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Demo Review


crazylegsmurphy

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I fail to see the issue here. If your troops can't see the gun, you can't. That's entirely sensible! Your troops aren't randomly getting wind of stuff. If they can place an eyeball on something, so can you. Trees, bushes, houses, tanks, etc etc get in the way of LOS. Things are as they should be.

Only point I'll concede is the dead crewmen, which leaves the AI at a disadvantage in that you can drop arty on guns and see how much damage you've done by counting the dead crew. At a guess I'd say having the game check LOS to dead people is CPU intensive without adding much to gameplay. And if the dead soldiers is a big issue for you, then disable them in the options screen.

I understand how the concept works, I'm saying that it feel unnatural to me to have units randomly appear. In other RTS games the fog of war is there to give the illusion that your troops are revealing what they are seeing. Other units fade into view and you then react accordingly.

This illusion of sight helps give the player visual clues as to what is going on. It also helps eliminate what I could call, "I can see it all, yet I'm totally blind!"

Because I can't actually see what my troops are seeing, I am at the mercy of them. When AT guns suddenly pop up on my screen, I have to start playing a game of "remember the position" As my snipers ran behind things the AT gun popped out of view...then back in...then out...then in...I knew where it was, but this "popping" action just looked odd to me.

I would have rather not seen anything, and then as my troops LOS came closer the AT gun came into view...you know like typical LOS...this way I am not guessing when my sniper will see, but I am actually making him position himself where I KNOW he can see based on visual clues of a FOW or LOS radius.

EDIT: The major issue I had is one AT gun popping in and out of view is odd...but when a whole platoon of enemy troops is popping all in and out randomly all over the map, it's like a huge game of "whack a mole!" only I don't know where the holes are.

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*unboggles mind*

Have you ever stopped to consider that people who go and lie down in long grass/wheat fields are suddenly tricky to spot, ergo they are not to be seen by your soldiers and thus not by you either?

I really, really don't understand your problem with this LOS issue.

And again, units do not randomly disappear. They disappear/appear only when certain logical visibility conditions are met.

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no issues for me with an ancient AGP 6800 ultra:P

looking at the SFS files it does appear to be IL2 engine based,which isnt exactly new,the upside to this is those with IL2 will know all the performance tweaks already.

i enjoyed the training missions uptil the red defence mission where i was struggling to keep my AT guns alive for more than a few minutes,cant seem to hide them at all and they certainly dont like being placed in the trenches,i may have missed it,but is there a dig in command?

seems to be far too exposed in a defensive situation,its only a demo so im not too fussed and ive only briefly studied the manual so far

quite looking forward to the full game and put the MP to the test.

the sounds may be a liitle on the weak side,but im sure we can mod them later.

troop management wasnt to much of a problem,having played alot of large CM battles its was quite easy to get around the map quickly,once i got used to the camera

i like the lock LOS to unit view,and the LOS and LOF data icons are easy to work with.

i have vista on another machine and it does seem to run well enough,although the usual sound issues with vista are apparent.

most pro gamers still have XP on their systems aswell,so ill stick to XP for the foreseeable future,vista offers nothing for gaming at this stage for me at least.

thanks to BFC and 1C for getting this off the ground,alot of us have been watching its dev for a few years now.

happy its finally here

Salute!

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Have you ever stopped to consider that people who go and lie down in long grass/wheat fields are suddenly tricky to spot, ergo they are not to be seen by your soldiers and thus not by you either?
I think you are missing my point. I have no problem with not being able to see my enemy, what I don't like is not knowing what my own troops are seeing. I'm trying to think of a better way to explain this.

I dunno other than how I have already explained it. I understand the concept, but for me it's just not working...I need to know what my troops are seeing so I can place them in places to get better views of things. I can't simply wait around for them to spot something.

I just did what some of you suggested. I took my trucks and ordered them from the top of the hill...to the bottom of the hill...basically a straight line right down the road. A distance of a walk to your local 7-11.

I did this (restarted the mission) 4 times. (note, the first time the mission loaded it took roughly 52 seconds) I clicked basically the same position, and they took out an average of 5 trees each time.

The best score the driver had was one time he only hit the first tree.

So you're telling me I should be micromanaging my trucks in some wide arch around trees, while all the while I'm getting slammed by shells, my troops are standing around, and I am supposed to be fighting a battle?

Also, can you shut off that wind sound? It's whistling nonstop in my ear and it's driving me batty.

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Originally posted by Zatoichi:

Hello all - long time lurker etc etc etc.

Well, I'm impressed with the demo, I am enjoying it immensely and it has whetted my appetite for the main game no end. As for the above 'review' - you just can't please some people, eh?

Well done to all involved in this game.

x2. I really enjoyed the demo. The game is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. You've really got to think about what you're doing. And besides that, the game is beautiful and well polished.
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crazy, if enemy units disappear then NONE of your units can trace a line of sight to them. If one of your units sees an enemy unit, then the enemy is also visible. If you select a unit which cannot see that enemy unit, it remains visible but the icon is dimmed.

I can't simply wait around for them to spot something.
Heh...

Martin

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Ok Crazylegsmurphy,

Demo downloaded, installed and played... obviously to gauge the full potential of this game you, like with chess, need to understand the nuances of the tactics. I on the other hand merely wanted to quickly gauge the points CrazylegsMurphy highlighted.

I will say that I come to this game with a background in CC (all expansions) and other more heavy brow wargames. I DONT DO CLICKFESTS!

Firstly my system:

E6600 Dual Core 'Overclocked 2.93mhz'

2 Gig 7200 DDR2 Ram

GTX 8800 756mb

Windows XP sp2

Screen Res: 1280x1024

Yours points:

Loadings times being excessive: My experience was anything between 18 – 25 sec. Excessive, no not really.

Features turned off/Bad Performance: All at max, smooth with fluid animation.

Frame rate Poor: As above no problems

Poor Pathfinding: I've played CC so this seemed normal for me to control my units with waypoints.

Camera Control: Like with everything it takes time to master, though in the end after an hours play or so I was comfortable.

Poor LOS (disappearing enemy units): You have to assign and control your units better so that at least one is spotting the enemy...I haven't a problem with that (realism).

---------------------------------------------

Unlike your good self, and this is not meant as an insult, I will give this game more than a few hours play before I resign it to the bargain basket. My initial impression is good, it feels like a tactical wargame that needs time to master...and hey guess what, that's what I wanted.

I feel that 'most' wargamers will appreciate this game, warts and all! I give it an initial thumbs up, knowing it will only get better with loyal, intelligent and balanced community input.

Good work BF!

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I'm a little puzzled by this thread. For those on the fence, my rig is pretty close to the minimum (P4 2.8, 1gig Ram, Geforce 5700fx) and it ran the demo fine. I found a few minor issues that could be ironed out but on the whole it worked quite well. With the settings on 'normal' at 1024x768 I have pretty good frame rate. The game struck me as fairly sophisticated so one hour probably isn't enough time to form an opinion. Looks promising to me.

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Well said, Smoke. My system, too, is mid-range. Yet it runs the demo very well.

And, your assessment is on target, I believe, in that the level of sophistication here is several degrees above the norm.

Looking forward to the full game,

Ricky

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The first time that I clicked on the game's desktop icon, it wouldn't run. I ran the config utility and it started right up.

The first time that I entered a mission, it ran VERY, VERY poorly, very choppy. I went into the setup program, loaded the defaults and THEN tweaked it a bit, which was to set EVERYTHING to MAX. I exited the game, and restarted ToW. It ran fine after that.

The game camera is excellent. It reminds me of the camera in TC2M. It's very flexible and responsive, a MASSIVE improvment over some older games.

I still don't know what I'm doing. I'm playing the tutorials and trying to learn how stuff works by RTFM. IMO, it's really important to do so, before going negative on the game.

I can't tell you how many CM fans showed up at the Panzer Command forums claiming that the orders system was FUBAR'd, only to then reveal that they hadn't read the manual and had no concept of the newer game's turn sequence. No kidding, they just sat down and tried to play Combat Mission and didn't understand why PCoWS wasn't cooperating.

One thing that I can tell our readers for sure is that ToW is more complex in it's mechanics than most of us probably assumed. If you hear someone refer to the game derisively as an "RTS," they're mostly full of bull. It's certainly not Sudden Strike or CoH. That said, it's also not CMx, CCx or PCoWS.

My vote, thus-far, is a definite maybe.

PoE

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I think I understand what crazy is saying about the LOS and spotting and I think his concern stems from a misunderstanding of the whole spotting system. I will lay it out and hopefully it will explain to him what he is seeing when he plays the game. There are 3 levels of sighting. "Nobody can see the enemy unit", "other friendly units can but the selected one can't" and "the selected has direct LOS to enemy unit". Let's say you have a squad walking down the road and someonespots and enemy unit. When you select a friendly unit the enemy icon will be solid if the select friendly unit has an LOS or it will be translucent and that will tell you the selected friendly unit has no LOS but another friendly unit does. Then let's say the enemy units disappears completely as you describe. What that means is the enemy unit is no longer in the LOS of ANY friendly unit.It is a dynamic spotting system. Once an enemy unit is spotted it does no remain spotted forever. It only remains spotted as long as it is in the LOS of a friendly unit. If during the heat of battle you can't figure out which friendly unit(s) have the LOS pause the game and click on each of your friendlyunits to determine which have the LOS and use that information if you want other friendly units to be moved to apsoition where they also have LOS.

Hope this is helpful....

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Originally posted by Kazzel:

I expect them to back up, but they kept turning around and exposing the rear to the enemy, this is one thing I think you should look into, theres nothing more frustrating that losing that tank, just becorse the driver are too lazy to put it in reverse gear.

There is a special command for that i believe - try 'Retreat' and they should move in reverse. Sometimes tanks do it themselves when under fire.
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This is an excellent game...

But not for the rts point and click game lovers,or for the casual gamer.

Much like the combat mission series, the dificulty settings are hard as hell to beat, i am finding the defensive tutorial hard, two at 45mm and two at rifles against 2 medium and 3 light panzer, that is a challenge.

I think some players are disapointed whith the grafics because they are comparing it against games like Company of Heroes, that is why they say it is boring.

This is no Company of Heroes kind of slaughterfest, and i am grateful for that.

It has the kind of hard to master challenge combat mission series had.

I am running it whith windows Vista, whith a ATI x1950pro with 2gb ram, at maximum settings and 1280 resolutions, smoothly and with good framerate. But this is no Company of Heroes (thank god for that), some players will get frustrated by beeing slaughtered every single time they run a scenario. The true wargame lovers will find it challenging and quite refreshing and full of possibilities.

About the small bugs, that is what patches are for.

Thank you Battlefront and 1c company for taking the game forward smile.gif

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If you have perfomance problems and have sound chip integrated in motherboard - try turning off EAX in game settings.

Devs claimed that audio system is advanced and thus CPU intensive: for example, voices from tank crews passed through special noise filters, even engine sounds are unique for different countries.

BTW, did you notice that each tank has unique number? smile.gif

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Im with Miguel from Portugal

As with Combat Mission when it arrived it had a few bugs etc , these where delt with . Some peole cryed some could nt load it etc .

After playing the demo I think TOW will be a huge winner and stand the test of time . Its not going to be for everyone but there s a huge ammount of people that are going to love this game . Thumbs up to the DEVS , well done i hope you s all reap the finacial rewards of your hard work .

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theBrit: Poor LOS (disappearing enemy units): You have to assign and control your units better so that at least one is spotting the enemy...I haven't a problem with that (realism).
In precise TOW terms where every soldier is rated for "Scout" (a skill which is both responsible for spotting as well as preventing to be spotted), it means that part of masterting the battlefield tactics will be to make sure that you have some spotters out to get a look at the enemy - and prevent the enemy from looking at you.

Real-world combat tactics center around this, and a good battlefield commander will figure out ways to keep the enemy uncertain about his positions (and intentions) for as long as possible. That's half of the point of the game and half of the fun.

We invested a great deal of effort in this area in TOW together with 1C to make sure that spotting and engagement ranges are realistic. TOW might be the only "RTS" that pulls it off at this scale.

TOW is really a deep game with a number of levels of complexity and detail. It will take time to peel off the layers of the onion. But that's the whole point.

Martin

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thanks for the info Brit and others. its reassuring to hear from the pros who play this type of war sim genre games. i wanted to play the demo but I didn't started downloading till 1030 last night. Had to be at work early so didn't get to play, bummer. Will play tonight!!!

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I think the camera system is great ... though maybe it needs some fiddling.

I've remapped the camera left/right/forward/back to the standard WASD keys used in FPSs. By default they're mapped to the arrow keys which seems like a strange choice to me.

They can be used in combination with the free look (middle mouse button) to move around really smoothly and quickly (yes Virginia, using both hands!).

It's awesome ... head and shoulders above the CM series. smile.gif Then there's the other camera modes (centre on cursor, for example) which look very powerful too, but I haven't had time to play with them properly.

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