December Normandy Bones

[Frenchy]

I am ready to pre-order! Looking very good!

[noxnoctum]

I better hurry up and finish all the NATO campaigns before this comes out . You know, I used to lament the fact that the Ostfront game was slated last after this and Bulge... but now I'm happy. The core game engine improves with every patch, so by the time Ostfront comes out I hope most of the remaining issues (LOS on cliffs for example) will be resolved .

EDIT: I hope the campaigns are hard as hell!

[Sequoia]

Will there be a German campaign?

Oh and +1 to the ammo depot idea.

From another thread:

We will make two medium sized campaigns; one American and one German. This is similar to the concept of three Campaigns being shipped with NATO.

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

In the second screen shot, the guy standing on the far bank near the center of the pic appears to have wet trousers. If I am not just imagining that, and wet uniforms are accounted for graphically, that is trés cool.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

,,,by the time Ostfront comes out...

I hate to spoil your Christmas by telling you that the Ostfront family of games has been canceled so that development time can be reallocated to Spiders From Mars. Market testing has shown that the latter can be expected to be a huge seller, especially among the 10-22 y-o demographic, which is after all the bulk of the game buying public.

Have a nice day.

Michael

[Scipio]

Speaking of which, please, for love of a fake god, no more neon green weapon icons. Give Scipio a break!

I SECOND THAT!!!

[c3k]

Better yet, get Scipio on the team. The angst of the NDA restrictions should nicely balance the sense of accomplishment he'll get when his icons are part of the official release.

[Gromit]

Let's see here... close to 19 hours since Steve first posted at 7'ish last night. At 4120 views since then that makes almost 217 views per hour in the first overnight period. Looks like the "tridents" are starting to surface after a lonely patrol under the artic ice... or somefink.

[vincere]

Yes, it would be great if you could have ammo stored also in buildings, bunkers, ammo trucks etc.

If memory serves, a year or so ago, Steve said that they were hoping to get something like this in. Not read anything since.

[JoMac]

Steve,

Yeah, I think its best to keep that blueish-grey colored uniforms for Luftwaffe Divisions, and Greenish-Grey ( field-grau ) uniforms for the typical German Infantry ( excluding camo variants ofcourse ).

Joe

[LongLeftFlank]

I hate to spoil your Christmas by telling you that the Ostfront family of games has been canceled so that development time can be reallocated to Spiders From Mars.

So the community needs to get work on the "well hung with snow white tan" and "leper Messiah" glam rock mods?

[Chad Harrison]

So I was pondering the whole ammo question I brought up above (if additional ammo storage would be available to formations without vehicles - could be stored at an OP/CP, bunker, certain buildings, ect.) and I realized something:

The standard TO&E for an American rifle company had two Jeeps with trailers for the weapons platoon. Will these show up in the TO&E? While these company jeeps use in reality varied from ambulance, to warm dinner delivery to moving around the mortars/MG's from weapons platoon, I do not think that it is any kind of stretch to include them with ammo - quite abit could be stored in the trailer.

Obviously if they got hit, well, you can imagine the results.

Anyways, still curious to hear the official word from Steve. Would be really cool to somehow designate a building or bunker from the terrain as an OP or CP and have weapon ammo there. And I dont mean 100 additional 60mm mortar rounds - just a bunch of rifle, MG rounds, some extra grenades and a few other odds and ends. This would also allow the American player to distribute Bazookas and their ammo as they see fit as they were not associated with anyone in particular (TO&E puts them 'with' Co. HQ, but the five were passed around as needed).

Anyways, just thinking aloud. Any comments would be appreciated Steve.

Thanks in advance

Chad

[MeatEtr]

From another thread:

Originally Posted by Battlefront.com

We will make two medium sized campaigns; one American and one German. This is similar to the concept of three Campaigns being shipped with NATO.

Steve

Thanks Sequoia, I must of missed this, great to hear.

[Melnibone]

The New Year is looking brighter.

[gibsonm]

So I was pondering the whole ammo question I brought up above (if additional ammo storage would be available to formations without vehicles - could be stored at an OP/CP, bunker, certain buildings, ect.) and I realized something:

The standard TO&E for an American rifle company had two Jeeps with trailers for the weapons platoon. Will these show up in the TO&E? While these company jeeps use in reality varied from ambulance, to warm dinner delivery to moving around the mortars/MG's from weapons platoon, I do not think that it is any kind of stretch to include them with ammo - quite abit could be stored in the trailer.

Obviously if they got hit, well, you can imagine the results.

Anyways, still curious to hear the official word from Steve. Would be really cool to somehow designate a building or bunker from the terrain as an OP or CP and have weapon ammo there. And I dont mean 100 additional 60mm mortar rounds - just a bunch of rifle, MG rounds, some extra grenades and a few other odds and ends. This would also allow the American player to distribute Bazookas and their ammo as they see fit as they were not associated with anyone in particular (TO&E puts them 'with' Co. HQ, but the five were passed around as needed).

Anyways, just thinking aloud. Any comments would be appreciated Steve.

Thanks in advance

Chad

Well given that Echelon vehicles and other things like SSMs / CSMs, recovery vehicles, AFV ammunition replenishment and recovery, etc. were excluded from CM:SF because it was" beyond the scale of the current battle" (my precise) I suspect the same would apply to the Normandy game.

[Blackhorse]

WOW! Those are stunning.

[LongLeftFlank]

These screenies are good screenies.... I like the mist-enshrouded landscapes particularly. But there is one small problem: the GIs and landser all look like they're on parade (especially the Panzerfuhrer with the tie). The modding community will certainly dirty up the gear post-release, but there remains the issue of the guys looking like clones.

ISTR some discussion of making 2 or 3 different uniform textures available within a squad, just as faces have multiple textures: e.g. some guys have backpacks removed (or alpha channeled invisible), others wear linked ammo belts, others wear forage caps instead of helmets, etc. Or was that deemed too CPU-intensive? Could there be a "Clones On/Off" toggle or sumfink for the SDRAM impaired?

[Battlefront.com]

The "clone" effect will remain, to some degree, for quite a while due to hardware concerns. However, you'll notice two major improvements in Normandy:

1. Equipment carried by the soldiers is dependent upon the type of soldier and the weapon he has. It's subtle, but when playing it is quite noticeable.

2. We can vary textures to some extent. We can't go crazy with this, though, because it does hit the resources to some extent. You can see different helmet textures on the German soldiers and different shades of OD for the Americans. We're working on some more variations like this. Varying the headgear itself isn't really all that necessary since pretty much everybody would be wearing a helmet (i.e. not wearing a M43).

The two limitations that will continue to be around for a while:

1. Limited ability to have completely different soldier model variations. For example, we can't have several different soldier heights, body proportions, etc. That requires unique animations and models, which increases both development costs and hit to the computing resources.

2. Variations in posture for the same action. For example, everybody sitting in a truck will sit exactly the same way. To do otherwise would require unique animations and models for each variation. Worse, we then have to do this for each possible small arm that could possibly be carried. Definitely not going to happen.

Steve

[Holman]

I thought we were getting hexes this time.

[gibsonm]

Sssh!

"Zones of Control" are the innovation to be included in January's round of bones.

Also a digital 20 sided die that you need to click on repeatedly as the turn unfolds.

[SlapHappy]

Will the Wehrmacht soldiers carry their rifles in their dominant-hand during Quick movement as was the norm for such troops?

[Mord]

These screenies are good screenies.... I like the mist-enshrouded landscapes particularly. But there is one small problem: the GIs and landser all look like they're on parade (especially the Panzerfuhrer with the tie). The modding community will certainly dirty up the gear post-release, but there remains the issue of the guys looking like clones.

ISTR some discussion of making 2 or 3 different uniform textures available within a squad, just as faces have multiple textures: e.g. some guys have backpacks removed (or alpha channeled invisible), others wear linked ammo belts, others wear forage caps instead of helmets, etc. Or was that deemed too CPU-intensive? Could there be a "Clones On/Off" toggle or sumfink for the SDRAM impaired?

That's not an issue, we've already proven that, LLF...as long as we can mod unis and faces and such, like we could with CMSF...I mean as long as they didn't change anything...we can add different unis within a squad...We could have dirtied, half grau half camo, full camo and full grau all in the same squad...we could have camo helmets, chicken wired helmets, and grau helmets...without BFC doing anything...cap AND helmets would be a different story however. As much tweaking and mod manipulating as you've done, and congrats on that 10th building texture...I figured you'd already known this...or are you talking something different? And not trying to sound snotty here...so no offense if it sounds that way.

Also if BFC would just let us add extension numbers to vehicle BMPs like we can with unis, helmets, and buildings, we could have those too...it would be at the user's discretion as to how much they wanna bog their comp down...be a decent work around until they do add them.

Mord.

[Chad Harrison]

Well given that Echelon vehicles and other things like SSMs / CSMs, recovery vehicles, AFV ammunition replenishment and recovery, etc. were excluded from CM:SF because it was" beyond the scale of the current battle" (my precise) I suspect the same would apply to the Normandy game.

Would the weapons platoons jeeps fall into this same category? I would assume that they were used to move the heavy weapons foward just like the battalions anti tank platoon would use its jeeps to move the 57mm's forward.

[bowenw]

I have not played combat mission for quite a while, the Normandy campaign sounds terrific as are the pictures shown above, great job guys, one question, I just saw a clip about the mg42 on a weapons show which still just might be the finest machine gun ever made, will this weapon be include in the Normandy mod. I mean will you actually see gun crews firing this awsome weapon?

Bo

[MikeyD]

MG34 and MG42 both in, in both LMG and HMG setup. You should download the NATO demo just to see what the modern equivalent MG3 is like. Its a hoot.