Kwazydog

Teach, no worries at all, each to their own Please do note that CMAK is being sold at a discounted price over our previous titles though. What our main goal was was to give people back the 'western theatre' whilst using an engine that is *significantly* upgraded last time they saw allied troops. Although we could have skipped this and moved solely onto the rewrite straight after CMBB we felt that people would rather this than having to wait another year or two from now for us to finish up the new engine, as the truth of the matter is people love using allied troops and now you guys have the tools to create a huge range of WW2 battles! There has been a huge amount of work put into CMAK though, dont doubt that, as resaerch on vehicles, TO&E's, vehicle models, new vehicle, terrain and house textures, etc, all take up time. The way we structured things was to all this work to continue in tandam with out other projects though, so things havnt stood still there Im happy to say. Anyways, no worries Teach...just wanted to make sure you had noted the discounted price and understood the reasons behind the descision...hopefully many will enjoy what CMAK has to offer even if its not quite for you. Dan [ November 23, 2003, 09:27 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Okay guys, out of interest I ran a test in the full version. The test was pretty simple...I had 3 Tigers being fired at from the side by 3 Bazookas from a range of about 50m. One Tiger was on a direct 90 degree angle, the next was at a slight angle (maybe 80 degrees to the firer) and the last was at a 45 degree angle. Each time through I watched the first minute of battle and played the test through 5 times. The only Tiger that was killed out of those tests (15 Tigers in total and around 40 hits) was the one that which present a 90 degree angle to the firer, and even it was only killed by a partial penetration though the side hull. There were several other partial penertations against this 90 degree vehicle during the test, both hull and turret, but no others have enough punch left to kill the beast. There were also a couple of other partial penetrations against the turret on other vehicles (as it is rounded) but again, no kills. The only other hit of interest against the Tigers was a side hit against the 10 degree vehicle which cause internal spalling, causing the crew to be shaken for a while. During the period of being 'shaken' the crew paused, allowing two rear hull hits to no effect. So, all up, it sounds pretty good to me. The armour calculations between CMAK and CMBO have been worked on considerably so I guess this shouldnt be suprising Dan

Hawker, glad you are enjoying it!

GJK, if you have a save of that one could you email it across to Matt Dan

Guys, if you notice something like this that could be a bug dont forget to keep a save game so we can replicate it and send it off to Matt (matt@battlefront.com) for testing. Dan

Jaws, they are indeed different trees. What you could be seeing though is a slightly downsampled version of the origionals if you are using a card with a smaller amount of VRAM and they are being downsampled one or twice as a result...this could be why they are looking less details. Also CMAK's trees are in better scale with everything else than those I made for CMBB. For instance in CMBB the leaves, which you could see nicely, we actually so large that about the size of your hand when compared to your troops In CMAK I made the trees to a more realistic scale where the leaves are considerably smaller and as a result they may look somewhate less detailed. I think the positive here though is that they give a better impression of scale to the maps and make the battlefield feel much larger. Of course, you can always use CMBB's trees if you like! Guys, I did look at a lot of photos and saw no cacti in NA, hehe. Im sure that they are there but the trees and brush you get in game are 99.9% of what I saw in photos from the region, particually that dead scrubby grass Dan

Heya Steve, Actually this is something that we may consider, but the current engine really isnt set up for someone else to work on in that way. I dont know the details myself but I know that Steve (the other one ) has mentioned this in the past. Dan

Flammenwerfer, of course this is something that we would love too be able to do. Unfortnuately the realities of time wont allow us to do so though, as Im sure you understand. Dan

Lol, Ive never noticed that before...what a disaster. Everybody, shhh, maybe that means I dont have to moderate any more. Hehe, Id probably make more friends that way. Dan [ November 23, 2003, 06:19 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Thomm I know there are techinial reasons why we cant have two types of terrain in game (gridded and not) but I can really what they are to be honest. I think maybe it would have doubled the VRAM usage? Anyways, this is something that will certianly be looked at for the next engine! As for dust its fine on my end to be honest. Remember that dust tends to build up over time so maybe what youa are seeing is a thin dust cloud? Dust is calculated on a metre by metre basis. This means that if you call in an 81mm barrage you should see thicker dust in the middle which will block line of sote and only thin dust towards the edges which may not. Dan

The models and textures are different, but all of the audio files are the same so that is a huge space saver. It was touch and go that we could have both an Italian and African scenario and it took a lot of work to fit it under the 100mb limited we were aiming for, so Im glad most of you guys appreciate the effort. If you want more then that is what the order button is for Dan [ November 20, 2003, 08:22 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Panzer I would say that it is either the underlying penetration model or data on the ammo that has changes. Unfortunately no, no plans to take this back at this point as it would require a lot of work and we want to go forward Dan

Yup, thats it...sorry I didnt explain it better Michael

Im pretty sure they share their ammo Michael as they are the same weapon, so if one runs out so does the other. Dan

GJK, that is probably just an indicator that the US gun was still tracking you in case you popped back over. Generally guns will do so for a short while unless they find a better target in the mean time. Dan

flamingknives, thats an odd one we havnt seen before. Could you post a screen shot by any chance? Dan

flamingknives, thats an odd one we havnt seen before. Could you post a screen shot by any chance? Dan

Yup, thats the answer Basically we put a lot more research into armour penetration between CMBO, CMBB and CMAK and although CMBB is has damn fine calculations in it CMAK does take it another step further. Btw Panzer....might be best to put a SPOILER note at the top of this thread Dan

Remember that dust is accumulative legend, so if you see very faint dust from, say, an AT round hitting the ground it is just that...faint dust that shouldnt block LOS. On the other hand if you have a heavy artillery barrage hitting a location you should quickly see it build up until it is quite thick and blocking LOS. Dan

Judder, try it in CMAK or CMBB in '43 and you will probably get a better impresison of why this vehicle made such an impact in the war By the CMBO time frame (mid '44 onwards) you are indeed correct...the Tiger had actually been outdated in many ways. The 88 will still packed a hell of a punch though, and its amrour was still pretty tough unless close. Dan

Just to clarify we have made it clear that there wont be any campaign system in the current engine, and it would have required too much recoding to put it in there. Time will tell where we might head with the engine rewrite Dan

Les, totally agreed I have never been a huge fan of 'RTS wargames' like Close Combat as the player usually ends up overloaded. I know people say that its more 'real' becuase its real time but that has never worked for me...in real life thats what squad, platoon and company commanders are for and AI cannot take thier place...at least not yet. Something I would be interested in seeing is a RTS game similar to the old computer ambush, where you just control one squad Im not sure if it would work or not, but it would be interesting to see the possabilities. Dan

One of the huge benifits of the WEGO (and all turned based) system over RTS in my opinion is PBEM. I know that is what attracted me to CM in the first place...I dont have time to spend an hour playing a game live but if I can do a turn in 5-10 minutes and get back to work thats great Dan

Les, I actually agree with everything youve said there Firstly a demo (unless specifically a beta demo, which can also have its place) in my opinion *must* be the same as the shipping code as you suggest. To make a demo based on early code only leads confusion and of course people will find bugs, etc. I think GIC is probably a good example of a demo that was released on earlier code and thus showed many problems that may have otherwise been avoided. Also agreed that there is a fine balance between giving people a 'demo' and giving people too much. What you need to do is to give them a taste of that the game plays like, get them excited, but not give them so much that they get too much for free, hehe. For instance some people suggested a long while back that the CMBO demo should allow randomly generated maps for more replayability. Now that would be too much, hehe, and also showed that the demo we gave got them excited enough to want more Lastly, yup, I think its the internets fault that people want demos more and more. They offer a free sample that is quick and easy to get whenever you want it...something which is indeed a benifit over mags. I guess its the net that has allowed companies like ours and matrix to exist though, so I cant really complain, hehe. Anyways, interesting discussion. I hope you give the CMAK demo a go and find it to your liking If not though hang in there for the new engine, hehe. Dan [ November 11, 2003, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Hehe, well to be totally honest Les that was once true, partically when demos werent so common and the internet not so popular, but all signs are that its changing and changing rather rapidly. In this day and age when many games are being released that are sub par to say the least (you mentioned a perfact example in GIC) more and more people are wanting to play a demo before they will even consider buying a game, this is unfortuantely a fact. I was recently at a games development conference recently where I live and this was one on of the topics discussed actually. The more complex a game is, the more the target audience tends to be careful about their choices and what they do and dont like, and as a result the more they want to see in a demo before they will consider a purchase (flight sims are the example the speaker used). Now, you havnt bought CM based on the demos and Ill be honest with you...if its not something you would enjoy Im glad you tried that demo . Sure, we are a business and we would like your purchase, but we arent out to get it by selling you something that you didnt want in the first place. When the demo is out for CMAK hopefully you will give it another go and maybe find something you like there this time around If not, then maybe for the game after...at least we are giving you a sample so that you can make an honest descision. So, what have the CM demos done for us? Firstly, Id say that they lost a lot of FPSer's who wanted a wanted a WW2 FPS style game, hehe. What we gained though is a lot of people who would ahve never considered a wargamer as they thought they were based on baords with counters. On top of that we got our demo out there on web sites and on magazine covers, which allows the game to reach thousands of people to give it a go whom otherwise never would have looked at it twice. This, along with the great reviews we recieved, I beleive is what made CM such a success for us...and yes, a little luck that people, particually the magazines with their reviews, took a chance on a small independant company Now, that being said dont get me wrong...I respect Matrix (I think that they are about the only 'no demo' company out there?) for their descision and I wish them the best with it. Actually, I would suggest that with the style most of their games are a no demo policy might work well with them (most wargamers are interesting in details not visuals) but one you hit 3D people want to see it first, particually if you want to get others interested who might not like the 'wargame' tag. I hope its something they review in the future though (they have a few games Im interested in actually) but until then each to their own I guess I did noticed that they have a WWIIOnline demo metnioned on their web site actually...maybe they will use that as a benchmark? Dan [ November 11, 2003, 04:04 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]