Kwazydog
-
Posts
1,547 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Kwazydog
-
-
Just in case you guys dont know, we have continue to make CMAK's armour calculations as realistic as possible. Along with our own research Rexford has helped us out a lot with new info, suggestions, and research (as well as all of our beta testers
). Ive been contemplating the suggestion that *some* people didnt find some parts of CMBB as 'fun' as CMBO, and I think I may have figure out why (I must admit, even though I love the eastern front and CMBB, CMAK has an element of fun to it). I think that this could be because on the eastern front one side of another usually had the upper hand, either through technology or numbers (T-34's and KV-1's earlier, Panthers and Tigers in the mid years for the Germans, and Russian numbers and pure power later on).
CMAK has a real element of balance to its battles. Ive played this scenario many times myself and the outcome is really based on the player that uses the best tactics and thinks smart. The AI has managed to kick my butt many a time, even though I know what is coming...it is one hell of a battle. Those Lee's can be mean, but the Pz-III's used correct can really cause them some trouble
Dan
[ October 11, 2003, 07:34 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Btw guys, note that those screen shots are using earlier beta graphics in some places...I think updated shots will be put up soon though.
Dan
-
Good question but I have no idea pixie...the paint was available and they even had a document stating how it should be applied. Note that they did use winter camo frequently though (after the first winter when I beleive there wasnt quite enough paint available).
Dan
-
Zimorodok, no, there is no default green
I actually have a translated Russian book here on camo and colouring during WW2 and to be honest I havnt yet seen a mod that uses what they describe as the 'standard' colour. It seems that the standard colour is actually a very dark green which almost looks black. If you start looking at WW2 photos of Russian tanks you can seen how this might be the case as they usually appear very very dark (though of course its hard to tell in B&W). It then goes on to say that there was variation due to different quality and mixes of paint, different factories producing it, etc.
The reason I didnt do this and went for the lighter colour is that as CM is current 16 bit these dark textures looked pixelated. So as an alternitive the colour I used was taken off of the *only* descent quality colour photo I could find of Russian vehicles (T-34's).
Btw, just for the record according to this book I have here the Russians almost never used camo, which is why I included none
. It was used on and off until, IIRC, mid 42 at which point it would no longer allowed (In fact it has a translation of the origional Russian documents stating as much).Dan
[ October 09, 2003, 05:58 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Ahh, okay, now looking through some of the history here I understand some of this a little more.
Carbon, if you decide to leave the forums that is your choice to make. Generally people do get along well here, especially consideirng the size of the community, and Im sorry that you dont feel that you can be part of it too. The ball is in your court though, so Ill leave the choice to you at this point.
Im going to lock this thread now as I have comment on it and Im sure other posts it is only going to cause further concern for the origional poster.
Dan
-
Cabron, firstly, Im locking your other posts as we wish discussions to be kept in one place in order to be fair to other forum member whom may not be interest in your post.
Secondly, to be totally honest, Im not sure what on earth are you talking about? This forum is large with, there are a lot of people posting here and from time to time personalities to clash, but generally people have been well behaved, particually recently. The General Forum has been an exception to that rule, but considering you have never posted there, not even this post which you decided to add to multiple forums, Im not sure why that would concern you. Even this situation has been improving though and we have been keeping a closer eye on it than usual.
That being said, we arent all know all seeing beings that have time to read every thread. Ive checked my inbox and no where have you emailed me with any conerns. If you do find some people are going over the top, let us know and we will look into it. I can make no promises that it will work out your way, as different people can be sensitive to different issues, but if anyone oversteps the line posts will be locked and warnings will be made.
Dan
-
Hi guys,
I must admit, Im glad that a bunch of you liked CMBB just how it shipped
We put a whole heap of work into it to make sure that all vehicles looked to be of the same colouring, etc, and Im glad it paid off!Dan
-
Seanachai, where do you think we found Charles in the first place
-
Lee, systems are getting closer, butI wouldnt say they would have no problem with it.
Keep in mind that many CM battles are battalion vs battalion size or larger. That places maybe 1000 individual people on a battlefeild. Not only do you have to graphically represent all of those little guys, but you need to give each them of a brain (AI). This is where the real processing power can be used up, as each of those little guys needs to work out where to stand, where to shoot, how to react to various situations, etc.
On top of that, if you are tracking indivudal people, you really need to consider tracking indvidual bullets and where they hit, who they hit, etc. If you are tracking indivudal bullets, you then in turn need to track individual ammo for each little guy, and so on and so forth.
So, basically, its not just as simple as saying lets represent each individual soldier...its like trowing a rock in a pond and watching the ripples. One seeingly small change can open a whole range of other problems.
That being said...will it happen one day? Hell I dont know I just make the graphics, hehe, but maybe
Dan
PS : And yup, compaing CM and CC really isnt good in this case. CC limits you too, I think, 12 'units'? On top of that comsider that its 2D, its ballistic calculations are far far simplier, so no processing power is used there, etc, etc.
[ September 25, 2003, 09:18 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Im pretty sure its been mentioned that the shots are work in progress...yup, a dozen times or so, anyways
. Those mountains are actually from the Italian theatre.Dan
[ September 25, 2003, 08:37 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Actually it looks to me like he aimed at the first unit but missed and it landed near the second.
Dan
-
Guys, I suspect that it would be easier to say what the fundemental simularities will be instead of the differences
Remember that the engine is being written from scratch, so basically everything has the opportunity to change. Nothing will be 'upgraded' as such, as it will all be new.
We have learnt a lot from the CM series thus far and will certainly be using it as a template for the rewrite, but we will be striving to make the game a better simulation of combat and thus many areas will be looked at from new perspectives. Just guessing here, but for instance Id say that calling in artillery may be one of those areas we will wipe the board clean, look at what we have learnt thus far, and see what we can come up with to make it the most accurate simulation seen in a wargame thus far.
Dan
[ September 22, 2003, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Yeah, desert backgrounds have only just gone in guys, so Im guessing this was a shot with an older build
Dan
[ September 17, 2003, 06:37 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Actually the reason they are low res are because people requested the skies show sunset and sunrise and not be mirrored around the map. This requires 3 seperate textures to mirror with each other, but in turn they have to be lower res in order to run reasonably on everybodies systems. This is why no one ever modded the CMBB skies though...they are damn hard to get right.Originally posted by Vader's Jester:Uh, recycled skies.
CM's low res skies are an eye-sore from hell!! The crystal-clear high-res skies modded for CMBO have yet to be matched.
It would be oh so easy for us to make everything super huge resolution and Im sure the result would look great, but if we did make everything equivalant to the mods out there there the game would be lucky to run on 128mb+ cards. Skies are, out of all the textures, the most system intensive to make larger due to their size already as video cards are much better at manipulating smaller textures than they are very large ones. This is why we tend to be more conseritive with our textures sizes....if people want to make out their VRAM themselves that is their choice
That being said if you actually take a look at the screen shots though you will notice that they all have been updated and the clear and cloudy skies being totally new, not recycled as you suggested.
Dan
[ September 16, 2003, 01:37 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Moving this one to the General Forum.
Btw, I didnt think this was due this year, and Im not even sure its early next year. Any ideas of the release date...we are looking forward to it too, hehe.
Dan
-
Rommel, yup, Im pretty sure that is the case. I havnt got time to test right at the moment but I am 90% sure I recall a game where dust was rising behind a rise and I knew something bad was on the way
Gpig...its a hard coded thing so not something we can change, but Ill run it past Chalres
Dan
-
Actually they are the same explosion as in CMBB at the moment, hehe. I guess everything looks cooler when in a new screen shotOriginally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:It looks like Juju has had a hand at helping BFC with their explosions judging by the visual impact those screenshots show when something goes boom.
Dan
-
And no, we didnt. Actually all vehicles are less likely to bog.
Dan
-
Roster, the CMBO special edition, as it installs off of the CD, is greatly different from the CMBO we were origionally selling. The buildings, trees, and all terrain have been greatly changed since the origional CMBO. I thought this was important to note as I think you are feeling cheated for reasons that you actually shouldnt be. If you download the origional demo you should see the difference
. We included the mods seperatly (as a *bonus* on top of our graphical enhances) becuase we wanted to give people the ability to install the mods they liked whilst not having to install them all. Some of the mods are very large in size and on some systems with lower VRAM, installing all of the mods may slow down system performance. We also thought that this was the best way to make sure the modders recieved the credit they deserved for their work, as in the seperate mods they include a text file describing their work which otherwise could very well be overlooked.
Dan
[ June 15, 2003, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
Havermeyer, very simply bump mapping is a method where by you can make a surface look like it has raised details on it without adding polygons to the surface. For instance, you could use a bump map to simulate zimmerit on a Tiger which would result in the zimmerit reacting to the light in the scene (highlights, shadows, etc) as if it were really raised from the surface, even though the surface is essentially flat. If saves polygons on a model, but does add to the overhead on the video card.
Err, does that help at all
?Dan
-
Thomm, good points.
To be honest though, hardware still plays a very and probably the most important part in game graphics, at least not for us. FPSer's are a very different beast to what we work on and are indeed crossing that barrier where the artist output is very important there (HL looks amazing!), but games in an open environment such as CM, BC or flight sims such as IL-2 that rely of detailed physics, good AI and a large detailed environment really are still bound by the hardware they are running on. Also, better hardware offers better effects....look at some of the shadows now showing up in games for instance, along with bump mapping, reflections (particually in water), textures thanks to VRAM increases, etc. All of these will become better and better over time.
Phil, Charles is writing the new engine from scratch. He has some amazing plans for it, but its far too soon to go into details unfortunately
To be honest there arent really engines out there to suit our needs...most engines are actually gears to FPS style games, and the better of those go for over $1,000,000 a pop, hehe.Dan
-
Dont worry Phil, I didnt take you the wrong way, just wasnt sure what you were picturing that might make it unplayable, hehe. Firstly, no, it wont become an FPS
VERY basically, at the moment, think of something similar to the current game play of CM, but with grpahics better than battlefield command. Now, dont get me wrong there, those graphics are absoluetly awesome in BC, but their game will be released sonner than ours and thus we will have more hardware to play with
There is going to be a lot more in there and a lot may changes, but I just wanted to give you guys a very rough idea of where it might be headed. More details down the track. I think you guys will be excited...I know I am
-
Hopefully Vanir, plus a lot more
Details are still some distance away though.Out of interest Phil, what is it that makes you feel CMX2 will possibly be virtually unplayable?
Just curious, as Ive read your first post a few times and you mention that you cant imagine CM modelled in true 3D whereas the CM you already own already is modelled in true 3D, hehe. Hopefully I can put some of your fears to rest, but I need to understand what they actually are first Dan
[ June 12, 2003, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]
-
If you look closely it looks like they have also painted the tracks, too
Tools, even if this is a wartime paint scheme in my opinion it is certainly not a typical scheme found on most vehicles. If it is origional Id say it was a rush job very very late in the war.
Here is a modelling site that might give you some ideas if you dont find anywhere better.
Dan
We put a whole heap of work into it to make sure that all vehicles looked to be of the same colouring, etc, and Im glad it paid off!
CM's low res skies are an eye-sore from hell!!
CMAK Terrain query
in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps
Posted
Well no promises, so lets just say for now you guys might find a 'tall hedge' in CMAK that should be just what you need
Dan