hoolaman

Since banning would only be a last resort, maybe a few threads that unproductively bring up the same old issues might benefit from judicious use of the padlock.

THIS THREAD AND THIS ONE featuring a reply from Steve, have already addressed this issue. Also from that thread:

[singing] I hate every ape I see From chim-pan-A to chim-pan-Zee No, you'll never make a monkey out of me

Yes this is the best tip. However, some have suggested in the past that a light gun might be a little too good at this task to the point of cheating.

Although the thread has subsequently been hijacked in that direction, Para never actually said this. All he said (and I agree) is that not being able to fast-forward the video on the first playthrough is annoying. Trivial maybe, but worth a rant if you ask me. I have ranted about it months back too. I agree that the whole "blue-bar makes for a better simulation" argument is pretty dubious without knowing how the game is programmed and how much processor power goes to graphics.

Doesn't sound silly to me at all. In fact it's exactly what I feel about CM:SF WEGO. </font>

I think this assessment is pretty much correct. However I am not sure their highest intention was to make sure RT *play* was in. A design decision was obviously made very early in the process that the engine must be based on underlying RT. They must have seen more value in doing this than just to give players the ability to play RT. Future multiplayer options and ease of programming may have been high on the list. And I'm sure abandoning WEGO was never put up as a wise idea in the BFC team meetings. Of course when time started to run short and the technical realities became apparent wrt TCP/IP, TacAI etc , WEGO seems to have been put on the backburner in favour of at least releasing *something*. I hope it will get more loving attention in the future.

...and if you tried to claim LOF to your friend's plastic army men through a lincoln log he would...

Yes I know what you mean, but I have always been of the opinion that some of the basic terrain in CMBB/AK looks a lot more believable and in some ways straight out better than in CMSF. I refer especially to the tufty brush as well as the little rocks and larger rocky boulders and stuff that made CMAK's deserts seem a lot more satisfying. Little 3-D rocks would add a lot to the terrain in CMSF. I have to say I agree with Rollstoy that the grass needs shading and it might be this that makes it look odd to my eyes.

To be fair, if BFC had been posting rebuttals to whining the whole time since Steve went into hiding, we would still be no closer to a patch, but would have all wasted our time and Steve would not have fixed his roof or whatever he was doing. What BFC have failed to do IMO is to explain what the "grand plan" for the game was/is. They could have kept up the anticipation for the future of the engine even as people had a buggy game on their drives by talking design philosophy and plans for the future. In mainly being defensive they not only stoked the fires but failed to give us anything else to talk about. The disappearing act is not really a bad idea considering the level of dialogue here lately, but they could continue to ignore our complaints while putting out info about the game.

If you really are interested, here is a list of all stated fixes to date. Not a small list, although some of these issues still exist, and patches introduced new bugs too. Although we are now 4! months from release, I do hold high hopes for the future. Hopefully after 1.05 BFC can do a new demo, a new manual etc. to get a bit more momentum for their game.

It really bugs me too, that the grass always is rendered in concetric circles around the point under the camera. Its expecially noticable on low settings and really distracting.

I am pretty sure the underlying grid in cmx1 was 1x1 or thereabouts. Thats why you could get a 20x20 map tile with road, scattered trees and grass and have guys either in them or out of them. Since nobody knows exactly how CMSF works, we can't compare the two, but Steve has stated himself that CMx1 was capable of much better resolution of LOS. He also stated that the action spot hexes are used in pathing, LOS and LOF calculations, not just for an easy way to do a coarse LOS check.

I don't think that Michael's argument is essentially about "bugginess"--as someone else on this thread pointed out, the problem with 1:1 design is that to do it you either need to: 1) have players control each of the individual soldiers--I think everyone agrees that this is not workable and certainly not fun; OR 2) Hand this level of control completely over to a TacAI, which is really just another form of computer-driven abstraction and incredibly difficult to implement well, given how difficult it is to program an AI to handle all of the situations that arise in this kind of game. If the AI explicitly tries to model and represent 1:1 action in the game, it will inevitably (pending significant advances in AI development) leave players asking "why are my soldiers acting like idiots/zombies/automatons?" BFC certainly has outstanding programmer(s), but do they have the resources to develop a "next-level" AI that can make individual pixel troopers behave in a believable manner under all circumstances? </font>

You could just forget about the particle fragment effects and just have the puff of smoke at the top and the impact puffs on the ground. That is what the excellent video posted by huntarr above shows.

Yes you can. Thats what I mostly used to do with mods. If I didn't like it I would find another mod to download and overwrite with that too. I never bothered making a copy of the whole original bmp folder because it is pretty big. If it all gets screwed up you have a backup of the originals on your game CD after all. Just reinstall. Its easier to back-up your scenarios and your downloaded mods and do a clean install.

I should also add for completeness that a significant percentage of the replies in these eight pages argue that 1:1 in CMSF is bad, is mis-matched with the underlying engine, and the sacrifices that have been made to put it in there are not worth it. These are valid points, but are all based on the reality, not the philosophy. If you want to argue that CMSF as it stands will never be a good game or a satisfying simulation; that BFC has bitten off more than it can chew, ok, that is entirely possible. But that is a different thing to arguing that a game of this type should not be attempted because it is fundamentally too hard to get right and will never be capable of suspension of disbelief. I don't agree with that at all. It seems in your OP you are kind of putting up the first point in evidence of the second. You said: It doesn't have to make it less correct either. The things that make a tabletop game playable are different to the things that make a PC game playable. A good boardgame design produces good results but doesn't require you to take all week calculating turns. If a computer can do these more complex calculations seamlessly, even if it just for the sake of better graphics, why not? [ November 20, 2007, 07:20 PM: Message edited by: Hoolaman ]

In what way? Sure I like to argue but I think I acknowledge when a point is well made. I don't think yours was. You started a thread about design philosphy and give examples of more and less elegant board-game designs. You then cite problems with CMSF presumably in evidence that a simpler more "Design for Effect" would not have introduced these problems. You then say 1:1 may not be the wrong way to go after all, and we can't go back to CMBB, but cite more boardgames as evidence that abstraction is good. Eight pages of replies including mine gave a pretty solid argument that the 1:1 design is fine, if only it weren't buggy and poorly implemented. Hypothetically if BFC had more resources the game would have been less buggy and better implemented, that is not idiotic. So I think I make a pretty good non-contradictory argument, and I don't think your original post was brilliant or even very good. Don't take it personally.

I agree with Hev's post above, with the exception that I think the original post of the thread was silly and rambling. While he admits several times that his thoughts are rhetorical, MD seems to just be pining after a few boardgames + CMx1. The things that constrain what you might call "playability" in a 1970's boardgame are not the same things that constrain a 2000's pc game. What was he really complaining about? That plus a few complaints about the QB editor, LOS issues etc? Seems like just padding out the same old complaints about about the game in a JasonC length philosophical epic. None of these issues are a result of the concept, but only as a result of the implementation. The team designing and coding CMSF put these restrictions in on purpose because thats the best they could come up with under the conditions. The future, maybe even the not-too-distant future may see all these improved dramatically. Given a bigger programming team, more resources, and more clout with hardware makers, with the same design philosphy of 1:1, this game could have been all that was promised. Therefore it is not the fault of the basic 1:1 philosophy, but BFC may indeed have bitten off more than they can chew.

Something tells me BFC have realised that just about everyone is in this frame of mind. I think they will make 1.05 all it can be.

The other thing about grog threads is that its hard to be an armchair warrior and argue with guys who are currently using the gear without sounding like an idiot. The old WWII grog threads allowed everyone to pontificate without any great risk of a veteran coming in and saying they were talking out their ass. But there are a few groggy x is over/underpowered threads, but none of these seem to evoke the kind of passion that might see these issues recognised and even patched.

While I agree with most of the OP, I can see where Steve was coming from in trying to rebut some of the negativity about the game. All the issues had been posted many times over, and even now, we are still seeing the same old complaints. What happened though is that he got sucked into the negative spiral instead of clearly explaining what was good, what was not so good, what was working as planned and what wasn't. That is why I posted a suggestion to resurrect the Blog, which, as I assume was originally the intention, is a good place to post facts without being drawn into an unproductive discussion. An official FAQ on the Blog would have been a great thing to have in the early weeks, and even now it is not too late. Like Vista, there actually are some pretty great design concepts in CMx2 under the hardware incompatibility and nasty bugs.

BUMP!!! I know BFC isn't around lately, but if that is cause they don't want to bother engaging the forum, at least the blog would be a good way to get the message out.

Yeah I'm the same. I was even worried that CMSF might be too similar to the old CM formula that I am thoroughly sick of. Turns out there is plenty of other stuff to worry about instead.

Your #1 issue with selecting units is a real problem for me too. It seems like I am forced to make a lot of unneccesary mouse clicks in this game.