sebastian

I want the hex-grid back!

Will there be an option, allowing to select entire teams by a single click, and single siolders by double click?

In TOW1 tanks forget the "hold position" after each move order. I would like to be able to set it as the default for a unit. Shouldn't be hard to do.

In TOW1 the mouse wheel is moving the camera up&down, instead of zooming (in contrary to what the options screen says). Especially in the camera modes "lock to center" & "lock to cursor" this behavior is: 1) useless, because your area of interest goes out of the screen (this should happen only when scrolling) 2) redundant, because you can change the altitude of the camera by vertical mouse movement (without losing sight to the current area of interest) The mouse wheel should zoom the camera or move it along it's current view axis, not in vertical. At least in the two orbiting camera mode mentioned above.

Then you don't know much. The problem is not "getting to grips camera interface", It not like the camera interface is to difficult, but simply inefficient. And every time I have used other software with a better one, and I go back to playing CM, I see the difference: more mouse action to achieve the same camera action.

Did they give any reason for this? I mean: why not use pressed mouse wheel for camera rotation. Then you have the right mouse button for: - drop down menu, if clicked on a unit - cancel, otherwise

Because they are bad. Because you can learn to use even the worst UI, if you waste enough time on it. "Newness" and "unexpected design" is almost always bad, when it comes to UI: The first rule of computer UI design is: Use standards that have evolved over years. They are tested, optimized and known to many people. Why not have a look on other strategy games, or standard 3D-software or Google Earth, before inventing new crappy camera controls.

It is terrible compared to popular strategy games, or standard 3D software like Google Earth, Maya or 3D Studio. Orbiting camera is the most efficient, and therefore used in all of the above. If I play a strategy game, I want to view the action from different angles, without loosing the focus on current the area of interest. I don't want to "fly the camera around" like in a flight sim. You can get used to everything, I guess. ToW has 3 different camera modes to choose. That would be nice for CMSF.

I don't want to repost, what I said about camera controls in strategy games on the ToW forum, so here the direct link: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=63;t=000045#000000 In short: Implement the orbiting camera from Google Earth, instead of badly reinventing the wheel. Speaking of wheel - Now that you found out about the mouse wheel and finally make use of it in CMSF, here is more news: It can be also pressed and used as a third button. For example you could rotate the camera by holding the wheel pressed, instead of wasting the right button for this.

It is a mission editor, not a map editor. The buttons might be only view toggles.

Well I need to see both. Think not one tank, but multiple of your units. I need to keep them in sight, to be able to select and give orders and to see what they are doing. The speed of rotation(orbiting)and panning schould be adjustable. The speed of zooming and panning schould be adaptive (faster if camera is far away from the ground). Most 3D RTS you mentioned games are using a limited kind of the orbiting cam I'am asking for. Google Earth is more the pure thing: orbit angles and camera distance(zoom) are independent.

What does the speed of rotation has to do with the axis of rotation? :confused: You can orbit an camera by 360 degrees just as fast as you rotate it around its own axis. The difference is, when you are looking at your tank, and rotate the camera in place by 180deg, to see who is shooting at it, you loose your tank out of sigth. When you orbit the camera around the tank by 180deg, your tank stays on screen and you see the enemy behind it. To make it clear: I don't want the Combat Mission style orbiting. I want the Google Earth camera, with faster non-linear zooming.

Does it still rotate in place, around its own axes, like seen on the videos? If yes, then it sucks, just like the one in EYSA. I want an orbiting camera like in Google Earth. Well I spend 90% of the time in a zoomed out, top down view when playing a stategy game like CM. This is the most important perspective. However I have not seen many screens showing how it looks, and if its playable, units visible/highlighted etc.

Yes it was a stupid first person camera, rotating around itself... and judging by the videos, TOW is using the same model. here is my rant about it: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=63;t=000045#000000

Thats one point, there schould always be a leader. But having to double click only the commander to select the whole squad, has nothing to do with realism or simulation. It is just an anoying UI issue. The option schould work on any sqaud member instead.

Random maps in CM (and in general) get boring too. They look all the same, very generic and unnatural, with few different bulidings and roads going only in 45deg steps. CC maps offer much more variabilty and freedom of design, to match the real world theatre. I am curious how ToW maps are made. They are obviously not tile based like in CM. The question is if they use an map editor to paint roads, trenches and place buildings and trees - or if the map is modelled within 3DStudioMax. [ December 17, 2006, 04:37 AM: Message edited by: sebastian ]

People call things mysterious if they don't understand them.

Every decent clickfest-RTS or GTA-style game, is using seperate threads for the main update loop and AI/Pathfinding computations. Thats the only way to simulate a complex map and still achive high responsivity to user input. A program using multithreaded libraries is multithreaded. I doubt it.

I asure you that most games from the last decade use multiple threads. Nonsense, games like ToW are the perfect area for multi threading. You have a lot of computing tasks, that can or even have to run in own threads: frame update, path finding, AI, sound... Mulitcore is the only way to go, because you cannot increase the clock speed much more. You surely need some education about programing, and CPUs. ... if you want to play graphic demos. If you like complex simulations with good AI and realistic physics, you stll need a good CPU. [ December 07, 2006, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: sebastian ]

here is a free xml-editor with tree and table display: http://symbolclick.com/download.htm

On the one hand it would be good, if cover would not be abstract, but displayed and simulated individually. On the other this means: More cover -> more CPU time. This dependency leads to unrealistic maps with very little cover.

Every tank crew should have a dog for this task. Like in the Polish TV-series "Four battletankers and a dog".

So, when giving an attack order, you don't see if your unit has LOS to the target point? In CM or CC you could move the mouse around, and you saw what interrupts LOS to the point, the mouse is over. Seems an important feature to me.

So you cannot simply order the tank commander to unbutton and look around? You have to extract the entire tank crew, to spot enemies?

It's okay for me, if players can give input on an early stage. Two months before release, you can't change anything with your suggestions.