CoolColJ

Steve It would be nice to have this feature though for replaying your FAv movies of past battles. It would be like watching a war movie. Maybe you can add this feature to a View Library mode, where you can watch all your saved movie archives. Just a thought - this is something my all time FAV game, Gran Turismo (on the PlayStation), has, and Gran Turismo without a replay wouldn't be Gran Turismo as I love. I suspect CM will be the same. CCJ

Hi all I haven't said anything on this particular thread, so I'll now happily air my voice! I agree 100 % with Mike and PIxman's previous posts, having scenario designer variable percentage abilty, will allow historically accurate campaigns, in which the arrival of certain units were vital to the flavour of the battle being fought. This shouldn't be difficult to do, all we need is a percentage field - something as simple as: Start turn no.; Start turn %; End turn no.; End Turn %. The computer can then ramp the % chance between the start and end points in equal increments. This is the simple method I wouldn't mind seeing, or we could use: Start turn no. / %, Median turn no. / %, and End turn no. / %. The Median turn no. could be the highest % point turn the unit should enter historicly, if it doesn't enter then, then the computer can keep checking until the End turn / % parameter is reached which may either have a lower or higher % than the Median turn no. The computer interpolating the % chance smoothly between the 3 % points. This could also be applied to battle no. in conjunction with turns within a battle of a campaign Phew CCJ [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-03-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-03-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-03-99).]

Pak 40 The cpu is still the limiting factor, until cpu and OS go at least 64 bit (windows is still 32 bit and not all of it!), and preferably 128 bit like the Playstation 2! The G4 mac is 128 bit, when it comes out, hopefully BTS will upgrade to one CCJ

I'm extremely interested in the games fuzzy logic system. Could Steve/Charles/anyone point me to some web resources that can explain how this works, with respect to the Strategic AI and gaming applications I'm still trying to grasp the concept of general behaviour, but yet with variability. Do you use some sort of table? BTW - Hows the STRATEGIC AI going? I'm very interested to hear 'smart' it is at present Will you be adding any LEARNING into the AI? Also I stumbled upon this very nice page on Games AI http://gamesdomain.netvision.net.il/gdreview/zones/strategy/craig/craig.html A nice interview with AI designer from SSG and CC2 Nice quote from CC2 article >I think it's great Charlie is going to do ASL. A computer game that tries to be true to ASL is a major undertaking. I'm looking forward to seeing how he handles it. Heheh Also this quote will back up what BTS has been saying - > What do you feel most holds you back in developing your part of the game AI? CPU cycles. There is a lot more accuracy that could be attained with a really powerful machine. For instance, internally we use a 2 meter by 2 meter grid to regulate all map movement. Ideally we would want to use a 1 meter by 1 meter so that the space occupied by a standing soldier is more in line with how close soldiers may be together when in dense terrain (such as in a building). But the CPU hit for processing 4 times as many locations for the same amount of area would drag the most powerful machines in the home market to it's knees. Other things like analyzing in detail the LOS from any one location to any other potential enemy location can't be done because it takes way too much time to do that many computations. We have to use a "fuzzy" LOS that is pre generated for a map to approximate these effects. - Ok BTW we believe you now! LiNKS - Some code and article on 3d path finding AI http://www.radixtechnologies.com/papers/pathfinding.shtml More links on game AI here http://www.gameai.com/resources.html#GAMEDEVNET and here http://www.gameai.com/ai.html CCJ [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).] [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 09-02-99).]

Well its good to see there is at least a 30-40% chance from the front,of some sort of damage being caused You always get the impression of the KIng Tiger being indestructable from the front (especially in CC3, even with the RealRed patch). This bodes well from the Allied point of view - would have boosted the British tankers morale no doubt, if they had some Jumbos to put them in!

Can Charles post some Penertration charts for a 17 pounder against a king Tiger? CCJ

Well all the games I have played on with 2 monitors work like this - One monitor has the the WIn 98 screen, and the other with the game if you choose that graphic card to play the game on. I had a Banshee V2 and a Leadtek Tnt2 at one stage, and it was like this when I chose the Banshee for 3dfx enhanced games. CCj

KwazyDog heres the quote from a Japanese mag interview with George Lucas - >Earlier this year we reported on Roger Ebert's (of the Chicago Sun Times) discussion with Lucas, in which Lucas continually praised the PlayStation 2 hardware. "The thing about the PlayStation 2 is that it works in real time," said Lucas. "We didn't make Phantom Menace in real time. Some of the shots in the film took 48 hours to render. We had huge, giant computers cranking every minute of the day. Here they're doing it in real time as you sit there." Remember the Playstation 2 cranks out 75 million Polygons a sec without Fx, imagine CM running with 75 million Polygons a sec! Oerrr! CCJ

Did the British ever employ a Jumbo with the gun from the Sherman Firefly (17 pounder?) CCJ

I agree I found Stalingrad too 90s technicolor for my taste! I prefer the period colour treatment of Saving Private Ryan, it has the right washed out look. Plus the battles in Stalingard remind me of CC3 skirmishs, ie small, its not what I picture Russian Front battles to be like. Its a bit arty for my tastes. It does remind me of some SVen Hassle novels I read in my teen years though CCJ

hi the battle report button at the bottom (horizontal menu) doesn't work. CCJ

Windows is a cpu sapper Just look how quick the Sega dreamcast is, and its quite modest in sheer mhtz terms. CCj

Steve How much of a speed increase would you get by coding in assembly or whatever low level language risc processors use, rather that C++. This would make the gamers smaller as well right? I remmeber in the old days, mosta AMiga games used assembly, which was significantly quicker than c coded programs, and a far bit more compact. CCj

Are we actually going to see rain (graphicly) when its raining? CCj

>If everybody's eating vanilla then there's >no problem with swapping cones. Yuck! :0

Att there is an interesting program on SBS tonite (AUstralia) - the TV guide says a Show called Secret Weapons of the 3rd Reich is on in half an hour I'll tell everyone about it after I check it out, I might tape it - CM has me all crazed about all things WW2. I went and hire every WW2 movie at the local video store this week!! There are some curious oddities I must say CCj

Do you take Us money order? If so where do i send it ? My credit card is a tad full CCJ

There wer 4500 odd posts couple of days ago - now 4900+ !! Yikes CCJ

Well I hope I'm not one of them I play pretty intuitively, I go with the flow and tend not to measure LOS, range etc. Which can be my downfall sometimes....but I've won my fair share games. I just stick with the principles of war cover, suppression and firepower CCJ

BTS>We have something like this already. With Fuzzy Logic things like this become fairly easy to do. Change a weigthed variable here and there and you get very different behavior. For example, one set might might the computer ULTRA aggressive, while another might make it advance with too much caution. Cool - will we be able to change these things in the senario maker? Or even have a random/variation generator so that everytime you play your home made senarios against the computer,it plays differently CCJ

BJK - hey I upgraded the cheapest way possible I chucked my 486 out the windows and bought a baby Octek AT motherboard that fits inside my 486 desktop case, about $140 in Australia ($90 US?) , the PII Celeron 400mhtz is real cheap $215 ($150 US?), plus 192 megs of ram from previous Machine, a Leadtek Winfast s320 II TNT2 AGP (16 meg) running 140 mhtz (I've clocked it up to 150 mhtz) which is pretty damn quick and really cheap with a TV out as well $240 ($150 US?) This machin flies for my music needs, and any game I play on the side for small bucks, I looked at the prices , and at the time a 466 mhtz celeron was another $100 more for a marginal gain and Pentium 2 were another $500 more, so this was the best choice and there is no difference in speed compared to a PII 400 mhtz cpu. Intel is ripping us off CCj

I assume these muzzle brakes actually reduce the recoil, right? I can't see how, by looking at them, the physics of it escape me You'd think with a far few tons in a Tiger you wouldn't need muzzle brakes. CCJ

This card looks good on paper, but the even with my 150 mhtz tnt2 card now, anything under 1000x750 is cpu limited, since I have a 15 inch monitor, I ain't using anything higher! CCJ

oops [This message has been edited by CoolColJ (edited 08-27-99).]

Problem is - which camera angles will you use???! CCJ