deanco

Hey that's some good stuff there Michael. I prefer a bar filling up or down anyway, and you've got that, plus the little dividers allow you to know precisely how far down the line you are. Cool.

Yeah, Michael is right, red is bad, yellow is uh-oh, and green is good. The idea being that you are passing general information to the player before he has a chance to read it, kind of organically, alerting him to take note of it. But whatever, the bmp's are there to be modded, so have at it.

"And to the poor guy doing the interface on CMAK, I like the icon allready in place." That's me. Thanks! These icons were one of the banes of my existence when we were doing it. We went around and around on what to use there. So I'm not surprised that there are alternate versions coming out already. Mod away people.

Hi, Yeah, I did this one too, with help from Steve. I think it looks pretty good myself, but of course I'm biased. Since there were no major changes from CMBB, the challenge was to make it look fresh and different than the other game. Not easy when the layout is EXACTLY the same as the previous game. I think we pulled it off though. You'll see soon enough...

It really comes down to presentation, now doesn't it? Like the brilliant student essay that's sloppily written. It's a rare prof that has the ability to grade the essay on content alone, and not be affected by the presentation. Although I agree that the CM presentation is passable, really not bad at all. AoM of course is light years ahead of CM in terms of presentation, but they had a much bigger staff and budget, and they could limit what they needed the game to do in terms of polygon pushing by adapting the game to the engine. Can't really do that with a historical simulation. At any rate I'm looking forward to what Steve and Charles have in store for the rewrite. If anyone can make a good looking yet realistic game, them's the guys.

Hi Apache, Yes, in fact I'd say it's a near certainty, along with other surprises. Look for my website to wake up around the middle/end of January. I will post here when...everything's ready.

That's a great idea, Michael. Of course, I can't help you with the army stuff, that's not my bag. But using the vehicle portraits to convey more info than one can get from the stock interface is really adding to the ease of use. If it eliminates a keystroke, it's good. And your silhouettes look great.

You said a mouthful there, man. I had the same flash while playing Battlefield 1942. People "who haven't read the stack of books necessary to truly appreciate CM" want their gaming experience to match up to THEIR IMPRESSION of what WWII was like, not what it was really like. And their impression comes from Hollywood films, books, History Channel, old reruns of Combat (with Rick Jason and Vic Morrow!), etc etc. BF1942 nailed this perfectly, that's the genius of BF1942. I'm not advocating that CM become less realistic to please the masses. What I think is necessary is to increase the realism of the 3D world in CM, so that people who are watching the action can understand exactly why the units are crapping their pants and not running across that open expanse of land or whatever. That's the key to bringing average people's perceptions of what WWII was like back into line with what they've seen on TV or films. In CMBB, the realism increased, but the 3D world stayed the same, whereas in CMBO the graphics/realism relationship was more balanced. IMHO.

I think stock CMBB looks great. I think a lot of the mod fever with CMBO came from the modders thinking they could do a better job because the original textures were not quite up to snuff. I honestly believe that's not the case now. However, there are some talented modders out there, and if it's possible to make a better mod, I have a feeling someone will do it.

I'm sorry, that should be 'control the camera height with the mouse wheel'. But 'mouse wheel zoom' just rolls off the tongue. I am *not* suggesting the mouse wheel should control the 'telephoto lens' zoom feature.

What von Lucke said. I also have a PBEM game going with Tom right now. I found out something very interesting about that review while chatting, I'll see if I can get permission to share it with you.

"However, Big Time Software still doesn't support a mouse wheel..." This is the only negative comment in the whole review, and I feel vindicated, because I've been begging for this feature on the beta forum for a good long while. Mouse wheel zoom! Put it in a patch! Mouse wheel zoom! Put it in a patch!

Hi Bruno! Yeah, I saw that thread. I'm still here. I'm trying to get the energy together to reanimate my CM website with some new CMBB content. It's sick, I already see something I coulda done better in the interface, and am gonna release that tiny mod soon. I'm playing CMBB, Battlefield 1942, Mafia, Divine Divinity. Sorry to hijack the thread, carry on all.

What Gremlin said. (Plus I want to try out my new sig.)

"The point I was making is that graphics should not take first priority over everything else in a mad pursuit to get "everybody" to play CM." Well, no, that's not the only point you made, Michael. You asserted in your first post... ------------- Another thing is that I think it would be a bad mistake to try to go after a much larger audience than CM already has. To do so would mean ever greater compromises to try to please that audience... ------------- ...without really showing the correlation between 'larger audience' and 'greater compromises'. When pressed, you responded... ------------- The conclusion is self-evident to me based on many years of observing movements of all types and their dynamics and developments. For a movement to maintain its impetus, it has to stay focussed on its core values and goals. ------------- ...which certainly sounds good, I mean you have a lot of big words in there, but you haven't really proved your point, nor did you address the specific issue of why putting better graphics or whatever in CMXX would compromise the integrity of the Battlefront Manifesto and forcibly make the game less realistic. But whatever, I don't want you to feel like I'm picking on you. Let's drop the subject.

Yeah, Michael, but you didn't show how 'desire to expand public' and 'dilution of product' are inevitably linked. I don't see how the level of personal integrity, one man's vision of how things should be, the Battlefront Manifesto, is tied to making your game more accessible. The two things seem different, like apples and oranges. Lemme use an example. The implementation of the color bars that show armor thickness in the CMBB interface. This feature, I think you'll agree, is aimed at the person who might not know off the top of his head the armor thickness of such and such a tank. Its goal is to make the game more accessible to those who haven't read the stack of books necessary to really appreciate CM. How does the implementation of that feature adversely affect the personal integrity of the game?

"Another thing is that I think it would be a bad mistake to try to go after a much larger audience than CM already has. To do so would mean ever greater compromises to try to please that audience..." You say that like it's a given, yet you failed to show the casual correlation between the two. Perhaps it's self evident, in which case consider me stupid. "But we need to understand and accept that this always will be a small market and not try to seduce a larger crowd that has no commitment to our particular values." So you're saying the number of people that could possibly be interested in playing a realistic WW2 strategy game is, by definition, finite? Sorry, but once again, I just don't get it.

Yeah, see, that's the difference between us. I'm an evangelist. I want everybody to play CM, because CM, IMHO, is first and foremost a great computer game. And I want to share this great game I found. Once they get past the graphics, I'm sure the underlying mechanics, WEGO, etc will suck them in and they'll be fans too.

Deanco, you know very well that there are no knowledge qualifications to post here. If there were, only about a dozen people would be talking to each other! I think it's safe to say 95% of the posts are amateur if not downright silly. So join the crowd and happily post some nonsense! Ren</font>

What Mercury said. I never have understood this argument. Good graphics and realism don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's a question of budget, and time. Good graphics *will* pull in more gamers, which means more money to finance more projects. It's a win-win proposition, assuming the extra cost of putting the better graphics in is offset by greater sales. Finally, if push comes to shove and BFC have to decide between putting a realism enhancing doohickey in or having tank track marks in the snow, does anyone honestly wonder which feature would be taken out?

Thanks you guys. To give credit where credit is due, Steve and to a lesser extent Charles kinda acted as producers. And like good producers (I have some experience with this in music), they didn't tell me what to do, they just steered me away from what not to do. And the beta team had good feedback as well. So it was really a team effort. Anyway, glad y'all like it.

Hi Apache, Yeah, I'm still kicking. I'm unqualified to post here, since I know nothing about tanks, historical realism, etc, so I hang out in the General Forum. I got an idea for an interface mod, but I figure I will wait until everyone is completely sick of looking at the original one first. That shouldn't be too much longer, at the rate games are played around here. Plus now I'm actually having fun playing the game, I was really burnt out after doing the interface but I have a couple PBEM's going and lost a minor defeat to the AI last night. The AI had this one tank on my right flank and maaaan, did this guy tear me a new one. I just could not take him out. Finally I suckered him into an ambush (using the cover arc command, works great) and some soldiers blew him up with some kind of anti tank grenade. (I wish a tooltip came up saying the name of the grenade or whatever when you put the pointer over it.) I made a point of finishing off the crew, out of spite. Boy did that guy hurt me bad.

A cross between Advance Wars and CMBO, with killer graphics.

I wanted a tooltip with the name of the weapon to pop up when you hover the mouse over a weapon in the gunrack myself. It's true though, the gunrack looks 'clickable'.

"I wonder if this would complicate things, or if it's no big deal to execute..." The letter bit of it is hardcoded into the game, and thus, can't be modded. (edit) Well, there is a workaround, assuming you could change the key assignments. You could put white there, making the letter invisible, then write the new letter someplace else. But what a kludge...(/edit) [ September 27, 2002, 07:22 PM: Message edited by: deanco ]