ParaBellum

...anymore. After a longish break from CM:SF because of a number of reasons I played a scenario again this evening. And within moments I again stumbled over the main reason why I'm not enjoying CM:SF the way I did BO/BB/AK. No, it's not the AI. No, it's not the LOS/LOF issues. No, it's not the broken QB generator or the lack of a "buyable" force. It's not even the scenario. (Ok, I lied a bit about the last point...) It's those little buttons on the lower right corner of the screen that control the playback of the action. At least that's what they should do. The current implementation of WEGO sucks. It truly does. The idea of having to watch the entire 60 second turn without being able to stop, rewind and replay the action is IMHO the worst design decision of CM:SF. WEGO in CM:SF feels so much more cumbersome than CMx1 that for me it's really not much fun playing that way. So, it'S RT play. Which also sucks because I simply can't effectively control more than a handful of units, especially in MOUT battles. Constantly having to pause the game in order to not miss anything important (and still miss something all the time) simply sucks. The beauty of CMx1 gameplay was that I could speed up time in the initial turns of a game when all units would slowly move to contact, then really concentrate on my troops once the action got going. Yes, I watched my tanks fire in level 1 view. Yes, I watched arty bombardements from the enemy's view. Two times. At least. Yes, I watched a tank slowly crest a hill, then rewound the action and watched two infantry squads cross an opening a mile away. The beauty of CM for me has always been sitting next to an AT gun, watching the shell arc towards its target. I simply cannot do all this in RT mode because watching a single squad deploy for half a minute could mean me not even noticing losing two Stryker thingies to some RPG-thingies. I long for that blue bar representing the system calculating the turn. I really do. I don't know what that poor bugger did to anyone to get him axed. Since that blue bar seems to have been gone forever, I'd like to ask if it would be possible to get a rewind feature for RT-Mode? Just let me stop the action whenever I want and replay the last 10 seconds. I would KILL for such a feature. Ok, probably not kill, but severely hurt someone. Preferably Dorosh. Or sum Aussie. [ December 02, 2007, 04:45 PM: Message edited by: ParaBellum ]

Very nice post Michael, I agree 100%.

Just ordered it.

Thanks for putting up this AAR, Adam. Unfortunately, I have come across this kind of AI behaviour quite a few times as well. Well, to be honest, "quite a few times" is actually a very polite way of saying that in almost every MOUT scenario I play I can see stuff like this. You can have even more fun when armoured vehicles are involved. And for total hilarity add a densely-populated area...

Brilliant game! One of the few games I couldn't stop playing until I finished it. If you're a fan of chinese movies like "Chinese Ghost Story" you will LOVE this game! Bioware at its best.

That's actually a good question. I consider myself a die-hard CM fan. When I got CM:SF I was really thrilled about all the new features and possibilities. Started playing the campaign but quickly switched to creating maps and scenarios. Run into lots of problems with the AI and got frustrated. Tried to continue the campaign, but honestly, playing the AI has always been kinda boring for me. Unfortunately I got quickly fed up with multiplayer due to me missing all the fun in Realtime mode, and WeGo being a royal pain in the butt compared to the perfect game system in CMx1. And then there's still the "US vs Syria"-thing that doesn't really interest me... During the development of CM:SF I really hoped that BFC wouldn't fix the things that were already working fine in CMx1. Above all I hoped that they would not "overcomplicate" the game. The moment I saw the GUI I knew my worst fears had come true... So, where am I right now? I don't consider CM:SF a bad game. Not at all. But compared to the fun I had (and still have) with CMx1 it's simply a collosal disappointment at the moment. I actually haven't touched the game for the last two weeks. [ November 11, 2007, 07:20 PM: Message edited by: ParaBellum ]

I never had problems with CMx1 and FSAA with my 9600 pro. Had to alt-tab once to get rid of invisible text though.

Nice. I wonder how long we will have to wait to actually see such grafics in computer games. 5 years? 10?

The Brummbär sure looks nice, great work!

The amount of times I find myself re-reading that one. About every time someone links to it. Excellent! Mies </font>

A quick test with 1.04 showed a big boost in FPS on my system. Vehicles now indeed open fire far less reluctantly than in previous versions. Infantry movement behaviour seems significantly improved. Great job BFC!

Definitely.

So what? I knew that I'd probably pay more when I pre-ordered directly from BFC. In the end, I actually paid the equivalent of 68 US$, since I had to pay additional customs surcharge. Do I regret it? No, I like the idea of directly supporting a developer who has provided me with excellent products in the past. Is CM:SF everything I hoped for? No. Am I having fun with the game? Sure I do. Do I feel ripped off? Definitely not. It's not that BFC decided to suddenly cut the retail price of their product just to piss you off.

I personally hate that giant pause message with a passion. It's not that it's so hard to miss when the game is paused anyway...

TYPE_OUT_GAMES'_NAMES_FOR_PENG'S_SAKE_YA_WORTLESS_HAMPSTERS. :mad:

I finally got my preordered copy of CM:SF. Unfortunately the german customs cunningly ambushed my package, resulting in a 8€ surcharge. All in all I paid 49.98€ for CM:SF, which is more than 68 US dollars. Still, I stand by my decision to directly buy from Battlefront instead of buying through a publisher. I've already spent more time with CM:SF than with the last three PC games I've bought.

I've pretty much finished the scenario, although 1.03 required some further testing. FOs for the Syrians have just been included. Everything works (rather) well. Stay tuned for the official release later this week.

Loving the new textures!

Still waiting for mine in Germany...

The Space Lobsters of Doom. At least, so I've heard.

Sure I do.

Due to JPEG compression there's some quality loss. The ingame map in (larger) BMP format is a bit more clear. S 850 is the name of the road running E/W through the map. I found the name via a quick google earth search.

Thanks for help guys, much appreciated! Molloy: thanks for that extensive feedback handihoc: there are no IEDs in the scenario. What you saw was probably an attack by the F-16 air support. I'll finish the scenario, add the briefings and will release the complete scenario later this week. Again, thanks for the feedback and the encouraging comments! BTW I'm experimenting with an "aerial pic" for the tactical map. Any comments?

Totally agree.

Wow, you're right! I remembered that I had been able to access views 8 and 9 before but couldn't figure out how I'd did it. That solved it, thanks!