sfhand
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Posts posted by sfhand
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Who knows, maybe a 3rd party developer will want to make a French module for CMSF. I don't see any harm in this thread, but then I'm not one of the guys who runs this forum either...
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Having said that, the primary reason you guys haven't seen much of Normandy lately is we've been extremely busy with Afghanistan and NATO releases, not to mention our other 3rd party stuff...
Steve
I'll bite... what other 3rd party stuff?:cool:
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I really hope that moveable waypoints are a simple thing that slips in prior to release...
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... The game engine for Normandy will be feature "complete", excepting one fairly simple thing, probably next week...
Steve
Thanks for the info Steve, out of curiosity, how long does implimenting "one fairly simple thing" take? (barring the dreaded "unforseen consequences" of course) I'm not trying to nail you down, btw, I know there may be other development aspects that need to take priority over said "one fairly simple thing" and that you may not get around to it for some time as a result.
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I'm thinking 2010... but won't mind 2011. Hopefully, now that the Mac version is off the to-do list, moveable waypoints might actually be included in the release.
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stoex,
FWIW, I didn't think malice was behind your post which is why I asked "why go there".
As far as "Anybody is free to their opinions in principle, but the choice of where and how to represent them is the line where one's own opinions can become open attacks on other members of society. Which is not ok and never will be." goes, well, this line is crossed all the time in our society, and not just by Riff Raff. Politics is a dirty business...
Hopefully we can agree on the need for moveable waypoints in CM:N!
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In CM2´s current state I feel there really is only one critical factor that has been lost when you compare CM1 to CM2 from a WEGO perspective. That is the problem that you, most of the time, do not know exactly where your squad is going to end it´s move. The little "move end preview feature" showing the approximate position of the squad when giving the move order improved things considerably. However there still is to much uncertainty, for my taste, when it comes to the positioning of the squad compared to the abstract representation in CM where I could always be certain that, for example, the squad was in the trench, the MG would setup properly and there was no tree blocking my LOS. These problems are not as clear in RT but in WEGO you need to be able to trust in the AI to sort this out because the process of micro managing the positioning of an MG is just too time consuming in WEGO if you have to spend a turn for every little change (and this is not me being obsessive, I really think setting up support weapons is much more complicated in CM2 since there are so many things that can go wrong when it comes to positioning, LOS etc). Not sure how this can be solved but one part of me would like to see the return of the "% cover" information and some other tools to help understanding the, shall we say, quality of the squads current position
This is, tangentally, one of the reasons I long for the return of moveable waypoints. It would be a lot easier for me to drag a waypoint and check los than to have to replot it.
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stoex... why go there?
There are a wide variety of political views on the board, none of which have anything to do with CM. Steve pretty much said that discussion was closed and now you're bringing it up again. Either this is a place to have political discussions or it's not, your saying you don't understand someone's political views is having a political discussion.
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A couple of thoughts...
If/when a command delay replacement feature is put in -what ever the heck that is- I hope it is an optional feature if it actually adds arbitrary command delays.
If the AI were "more powerful" a WEGO player wouldn't have as many items to "concern" him/herself with. (e.g., MOUT in WEGO really needs a high level of player micromanagement)
While I've seen a few others complain about RT I think the vast majority of us realize that having the game include both increases its customer base which, in theory at least, should result in more titles... and sooner!!!
Since I basically only play pbem I laugh at the notion that WEGO "takes longer" to play. More time to complete a scenario against the AI? Sure, but my game time is broken down into 1-5 minute sessions (granted more on the setup turn but my understanding is RT has a setup turn as well). If I want to play for longer periods of time I can fire up a scenario and play against the AI and then save it if it starts taking too long. The bottom line is the game doesn't dictate how long I play it.
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In a perfect world gameplay options are good! But with limited development resources, as a wego only player, I would rather see development time spent on other more-important-to-wego items like moveable waypoints. Besides, if turns were shortened to 30 seconds the "control freak" accusations might start having a basis in reality...
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Ha
Thanks Thomm, no bug reporting for me these days though, just taking it easy.Count me as one who is pleased to see you here...
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With persistent map damage the existing campaign system could largely handle a 2 player Ops like game. So when we get persistent map damage in, this will likely be possible. But it will not have a dynamic sense of a front line. That's just not worth the development time.
Steve
Steve, as always thanks for taking the time to read and consider whats being put forward on your board. It is appreciated!
I'm pretty sure you understood this, but in case you didn't, I'm not talking about changes in the campaign system (although they would be welcome). I'm suggesting that old style operations(pvp, especially pbem), including persistent map damage, are already theoretically possible within the current scenario system (already played some multi-reinforcement pbems with MarkEzra). The only thing holding it back is mapsize, and for longer conflicts, game time.
Obviously, I have no idea what would be involved in increasing map size... but something like the Team Desobry operation can be pretty easily done now using one scenario (up to 4 one hour long battles?).
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I am in the minority... I prefer pbem to all other forms of CM. From that perspective my experience of old style operations is pretty negative. Since one can't play the current campaign system against another person it, too, doesn't really pass muster. However...
As I wrote earlier in this thread, were we able to make larger maps I can see developing a scenario in such a way as it could be played like an old style operation in pbem. This could mean one side pushing it's way across a map only to be met by a larger force which then proceeds to push it back across the battlefield. Of course the players would need to follow the scenairo designers instructions, e.g. don't advance past phase line alpha until 1:05.
So, by adding to map size and length of turn it becomes possible for pbem players to enjoy the game to a much greater degree than they could the old style operations.
Not holding my breath on this...
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This is great news! Congratulations and best wishes to Philip and BF.
Out of curiosity, does the fact that Phillip created the CMx1 Vista patches mean his learning curve will be less than had he just walked in? Or, is CMx2 coded in a radically different way that means he'll be starting from scratch? How long will take for him to feel he's operating at peak efficiency?
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And rounds that bounce off almost as often as they kill...
Hypothetically yes, until the rounds in question are mine...
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NATO will definitely come out before Normandy. As for an exact time... we are close enough that we may soon announce a ship date, but far enough out that we don't want to give a timeframe.
Steve
Steve,
In an earlier statement, iirc, you predicted an Afghan/Nato/Normandy release order. You also made it quite clear that this was your best guess and not a hard fact. Is this still your best guess?
As always, thanks for any information you are willing to share!
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Silly me, all this time I've been thinking the beatings you've been giving me have more than made up for any rabbit-punch, cheap-shot, one-off, entirely-dependant-on-fluke-shot, lucky, minor, and ultimately meaningless victories I have managed to score against you...
What sinister method of psy-ops will you employ when rubes like me have access to Nato (and Normandy too)???
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US Army, USMC, British Army, German Army, Canadian Army, Dutch Army, Syrian Army, Syrian Special Forces, Syrian Airborne, Syrian Unconventional Forces. The BFC Modular System has proven to be a win-win.
MarkEzra... why you gotta be like that?
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Ah, I see what you mean. Well, it already is in and working that Team members can carry ammo for other Team members. For example, RPG ammo is usually carried by two guys, even though there is only one launcher. For HMGs usually 3-4 members of a Team carry ammo. Etc.
One difference (and this is a tiny bone) between the current version of the engine and v1.21 is sharing can now happen between unrelated Teams. For example, a Syrian Rifle Squad with 4x RPG rounds and NO launcher (because of casualties) can now supply a separate Syrian Rifle Squad with no RPG rounds and a Launcher. Rifle ammo and what not is treated the same way. Best of all, it happens automatically, based on need, when units are close to each other. This allows for dedicated ammo bearing Teams as well, which we do have for CM: Normandy's Heavy Weapons Platoons.
Steve
P.S. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a "Squad" in terms of units. Everything is a Team. Squads are simply containers of between 2 and 3 Teams. Just to keep the concepts described above clear
Steve,
When you cite this one difference between "the current version of the engine and v1.21" do you mean to imply that CM: Nato will also have this feature?
As always, thanks for the treat!
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Well, it seems like half the mods are made by the same guys working on the game (including testers), so they are surpassing their own work. And it's not just about getting better quality, it's about changing the look. Great examples are changing desert paint/uniforms to temperate. Or the mods that reduce or get rid of sun glare, or the sun itself, or mods that reduce the size of the background mountain images. There's a lot of room for many, many mods.
I wholeheartedly agree with sfhand. Pinetree's base mods is one of those you can't go back from. It's simply the best (imo) and provides not only color indicators, but shape indicators as well. Much better than stock bases. Beside the fact that Pinetree is a good guy and went to New Zealand Army boot camp with none other than the great Rhys Dharby.
There is a mod-manager utility I've downloaded that I'm too intimidated to try to use because I run Vista 64. As a result I've no doubt missed out on a lot of very good work. Your comment about those who are involved in the mod scene as well as the game's development is something I was unaware of, thanks for pointing it out!
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I also think the subject matter is harder to improve when looking at an arid environment. One of the long standing jokes around here is "who's grass mod are you using?". I have yet to hear "who's sand mod are you using" simply because it's much harder to have a different artistic interpretation of sand than grass. Similar to how we never heard people saying "who's snow mod are you using?" for CMBB. And although I've done no research on what I'm about to say, I suspect CMAK had the least number of mods proportional to the players owning it.
Having said that, modding CMx2 is definitely more difficult than modding CMx1 because the models in CMx1 were quite primitive. People with even a mediocre understanding of MS Paint or PhotoShop could make mods fairly easily. Not so with the more complex objects in CMx2.
Lastly, when we did the artwork for CMx1 games we kept medium sized graphics cards in mind. Modders tend not to be so kind
Which means someone could make a really super detailed Panther A mod that took up a ton of VRAM and not really care about the overall effect because it isn't his problem if the game starts to slow down or cease working for the player with the 3 year old card. Therefore, we had to purposefully keep some artistic quality in check. With CMx2 we've had to do that a lot less thanks to breakthroughs in affordable VRAM and graphics processing power. Which means that we aren't holding back as much, which in turn means that modders have a higher standard to surpass before their work measures up to our work.Therefore, I expect there to be less mods for CM: Normandy than there was for CMBO proportional to the number of customers of each. And to me, that's fine because it means more people are happy with their "out of the box" experience.
Steve
Steve,
I only use one mod for CM:SF, which is pinetree's base mod (I think that is what it is called). I urge you to give pinetree a little love and see if there is any way to include this mod in the release of CM:N.
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I'd happily pay for a pdf of the map but really have no use or desire for a mousepad or even a paper map...
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JonS, per Steve:
"As for WeGo, where Waypoint stuff is far more important than it is for RT, we're planning on making improvements there in the very near future."
Not sure where "except" fits in here...
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I got the notion from posts like this one:
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1097920&postcount=122
2nd to last sentence.
Since I don't play RT I can only imagine that were I to go that route part of the reason for doing so would eliminate using the pause feature (otherwise why bother?) so I don't imagine that I would be issuing lots of complex movement orders or taking much time analyzing the terrain for advantages once the fighting starts.
This is occurring only in my imagination. But because this is how I imagine it, it is very easy for me to accept when a RT player, in this case Steve, says that moveable waypoints aren't that important for that style of gameplay.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that having a good user interface wasn't important...
I've been toying with the thought of getting AP since the price is so low.
:D:D
Thanks Thomm, no bug reporting for me these days though, just taking it easy.
Repositonable waypoints in the NATO module...
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
As one who has, and will continue, to advocate for movable waypoints I'm a little ambivolent about this post and some of the responses to it. At one point after the Marines module Steve addressed the issue and my hopes were raised (I would never say movable waypoints were promised) to the point that I think/have thought they are potentially in each subsequent patch. This hasn't stopped me from ordering and enjoying the Brits and Nato (not enjoying yet). But, I would enjoy the game a lot more were they in there because movement plotting without them frequently is drudgery.
But like most features, if it's not an issue for you then it's not an issue for you. That's different than not being able to acknowledge that just because it's not an issue for you it may be a very important feature for someone else.
For me the value of movable waypoints is that it streamlines the movement orders process. For me it is much quicker to give group movement orders and then fine tune them than to plot each one individually. Another great use is to plot to the top of a rise, issue a target order, and then drag the waypoint back until spotter is hull down. Much faster, and for me more enjoyable, than what the game currently allows me to do.