FinnN

Looks good, but I think CC2 had by far the best connection between a campaign - the way that reinforcements, bidding for ceasefires and so on worked was perfect. From what I read at the time they ditched all that as people found it hard to grasp and so they went for a basically linear (and unloseable) campaign in CC3. CC4 (the last one I played) made things a little better but was little more than 'Risk' on steroids - looking at the one above it seems the same to me. I wonder if anyone will come up with a match between realtime and strategy with elegance and subtlety of CC2 again? Have fun Finn

I think they mean 'serious games' market, rather than serious 'games market' - it's just another standard term for educational software. Have fun Finn

Agree 100%. Have fun Finn

Are you on crack? Or whatever sort of Lotus thingummy that conan was on seeing as that's your thing... Anyway, I'm guessing that eventually I'll buy SB Pro (especially now the dollar is worth, what 2p or something?), but the setting doesn't appeal to me so it won't be tomorrow. You might as well say 'The Sims 2 rulez!' - if it isn't my sort of game I'm not going to be rushing out to buy it no matter if it's the best or worst of the genre. I'm sure the same goes for lots of other people too. Oh, and before you wet yourself about playing a real training tool, don't forget you're missing one fundamental part of military instruction - the instructor... One last thing, from what I can gather from the SimHQ forums, SB2 is going to be a dumbed down game rather than something like SBPro. SBPro is a spin off game (which is what it is outside the context of a course) from their military contracts, but you have to wonder how it'll hold up against actual games several years down the line. Have fun Finn

If all you want to do is edit the height maps and can't wait for the official tool, tootle over to the modding forum and you'll find out how to edit them. In brief there's a modding tool which extracts the files that make up the maps. The height maps are in raw data format, which you can open in a program like Photoshop (which shows them as greyscale images) or some 3D software. Have fun Finn

I have to disagree to an extent, if you can find a better example of something that could be better handled by multiple processes than things like pathfinding and LOS calculations then I'd love to know. In games like the combat mission series those are going to be two of the biggest sinks of CPU time and all you need to do is pop over to the CM:SF forum to see what the result of the abstractions made has been. There are two ways to get a solution to a game - some sort of elegant model, and simply taking a sledgehammer and crunching some numbers. In reality both will always be required, but as your sledgehammer gets bigger you get more options when preparing your model as more and more things become computationally feasible. Unless of course you think that a really elegant model would have got an army from Medieval Total War II walking around in realtime on a machine from 20 years ago... Have fun Finn

I think the two games would definitely be comparable. For graphics, I think ToW has the better landscape and lighting (but by no means cutting edge any more) but CM:SF has much better unit 3D models (especially infantry). If 3D modding (or the developers do extra work) becomes possible I think ToW could match anything in CM:SF, but I don't think the same is true the other way around as (on my system at least). Flat lighting, very 'grid'/'box' like look, no detail outside the play area and punishing LOD distances make for a quite crude looking game at times. I also don't like the 2D graphics in CM:SF, whereas in ToW they're really nice. I have very limited experience with CM:SF, but from what I can see so far (and previous experience with CM1 games) I think CM has a better control system and more varied orders to give out that make for a game requiring more thought, strategy and planning. I don't see that ever being possible to the same extent in ToW. At the moment individual AI in both games has problems, and I think both will get better if patched - but I think CM will benefit more than ToW from this due to the wider range of orders which will benefit. In terms of scale, ToW seems to handle company sized actions pretty well and given sufficient horsepower could probably go a bit bigger but not much. I think with its current interface you'd be struggling to control your forces in CMSF if the scale (platoon in WW2 terms maybe?) was increased much. I think the CM2 engine would be good for things like commando raids or anti-partisan operations though. Personally I like company sized engagements or smaller, so I guess ToW would come out ahead for me there. Finally, in terms of potential - I think CM:SF is likely to see more development by BFC than ToW is by 1C. But then again ToW is much more open to modding (even if this wasn't planned). As such if the add-on comes out and fixes the bigger holes (***smoke***, building entry, on-map mortars, multiplayer) I think ToW is the one most likely to give us the wide range of options we saw in the CM1 series. So, as there's so many 'ifs', 'coulds' and 'maybes' in there for me I think it's next to impossible to really say which will be better - ToW + add on + mods or CM:SF. Certainly if both reach their full potential I think they're complimentary games both worthy of staying on the hard drive - CMSF for really small unit actions, and ToW for larger engagements. Have fun Finn

I'd like to see more granulated difficulty settings. For example if you choose elite you can't issue orders whilst paused. I don't want that, but I would like all the others - however it seems to be a case of all or nothing. Have fun Finn

Actually I think board games are having a bit of a resurgence these days - I know more people that play them now than ever before and there seems to be steady stream of them being released (mostly from Germany). What you don't get though are board games with obtuse and difficult to understand rules requiring weeks to play and a zillion counters on some poorly laid out hex map. Miniatures are also quite visible still for example, although I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole, there seems to be plenty of 'Games Workshop' shops floating around in this country (UK) at least. These are certainly far more widely available than historical miniatures ever were in my memory at least. On the other hand I don't know anyone that plays with historical miniatures any more, and haven't heard of anyone for ages either. What I personally think is happening both with 'real' games such as those above and computer games is that those with accessible and clear rules/gameplay have become popular and those without have fallen by the wayside and left to niche markets. I think that games aimed at mass market aren't going to put in lots of realism because the extra effort isn't going to pay back in equivalent extra sales. On the other hand, if 'hardcore' games put more effort into having a better user interface and genuinely scalable difficulty/complexity settings then there are plenty of people out there who'd buy them. I think there's too much self-defeating "it's a niche game, anyone who buys it won't care if it's easy or hard to understand". A good (but rare) example of a game that did manage to pull this off are the Silent Hunter games, II was a surprise hit despite its bugs and II sold well too. There are lots of people out there gagging for more intellectually challenging and immersive games, but no-one seems terribly interested in providing them. I'd include CM:SF in that. As to AI, well I think we're probably not too far away from seeing hardware come to the rescue there. In the not too distant future as multi-core processors become standard and games designed to utilise them from the get-go start appearing I think brute force will start delivering where current games can't with the computer power being split around doing everything. Have fun Finn

The forums are well worth a read through an online translator, even if the results are a bit funny and incomprehensible sometimes. The mod looks interesting, especially the infantry side of things which is currently very underdeveloped in the game compared to armour. Have fun Finn

SBPro looks great and I've almost bought it a couple of times, but a modern setting combined with crude representation of the infantry side of things puts it outside of my interests. From what I read the infantry side is due for polishing and when then that happens I might buy it but I'm in no rush with no WW2 ever likely. I only bought CMSF because a WW2 module is coming. Les Grognards looks good, and there's a Napoleonic version of the Ageod ACW game (http://www.a-acw.com/) in the works. All I need now then is a decent Napoleonic naval game - managed to get AOSII working on my machine recently and I can't lose against the AI even on the hardest setting. As I'm not the reincarnation of Nelson something's wrong there. Ho hum. I think ToW is going to go a long way through modding, but it isn't going to happen overnight. That includes some sort of random battle or quick battle generator. Assuming the add-on materialises then we may see some of the missing things smoke (well, I'm hoping anyway), enterable buildings, some sort of more advanced multiplayer and the like. Although I think multiplayer is important in a game, personally I'm much more interested in single player (and modding) and I suspect that for all its flaws ToW may have more potential in that area. Have fun Finn

That'd be insane - you might as well play with the monitor off, with no way of getting feedback from the other units about what they can see (not to mention control problems involving clicking) you'd be blind. Have fun Finn

Drinking coffee? Have fun Finn

LOL, know I know what they modelled the snipers on in ToW! Have fun Finn

Interesting stuff! Is the new terrain tool just for internal use, or is there any chance it might be bundled with the add-on? Thanks for taking the time to translate these! Have fun Finn

Yep very good to hear! Talking about game endings - looking at the bigger picture it'd be nice to see more flexibility for game endings in both single and multiplayer. Ideally I'd like to see a scriptable dialog box pop up to ask for user input - allowing for example in certain circumstances draws to be accepted etc. Have fun Finn

I agree with Nachinus, but I also think it's nice to see little things like this - and it's appreciated to let us know about them on this forum. Equally I think it'd be good to see some sort of summary of the dev blogs in English (the new one on the map terrain editor looks interesting - is this for a future add-on, or only a dev tool?). Also who's 'М.Свирину' who seems to have been taking questions in a sticky for ages? Not important, just wondering! Have fun Finn

Yep, I was watching that one - some nice ones in there. I personally really like the ones that combined real photos with ingame graphics, this was my favourite: http://ww2.games.1c.ru/image.php?id=1488 Was surprised not to see any done in a constructivist style though, would've been really cool. Have fun Finn

Have to agree with Joques1, whether you agree with it or not it's a fairly well written review with specific points to make backed up with evidence (unlike some other reviews of CMSF I've seen). Battlefront seem to be assuming that these days 99% of people will be able to download patches online, well those same people will be typing "CMSF review" into Google so if you think online reviews don't have any weight then you're dead wrong. Have fun Finn

Paradox uses a system like that and it works pretty well IMHO. There's a central list (or was until their most recent game) and also, importantly, the moderators tag each thread title with BUG, NOT A BUG, DUP(LICATE), WAD (Works As Designed), FIXED IN 1.02 (to indicate the bug is fixed in a particular version), WON'T FIX (to say that something is acknowledged to be a bug, but won't be fixed as it's a minor problem but a lot of work to fix) etc. They also have quite detailed guidelines on how to describe and submit a report too: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=282067 I guess some management software would be better, but if you wanted to stick to using the forums I think that things are more than a bit ad-hoc at the moment. Have fun Finn

Those ancient Peter Turcan games (1989-90) had something which sounds similar to me. You passed orders down to your subordinates who then generated orders to theirs based on what you'd told them and what their situation (especially if your orders had expired) was. Likewise orders were passed up the chain too. In all cases the orders were carried by couriers who could be killed, so if your army was split up you could find part of the battle going completely out of your control, not to mention some units using their own initiative. Obviously the AI was fairly crude, but the whole thing was quite good for its time. Example orders might be something simple like "NEY MOVE TO UTITSA" or it could be quite complex like "EUGENE SHELL THE ENEMY CAVALRY 1 MILE NORTH OF YOU FOR 30 MINUTES" or even fairly abstract like "Eugene, form an attack line from the north flank, to the pontoons linking with Ney", "MONTBRUN, AT 6.30 AM GIVE SUPPORT TO NEY AND DAVOUT" or "EUGENE, CHANGE YOUR STRATEGY TO DEFENCE". All very impressive considering, and I've never since seen a game try to achieve something similar since. A shame as I wonder what it'd be like now with more horsepower and better graphics, maybe Les Grognards will be similar?: http://eager.orgfree.com/SSHOT/B/borodino.png http://eager.orgfree.com/SSHOT/W/waterloo.png http://eager.orgfree.com/SSHOT/D/dreadnoughts.png http://eager.orgfree.com/SSHOT/G/gettysburg.png In any case it's a good thing if CM:SF takes a stab at more detailed modelling of command and control. Have fun Finn

Looks good! From what I remember looking at the game files the seasons are all defined in the text files - so even stuff like, say, 'autumn' or 'light winter' might be doable too. Have fun Finn

That looks really interesting - shame my home computer is now packed away and out of action for a week or more :-( Have fun Finn

That's just it - one lucky shot from the enemy can wipe out any possible chance of victory (which is usually against insane odds to start with in any case) in too many of the scenarios and I hope this is born in mind in future campaigns. Have fun Finn