Tarkus

Same here.

At cmmods. Look for Dirty Olive option pack. It is a separate entry from the original pack. Be aware though, it is not a stand alone pack. You must have the Dirty Olive interface for the optional pack to fit properly. HTH.

There are options. At cmmods.com you will find some nice choice to pick from. Look for Vincent last offering. [EDIT: Thanks Other Means] * whistling innocently * Cheers

I think I just clicked on this and actually understand what you are saying just now. Made a new button set and updated the patch (now 1.1). You were certainly right for the olivness required on state of the "infantry/support/armour/arty", but those buttons are the same used for the "choose game type screen", and there, I think the glassy look was better. I'll let you have a look. That should do it now. I hope. One thing for sure, you certainly didn't rob that job. And next time I do this, you mark my word, you are my tester. There is no escaping this. Best

Congrat Meach. She looks quite healthy. All the best to you all. Best.

OK. I've made a patch. Its available here. It fixes the generic button in the choose game type screen (which was a goof on my part), remove the wrong-side ammo drum on the MG34 in the weapon rack and include a new button for the "load from file" map-importing button. The DO main pack has been updated. The other issues, I'm afraid I can't correct. Hope this help. Best. Tarkus [ February 12, 2005, 05:54 AM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

You are discovering the niceties of bmp swap. For some reasons there are some places where the file used isn't in line with the rest of the sofware. The "consistency" rule Other Means is refering to. In this case, the Mg usually used by allied vehicle is the one I made with a .30 cal mg. But you got the exception. My choice was then either to design mgs that ressemble nothing (and thus would fit anywhere) for this exception, of to leave it. I did the later, but forgot to put this in the readme file. I recall there is an italian vehicle that has the same problem, but using the .30 cal. About the ammo drum, your right, it is inverted, as is the Breda magazine IIRC. But as you, I thought I saw a dual ammo drum somewhere (AA setup?) and kept it like this. Now an MG grog will drop by any minute to tell us exactly how it is. Showing the weapon on the other side is not possible because of the number on the bottom right of the weapon rack, and the drum so easily identify the MG34 that I decided to leave it as is. I'll look for a fix though. cheers

Eheh. Although I am no professionnal, when you put your work before the public eye, you assume what the public eye has to say about it, especially when its comments are based on professional experience. It all good sport to me. So let's review all this together shall we ? To this, I can only but agree. This is the cardinal rule I tried to apply but, and this is no excuse, one critical part of the creative process, IMO, was missing: I could not count on a second eye such as yours to point out those points BEFORE release, and at some points, there are things you simply no longer see. After 800+ files to be modified, I got tired a bit. But I'll sure give you a call when I get back to it. To be perfectly honest, I saw that, but I could not resign myself to put the title panel on the painting itself. I felt (perhaps wrongfully) it was like breaking it or something, you know ? Maybe I could find a more subtle way of showing the title though. Ooops. [EDIT: there IS an issue there, but it is now fixed. The DO pack has been updated, or you can download a patch as well, here. Also, the button scheme is at variance at some point because sometimes there are only two bmps that swap instead of four, so some options aren't always in. Yet I readily agree that there are most probably places where I threw consistency out of the window. This can be arranged in a matter of seconds though. But as I saw it, it was more as an additional, special option that required some prior planning, so I made it very different. (and I was too happy to fit it on the backpanel...) You talk about the camera controls? Because on that point, I conciously decided to design it on its own. (In fact, this was the first thing to be designed). I understand. But as I said, to me offgame and ingame interface are two different enough places to allow such a difference. I aimed at consistency within those two places and related the two somehow, but not to the extent of being systematic. One of the critique I had for the Dark Steel project was that it was too shiny and futuristic, so I left the red out in CMAK as being to "obvious", exept for the "go" button. These emplacements should be black unless the unit is out of control. If you can get a screenshot of this I'd be grateful. I made it to look as one piece of metal but sometimes HQ bonus appears, sometimes HQ controls. I haven't found a way to be consistent on this part. Could you be more specific ? The windows with the maroon filling ? The maroon thing is hard coded unfortunately. I did note it in the loooong readme file though. The scenario separator thing, I agree. I could review this part as well. I am not totally satisfied with the flags either, but at some point, I decided to let it go. * * * Good to have your insight on this. I am quite content of the work, but I really agree with you, it ain't perfect. I may look into this in the future and come up with some corrections. For the moment, I'll play a little Cheers. [ February 12, 2005, 05:52 AM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

Now I wonder where I stand... Reading this and the 1:1 thread, I wonder about the relationship in the forums. For the last two months or so, I've been actively reading CMx2 threads, contributing my fare share and pondering about what Steve and others said. Yet each time I contributed, I could not help but to wonder who am I to suggest anything to these guys since they made their game so good that I actively play it still today? My answer to that is still the same: I am mostly interested in design discussions to keep thinking forward based on the observations I made on the game I know, and be it as it may, if you find one single tiny sparkle of an idea into that slump of delirium (in which I assume my fare share of responsabilities) all the better. Moon very clearly stated back then that we should always bear in mind the game would be all about change, and this certainly induced me to take "shots in the dark" and then read and reread your post to try to figure out where you are going. I guess I most often sound silly to suggest this or that, but the keyword here, really, is suggest instead of ask. Yet one must keep in mind that there are so many things we ignore that it is almost impossible to be very and accurately (if at all) on the mark, not to mention that you have years and years of experience at it while I don't. I suppose it also prevent me from thinking big with any measure of realism. The bottom line is, I really hope you don't get tired of our suggestions, even though I expect none of them to be specifically useful. On my side, I'll remember to show some respect since, as you clearly stated it, it is your butt that's on the line. Up to now, speaking only for myself, I think I did. Cheers Jean-Vincent a.k.a. Tarkus

Quite the contrary. It is, in fact, the only way to get better. . Now, let's see. I had the same feeling at some point about this pic, most of all when playing on a rainy day... I decided to keep it because it looks just like a postcard, but I can look at it to see if there are other interesting options (like B&W pics ?). Also, in case you haven't noticed, you can get an alternate image for these in the option pack. You will get back to the original map. See above first post, second image. You can't. This part is in fact made of two files that disappear when you roll the pointer over it. Not much flexibility here. No fixes. I could have made the overall frame more consistent with this effect, but as it didn't bothered me at all... It depends. Since it is an orange (I assume it is what you meant by 'red', but it also depend on some settings on your monitor) led, it is right, but it should be OFF. I suggest you load a map via the editor with fog or rain. You will see what it looks like when the led is ON. The lowest ON setting is a spark that theorically cannot be mistaken for the OFF setting. When you're done looking at that and seeing the various light effects, I'd like your opinion on the results. Just to make sure it's working as planned. Cheers. Thanks for your comments.

Some notes. As you can see, I like leds. Leds are cool. Easy to see from the corner of your eye, clear, nice, colorful, big kudos to the guy who invented leds. Now. Maybe some more explanations are called for. HQ contact As Pheasant Plucker said, HQ contact is illustrated by a blue led when contact is on, and a red one when it's not. I also agree that green is more efficient on that count. Maybe I'll change it at some point, now I must get away from the thing for a little while. Terrain and weather leds. As you noticed, the [now seamless :cool: ] main interface comes with two small leds next to the ground & sky thumbnail. The idea is simple here: when the lights are on, there is an issue either with the ground condition or the visibility, to warn the player upfront about a possible important factor even the most seasonned player can sometime overlook. The more intense the light, the more trouble with its related factor. Upper led, sky, lower led, ground. Various leds all around. Here again, the idea is to warn the corner of the players' eye. I was sceptical at first, but it really works. Note that leds won't light up unless to show that the unit is under special condition preventing it to act normally. For example "Alerted" won't be on, while "Pinned" will. On the moral slot, the led on the right is the "rattled" led you all know already, while the one on the left is as explained above. HTH, cheers. [ February 11, 2005, 08:46 AM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

Yay ! Thanks guys. I'm glad you like it. Sure. Still compressed and smaller, but here it is. From a beautiful painting by Lawren P. Harris, it's called, "Night air attack before the Hitler line". The original is part of the permanent collection of the Canadian War Museum (CWM/MCG #12706). That was intentional, to get a fast reply But since I was fearful I'd procrastinate into eternity with this thing, I decided to rush it a bit and test it myself. Uninstalled CMAK, put it back, patched it, and then used MCMMM to preview it. Got a few errors this way. Hopefully there aren't any goofs. Cheers

And I dub it the Dirty Olive Interface. (No reference to Popeye intended). I got tired of the woody feel of the original and decided to get the Dark Steel design made for CMBB a little further, keeping in mind comments people made back then. It's a little more sober, it's OD, and there are some nice little additions. I hope you like it. Any and all comments most welcome. I also made an option pack for those who want to keep the original portraits (and map thumbnails) but want to keep the DO interface. You get all this here. Cheers. Tarkus

Make that printable too.

I may be wrong on this, but I think CM counts every unit dispatched in terms of game points, whether the unit was imported or not. Eliminated units from previous battles aren't part of the point scheme for the new one though. Have a look here for further ideas on this topic. I personnally think this is one of the best part of the whole CM experience, yet it seems very few people are actively using it. Cheers

If anything, 1:1 representation to me means more precision in situationnal awareness and faster sitrep. It shall be easier to assess the outcome of a particular action, at least as far as friendly troops goes, then it is right now with three-man squad.

Exactly. Incidentally, your Ortona operation comes to mind, since most of the action happens to be street fighting. Better modelisation of buildings would greatly enhance both the immersion and gameplay in such a battle. Imagine a bren team ducking behind a well in the middle of Piazza San Francesco or a Seaforth assault team mouse holing along Via Cavour! Since importing 3D models is out, IIRC, I hope buildings get an extensive treatment and much more variety. And I'm talking on purely gameplay grounds: windows, doors, sewers and floors matters a lot when it comes to street fighting. A modular editor would be very useful... as would be the possibility to model third, fourth and higher floors. This in turn raises the question: how to go about house clearing ? From here IMO a movement order would be fine, like "assault", but very specifically tied to this tactical situation. You could order a squad to clear a particular house and then some animation could take over. Grenades, door bursting, short SMG burst, yells and such.

Of course, but are you saying the game should be built around features that wont be used after the initial game ? I dont understand your logic for this, and most of all the point about hexes. I though this stuff was gone for good ? * * * Getting back to the 1:1 representation, here's a big challenge IMO, already stated before: making each of these virtual guys act or move in relation with terrain they are on. Here some abstraction can still be OK (like in current CMx1) but as some put it before, the minimal requirement would be to show the guy where he really is and, since there is will be no control on each man, AI will have to be quite smart when deploying men. This must be a nightmare to figure out, really. Say you plot a move for a 12-men squad, moving by bounds & overwatch, along a city street. Each guy will obviously look for cover each time he stops. The cover may not be perfect, but he will at least get some along his idea of where the threat might most probably come from. Apart from conscript and green troops, this is something to be expected without having to take care of it in detail. The one thing to avoid is to allow AI to let a man stand in the middle of the street because the "formation" does not fit perfectly the physics/situation/whatever external factor come into play. From here, it looks as if the tactical AI will have to consider the position of each man, the relative cover/concealment factor of each terrain element relative to standing orders/SOPs and such, and perceived direction of threat (a guy can understand that a stone wall is a good place behind which to stand, but it is note precisely useful if he doesnt know on which side). A measure of abstraction can be retained, (Man and wall combine=man is assumed to be on the good side each time (as it is right now in CMx1?) but I guess it depends of the detail acheived by the terrain engine. The more accurate, detailed terrain gets (houses, streets, walls) the more accurate the player will want to be about the position of his troops... If there is a big gap between the two, isn't there a risk of making the player "read" the ground and plan ahead a more difficult process ? Cheers

I know the thread deals with gamey recon and scout, but since comms are somewhat related... Some games use shortcuts for standard comm procedures, like Day of Defeat's hand and voice signals. You simply hit a shortcut and a prefab message is sent on the air (text, voice or, in this case, hand signals). It can be quite useful for simple things in the heat of battle like "Taking fire, left flank!" and so on. You can also use voice chat for additional infos. Text -and voice- messages would be a good way to do it, with prefab and customizable messages. That way simple info could be transmitted in no time, but would need time to get used to. The real difficulty would be when trying to be specific about planning, deployement and coordination in battle, giving the relative innacuracy of radio reports (when compared to situationnal awareness in current CMx1). Hence the usefulness of a planning/drawing tool. Here again, Day of Defeat is an interesting starting point for further discussion. In the game, you can toggle a birdeye view of the area, and you can add some infos manually, like mg nests, snipers, etc. The main problem is that you generally lack time to use it properly since the game is such a fast paced one. But there are some nice and realistic advantages. One being that the process of getting the information is not instantaneous but fragmented. First, a visual sign appear on the screen to tell the player the map has been updated (delays could be added here, depending on his "acting HQ" situation, for example). Next the player must toggle the map on, and it can take some time to do it if he is doing other things. He can then see new markings and notations made earlier, but doesn't have a precise idea as to WHEN the info was put on the map, and if this info is still up-to-date. Add a timer to limit the time available for the player to give orders and plan his own move, and he will simply not be possible for him to start writing novels while reporting useful intelligence. Within this model, higher echelon HQs could act as C&C hubs while managing intel (priority, directions, release of, etc) and decision. Being high in the rank would get a whole new meaning and need some quite specific leadership and management talents. It seems to me this is realistic uncertainty within a workable user interface. And somewhat relate to gamey recon... well, kind of... Cheers [ February 04, 2005, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

Zemke, Did you present CM to your son? What was his reaction? Did he play? I ask because I did show CMAK to a 17 year old kid, and there was mixed interests. I think he saw the potential but was having a problem with the game pace. Too slow. Speaking for myself, I will never oppose any measure that could make more players enter the genre and enjoy the game, except one: simplification of the game to target a young audience specifically. Simple games are what the whole industry is made of. To me CM stands has a rare exception to this, keeping the fine balance between plain computer game fun and simulation realism. I like CM for the fact that it takes time and quite a bit of dedication to learn and succeed. Not because the game itself is complex, on the contrary I think it is fairly simple to understand and use, but because the reality it depict, and I suppose you know that way better than I'll ever do, is quite complex as well. I know you are not advocating simplification and power up crates to try to catch young people, and we could spend some time on the semantic implication of a term such as "a simple game". However, I still think Soddball's right. There are some quite impressive exceptions to this, here on this board, but young wargamer aren't the majority. I guess you're a wargamer, at any age, or you are not. I remember playing mac old "Stategic Conquest" 15 years ago (IIRC by Peter Merill ?). A shame nobody ever took the concept further. This game was a killer for me. But I digress. Right. As an option, It could be big fun. My own problem with this is that I doubt to have time for this, has others have pointed out. I play every day, in the morning, PBEM, and quickly in the evening, another PBEM shot. That is almost all I can afford schedule wise. But it could be really really interesting. I respectfully point out that this comes has a counter argument to making the game more open to young audience though. Making the game more expensive put it at a distance to those who have less money yet want everything: kids and students. I hope it does not cost that much myself. Remember, most will have to upgrade to play the game. This does not come cheap. Cheers

Zemke, Did you present CM to your son? What was his reaction? Did he play? I ask because I did show CMAK to a 17 year old kid, and there was mixed interests. I think he saw the potential but was having a problem with the game pace. Too slow. Speaking for myself, I will never oppose any measure that could make more players enter the genre and enjoy the game, except one: simplification of the game to target a young audience specifically. Simple games are what the whole industry is made of. To me CM stands has a rare exception to this, keeping the fine balance between plain computer game fun and simulation realism. I like CM for the fact that it takes time and quite a bit of dedication to learn and succeed. Not because the game itself is complex, on the contrary I think it is fairly simple to understand and use, but because the reality it depict, and I suppose you know that way better than I'll ever do, is quite complex as well. I know you are not advocating simplification and power up crates to try to catch young people, and we could spend some time on the semantic implication of a term such as "a simple game". However, I still think Soddball's right. There are some quite impressive exceptions to this, here on this board, but young wargamer aren't the majority. I guess you're a wargamer, at any age, or you are not. I remember playing mac old "Stategic Conquest" 15 years ago (IIRC by Peter Merill ?). A shame nobody ever took the concept further. This game was a killer for me. But I digress. Right. As an option, It could be big fun. My own problem with this is that I doubt to have time for this, has others have pointed out. I play every day, in the morning, PBEM, and quickly in the evening, another PBEM shot. That is almost all I can afford schedule wise. But it could be really really interesting. I respectfully point out that this comes has a counter argument to making the game more open to young audience though. Making the game more expensive put it at a distance to those who have less money yet want everything: kids and students. I hope it does not cost that much myself. Remember, most will have to upgrade to play the game. This does not come cheap. Cheers

There are really two points in Zemke post. Well put. IMO, the best that could perhaps be achieved along these lines would be to allow for some sort a cooperative tutorials, where more experienced players could share with newer players directly on the field. Not quite a sales pitch, but a nice side effect. I do think that coop multiplay, as a game feature, holds some nice promises. Cheers.

There are really two points in Zemke post. Well put. IMO, the best that could perhaps be achieved along these lines would be to allow for some sort a cooperative tutorials, where more experienced players could share with newer players directly on the field. Not quite a sales pitch, but a nice side effect. I do think that coop multiplay, as a game feature, holds some nice promises. Cheers.

Slightly OT, but I think this deserve a comment. A planning tool is something I really think could be helpful. I made the point in Hoolaman's command zone proposal thread back then, and still think it has some very nice advantages. Even though Jump-right-in players that are mostly interested in instant action (and I have absolutely nothing against that, really) may not like that, especially if the planning phase yield advantages for he who likes to plan things ahead, it is worth looking at. Specificaly, Dalem, I understand (perhaps wrongfully, you tell me) you seem to prefer faster paced game and not like the idea of more tasks for the player. I would ask you what is your opinion about a planning tool. It implies more things to do upfront, but it would not, IMO, change the player's burden during the battle. Yet I really think such a feature can be the best possible compromise between making the game a "command game" by keeping the planning phase to setup. This way, the game itself might be played pretty much as it does right now, yet problems with Borg swarming and instant change of battle plan in a second might be made a bit difficult. Not impossible but a bit more tricky. It also would help manage large scenario. I've been reading comments from Steve and others about company size battle being the real scope intended for CMx1. While I don't know if this is still the intended scope for CMx2, I can say I've been playing quite larger engagements recently (via the import troops features), and a planning tool (along with map overlays allowing markings and notes of some sort) would be very helpful. What I would like to hear is comments from experienced and successful players about this idea. Could it help, would it be useful ? I think it would add to the fun, but the additional step of implementing a plan on the map prior to the battle may not be to the taste of everyone. There's more to that, go to this thread for further reading. Cheers [ February 02, 2005, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: Tarkus ]

Speaking of ways to simulate recon and scouting, asides from many ideas suggested here, in terms of gameplay and scope, another one might be to include downright recon type battle. The idea could be as simple as getting victory point for spotted ennemy assets. Perhaps a two-phase battle could be in order here. A recon phase, then the battle proper. It raises many question about the proper way to implement this, but IMO it could work, particularly for solo playing. It could give more flexibility and depth to user created scenario. Also, along the line of SOPs, recon units and such, don't you think a recce bonus of some sort might be interesting ? Back in my admittedly brief army days, IIRC this particular task was carried out with varrying degree of success depending on the person in charge. Things like correctly identifying small arms by the sound, afvs in the distance, spotting and assessing MLR... My guess is that not everybody carry these task with equal efficiency. I'd suppose same goes for scouting. Cheers