Philippe

Since less than lucid thoughts are becoming one of my specialties, I couldn't resist asking this question: Would it be possible to code terrain types as units for a special terrain existance sighting check without bringing the game to a screeching halt? I have a very strong suspicion that the answer is no, so my feelings won't be hurt if you start laughing at me. The idea is that from time to time during a turn the system would figure out what each player's borgs could see that they hadn't seen before, and add that to the terrain map. A terrain tile with trees in it would be like a spottable unit. This would make some demands on the system, but you wouldn't need to do it constantly throughout a turn: three or four times per minute would be enough. Something like this is already being done with fortifications in CMx1, though doing it with everything is going to use up some resources. Perhaps if the game maintained a parallel map with pre-calculated lines of site, and a notation that if a unit appears in quadrant x, it can see a, b, c, and d in addition to x and whatever else it has already seen. The effect would be that if a designer didn't predesignate terrain quadrants as having already been seen, you could be maneuvering against a very blank map (hills only, no trees, roads, or buildings or rivers). This would make the use of a pre-game sketch map of the battlefield very important. The sketch map wouldn't change over the course of the game (and if the designer were really evil it would include mistakes likes fords and bridges that didn't exist), but the terrain that a player would see every time he entered an orders phase would get more and more detailed. By segregating the map check from the LOS crunch, and by not doing it very often, might it be possible to slip this in without burning through all the user's computer resources?

After giving it considerable thought, and with all due respects to LOD (the main contender), the next release will be a brilliant stroke of marketing: Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Whenever I hear someone mention Sandusky, Ohio I get the shivers. The Lobsters will be a module in the series, probably having to do with the Goddesses' misguided search for sex slaves on the wrong planet. Gourmet food and sex: what more could you want !

One visual element that I really miss are winter greatcoats. I would hope that CMx2 could be programmed with a few extra frames for infantry to allow these, either as an option or as standard cold weather wear. This is not just a question of modding the textures, of course, because greatcoats extend from the waist to below the knees. Last time I looked CMx1 greatcoats were truncated at the waist, which isn't a very effective cold-stopper.

A few years ago I visited Qatar in February. A cold wind was blowing out of Persia, and the temperature dropped into the mid seventies fahrenheit. I had just come from Oman, where the temperature was around 100 fahrenheit, so I was delighted. The locals, however, were visibly uncomfortable. Many of the shopkeepers in the bazaar were wearing sweaters, and several of the shops had fires burning in little copper braziers. And I actually saw one guy shivering from the cold.

And on a related note, are we happy with the amount of time that it takes to limber and unlimber guns? My sense is that it probably happens too quickly in CMx1, but I have nothing hard to base that on. I realize that it doesn't take that long to fold up the supports of a gun and secure them to the back of a halftrack (provided you didn't lose the sledgehammer). I would think what takes a bit more time is loading and unloading the ammo -- I find it hard to believe that you could get twenty minutes worth of shells in and out of a vehicle in under a minute, unless they were of low calibre. Input from real artillerymen on this would be useful. And realistic towing behavior is also a concern. I don't like the fact that I can apparently hook an anti-tank gun to the side of a halftrack, and for all intents and purposes it counts as an attachment to the limbering hooks in back. And I really don't like the way limbered guns get pulled around coners -- the towing vehicle should take the turn before the pulled vehicle. These issues will beome especially pronounced when BFC implements field kitchens, bakeries, and butcheries (for fresh sausage and schnitzel) which have to be towed and which are much less nimble than an anti-tank gun.

On a related note, is there any way to use umlauts and accents in the unit editor and map editor ? Using funny letters in the scenario briefings is pretty easy, but I haven't figured out how to get them into the editors. I've seen them show up in a few scenarios in the unit editor -- real live umlauts on the vowels of peoples names. I'm assuming that to do that you have to either remap your keyboard in some way, assigning accented letters arbitrarily to underused keys (probably the number keys). The only other thing I can think of is to try to reset your computer to German rather than English and reboot before you start typing. Not sure I remember how to do that, but I've run across the menu for it a few times. It would be nice, if doing a scenario in Berlin, for example, to spell out the names of the streets correctly, and to use that funny german double s that looks like a B. It would be even more fun to do Russian streets in Cyrillic, but that's probably going overboard.

And what about the Leather Goddesses of Phobos ?

One of the few things I took away from a too-brief reading of Closing with the Enemy was that green troops tend to be more likely to get themselves killed quickly in their first few combats because they don't know any better and don't take care of themselves. Veterans are veterans because they know how to stay alive. Risk-taking is fine for green troops and cyber-warriors, but the most important experience you gain is in the art of self-preservation. Green troops might have a certain initial impact on the enemy at first, but very soon they will be dead or will have figured out (by watching their buddies splattered all over the battlefield) that sometimes it is better to keep your head down and make the new guy take point. There was apparently a reluctance on the part of some veterans even to learn the names of new replacements until after they had been around long enough to absorb some basic survival skills.

I don't have the details at my fingertips, but one of the climactic tank duels during the liberation of Paris ended by the Frenchman ramming a Panther with his outclassed tank in desparation (I can't remember if it was a Sherman or a tank destroyer). And it worked. Gets discussed in Is Paris Burning (not to be confused with Paris is Burning).

No worries, mate. Keep on truckin'.

Testing a scenario is a TPG issue. I'm not really talking about what goes on at TPG, my only concern is with TSD II, which has a whole different gestalt. What might be kosher at TPG, a closed circle of consenting adults, is not necessarily appropriate for a universal site. As for testers, I couldn't agree more that they're necessary. I was part of the CMMOS cabal, and the whole point of having the cabal was to make sure that everyone in the group looked at everything. And we killed a lot of pink spots (a common side-residue from mod-making), among other things. I gather that posting a scenario at TPG triggers comments from the active members, which is a good thing. They're known quantities, and if one of them makes a comment about one of your scenarios I'm sure you know how many grains of salt to take it with. The problem with unsollicited comments is you have to evaluate the critic before you can take his comments seriously. I would think that recruiting a few experienced testers by a one-on-one e-mail campaign would ultimately yield better results than dealing with a lot of unknowns. But as I said earlier, this thread is not a critique of TPG. If what goes on there works for you, great. It doesn't really matter whether it would work for me or not because I don't design scenarios. Please don't mistake my concerns for how things should be done at TSD II for an attack on TPG. I suspect that my biggest practical concern is really about cookies. It's not a matter of what I do or don't do, or what I would be better off doing. What I can or shouldn't do is irrelevant. I'm not thinking about myself - I'm extrapolating from my own internet behaviour and concluding that there will be a class of users with similar quirks who will become easily discouraged. That's fine for a site like TPG where I would think that you only really want the committed anyway. Not so good if you're trying to serve the largest possible audience (who don't post messages on this forum and probably wouldn't know how to loosen their screws with Netscape anyway). If you must have registration, I would suggest doing it CMMODS-style so you don't have to bother with cookies. I don't mind logging in there every time because, having checked that little box on the pop-up I don't have to remember my screen name or my password. And yes, I agree with Michael that CMMODS is slow. I usually read a book and visit other sites while I'm waiting for the pages to load. As an aside, I believe that people who live in Europe tend to have a different concept of the appropriate limits of privacy from North Americans. I think it better that we agree to disagree, because arguing about that kind of thing is really more suitable to the old General Forum prior to the ban on politics. But just remember what I said twenty years from now when they're grilling you on your moral fitness to be a memeber of the Supreme court, and someone pulls out a list of all those games about Nazi's you downloaded in your youth. One of the many differences between Finland and the U.S. is that witchhunting has been a national sport over here since the 17th century: we just don't call them witches anymore.

At the end of the day the only way to get anything done is to do it yourself. Only go the advise and consent route if you're really, truly out of ideas (which you aren't). There's a poem in spanish that says something to the effect that: Bullfight critics ranked in rows Crowd the enormous plaza full. But only one is there who knows And he's the one who fights the bull. I bet if you check your hands you'll find you're holding a sword and a cape...

This line of thought strikes me as idiotic and unnecessary. If you want to protect your "privacy", don't use the internet, and don't use private websites that require registration, or simply use a false registry name. </font>

The invasion of privacy does not come from the act of downloading. It comes from the act of collecting information about a third party and disseminating it against their will. And the point is that your personal habits are being monitored and tabulated and then distributed to others without your knowledge.

Throwing in a disclaimer does not change the fact that we are dealing with an invasion of privacy. It's merely a legalistic attempt to dodge responsability on the part of the invader. What might work for TPG would be to give someone a choice as to whether their downloading would be revealed to anyone. If they can check "no, it's nobody's business what I'm downloading", then that should alleviate the problem somewhat if their specific data were not added to the lists when they downloaded. But it doesn't belong in TSD II in any form if the idea is to create a replacement for TSD I. TSD I was a universal resource that wasn't pandering to any particular group. TSD II should be the same if it is going to fulfil a useful purpose. [ September 06, 2005, 02:03 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Not if there is a disclaimer in advance. GJK you may want to do that - IF you are providing download lists to scenario authors (which I would love to see). </font>

CMMODS is certainly slow once you get inside it, but I think the log-in procedure is pretty good, considering. There's a little box you can check in the lower left-hand corner of the password screen that saves you from having to remember your password and screen name. I'm not proposing making any changes to TPG. However, the log-in at CMMODS is a lot more user-friendly than cookies, especially if you block most of them and flush the rest once a week.

Just to clarify, I've visited TPG several times and have downloaded scenarios from it. My problem with the site is not really registration in and of itself (apart from the fact that I don't like anyone seeing a list of what I have chosen to download). And if registration is the only way to authenticate reviews, that's fine. Though I would suggest that you require log-in only for review-writing and not for downloading. My problem is with navigating the site, and with coming back to it when I've been away for a while. And yes, it is a cookie issue. I don't know if that is what makes it so hard for me to navigate from one screen to the next on your site, but I do think that that is the crux of the problem. I'm not going to lower my computer defenses across the board just to visit one site, especially when trips to the web are becoming more and more fraught with people trying to shove things inside my computer without my knowledge and against my will. I am not a frequent visitor to TPG because it is hard for me to use it (but I do go there from time to time, nevertheless). If it is hard for me to use, it is hard for others like me. And I think my point of view is going to become more prevalent over time as internet security continues to deteriorate. [ September 06, 2005, 01:59 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I've often seen people ask if their PBEM opponent can see the camo scheme that they're using. Inspired by the fact that many German armored vehicles in Normandy looked like moving bushes, I would like to propose that the designers consider making real, three-dimensional assemblages of shrubbery to drape over vehicles. This wouldn't just be eye-candy, if used it should have an influence on sighting at long distances. Painted on shrubbery looks a bit too flat for my taste most of the time. Giving mobile bushes a game function might make it a little easier to justify coding the wire frame. And if you can cover your Stug with bushes to protect it from airstrikes, you're not that very far from making haystacks that can be occupied by machine gunners.

I realize that this isn't the most important thing to be adding into CMx2, but it would be really nice to be able to specify that somone is wearing a forage cap instead of a helmet. This is not the kind of thing that can be fixed by modding, because the textures alone can't make up for the fact that the shape is wrong. It would mean that you could put your Finns in helmets or soft hats, which I suspect is was a bit more common. You can put your Germans in helmets, but when simulating an attack on a rear area they might be too surprised to get out of their forage hats. French troops are a special case: you need the ability to put them in American or British helmets, the old French helmet which has such a peculiar shape it the texture needs help from the fram, or forage caps. Late-war photographs that I've seen lead me to suspect that after Normandy they were wearing forage caps into combat as a fashion statement. There are more examples, but these are the most annoying ones that I've come across recently. And maybe there should be some ever so slight in-game penalty for not wearing a hard hat in an artillery barrage...

The registration mechanic at SDP I, while annoying, was much less of a problem than at TPG. CMMODS, by the way, has the easiest system to work with. Reviews should certainly be signed and not anonymous, because knowing who the reviewer is is often the only way you can tell whether to take the review seriously or not. But that has nothing to do with registration. The mechanical issue is not about being bothered with registration. What I am saying is that if you create a step that is mechanically clunky and that isn't strictly necessary, you will discourage people from downloading your scenarios. That is cliquish and contrary to the whole spirit of posting mods or scenarios in a public forum. The Scenario Depot is supposed to be the only place where anyone would go to get their scenarios, and since it will be a near-monopolistic provider it is essential that it be held to a higher standard: the people who will be coming there will be a captive audience, and that mustn't be abused. The Scenario Depot has to look after the interest of the community as a whole, and not just a particular segment of it. It needs to be open and set up in a way that doesn't smack of exclusivity or a closed club. And it must be very easy to use. There is really no reason to burden people with having to remember one more screen name and one more password. It's not so bad at CMMODS because at least there you can set the log-in screen to always remember your password, so logging in doesn't interefere with the process. I would dearly love to know who downloads my mods, but I don't need to know. In fact, I shouldn't be allowed to know. Merely knowing how many have attempted to download is enough to satisfy prurient curiosity. And the designer's need to know doesn't wash: when I play a new scenario I often send e-mails with lists of any glitches I've found to the designer because I'm a compulsive editor. I rarely get a response back. I've taken to simply correcting the file and sending the corrections back with a note explaining what they were. That doesn't get a positive response very often either. What I'm beginning to suspect is that many designers really want adulation rather than feedback or proofreading. So if the rationale behind registration is not standing on as firm grounds as it pretends to, and is somewhat invasive to begin with, do away with it or water it down to the point that the unscrupulous wouln't eventually be able to use the information collected for their own nefarious commercial ends. [ September 06, 2005, 06:21 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Internet Explorer, Windows 2000, and a 56 k modem. Knowing who downloads their scenarios is actually something of an invasion of privacy. Tolerable to some extent at TPG, but not really appropriate for Scenario Depot II. It's a very slippery slope. Designers may want to know, but they don't need to know. It won't improve the feedback they get. If someone is going to give them quality feedback, it is not because they receive an intrusive e-mail out of the blue. Advertisers want to know that kind of thing too, and for obvious reasons. Registration is a bit like a form of tracking software, in that case, and it has the added disadvantage of interfering with the free and open distribution of the product. Keep it by all means at TPG if you think that is what your clientele wants, but don't use it at the new Scenario Depot because your clientele is very different there, and values its privacy.

Did you find that in a history of the SNCF ? I wonder if the single lines you're referring to aren't really a single pair of lines.

Speaking of bells and whistles, is there any chance it would be possible for a designer to write in ranks as well as names when doing historical scenarios? As it stands now you have to either let the system choose the rank of an historical character based on game function, or have Captain Major So-and-so show up in a scenario. I'd rather have the Captain demoted to a Major than have a Captain Major, but it would really be nice if I could just over rule the game engine and write in whatever rank I choose. This would also be nice, I suppose, if you were doing a raid on Rommel scenario, and didn't want a general showing the rank of major. I would also dearly love to be able to find a way to get umlauts and double ss's into the scenario editor without remapping the keys on my keyboard.

Remember that you don't just want to overlay the railroad track visual on a bridge surface. Tracks crossing a bridge won't have the roadbed they have in other terrain. So we'll need a separate bridge surface tile, as well as a special set of straight track tiles (vertical, horizontal, and two diagonals).