sage

It seems to me that there are people with strong opinions on both sides of the bodies vs. nobodies debate. At this point in time it may be too late to have this feature included; regardless, I believe it *should* eventually be included as an optional feature. Turn it on, turn it off, as you will. This keeps both sides happy. Sage

I think the problems with Braveheart have less to do with hardware and more do with a lack of focus on the part of the developers. The best games I have played have been the ones with a tight, well-implemented focus. Battlecruiser 3000, Braveheart et al. -- if you try to do too much you will fail to do any of it well. The fact that the game has insane hardware requirements is just a result of poor (unrealistic) focus. A game can be broad and ambitious and still be 'tight' -- it just means that the developers knew what to leave and what to cut. That's what experience in software release (games or otherwise) helps teach you. I agree with BTS, and my gut feeling is that they are going the right direction (even if they don't add dead bodies. :=) ) Sage [This message has been edited by sage (edited 09-21-99).]

).] [This message has been edited by sage (edited 09-21-99).]

All I'm asking for a is a hidden option, that defaults to off, and is only exposed in the readme... I can't speak for the coding time. With luck it would simply be as easy as commenting out the 'remove body' routine when a guy falls over after being show & making sure that information is saved from turn to turn. It would be a nice option in a feature enhancement patch down the line. Sage

My experience is all in the west, and based on limited experience and hearsay about eastern fires and how slow and difficult to set they can be, compared to the tinderbox west. Trust Kent...

What is the maximum size of the campaign map? 20km by 20km? More? Less? What's the maximum size/dimension of a game map?

I know a little about wild land fire fighting. I once, in the California/Nevada desert, saw a large fire occur in the winter. The conditions were very, very specific, however: it required very dense fuel (sage brush) to be very dry (the sap had not yet risen) on a very windy day. Probably the first and last anyone there had ever seen it SNOW on a fire. However, I would say the chance of a wild land fire to do anything other then smolder briefly in a deciduous forest in the winter to be absolutely nil. You might get some drifting smoke, but that's it. First off, deciduous forests really don't like to burn at all, anyway. I would put the chance of forest fire in Western Europe's forests as something like this: Winter: absolutely none. You could shell an area into splinter and and you would just end up with smoldering twigs. Spring: very, very low. Extremely low. Think slightly more smoldering twigs. Melting snow, rising sap and rain. Summer: very low. If was an extremely dry summer (summer of 1944???), low. But basically you get decent precip in most of Europe in the summer. Fall: very low, but, at least to some extent, a function of the summer's wetness. What does all this boil down to (IMO)? I think that wildland fire would not be tactically relevant Fall, Winter or Spring, and very unusual in the summer. House fires and flame throwers not withstanding. Sage

Beating the crap out of a dead horse now. Feel free to ignore. "No science here, but I am sure that infantry losses exceed the additional polygons coming from smoke, craters, and fire. One of the good things about not having dead figures is that your framerate increases during the course of the game instead of decreases. So you can start out with something that is a bit of a pig graphically, but then mid game it is just fine (we are talking slower systems here)." Well... so for those of who are running the new state of the art AMD K-10 1200mhz beast (or whatever is 'in' next year, or the next, or the next), could that dead guy be left on (a reg value, default off, that flags the game and says, "when they fall down, leave 'em"). This way we at least have the chose as to whether if the scattering from a moving battle looks bad or not... Users don't have to enable it if they don't want to (and it might even take some work to find), and so people who are running with 2 men per squad (i.e. slow systems) don't need to use it. Ditto for anyone who thinks that it 'just doesn't look right.' Being a software PM I know how painful adding features towards the end of a project can be (and freeing it is to Cut! Cut! Cut!), but... well... I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one. Sage "Won't let it die gracefully" Schreiner

Warning: corporate proseltyzing to follow (or would if I could spell that damn word). Well. I feel, yet again, the need to pipe up. As it happens, I work for a company that does display cards, specifically card designed with multiple-out (similar to the Matrox G400, except that we've been doing it longer, and do it better. Hey, I warned you.) Anyway, the net result two fold: one we have some really kick-ass displays lying around -- like the two 16x10 ratio 22" Sony displays (now THOSE are nice CRTs) -- or 18" and (unreleased) 21" flat panel displays. Now THOSE are fine displays. I'd have two for home, except that they cost more than my car. :=) All this talk has got me thinking. I wonder (in theoretical terms, since it's probably a wee bit late in the dev process for this...) whether Combat Mission would benefit from multiple displays. For instance, during playbacks, the first display could be used for zooming in and out on interesting spots, while the second display provides a zoomed out view. During the orders phase, the second display could be used for the info/tool bar at the bottom of the screen, unit status and info and as additional screen real estate. Finally -- think immersive panorama. Hardware-wise it can be done with two identical cards (you can use non-identical cards, but you run into strange artifacts) in Windows 98, and I believe some Macs have been able to do it for quite awhile. Software wise... well... that's why I said "theoretically" up at the top. It can certainly be done, but it's not the kind of thing that gets done this late in the dev process. Regardless, it would (I think, but then, I'm biased) be a cool feature. What do people think? Worth while for next version? Interesting? A good use for the crappy 15" sitting in the closet? Sage "at least I'm not going off about dead infantry sprites" Schreiner

I've tested professionally before. A few quick words: without a solid test plan to run after builds and an extended version to run before milestones, bugs have a way of creaping in. Operation Art of War II is a great example -- in the final build, global events and air mobility were both fatally broken. The game was unplayable for five weeks until it was patched. It's those bugs that show up because of that one, last tweak. Not to say that will be a problem here. I hope it is not, and will trust the CM guys. Sage

Ummm... how about an option to have the only every 3rd body represented. (i.e. when a poly figure from a squad goes away, i.e. the third guys dies, he ends up spread eagled on the ground). Shouldn't increase the poly count, but would keep me happy... Maybe just a registry value -- i.e. doesn't even have to be exposed in the interface? Sage "really trying to not make an ass of himself" Schreiner

Errr... point taken, but I should say that I wasn't thinking the "billboard approach" (ala Wolfenstein). More of the 'decal' approach, like your craters. I would play and enjoy this game if it looked like TacOps, but I also just wanted to add my opinion. s

Not to beat a dead horse, but I have one more thing to add about sprites. I've been reading this board for several months, and I finally feel like piping up on the poly vs. sprites issues. One of the things that I like war gaming is the "cluttered, wrecked battlefield" syndrome. This gratifies the three year old in me. Close Combat was good like this -- my only gripe is that the dead bodies didn't stay from battle to battle. Now, while I agree that the AAR battlefield does look pretty good, I would still like to see bodies, or something along those lines. I feel strongly that this should not be missing. Why? Because I really do feel that this detracts from the immersion on at least some level. Here is an idea: sprites can be used for bodies, in a similar way that sprites (i.e. flat textures) are used for shell holes. In otherwords, a sprite flat on the ground to represent a dead or wounded guy. If the powers that be decide that looks like crap, another possibility would be to not use bodies, but to use debris, such as a splatter of blood, a backpack, a broken rifle, a discarded helmet. Why do I feel strongly about this? One of the things that really sticks with me about my grandpa's accounts of WW2 (higgins boat driver, pacific) was the immense quantity of trash that was left over once the battle moved inland. I have read other accounts that emphasize this as well, and you can get a sense of it in some of the photos. Combat Mission seems to be a game of details -- i.e. the rock of a tank as it is struck from the side, and so forth -- but it seems odd to dismiss off-handedly what is (or I at least consider to be) an important detail. Sage

"Meanwhile, the other JT was trying to get range and distance (usually at least 2 shots), and since the RoF is so slow, this took a lot of time." Not that I want to make the JTs any more powerful, but it seems to be that one of the benefits of such a massive gun is that the higher velocity of the shell gives it a flatter trajectory, therefore making ranging less difficult. Is this true? Is this taken into account? Just a thought... Sage