GreenAsJade

Yes, it was the issue *I* was raising, and it was THE issue that was being responded to in the post I quoted. Sure, it's great that the bug is being fixed. How many BFC posts did it take to acknowledge it? I reckon time would have been better spent on one line saying "thanks for the PR, we're working on this problem"... then working on it, or others. What did you take away from all those words about how bugs can be easier or harder than we think? Were they better use of time? GaJ [ August 26, 2007, 02:43 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

I think the correct response I'm looking for here is "Dude, chill out!". When was this thread started? Less than 12 hours from the time I am typing this and 6 hours before my first response. Steve </font>

I just read all 5 pages of this, and the only BFC comment I saw was a very general "we fix things and some bugs aren't as hard as you think". Did I miss something? Has BFC actually acknowledged that Redwolf has a point here, acknowledged the finely presented problem report, and indicated that they think its' one they'll fix? If so, I appologise for not seeing it. If not, this is what pisses me off about BFC. So slow to acknowledge supportive efforts. GaJ

Or you could just _buy_ it and then get the patches... GaJ

Its fine to have _lots_ of dust from vehicle in the desert, in lines where they drive etc etc... I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that if I am on one side of a huge hill and they are on the other then I can still see, in every detail, the lines of dust! They haven't fixed this in CMSF either GaJ

I think dust was misimplemented to the point that the bad outweighs the good. I encourage scenario designers to choose "damp" to get rid of dust. Having radars showing where all enemy forces are is just silly. GaJ

I'm curious about this one. It seems to me that there are lots of cases where the unit should easily go along the path I had in mind: it should follow the line that I drew on the ground! Only if I asked it to go somewhere where it can't... then it has an excuse to deviate. And when it deviates, it would be most playable (it seems to me) and comprehendable if it stayed as close as possible to the line I drew on the ground. That's not "reading my mind" it's a pretty well bounded problem to solve. Right now (1.01 demo) I have a unit reproducable tripping of for _miles_ from my line for absolutely no apparent reason. GaJ

I think that what this boils down to is that Steve reckons the way to go is to get 1:1 working properly, so although I don't care if Private Jones is picking his nose, at least if it matters then that info will be there. Fair enough... bring it on! GaJ

You don't have to have 1:1 representation to corretly model the response that you described of a squad in a building to MG fire on the building. It would be interesting to find a concrete example where 1:1 representation gives you something you really can't have in abstract form, must have 1:1, and really do want to have in commanding a company of squads to do its job... GaJ [ August 11, 2007, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

Hip Hooray. Honestly! It's great! But... it's much more interesting to consider the underlying game design, and whether this is what's making CMSF less fun, than to sit around cheering. If they could have added this borg cure to CMAK, and fixed up the dust and AI limitations, and added icons instead of bases ... we'd be all cheering wildly, some years ago, I reckon... GaJ

I'm a bit late to this excellent thread, and I agree with the first post, and where it leads. I have just one thing to add: I think that there are *two* problems 1) Having a game that looks like 1:1 but isn't. 2) Whether a 1:1 game is even interesting and fun. I think that #1 is clearly a problem for all the reasons give in the last three pages. I think that #2 is also a big problem. What does 1:1 add to the tactical or strategic play options or experience? When I order 1-PLT A-Co to cover some barbed wire blocking a forest approach, I really don't care if Private Jones is picking his nose. I don't want to give orders for individuals, because it is the behaviour of the squad I am planning. So why do I want to see the behaviour of individuals? What I want is a clear representation of what the squad is doing in response to my orders combined with the circumstances they are in. And guess what. The 3-figure representation perfectly does that. If someone in the squad throws a grenade, I see a grenade getting thrown. I don't need to know which one of 10 men threw it. I really do think that 1:1 introduces a fundamental mismatch in the abstraction and the gaming thinking. GaJ PS: I think the title of this thread is unfortunate, and would benefit from being changed. As has been observed, no-one thinks Steve is a whiner, so why imply it? This thread is really about "The Wrong Left Turn and the Uncanny Valley".

BTW, I'm playing a scenario by Richie with Ferdinands in winter (Nikopol Bridgehead). I reckon that means they were used in winter... GaJ

ROFL.

Heh - not one of the more commonly seen tanks, the ole Ferdinand, eh? Lemme guess ... you have two of them now? Me to! GaJ

Can we not refer to "Wegoers" as a whole as the people who are whining about the RT engine? It pulls me and a lot of other fine folk into the group you think has no clue or appreciation of what is there. What there is out there is a stoopid "blue bar brigade" : I think these are the people (the person?) you are referring to. Actually, most tactical/strategic players are probably quite happy with the fundamentals of the new WEGO implementation, and do appreciate the new features the engine brings (or would if they were aware of them). There are some serious bugs and limitations right now, and so the complaints about those I'm sure are taken in the right spirit: these need fixing (like multiple movable waypoints, self-preservation, rewind properly etc) in due course. That's different from saying "WEGO on an RT engine is broken, give me a blue bar". So there you have it. A new engine that benefits both WeGo and RealTime players. Are both sides happy with all the decisions we made? No, obviously not. But we're moving forward on evolving both halves of the game for the next bunch of years. WeGo will never be replaced by RealTime. Yay GaJ [ August 07, 2007, 07:39 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

Will the demo be patched (sorry if this has been answered elsewhere)? GaJ

RT and WEGO are two different kinds of game. It is definitely not the case (IMHO) that "RT is the next evolution from counters after WEGO". Rather, they are forks in the road. WEGO is all about strategy and tactics. RT is about "realism" at an individual commander level ... decisions on the fly and all that good stuff. Neither is truly realistic ... commanders don't get to issue commands for many different platoons in real time like we do in CMSF RT, nor do they have hours to plan each minute, like we do in CMSF WEGO. Rather, each approximates some sort of realism that we find enjoyable to *play*. Saying that WEGO gamers might enjoy RT is like saying basketball players might enjoy baseball. Sure - they might. They're sportsmen, afterall. But basketball players are likely to want to keep playing basketball. Similarly, tactical/strategic wargamers are likely to want to keep playing WEGO. GaJ

:eek: I actually find this one of the most offputting things of the whole game. I _hate_ seeing individual men kark it while playing a wargame. If I want a horror movie, I'll go hire one. While at a "social conscience" level I can see there might be some argument for this level of depiction being a good thing, I think finkster is a great example of why this is pointless. For me a wargame is about the skill of applying tactics correctly to achieve an end. It's unfortunate human nature that one of the most fascinating ends is military conquest, but as a matter of enjoyment, I don't really need to be reminded of this strange twist in our psyche! GaJ

Now it appears you're saying that every beta tester has to fullfil every criterion. IE a beta tester has to be a wargamer with military experience and skills at scenario making with a wide range of hardware combinations available to him/her. I would have thought that 3-4 beta testers who are "wargamers with military experience and skills at scenario making" would be plenty for that dimension of beta testing. That leaves ... what ... 46 out of the 50 you said was reasonable for HW/SW cominations testing, GUI suitability for your average gamer, documentation reading etc... GaJ [ August 04, 2007, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

Wouldn't that be a pretty sensible high criterion? "Hey, if we don't have a single 8800 owning beta tester, maybe we better put feelers out". If we are saying that the reason all those high-end ATI owners out there are having post-release problems is because BTS couldn't find a suitable 8800 owning beta tester ... well I'd be (momentarily ) speechless if that really was what you're saying... GaJ

This is a fair point worthy of analysis, because it's always the response to a question about "couldn't you have tested this?". How many combinations actually would a company have to do to cover significant *new* configurations? There are two card vendors. Each has ... what 5 or 6 significantly different *new* cards? Then there are 2 Windows CPU vendors (AMD/Intel) and a couple of configurations of note (single CPU/dual CPU). Can anyone enumerate better? What does this multiply out to? About 50? Then if you have less beta testers, obviously you have to hit really key likely points of failure. I'd say "Most recent, high end cards and drivers", wouldn't you? You'd have to say that in this case it seems these were not covered before CMSF release. As we heard, Charles only just got an 8800 machine. Did no beta testers have one? Another very fair point: it is an extremely difficult thing to be developing a leading edge piece of software using other people's leading edge pieces of software and hardware. There are ways of coping with this. I can conceive of a regression test of the required functions of OpenGL, for a start. Run the test across new cards and drivers as they arrive... if you're resourced. The funny thing is, BTS, of all companies out there, is one of the best resourced. They have _us_. I'd have been keen to be part of setting up a test suite like that. Or I'd have done the mod manager interface while someone else does the regression test. I'd have done it for free. But no-one asked (that I recall). However, all this is somewhat secondary to the main point. I got the impression, possibly mistakenly, that the post from BTS was saying "look, the reason you ATI users are having so many problems is 'cause irresponsible ole ATI has bugs in their drivers, and they don't care about us and they don't help us. Please give us some sympathy, we're getting a bloody nose here." And I feel somewhat sympathetic, because it's a hard task that BTS has, coding to someone else's API, but I'm not sympathetic to this being presented as the reason why CMSF appears unready for release even though they released it. The situation with ATI drivers has been known for years, and no developer using those drivers is helpless for ways to deal with it. I think it was the "(yes plural)" that got me. As if ATI dare to have plural bugs - shame shame. GaJ [ August 04, 2007, 05:53 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

I've thought more about this. It's really a bit of a double standard for BTS to be blaming someone else's software bugs for any CMSF woes. Here we are, being told to be patient with first release of software that's full of bugs. They'll be worked out in time. OK ... so far so good. Really: many software companies do acknowledge that they need users testing to find user bugs. That's what beta test is about, right? But then ... we're being told "Gosh, gee... ATI had ... " (how many now) "... THREE whole bugs" in their software. Now please: is it OK to have bugs in software or not? If it's OK, then you must have been expecting bugs in the software of your suppliers. How did you plan ahead to deal with these certain ATI driver bugs... I mean: I read somewhere else just now that Charles only just now ... post release ... got a machine with the most common leading edge ATI card in it!!!?? Why is that? Weren't you expecting bugs in the video card drivers? And what about the beta testers? Did they have ATI cards? If not, didn't you need some more beta testers? And then ... let's think: how big is this API anyhow? Did you first create some tests to make sure that the calls you've told us you "have" to do actually work? Wouldn't that have been a good idea? If we return to the burger analogy, it's like you _knew_ the boss was going to ask for this burger for _years_. Did you go down to the outlet and make sure that the order you were going to give was going to go OK? Or did you just assume that Burger King was bug free? In which case ... is it the case that really software _should_ be bug-free? Afterall, this seems to be the expectation of ATI drivers... so why not BTS CMSF? Hmmmm... I don't think you can have it both ways.... GaJ BTW: API's aren't any more violent than any other software. For example, I get punched on the nose every time I ask my tank to go in a straight line to that hill over there. No matter how politely I ask, it vectors off at 45 degrees into the line of fire... is that so different to a call to a texturing API that fails? [ August 04, 2007, 03:17 AM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

It does beg the question why you didn't use the same API the other games out there that do work use? IE if other games don't have problems, but you chose a route that does give you problems, then ... um... ??? GaJ [ August 04, 2007, 01:50 AM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

Heh it's funny you should say that. When I first played the CMBO demo I thought...wow miniatures wargaming on a PC. Especially with how the infantry was displayed - always reminded me of four figures on a base to represent a squad. </font>

Yeah, I'd have signed up to that happily, feeling like I was adding something in both $$ to something I look forwards to and feedback I'd have enjoyed giving (as opposed to feeling like whining about a product). GaJ