Agent Smith

Excellent AAR's a couple of questions... 1. What did you use to create the interactive AAR? Was it something like macromedia's captivate? 2. How did you get Blue team to have green units? and red team to be white on red, not black on red? regards A.S

How many people actually ever played TOAW in 3D mode? I would suggest ZERO! Long term playability with fussy graphics wears thin very quickly. Wargames, particularly; link historically with the cartographic dynamics of the 'thin red line' and the dates and arrows of strategic thrusts into enemy territory. 3D views are for minature enthusiasts that like to create surface elevations and get down to eye level and move their pieces around on the green felt. (Combat Mission is brilliant for this). Ideally SC2 should not try to have it both ways, either it graphically models minature dynamics, (ie. multiple viewing angles), or it sticks to building on a long tradition, (SC1 included) of excellence in cartographic wargames. If all we get is yet another variation of isometric view, where is the point of difference from the myriad of iso-games out there?

another Brilliant Idea Edwin! ...and certain to further delay the release date of the game

If this is the case then I want Edwin P. banned from any further excellent posts. All his stuff would be brilliant if added, and if HC is indeed taking forum posts into account, then this game will never be released...

Lars was most succinct about this. Without an A.I component, it is not a computer game. All the guys in this thread, big noting themselves should go back to playing with cardboard, dice and rule-books and using their computer for posting their moves to the like minded. The challenge of a computer game is combatting the A.I. Games that "challenge your brain and not just the mouse." TCP/IP and PBEM, should be seen as the icing on the cake, not the primary focus. A.I. WILL determine the commercial viability of this product.

the ONLY thing that will prevent me from purchasing this game would be an insipid A.I or crappy scripting interface that can tweak said A.I. Hey beta-testers how about some screenshots of the scripting dialog boxes?

You got the bomb.

Okay; the A.I was so easy, that I knew a guy who played someone that knew this dude, that was in a coma for 6months and beat the A.I. within a day of waking up! or how about this one... I knew some dude, who had a friend of a mate that had died, and he used a Ouija board to get his moves from him to play against the A.I. and even the dead guy kicked the A.I.'s butt! (really is all this chest thumping, psych-out foreplay necessary before the game arrives?) ...and for the record... I kick arse on this game after 10 beers!!! :cool:

...that's going to be one fantastic-helluva game with that sort of development!

ditto, I honestly can't understand why Battlefront just don't start with the pre-order list now. Yes there are numerous lurkers here just waiting for the green light. I'm not going to bother with the demo, and just go straight to the pre-order page. I've seen enough to be convinced that this game will be much more involved than SC1 and has taken into account much of the discussion here... Although to be honest, the lack of some specific end date has become tiresome. The AAR sustained me for a while, but even that seems to have run dry...c'mon Battlefront we've suffered long enough just let us know when santa's taking orders!

Lest We Forget...

Hear Hear! Let this be the game that Matrix's TOAW aspires to be. SC1 was/is a gem. We should hope to see scenarios being developed for SC2 4+ years from now. That will be a measure of its' success, not whether it came out for christmas 05 or new years' 06. Get it right and design it to last! Bravo HC, kudos to all who breathe life into this game.

Comanche, Try getting a hold of a program called 'getright'. It allows large files to be downloaded in packets. and reassembles them on your computer, when completed. I downloaded SPWAW 700+ Mb using it on a dialup. Regards Agent

any chance of putting in some screengrabs...every picture's worth a thousand...

Will SC1 scenario files (*.cgn), be compatible with SC2?

Yes. Copy your old stuff into a different folder. and NB: the menu buttons often exclude the tcp/ip option button, causing SC not to work.

Is the isometric view the only one available? Or will a top down square-grid-map view be possible?

I would just like to encourage all the scenario modders/ creators out in the community to remember all this discussion about the A.I. and the eforts many are going to, to create this game. I play 99% of my games solitaire, and find being able to tweak, create or download solitaire scenarios, a fantastic pastime, it breathes variety and shelf-life into a game. Which brings me to my point; I play TOAW, and disappointingly find many fantastic new scenarios unavailable as solo play, I assume this is because of the limitations/age of the program, the complexity of the interface, and the lack of support documentation or tutorials. I hope SC2 will not fall into this trap.

My AH box set still in great nick, played many hundreds of hours over the years with friends. The scale and variety of units and possible strategies would make this an excellent scenario for tournament play amongst SC2 community. And for additonal scripting for the A.I, till it breaks! For a very full account of the game try... http://www.grognard.com/reviews1/tactics2.txt [ October 26, 2005, 08:58 PM: Message edited by: Agent Smith ]

Q: Initially, will there be a single repository of non-default scenarios such as Tactics II, and where are they invisaged to reside?

Early on there was some mention made of a 'Tactics II' like scenario; (when talking up the issue of square v tiles). Will this scenario be shipping when the full version is released?

Thankyou for some belated interest Robert. What follows is a rather sad tale... After spending TOO many hours, manipulating pixels, tweaking colour sets, altering sounds and music score, (scanning in wood grain from cigar boxes etc.) As stated above, to my horror, the file total was over 20mb. I pedalled the mod to a number of sites that host mods and scenario, but all deemed it too big. THEN My computer crashed consigning this titanic to the cyber-depths...one copy did survive. Burned to CD and shipped to Kurt 88. (from Australia to Belgium). A shadow of my former modding days, I now quietly play a vanilla version....awaiting the glorious modding frontier of SC2. ...but seriously, try messaging Kurt, he even suggested at one point, he'd pass it on to some of his pbem opponents. I'd be chuffed to think that it is still gracing the screens of somebody's machine. The whole point in doing the mod, was to capture a combination of forties font styles and a traditional board game from the box. Again with SC2, my modding aim will be to remove windoze dialog box graphics, and hopefully move from minitures to old style press out card units. Perhaps the next mod will also need to include an SC2 windows theme, while playing the game. I'm rambling... good luck regards Agent S.

Kinda obvious question, giving that EVERYONE's been lurking around on this site hoping that every time they fire the browser up, they're going to see a splash banner signalling the demo is available for download. but just for the record; OH YEAH BABY! bring it on!!!

Engineers= people that know everything; about very little topics. Architects= people that know very little about every topic.

(Totally off topic, couldn't resist.) Hey Lars, Autocad! ha ha try REVIT or Archicad, get into the 21st Century. Vector linework is so 80's.