war2004

No matter which theatre of operations CMX2 we could reproduce the great landings including DDay, Italy and the numerous Pacific theatre landings. Cordially

You may want to learn the difference between strategy and tactics. What type of "game" are you looking for? a) PC board and a) tactical operational c) strategic One can think of examples of all of these, in classic form - from TRENCHFOOT to THE GUNS OF AUGUST. </font>

WEGO is good for me, but it would be nice to have the option of RTS for the masses ! It would allow an increase in sales and popularize the game.

Hello, I took a look around the Internet using Google and Meta-Critic for a WW1 genre game but it seems the very few that are available are panned by the critics. My question is: Would you please recommend a WW1 game to me. I am wondering why there is so little interest in the WW1 genre for wargames. Perhaps, because it is mostly infantry just moving back and forth over no-manz-land and trenches being pounded by artillery and machine gun fire. Adding up to very little strategy. Comments welcome. Cordially

Best to ignore the trolls, their little children, quite often in adult bodies I think the graphics sound amazing, even better than expected. I am surprised about the amount of detail, which you noted. If they have gone to that much trouble for the peripheral items, I suspect the combat units and cities/villages will be more than adequate, I hope Cordially

Hello Moon, Not sure why you would lock a thread about a topic that has already been discussed by BFC on other threads. ie: it was BFC that suggested the CMX2 engine would have graphics as good or better than Wartime Command. In addition, the following points have been made by BFC: http://diygames.com/index.php?p=657&more=1 The hardcore strategy game developers at Battlefront have sent along some details on the next generation of titles in their long running Combat Mission series of games. While there's no information regarding the theater of battle or even the time period the next Combat Mission title will take place in, there is some good information with regards to the engine that will power future Combat Mission products. Currently codenamed "CMX2," the new engine will have a number of features that should help give it a bit more street cred in the graphics department that previous titles in the series have lacked. Keep reading for a detailed listing of some of the enhancements being implemented, including 3D clouds, celestial body movement, and mud effects. "Sun moves through correct arc in the sky (and can be placed correctly for a given calendar date and global latitude). Want to see what the sun looks like viewed from latitude of Tobruk on November 13? No problem. Try setting it in Australia and you might get freaked out (at least if you’re not living down under) by seeing the sun arc northward instead of southward! And then set it above the arctic circle in the summertime and watch the sun "spin" all around the sky and never set. 3D Clouds - both low and high altitude levels, and they both animate across the sky at different speeds. Cloud shadows are moving over the ground! And there are lighting effects on the ground. The 3D clouds really do add more depth to the scene, particularly as they are animated and disappear over the top of the distant hills. This is because everything is done in layers now. The mountain layer is drawn on top of the cloud layer, which in turn is drawn on top of the sky layer. So clouds automatically recede behind the mountains as they move into the distance. The sun (or moon) disappears behind the mountains too (and behind clouds). We'll have a night layer, too. The moon works pretty much like the sun, so that's already effectively working. Stars are trickier, but we'll have them too. You can't easily represent them in the sky texture because in order for stars to look like pinpoints of light (instead of magnified pixel blobs) the texture would require extremely high resolution. Probably too high to be practical (i.e. a giant BMP). However, OpenGL allows the rendering of "point" objects, so Charles will probably construct a little "celestial model" of the major stars and constellations and actually draw the individual stars. Then it could show the proper night sky for a given spot on Earth at a given time of year. Eventually the light colour and intensity will change as the day changes to dusk and night, also Terrain "blends" - The engine can blend in snow, rocky terrain, whatever you can make a texture of. This is done automatically with only two (totally separate) textures. (In theory the engine can handle an effectively unlimited number of textures to blend). And not just that, but it's possible to "mix" terrain in a fashion that's not a pure blend, but purposely more spotty, like spots of (melting) snow over, say, otherwise muddy terrain, where you don't want a literal 50/50 blend of snow/mud, but rather 100% snow in a small spot right next to 100% mud in an adjacent spot, but have them border cleanly and smoothly. The new engine can handle both types. The blending between terrains is amazingly smooth as is the terrain itself (no more jagged mountains, hehe!). The "tiled" nature of CM's terrain is completely gone now. And yet the new method is not a huge hit on VRAM. This means that most likely - if "tiles" remain in the editor at all - it will be merely as a convenience for the editor interface, and totally separate from the concept of tiles as actual 3D graphics as they are in CM. We might keep editor tiles if it's just easier for a scenario author to "paint" a map that way. But when you see the map in the game, you won't see anything that looks like a grid of tiles. And no seams either. The engine also supports "dark mapping" where we can arbitrarily make any spot darker (or tinted a particular color). This can be used for crude shadows, terrain variants (a handy way to show mud is just to darken the dirt terrain) or special game-related things like "go to the red spot for 1000 points" or whatever. For instance you can have varying levels of damp ground in Russia that could be displayed visually with this method. Another feature: you can also have a "color gradient" in the sky, where (for example) the sky is darker blue when you look straight up, and hazier/lighter when you look lower down. Next on the list, i.e. what Charles was working on when this was written, but was not yet fully implemented – doodads. Doodads won’t work like in CM. CM doodads were little 2D texture "billboards". That rotated to face the viewer, giving the illusion of depth. That was fine for older machines that couldn't handle more complex modeling at a decent frame rate. The new engine will take the old concept of doodads and replace them with two things. First, in the case of objects that have real volume, like cemetery stones or trees, we'll use actual 3D models. No "fake" representation at all (except maybe at long distance, where you can't tell the difference and drawing a 2D billboard is a lot faster). For things like long grass where an individual blade doesn't really have volume (and therefore a true 3D model isn't appropriate) a totally new algorithm will be implemented."

I read on one of the threads that CMX2 will be at least as good if not better graphically than Wartime Command. Here is an index of pics for WC, they look quite good: WC pics Notice the water in this pic: WC Water Pic Is Battlefront planning to make the water this realistic ?? If so, it will be a nice game graphically !!

Do some Google seaches on "Battle of Caen" and "Pegasus Bridge".

Here are some interesting tutorials on making face graphics. Does not seem overly difficult for a person with graphics experience http://www.perpetualvisions.com/articles-and-graphics/tutorial-dp3d-poser.htm http://markbutler.8m.com/graphics/rotoscope-tutorial.htm Perhaps, making all the human face muscles work is not required for most games, just enough to give a human feel to the graphic. Cordially

Myself personally, if a game with the strategy of CM combined with the graphics quality of Call of Duty would be adequate for me ! Perhaps, better human body movements though. If wargames have a slightly surreal look to them, it adds a bit to the immersion. The anti-aircraft gun firing in the COD first version was an example of some nice dynamic lighting

My belief is that there is a huge push on for better graphics, in the name of film production and gaming ! Instead of paying over priced actor like Tom Cruise to star in a movie, they could utilize the funds to create fabulous backdrops for the movie and their own computer generated actors. Think of the battle scences that could be recreated !! The only limitation would be the imagination of the Director and graphic programmers. It could be GLORIOUS >>>----->

When do you feel photographic quality graphics will come to computer software games ? What power of CPU and GPU would be necessary to generate this level of quality graphics. Cordially