J Ruddy

Yeah, Mike is old, mean and grumpy. But once you get to know him, he is old, mean and grumpy. He does rock us with some good natured humor now and then but usually he is just old, mean and grumpy. I think he kind of looks like that guy on the Scooter Store advertisement that is in his garage and looks like he is about to biff one of his grandsons upside the head when they shut off the camera. </font>

I think all the posters that think this is a good idea included a 'neat but not a must have' qualifier. Look I can put a rolling eyes smilies in my posts too...

Holy crap - yer a frikking genius! erm... I agree with this excellent alternative whole heartedly, but only so long as it doesn't take up so many CPU cycles that it bogs down movement plotting. For example, if I'm giving an order for 10 infantry sections to advance (I select all 10 units and tell them to move) I would hope that when I placed the move to location, I wouldn't need to wait more than 100 ms for calculations to happen and control to return. By the way, for those that care, I'm not wearing any pants. My wife told me to take em off, so I did. Unfortunately what I didn't realise at first it that its laundry night at the Ruddy house...

Shut up now please your words hurt my brain I've counted to 59 in primes and its going to leave a stain See, One Two Three Five are easy and fine but 7/11s were no place to dine 13 to 31 tasted kind of like coke 37 to 59 damn near gave me a stroke this poem is cess-art and it isn't a fib the only thing prime worth eating is rib (am I a fecking poet or wat?)

I can't tell if you trying to say that my idea for collision detection is a bad idea or give me a lesson on tactics. Because if it is the latter, send me a balanced for human play CMBB/CMAK urban setting PBEM and we'll see what happens... :cool:

Of course if the unit was familiar with the location or had a decent map, the order would simply be advance up main street to 2nd avenue, cut across the 2nd Avenue plaza and cross to the front of the Bank on King Street. This isn't complicated and I don't see a need to any fuzzyness - even if they've never been there before, it'd be pretty obvious which building is the bank (for example) [Edit - an added delay due to no LOS on one or more waypoints is fine, but unless they're under fire or really stupid I wouldn't expect a unit to move to the wrong location in CMX2]

Another thing that complicates this is the familiarity factor. If a unit has been posted to a small town for more than a couple of days, some units may get to know the town better than others. In fact they may or may not have indigenous forces who are intimate with the area assisting them. Also, even if it is historical, good maps may be available to some or all of the platoons or not available at all - who knows? I think an updated version of the CMX1 system is probably best solution and if I understand Steve correctly this is what we are getting, like it or not.

We all know the scene in Kelly's Heroes where the Tiger can't traverse its turret to engage Donald Sutherland's Sherman (which handily nails the Tiger with what is essentially a 75 mm paintball) I haven't seen this problem in CMX1. I assume that in certain terrain (light woods) it may be abstracted into slower turret slew rates, but I'm not 100% sure on that one. In CMX2 I have the impression that we're going to have much more detail and smaller map grids. I'm hoping that narrow lanes are possible and I wonder if we're going to see tank guns slewing through buildings - kind of like the way you can get overlap when you put your tank beside a building and rotate it in CMX1 - or if there will be better collision detection and (for long barrelled tanks) the inability to rotate the turret in the desired direction if there is an obstruction? This is not a big deal, just a nice to have. Another thread made me curious as to whether this is in the scope of CMX2 or not?

I'm sitting here wondering if I should cut back on shots o' the gold, and pints o' the black but I need liquid help, my sorrows to drown 'cause my wife's little frien', again is in town So I sit in my box, pretending to work The glow of flourescants makes me want to flerk 'cause my head its a pounding and my gut's feeling green and I'd kill Billy Bishop for a decent cup-o-tea should I cut back on the drink, or am I better off dead? This is my Question for the scum of Pengthread.

I tried it a while ago and didn't like it - maybe I'll try it again someday but I doubt it (Steve - can you guys do a Rome and Carthage game please?) In combat mission's wego system, there are two distinct phases - an orders phase and an action phase. (ok three if you include the deployment phase) Personally I'd rather keep the God camera in the action phase because I like to watch from the point of view of the enemy troops (at least the one's that are in Borg LOS) and replay portions to see 'how the heck did he see my T34 - ah - right there - crap!' etc... If they want to lock down the camera movement and panning during the orders phase, I guess that would be OK - but if there is a hill, and I want a few units to skirt around the hill and assault from the back side, I'd really like to be able to see the back side of the hill before placing my waypoints.

Really? I thought all cars blew up when they drove off of a cliff, and a helicopter that crashes always crashes 'behind the hill' and also creates a 200' fireball and of course vehicles somersault when a fragmentation grenade explodes under them. {I need to start including [sarcasm] tags in my posts so you guys know when I'm joking and when I actually have a genuine hair brained idea... }

:eek: HOLY FARKING COW those are the best game graphics I've ever seen!!!! :eek: </font>

SpitfireXI I'm with Sergiy 100% If I'm trying to fight AT Bunkers at standoff distance, I smoke 'em and poke 'em I'll blind the bunker(s) with smoke, get as much firepower into position as I can and when the smoke clears let them have it with everything I've got. AT Bunkers usually are by far the most immediate threat to armour on the battlefield and if they're in a good (bad for you) position, they need priority attention. If the battlefield is small enough I will smoke em and flank em, but then I'm not engaging at range - and that was your question.

I can already hear the grogs now.. "Because the Stug III was slewing to the left when it was hit in the right track, the track should have peeled of in a completely different way than shown in the animation!" I do agree though, it would be nice to have a few more options for knocked out tanks & vehicles. For example, if I hit in front of a Jeep with a 150mm inf gun, I want to see it backflip..!

Don't feel too bad, niether has Tom Clancy.

Hey Barrold, you won! Unfortunately I ate the hotdog so you're going to have to wait 12 hours to claim your prize, ok?

Thanks Steve - I'll shut up about this now. (Dang, I'm starting to get that deep routed longing for a screenie again...)

I'm thinking of two words. Whomever can guess what they are wins a free hotdog.

Maybe we need to form the SLF - Screenshot Liberation Front?

Just so you know where my worries and assumptions are coming from - I saw CMBO at a gaming convention (you know the kind of place where men are odiferous and women are nervous) and I didn't run out (log on) and buy it because the graphics were pretty far behind what was considered average at the time and I couldn't get past the graphics to give the game a chance. I did buy CMBB and CMAK, although the graphics were still a bit weak compared to some of the games coming from the big name studios. I understand there are CPU & GPU limitations to take into consideration and so on and I was a happy camper when CMBB ran on my 2nd machine's on board (shudder) shared memory video card. I know at the time CMBO came out, the Graphics and Game engines that were publicly available were crappy and expensive. However, I have played with a number of demo versions of professional engines in my own experiments and man some of them are pretty sweet. RTS or WEGO - it's all moving a lot of pixels, the big difference that I can see is that WEGO has an advantage when it comes to processing power - all the moves are precalculated, so you aren't hogging up CPU cycles during graphical processing. But the thing that I may be out to lunch on is that if you're using DX3D or OpenGL 3D functions, most of the graphical processing takes place on the GPU on the video card, not the CPU...? So in fact the number of polygons in a RTS graphics system, like with the TOTAL WAR games, is limited not by how much spare processing power you have, but by the graphics card's processing power? So my question is why would RTS allow for significantly less detailed models than a WEGO system? I don't know why I'm getting defensive here - it is a very good thing to have total control of the Graphics engine, if for no other reason then to have the code 'in house' for fixes and enhancements...! I just hope it is scalable to take advantage of graphics hardware advances so that you won't have to write a new engine yet again in 2008. I also hope it is as good as I imagine it is going to be.

I've been told you have to watch out for the SS clock makers, apparently they have ways of making you toc!

I thought of the individual light sources on my drive home. Dang! I wish I would've posted it & sounded intelligent for a change...! As for the engine - I am dumbfounded. You guys are nuts (in a good way) & I bow in your general direction. I buy into #1 and #4 and by way of #4, #3. As for #2 optimizations - I am not so sure - polygons are polygons - but frankly, I don't give a damn because you guys (as usual) are doing the *right* thing - not the *thing other people do* you are good enough, smart enough and Doggone it, people like you... big smile here - I'm going to sleep tonight with visions of paraflares dancing in my head...

Huh? The first release is Finland 1939, so you wouldn't need star maps of both hemispheres. And even if you did, you use seperate bitmaps. No? </font>

Huh? The first release is Finland 1939, so you wouldn't need star maps of both hemispheres. And even if you did, you use seperate bitmaps. No? </font>

The moon location and cycles would need to be correct and in theory the planets' positions could be modelled. (Model in telescopic sights and I could trash my copy of Starry Night!) As for the Graphics engine - no doubt it is better to have the entire engine produced in house as you would have total control over engine bug fixes etc... I am running on a huge assumption that Charles isn't a masochist. My understanding is that there are very good graphics engines available that are pay per unit shipped that can handle many hundreds of individual 3d entities. The game code is seperate to the visual representation of the action which is handled by the graphics engine. Personally, I hope I am wrong because (as I understand it) Charles is a damned good programmer and I know he could create a kick-ass 3d engine if he put his mind to it.