ClaytoniousRex

So are we, Colonel! Some of your sneaky infantry tricks would have helped in the Black Canyon game for sure. Hopefully you can make it next weekend!

Yes, and it runs very well there. The demo itself is woefully out of date w.r.t. game features, though. We hope to release an updated version very soon.

Are you kidding? Your team is called BLOOD, after all. We were the "good guys" and today the forces of evil prevailed. God only knows what you guys are doing to innocent locals in that Research Station at this very moment. *Shudder*

Well, Apollo is an archer. The Apollo is designed to scoot quickly to good firing positions and engage at medium to long ranges with its powerful gun, but is no good at close up brawls... like an archer. The God Hermes was known for his cunning and shrewdness and he was the "messenger" for the Olympian Gods, so this moniker stuck with the electronic warfare/jamming vehicle. Maybe that means it is the opposite of a messenger, but it is certainly a cunning tool and its name stuck nonetheless. Not a perfect fit in either case, but FWIW there's the original reasoning.

We would love to have you next time, Jalinth. The server did hit max players at one point this time, but only for a short while.

Should also mention, that one engagement with Jung that was mentioned aboved was definitely atypical. On those occasions where he and I were looking down the sights at one another, he spanked me like a misbehaving Nellie Ollsen on almost all of them. I'll think of some good excuses for that after I have some more coffee, though.

And, sincerely, fun, fun games today, guys. Hats off to everybody who made it!

AAR of the first game is now here.

AAR from the Sunday, Oct. 15 practice match This is the AAR from Water's perspective. Some of you Blood guys might want to lay out how things looked from your end. Unfortunately, my screenshots are all corrupted! :mad: Will get a good set on the next match, though! Game 1: Sea Cliffs Deployment Water was tasked with seizing the research station at the crossroads. Our plan was to standoff and attrit the enemy before advancing on the objective. We wanted to whittle away their forces, especially any heavy units, while not yet using any of ours. The hope was that in the final advance they would be outgunned when we attacked with heavy units. We would seize the objective with MBT's and then deploy defenses in case of a counterattack, though we knew there would probably not be enough time for one. And all of that is almost what happened... We deployed like this: We had two drop zones. The eastern one was an impromptu firebase: a handful of Thor heavy mortars supported by an EWV for point defense in case of counterbattery fire. From here we would pound the objective into rubble and then use this same point as a staging area for the advance. We initially deployed an ATGM launcher here, too, but eventually realized that another mortar tube was a better choice. Sabot3 correctly pointed out that the high ridge to the northwest would threaten our flank when the time to advance came. So he and Poesel setup the western drop zone. They were to land light attack/recon vehicles here and move north and east up onto the ridge in order to secure our advancing force's left flank. This meant two fewer mortars for the firebase which is a painful loss (to punch through enemy point defense you need all the mortars you can get), but in the end it proved that Sabot and Poesel were exactly right to do this (and without them our entire advance would have stalled). The deployment phase ticked to zero... The Wrath of God When the deployment timer hit zero the sky was split by the sonic booms of all of Water’s dropships landing on the two DZ’s simultaneously. Our landing was unopposed and our first glimpse of the field confirmed our hopes: the enemy was deployed pretty conventionally with several units clustered onto the objective itself. This was exactly what we wanted to see. Nexus and I immediately went to work setting up the firebase. Within only a minute or so we had a line of Thor heavy mortars deployed with the EWV tucked safely behind them. The firebase went to work with the constant chug, chug , chug of outgoing rounds toward the objective. Initial results were heartening. The objective was clotted with dust and flying rocks and plumes of dark smoke rising into the air were a testament to our first few kills. It appeared that the enemy had at least deployed one EWV as we could see the airbursts from some of our rounds that weren’t making through. But we had enough tubes firing that this small amount of point defense wasn’t enough to stop us: not only were enemy vehicles on the objective dying in the barrage, but dropships trying to extract them were being torn apart, too. Doubtless the enemy commander at this point was cursing his bots for even trying to extract and quickly issuing orders but we were happy to get what we could while it lasted. This was exactly what we had hoped to see. We maintained good discipline and kept up the fire without advancing toward the objective. Meanwhile, Sabot and Poesel headed up onto the ridge to the west. It wasn’t long before Sabot’s initial assessment was confirmed: the enemy was not only up there but had deployed defenses to meet us there. Sabot and Poesel began their slog up the cliffs, destroying enemy deployables and vehicles as they advanced. Quagmire Unfortunately, the enemy weren’t just competent: they were good. Amidst the initial chaos of our barrage, even as the shells were scoring kills and shaking the ground, they were able to somehow bring up replacement EWV’s into the cauldron, eventually getting at least two of them in place. Within a couple of minutes, they had stopped the bleeding and were very effectively batting away our incoming artillery rounds. Our reaction time to this development was slow; eventually, we brought in a Viper for a dangerous but effective recon of the enemy objective and it confirmed what we by now suspected: the enemy had brought up enough point defense to make our barrage ineffective. Due to the unique nature of the terrain, where we were deployed in low ground on the beaches and they on a high plateau at the station, we had no good way of bringing those EWV’s under direct fire (normally a couple of ion beams would shred them up and the barrage would continue apace, but here that wasn’t an option). At this point, we had successfully caused some of the early attrition that we had wanted and the objective was now manned by at least two EWV’s. This would have been the perfect moment to begin our advance and overwhelm those lighter enemy units on the objective, exactly as we had planned to do. But we delayed, trying instead for another couple of minutes to get some artillery through the net. I believe that this delay was the deciding error of the game. I was in contact with Poesel and Sabot on the ridge, hoping they could angle in from the northwest to take those EWV’s under direct fire. Nexus used a Hurricane to try to angle some artillery in from the southeast of the objective. These were wasted minutes that should have been spent on the advance. Ride of the Valkyries At last we got our butts in gear and began the advance in earnest. Poesel and Sabot were still skirmishing on the ridge as Nexus and I gathered up a force of Thor MBT’s supported by a single Hermes at the original firebase. At last, we were rolling northeast toward the objective: Defenders at the objective were powerless to stop the advance of our heavies at such a long range, but the enemy managed to throw two spinners at us. First, they appeared in an excellent hull down position on the high ridge to the left of our advancing forces: exactly as Sabot had warned that they would. A MBT on that ridge began firing into the soft flanks of our advancing force. Were it not for Sabot’s foresight our advanced would have stalled right here as our only option would have been to stop to turn and face this flanking threat. Thankfully, Sabot was already on the ridge, behind this ambushing enemy unit, and was able to engage him from the rear and blow his turret to pieces in short order. Our advance continued. About halfway to the objective, I noticed a quick movement down on the beach near our advancing force – just a sliver of something moving behind a low ridge, something very close to us. There wasn’t even a moment of doubt about what this could be. I took control of the lead MBT and immediately toggled to the 20mm coaxial gun: Jung was doing one of his notorious frontal Hermes harassments. These are often very effective at causing chaos and breaking up an orderly advance like ours. In this case we were quite ready for him, though, and as soon as he crested the terrain we took him under 20mm and 120mm fire and made short work of him. Our advance of MBT’s continued apace toward the objective. Large caliber rounds whanged and zinged off of our frontal armor as we covered the beaches toward the research station. The defenders had tanks deployed in excellent hull down positions on the objective but just as we had hoped, only one of them was a heavy MBT. The others were Apollos and still some EWV’s remained on guard behind them. By this time Sabot and Poesel had worked their way completely around the enemy. Unable to traverse the massive cliffs, Poesel had come completely around to their eastern flank, helping to draw their fire away from our main advancing force. Mano a Mano With only a few minutes remaining, we finally closed in on the objective. I led a platoon of bots in MBT’s frontally onto the objective as Nexus angled up onto to road to the west of the objective. This deployment was very effective since I was able to keep the enemy pinned to the front while Nexus crept closer for flank shots. Poesel continued harassment from their eastern flank, as well. At last our tanks began to crest the final ridgeline up onto the research station’s plateau. Fighting was now brutal, fast, and close. Smoke, flames, and debris kept even our team mates out of view of each other. Our force was slightly heavier than theirs at this point, outgunning them by just enough to get a foothold and finally push into the objective itself. But time was almost out. We had waited too long to advance. The enemy was on the ropes, fighting tooth and nail for every inch, but the clock was on his side. We were inevitably rolling onto the objective with the unstoppable motion of a glacier, but also with the speed of a glacier. We weren’t going to win. In one final last ditch effort, I ordered all of our bots to drop directly on the objective as there was no time left for them to maneuver from afar. Alas, in the thick smoke of the pile of burning wreckage that was now the objective, I had failed to notice that the enemy had called down a Galaxy. Our reinforcements were slaughtered wholesale as wave after wave of burning dropships crashed all around the objective. I was even sitting on the objective in a MBT within a few hundred meters of the enemy Galaxy, but was unable to kill it fast enough to save our reinforcements. At last time had run out, and Blood won the match. [ October 15, 2006, 03:48 PM: Message edited by: ClaytoniousRex ]

Fantastic games. Will post an AAR shortly... grrr...

Be there in just a minute!

Hold down the clover leaf key while left clicking on a unit to get the orders menu. You can also do this when multiple units are selected.

Almost any time is OK for me, but just to throw something out there: how about 3pm EST? (This way I can nurse a giant Starbucks coffee before the game).

Gents, I'm having a devil of a time rounding up the Dev Team (it's kind of like coordinating bots). I might not be able to get a firm game setup until the next weekend - the 22nd. However, since we're all massing for the 15th anyway, we can definitely still play! But the official Upstarts vs. Devs match is probably going be delayed. Is the 22nd OK for you Upstarts, with a practice game for fun on the 15th?

You can try starting it up in a window so that X won't need to switch modes. Then on the Options tab in DropTeam the pull down list of video modes should only show those that your server actually supports, so you can choose one of those and THEN turn on the fullscreen checkbox again. To make it start in windowed mode, edit DropTeamSettings.dat and change IsFullScreen from 1 to 0.

Oh, heck yes. We live and die by gathering the demands of players - having an organized wish list from the community is like a dream come true for requirements analysis! Toby, those are all things that have been on the short list to get to. There has always been "just one more" fix or important feature ahead of them (you know how that goes) but I completely agree with your assessment of these as the things that would most improve the graphics with the least amount of work.

A great start, Iceman. A dedicated long-range, direct-fire platform that is balanced by vulnerability at short range is a very interesting game design idea that can work out very well! It's also very interesting to see some creativity with the internal components - branching out from the same formula used on other vehicles can add some real variety. Learning to effectively use vehicles like this with truly different properties makes for real fun for all of us. Of course there's some work left to do on the turret and aesthetics. This is the most laborious and time consuming part of any new vehicle but I think you've taken the right approach by getting the gameplay mechanics the way you want them first before worrying too much about the visual details. Those take ages to complete so you want to make sure your design is sound before going the extra mile on them. It's always nice to have a real write-up like that, too! Excellent start, Ice!

Is the new mic set as the default sound recording device in "Sounds and Audio Devices Properties" in Control Panel? At the top of your DropTeam.log it should say which device it is using for audio capture. What does it say?

Caseck, there are some area effect screenshots here.

Go to Start/Programs/Battlefront/DropTeam/Game Updater. This will run the external Updater and get you going. Once you have done this, you won't have to do it in the future. Subsequent updates will happen from within the game itself.

This base has been Nebelwerfed. Pappa make it stop! IT HURTS, PAPA! Very cool, Poesel!

I'm no good at Smack Talk, so a simple "Heck yes!" will have to do. I can only hope sections of code like this are still in there somewhere: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">if (username == "Claytonious") armor = 10000000.0f;</pre>

That is some truly useful information taking shape over there. Very nice walk-through on scenario design! I'm going to take another look at Geomorph and Cinepaint. And Poesel's info is answering a lot of questions - his suffering will pay off greatly for others following in his footsteps.

Wiki .

You need the 1.1 version of the .net framework. You can download and install the 1.1 redistributable package here. Sorry, Toby, no GTK. It's all Dot Net. I plan to try a run at a Mono build pretty soon but if you want to play with it then we're happy to give you the source. Yes, a vehicle editor is on the way, too. But it will be a while.