Blackmuzzle

Hmm... I for one do enjoy the realtime mode. I find it sufficiently different from all the other RTS games out there. That is not to say that WeGo should not be possible via TCP of course. However, that would be cool to have as another way of playing, not instead of RT.

But.. but that's not realistic!

That's most likely a driver issue. I dare say that because I remember debugging a crash in the game "Illumina" right into the mipmap generation inside the ATI driver a few years ago, so there's a definite chance for something similar being the case here too. Or maybe, you know, Vista.

I had exactly this A-HA!-type of moment a few weeks ago when a customer explained to me why he won't accept the way an electronic flight-strip was being displayed and moved on the screen. As a computer user I saw no problem. But when a controller showed me how they use it, I saw that they could misinterpret the way the strips were laid out as the runway being free, when in fact there was a plane already lined up! And the sound of one plane humping another isn't too pleasant... It's similar here: It might be just a "convoluted path" to the programmer, but when two Strykers turn into each other instead of just proceeding ahead to the waypoint, it may mean the difference between victory and defeat. If you have this happen 2 times out of 10, the game is essentially unplayable because while nobody enjoys loosing, suffering defeat for no reason is so much more infuriating. EDIT: I support the call for a display of the actual planned path after setting a waypoint. That way, at least the turn-based games are playable because you can see when the path is not to your liking (whether that be a bug or not) I think SupremeCommander has done an excellent job on that (as well as on the entire interface for that matter) for it displays paths as straight lines on open terrain, but detailed path-segments when navigating through a densely-built base. [ July 31, 2007, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ]

DesertFox: You should definitely try the demo and form your own opinion. There's a lot of cool stuff in this program. That is exactly the reason why people are so infuriated about the issues it has, because the game has so much promise and so much going for it.

What do you mean by "gridded terrain"? Do you mean pre-calculated lightmaps or somesuch? AFAIK it should be no problem to calculate the normals of all terrain vertices and just adjust the vertice light value accordingly. Alternatively, if all lighting is done via GLSL and the "primitive" opengl lighting is not used at all, a minor shader modification ought to do the trick. One thing is for certain though: Please don't do lighting the way it is done in BF2. When you have hundreds of megabytes of shadowmaps, then you did not understand the idea of realtime lighting. OpenGL can do a lot of things, and it certainly can look just as pretty as any other API. Does it show that I love OpenGL?

That's some very nice terrain there, Thomm! And yes, I do write games in my spare time. Spent much time on Spoonbot for Tribes, then got DerangedRaid to an almost playable state. Eventually I got a job and had no time left for that hobby. Now I'm doing software related to air traffic control, and let me tell you: Quality problems and/or incompetent programmers? They exist in that field of expertise as well.

@Steve: Thanks for your response and the effort you guys are no doubt spending on finding and fixing bugs. Yes we pay money for the games, but I still want you to know that your efforts are appreciated. Now on to your major statement: Pathfinding bugs and the difficulty to find and fix them. I find myself in the position of being the customer here (contrary to work, where I do software for a living), so at some point I have to say that yes, this is a problem, but it is definitely one for you to solve. Oh yes, pathfinding is easy to implement (A* or Dijkstra and you're done) but hard to do right (you have to resolve situations like conflicting moves of two different units and so forth, which I feel is CMSF's big problem right now) It would help to know under which circumstances units are allowed and supposed to break formation. As for finding out *why* a unit shows a convoluted path in debug mode, well that shouldn't be too difficult really. And given that such problems can be hard to replicate by manual means, I really hope you guys are doing unit tests on the pathfinding to see which parts are improved or worsened by a code change. Finally, let me state that I don't mind a unit not reading my mind when I plot a 2-waypoint-path that goes straight through a dense settlement. However, even when doing that, I expect the unit to take a working path and execute that move. And when I have 5 units selected, I expect them to either select different paths, or going one-by-one on a single path. Difficult to code? You bet. But not at all impossible.

Ah, you mean terrain shading like this: (That's from a game I wrote back in 2000) Yep, I'd like that here too Especially considering that there are 3 cheap and a few more "proper" ways of doing that in OpenGL. I used the cheap way back then and just took the vertex normals and calculated the lighting according to the sun angle. Works fine, even though it doesn't cast shadows of course. It shouldn't interfere with existing stencil shadowing though. [ July 31, 2007, 05:45 AM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ]

*Gah, double post* [ July 30, 2007, 02:25 PM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ]

I just lost two missions in a row, which I have to add happened solely due to the vehicles not staying in formation or haphazardly wandering off somewhere else. In one particularly disturbing instance, I caught one of my Strykers driving into an occupied city center despite my very clear order to advance slow just a few meters ahead. Other times I've seen Strykers "hanging" on the side of a moderately steep hillside, only barely rotating but not moving at all until they've been blown to smithereens. As it is now, I'm certainly not abandoning the game, but I admit these frustrating issues have been detracting a lot from the experience of what is actually a full-priced game. Now before anyone gives me the support-small-business nonsense, I have 5 licenses for SteelBeasts Pro PE. That's quite a lot more than the 50-ish bucks that Battlefront takes for CMSF. Those of you who know SB will probably nod already, but I have to say that there's an immense difference of overall quality and finish between these two products. I really, really hope that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe an upcoming patch will surprise us all and bring us the gameplay-relevant fixes we all crave for. CMSF is worth that effort. As a long-time SB Pro PE player I'm indeed quite frustrated at this. Simple scenarios turn into a massacre because it is virtually impossible to move several units in an orderly fashion, or to make minute position adjustments properly. Another annoying thing is the fact that my units don't seem to prioritize contacts. Quite often a Stryker would keep harassing an MG team on the 3-o-clock while an enemy BMP pummeled him from straight ahead. Unless I give the order to attack that MG team, I'd expect the unit to use a least amount of common sense and return fire where it counts.

My list reads similar: +) Vehicle suspension animations +) Mortars, explosions, smoke +) Tracers bouncing off walls and the ground +) The game speed and sense of scale +) ATGMs +) multi-floor buildings, destructible environments Gripes: -) Pathfinding -) The pathetic AK sound (Can we get a tool for editing brz files please? Also, you gotta listen to how the "Insurgency" mod for HL2 sounds. That's fantastic!) -) Camera control (not intuitive to me) -) Entering buildings is quirky

And yet again, I can't understand how a multiplayer game ships without an integrated server browser. Like, for example, the one at http://hoxdna.org/eech Takes a couple dozen lines of C code for the server, and a few dozen lines of C code in the game to request a server list and/or send updates about the running hosted game to the masterserver. I've added that to EECH in about a day. The hardest part was to get DirectPlay to connect to the goddamn IP

I would be happy if there was a way to TELL (as in, from the shape of the mouse cursor) where to click to get the guys pop in for a spell - or did I miss something and should RTFM again?

I've seen Strykers "do the dance" for no reason in particular on wide open terrain, so I can attest that there's something fishy in the pathfinding - or at the very least in the AI movement command system itself. At the risk of sounding like a smartass, I wrote "Spoonbot" for Tribes so I dare say I know a thing or two about AI and pathfinding What makes this so frustrating is that it doesn't happen on all maps, heck it's a sporadic problem for me that really does kill the fun because the otherwise the game *is* great.

Hmm, don'cha love the combustible shell casing of the Abrams' cannon? (Yeah I know, the bottom plate still remains and is ejected as well) Shame on the russian developers for ejecting the case too soon. The game is ruined for me now

The muzak was ok, but I would've prefered the original sound. Awesome stuff!

Did you order the AI TC to "scan" (Press "3") while in the gunner's position? Similary, while sitting in the Commander's chair and using Dual mode, be sure to issue a "hold fire" command to your gunner. (Press "2") Hope that helps!

I would help you - if I weren't killed by the damned arty everytime... Tell me, how did you kill those SOBs?

No lockups here either. Bad FPS, but no lockups yet.

I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2GHz), 1GB RAM, and a GeForce FX6800 Ultra with 256Meg. Latest drivers and driver settings to "performance" of course. Having all game settings to High results in unplayable 5-20 FPS, mostly depending on the zoom level (high magnifications = slideshow) At medium details I get fair framerates of 40fps max, with the occasional dropdowns to 20fps. Game resolution is 1280x1024. I don't want to sound like an ass, but I'm a game developer and am working on stuff involving high terrain visibility (5km+), realtime lighting and shader 2.0 and for the graphics that T72 delivers, it's performance is less-than-optimal. Especially the increasing fps when zooming in leads me to believe that there are indeed a few oddities in the program that lead to unneccessary slowdowns. I might be mistaken of course. I haven't seen the code so I cannot make much more than educated guesses. As it is now, the game is very enjoyable, if rough around the edges. I can only imagine how things looked like back when you first got to see the original game (I mean the russian version without multiplayer mode) I do not think that buying T72 was a mistake, quite the opposite. I just hope that there will be some patches to improve performance and to fix some of the bugs - and maybe even get internet play working. Everything else (internal views, more vehicles and weapons) is beyond the scope of a patch and best done in a sequel, which I certainly hope will happen one day [ July 25, 2005, 01:19 PM: Message edited by: Blackmuzzle ]

I agree with you on pretty much every point. The separated menu program reminds me of BF42's "after-map-restart". My system is quite capable of running games like BF2, VBS1 and LOMAC with the highest possible graphics settings, AAx4 and anisotropic filtering set to max. T72 has to be at medium settings for decent framerates. Sometimes I suspect someone accidentally released a debug instead of a release build... Alas, I have to say that T72, despite it's shortcomings, IMHO is still the best tank sim you can buy to date. Maybe SteelBeasts2 will take the throne when it finally comes out, but until then I rather live with T72's shortcomings than having to play M1TP2 over and over again

My order no. 130913 was placed on the 10th of July and I'm still waiting. I'm not sure whether it's BF.com being swamped with orders, the austrian post office's inherent slowness, or just my lack of patience

Well I use Daemon Tools to be able to start my games without carrying the CDs around. There was a time when certain copy protections did not allow the game to run if they just found daemon tools among the active processes. It's that kind of behaviour that I don't like. Almost all new multiplayer games have serial numbers that are checked on-line, so there's no need for things like Starforce. Take a look at Joint Operations, it doesn't bother checking for a CD either. I wish all games worked like that. Incidentally, I also wish it would be possible for games to run in a LAN without a CD key, making it possible to infect other players on LAN-parties. That's a great marketing vehicle, and too many companies insist on "reaching that market" by force. Oh and AFAIK Starforce has been cracked. I've seen NoCDs for SilentHunter3, Trackmania Sunrise and others, which AFAIK use Starforce. It did take them quite some time though.

Oh, alrighty. Well, there's no play-by-wire in the T72 anyway