umlaut
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Posts posted by umlaut
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Hi all.
I think I´ve got the testers I need now.
Cheers
Umlaut
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Welcome aboard/Velkommen til
Rart (koseligt) med lidt flere skandinaver her
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Hi all
I´ve got a scenario almost ready for release, but I´d like to have it tested one more time before doing so.
The scenario is fought on the map of the fictional urban town, Ciembienne. The map is the same as in my scenario "Seizing Ciembienne", but the scenario is very different. In this thread you can find pics of the map:
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=112831
This is a relatively quickly played scenario of 60 minutes (there aren´t that many forces on either side).
So if you´re up for testing this - and you think you´ll be able to finish the game relatively quickly - please send me a PM.
Edit:
Forgot to mention that you need the both the Commonwealth Forces and Market Garden modules to play this one.
Cheers
Umlaut
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Real troops have to pee sometimes right in the middle of battle, no peeing animations = gamey?
Seriously, what do you do when you have to pee right in the middle of a battle?Easy to fix:
A simple, little mod that colours the trousers of the pixeltruppen a few tones darker around the crotch
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Well, that is of course only my contention. But it seems to me that the scenario has been created with the intention that advance towards the objectives should be via the ditches - using them for cover.
But as the game mechanics do not allow useful cover from ditches in this scenario you´re actually more or less advancing across open ground.
Of course I cannot say what the designer´s intentions were, but it seems odd to me to create a map with such an elaborate system of ditches - if they weren´t meant to have any relevance in the game.
And let me stress again: I think that this campaign so far has been very well designed - and I´ve really enjoyed it immensely.
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Thanks for the advice, Harry.
Unfortunately, that doesn´t help me or the other players still struggling to get through a scenario where the ditches are useless for cover.
In my view, The Heuman Lock Bridge is a broken scenario, because the ditches that were supposed to provide cover for the attacker actually provide no cover.
A pity, because it spoils some of the fun of an otherwise a great campaign for me (I´ve simply chosen to surrender this one and move on to the next mission, even though that probably means missing out on some of the scenarios in the campaign.)
I hope BFC will tell us if this is something that is going to be fixed - or if they think everything works just fine?
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It does indeed
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They seem to be quite deep and should give good cover to soldiers but instead seems to be death traps.... Or am I doing something wrong as the pixeltruppen are manning them totally wrong... When I order them to the ditch squares I would expect them to take proper cover in them but now they expose themselves very badly...
And when I order them into the ditch and give them hide command I would expect them to crawl to the deepest bottom of the ditch but no, they just lie in the edges and again expose themselves without any cover...
Bumping this one as I am experiencing the exact same problems - and finding it extremely frustrating. I hope BFC will take time to reply.
Please note which map/scenario is causing particular problems.Playing the Heuman Lock Bridge scenario in the - otherwise - brilliant Road to Nijmegen campaign.
The problems are these:
I split my squads and order them to move into the dithces. But no matter what I do, approximately half of the troops decide that they´d rather enjoy the nice view on the high ground next to the ditches than take cover inside the ditches. And so they get cut down.
I´ve tried all combinations of facing orders that I could think of - but to no avail. The result is the same.
Also, when I order troops to move along a ditch they will move on top of the edges instead of in the ditches.
I don´t get it. What is the point of having all these nice ditches in MG - if the troops aren´t able to use them?
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They will use their small arms for self defense. I also think that if they are out of ammo you can deliberately have them target something with their small arms, but I'm not sure. The reason why I'm not sure is we took a lot of heat for a long time about weapons crews plinking away with their small arms and giving their positions away without doing anything significant to the target. Which is realistic since these are not rifle units so they are not supposed to be engaging targets with small arms.
Steve
I´ve just finished a game in The Road to Nijmegen where I ordered a US 60mm team to fire at a spot about 130 meters away.
As I expected they fired only the mortar (as opposed to before one of the upgrades when they would also had been using their small arms). But I was a bit surprised to see that when they´d expended all their mortar rounds they continued firing - but this time with their carbines.
Is that because of the relatively short range - or a sort of (very minor) bug?
Cheers
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No worries - take your time
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Hi Chris
Sent you a PM a couple of days ago (in case you simply hadn´t noticed).
Cheers
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Then you must translate them back and post them here, Aris
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Lots of interesting titles in this thread.
I´ve just ordered four of them from the Danish State Library´s website. They should be available tomorrow.
Alas, I´ll have to walk almost half a mile through the park to pick them up.
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Flavoured objects...
Many of the flavoured objects have like 6 different versions to choose from (the green squares with numbers in them at the bottom left)
To help identifying exactly what typ of BIN, CRATE, BENCH etc i have selected it would be nice if we could have a small picture off that very item (bin number 5 for example) shown below those green squares to help us get the one we want without having to go to the 3d preview to check it out...
+1 to that. This would save a lot of time in the editor.
My try work around this like so: If I don´t remember which flavor object is which, I place one of each on the map. In preview mode I then remove all the other ones.
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But making the foxhole and trench models look better is possible for sure,they dont have to look that ugly or what ?
I´ve done what I could to make them less visible graphically (this of course has no impact on in game spotting) in this mod (it is supposed to represent camoflage net draped over sandbags):
http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4855/details
But I don´t know if this is what you´re asking for.
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"The ultimate would be a replay feature where you could save and view an entire battle against the AI or H2H on your PC and smartphone."
I dont see how this could be implemented without a lot of complications:
If you were to watch replays in true 3D where you would still be able to view the actions from every desirable angle then you would also need to have some version of the CM engine on your phone.
And if you only wanted to watch 2D replays, how would the game decide which angle to choose out of the infinite number of possible angles?
And lastly: Personally, I would never try watch CM replays on my smartphone - I ve had a hard time enough trying to write this on the thing
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One new terrain detail longtime CM players might be overlooking. Big trees, small trees mediums sized trees.
Well, I had noticed it but wasn´t sure from looking at the screenshots. So I had been meaning to ask if that was a new addition - but forgot again.
This is great news, as this will enable much more realistically looking woods/forests, especially at the edges.
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Hey Umlaut,
the whole thing seems to be like talking to a wall - you will hardly get any reaction from the community. I have made three campaigns (for CMBN, CMSF and CMFI), so I am able to know the effort, one has to put in such work - and 50% of the few comments, I got, have been negative
At the moment, my campaigns all together have been downloaded > 1600 times - result: less than 16 comments - less than 1% of the users...so, following the theory, I have read in the other thread, they must be bad That´s it. I will go on making campaigns and do not care about their statistics
and one day in the future, I may decide to buy the BF Company and to hire a professional team of Scenario/campaign designers Regards
Frank
Hi Frank
I´m in absolute awe of people designing campaigns! When I consider the amount of work there´s in making one scenario, I wouldn´t even dream of making an entire campaign (OK, perhaps I´d dream).
When I read this I tried to find you campaigns by searching the Repository. I didn´t find a single campaign - by you or anyone else. A good example of the usefulness of the search function in the Repository, I´m afraid
Could you please tell which they are?Personally, I think I´ve only finished two CM2 campaigns. I always seem to get stuck somewhere - either because of a mission I can´t get through or because of upgrades that force me to start the campaign all over (I´ve started The Scottish Corridor three times now).
I would really like to have some kind of special campaign forums, where you could discuss the missions in a campaign separately. I´m always nervous about entering a campaign thread because people might discuss a mission I haven´t yet reached.
The ability to discuss campaign missions separately would also make it easier to comment on a campaign - even if you hadn´t finished all of the missions yet.
What do you think?
Cheers
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Right, Mikey, but you see:
When googling these facts and statistics we could never be entirely sure that we´d gotten the correct data. Not every site on the internet is completely truthful and flawless, I am told.
Whereas the info in an ingame encyclopedia would be beyond any doubt - as it would originate from BFC!
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On an interesting but totally unrelated note, I was listening to the music of Ennio Morricone on Last.fm and one of the suggested youtube videos was
The German Infantry Squad In Action: A demonstration of minor Field Tactics
Very strange.
Not so strange, I believe. Google (ie YouTube) keeps track of what videos you´ve been watching earlier - and makes suggestions based on that. Via the IP adress, I think.
YouTube keeps suggesting Curious George videos to me - because that is what my daughter mainly uses this computer for.
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Glad to spark a debate. Hope BFC are reading it too and it leads somewhere.
A few comments:
a good feedback indicator is the number of downloads.First off I think that the amount of downloads in itself shows how well liked a particular scenario is.Sorry, but I really don´t buy that reasoning. There´s no logic in it:
How do you know if you like a scenario before you´ve downloaded it? You don´t.
Unless, of course, other players have rated it or recommended it. But hey: They don´t! That is what this thread is all about.
Here´s a fact: My first scenario, Two Bridges, is the one that has been downloaded most times: 651. It has recieved 3 ratings with an average of 3 stars (out of 5) and 4 comments, all of them rather negative. Of all my scenarios it is the one that has the worst ratings and comments (I´m disregarding Waylaid that had neither), yet it is the one that has been downloaded most times. Where´s the logic?
I also believe that most people will only rate if they are really blown away or disappointed. If they are content they probably won’t rate/come back to leave feedback. That’s just human nature.Well, that might be human nature. But as I have said earlier: It is also human nature to lose interest in continuing an activity if it has no payoff.
If we take a quick look at your threads for Ciembienne you have attracted a lot of praise and feedback in them. So maybe the forum should be used in a greater extent. Showing of pictures of a beautiful map and giving some hints about what the battle is about will have more players exited to try the scenario and gives them a easier way to leave feedback (not to mention that you will get reminded of a scenario when you see posts about it on the forum).I fully agree that the forum should be used to a greater extent to promote scenarios and generate more feedback. That is my main point.
But the funny thing about WIP threads, like the one I made for the Ciembienne map, is that - in my experiece - you get a lot of positive feedback on the map and scenario while you´re working on it (and people are waiting for you to release it) - but next to no feedback after the release.
I played Umlaut's Seizing Ciembienne about a month ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. One thing which stopped me from posting an indepth AAR or too many screenshots was that I didn't want to spoil it for anyone else. Maybe that stops others commenting on scenarios.Happy you like it
Regarding the spoilers, I understand you reluctance to spoil the game for others. Generally, people simply write " ********SPOILERS****** "
- if they want to warn you.
And this reminds me of a suggestion I forgot to mention in my first post: "Special spoiler sections".
On other sites I have seen a sort of "collapsible" text field reserved for spoilers. They are construced so you´ll have to click on them to reveal the spoiler text. Those would be a great feature to have in these threads too.
Unfortunately, I can´t remember where I saw them, so I can´t provide a picture. Does anyone here know where to find examples of those?
EDIT:
Suddenly remembered where I saw the spoiler thingies. At my son´s World of Tanks forums:
Cheers
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I´m starting this thread in the hope of opening a debate about the lack of feedback to scenario designers. This is a debate that has been popping up at intervals in threads with other subjects, but to avoid hijacking these threads I´ve decided to start a separate thread on the subject (Even though my previous scenarios have all been CMBN, I´ll post it in this section, because this is the most active part of the forum and probably where most new scenarios will be published)
I´ll try to outline the problem as I see it, briefly describe the work involved with releasing a scenario, possible reasons for the lack of feedback and possible solutions. I very much hope other scenario designers will chime in with their own views and suggestions.
The problem:
A quite regular occurance on these forums is some CM player complaining that there are too few user made scenarios available. This has some times provoked me to reply along these lines:
Dear complainer, you´ve got no-one but yourself to blame for that: If you can´t be bothered to give the scenario designers feedback on their hard work - then they will stop releasing scenarios to the community.
Judging from comments in other threads it is my clear impression that other scenario designers share my frustration about the lack of community feedback. If I felt I was the only one I wouldn´t bother starting this debate. I´d probably just stop releasing scenarios. Still, I can of course only speak for myself and thus I´ll use myself and my own experiences with scenario design when I try to describe the problems as I see them.
Here´s the situation from my perspective:
I really enjoy creating scenarios. Mainly because I enjoy making maps that look realistic, but also because I like to play a scenario where I get to choose the forces and the scenario´s challenges myself. Sometimes I dream up a situation and then make a map that suits it. Most of the times I make a map and then make a scenario afterwards.
It has often been said in these discussions that "you should only make scenarios to please yourself, not the community". That is of course entirely true – and as you can see, this is what I do myself.
But sometimes I decide I´d like to share one of my scenarios with the CM community. And this is where the trouble starts.
Because there is a crucial difference between making a scenario that is playable for the designer himself and making one that is playable for everyone in the community, ie one that is ready for release.
In my experience the time needed to make a scenario ready for release equals the time used on creating the scenario itself.
Making a scenario ready for release means:
- writing a briefing that is clear and hopefully entertaing to the players. Two briefings, if it is a H2H scenario.
- making a correct list of the forces involved
- making a strategic map BMP
- making a tactical map BMP
- making a preview BMP
- making a operational map BMP
- writing designer´s notes
But the most time consuming aspect above all is playtesting the scenario. This involves activating several volunteer testers, who play the scenario while they send me save files, during action reports (DAR´s), comments and suggestions. Then, when the testers have finished playtesting, I begin altering and tweaking the forces, map, victory points or AI plans based on their experiences and suggestions. After this I usually get one or two new testers to playtest the new version of the scenario to make sure there are no oversights.
All in all this process takes at least one month – usually several - and involves between three and six testers.
You see the difference here? If I just want keep the scenario for myself and enjoy it on my own, I can do that right away. But if I want to share my scenario with you guys in the community, I´ll have to work twice as much on it – for months, literally.
And then, when I release the scenario, the feedback is mainly next to nothing. Here are some numbers from my own four hitherto released CMBN scenarios:
In total 1498 downloads that have recieved a total of 18 ratings or comments.
In other words: 1,2 percent of the users that have downloaded my scenarios have bothered to give me feedback (in reality even less, as the people rating often are he same as those that comment)
This is why I have begun to doubt whether releasing scenarios is really is worth the effort. Why bother when the response from the users is so meagre? I could have used all that time creating an entirely new scenario from scratch – for my own amusement.
I must stress that my reason for bringing this subject up isn´t about simply craving praise for my effort – even though praise is very nice to recieve, no doubt about that.
This is mainly about feedback. If I am to maintain any motivation for going on releasing scenarios, I need to know that they are being used, what the users think of them – and especially how they´ve played out. Nothing makes this designer happier than seeing one of his scenarios described in a thrilling AAR with lots of pics.
So what are the reasons for the lack of feedback - and how do we solve it?.
The reasons
I believe the main reason is structural. The scenario ”archives” do not encourage feedback from the users – more like the opposite.
I have nothing but praise for GreenAsJade´s great site, cmmods.com. Unfortunately, it doesn´t provide the ability to comment on the uploaded content. A pity, but I´d never complain: I´m just really happy that we have such a site for our mods and scenarios.
I believe that it is a major problem that The Repository is almost completely isolated from the Forum. There might be good reason for this, that I am not aware of. But in my view this is the main problem: You can rate and comment briefly on a scenario in the Repository, but if you want to post longer comments, screenshots, AAR´s, debate or ask a question, then you have to go a completely separate site, the Forum.
In my view, this greatly discourages feedback to the designers. These activities should in my opnion be integrated.
What to do?
If we are to establish effective user feedback, I believe we have to make the link between the scenario and a review/rating forum as direct as possible. The longer the distance between scenario and forum, the fewer comments.
One of the solutions I can think of, is to incorporate the Repository interface into the scenario thread in the forum. In this way you´ll be able to find and download the scenario in the same place where the scenario is discussed.
I´ve tried to construct a visualization here:
I also think the Repository generally needs improvement. In my experience the search function is close to useless in the Repository – and not very good in the forum either.
That means that even if you want to go back and rate or comment on a scenario, you might have a hard time actually finding the right file or thread.
Another solution could be this:
Make sure that you get the player´s attention exactly at the moment when he is probably most inclined to comment and/or review a scenario: When he has just finished it.
This is why I suggest giving the scenario designer the option to write a short message in the AAR screen. It could look something like this:
The optimal solution would of course be if this message could contain a link that would take the player directly to the discussion thread in the forum. But I bet BFC can think of a lot of problems with placing such a link.
Ian Leslie has suggested something along these lines too:
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1500231&postcount=40
This was my ”short” view on the feedback problem – and how we might solve it. I have no illusions that these suggestions will solve all problems and make the feedback rise dramatically in one blow. But at least it will remove some of the barriers.
I hope you survived reading through it – and that you´ll post your own views and suggestions here.
End of rant
Cheers
Umlaut
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It is pretty simple - if you know the right button in the editor
- or am I misunderstanding you?
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...there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven't strayed away!
Could you please tell which they are?
When will we have the Grille in Normandy?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Wow. That takes some skill - not to mention patience.