dan/california

Yes!

That is two votes for him, should we start a separate thread for the poll? And we will give him a year to adjust to the idea of the jar. :cool:

The most needed tool by far is some trigger besides time in the AI planning menu. Some things as basic as "when the first enemy unit/AFV reaches zone X, implement maneuver Y". [ September 30, 2007, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

Steve, meet Charles's new assistant. In our generosity the community will give him one week to quit whatever he is doing and move into Charles's basement and or doghouse like a good apprentice. I recommend a six month trial before his brain is decanted into a jar.

So call Bangalore and hire one.

Could I propose the rather simple idea of extending a units LOS check to the surrounding action points if and only if it is an infantry unit using the hunt command, and maybe something to represent the highest state of alertness in a fixed position, and not otherwise engaged, suppressed or exhausted. This would seriously limit the number of units the extra LOS checks that had to be run for and also simulate the benefits of moving very deliberately in bandit country. If Charles can detect a corner reliably all the better but I think the idea would help either way. And it could be ridiculously difficult to explain the concept of "corner" in C++, jsut a guess on my part. You put the code in 1.05 and follow up with the animations later. [ September 29, 2007, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

The real key would be for the unit stopped at the corner to get the ability to look around it, even if their action spot did not normally allow this. The ability to, at least mostly, look before you leap is the primary issue here. I am pretty sure that is SOP in the sandbox. In fact various robotic means of doing seem to be ever more popular, but that is another thread. If the same look before you leap idea could be applied to the crest of a hill that would be even better. :cool:

Given how many of these problems are driven by building corners, would the best short too medium term fix be to create a specific "corner" animation and maybe even a command to go with it. That could abstract if not simulate having the sense to poke your head or even a mirror around the corner before jumping into the street?

if i am interpreting the lat few post correctly Cpl Steiner and Knac have been kind enough to prove me at least basically correct, or maybe i was already reiterating something that they had already figured out. but regardless.... The single biggest problem is that the game is computing incoming fire to squad members that do not have outgoing LOS because the rest of there squad, and there fore their action spot for LOS purposes, is on a trailing action spot relative to their direction of movement. That is a BIG problem. I think it is a fixable one, and it should not break the frame rate too badly. I would personally rather play a smaller scenario with this fixed than a larger one with it still broken. Can Battlefront give a yes,no, or maybe to the conclusions in this thread.

Somewhere, in some thread that i don't have time to find Cpl Steiner had the basis of a workable Idea. If the computer can just keep track of all the action spots a squad is spread over and give it LOS based on that almost all of the problems go away. Then instead of the entire squad advancing into the action spot on the far side of the street before realizing that it is in the field of fire of a heavy machine gun, just in time to die messily, the first squad member into that action spot could tell everyone else to stop, or duck or do something other that the current march out there and die approach. If the engine can keep track of enough stuff to allow that first guy to get shot at great, if it can't it would still play about a thousand times better. It is squad members on multiple action spots which can be targeted, while there own response is tied to their action spot, which can't shoot back or even spot what is happening that is queering the whole deal. The ugly details on the performance hit to address this I leave Charles's immortal brilliance, but IF I understand the engine correctly most of the data to make this change is already there.

Yes, but only ten percent of the possible market has such a machine at any given time, at the most. There just wouldn't be enough customers to go around if it took a brand new quad core with dual 512MB video cards to run the game. Of course if someone wants to donate me a rig like that I will happily volunteer to beta test.

The guys getting shot at don't much care what the toy cost. They just want to see the bad guy go boom right now. I think there is strong need for a simpler version of the javelin for non armored, less dangerous targets. Maybe laser guided instead of the brilliant but expensive self-guided homing set- up. The viewfinder is an excellent piece of equipment and tacking a laser on it can't be all that hard. Then you carry the same number of anti armor missiles you are carrying now but whole truckloads of the cheaper ones. It would make sniping a much less healthy occupation. I also think they would have been far better of to go with a lighter, or at least lower velocity gun for the MGS. I would cheerfully trade a lot more rounds for a little less lethality. They can't go head to head with anything dangerous anyway. I know, I've tried it in the game many times.

From the Total War forum I repeat, 3D 1 to 1 is hard. This from a truly large scale developer a YEAR after release, in which they have managed three whole patches. This leads me to three conclusions. 1) Charles's programming abilities must be godlike for him to have done so much good work more or less by himself. 2) At least Battlefront is trying for gods sake, two patches and another one soon is quite good by industry standards. I am still quite happy I pre-ordered. 3) Charles needs to be in charge of a room filled with other nutrient jars. I understand the brains to put in the nutrient jars can be procured at reasonable rates in various former eastern block countries. Like the gentlemen who made the T72 game for instance.

I would have to completely disagree with that statement. It has/had a lot of the same issues and for many of the same reasons. trying to go to a 3d, coordinated, individual representation made pathfinding and unit coordination absolutely awful for at least two patches. Don't even get me started on the shield bug. Sieges were a bloody joke. :mad: Those two lousy patches took months by the way. 3D one to one is just a tricky thing to do. I think Battlefront will get it straitened out eventually. I am enjoying it in the meantime, with occasional moments of frustration.

The easy way to fix area fire is just to have automatic weapons move their aim point a round a little. maybe back and forth across the entire tile or between three action spots. That is why its called area fire after all. There is something in a thread around here somewhere about the squad regrouping thing being very deep in the engine. In the short term I will happily settle for some idea of which side of the building that they are going to try and enter before I actually give the order.

They signed a contract that they probably shouldn't have. I would bet a great deal of money they know that now. They may not have realized how much time they needed, they may have just HAD to have a cash infusion. Either way, if they get it all patched up and running right, and there is every indication that they will. I am OK with it. Total War II was disaster on release too and they took MONTHS to get a first patch out. Battlefront has had two in six weeks and the third is close. That ain't bad

But would or could you by the computer to run it any time in the next ten years.

It seems to me that a least from a game-play perspective a lot of the abstractions involved with the terrain at higher view levels would be far more tolerable if they engine would just draw elevation lines, and maybe give some kind of graphical indication of the total amount of cover available in a given 8*8 tile. Or maybe the current target arc tool, which already has some LOS functionality, could adapted to show the available LOS as you moved the cursor around the map. I just want some idea if the movement order I am giving is going to get my guys hosed or not. Hosed by heavy machine guns that is.

I really want a fire once command for AFVs and anti tank teams. In most cases the next order would be RUN FOR YOUR LIVES. More seriously it would be great to be able to tell a tank to reverse of of a berm after taking a shot.

We elected Bush, twice. This is absolute proof that a great many people can be be both wrong and pigheaded about staying wrong. :mad:

Someone deserves not to get their patch until Monday.

This statement can only be answered adequately in a thread with "Peng" in the title.

I am starting to work with an excellent program called Mathematica to do presentations for teaching and I and remembering all over again the joys of the misplaced comma. One wrong one turns a beautiful graphic that takes a hundred lines of high level code to generate into mush. I am getting much better at saving before EVERY SINGLE RUN of anything new. Given that CMSF is about a 100000 lines of code, just guessing. I am sure that it is all of the wrong kinds of "fun" to chase this stuff down. Have you ever considered hiring Charles a helper or two, or maybe a whole room full of them in some eastern block country maybe. I would hate for BFC to disappear just because something happened to his jar. And I know it is a lot harder than it sounds to actually do, but still.

Two articles about this very subject. The first is a NYT editorial by seven NCOs in the 82nd, one of which has been badly wounded since it was written. The second is sort of about the first but you don't need a subscription to read it, which the NYT requires. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all http://www.slate.com/id/2172636/

Excalibur, GMLRS ,and UAVs would certainly perk my credit card right up.