Stick

Just an update, this tool can now be found here

http://www.freepgs.com/r_stich/pub/CMAK_option_picker_v2_1.zip I made this 2 years ago, but never really made it "available". It's a small tool that will pick options for a QB pseudo-randomly. (pseudo = only a small chance that "night" will be chosen, etc). It will paste a message with your IP address to your clipboard so that you can paste into a chat. Why not just choose "random" for the options? Well, because it's nice to know the general terrain before choosing units, and not everyone wants to play night battles in heavy forest on a huge map. The intent, for a 2 player challenge, would be this. One player picks a side, then the other player changes one option (ie: light trees to heavy trees, or Axis attack to Allies probe, or '42 to '44, or 500 pts to 1200). I can't remember all the weightings, but, for example, the "points" are chosen on a bell curve, night is uncommon, odds are that both sides will be of the same type, and that the type will be Combined Arms or unlimited. If you use this and enjoy it, I would be happy to hear from you! Stick example: North Africa, December, 1940, Meeting Engagement, Axis Combined Arms versus Allied Combined Arms, 1000 Points, Huge, Rural, Gentle Slopes, Moderate Tree Cover, Medium Damage, Noon, Cold Windy, Fog and Rain: join at 137.244.xxx.xxx

Yes, I realize you can do number 2 already, but it's hardly intuitive, and don't the foxholes, trenches and craters stay? In any case, It would be nice to see, on the end screen, the choices -play again with same units? -play again and switch sides? etc, etc... My generic idea has merit? yeah! I was waiting to be attacked by space lobsters and waffles. (watch the entire movie replay? -I know that's already on the list... please please please)

Well, ok, I didn't read the complete 20 pages of posts in BFC's 5&5 info gathering topic. Also, I realize some of these suggstions may not even make sense in the CMx2 ideology, but still, some little things I thought of that might be easy to add late in the devolopment cycle. An option for simplified unit selection (in random map gen combat, of course). I'm too busy and too stupid to try to figure out all the differences between th 20 types of infantry. Nationalities, divisions, modernness of weapons, etc. How about, for the stupid player, a selection of about 3 simplified types of infantry. The computer then semi-randomly gives us a fitting unit. I know the grognards, and I, on occasion, enjoy the large amount of historically accurate models to choose from, but sometimes it's really to heady. Why not give the choice of "medium tank". Then a unit is chosen for you that makes sense for that location and time period. 1b) Come to think of it, how about a few "standard packages" that can be played on random maps. ie: the unit loadout is scripted, and maybe even the map characteristics, but the map is still generated. 2) A choice at the end of battle to switch sides and play the same map again. And/or to be able to save the generated map, if it was a good one. 3) Command line options for starting the game. For CMAK I developed a small utility to help randomly choose quick battle options (esp for multiplayer). That way you would know, for example, that it was a night battle in heavy woods before making your unit selection. However, there was no way to kick the game off with certain settings. Some command line options, or perhaps an .init file where the options could be read from, would be nice. In fact, number 3 and number 1b could be handled in the same way. Imagine that, for a choice of quick battles, you load a file that says the following: [MAP] Trees: Moderate Hills: Small *the rest is chosen by user at run time, or maybe just randomly filled in. [bATTLE] Type: Axis_Attack Points: 700 Victory: 25_turns [uNITS] AxisUnits: UserChoice AllyUnits: TankX,TankY,CompanyA,CompanyB,Special1 you can imagine the "partially scripted" battles that would ensue. I just think, logistically, this could be simple, at the place where you would gather these options from the user, you have an option instead to load them from file... what do you think, sirs? Stick