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CptWasp

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    Events log... please BF!

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Steve

    Only a comment: sometimes customer needs evolve and change. A given feature could be secondary when a game has still bugs, and can be very reasonable when the game is mature. I'm here since... I don't remember but now I have 2 childs and before no one :) I have seen the event log request already, but I requested it again (as stated in my first post) because it's the only thing I would add to this game today.

    Thank you for the kind response.

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    Events log... please BF!

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Our time would be MUCH better spent on things like adding a viable Pause feature to RT play, don't you think? See... it all comes down to choices. And customers don't like choices so we get surprise like this...

    It would be great.

    99% of the time a good game developer is much better at figuring out what should be in the game, and how it should be implemented, than the customers. OK, that's not really fair. Maybe 98.5% of the time :D

    My professional experience is the opposite :)

    Often the customer doesn't know exactly what he wants; but when some mechanic or feature is clearly requested by more than one player/customer, it's often an interesting one.

    Very often the devs and architects like me and you have their own idea of the software/component, a "mental project", and this hides the real needs of the customers (or of a part of them, obviously, I understand that an event log can't interest players not using RT). When at work someone is requesting a feature not in my mental project I find it a trouble, by instinct; but very often it's what the customer is expecting from me.

    I certainly do :D Customers like to think of their ideas in a vacuum. If we spent our time making the $20 feature for a log, which maybe 100 people would purchase (a different point to consider), then we didn't spend that time putting in moveable waypoints. And if 100 people would be willing to pay $50 for that, well... then obviously we should put our time towards those. But what happens when one person is willing to pay $10,000 to have obscure Italian TO&E put into the game? Should we do that instead?

    Our time is not open to a bidding war, though the idea is actually kinda fun to think about :)

    Sorry, it was only an example to give an idea of the relevance of the feature for me. What I want to say is that for me another module with some other tanks is secondary to an engine feature like this.

    Yup, and that's my point exactly. Customers have a tendency to look at their ideas as fool proof and/or solidly useful. Even professional game designers think this way. The difference is game designers are immediately confronted with having to make the transition from idea to implemented feature. In that transition a professional game designer, a successful one at least, has to kick the Hell out of the original idea to make sure it will work as intended. A customer, on the other hand, doesn't usually do this. He instead imagines a fuzzy vision of nirvana and that's about it.

    I think that before taking a clear position against an idea it would be interesting to see how many players are interested... then, if the number of interested persons is marginal, it can be rejected with a simple "we will evaluate it". There is no need of censuring it. I think that an event log is not a fuzzy vision of Nirvana. It's a very common thing, and a lot of real time simulations have it. Close Combat (and I think it has less need of it than CMSF, because the map is smaller and easily scrollable); the awesome Panther Games series (HTTR, COTA, BftB); if I remember well Operation Flashpoint; IL-2...

    Then, you are the boss, so you are right ;)

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    Events log... please BF!

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Same here. It's a concept that works on paper a lot better than it does in reality. And since it would have to come at the expense of other features which have more solid footing, we've got no plans on adding an event log.

    Event logs work better when there is less going on and the important stuff happens less frequently. That's not Combat Mission :D

    Which gets at the ultimate irony of an event log feature.

    People want want an event log because they feel there's too much going on in a game to keep track of easily through regular gameplay. But distilling all that information into text results in a ton of text scrolling by the player, which is not easy to interpret because it's divorced from the 3D gameplay area. Which means the player now has even MORE information to overwhelm him and that additional information is not necessarily easier to handle than the regular game stuff. As a result the player winds up tuning the text out and misses the same things he misses in the 3D environment for the same reason. Hence the irony ;)

    Steve

    Hi Steve,

    I think that it's very difficult to keep track in real time of a battalion, and not very realistic without some sort of an event log.

    But it's more than that: it's tedious to search a big map for the unit under fire. In multiplayer it's even impossible, since you can't stop playing. Can you agree on this point? Many of us are playing only RT, and I love multiplayer.

    I'm a little surprised about your stand (a very early one). Some posters in this thread are big supporters of your games, and I own all expansions. As a professional software architect I think that a request coming from some veteran players-customers COULD be more relevant of what the developers and the publisher think about their program. It depends from how many are requesting a given feature.

    An example?

    I requested printer-friendly manuals, long time ago. Other players requested them. If I remember well BF was against them, but now we have printer friendly manuals (thank you very much for them, it's great).

    This is because a game is, after all, made to be played by the customers, and not by the developers. I'm wrong? Maybe my idea is bad, but I'm sure that a lot of players are sharing my request.

    I would be glad to pay 20$ for this feature, only to give you an idea of the relevance of it for me. For me it would make the game much better.

    Then... I will support your games even without this feature :)

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    Events log... please BF!

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Honestly, I have yet to play any game where I made us of such a feature. I generally know what is going on. I certainly don't miss the significant occurrences, and for tracking minor occurrences such a log is next to useless due to information overload.

    Such a log is probably distracting a player from what's going on more then it informs him. Watch the action, not the log.

    A firm NAY from me regarding this feature. Programming time can be better allocated on other features, imho.

    I think we all watch the action; simply I dislike searching for the involved unit, and clicking on a log is way better. You instantly jump there. Do you know Close Combat? The log works perfectly. It's VERY usefull.

    And if you can remove the log with a shortcut you would be safe from distractions.

    Another point: I think that after 3 expansions BF should think more to minor engine improvements that could be re-used for Normandy than to other units.

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    Events log... please BF!

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    I know, this has been discussed already time ago. But today I was playing again CMSF after a long break (Nvidia lighting issue) and I was thinking "this is the only thing I would add to the game engine".

    You are playing in a large map (there are lot of them). Or you are closing on some units. You hear an explosion, a vehicle has been hit. But what? where?

    Situational awareness, will say someone. Ok, but in reality after some time I would have some status/report message, some info...

    I think that an event log would add a lot to this engine. Similar to the one of the Close Combat series: stating relevant events with different colours. Completed movement orders in green; enemy spotted in yellow; damage taken in orange; kills taken in red.

    And the best would be if clicking on a message you could centre the map on the relevant spot... it would be fantastic.

    Then, if you think this would make things simpler, I have another idea: let messages appear in the message log with some delay, or better, with a delay depending on the C&C status of involved units! This would be very realistic.

    Keep up the good work BF.

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    Latest Driver from Nvidia

    in Combat Mission: Shock Force Tech Support

    Posted

    I think that the lighting effect is useful only marginally for lighting purposes, it's cosmetic, so I can live well without the flashing even for night battles. Using the gamma control you can make it appear as evening.

    PLEASE BATTLEFRONT REMOVE (optionally) THIS FLASHING HORROR, I give up the lights! I can't play night scenarios at all, now, so it would be a lot better IMHO...

    I NEED CMSF :D

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    Latest Driver from Nvidia

    in Combat Mission: Shock Force Tech Support

    Posted

    Dear Battlefront, thank you for being present in this discussion, we just need to know that you are aware of our problems with those NVidia drivers.

    I work in the software development sector, so I understand your position; but this problem will become greater and greater for you. New players will use recent NVidia cards, and all will have the problem. You really need a solution, even a temporary one.

    I see that a solution from NVidia is not near. Can you think to a temporary workaround for us? A flag disabling all the reflected lights, would it be possible? We would see the flash of the weapons but not the reflected light on the walls. Better than now, for sure.

    Good luck for Normandy Battlefront... I still hope you will migrate the engine to DirectX :D:P

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    BF.C; status on OpenGL support from Nvidia?

    in Combat Mission: Shock Force Tech Support

    Posted

    I need 197.13 at least to play Empire Total War, so I'm stuck with CMSF. I'm very biased about this problem.

    It seems after some technical reading that using mixed OpenGL / GDI rendering is deprecated and not supported in Vista (and in 7 too I think).

    So: does CMSF use mixed OpenGL / GDI rendering? Can we have a clear response, BF?

    If the answer is yes, we can affirm that CMSF is not fully Vista compatible. It's not a driver issue, it's how it has been programmed.

    I'm a big Battlefront fan, and a big CMSF supporter: but if Normandy doesn't fix this problem I will not buy it.

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    BF.C; status on OpenGL support from Nvidia?

    in Combat Mission: Shock Force Tech Support

    Posted

    "...

    The following are known compatibility issues for OpenGL applications developed under Windows XP:

    Mixed GDI and OpenGL rendering does not work.

    A number of applications use GDI to render UI components and object highlighting. This is not supported in the Windows Vista driver model.

    Nvidia recommends converting GDI rendering to OpenGL.

    ..."

    Not sure if this causes the problem or not.

    MMmmmm Battlefront, they are giving back the problem to you I fear :)

    Are you using GDI rendering?

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