Ithikial_AU

Yeah I've mentioned this one before as it's on my (always growing :D) wishlist. It's the one type of fence/wall that is missing from the game; blocks infantry movement without bloocking LOS and LOF. It's also a biggy more for the modern era titles to help map out built up areas accurately. Not everyone has solid cement walls between properties.

The simple solution (in my head - probably not when it comes to programming it) would be for all instances where troops are in a building on a floor with a balcony they will remain indoors unless the player gives them a "Face" command that is in the direction of a balcony, at which point they will then use the balcony. This type of setup would mean troops would only occupy exposed balconies when the player has actually prescribed an order to do so. Troops that simply spot and start shooting enemies on their own accord will remain inside the building behind hard cover. Perhaps there's an option here for lower quality troops to rush out on balconies to reflect their inexperience?

Africa or early war? Both. Barbarossa: Would flip the game on it's head with the Germans being the ones on the major offensive rather than the usual Allies vs German defenders set up we have now. Not to mention Axis minor nations. Africa: Well I want to see Australian forces eventually. In my mind at least Africa could work well with the family/module system except you'd work back wards through time rather than forwards like we see now with CM2 titles: 1. Base Game - Operation Torch to Tunisia focused. Nov 1942 - May 1943. US, German, Italian forces. (Maybe Vichy French?) I'm also assuming the US forces first policy would be continued. 2. Module - El Alemein. Time-frame extends back to June 1942. Commonwealth Forces to cover the famous battles in Egypt and the Mareth Line. 3. Module - Early war Africa. Time-frame extends back to cover 1940 and 1941 in the desert. Tobruk, Crusader etc. 4. Module - The Balkans, Greece and Crete. Considering the Commonwealth shipped forces from Africa seems like a nice fit. Meh, we can all dream.

This reminded me of a long held but often forgotten wish of mine. One day in the future is it possible to have the scenario selection screen reflect a bit more info up front as you scroll through and filter for the scenario you are after. (Without needing to click on each item to view additional details. Something similar to the old CM1 days. It was just that bit easier to scroll through when deciding what type of battle you wanted to fight based on size, nationality, number of turns etc. And I never knew GOG sold CMBO. Things you learn.

Thanks, hope you enjoy. Call me overly competitive in the wrong areas but it's good to see this one still towards the top of the dload count over at the Scenario Depot even after all this time. Hope the folks who have played through it found it enjoyable or at least got some use out of the master maps for some MP action. You don't get much feedback as a designer...

Many blue moons ago when the whole Upgrade system was announced I mentioned that long term it was going to turn into a bit of a logistical nightmare trying to balance multiple number of game 'families'. At the time there was only two families (I think), now we're heading for six. Has this experience changed BF's thinking around release strategy? For instance bolting on on more modules to CMRT to push that front back to say Kursk, rather than releasing a whole new family for July 1943 - May 1944 eastern front? I'm no programmer so no idea if it would make a difference man hour wise but logistically/project management wise wouldn't there be some gains?

I'd be more interested if this was the 'bigger' sub-bone... What can I say, I'm an Aussie so it's the only way I'm ever going to see some of my mob in the CM2 engine.

Is there any chance that there could be multiple payoffs for BF with doing this TOE hard slog for Rome to Victory? For instance, the work done for US kitted out French forces appearing in this module being the basis for them appearing in CMBN/CMFB via a module/pack?

Great news. Looking forward to playing through the old missions again. There's still one certain scenario from the British campaign... a certain riot/militia attack on a police station that still gives me CM nightmares. God knows how lethal that will be in Engine 4.

Thanks for the update.

Beautiful looking map. Now for a scenario and AI plans.

Just an idea to help out the newbies buying a copy of CM for the first time. Would it be wise to add statement against the item in the store saying only purchase this if you purchased your copy of CM:XX before "Y" date?

There will probably be the odd team that will be added for individual scenarios seperate to the core unit file. I think I've mentioned the bunker issue before on one of the forums or in one of the videos before so that's a good example. However I don't want to get caught up relying on these 'once off units' too much. The player has to feel they are making a difference as they push forward up the hill. Being able to push in and eliminate the Germans from three lines of hedgerows in a single battle, only for the next battle to see those lines manned with fresh forces would just be a slap in the face to the player. If you have a nasty fight that leaves one of your companies severely bloodied but you know the enemy got just the same treatment, you should feel safe in knowing that overall it was probably worth it. (And rotate your forces around for the next engagement- giving time for the weakened company to recover). I don't mind the player winning the campaign (in fact I want them to!). The best result would be once the end of campaign screen comes up they sit back and feel they had a challenge but one that was never felt insumountable and a frustration to continue. Purely my own personal opinion -> Even some of the stock scenarios/campaigns have probably fallen more into the frustration basket. Campaigns where your forces are whittled down to being a shell of their former selves and you simply can't progress during the next scenario. You hit the ceasefire button and see you have a dug in battalion in front of you. Ok a bit of an exageration but the player should never get to that point where the follow on sceanrio they enter is simply unwinnable. That's not fun and this design encourages players to just give up or begin save scumming to play through a campaign.

Two new videos in the blog series. SPOILER ALERT - Talking about my thinking around unit selection, so if you want to one day go into this one blind then suggest not taking a look. Enjoy and hopefully a few ideas around things to think about for others wanting to take the plunge into the editor. The US Army (the player's forces) is up first. And the German Heer.

Sources are mixed on this one by this point. Not exactly a lot of time for record keeping during the Battle of St Lo. However the KG was about 1,800 men spread over two battalions with some support weapons. No armour to speak of. There will be a video blog on it soon.

I'll have to check my maps when I get home but the FJ around St Lo were operating to the east of this action. The Germans in this vicinity were from the 352 ID, which in reality by this stage was a division in name only. The 352 ID was a series of KG's that had been cobbled together from surviving troops from multiple shattered divisions that had been in engaged since June 6th, as well as reinforcements from the divisions rushed over from Britanny to build up the resemblence of a fighting force. The KG holding this strongpoint was actually from the 266 ID. Totalize was more traditional open ground affair wasn't it? Also occuredfew weeks later than when this engagement is set.

Not really but I think the map itself sort of lends itself to being an infantry heavy affair. If you want to try and push a full mechanised force through some dense hedgerows and forests be my guest. The campaign eventually will be heavily infantry based as you command the 2/137IR of the 35 US ID with some minor armour support. Be curious to see a how a Commonwealth force pushes up the hill against some dug in German defenders but that's only a curiosity, obviously not part of the campaign. Thanks benpark. Don't worry I've noticed some over time while fighting over your maps.

So who wants to test out the map? http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tpg2/cm-battle-for-normandy/le-carillon-strongpoint-map-test-h2h-only/ Merry late Easter? I've uploaded a blank copy of the map as well as a rough meeting engagement and allied assault option for any budding H2H players who want to settle some old scores in the hedgerows north of St Lo. Pick you own forces or even your own objectives. I'm really after feedback about how the battle 'flows' so to speak. Where the natural lines of engagement are, the choke-points, strongpoints etc. This will be pretty critical and allow me to design a tougher experience for the campaign. Also finding out little oddities/errors with the map never hurts at this point. Note that some of the custom flavour objects won't show up since they aren't included with the file yet. Many thanks in advance. On to placing units and making the next video diary on unit selection (so spoiler warning from now on).

Sorry late to the party. Modtags affect every texture you see on screen so that includes the UI. It's something that was realised when testing JuJu's UI mod v5 after CMFB's release. As a result there are different unit portraits for when it's winter compared to autumn in that mod. There was some brief talk of going further and having an 'icy' UI for when the the modtag of snow was in use but the amount of work for poor JuJu would have been too much. One thing to keep in mind with using modtags on uniforms is to keep in mind that some users have mutliple variants of the same uniforms to help make the pixeltruppen look unique in any given view. As soon as the number of mod tagged files in a series runs out, it will revert back to the un-modtagged default uniform file if it exists under the original file from Battlefront or if it exists in a mod folder. So for instance if you provide 3 uniform textures that are mod tagged to a scenario but the user has 4 modded uniforms, then the fourth pixeltruppen will still be displayed using relevant un-modtagged texture file. Even if the modtagged textures are duplicates, it's better to provide a few extra in sequence just in case. Also I've yet to test it myself but modtags also work with sound files? I have a sneaky long term idea to finally get some Australians into a CM2 scenario.

Fragments from a ricochet then... meh it was a laugh when it happened.

From the "Combat Mission Meme's" thread over on the FGM forums. Oldie but a goodie.

Good old ricochet. Proof:

I don't know why but I've always had a soft spot for the Panzer III. And a Panther but only when I'm not facing them.

Some additional thoughts that could be done on top of Combatintman's initial idea, (from my own head scratching for my project, so perhaps more for a "Player vs AI" option rather than H2H): - Give the player say 3 attempts to clear each map. In their final attempt he is given a lot of heavy artillery/supprt to help push things along since you won't need to wrry about map damage carrying over in this case. - You could really design this campaign up to make it heavily time influenced. If the player takes longer in early battles by the time of the Map 4 assault the players who have ebeen able to keep to the 'operation schedule' would fight this in say mid-afternoon, while those that have fallen behind taking longer to clear Maps 1, 2 and 3 are forced to go into an urban fight in fading light. - You good do a whole regiment with multiple battatlions with one battaltion on each map. Whatever is left is pushed into Map 4 for the final fight. COmputer should be able to cope since the unit count won't be anywhere near 100% by this stage. Alternatively you could have a 'decision making' scenario before the player commits to Map 4 stating do they want to use their North or South based forces to push into Map 4. You could do this between each engagement on Map 4 actually so the player can pick what forces he thinks are best suited to take on the final assault at that time. Ideas, ideas, ideas...

Part 4 in the video series is up.