BletchleyGeek

I think that discussing Veitikka's excellent game is better served on the General Discussion forums. We had a thread for the game already.

Funny thing is that with your message I just discovered that email threads in Gmail can only be made of up to 100 messages.

Issuing an indefinite pause when you see the spotting rounds helps to keep control. In some other cases, you actually want them to run for cover autonomously. For instance, while on the advance and during the 1 minute, hands off simulation, when you cannot provide any input. But the AI doesn't know how to handle that input, and some campaigns and scenarios relied (IMO) on the defender fighting like cornered rats for every foxhole in order to be challenging.

Not a "lot worse" for me, but it is noticeable. Also, I am not convinced that the apocalyptic scenario you paint "modern computers won't be able to play CM in a year or two" has a high likelihood. It is within the realm of the possible (and a given on MacOS X systems), but I refrain from taking the worst case scenario for granted.

That's an incomplete answer @Schrullenhaft: the situation isn't static.Things have been changing over the past two years. I do have a i7-4400k + GTX 1080 system (not designed to run CM but to do work, mind you) and I have appreciated a steady and slight deterioration of performance over the past year and a half. So what changed so the envelope of optimal performance contracted? There may be two causes for that imo. First, the patches to "fix" the Specter (and his colleague whose name can't recall) chipset bug, which had a "slight" performance hit. We seem to have forgot about that, yet those patches easily laminated a good 10% off performance on most operations, and more on I/O bound operations (which include also the CPU sending data to the GPU). I think I remember it hit harder older chipsets like the i5. Second, NVIDIA has been obviously been reworking their drivers to drop support for "legacy" cards (older GeForce mainly) and gearing up for the incoming RTX extravaganza. That has probably changed the assumptions on which the shadowing, LOD and scene culling algorithms in the engine were resting on. I wish Phil was still around. Perhaps he would have been able to keep up on top of this and update/refactor shaders and the shadowing heuristics, trying to keep ahead of the curve.

All your Steams belong to me

The actual name of the class is NP-complete. And pathfinding is a polynomial time problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm?wprov=sfla1 But quadratic is usually too much anyways. I am sure that the TacAI is using some kind of informed search algorithm improving significantly in most cases over Dijkstra. Probably @RockinHarry is the one with the guess closer to the mark.

My understanding of Steve's posts is that the current website is a customised instance of a generic template provided by the same company that provides them with payment and fulfilment services. At several levels, it is pretty much the same that having a page about your game on Steam's site. What they "miss out" is the visibility and discovery services provided by the main Steam site. And also Steamworks, which provides many services that simplify enormously some "logistical" aspects which can be quite hard to solve (like matchmaking) as well as more or less intrusive mechanisms to figure out what do players actually do in your games (from passive stuff like achievement stats to more active, greyish allegedly anonymised user data collection).

Aaaand I need to remember to follow up on this!

Thanks very much for the AAR Bil, I always find them very didactic and illustrative. Looking forward to the next one.

These forums are an extension of your business - or so I consider them - and indeed, you set the rules here for what is civilised discussion and what's not. Youwere underpromising weren't you? Nothing of value costs nothing. Of course, there as many possible appraisals of value of a thing as possible punters interested in buying it Have a good weekend, Steve.

Before unfollowing this thread, so I don't get these back and forths into my inbox, let me quote this bit I found on the top news item in the website The obvious question out there is "when will CMSF2 ship?" We're aiming for no later than the end of September. However, we'll soon release a demo with 4 battles and a training mission. That should help keep you occupied for a while. "No later than end of September" it's pretty clear to me and English isn't my first language. And it is announcing that peeps will be getting a demo before launch too. How hard was to point out this to Aragorn guys? Some in the industry don't do it, just like you - the Ukranian fellows in Kharkov for instance, some do it very well imo - Jason Williams at 777, and others do it very badly - like the Star Citizen guys who were showing their experiments on procedurally animated fried eggs meant to be a decorative prop in an in-game canteen

Because if you underpromise it will be hard to be elected...

Underpromising and overdelivering is what works best in my experience, in most life endeavours but politics.

Well, these are battle mishaps @Bil Hardenberger, demoralising, but not breaking the bank, do they? In any case, this battle was just a probe. Once you establish the strength of the opposition you can come back with more stuff and artillery support...

That actually made me laugh.

That's dangerous territory, friend. Make clear somewhere that uncon footwear are 100% legit fakes made in Malaysia. Very cool shot but I would have loved more to see the dude in black shooting from behind the corner. Illustrating one of the coolest things in the 4.0 engine, the improved infantry behaviours.

Thanks for sharing your assessment, 10+ years on, Steve.

My intention wasn't to re-litigate anything, but look at it from a historical perspective, as the years have go on and I think we all have moved on and made our own peace with all that. Well, at least I have. I don't love modern, I won't hide that, but I can appreciate what you guys have achieved. Which is pretty unique. I was just looking at a counterfactual and musing that your offering would be objectively poorer as in less diverse if things had gone my way.

Do you do that per chance? In any case, if you felt somehow identified, here are my excuses - it was a humorous remark not a handwave or a pile on. Have a good day there in Manila.

Some excellent stuff over here https://www.google.com.au/search?q=improvised+armored+vehicle+syria&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=bPdHi3vPqk37_M%3A%2CF1XJQHUub3HFSM%2C_&usg=AFrqEzfm8RkMI6R2aNLJ3SwchDNjTp8VAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVsOTcydncAhVIQLwKHamuDAUQ9QEwAXoECAEQBg#imgrc=bPdHi3vPqk37_M: Complaining about people not managing expectations is like complaining about dogs taking a poop on a carpet. It happens, unless extreme conditioning is applied on the subjects

Maybe. That would have probably made the transition from CM1 into CM2 smoother, as you guys would have gathered more experience with the 2.0 engine out in the wilds, teething it out and having a baseline of sorts, while staying in a familiar subject matter. On the other hand, that may have had the effect to preempt you from getting so deep into modern contemporary warfare. Also I think that always trying the same old is boring

That was a pretty cool little video @Bil Hardenberger I really liked the effect of the smoke belching out of the BMP.

Well, Bil doesn't need to achieve the 9:1 or 3:1 everywhere and all the time across the map. I think that Bil's recon in force - at the farm - is the right thing to do, as that is the most effective way to have Ian to react, and get an opening to change the situation so that the preconditions for decisive offensive action hold. They don't atm. Where I think there may be an issue is in the lack of artillery support... Which would go a long way to interdict or blind Ian's forces and equalise things long enough for offensive action not being suicidal.

I do have some crashes occasionally, when selecting units. Last time two nights ago. I think that has to do with how NVIDIA (up-to-date) is implementing the OpenGL calls that map points in the view port to 3D primitives. But I haven't been able to create a test for it.