It's not that bad is it? I've been crying out loud trying to keep my panzers on the the road to La Gleize, despite my precise orders being ignored. An absolutely great experience nevertheless, and one I wouldn't have had without CM.
It'll be worth the wait I'm sure 😉. And the wall and rifles are still waiting for me...
This is blind speculation, but I wonder if CMSF2's move to Steam has thrown off BFC's planning. Should they put out the Fire and Rubble module in the usual manner? Or should they wait to see the results of partnering with Steam/Slitherine and adjust their release plans accordingly? Bear in mind, I've heard zero talk of this in the halls of the BFC office tower. But it would be logical for them to consider putting CMRT on Steam with the module... IF there have been no glitches with the partnership. There's lots for them to consider and it might take awhile before they have the data to reach any conclusions. BFC's had a very unusual year this year.
Perhaps that's what worries me most, the slow rate of release. After all Fire and Rubble is just a MODULE, and not even very different from the base game.
The waiting for this module has been ridiculously long. The delays countless and endless. The priority seems to have been low, although we are led to believe otherwise. My confidence in what we are told is nil. I'm too lazy to make a list of all promises and announcements concerning the expected time of release through the past few years, but I'm sure it's quite a list by now. Reminding BF about those promises often resulted in reactions of ridicule, irritation and hostility, but I'm past caring about that. The release dates of BF have become the laughingstock of wargaming sites like Wargamer.
Even now we've arrived in the autumn of 2020 we still know nothing about the period of release, apart from that it can go 'extremely fast' when all the work has been done. Which is basically the same story as we've been told in the beginning of the year. To me all this makes an impression of utter unreliability. Harsh words, but I have no others left for this company.
I'm truly amazed I'm one of the few people who's getting angry about all this. Perhaps it's just me and caring too much. I'm sure this will get me the usual Flak and I just don't care. Just finish the damn module!
I am really sorry for what is happening to you right now.
But please, can you continue this in another, appropriate thread? I would like to read about the game here.
Lol, I also made this mod, or at least a very similar mod, a month or two ago, in preparation for Fire and Rubble's arrival. It's all ready to go for CMFB and RT-F&R when the module arrives, just need the fieldcap model and a texture as a guide. Adapted some of EZ's uniforms too, but need to work in some of those warm jackets, what's great is that the gebirgs tag works with models too. You obviously know that though as you mix helmets in your screen shot.
@Bubba883XL Try here: https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/desert-commander-nes
Looks like they have the whole sound track for the game (and many other treasure from the past).
why wait????? game is awesome as all titles, and are certainly all worth what they charge. the catch is how much you delve into the game and be creative with your own missions etc or wars lol.... its my main game I always come back to. you've also got to think of all the engine updates they've done. they've constantly kept this game updated and improved, where most company's abandoned a game after 6 months or so..to me that's the key...
One thing that most CM titles come with is separate tagged terrian art for heavy rocks using the word [rubble]. If you use that tag in you scenario heavy rock tile becomes broken building debris. That's how you get city scenarios with blasted buildings and rubble blocked streets.
1 – Outline Campaign Concept
“Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
Step one of making a campaign: quit Combat Mission and start planning. This first and the second section of this write up will all be done outside of the game itself. A Combat Mission campaign is a project with many moving parts that need to talk to each other ideally in a seamless way to make a great experience for your audience.
Before properly begin, I want you to go through this checklist and ask these questions:
- Have you made a scenario yet?
- Are you inspired? (This is going to take a while)
- Can a Combat Mission Campaign do what you want it to?
The third one is a bit fuzzy for some so that’s what we’ll be answering below in this part, but hopefully you’ve said yes to all three. The first is paramount as designing a scenario from scratch has enough to learn on its own without adding on yet more to learn. Considering campaigns are single player only, you will have to know how to create AI plans. Is that historical series of engagements grabbed your attention? No way around it, you’re creating a bunch of scenarios on the same subject matter so it’s going to take time.
Jon Snowden started his Scenario Design DAR/AAR stating: “Scenarios usually begin with a hazy idea of what I want to do.”
Campaigns usually start by having a hazy idea but then also wondering what would come next? For historical based campaigns there’s usually a series of engagements that line up that you want to re-create. For fictional campaigns it’s usually a bit more creative such as “The player has taken the hill, so what should I place on the other side?”
There are always more inspiration and ideas… one day. (And there are no Battlefront secrets in the screenshot, I’ve checked).
What is a Combat Mission Campaign?
It’s a pre-determined series of linked scenarios that can track and carry across the same units between multiple engagements. That is it.
Combat Mission is still a strategy game and campaigns do no introduce any role-playing elements such as units gaining experience after ‘x enemy kills’ or the like. The campaign must be a self-contained within the same game family – so a campaign can’t begin in Combat Mission: Battle of Normandy and transfer through to Combat Mission: Final Blitzkrieg. Though there is nothing stopping a designer from breaking this one, the focus of tracking specific units between battles does naturally lend the system to favouring short time scales ranging from a few hours through to a week or so of combat. If you look through all the stock campaign releases that have come with every base game and module, you’ll see they largely follow the same pattern where you command a handful of formations through a number of trials over the course of a few days or weeks.
So back to my third question: Can a Combat Mission Campaign do what you want it to?
Idea: I want the player to command Army Group North in its defence of Riga. I also want to throw in a hypothetical scenario around what would happen if an additional Soviet Tank Army also joined in the attack. I want a pony.
Ithikial’s Response: Combat Mission is the wrong scale for that type of wargame. I also want a pony.
Idea: I want the player to command the 2nd Battalion, 506 PIR, from D-Day through to the end of the war.
Ithikial’s Response: Well that’s doable on paper, but before you begin that’s already two campaigns across two titles that can’t ‘talk’ to each other. It’s also likely dozens of scenarios that need to be individually built and have planned out branching pathways. Have you considered what happens if Lt Winters is killed at Brecourt Manor? What does that mean for Easy Co. at Bloody Gulch? I promise you’ll burn out and the project will never get finished.
Idea: I want the player to command 3rd Battalion, 116 Infantry Regiment in July 1944 as it fights towards St Lo. The campaign will end once they manage to link up with the 1st “Lost” Battalion east of the city on the city.
Ithikial’s Response: I want to play that. There’s a good chance it will work.
The message here and for most of this first part is that campaigns can spiral out of control very easily if there is no time, force composition and geography limit you place upon yourself as a designer to keep the project workable and a player interested.
What if I said the Battle of Tukums actually started out first as a seven-scenario campaign tracking the Panzergrafs’ units from their jump off at Saldus in western Latvia, through to Tukums and then onto the Riga outskirts themselves, plus a few more scenarios as they widened the corridor they created over the following days. It was too big with the major set piece battle around the town itself occurring in the front half of the series. Everything else would quickly become filler. So the campaign turned into a large scenario merging two of the earlier planned engagements of the campaign that were to occur concurrently in the timeline. Then when I realised there could be potentially over 1,500 moving pixeltrüppen at one time on the screen with 100 plus tanks… I really didn’t want to be the cause of melting CPU’s and complaints back to Battlefront help desk, so it was split up again into three distinct parts ranging from 0830 hours in the morning through to around 1400 hours in the afternoon.
The green square is what this campaign is focused on. The purple boxes are what the first cut of what this campaign would of looked like and I still think would of played worst for it.
So, remember when I opened this part saying the first thing to do is “Quit Combat Mission”? All of the above was done through a few forum posts (behind the scenes), ongoing research and planning, and (because it’s me) a spreadsheet or two to organise my thoughts. There was no time wasted in the editor making maps and creating scenarios that went nowhere which is a path to losing interest in a project pretty quick.
Now there are going to be some unique terminology that I’m going to keep coming back to in every part of this series so it is prudent to get this out of the way up front:
A Glossary of Terms
Core Unit
Any unit (on both sides) that will take part in more than one scenario and where it’s end condition
will transfer from one to another.
Non-Core Unit
Any unit (on both sides) that will only take part in one scenario or where the unit’s end condition
does not matter for follow on scenarios.
Campaign Briefing
The first briefing the player will read once commencing the campaign and will likely refer back to throughout the course of playing to review the overall objective. In most cases contains high level information on overall situation, objectives and a high level of detail on units under their command. (A part will be dedicated to this).
Campaign Script
[Cue spooky music] The behind the scenes code that tells Combat Mission what to do between scenarios. The branching ‘road map’ the player will go down between individual scenarios and the information about what should change for the core units transferring into a battle. Has been known to cause designers to cry, scare away newcomers and cause marriage breakdowns*.
Core Unit File
A master file that is the central collection point for all campaign level elements. It is also the file that is used to compile and create the final campaign. Will include all Core Units, the Campaign Briefing, Campaign Briefing Imagery, the Campaign Script (sort of we’ll get to that).
* There may not be any tangible evidence of this one.
End of Part 1.
Your homework to be posted in the comments below:
- Is there a Stock Campaign that has come out with a product release that sticks out in your mind as one you really enjoyed?
- Why do you remember it and what makes it stand out?
Bubba883XL reacted to Aragorn2002 in Fire and Rubble Preview: The Anatomy of What Goes Into a Stock Campaign Release
Bubba883XL got a reaction from Vacillator in Question CMRT
Bubba883XL got a reaction from Aragorn2002 in Fire and Rubble Preview: The Anatomy of What Goes Into a Stock Campaign Release
