Operation Market Garden announced!

[JonS]

When we get to graphical upgrades are we any where near smaller tiles sizes, yet?

I hope not.

[Mord]

I hope not.

Why, would that screw up all the maps that are already made?

Mord.

[JonS]

Dunno about that, but making maps is already quite time consuming. Quadrupelling the number of tiles that need individual attention is not going to speed things up. Similarly, programming the UI and AI to sensibly spread out units over twice as many tiles would not be a speedy task.

[Sequoia]

Wasn't there talk about "pre-fabricated" blocks of tiles that would actually speed up map making?

[poesel]

the above linked thread contains probably 20 years worth of ideas. There's plenty more just like it too.

...

And it's exactly why we do pay attention to Wish Lists.

As I'm a regular on that thread I'm happy to hear that you read it actually.

Of course I would be happy if you would also comment there but I guess you won't because the arguments would never end. OTOH it seems easier to get you out of your foxhole if one does criticize your business model...

I'd like to use the occasion to state that I'm well aware that most of my suggestions will never happen (or at least not soon). But one can hope.

About prices and modules and such - I think I'm paying you to continue to develop this game. If that means I get new stuff to play in addition(!) to engine improvements I'm fine.

Keep doing what you are doing. If it works for you - it sure does for me.

[jakla1027]

Steve,

Can you go into any details at this time on what changes might be coming to Urban Combat in the MG Module, or further down the road in version 3.0?

Thanks

[Mord]

Dunno about that, but making maps is already quite time consuming. Quadrupelling the number of tiles that need individual attention is not going to speed things up. Similarly, programming the UI and AI to sensibly spread out units over twice as many tiles would not be a speedy task.

I can see that but I remember them saying way back that they wanted to get the tiles smaller as the engine progressed. They look pretty good now, as is (what 8X8 meters?)—no longer get that patchwork quilt look like in CMX1. The tile bleed really helps with the look.

Wasn't there talk about "pre-fabricated" blocks of tiles that would actually speed up map making?

That was for QB random maps but that idea's been scratched since CMSF, I think. Least that's the last time I can really remember it being mentioned.

Mord.

[ZPB II]

Ah, the idea about growing BFC into a gigazillion dollar hypercorporation to govern all forms of life took me to read again the article about BTS/BFC origins. Formed as a last refuge against gigazillion dollar hypercorps.

Then it reminded me about a smart person who said that managing gigazillion dollar assets is a nice way to lose your hair. Maybe it'll happen on a yacht or in a Lamborghini with a 20-year-old model giggling shotgun, but they'll still fall off.

Funny how EA started out way back, for gamers by gamers, and now it's mostly a bunch of suits preparing expensive parachutes while thousands of nervous people watch.

(post contains hyperbole)

[para]

Steve

Any chance the British paratrooper models will appear with their scarves? Also why is there no British/Arnhem campaign.nachinus asked the same question earlier in the thread. Lastly, will we at some point be able to utilise roofs?

cheers

[Offshoot]

The Ditch Lock feature itself is not specific to Market Garden. Which means even without Market Garden you'll be able to use this feature when the v2.10 patch comes out for the Base Game/Commonwealth users...

The only downside of the way we're doing things is we do, from time to time, run into challenges where doing something one way could cause incompatibilities and confusion for those who have not bought everything. It's something we are very conscious of and try very, very hard to minimize it to the degree we think is best for everybody on the whole.

Thanks for the clarification. It all sounds very sensible.

[Childress]

Steve,

Can you go into any details at this time on what changes might be coming to Urban Combat in the MG Module, or further down the road in version 3.0?

Thanks

Lots o'luck.

[Ithikial_AU]

The only negative thing about dividing up a Front/Theater is that players will have to load different games to play the different timeframes. We understand that can be a nuisance, but we do feel it's unavoidable. Er, unless we come up with something clever and that is always a possibility

An 'Overview' Combat Mission Application which links to all other installed WW2 CM games found on the persons computer?

Perhaps the main interface could be a map of Europe/North Africa with buttons over each theater to link to the other respective games in the collection. Therefore the user doesn't have to clutter his desktop with icons for whats up to 8 eventual base games. This would also be a chance to incorporate an official BF PBEM or mod organiser type feature into the mix. Of course no idea how to program anything remotely like this.

Base Game Count:

CMBN

CMFI

CM Bulge

CM Ost Front 44 - 45

CM Ost Front 43

CM Ost Front 42

CM Ost Front 41

CM Afrika

Ouch that will be an organisational nightmare for die hard PBEMers.

[Mord]

You forgot Black Sea and CMSF2....unless of course you meant to forget Black Sea and CMSF2...in which case you are a blasphemer and should be burnt (along with Mjkerner) the second we get flame throwers.

Mord.

[mjkerner]

What'd I do?!?

Ithikial, great idea.

[sburke]

Steve

Any chance the British paratrooper models will appear with their scarves? Also why is there no British/Arnhem campaign.nachinus asked the same question earlier in the thread. Lastly, will we at some point be able to utilise roofs?

cheers

What exactly do you mean by no Arnhem campaign? There are two.

Two Campaigns: Allied and German

THE ROAD TO NIJMEGEN – ALLIED CAMPAIGN

September 17, 1944. Holland.

15 missions.

A MOMENT IN TIME - GERMAN CAMPAIGN

September 19, 1944. Holland.

6 missions.

Is there something specific you are looking for you don't see there?

[Buzz]

"You forgot Black Sea and CMSF2....unless of course you meant to forget Black Sea and CMSF2...in which case you are a blasphemer and should be burnt (along with Mjkerner) the second we get flame throwers."

Mord.

Like this

"'Overview' Combat Mission Application" Good idea Ithikial

[mjkerner]

[quote=Buzz;1462847

Like this

[Mord]

What'd I do?!?

Don't play coy, blasphemer! You know what you did!

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1460129&postcount=13

@Buzz that cracks me up every time...It's becoming a tradition.

Mord.

[Ithikial_AU]

You forgot Black Sea and CMSF2....unless of course you meant to forget Black Sea and CMSF2...in which case you are a blasphemer and should be burnt (along with Mjkerner) the second we get flame throwers.

Mord.

I specifically said WW2 Combat Mission titles. I'll be happily returning to the modern era when Black Sea is released but the WW2 families are something special and somewhat linked. (At least in my book).

I also think the British Paratrooper scarf is a brilliant idea. On top of that I think it would be great to have the option in the editor for British paratroopers to switch out helmets for the red beret. This would help distinguish them from the regular Tommy. Was also a great little bonus in the CMx1 days.

[Battlefront.com]

Some quick comments...

1. Ditch Lock is called that instead of Trench Lock for a reason Sure, you can use Ditch Lock to make trenches, but then that's back to CMSF's method and it wasn't popular. No FoW, no ability to move them about, and all the negative gameplay that came with it. Which means the feature is definitely intended to create ditches, not trenches.

2. Unfortunately the wider market of millions of gamers haven't heard about CM because we don't have the millions of Dollars needed to reach them. Fortunately almost none of them would care even if they did see an add or promo, so at least we know that we're not missing many sales opportunities. For sure we could sell more if more people knew about CM, but the costs of trying to reach them far exceeds whatever sales we could get. We have to rely upon mostly word of mouth, reviews, Blogs, etc. and be satisfied with that because that's the only viable course of action for us.

3. We are definitely, and actively, talking internally about how to make the avid CM player's experience easier to manage many CMs installed at the same time. And yes, some sort of "portal" application is the leading contender. It's too early to say what we might do, just that we are definitely giving it more thought now that we're coming up on a bunch more releases (Black Sea and Eastern Front 44/45).

4. No scrim (scarf) for the Brit paras, just a fancy camo smock and para helmet.

5. CM's map tile size of 8x8m is likely to stay around for a lot longer than we thought. First, computers have kinda leveled out in terms of performance. But more significantly we would have to do a LOT to the Editor to make it viable to make even finer resolution maps. JonS is quite right... without that we'd be in trouble. On the plus side, larger maps are being looked into for the near future. No promises as we're still pushing average hardware pretty hard.

Steve

[Macisle]

(This posted before reading Steve's last post.)

One place animations could use some major help would be when crews move AT guns.

First, I'd really like to have ATG crews be able to bail and remount ala vehicle crews. This seems very important for the East front, coupled with more realistic fortifications. So, you'd have a pak group defending, for example. Attacking arty comes in, the pak crews bail and run to their (very beefy) fortifications. The barrage ends and they run back and re-crew their weapons. I'd like to see better animations for moving guns, too, but would put the resources into re-crewing ATGs and fortifications first.

When we get to graphical upgrades are we any where near smaller tiles sizes, yet?

Big +1! At this point, I'm hoping for things to eventually get to 1x1 (that's meters) tiles and 0.01 (yes, ten cm) variations in height (adjustable increments up or down--for things like sidewalks and fine-tuning walls, etc). 8x8 is still way too big for truly life-like spacing for things. Also, this may be needed (dunno) for things like a bazooka team peaking around an alley corner for a quick shot and such. I'm hoping for say, 4x4, for Bagration and/or Bulge. However, if they can go smaller--great!

Dunno about that, but making maps is already quite time consuming. Quadrupelling the number of tiles that need individual attention is not going to speed things up. Similarly, programming the UI and AI to sensibly spread out units over twice as many tiles would not be a speedy task.

I would say it depends on what other relevant upgrades are made in the Scenario Editor. With other improvements bundled-in, things could go much faster at 1x1 than they currently do at 8x8. Large-swath areas and elevations are still a question of big brush strokes, so 1x1 wouldn't be an issue there. The issues are in the detail work. So what if it worked like this:

--You put in your overlay map and broadly paint out your areas and elevations.

--1x1 allows you to exactly place your walls, roads, paths, buildings and flavor objects (hello "real" European villages, towns and cities!).

--This isn't tedius because to place buildings and flavor objects, you can drop in a bunch in the selection (tile map) area, then move to Preview for fine-tuning. Preview view allows you to drag and rotate (both free-form) buildings and flavor objects with snap to tile. It also allows you to copy and paste them. Road and wall tiles can also be rotated and copy-pasted in Preview mode.

--Units can be assigned unlimited group numbers (and broken into fire teams with their own numbers). They can then be given specific waypoints that are tied to them, specifically (like Arma II, for example). For QB-map work, something more generic, like what we have now, could be left in place).

When I look back on my recent map-making experience of trying to make a very detailed scale reproduction of a real place, the real headaches and time suckers were the following:

1. Not being able to place roads, walls/hedges and buildings where I wanted, due to 8x8 limitations.

2. Having to go back and forth between tile-map and Preview mode to place buildings (and everthings else, but flavor objects) with no copy-paste ability. This was a HUGE time suck.

3. Having to fiddle with buildings as per number 2 above, and also flavor objects in Preview mode, due to the lack of smooth drag-n-rotate and copy-paste in Preview mode for all these things.

4. Door and window placement. It's damn tedius. However, I don't see an easy way to improve it, so I'm only mentioning it in this list because it was a major time consumer.

So, again, I'm hoping for tile-size and elevation-level increment reductions (of any sort--maybe 4x4?) for Bagration and Bulge, with my ultimate goal for future families set as 1x1 for tile and 0.01 (adjustable increments up or down) for height. Coupled with the above-listed Scenario Editor improvements, they could really make map terrain in CM more life-like in look and in impact on combat dynamics, while at the same time making maps easier and faster to make.

[Macisle]

...CM's map tile size of 8x8m is likely to stay around for a lot longer than we thought. First, computers have kinda leveled out in terms of performance. But more significantly we would have to do a LOT to the Editor to make it viable to make even finer resolution maps.

Posted my last reply before catching this. Again, my suggestion of going for lower tile sizes is based on the assumption that you are getting the necessary other Scenario Editor improvements at the same time.

[Mord]

I specifically said WW2 Combat Mission titles. I'll be happily returning to the modern era when Black Sea is released but the WW2 families are something special and somewhat linked. (At least in my book).

I hear you...but I still want to burn you once we have flamethrowers...cue Buzz.

Steve, what about the guys that disappear when they get hit on vehicles (if I remember correctly that even carries over to bunkers)? Is there a way that they could be placed on the ground, or in the case of a destroyed vehicle just left where they are? How come they have to disappear? Is it a coding issue?

And something I asked in another thread;

Right now we have vehicles that can have multiple skins but the sums of the parts are randomized. How hard would it be to code it so hull_2 always ends up with turret_2 and track_2 etc. You have talked about eventually having numbered turrets and what not, it seems we are right on the cusp of that just by having the same numbered BMPS stay together. It may not be as fancy as you guys might have planned but I think most of us could live with that, easily.

Mord.

[waclaw]

Some quick comments...

1. Ditch Lock is called that instead of Trench Lock for a reason Sure, you can use Ditch Lock to make trenches, but then that's back to CMSF's method and it wasn't popular. No FoW, no ability to move them about, and all the negative gameplay that came with it. Which means the feature is definitely intended to create ditches, not trenches.

otherwise ask - objects such as "trenches" and "foxhole" will graphically "buried" (do not know if that's the right word) into the ground, as well as drainage ditches and bomb craters?

and one more thing - if there will be separate sounds for traction popular vehicles (Sherman, PZ4, panther)?

* (You do not have to make new sounds, we do own sound in the form of mods)

[PanzerMike]

From "By tank into Normandy" - Stuart Hills:

"When we entered a town or village, tanks did the softening-up first by destroying all possible positions where enemy infantry might be lurking. We simply hosed down the buildings with shells and machineguns, and then called through our infantry for house-to-house clearance"

Any possibility that the AI tanks can perform something like that in the near future (V3.0)?