BletchleyGeek Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Combat flight sims are doing fine. New IL2 coming out, various DCS games, War Thunder being a fairly big hit, etc. The response in the gaming media has been muted because in all the above cases its Russian devs and Russian publishing houses pushing out a product at least somewhat orientated towards Russian audiences. Well, Lock-On Modern Air Combat - the last flight sim I've really played - I think was being quite fair when modeling a hypothetical NATO-Russia conflict over Georgia. Too bad the game just crashed my machine more often than not due to overheating and stuff. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 In general the PC platform is not nearly as popular as it was back when CM first came out. Sales are decreasing or flat. You could release a game like CM in the 90's and the gaming media would write articles and generate all sorts of buzz. You had all sorts of PC gaming mags and websites devoted to games like CM. Look at what's happened to combat flight sims. I think you completely mis-analyze what's going on there. Just because people don't refresh their PCs so much more often doesn't mean they don't have any. People just don't need to upgrade to surf the web and many find that new PC games are lameass console ports not worth their time anyway. Flight sims have their own sets of problems. No matter how realistic you make the software, it is extremely difficult to create the right kind of situational awareness as in a real plane as long as you only have 1 monitor in front, or even with 3 in front. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vergeltungswaffe Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Combat flight sims are doing fine. New IL2 coming out But therein lies the problem for flight sims. IL2 was the closest thing to CM for that genre, but they never made it to CMx2. The "new" IL2 is STILL a rehashed version of the same game that was great for the first few years, but never solved many of the things that would have improved it greatly. It's going to have the same high altitude problems, and on and on, et al. I, for one, am glad CM didn't follow the same path. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skwabie Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Eh, no, not at all. I am a hardcore flight simmer by night and have a keen eye on spotting software deficiencies. For sure an average user most likely doesn't notice anything at all! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 But they gotta move the set to modern. WWII are for old timers these days, the youth can read stories 'bout it but hey if you haven't been there it won't be the same. LOL how old do you think we all are? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skwabie Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I'm not an archeologist... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altipueri Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I am a sort of archeologist - my career is in ruins. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I think reports of the PC's demise as a gaming platform are highly exaggerated, thanks in large part to Steam. Sure, no one buys PC games in brick-and-mortar stores anymore. Why would they, when they can sit in their comfy chair and download them? I have personally purchased at least ten PC games so far this year, half of them on Steam, and have only played perhaps five of them so far. I also recently spent close to $2k upgrading my gaming PC, which should now be good for a few years. In the same amount of time, I purchased exactly 0 console games and 0 tablet/mobile device games. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poorfish Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I second poesel71's criticism of the Repository - it sucks. I commented yesterday about the character limit, but thought perhaps I was wrong. There are 3 comments of the scenario I posted a few years back; one is mine which was truncated and so made no sense. Another was a recent comment to which I replied. And clicking the Leave Comment button made the whole thing vanish. Are comments over 1500 character automatically deleted or do they have to wait to be checked by a monitor? Doesn't matter really as there are no comment guidelines on the page - maybe somewhere else, but again that is irrelevant. BF Admin and others need to re-look at the whole Repository concept. There must be more user friendly ones available or just tweak the existing code. We users want to comment, and scenario designers want to be commented to, but the present system seems to actively discourage it. And active discouragement leads to fewer new maps and gives the appearance to some that the game is dying. -- On a Second Front Maps are growing increasingly larger and more complex, perhaps faster than users can upgrade their machines to render the evermore complex scenarios. I have this problem with my macmini 3,1 and must edit scenarios to make render times acceptable, and now with MG the render time is horrendous. To that end, I have edited several of the Master Maps so they now load faster. To scenario authors: I would encourage you to make smaller, tighter, less graphically complex scenarios. For instance: try not to place trees etc in every fence/hedge row square, make sure your roads are complete and properly formed ... not to mention the placing hundreds of Flavor Objects ... I have to contanly keep the numbr of troops and vehicles on screen way below 1000, else machine gun fire is relagated to the occassional pop ... pop ... pop. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Sounds like it's time for a hardware upgrade, poorfish. Games have always driven my PC upgrades, since the late 1980s. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poorfish Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Yes, but then there is the money issue. What effects me likely effects many others. The work I used to do drove my upgrades, not games. Again not every one has the money, time, or inclination to upgrade. Which makes my point. Smaller, cleaner scenarios will keep and encourage more people to continue to buy and play, than large complex one ever will. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 That's a good point, poorfish. I personally prefer smaller scenarios, not because my PC cannot handle the larger ones, but because I simply don't have the time to play them. When you are involved in anywhere from four to six PBEMs, as I usually am, and try to do a turn a day on all of them, as I do, the huge scenarios/quick battles simply take too long to properly do each turn. I suppose I could try one against the AI, and perhaps do a turn a week or something. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt Belenko Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 It is a sad, sad day when I find out one of our American customers is too young to understand Happy Days references. Makes me fell old. Well, to cheer me up Emrys can come here and tell us about earlier times when shadow puppets on cave walls were the evening's entertainment Steve Don't make jokes about shadow puppets. I remember an episode or two of The Ed Sullivan Show where he actually had a guy do that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nelson 1812 Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Doug need a tester for an AI ... you up for it? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Williams Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 You mean to test a scenario VS the AI? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nelson 1812 Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 ....m, AI verse the Brits, bit big though... Brits would be you... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Funny, folks worrying about CM dying and my worry is I can continue to keep up with their product releases. Lets say at a minimum they release two games next year. Forget modules for now. As of this time next year I will have 4 families of games to choose from when I decide to play. A year later 6? Hoping they get to Bulge in 2015. They have stated (and their hiring seems to indicate) they are financially doing well. I for one am certainly going to keep acquiring their product and I think I can safely say most of us here will be doing so as well though some folks may start being more targeted on their purchases. I expect we will splinter a bit into EF fans/modern games etc just as I know some folks have not purchased CMFI (damn are you ever missing out). Dying, ha. I am just hoping that BF runs out of European WW2 theatres enough to explore others and do so profitably enough with a solid engine behind them. Pacific/Korean/Vietnam/Middle Eastern/Cold War Europe - the list goes on. I have 10 years till retirement. That should give them plenty of time to maybe take a spin with one or two of those. In the meantime I'll probably need to roll bizarre looking die from a roleplaying game to select which game to take for a spin when I want. I am also not worried about the PC dying. Yeah maybe BF will eventually need to port to some other platform, but I have a trust in their smarts on that. They just need to chain Phil to the chair and keep him working at it. Steve you have gotten the shackles already right? Gotta keep your eye on the ball and plan for the future. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broadsword56 Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Hear, hear. Even if the PC "died" as a common household and workplace device, I'll bet many of us are so hooked on CM that we'd just scrounge old PC components (like vinyl record and typewriter enthusiasts today) and keep building our own machines to continue playing and enjoying these games until our twilight years. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeFF Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 But therein lies the problem for flight sims. IL2 was the closest thing to CM for that genre, but they never made it to CMx2. The "new" IL2 is STILL a rehashed version of the same game that was great for the first few years, but never solved many of the things that would have improved it greatly. It's going to have the same high altitude problems, and on and on, et al. ROFL! You do realize the version of IL2 now being developed shares zero code with the old, original IL2? It is most certainly not a rehash. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeFF Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 I am a hardcore flight simmer by night and have a keen eye on spotting software deficiencies. For sure an average user most likely doesn't notice anything at all! I am a good friend of the man who's developed Rise of Flight and the new IL2. He would wholeheartedly disagree with you. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mord Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 my worry is I can continue to keep up with their product releases. Lets say at a minimum they release two games next year. Forget modules for now. As of this time next year I will have 4 families of games to choose from when I decide to play. A year later 6? I have a pretty good cure/decider for this...titles get picked a lot of times on what I am reading or watching military history wise, at the moment, and sometimes vice versa. I have held off on some cool EF docs I found on YouTube because they got me so pumped after watching a couple I was fiendin' for some EF CM action. I love being able to watch a doc or read a book and then interact with the subject matter in CM. It's like a couch potatoe's version of reenacting. I really, REALLY, wish we could get a Nam game for this exact reason. Mord. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buzz Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 Vietnam ... Jungle fighting, tunnels, intense small unit actions... potent CAS with realistic ground-fire impact ... River Assault Squadron fighting.... to the huge Battle of Huế 1968 ... much like 2004 anti-insurgent Marine operation in Fallujah. Lots of possibilities to "interact with the subject matter in CM." I would really buy the game and modules and I suspect others would so maybe Vietnam after Black Sea and CMSF2? I am NOT worried about keeping up with Battlfront product releases. As my CM toy box fills with variety it makes for my better understanding the conflicts and a entertainment Buzz up and own military history's timeline. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 Let me summarize it this way. Not even I am saying CM is dying. Now that we got this over with, what's gonna happen about the repository or the repositories? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vergeltungswaffe Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 ROFL! You do realize the version of IL2 now being developed shares zero code with the old, original IL2? It is most certainly not a rehash. Rofl? I've followed IL-2 Battle of Stalingrad and I'm aware they're using the Digital Nature engine, but that doesn't mean it's being redone from scratch. I like RoF and 777 studios does nice work but this is still in partnership with 1C and even the webpage says its a continuation in the first sentence. So we'll see what gets released. If it's revolutionary instead of evolutionary, you can rofl to your hearts desire. But don't bet the house on that... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 Currently 9,976 views of this thread. I'd say once the number reaches 10,000 that'll answer the question about whether CM is dying on not. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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