Quick Battle generator

[Battlefront.com]

(yeah I don't have a zillion comments but am one of those weirdos that checks in to see what's new and rarely posts).

You're certainly not alone

Just so happens that the rmg for CM1 was what kept me playing it all these years and apparently, to the chagrin of the exacting detail crowd, there is a group of us out here that do love rmg's despite being dismissed as a vocal minority.

Now despite that it's apparently a herculean effort to put an rmg together due to the complexity of cm2, don't belittle the crowd that likes the challenge of complete randomness (which is what I believe altipeuri was getting at steve - made sense to me)

I for one am not being dismissive of the crowd that wants maps to be generated completely randomly. If I were to do that I would be belittling myself There's no doubt in my mind that if we could make it happen we would.

Unfortunately life is all about having to make choices and living with them. "Hobbling" the entire game experience (and it would have) so as to support this one feature was never a viable option. And therefore the choices we've made are the right ones for the game as a whole.

The utility of any of those features can be debated on their own merit in terms of cost/benefit, but to broadly dismiss desire for them as some sort of mindless greed is idiotic.

What MikeyD is commenting on is that there have been features that people demanded (not requested) be added, arguing that without said feature the sky would fall and the Earth would spew forth demons from below to rob players of any fun they might otherwise have had. Then we put in the feature and either nobody used it or it wasn't all that important after all. NO SLIGHT on customers for this as there's some things on my design lists that I think are über important, they don't get in, and nobody notices them being absent. Just the way things go sometimes.

Steve

[Buzz]

Technically I do not know if this is even possible but if a separate product(s) were developed to: generate quality random maps with new engines... would that be a viable product based on demand? Would it require spefiic Module / pack data to function?

Steve, "...Logically generated AI Plans are not in the cards any time soon. That's a huge amount of work to have them be anything other than crap. With the MegaTile concept generated AI Plans becomes more viable."

Kinda same question. Is a separate product development to generate anything other than crap AI Plans over the spectrum of games on offer a viable product based on demand?

I just wonder IF the demand was sufficient would it make a sustainable profit. Might be a feature more casual players would purchase. I can relate to the ... off work, relax and limited play time ... I can press 2 buttons to generate v3.0+ map and non crap AI Plans.... blow stuff up for a couple of hours and call it a Total Victory...

[Buzz]

I am happy with CMx2 Map fidelity & AI Plan quality. Wondering if a couple of uber utility products might be commercially viable for those requesting such.

[altipueri]

Do any of you use the "Random article" button on Wikipedia? (It's about 5 down on the left)

To me it is the modern equivalent of wandering through a library and just pulling a book off the shelf just to see what it's about, or opening Encyclopedia Britannica and just reading a bit at random.

How many of you know who George Eulas Foster was? He was resting in splendid isolation until I just clicked on "Random article" a couple of minutes ago whilst writing this post in order to check how many items down the menu it was.

Supplementary question - why do I sometimes get a "preview post" button on the forum, and sometimes not?

[Collingwood]

The discussion of random maps has had me thinking about the challenge. I doubt there would be much or any profit involved.

If I knew the format of the map file it would not be hard to get started on something that spat out random maps. I could try to reverse engineer the map file format, but I'm not sure I'm that keen (yet)

As for a random map generator that also created any meaningful AI plans, that's a whole different matter. How useful would random maps without AI plans be ?

[hellfish]

I loved the CMx1 QB map generator, but I love the 100+ CMBN and CMFI handcrafted maps more. There's absolutely no comparison between those goofy, but random, maps and the maps we get in the CMx2 games.

My only wish for the CMx2 quick battles is that the game would pick more diverse opponents for me to fight. It seems like I'm always fighting Stugs or Flak or Recon units for my computer-picked opponents (everything as random and/or unrestricted as it can be). I can't remember fighting straight up German Heer or SS infantry ever. I did see Jagdpanthers in a QB for the first time the other day, though...

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't miss the CMx1 random maps much. I thought I would, but since I started converting scenario maps to QB maps for PBEM play I've noticed that I can "fix" a lot of things that used to bother me about the random maps. For example, on random meeting engagement maps the VLs were often clustered together in the middle of the map, so the strategy was basically rush your forces to the middle and have a big scrum. Now I space terrain objectives around the map is such a way that players have to prioritize objectives. It makes for more dynamic gameplay, IMO. Plus, I can put the setup zones along the diagonals as I prefer.

What I do miss about them is the unpredictability of not being able to tailor your force with foreknowledge of the exact terrain and weather.

Nevertheless, I can think of several QB features that I would rank higher than random maps. More unit information in the editor, the option to disallow the editing of the traits of individual units (experience level, ect) outside of broadly set parameters, combined arms, force adjustment option for both sides, ect.

EDITED to add: And all those could probably be done with a fraction of the effort random maps would require.

[Battlefront.com]

In a perfect world we could make custom pay-to-play features, but this world is far from perfect. The primary problem is that we'd have to distract ourselves from developing other features so we could develop a specific subset. Even if there were enough people willing to buy the specific features to make it profitable, that's not enough. The term is called "opportunity cost". Think of it this way...

If I told you to work on Project A for 3 months and I'd pay you $10,000... you might think that's great! But while doing that someone else comes up and says "I would like you to work on Project B for 3 months and I'll pay you $50,000. Problem is I need it now". Then you might not think that Project A was such a good choice.

This is the sort of thing we unfortunately have to consider with every decision we make. First if something is likely to compensate us for our time, second if there could be something better for us to do with the same amount of time. In this case random maps requires two major investments of time; one for the maps and another for the AI. We do not think we'd make our money back on the investment, not to mention compensate us for opportunity cost.

Then there's the hassles and headaches of supporting a separate product, complaints from people that we're now charging for basic features, etc.

Such is the wonderful life of a game developer

Steve

[Buzz]

Solid business / development explanation. CMx2 Map fidelity & AI Plan quality are superior to CMx1 random product and more fun for this customer.

In a perfect world we could make custom pay-to-play features, but this world is far from perfect. The primary problem is that we'd have to distract ourselves from developing other features so we could develop a specific subset. Even if there were enough people willing to buy the specific features to make it profitable, that's not enough. The term is called "opportunity cost". Think of it this way...

If I told you to work on Project A for 3 months and I'd pay you $10,000... you might think that's great! But while doing that someone else comes up and says "I would like you to work on Project B for 3 months and I'll pay you $50,000. Problem is I need it now". Then you might not think that Project A was such a good choice.

This is the sort of thing we unfortunately have to consider with every decision we make. First if something is likely to compensate us for our time, second if there could be something better for us to do with the same amount of time. In this case random maps requires two major investments of time; one for the maps and another for the AI. We do not think we'd make our money back on the investment, not to mention compensate us for opportunity cost.

Then there's the hassles and headaches of supporting a separate product, complaints from people that we're now charging for basic features, etc.

Such is the wonderful life of a game developer

Steve

[Canada Guy]

What about

1. a Map Editor feature button that would just create realistic undulating elevations? This is one that I hate doing the most when I am playing in the editor.

2. And also an ability to create rivers like we do roads now with a drag button from one end of the road to another?

[Collingwood]

What about

1. a Map Editor feature button that would just create realistic undulating elevations? This is one that I hate doing the most when I am playing in the editor.

Perhaps that's where a random map generator could be useful - to provide a starting point, a basic map which is then finished off by hand.

[Fenris]

Yeah mostly played on random maps in CM1 too. Terrain, trees, water. Would be a very nice start cor CM2... And for rural evirons, eg Ost Front, might be all you need

Whilst we're dreaming and pulling stuff out of thin air, how's about bringing back Operations? Huh? Come on, you know it'd be awesome... So how about it?

-F

[tdogg]

^ Or atleast persistent map damage.

[Battlefront.com]

What about

1. a Map Editor feature button that would just create realistic undulating elevations? This is one that I hate doing the most when I am playing in the editor.

2. And also an ability to create rivers like we do roads now with a drag button from one end of the road to another?

I would not rule out further improvements to the Editor to make creating new maps easier and/or faster. We've made a number of these improvements over the years. But it will never remove the need for a designer from the equation.

Steve

[womble]

I would not rule out further improvements to the Editor to make creating new maps easier and/or faster. We've made a number of these improvements over the years. But it will never remove the need for a designer from the equation.

Steve

Finding some way to copy and paste from one map to another would be good, even if it's only one layer at a time.

Random topography generation shouldn't be too difficult. The math's already been done (Oi seen it on the telly, dinnoi?) and I'm pretty sure is public domain, on how to generate the elevation point matrix so that it looks "natural".

[A Canadian Cat]

I liked cheesy cmbb maps and had no complaints about them.

Just a question - have you tried CM2x battles with the QB map set to random. As @MikeyD pointed out there are a lot of maps now. If you just played QBs and let the game choose the maps I find it feels pretty random.

What I do miss about them is the unpredictability of not being able to tailor your force with foreknowledge of the exact terrain and weather.

I see that if you are tweaking a scenario map and then using it for a QB that this would be a problem. How about this: do that for several and add them the to QB map pool then let the game choose from the pool randomly. That way will not really know what you are going to get until the game starts.

[76mm]

Rather than a random map generator, I think it would be much more useful to be able to convert maps from one CMx2 game to work with other CMx2 games, or at least some of them.

Sure, converting from Normandy to Russia might not work great, but within the Russia games it should work fine. And if there are terrain inconsistencies, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to have missing terrain automatically replaced with something similar (ie, bocage with hedges); worst case if it doesn't work 100% it would be a good base for a human to fix the map with limited tweaks.

We'll probably have a fair few maps with open fields, etc. but the work involved in creating good river/bridge maps, town/city maps, etc. mean that we might have relatively few of those. And coupled with the larger map size and battlefields on the East Front, we might have fewer maps than we would like.

Therefore, BFC please consider some way to allow map re-use among CMx2 games!

[SlowMotion]

Therefore, BFC please consider some way to allow map re-use among CMx2 games!

This would be useful even if only some of the information could be converted, like just elevation part but no buildings etc.

[76mm]

This would be useful even if only some of the information could be converted, like just elevation part but no buildings etc.

Zactly, anything would be better than starting from scratch. But especially within the Russian titles, seems like even the buildings would be pretty straightfoward? But even swapping a Norman steeple for a Russian onion-dome doesn't seem like it would be that complicated?

[SlowMotion]

I have no idea what kind of game specific map objects we'll see in CMRT. Probably at least buildings and bridges are different from those we see in MG module's scenarios.

[LukeFF]

And it's just as well I previewed this reply because I'm too non computer savvy to understand why the "quote" has only repeated Steve's bits and not mine - hence not showing what the "makes no sense to me at all" bit was about.

I give up, and I've only had three glasses of port; but the evening is not over yet.

That's nice, now run along.

[altipueri]

My, you have got a chip on your shoulder. There must be a story behind that byline.

Vidi vici veni perhaps?

[Mord]

It might have to do with the fact that when you post all you do is make veiled insults about CMBN and talk about how much better CMX1 is. LOL So go play CMX1! Why such a pessimistic attitude all the time?

Mord.

[LukeFF]

My, you have got a chip on your shoulder. There must be a story behind that byline.

Vidi vici veni perhaps?

No chip on my shoulder, and Mord explained it far better than I could.

That, and I have no clue what that latin phrase has to do with my response, much like Steve couldn't understand your reply up above.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I see that if you are tweaking a scenario map and then using it for a QB that this would be a problem. How about this: do that for several and add them the to QB map pool then let the game choose from the pool randomly. That way will not really know what you are going to get until the game starts.

This would work fine for single player. It could work for PBEM as well, the only problem being that it requires a significant amount of trust since it is very easy for the player who sets up the game to find out what map was chosen or to rig it so that only one map can be chosen.