CM newbie impressions

[Mark L]

I recently heard about CM over at Mac Gamers Ledge, so I came over to check it out. I'm 2/3 of the way through my first game as the Yanks in Riesberg, and now firmly entrenched in house-to-house fighting). My first impressions... WOW!!! This is just TOO COOL! This is really an _amazing_ concept in wargaming.

I have a friend who is very much into traditional board wargames, but has never been interested in the computer variety. His reasoning is generally valid: most computer wargames are, admittedly, not much different from their paper brethren - still "two-dimensional", albeit more detailed, with less paper-pushing, rules-lawyering, etc., but generally better FOW. But CM, like all truly ground-breaking computer games, uses the power of the personal computer to do NEW things that just can't be done in a practical manner in a paper format - obviously, I refer the true-3D LOS among other features, and the really cool "you are THERE" trench-cam perspective! CM may very well be a computer game that he would actually be interested in.

However, he also prefers the tactile sensations offered by boardgames - i.e. handling the counters, rolling the dice, etc. - as well as the face-to-face social interaction; things that computer games have a hard time replacing. But, IMO, CM is SO revolutionary, it may bridge the gap for him. (He may also still be system-challenged - using a 486 or something - I'll have to check)

OK, I've perused this board a bit and found some of the hot-button issues. Nevertheless, I thought I'd weigh in with some of my opinions, preferences, and some anecdotes from my game so far, but I sure hope I don't open up old sore spots. (any other newbies, PLEASE take time to search the board for some of these topics before immediately replying - some of these issues have become rather sensitive, and it may surprise you which ones).

(sorry... this got kinda long. It turned out that there was just sooo much I wanted to relate, and I'm kinda long-winded anyway )

Fog-of-war (FOW):

VERY nicely done, IMO. Don't change a thing, except perhaps to make it even "foggier"!! I've had several engagements at longer ranges - say >100 meters - where the enemy never appeared as anything beyond "Infantry squad?", with the three-man depiction. Nevertheless, I could hear the dreadful "ripping canvas" of the MG42, but I could also see them duck as I started to pour on whithering fire, and then they seemed to withdraw. I am reminded of various battle accounts I've read in books, as well as scenes in some of the better war movies. In particular, I recall a city-fighting scene from Full Metal Jacket, in which much of an entire floor of a building erupts in muzzle flashes - you just aren't gonna get much more than that as information to act upon, and CM handles it pretty darn well, IMHO. In fact, in my first encounters with anti-infantry fire, the ONLY information I got, was the SOUND of an MG42. Very cool. (and actually, I sorta "cheated", by replaying the turn over and over while roaming the camera around trying to figure out where the sound was coming from! )

In a turn 1 encounter of my Riesburg game, a Sherman came under immediate from an AT gun clear across the other side of the map. Fortunately, two shells bounced of the front armor (I'm guessing it was a 50mm PaK 38 or lesser gun?), the Sheman engaged with it's main gun and MGs. I also watched the action from the enemy's perspective and could see the gun crew go to ground occasionally. Even that much information may be too much to ask in reality, but since I don't really have the experience or knowledge to know how much effectiveness to realistically expect (or perhaps more importantly - what the GAME considers effective), it was welcome feedback - not too much, but not too little, and still available _if you look for it_ (as the tank commander would surely have to do, peering through his binoculars from his hatch, praying the next shell doesn't have his name on it).

Deciding that engaging an unknown AT gun in a dual without adequate preparation was probably not a good idea (even if two shells had already "bounced"), I ran the tank to safety and called the 105s. My FOs LOS to the target was obscured by some tall trees or something, but it didn't look too bad from the trench-cam, so I applied an ASL principle and assumed he would at least be able to see the blast height of spotting rounds and still be able to adjust the fire. It seemd to work - in short order, a "destroyed" marker appeared.

Those labels can provide some useful information regarding status, but in this case, I'm not sure if I really would be "entitled" to that information? And in a later case, a "destroyed" marker appeared, when ALL I "saw" was an "Infantry?" unit. Not even "Gun?" Especially in this case, I think the "destroyed" marker was too much information. (I still haven't reached the "invisible" gun's location yet to see if I ever find out what it was)

So far, I seem to be getting pretty lucky taking out these AT guns! But I've also been trying to apply sound tactics - cautious movement, lots of overwatch, covering an area form multiple angles. It seems to work VERY nicely in CM, and the 3D terrain even makes it mandatory - much more so than any other game - I like it!

OK, that's quite enough about FOW. Suffice it to say, it's gooood, IMHO.

Targeting:

Yeah, I have occasionally had units "ignore" my targetting orders, but in most case it hasn't had to severe an impact. And in at least one case in particular, it was a good thing - a Sherman refused to obey instructions to target what seemed to be a fairly significant concentration of infantry, chosing instead to target a single-man "Infantry?" marker. When I looked at the replay and examined the situation, I noticed that the single-man was depicted with a Panzershreck! The tanker had a durn good reason to change targets, especially since he had just pulled up next to the abandoned hulk of one of his brothers that had been less fortunate with a similar encounter.

IMHO, one of the posters put it best when he said if your position is such that it is absolutely necessary for one particular unit to make a less than optimal shot to try to save another unit's arse, you are probably in a poor position. Overwatch from multiple angles is mandatory for an adequate defense, and CM shows this VERY well, IMHO.

If your defensive plans require coverage of a specific area, better make use of the well-implemented "ambush" features to help the unit focus on his required duties (and read the docs - there is more than one way to set up an adhoc "ambush" without requiring a leader and an ambush counter).

In another example from my game - on my right flank, some German units in and around the objective building on that side of town were inhibiting my move from the gully into town. I ordered my Sherman on the road to target some of them, but he seemed to prefer engaging various other units further down the road on the other side of town. OK, then... I had just relocated my FO to a good spot near the road, and used him to call in some 105 on the offending units. Three buildings flattened - problem solved (or so it seems... ). Never hurts to have backups...

Furthermore, one important aspect that a tactical game must attempt to simulate is the pure CHAOS of battle. In terms of realism, it's FAR too much to expect a company commander to be able to specifically designate targets, instantly reroute units, etc. within a one minute time frame! (OTOH I consider the player's perspective is more of a hybrid of company CO and platoon leader; and besides, the game wouldn't be nearly as much fun otherwise! ). But if a unit doesn't obey orders exactly, I just chalk it up to the "chaos factor", or perhaps he just didn't receive your instructions, misinterpreted them, or was unaware that his support of another unit was desparately needed.

Graphics:

Kinda hard to judge vs. any sort of "state of the art" isn't it - since there aren't ANY other _fully_ 3D wargames out there? (certainly not any that I know of on the Mac side). It does sort of remind me of a VERY souped-up "miniatures" wargame, but from my perspective as a board wargamer as well, that is not necessarily a bad thing! And there are some nice touches - the first time I orchestrated a close assault, I noticed one of the soldiers lobbing a grenade as he charged. Liked it!

OTOH, I also used the trench-cam view to check things out from the perspective of one of my most forward squads, located in some woods on the lip of a depression. A rather impressive viewpoint, with tracers wizzing overhead in all directions and the very loud clamor of battle all around! However, considering the large quantities of high-caliber death and destruction screaming by overhead, the soldiers seemed amazingly composed in their erect kneeling posture, calmly firing at barely seen targets! Be they green, regular, or veteran, it seemed to me that a more appropriate depiction would be of someone hugging the best cover they could find, occasionally popping up to squeeze off a few rounds, and then ducking again! And no, I'm not at all saying this is something that needs to be changed - I just thought it was kind of an amusing discontinuity!

Another kinda picky detail - I noticed a Sherman firing at a target, and then quickly rotating his turret. The muzzle flash animation tracked around with the turret! Kinda goofy looking.

There is one thing that is graphically unappealing to me, tho, that I hope gets some improvement in the final version - and that's the smoke. Yes, I read the smoke threads, and having thought about, I can understand the difficulty (I'm certainly no expert, but I think I have a reasonable understanding of how 3D graphics hardware works conceptually). The billboarding works just fine for the trees - they look VERY nice, even if they do "rotate". Smoke, OTOH, has a rather ugly "blocky" appearance, even from a moderate distance. I suppose this is to save texture memory - dunno if it's also much of a speed issue with 3D hardware, but I can imagine it is with software rendering. I also think giving it a little transparency would help too - is this difficult with 3D hardware? If it is at all possible and can be done without a lot of trouble, I would very much like to see options for higher resolution textures and/or transparency effects for those with graphics hardware that support them.

Also, in the overhead views, the "billboard" trees change to a proper depiction as seen from overhead. Could the same thing be done with smoke? Currently, the edge-on billboard smoke looks really odd. Perhaps it was determined that it would obscure too much of what's underneath it. Well, there's always "shift-I" to turn it off. It would also give you a better idea of the extent of coverage.

A final idea on smoke: another depiction I've seen used in some games (can't remember which off-hand) is a series of translucent "bubbles" (spheres), that float upward, expanding as they go. Not a bunch of little bubbles, but a single "column" of large bubbles, perhaps overlapping somewhat. It's not really a "photo-realistic" depiction, but I think it would convey the right idea, in perhaps a more visual appealing way, which is all that's really needed, IMHO. It seems to me that, especially with hardware acceleration, this wouldn't add too many additional objects (assuming 3D harware supports "spheres"?), and theoretically wouldn't have too much of an impact on performance? (again, I'm no expert on 3D graphics, so maybe I'm full of it! )

Sorry to go on so long about smoke, but I like to play the Yanks, and so I use LOTS of it! In my first game, I was pleased with the graphics - until I had the 105s drop smoke on the church! It was kinda dismayed - it was sort of an eyesore, IMHO, and arty smoke seems to hang around a LOOONG time! (I also noticed that it seemed to scatter _all_ over the place, although there is also a pretty good concentration around the church. I wasn't sure if smoke rounds specifically were modelled with a LOT of additional scatter, or what, but I understand from other threads that this being looked into).

Phew! It feels good to get all this out in text! I apologize for the length, but as I've played CM and come to like it more and more and MORE, I just had ta get it out! I hope at least some of it is interesting reading for somone.

Can ya tell I LIKE this game?!?! CM is THE coolest implementation of a tactical wargame I've seen yet. Congrats to Mr. Moylan, BF.C and everyone else who is bringing this vision to reality. And I'm doubly glad it's BTS that's doing it, since that means a Mac version too!

OK, enough writing... time to get back to the task of clearing out that town. So far, I've been applying what I know of real-world tactics, and it seems to work out VERY nicely. Maybe next time around I'll try some crazy stuff, and see how badly I get punished!

Mark

P.S. Very nice site, BF.C. I especially like your mission and Manifesto!! A pre-order is on the way - and this will be the first time I've EVER pre-ordered anything, so that's gotta say something!

[This message has been edited by Mark L (edited 11-07-99).]

[This message has been edited by Mark L (edited 11-07-99).]

[Guest Big Time Software]

Hi Mark,

Wow, started out with a whopper of a post, didn't you Here goes my attempt at answering your questions...

FoW - we recently added a third, intermediate, FoW option. From what I understand units still need to be spotted but you get absolute information from the very first encounter. Personally, Charles and I will never play with this option, and many others won't either, but it was requested and was quite easy to put in. Since it doesn't mess up the realism for those who want it, no problem.

Hit Descriptions - we have changed around some of the feedback for when you hit stuff to give less information when you shouldn't know it.

Target Switching - the TacAI is now less likely to switch targets, but only slightly so.

Muzzle Flash and Rotating - we'll look into it. Haven't ever seen it myself, even after hundreds of shots fired

Blocky Smoke - this is a VRAM limitation. There are a lot of "frames" for the smoke animation, each one taking up precious VRAM. We could make the smoothest smoke you could ever hope to see, but on a 8MB card the texture quality of something else would suffer. When everybody has 32MB cards as the LOW end we can improve all sorts of stuff like this.

Smoke From Above - VRAM issue. Not worth using all that VRAM. Just not enough to go around.

Smoke "Bubbles" - hehe... that was the FIRST style of smoke we had, and it looked too artificial. Also, it has a noticable hit on the frame rate since it is animating polygons where as a billboard simply is replacing a texture. So we would save VRAM but hit the hardware hard, and probably not look that good in any case.

There, I think I got them all Thanks for your support!

Steve

[Mark L]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wow, started out with a whopper of a post, didn't you<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hehe - now that I've got all that out, hopefully they'll be more brief in the future! Thanks a bunch, too, for actually taking the time to read through it all and addressing my questions!

I certainly won't use other than the full FoW setting either - the foggier the better, IMHO. But only to a certain point tho - in some cases, ya gotta have some compensation for the limitations of the medium (computer). I also like accurate flight sims, but in almost all cases, with the "full realism" option, it's virtually impossible to visually see the bad guys at realistic ranges. The same would be true for CM, so the ability to enlarge the unit depictions is welcome.

Thanks, too for the explanation of smoke. I can accept it, and I think I can get used to it as it is now. I wouldn't be surprised tho if some folks don't understand, when they see the final product. Unfortunate, but that's what the eye-candy crowd has come to expect, and I sometimes succumb to it myself! But CM still has plenty of visual treats anyway. Just today, I was watching a Sherman change targets, and noticed the gun also depress in elevation before firing. Neat!

Mark

[guachi]

"Trench-cam"

I love it! From now on I am gooing to call the level one camera view "trench-cam"

The top down views I call "Goodyear-cam" after the Goodyear blimp. Now I just need names for view level 2, 3, and 4.

Jason

[Neutral Party]

How about squirrel-cam for view 2. As seen by a frightened squirrel from the top of a tree. For view 3 spyug-cam in memory of the dainty european sparrow (as I'm sure you're aware, spyug is Scottish for sparrow) that flits around at medium height looking for nazi helmets upon which to crap. For view 4, what about jabo-cam as seen from the cockpit of a P-51 looking for nazi tanks upon which to crap.

Joe

[Mark L]

Well, I can't take credit for "trench-cam". I picked it off of someone else's post - one of Fionn's maybe?

Jabo-cam... hehe.

Mark