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Beyond Gustav Line


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13 hours ago, Erwin said:

Love the little details - like the pipe. 

Yeah, we tend to forget how many pipe smokers there were during WW II. The movies frequently show soldiers lighting up a cigarette but almost never show pipes being smoked, whereas period photos where the men have the leisure to smoke frequently are smoking pipes rather than cigarettes.

Michael

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Chris started to talk about it in the last Xmas bone, one year ago. A few months later, Chris returned with news when he finished to upload the TO&E for 10th Mountain Division. Since that moment no more news. As you said, there are to much posibilities that Gothic Line come early in 2017, but this is not oficial. I'd wait for more news in next Christmas bone, we only need to wait two weeks more ;D

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  • 2 weeks later...
7 hours ago, lordhedgwich said:

the  lack of news is disturbing

Why disturbing? Do you imagine that the BFC team is goofing off somewhere, maybe gone on a skiing vacation to Maine? Oh wait, Steve at least is already in Maine and probably has a belly full of snow already. Of course, another possibility is that development has hit some insoluble snag and they are working desperately to keep it from falling completely apart. On the other hand, maybe they are just busy trying to get the next release ready for distribution and given their limited number of personnel, consider that their time is better spent doing that than holding our hands and reassuring us that something groovy is indeed in the offing. I guess we'll find out...sooner or later.

Michael

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I don't think that "disturbing" is the word I would be using, but from how things have worked out in the past, I was half-expecting some sort of news coming out regarding the Beyond Gustav Line module by September or so. Steve made some public comment on 4.0 about that time, but in a not very notorious fashion. So let's settle for "uncharacteristic", or at least "curious".

I just hope everyone is in good health and shape. Personal mishaps can happen - I just learnt that Fury Software dev, Hubert, is out of action due to pneumonia, leaving a just released game without support for a couple months. Of course, these are private matters which may or not be disclosed at the leisure of the persons being involved. 

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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2 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

So let's settle for "uncharacteristic", or at least "curious".

Well, that is the kind of thing that can happen when you try to second guess another party, especially when that is someone that you do not know well personally. People can be unpredictable. We would like the businesses we deal with not to be so, but BFC is kind of an unusual business, maybe closer akin to an art studio that turns out occasional masterpieces at irregular intervals.

Michael

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30 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

Well, that is the kind of thing that can happen when you try to second guess another party, especially when that is someone that you do not know well personally. People can be unpredictable. We would like the businesses we deal with not to be so, but BFC is kind of an unusual business, maybe closer akin to an art studio that turns out occasional masterpieces at irregular intervals.

Michael

It is called Folk Psychology and follows from our ability to work at an intuitive level with what some call Theory of Mind. We do this all the time: even if as you say, people is ultimately unpredictable, we try hard to make sense out of what we see them doing (or not doing). It is part of what makes us "people" as opposed to being just "things". If you want, I can even introduce you to a formal, mathematical model to define precisely what "curious", "uncharacteristic" or "surprising" is.

Since BFC is made of human beings, it is a bit hard not to use these two tools in my everyday life to empathise and make sense of what is going on. And I can't help to worry about human beings, especially if I care about them.

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Not sure what's going on in their minds, but I can't understand why they don't try to capitalize on impulse-buying behaviour right before Xmas.  The Steam sale will I'm sure see me make a few ill-advised purchases on games I'll never play...as it does every year ;)

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A while back, maybe back in the late summer 2016 I was posting my timeline and showed it with predicted CMFI Module #2 for early 2017 and did feel I was being a bit negative but I guess it might now be actually optimistic!

Timeline2a_zpsks3fam46.jpg

My personal bull****e hypothesis here: I can only scratch my head and figure this whole BFC business is a back burner side show for the key guys. They gotta have other jobs taking up their time and then add in the family requirements and probably burn-out and disinterest. To me this CM stuff must suck the hind tit for them. Like those old rock stars on the road singing the same damn hits from 30 years ago? But without the female groupies, royalties and great drugs! We are gonna have to just be thankful for whatever they manage to fart out for us.

EDIT: fart out? Ok, I retract that. This CM project management CANNOT be easy. You got the new 3D models to get from Casio Lima studio plus artwork plus any mods by in-house guys to existing art plus the scenario and campaign authors and then the beta testers plus any new voice files or whatever needed. Plus all this is probably on the no deadline basis to lower the costs. Good luck to all the folks involved especially if dealing with real life crap like cancer, substance abuse, divorce, failing marriage, new Harley, new girlfriend half your age, erectile dysfunction, college tuition costs for the kids, aging parents need a nursing home, etc etc f-ing etc. 

Edited by kohlenklau
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9 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

My personal bull****e hypothesis here: I can only scratch my head and figure this whole BFC business is a back burner side show for the key guys. They gotta have other jobs taking up their time and then add in the family requirements and probably burn-out and disinterest. To me this CM stuff must suck the hind tit for them. Like those old rock stars on the road singing the same damn hits from 30 years ago? But without the female groupies, royalties and great drugs! We are gonna have to just be thankful for whatever they manage to fart scrape together the time to make and release it out for us.

Edited by BletchleyGeek
This forum reply interface seems to behave a bit wonkily with the latest version of Chrome
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Sorry for answering in two different posts, it seems that the forum software gets a bit confused when you edit quoted text.

----

Phil, I do think you're pretty much right on the money. I would be surprised that CMFB reached an audience needing 4-digits to write it down... CMBS probably was on the higher side of that. With that kind of money I just cannot see how:

  • You can pay two full time experienced C++ programmers. A quick look for job postings around Boston, Massachussets gives away over 500 postings within 25 miles of the city, paying between 85,000 to 150,000 USD per year before tax. And that for jobs that include very entry level stuff such as  from developing/maintaining low level web services, and would be a very poor match for the experience and very diverse expertise I can tell a programmer like Charles has.
  • You pay an artist
  • You pay a monthly decent salary to Steve, who acts community manager cum CEO cum webmaster cum producer...
  • You pay a monthly decent salary to Chris community manager cum producer
  • You pay the ongoing costs of hosting the website, forum and bandwidth associated with fulfilling orders served 
  • You pay software licenses renewal fees (i.e. InstallShield) and ongoing service subscriptions (i.e. source code repository hosting, file sharing). Lucky thing that now both the Microsoft and Mac development environments cost 0$.
  • and so on...

unless people are doing part time, or just working for the sake of the arts. 

To be honest, what we should be doing is opening an online jar tip for these guys to say thanks for the patches we appreciate your work very much. If I get a bank account for Battlefront, I am happy to wire some money right away.

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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1 hour ago, DougPhresh said:

One of these days a grog / wargame publisher will have a good experience with Steam and the whole industry will change.

I am not sure it is precisely a silver bullet.  Or at least the picture is a bit muddled.

I have been keeping tabs on how war games have been doing on Steam for some time on http://steamspy.com, specifically titles like:

Take the figures listed there with a grain of salt, they're unreliable, but sure they're more accurate than most recent exit polls and it gives you the variance of the poll :-) Also, keep in mind that:

  • Publishers like Slitherine offer free of charge Steam keys, so many of the 'owners' listed actually bought the game via the publisher's store.
  • All of the above, with the exception of GG's WITE, Mius Front, IL2 and the follow up to Ultimate General, have gone through very deep discounts (as much as 70% discount) since release (for instance you could get Operation Star with all the DLC for about 15$ a year ago or so).
  • Not all the titles cater for the same public, but you can see that the people that like certain games tend to like very much as well certain other games with similar themes (that's why IL-2 is in there, it is a hardcore combat sim set on a theatre not very popular in the US/UK).
  • Some communities have lots of baby boomers who seem to be very reluctant from using Steam at all.
  • Price points seem to be fairly irrelevant for the audience, and other aspects such as theme/theater, continuing support, dlc/expansions released at a steady pace etc. seem to be better predictors for # "owners".
  • The "peak concurrent players" statistic gives you a very good idea of how much people are actively playing the game and probably posting on its forums etc. 

So I don't think it is a matter of being on Steam or not, but rather a matter of knowing how to play in that market place without going broke. Note that these market places are designed to make money for their owners (Valve, in this case). It is not so much a dog's breakfast as the Apple App Store, but I can see people getting badly burnt.

 

 

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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Absolutely no knowledge of the inner workings of BF, but I assume this time around having to handle a CM Upgrade for a five families of games takes a bit of manpower and coffee. :P Not to mention the content modules that have at least been mentioned in previous bones being in development at the same time.

In short let them work and oogle over screenshots/bones when they are released.

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4 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

To be honest, what we should be doing is opening an online jar tip for these guys to say thanks for the patches we appreciate your work very much. If I get a bank account for Battlefront, I am happy to wire some money right away.

If money is the problem, that I'm all for crowd funding and willing to participate. On the other hand BF relieved a splendid game this year, so it's not as if nothing has happened lately. Let's just await the Christmas bone. If there's a problem BF must communicate with us and perhaps we can help. 

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1 hour ago, chocice said:

+1 to that, i honestly think there could be a problem.

I'm not so sure. This is the way BF communicates, always have been so. We know they are working on upgrades for each CM game, which must be a lot of work. We're just getting impatient and irritable as always in this time of the year. Within a week we know more and everybody will be full of joy and happiness again. :D

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1 hour ago, chocice said:

+1 to that, i honestly think there could be a problem.

I honestly think you are all panicking. Anyway, if BFC is seriously struggling with a problem, it is one that they will have to sort out in their own way in their own time. While recognizing your good intentions, they might also resent any implication that they are not up to the job of solving their own problems. If there is anything they need for us to do, I am confident that they will inform us and there is no point in getting worked up about it before that happens. Relax, play the game and have a nice Xmas.

Michael

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