Freedom of Creative Design

[Guest Bobb]

From experence in designing scenarios for The Perfect GeneralII, anything that enhanses the variety and opportunity for creative use of the editor is to the good. Real life sees enough exception to the rule to not be excessively exclusive on design options.

One aspect that I have observed enhansing design has been the Long Description that can be attached to each scenario. In it a designer can despence with such items as Victory Points and set another agenda for the player than VPS.

While that game,TPG2,in no way compares directly with CM, and its deficiencies beg minipulation of design elements to make the thing work somewhere in the direction of rationality, it still demonstrates that features of the editor that can be abused for sure, can also be used for legitimate purposes. That is, just because a tool can be used to create unrealistic scenarios, does not keep them from ligitimate use for making superior ones of elegant creativity. This is said in support of generosity in questionable matters that come up in the making of the editor. I would urge that for user designed scenarios, the designer should not be prejudged by restricting his freedom to screw up the thing, let those who play his creations do the judging. It is in facillitating a wider capability of design that users can work towards realizing the full potential of the system.

A main designer of TPGII experessed wonder at the achievements of what was acomplished beyond their visions of what could be done with their editor.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Totally know where you are coming from Bobb. Not to worry, the eiditor will be very flexible. We are confident that people will make scenarios that we never thought possible In general this is a good thing. But if people are using the editor to work around game flaws, well that means we haven't done our jobs. So if enough people feel compelled to work around something using the editor, we will likely want to address the problem so that the hacks will not be needed.

Just remember, that we are using the same tools to build scenarios which will ship with the game. If we find that our creativity is blunted, we will fix the editor BEFORE people get their hands on it. We don't like to be boxed in any more than you do

Steve

[Guest Bobb]

Great to hear the attitude you exude as I expected from previous postings. Work arounds for design problems is one matter; creativity another.

While it is not my bag with me being tagged a "moderate realist" in preferences by a gaming buddy, I have seen some folks get a great bang out of designs that exploit in unrealistic ways the use fo an editor to create puzzle type scenarios. I suspect that this will be difficult in CM given its inherernt realism consisiting of rather exactly modled specific units instead of generic types.

On the Perfect General2 Game Page tucked discretly away among its offerings is a wish list for another version. Too bad we will not see it happen. While that game's devoties will likely remain with their pet, as I probably will, the expanded horizons offered by CM should challange their loyalties. I surely think I can make room

By the way, this whole process you guys are conducting must be unique. I have heard of user participation in improving a marketed product, but not apriori even to the completion of the initial design phase. The popularity of the various SL board games represented seed of inception, but AH's demise liberated CM to fly in this way. To a gamer it has to be breathtaking. Treat people like they have brains and useful capabilities, and they may even demonstrate that they are worthy of such consideration.

The news media and others could use that outlook. Sure we all have voids in our systems, but put together they should cancel out.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Thanks for the thoughts and comments Bobb. We fail to understand why more game companies don't do this sort of design discussion thing as the game develops. Ultimately we are making a game to please a particular audience (some do it for money. Too many in fact!). If we can't please our target audience, then we have failed to live up to our own expectations. "Closet Designs" are very rarely any good. They need to be open, if even to an expanded internal group for feedback. We don't have a "group" inhouse, so we must turn to the open world or risk coming up with a game that nobody is happy with. This is our first time doing this public design process and it will not be our last. Combat Mission is so much better now than it would be had we kept the design to ourselves.

Now, you mentioned making very unrealistic scenarios. You can indeed make them in CM, perhaps even "puzzle" ones. For example, you can make a maze of cliffs, gullies, and other impossible obstacles that would NEVER have formed in real life. You can also pit unrealistic forces up against each other (like Pershings vs. King Tigers). However, as you suspected, everything else in the game will react realistically. Troops will have to shuffle down the gullies and the famous match up that never happened will be carried out as if it is normal to see such vehicles slugging it out. The gamers will ultimately decide if these ahistorical scenarios are any fun. I suspect some of them will be.

Steve

[Brian Rock]

Good point about ahistorical scenarios. They can be fun. Sometimes.

I think it's a good idea to make them *possible* for people who want them. I tend not to like them, especially the puzzle type. Still, if someone wants to slap down their $40 bucks to play CM that way (C&C/CM).

It's one thing to have a clear design concept, it's another to force that vision on someone else. I don't see why it should be hard-coded to make weird tweaking impossible. If I pay the money, let me play it however I like.

For example, I like the way Civ II put the cheats in the menu. If you want to cheat, fine - it's your game. If not, that's OK too, for the same reason. Mind you, I'm not sure I'd like the *cheats* to be quite so easily accessed in a two-player game, but if people really want to play Tigers vs Pershings, let 'em.

[Guest Lokesa]

I guess it probably won't be neccesarry but CC3 had a nice attachment that would verify databases when playing head to head. If someone was using modified files it would report this to the other player.

[Guest Big Time Software]

CM doesn't need this as all databases are closed off to the end user. There are MANY reasons for us doing it, most of which are technical. We don't have spreadsheet like data tables, so there is no easy way to edit numbers. Game parameter values are generally "fuzzy" and are context sensitive to the equations they are used in. Nobody, not even us, would understand these values out of context of the code. All unit stuff (like armor slope and speeds) are done in realworld values, so there isn't anything to tweak here.

Our job is to get the data right ourselves. If gamers find errors or problems, then we should fix it for EVERYBODY. The last thing we want is the chaos that different data brings with it. "Dude, I just knocked out 2 KTs at 570m using nothing but a Garand!" "Were you using Bill's squad hack, he thinks there is an error in it" "No, I was using Fritz' German vehicle hack" "Oh, you should really try the one Mike did last week instead". Yuck!

Steve

[Guest Lokesa]

I like your attitude

your example of the different patches strikes me as funny. Me last year on the internet gaming zone for CC2, "Anyone here using Das Fuch's Eastern Front patch?" "Anyone using the Real Para Patch?" "Anyone playing with the FO patch?" etc, etc. It's unfortunate that the state of wargaming is such that I really don't expect realism or at least good unit representation out of the box and have to resort to user made patches.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Thanks for the real world example The end result is that NOBODY knows what is going on when people discuss the game. One person states that he did some amazing thing, but with which database? Could be that he did something really lame, or something SUPER cool, depending on what database he used. And it also reflects quite poorly on the game developer that people have to do this.x Unfortunately, many of the hacks out there for games are written BY hacks, which only makes the game MORE messed up than it was before! We don't want it to happen to CM, so we intened on getting it as right as possible up front, then make corrections using our best judgement. Between us and our hand picked testers, this shouldn't be a problem. We doubt any single person is going to do a better job than us. If that single person finds something wrong, *we* want to check it out first so that it doesn't "polute" the gaming experience if wrong.

Steve

[Fionn]

Aye, with Steel Panthers there are so many MOB hacks and vehicle hacks floating around it is almost impossible to play the game any more.

Even with the original version everyone has different weights for all the options which they feel give the best "realism" for the game. Sometimes I just feel like asking why the damned designers didn't make a realistic game in the first place so that all this tweaking could be left out..

Ah well... I think that as long as a willingness to issue patches for errors is evidenced then I don't want to see player-made hacks. Most of the player-made modifications have huge errors in them. I sure as hell can't hexedit or anything even though I might be able to put a good hack out of CC3 to fix a few things.

I am of the opinion that most of the "correctors" out there don't know enough history etc to be able to get their hacking correct and as such end up imbalancing the game even more.

Still, in some cases even a flawed hack can't be worse than the errors in the game as released (naming no names ).