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Why so little community content?


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6 hours ago, SlowMotion said:

If you make something playable against the AI, AI plans take a long time to get right. 
Tons of play testing. That's one big reason I think.

This.  ;)

At least one major scenario, utilising the full capabilities of Engine 4 (& then some) is imminent (courtesy of the mighty @MOS:96B2P).....Testing for that project started on January 30th (for me at least).  :o

I've got several projects in the works (including a 2p only one that's very near completion, but which will need thorough testing before release), however all of them are set on large re-jigged CM:SF1 maps which featured fake rivers or seas.....They now have real rivers & seas, but the process of making those changes affects the entire topography of the map (fake rivers and seas can have multiple elevations, real ones can't).  It's amazing how much time it can take just to restore the general lie of the land (on maps of over 6Km2), let alone adding in all the new terrain types and flavour objects.

 

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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I know this has been mentioned and discussed 58-ish times before but a little reminder every now and then nerver hurts 😉

As mentioned above...mapdesign is usually a rather lenthy process. Especially with larger, huge maps. Not only with regards to the elevation but also 'the painting of the terrain'

I agree that the time-commitment to produce a high quality map is probably one of the reasons for the limited number of scenarios being made. There are ways to improve this though. As mentioned before...

 

Please BFC give us a copy, rotate, paste feature to the map designer. Combine this with a way to import/export (load/save) designated mapsections.

 

If we as the mapdesigners could load something like 20, 30 or more different farm complexes,  simular number of small villages, river/stream sections with appropiate vegitation, different kinds of forrest sections, urban sections etc, etc and rotate these as desired, place them on the map and if neccesary edit them further ones in place.

The time require to design those larger maps would be seriuosly reduced.

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It appears the volume of user-made content is in inverse proportion to the quality of the QB engine. 3rd party scenarios were at their height when the QB generator and maps were at their most basic. If you merely want an infantry engagement in wooded terrain next to a river there's no need to make it yourself.

There's also the issue, I've noticed, of newbie scenario makers being 'overly ambitious'. For their first map they tend to choose metro Antwerp or something similar and soon become discouraged. Map making is fun & easy as long as you don't assign yourself impossible tasks. A field, a straight road, a cluster of houses, a barn, a fence. Nothing could be easier! Let downtown Antwerp with AI orders for multiple battalions be the 15th scenario you make, not your first.

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32 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Let downtown Antwerp with AI orders for multiple battalions be the 15th scenario you make, not your first.

That is rather good advice 😁

But i would not be supprised if many new scenario designers does not upload their very first, and simple, scenarios...but rather keep them for them selfs.

Ones they do decide to take the plunge and upload their first scenario they want it to be 'GOOD' 😊

Obviously it does not need to be a full Antwerp city fight...but they do want it to be...good.

I think that it is pretty natural for most of us to want to do as good a jobb as possible if we are doing something for others...

The bar has been moved up...when it comes to thelevel of quality we expect to see in a CM scenario. The community have been 'spoiled' by many good, very good scenarios being released lately...

Even a newbie designer feel some preasure to deliver a scenario of decent quality i'm guessing...

Therefore many scenarios might not get finnished...they get stuck or 'burnt out' or simply feel that the end result is not of high enough quality...

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Another thing that a belive might discurrage many new scenario designers is the lack of feedback !

They may have spent months designing their first scenario they intend to upload..

They upload it and wait with exitement to read the first comments...and they get absolutelly ZERO feedback on it...no comments what so ever...maybe one or two thank you at best.

This could make even the best of us loose intrest in designing any more...

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13 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:

I have started to wonder where are all the community created scenarios and campaigns? We have two scenarios at CMMODS IV and a couple more here at the forums.

CMSF I had so much user-created content. I thought a lot more would have been modernized and ported to CMSF II at this  point. 

You're a member of the community ….

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Quote

Another thing that a belive might discurrage many new scenario designers is the lack of feedback

Lack of feedback can be a positive thing at times. It means you can throw together any scenario you want just for fun and not need to worry about circling history grogs coming down on you like a ton of bricks for failing to be historically faithful in all details. I recently posted an alpha scenario for (redacted) on the beta board and told the guys to NOT give me feedback! Just have fun with it! They gave me feedback anyway ^_^

 

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Can't speak for everyone, nor do I consider myself a proper content creator, but for me its a matter of carving out the time to sit down and finish a project. Between life being what it is, and other competing interests, sometimes making a new mod or whatever just isn't at the top of the priority list. 

That said though, I think others here are right when they say that there is already a ton of community made content out there for SF1 that works fine in SF2. Another aspect is that SF2 has so much content inherently that many are probably still playing through it all. Add on to that some are likely waiting for the revamped Canadian/Dutch/British campaigns.

Give it time, I'm sure there will be more community made content coming out in the future. Some of it may already be in the works!

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A lot of the community's past biggest content creators got gobbled-up by the BFC Beta Borg collective. They're still creating content but now its for the hive. You see their work in new titles. So in a weird way, being too good at creating 3rd party content will reduce the amount of 3rd party content available as scenario makers get kidnapped and enslaved by BFC.

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On a more serious note...

I think that feedback is MORE wanted...MOORE needed when it comes to newbie designers...

Speaking for myself atleast...i would wanna know what the players thought was good about the scenario and witch parts could do with some more work/improvements.

Such comments i would find very useful for my next project and inspire me to do more work...

No comments at all i would simply find 'depressing' after many, many hours of work...

A more seasoned designer have a better understanding of how the gameengine/editor works and what is required of a 'good' scenario and might not neccesarely need that many pointers...

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11 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

Please BFC give us a copy, rotate, paste feature to the map designer. Combine this with a way to import/export (load/save) designated mapsections.

The copy, rotate and paste feature would be a blessing for certain. Always wanted to 'paste' my Carpiquet map to the southern edge of Rocko's 'Canadian Corridor' map. :P One big map from Juno Beach to Carpiquet Airfield.

The latter part of your statement can sort of half be done already. Save a copy of the master map and then trim down the edges from the map size bar. Not perfect but you can cut out slices of existing work to expand in another direction or build a scenario on top of.

Edit: Oh and spend the time on developing AI plans at least for one side. The scenarios that got downloaded the most over at CMMODS back when it had a download counter were those that allowed for SP play.

Edited by Ithikial_AU
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Just my two cents, but I think maybe the bar has been set too high as far as scenarios are concerned. You have got to admire how some scenario designers these days are pushing the envelope and thinking outside the box and creating some super polished innovative scenarios or campaigns. But perhaps it is intimidating too, you could even say over engineered in a way and we have forgotten how simple a user made scenario can be.

I remember fondly the days of CM1 and its plethora of user made scenarios, probably in part with the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia. And granted not all of them were super good. But I have a feeling there is a level of complexity and polish that potential designers might feel they have to meet which is perhaps  both superfluous and disheartening for them.

Basically all you need is a map, AI in defensive positions and a bunch of units for the human player to toy with. Then slap together a short briefing and you're done. You don't even need AI plans most of the time really in a simple straightforward attack defense battle. There is no need for the defender to counter attack or pull back or do anything super fancy most of the time.

Similarly all the eye candy brought by having a tactical map, slick looking victory objectives in the briefing using official graphics that require a basic knowledge of photoshop etc, all these things are not needed and shouldn't stop anyone in case they don't want to go the extra mile.

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I've lost count of the number of times (over the past decade) that I made a decent scenario out of something I just threw together. You could call it 'no pressure scenario making'. My scenario won't be graded as homework by anyone, it isn't a submission for a PhD in military history. Its just me chillin' after supper when there nothing to watch on TV. Some landmarks get thrown down on a map, some terrain curves, some building clusters and water and roads, then drop in some opposing forces. If the map feels too small make it bigger, if it feels too big make it smaller. Go into the AI, make one platoon scamper into nearby trees, make another scamper behind some buildings. There, you've got a working scenario! Anything you do beyond that is gravy.

Edited by MikeyD
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1 hour ago, sburke said:

My pixeltruppen with their unit patches would beg to differ.

I'll take that as a compliment 😁

6 hours ago, MikeyD said:

A lot of the community's past biggest content creators got gobbled-up by the BFC Beta Borg collective. They're still creating content but now its for the hive. You see their work in new titles. So in a weird way, being too good at creating 3rd party content will reduce the amount of 3rd party content available as scenario makers get kidnapped and enslaved by BFC.

I think this is a large part of the reason why CMFB has relatively few uniform mods compared to other WWII titles. I know that some of the uniform mod makers in the past have been contracted by BFC to do the uniform models of newer CM games, which is in large part why the uniforms in CMFB and CMSF2 (apologies if I've forgotten one) look so spectacular on release. 

RE: Scenario Making
I've just never been very good at putting a map together. I can never seem to get the building placement right, or the map to look real and lived in, and I always have issues translating the scale from the 2D map you place everything on to the 3D game you actually play in. That's probably the single biggest reason I haven't gotten into scenario creation, though I fully acknowledge that this is an issue on my end, not anything to do with the scenario editor. 

Again though I'll point out that the scenario's and campaigns in CMFB are in my humble opinion some of the best stock scenarios/campaigns that have shipped with a CM title. The reworked campaigns and scenario's that came with CMSF2 continued that strong tradition, and CMBS also had great stock scenarios/campaigns that were immensely bolstered by the release of the mission pack. 

In general, I think that there is a lot higher quality stuff shipping with the stock games the past few years, so community members feel less of a need to create their own standard scenarios. Instead, we are starting to get scenario's that stretch the limits and capabilities of the CMx engine, like what @MOS:96B2P is doing. If the stock quality remains going forward (which I fully expect it to) I think unique scenario designs will be more common as well. 

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14 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

That is rather good advice 😁

But i would not be supprised if many new scenario designers does not upload their very first, and simple, scenarios...but rather keep them for them selfs.

Ones they do decide to take the plunge and upload their first scenario they want it to be 'GOOD' 😊

Obviously it does not need to be a full Antwerp city fight...but they do want it to be...good.

I think that it is pretty natural for most of us to want to do as good a jobb as possible if we are doing something for others...

The bar has been moved up...when it comes to thelevel of quality we expect to see in a CM scenario. The community have been 'spoiled' by many good, very good scenarios being released lately...

Even a newbie designer feel some preasure to deliver a scenario of decent quality i'm guessing...

Therefore many scenarios might not get finnished...they get stuck or 'burnt out' or simply feel that the end result is not of high enough quality...

I am anxious to do something good indeed. That is why my first scenario is so long to exit. I have changed my CMSF1 map to include bridge, water. I am playing with AI triggers and play testing the AI plans right now. This is a Red vs Red CMSF2 scenario. But, yes, I would like to do something good and I am anxious about your feedbacks.

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Well I think I´d pulled everything from the V4 toolbox for my Enter Germany mission published at SDIII. Not much of that is actually be seen as most of it is more under the hood and used mainly by the attacking AI. I´d received very little feedback on that, obviously cause the mission concept hasn´t been grasped by players really much. It´s sort of a puzzle solving mission, not to everyones liking obviouisly. Also the player is initially on the loosing side, which might cause some frustations at first 10 turns or so. While this might be the case, it´s actually the chosen style of "loosing" for setting the stage for a later powerfull counterattack. There´s lots more under the hood, but also few things visible, like detailed micro contouring the map and partial modding of map objects and tiles. Maybe bits to much for a rather small mission like that, but I like it that way. 

http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battles-for-normandy/cmbn-v4-mg-vp-you-enter-germany-introduction/

V3 and follow up V4 did lots of ruining my planned Westwall series of missions. Mainly due to the AI´s possession of fighting the pillboxes before anything else which IMO is some the fubar´ed features in CMX2. Another big issue is mortars and arty killing pillbox occupants with ease, with lots of direct penetrating kills. Near misses also are ridiculously effective. Well.... half a dozen WIP missions put on hold was the result. 

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