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Exciting news about Battlefront and Slitherine


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40 minutes ago, Hapless said:

Of course I could only think of one question. Kinda wanting the Professional version now though.

Same...

38 minutes ago, ChrisND said:

That was me. :D Steve was narrating, I was playing.

Thank goodness for that! Its a pet peeve of mine when game developers use less than skilled YouTubers to show off a new game. Glad it was you behind the controls!

 

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10 minutes ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

I'll critique Chris's play once I get a chance to watch it myself.  ;) 

 

Don't be too harsh. :o I was purposely courting casualties, both for time's sake and to show some defensive systems. But CM being CM, it didn't really work out this playthrough. The last rehearsal I lost two Bradleys... I'm expecting my court martial any day now.

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1 minute ago, ChrisND said:

Don't be too harsh. :o I was purposely courting casualties, both for time's sake and to show some defensive systems. But CM being CM, it didn't really work out this playthrough. The last rehearsal I lost two Bradleys... I'm expecting my court martial any day now.

Don't worry Chris, I know you are a skillful player, hell you took our AAR game to the very last minute, what a roller-coaster that one was... so I won't really be giving you a critique, I know these sorts of demos are not the best way to display skill and finesse.

Bil

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1 hour ago, akd said:

Yeah, I think full video becomes available when the stream ends.

Here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/707289746

Neat video. Thanks!

I will say, though, that if they can't get shadows to look better than that shimmery, blobby mess we see in this presentation -- which is exactly how they look on my PCs, regardless of video card brand -- they should just turn them off altogether. They're trying to attract customers, right?

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1 hour ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

I'll critique Chris's play once I get a chance to watch it myself.  ;) 

1 hour ago, ChrisND said:

Don't be too harsh. :o I was purposely courting casualties, both for time's sake and to show some defensive systems. But CM being CM, it didn't really work out this playthrough. The last rehearsal I lost two Bradleys... I'm expecting my court martial any day now.

Only teasing fellas.....TBH, as I said elsewhere (or maybe earlier), I'd love to see a house BfC team take on the 'pros', using strict C2 rules and as close to peer forces as possible.....I suspect you guys would wipe the floor with them, to begin with at least (although I also suspect things might change once they've learned the game's subtleties). 

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Just checked out the twich video. Nice presentation Steve and Chris. Would have liked to hear some show off of the games sounds with arty in the beginning though to give a taste of that immersive quality of the game for new players. I predict SO many new players finding the game for the first time on Steam! I hope the demos will be available there too. If a person can get a taste without having to commit I think it will grab even more people like it did me 20yrs ago.  The game has been around for over 20 yrs, and it's amazing CM is just scraping the surface to it's most realized potential. So excited for Battlefront with these latest developments!

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2 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Only teasing fellas.....TBH, as I said elsewhere (or maybe earlier), I'd love to see a house BfC team take on the 'pros', using strict C2 rules and as close to peer forces as possible.....I suspect you guys would wipe the floor with them, to begin with at least (although I also suspect things might change once they've learned the game's subtleties). 

In the CMBS BETA AAR I was actually going up against a professional soldier.. my opponent was a US Army Lt. Colonel (Armor).  ;)  Professional soldiers are my favorite opponents actually... I seek them out.

Re: the presentation... damn fine job @ChrisND and @Battlefront.com , I especially liked Steve's play-by-play analysis  :) ... I hope it brings in a ton of new CM players but also more Government customers.  Good luck guys.

Bil

Edited by Bil Hardenberger
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Watching the presentation what struck me is how much of CM is taken for granted by longtime players. Tracking individual bullet trajectories? Sure, ain't nothin' special! But when you see the sim explained in detail to total novices you start to appreciate what you've got. Yeh, you're right, individual bullet trajectories is really super-cool!

Edited by MikeyD
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Just wanted to throw in my congratulations as well. Been around here with you guys since 2000 - what a ride it has been. Hope this opens up a nice new wave of CM players!

Plan on buying a new Steam key just to support BFC on the new platform. Will leave a nice detailed review for those new to the system as well - as good, detailed reviews are key for wargrames.

Again, congrats to all the old hands at BFC.

Chad

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Thanks!  Excepting the 2 hours Chris and I spent consulting the Google Oracles about various audio problems we had syncing up our streams and an early hiccup in the presentation where my stream window seized up, it was fun.

As for taking this stuff or granted, I definitely am guilty of that.  Chris and I played through this little scenario roughly 3 times to get a feel for it and each time Chris did about the same thing with completely different results.  I personally helped prepare his court marshal paperwork for the 1st game :D

One of the things I loved most was, oddly enough, the smoke screen he put down.  Not only did it (mostly) work from a tactical standpoint (er, like real smoke!), it was so pretty drifting off to the side and through the forest, creating a bit more confusion with the firefight that was going on there.  Turns out Chris spent quite a bit of time getting the wind direction and speed right to show off how weather settings can subtly affect the battlefield.

Steve

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The video was under the Slitherine banner using a (rather catchy) title that I had never heard before: CM: Professional. I assume they weren't fishing the gaming market (they would have previewed CMSF2 if the had). Instead they're letting the professional world know there's a new military training gunslinger in town, everything you need to do basic tactical training & testing on a budget. Which makes me wonder what would happen if... pick a random country... Senegal expresses an interest in building a Senegal army tactical sim? There are 193 nations in the world, 195 if you include the Papal See and Palestine. Maybe Liechtenstein is writing up a letter of intent at this very moment!

The video website listed a live CMSF video on Friday, I believe.

Edited by MikeyD
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2 hours ago, Vinnart said:

I hope the demos will be available there too. If a person can get a taste without having to commit I think it will grab even more people like it did me 20yrs ago.

Definitely agree. Having a demo on Steam will go a long way to alleviate some potential flak from new and old players alike. I know there are a handful of people who used to play CM but stopped after having issues with upgrades and installs that are planning on making a return with CM on Steam. I suspect many of them will be put off by the initial price, but a demo will go a long way to mitigating that issue. 

40 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

The video website listed a live CMSF video on Friday, I believe.

Looking forward to watching that! There was a lot of great info in today's stream. It certainly sounds like things are going very well for BFC and are only going to improve, which is great news for the rest of us. Nice to hear something is going well despite the rest of the world going to hell. 

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1 minute ago, Lethaface said:

Nice presentation, good to see CM in the spotlight! :)

And +1 for hoping that the 'full game' replay will eventually come to 'commercial' CM as well!

From a technical point of view, one assumes this would basically boil down to saving each PBEM turn, and stringing these together. Given how large PBEM turns get, that quickly builds up to a ton of disk space. It's certainly within reasonable bounds given how cheap storage is now, but I'm not surprised that this hasn't been an option before.

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On 8/11/2020 at 10:41 PM, Bil Hardenberger said:

It can be viewed at this link

You can also find it on YouTube if you search for Combat Mission and filter the results for uploads this month. It's called Introduction to Combat Mission Shock Force II - Connecting Wargaming Confetence.

I wonder why they played Black Sea on a conference about Shock Force II?

During the problems with the screen in the beginning of the video Steve missed to talk about the second slide and during the demo session he never explained why the smoke from destroyed vehicles always go straight up even though the dust and smoke from granades and fosfor shells are affected by the direction of the wind.

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35 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

I wonder why they played Black Sea on a conference about Shock Force II?

Shock Force 2 is being shown off on Friday. This stream was about the features of CM: Professional. 
 

43 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

demo session he never explained why the smoke from destroyed vehicles always go straight up even though the dust and smoke from granades and fosfor shells are affected by the direction of the wind.

No idea what this is about, but smoke from destroyed vehicles goes in the same direction as smoke when the wind is strong enough. Literally saw this last night. 

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Thanks @akd for wading into Twitch and coming up with a direct link to Steve & @ChrisND demo session. Very interesting to hear Steve's voiceover (it's good to put a sound to the written word!). As usual, when you listen to a creator talking about their work, there's nuance and a smattering of detail that you don't get from text alone. So I learnt a couple things about CMx2 that I didn't before. I think every fan of these games should watch that demo.

What was the feedback and questions from the professional audience like? It is a crowd that, speaking in very general and broad terms, is not very fond of high fidelity simulators, and prefer manual wargames as they don't need to jump a big technical barrier in order to tweak the models.

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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On 8/12/2020 at 3:59 AM, MikeyD said:

Watching the presentation what struck me is how much of CM is taken for granted by longtime players. Tracking individual bullet trajectories? Sure, ain't nothin' special! But when you see the sim explained in detail to total novices you start to appreciate what you've got. Yeh, you're right, individual bullet trajectories is really super-cool!

Mike, it's now the year 2020...

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7 hours ago, domfluff said:

That's still uncommon though. You still occasionally get people asking on this forum if tanks have hitpoints or whatever. Does ARMA 3 still have hitpoints for tanks? I can't remember.

It depends on what you are playing. Its uncommon in infantry focused games because frankly hitpoints can get you "good enough". If you are playing a dedicated tank game though they generally don't use hitpoints or use them in a non-standard way. Warthunder, for example, doesn't use hitpoints but a vehicle isn't dead until all the crew are killed. That still allows you to mission kill them. Arma itself uses a hybrid hitpoint system, but its more complex than it used to be. Again though infantry focused games across the board use hitpoints for vehicles in some fashion and I cannot think of an infantry first game that doesn't.

Once you move into games that are air/armor focused you see hitpoint systems drop away quite quickly though. SABOW, Men Of War, IL-2(?), Graviteam Tactics all stay away from hitpoints. But obviously they are not infantry focused FPS.


------

As far as individual bullet trajectories. Those are now as common as dirt with nearly all the major shooters moving to them. Their complexity differs so you have Battlefield V with a over emphasized system and general lack of penetration while in Rising Storm 2 you can wall bang all day.

Edited by com-intern
Arma
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On 8/4/2020 at 8:06 PM, bomberburn said:

Congrats! Sounds like great news.

Are there plans to move the other Combat Mission games over to steam such as Fortress Italy , Normandy, Red Thunder ect.?

Didn't see a response to this.  Is there a possibility the older titles will eventually find their way to Steam?

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