2022, the Year In Preview!

[Artkin]

I totally agree, with a couple shading techniques the current game looks perfectly good. Of course it could be better, but there are times where you can get near photorealistic shots. Ironically it often looks best with lots of smoke, one of the most simple things in CM. 

Pushing more performance out of the game however it is done will probably lead to better load times. So I look forward to Engine 5. I also agree focus should be on quality of life improvements. Some dont bother me as much, like a convoy command, but certainly it would be a step in the right direction having it implemented. The CMFB master maps come to mind. 

 

6 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

With an improved map editor in CM3 map design will hopefully be more streamlined 

I'm hoping for at the least an external tool that can (at least) vaguely translate maps to whatever new format. If they can pull that off then CMx3 will be a hard hitter from the start.

2 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

- Some way to improve, speed up, map design.

I feel as if the hardest part of map design is doing the suburb work. You dont want things to look the same but you know you have to place a few hundred houses. I think a random suburb generation tool would save a lot of time, at least for me. I get tol focused and try to hyper simulate everyones house by staring through their gates on google maps. Sorry Donestk residents. 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Artkin

[Glubokii Boy]

One feature i really would like in a future mapeditor...one wich i belive could be added even to CM2 would be the ability to import (and export)  map-templates when working on a map...

Designing a village map today for example with a number of detailed farms located around it takes more or less days for an average map designer.

Imagine if we could have a 'library' of templates that could easily be loaded into the editor while working on the map....A few templates with a village crossroad to chose from...a few templates with simple roads going through it....a few templates with different church buildings perhaps complete with graveyards etc....a bunch of different farm templates that could be added to the outskirts of the village.....different types of detailed forrest templates...etc, etc...

These templates should be placable, rotateable etc...

Add them to the map and tweak them the way you like...add and remove some of the details...

Designing a detailed village map with surrounding farms and forrests would be possible pretty much within an hour...

We here...the CM community could design and share these templetes for others to use...Very quickly we would have an impressive library of these templates i belive....making mapdesign very, very much faster...

 

 

 

[Artkin]

Thats a fantastic idea. Simple and can be extremely powerful.

It would help when combining maps too. 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Artkin

[LukeFF]

On 8/24/2022 at 9:52 AM, Artkin said:

Singleplayer games die. Every time.

That's a good laugh. 

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

That's a good laugh. 

Good for you, I can't remember the last time I read you were involved in a pbem. Maybe single player games are perfect for you considering your consistent trouble with socializing.

Very niche single player games exist, sure. But that's a small fraction of the market. I'm talking games that profit and are talked about. CM is on the cusp of this, and if they had a good multiplayer solution then I can see this game booming way past where we currently are.

[chuckdyke]

I don't think the 120 mm HE from the Abrams is correctly modelled. He had time to say: "Au!" 

[chuckdyke]

12 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

Designing a village map today for example with a number of detailed farms located around it takes more or less days for an average map designer.

Can't we do this already when we rename a map? Also there are master maps which we can cut into smaller maps. An improvement is for example when we can use WW 2 maps in Black Sea or vice versa. 

[Simcoe]

19 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Which features do you want, is the question. I don't know what is CM2.5 or CM3. Some people want better graphics I really think the present graphics are functional. I need bigger maps and easier management at battalion level. 

Totally agree. Reducing the tedium and increasing performance should be the main goals. Maybe a couple extra features. All graphics does is slow down development time.

• If you have a unit that will be meeting resistance, you should be able to set a speed, plot your waypoints and that unit should be able to fight anything it spots and keep going when it loses the spot. 
• Trained spotters should be able to control multiple batteries. None of this adjust one battery and adjust all bull****.
• You should be able to call artillery anywhere but you have a substantial penalty to accuracy if the observer has no line of sight.
• Counter battery should be a factor. If you fire your artillery for too long there is a chance it will be taken out by the enemy.
• You should be able to set a massive area for aircraft to go guns free.
• Battalion level engagements should run at 60fps

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Simcoe said:

Trained spotters should be able to control multiple batteries. None of this adjust one battery and adjust all bull****.

Should reflect reality. I don't know what is involved in being an FO. There is a difference between Black Sea and Red Thunder. 

 

1 hour ago, Simcoe said:

You should be able to set a massive area for aircraft to go guns free.

Word War 2 should be like Red Thunder, no communications, just friendly aircraft in the sky. 

 

1 hour ago, Simcoe said:

Counter battery should be a factor. If you fire your artillery for too long there is a chance it will be taken out by the enemy.

Agreed.

[Glubokii Boy]

3 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Can't we do this already when we rename a map? Also there are master maps which we can cut into smaller maps. An improvement is for example when we can use WW 2 maps in Black Sea or vice versa. 

No we can not.

Today you can load a map into the editor and tweak/resize that map as you please.  What you can not do is to load two different maps (or sections of maps) at the same time and combine them into a larger one. 

Currently you can only work on ONE map at the time.

When i say i would like to be able to import premade templates into the map i'm not talking about loading entire maps but rather smaller sections of a map with specific terrainfeatures on them...maybe 10X10 actionsquares in size or 15X5 actionsquares and paste these sections onto the map i'm currently working on.

For example...

I want to design a map with a number of farms, a chuch and a small village.

Today you have to design each farm your self individually...placing maybe 6-8 buildings, fences, some trees and various flavoured objects. With a template system you would simply look in your template library and choose from 10-15 different farm templates (or however many you might have stored in the library). With one click you place that entire farm on YOUR map...rotate it as desired and finally make any tweaks you might feel is needed....add a building or two...remove a building if desired.

Do the same with the next farm.

Instead of designing a nice looking church with walls and a graveyard your self simply look in you library and chose from a number of church templates and click that into place on YOUR map.

Instead of designing an entire village all by your self...look in your library and chosse from a number of different village templates and combine them together on your map as you like....add a few extra buildings and other features as needed at various locations.

Your map will be finished 10 times faster then today...

When designing 100 % historically accurate maps this template feature might not be all that useful but when designing fictional or semi historical maps i think a feature like this would be most useful.

 

 

 

 

 

[chuckdyke]

2 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

When designing 100 % historically accurate maps this template feature might not be all that useful but when designing fictional or semi historical maps i think a feature like this would be most useful.

 

Even a library of historical topographic maps would be great. To be able to do your editing in 3 D view woud be great. 

[Artkin]

Yeah man there are a lot of options nowadays. Instant topograph mapping? Oh man I hope that's accessible stuff. 

[Vacillator]

7 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:

What you can not do is to load two different maps (or sections of maps) at the same time and combine them into a larger one.

@Artkin I may have misunderstood your Stalingrad map work, but I thought you were adding multiple maps together?  Okay maybe that's not two maps loaded at the same time, but it looked like it acheived the 'combine them into a larger one' part?

[Artkin]

@Vacillator Kinda sorta until you have two sides attacking each other from two maps at the same time. The desired result would be to have a battle in the center of those two maps, or even better, both combined.

This is one small problem to hosting an operational level game. Not sure how to solve this one yet

[Vacillator]

1 minute ago, Artkin said:

Kinda sorta

Ah okay I get ya.  I did slightly misunderstand, must try to read things more carefully .

[Artkin]

4 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

Ah okay I get ya.  I did slightly misunderstand, must try to read things more carefully .

Its all good, and if we had an easy operational layer solution available to this community I would take it. I did acquire a tool called "Geccos". It's a pretty nifty campaign builder that you can create icons and place them on a .jpg. There is no game, only this tool. It's really just a digital version of having paper icons on a paper map and moving them around with your finger. 

With this tool we are a step closer to having a fluid, dynamic, multi-map operational game formatted and easily understood/usable. 

Unfortunately this isn't a perfect solution, since a GM would be required to manage the operational gameboard, or both sides would have to know of each others troop positions. If you are tight with the enemy team you could base all your troop positions on trust. I would prefer a solution like Vassal, but I would probably need a hand with that. I think I wasted a few hours tinkering in the program so I want to wait for a pro to look over my work first. 

If there was a GM, they would have to manage 3 boards in geccos. 2 boards each showing only their own team's troop locations, and a third board which has both teams troop locations. The third board would belong to the GM only. 

We are close. I am building the troops for the Stalingrad board. Now I want to add another map, Oosterbeek. 

[Vacillator]

Good luck in your efforts my friend .

[LukeFF]

20 hours ago, Artkin said:

Good for you, I can't remember the last time I read you were involved in a pbem. Maybe single player games are perfect for you considering your consistent trouble with socializing.

Very niche single player games exist, sure. But that's a small fraction of the market. I'm talking games that profit and are talked about. CM is on the cusp of this, and if they had a good multiplayer solution then I can see this game booming way past where we currently are.

Lol okay. You've heard of games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, right? They're designed around single player game play. 

I'm not going to dignify the rest of your childish response with an answer. 

[Artkin]

51 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

Lol okay. You've heard of games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, right? They're designed around single player game play. 

I'm not going to dignify the rest of your childish response with an answer. 

A simulator is a game now? 

Right, you're going to give me nothing. Nothing new.

[Vkhani12345]

I feel they accidentally typed "2022" instead of "2023" for the release date

[massi]

5 hours ago, Vkhani12345 said:

I feel they accidentally typed "2022" instead of "2023" for the release date

We hope this septembre cm battle for normandy Will get released 

[kohlenklau]

On 8/27/2022 at 12:47 PM, Artkin said:

I would prefer a solution like Vassal, but I would probably need a hand with that. I think I wasted a few hours tinkering in the program so I want to wait for a pro to look over my work first. 

Did you see nathangun's vassal project? It looked really cool and he has a lot of experience from over at The Few Good Men website gamer group where folks step up and run a show as the GM. nathangun has this new project he did and though  I THINK it was for 2 people, it didn't need a 3rd person as GM. Let me find the link to the BFC forum thread and post it here in a jiffy. standby

EDIT: here it is...I hope somehow this helps you do what you want. If not, ooops, sorry.

https://community.battlefront.com/topic/140876-i-have-a-campaign-idea-and-i-dont-have-to-gm-it/#comment-1900860

Edited September 9, 2022 by kohlenklau

[Anxel Torrente]

On 8/26/2022 at 6:28 PM, Glubokii Boy said:

Imagine if we could have a 'library' of templates that could easily be loaded into the editor while working on the map....

That will never happen. Too much work for Battlefront to do for some gamers when what they really are interested in is the work with military contracts. That is where the big bucks for them lie.

[Vkhani12345]

16 hours ago, massi said:

We hope this septembre cm battle for normandy Will get released 

Guess we won't really know until it actually releases, Was hoping for more communication on this though

[BFCElvis]

18 hours ago, massi said:

We hope this septembre cm battle for normandy Will get released 

I's still possible. The scoring for the tournament system was the last piece that we needed to get right and that looks like it's been taken care of. So, from there it's a matter of double checking that nothing else is broken and having Slitherine set up the release on their schedule. 

The Red Thunder Pack on the other hand............ We're not waiting for the Steam release for that and it is very close to being released. Not very very but very.