Annual look at the year to come - 2023

[kohlenklau]

16 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

She was likely worried about the opportunity cost.

I should have explained it BFC style. We would go direct to intercourse and "work backwards" to just a kiss.

[PEB14]

2 hours ago, Kevin2k said:

You write "as a NEW game should". Some years ago it was the other way around. Released April 2016. Vehicle wise Final Blitzkrieg was the most bang for the buck. Mainly because it included so many German vehicles. Like the German vehicles from CMBN base + Commonwealth + Market Garden (Flak vehicles) then maybe some from CMRT like the Hetzer. There are still two  CMFB exclusives: Flammpanzer38t and Sturmtiger.

I meant NEW vehicles, not sure my post was clear enough.

In CMFB you pretty much find the same vehicles like in the other WW2 games more or less combined, plus the Flammpanzer38t and Sturmtiger, as you point out. That's not a lot of new stuff, vehicle-wise...

And you are right pointing out that the situation today is not the same as at the time of the initial release,.

As of today, CMFB is like a dead end: nothing but the basic game. No battle pack, no module, not even CW forces (at least not yet) included. For a new player it's by far the least attractive of the CM WW2 games (except if you NEED to play Ardennes, obviously...).

I now that some players here love CMFB very much because of the quality of the maps and of the optimized engines. But these are not the most appealing things for a new player (at least, not for me!). Especially as you get excellent maps in the other games!

[Vacillator]

56 minutes ago, PEB14 said:

except if you NEED to play Ardennes, obviously

I thought I'd add that there are some great battles (not just Ardennes) and of course maps, and campaigns in CMFB.  For me, I've spent more time in CMFB than CMFI, but that's likely just a matter of who wants to play what.

On the flip side I've spent more time by far in CMRT and CMBN, but I don't regret any purchases.  Money well spent.

[PEB14]

1 hour ago, Vacillator said:

I thought I'd add that there are some great battles (not just Ardennes) and of course maps, and campaigns in CMFB.  For me, I've spent more time in CMFB than CMFI, but that's likely just a matter of who wants to play what.

On the flip side I've spent more time by far in CMRT and CMBN, but I don't regret any purchases.  Money well spent.

Don't get me wrong: I'll certainly buy it at some point (but certainly not before the CW module is packaged as a bundle). It's just that it lacks the taste of novelty added by any other game. And now, what next?

[kohlenklau]

Our theme song for poor old Steve!

 

[Combatintman]

16 hours ago, wadepm said:

We don't need them, we can make that up ourselves.  What we can't do is make the models...

Of course you can - how's C2 going to work then?

 

[nox_plague]

@Battlefront.com 

On 1/30/2023 at 3:14 PM, Battlefront.com said:

Therefore, someone who knew what they are talking about would conclude that Combat Mission was properly coded to work with the OpenGL API as it was at the time the core game engine was developed.

The one exception was an AMD driver that introduced two bugs into standard OpenGL API calls.  We had a customer high up in the tech side of AMD and he was able to track down and identify the bugs, but it still took AMD more than a year to release a fix.  Until then we did, indeed, have an optional hack around the API that people could opt into.  It didn't work as smoothly, but it did work.  After AMD fixed the problems we removed the option since it was no longer necessary and it would likely stop working at some point anyway.

The problem developers face is not so much that they wrote code that used calls incorrectly, but that new calls have been introduced to access hardware that previously did not exist.  Optimally, existing calls are looped into the new hardware and therefore gain a benefit without the developer needing to do anything.  Unfortunately, that's not always possible to do.  It certainly isn't possible to do when novel features are added that have no prior API equivalent.

Sometimes improvements can be implemented relatively easy, though it usually still takes a fair amount of time.  As an example we added support for bump maps and shaders, two features that IIRC weren't available when we the engine was developed.  At the very least they weren't deemed viable due to framerate issues.

Ah, I was wondering about those AMD issues.  I had the actual issues where the game rendered improperly with my PC Radeon 6700XT.  For my latest desktop I went with an Nvidia RTX just because I knew it would have better OpenGL support. And the load times are so much faster.

I appreciate your dedication to multi-platform support over the years. I've done some tests on other forum threads comparing the load times on MacOS with a Radeon and then with Windows (Bootcamp), same machine, and seen much longer game load times when on Windows, my guess is that Apple just did a much better job with their proprietary OpenGL drivers for the Radeon GPU.  My Mac is still the best at loading CM and it plays pretty darn well for a laptop. I've read on the forums that CM continues to perform well on Apple Silicon and their custom GPUs even though they've deprecated OpenGL support.  To me this example of how well CM performs on a much less powerful portable Mac compared with my beefy desktop shows that a lot of the performance fault lies with the GPU vendor driver implementation, something you have zero control over.

Eventually you'll probably want to look into Vulkan and MoltenVK (Vulkan to Metal translation layer) since they are the Kronos Group successor to OpenGL.  I understand the opportunity costs make it difficult to invest in such an expensive engine rewrite/re-architecture when OpenGL continues to run.

Regarding the Black Sea expansion - would it be possible to setup a donation campaign or some other form of giving to help show the release is not trying to exploit the ongoing conflict.  I could see a purchase option to add an additional $5-10 dollars to each order to help raise humanitarian aid or some similar way to help bring to market the expansion while being sensitive to the reality.

Anyway thanks for the plan and looking forward to continued Combat Mission updates for years to come.

[Redwolf]

1 hour ago, nox_plague said:

@Battlefront.com 

Ah, I was wondering about those AMD issues.  I had the actual issues where the game rendered improperly with my PC Radeon 6700XT.  For my latest desktop I went with an Nvidia RTX just because I knew it would have better OpenGL support. And the load times are so much faster.

I appreciate your dedication to multi-platform support over the years. I've done some tests on other forum threads comparing the load times on MacOS with a Radeon and then with Windows (Bootcamp), same machine, and seen much longer game load times when on Windows, my guess is that Apple just did a much better job with their proprietary OpenGL drivers for the Radeon GPU.  My Mac is still the best at loading CM and it plays pretty darn well for a laptop. I've read on the forums that CM continues to perform well on Apple Silicon and their custom GPUs even though they've deprecated OpenGL support.  To me this example of how well CM performs on a much less powerful portable Mac compared with my beefy desktop shows that a lot of the performance fault lies with the GPU vendor driver implementation, something you have zero control over.

Eventually you'll probably want to look into Vulkan and MoltenVK (Vulkan to Metal translation layer) since they are the Kronos Group successor to OpenGL.  I understand the opportunity costs make it difficult to invest in such an expensive engine rewrite/re-architecture when OpenGL continues to run.

Regarding the Black Sea expansion - would it be possible to setup a donation campaign or some other form of giving to help show the release is not trying to exploit the ongoing conflict.  I could see a purchase option to add an additional $5-10 dollars to each order to help raise humanitarian aid or some similar way to help bring to market the expansion while being sensitive to the reality.

Anyway thanks for the plan and looking forward to continued Combat Mission updates for years to come.

Or bring your own OpenGL:

 

[Battlefront.com]

On 2/24/2023 at 2:42 AM, PEB14 said:

That is sound. So why not starting backwards and not onwards? Development would be diluted over time if the next game starts with Kursk, then extending back to Stalingrad, and finishing en beauté with the beginning of Barbarossa! Many vehicles and forces required for Kursk are already there, and some of those developped for Kursk would be useful for Stalingrad...

That is what we did for CMFI and it is the only reasonable way to approach the early war period.  The thing is, we had more areas to explore post Normandy so we did both moving forward (1945) and moving backwards (mid 1943)

On 2/24/2023 at 6:36 AM, Bulletpoint said:

But if somebody offered to cover all the costs, wouldn't you be free to do other projects at the same time, while you outsourced the biggest expense, modelling of vehicles and forces, to some external studio?

Or hired in some extra manpower on a temporary contract, using Kohlenklau's powerball money.

If outsourcing or expansion were deemed viable we would have done it a long time ago.  Our conservative nature is both a blessing and a curse.  A curse because it means we put out content much slower than if we were bigger and more aggressive.  Blessing because I doubt we would have gone 20+ years without running ourselves out of business.

As for costs being covered, I again point you to the comments I made about opportunity costs.  All else being equal, we'd still aim for the product with the highest sales potential and lowest development costs, not one with very high development costs and low sales potential.

On 2/24/2023 at 8:39 AM, Redwolf said:

But the question is - don't you have to cover some new area/timeframe? If you already did all the attractive ones you can only do them again with a CMx3 game. As long as it is CMx2 engine v5 you have to move [i]somewhere[/i], no? Is there a 100,000 copy theater left?

Well, obviously 100,000 sales theaters don't exist for us.  If they did, you would be talking with someone else because I'd be retired long ago

The problem with wargames is that there's basically only one big seller... Normandy timeframe.  Everything else lives in its shadow.  We did Normandy first, therefore by definition everything we did after that was always going to sell less.  So the more appropriate question is "are there any sellers that are bigger than what we've already made?"  The answer is no.

What we have left are niche products within a niche market.  We might sell relatively more of one than another, but none will hold a candle to what has already been released.  Therefore, we have to be careful to select titles that have development expenses that are inline with projected sales.  New Base Games, Modules, and Packs all have to be viewed in that way.  In fact we've always done this, however it is more important to do so because the chances of being positively surprised are modest.

Our longstanding strategy of leveraging what we've already invested in is a key part of this.  Making a 1943 Eastern Front game focused on the Summer period is vastly easier to do than Barbarossa.  Making Finnish forces, for example, is even more modest, however sales of that on its own are likely also very modest.  Which means opportunity cost calculations come into play.

It's a complicated situation and it is why there are few companies out there that are deliberately constrained as to what they can develop next.

Steve

[kohlenklau]

16 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Making Finnish forces, for example, is even more modest

I smell pinecones

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, nox_plague said:

@Battlefront.com 

Ah, I was wondering about those AMD issues.  I had the actual issues where the game rendered improperly with my PC Radeon 6700XT.  For my latest desktop I went with an Nvidia RTX just because I knew it would have better OpenGL support. And the load times are so much faster.

I appreciate your dedication to multi-platform support over the years. I've done some tests on other forum threads comparing the load times on MacOS with a Radeon and then with Windows (Bootcamp), same machine, and seen much longer game load times when on Windows, my guess is that Apple just did a much better job with their proprietary OpenGL drivers for the Radeon GPU.  My Mac is still the best at loading CM and it plays pretty darn well for a laptop. I've read on the forums that CM continues to perform well on Apple Silicon and their custom GPUs even though they've deprecated OpenGL support.  To me this example of how well CM performs on a much less powerful portable Mac compared with my beefy desktop shows that a lot of the performance fault lies with the GPU vendor driver implementation, something you have zero control over.

Yup, and this is a standard problem for gamers since the old days.  Person A has a vastly powerful computer based on specs, but Person B gets better performance with the same game and card because Person A's computer was made with a slower sub component that isn't mentioned in the specs.  I still remember the old days of customers buying cheap POS from places like Staples (US based office supply mega store) and looking only at chip type and speed when making comparisons. 

Then on top of that you have the difference in tech between Apple and Intel based systems, then some differences within Intel as well.  And that's before even looking at the cards!  I remember one time when there was a card (Radeon?  I forget) with something like Mega 123 Card.  There was also Mega 123x Card.  The "x" denoted a card that was made with a vastly slower chip set and was sold super cheap compared to the other.  Really sleazy marketing tactic that made game developer's lives suck a bit more than they should have.

Oh, and not to mention the silent revisions on hardware to address physical bugs.  We've seen that as well.  "My card sucks!".  Well, turns out yours was made on the Friday before they made a revision.  Sorry chum.

2 hours ago, nox_plague said:

 

Eventually you'll probably want to look into Vulkan and MoltenVK (Vulkan to Metal translation layer) since they are the Kronos Group successor to OpenGL.  I understand the opportunity costs make it difficult to invest in such an expensive engine rewrite/re-architecture when OpenGL continues to run.

We think the most viable avenue is to update our older OpenGL calls to newer ones and rewrite whatever supporting CM routines are necessary to make that viable.  It is definitely more practical than trying to use a third party OpenGL interface or switching support to an entirely different API.

2 hours ago, nox_plague said:

Regarding the Black Sea expansion - would it be possible to setup a donation campaign or some other form of giving to help show the release is not trying to exploit the ongoing conflict.  I could see a purchase option to add an additional $5-10 dollars to each order to help raise humanitarian aid or some similar way to help bring to market the expansion while being sensitive to the reality.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing creates expectations that we might not be able to live up to.  When people put money into something that doesn't happen they tend to be a little sour.  Even if the money isn't charged or is refunded, the conceptual "contract" is problematic from a PR standpoint.

22 minutes ago, Redwolf said:

Or bring your own OpenGL:

 

Thanks for that post.  I never doubted that CM2's compatibility and performance issues have a lot to do with failing OpenGL support, but it is nice to have it confirmed.  Obviously my eyes also picked up on the three letters AMD as well

Steve

[kohlenklau]

On 2/24/2023 at 1:22 PM, Vacillator said:

You have to get these into France 1940 Phil.  Now that won't be easy...

Needs some grey paint and some markings but she moves and fires. AND KILLS FRENCH TANKS!

Edited February 27, 2023 by kohlenklau

[PEB14]

9 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

That is what we did for CMFI and it is the only reasonable way to approach the early war period.  The thing is, we had more areas to explore post Normandy so we did both moving forward (1945) and moving backwards (mid 1943)

(...)

Steve

A ray of hope for the WW2 early war fan club: Steve does indeed recognize there is a "reasonable way" towards early war.

A first step towards the Holy Grail...

Edited February 27, 2023 by PEB14
typo

[markus544]

I'm all in on early war. France 1940 and Finland 1939. All those goofy Russian tanks and those funky Russian caps. Winter War would be cool.

[kohlenklau]

Come on Powerball

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by kohlenklau

[Centurian52]

On 2/18/2023 at 6:50 AM, Erwin said:

It sounds like one scenario... and then any others would be very similar.  A trench is a trench.  And then rest would be hard to traverse mud with huge holes.  There are quite a few strategic or operational WW1 game - at least cardboard games.  That may be a more appropriate scale.

Not to beat a dead horse (I know deep down that CMGW will never happen, so at this point this is just about correcting historical misconceptions), but while life on the front may be boring and monotonous, I doubt actual battles in any period of warfare have ever been that homogeneous (in the pages of history you can probably find two battles somewhere that were practically twins, but I expect that is the exception). There would be considerably more variety than that, even just in the static warfare phase on the Western Front (so not even considering static warfare on the Italian front, Gallipoli, the somewhat more mobile warfare of the Eastern Front, or the mobile phases of the Western Front (and of course different armies with different TO&Es on the Western Front)). So far Hapless has done four videos on WW1 engagements, three of them in the static warfare phase of the Western Front, and each of them has been dramatically different from the others. The simple fact is that a trench is not a trench (well..it is a trench, but it's not the same trench). There is considerable room for variation in the shape of the front line, the distance between the lines, the relative elevation (is the opposing trench on flat ground, the top of a hill, base of a hill, on a reverse slope, is the second line elevated enough to support the first line). Some trenches could be caved in from bombardments, have more or less barbed wire or mines in front of them, they may be parapets instead of trenches (in some places the ground was too hard to dig deep trenches), the placement of bunkers and other hardpoints along the line would vary, there may be defenses in shell holes in front of, behind (in support), or instead of a contiguous trench line. And there are evolving weapons and tactics. Bayonets in 1914/15 give way to grenades as your primary close-combat weapon in 1916, with increasing numbers of rifle-grenades and light machineguns to provide support in the attack. Companies and platoons give way to squads/sections as the primary maneuver element as command responsibilities are filtered down to lower levels, etc...

Remember that trenches were still in use in WW2, it's just that there were new and better ways to break through those trenches. And I don't recall anyone ever complaining that any two attacks on fortified positions in WW2 were all that similar (I personally found CMFI Gustav Line pretty interesting, even though it is specifically focusing on a period of several months of almost WW1 style static warfare in Italy).

Is my point that Battlefront should make a WW1 game? No. I already know that will never happen. My point, as a military history enthusiast first and gamer second, is only that pretty much any period in military history is far more interesting and varied on closer inspection than it may first have appeared, and that includes the periods that have a reputation for being monotonous.

[Centurian52]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:38 AM, Lethaface said:

CM:YK, Middle East '73?

 

While I would absolutely love to have it, I suspect it is way too controversial to even be an option.

[markus544]

4 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

While I would absolutely love to have it, I suspect it is way too controversial to even be an option.

Sagger vs and M-48, M-60 IDF took a beating at first then figured it out. Still would be cool to play around with. As I have said before Centurian Vs T-62 on the Golan, Valley of Tears, IDF out numbered and on the edge of loosing it all. Certainty not fictional. Again, would be cool to play around with for sure.

[wadepm]

On 2/25/2023 at 4:38 AM, Combatintman said:

Of course you can - how's C2 going to work then?

 

Can or can't?  We can adjust existing units to be kind of like the ones we actually need.   I am not a stickler for absolute accuracy... 

[Combatintman]

18 hours ago, wadepm said:

Can or can't?  We can adjust existing units to be kind of like the ones we actually need.   I am not a stickler for absolute accuracy... 

Horses for courses mate - if that's your thing then fine but there's a whole bunch of other folks who play this game because of its attention to detail and accuracy and complain volubly when those standards aren't met.  C2 is one of those important game mechanics that works better and more realistically when you've got the TO&E right.

[Bearstronaut]

On 2/24/2023 at 12:02 PM, CarlXII said:

Yeah...where's all the friendly rich guys when you need them. Some are willing to spend 5-10 billion dollars on a soccerteam....How about throwing BFC their fair share ? 

If I won the billion dollar powerball I'd definitely contact Steve about funding a Korean War Combat Mission game.

[kohlenklau]

6 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Horses for courses mate - if that's your thing then fine but there's a whole bunch of other folks who play this game because of its attention to detail and accuracy and complain volubly when those standards aren't met.  C2 is one of those important game mechanics that works better and more realistically when you've got the TO&E right.

I speak for myself only. I respect that aspect of BFC with getting the nitty gritty of TOEs correct by date and such. I do.

But my play style came from once having a low end PC and still having a low end brain and I better enjoy the type of small scenario where the unit has been ravaged and the TOE is no longer intact. So, in the editor you have an HQ and purchase the teams tucked under there and you get your red lines. Like an adhoc force. Not a day 1 of the invasion TOE.

I think there should be room for both types of approaches.

[kohlenklau]

4 minutes ago, Bearstronaut said:

billion dollar powerball

Hey! You better not use my lucky numbers...

j/k

[CarlXII]

1 hour ago, Bearstronaut said:

If I won the billion dollar powerball I'd definitely contact Steve about funding a Korean War Combat Mission game.

Let's keep our fingers crossed ...

[wadepm]

1 hour ago, kohlenklau said:

I speak for myself only. I respect that aspect of BFC with getting the nitty gritty of TOEs correct by date and such. I do.

But my play style came from once having a low end PC and still having a low end brain and I better enjoy the type of small scenario where the unit has been ravaged and the TOE is no longer intact. So, in the editor you have an HQ and purchase the teams tucked under there and you get your red lines. Like an adhoc force. Not a day 1 of the invasion TOE.

I think there should be room for both types of approaches.

This is my approach as well.