Annual look at the year to come - 2023

[Vacillator]

2 hours ago, Panzerpanic said:

Are we supposed to get the cmfb expansion this year?

I think we were supposed to, I hope that's still the case but in the total absence of any updates it's not looking good.

And with that perfect intro to a big surprise, I'm keeping my fingers crossed all night...

 

[Centurian52]

17 minutes ago, Vacillator said:

I think we were supposed to, I hope that's still the case but in the total absence of any updates it's not looking good.

2023 has been a good year for Steam releases. But I'm starting to think that all those Battle Packs and Modules are more for 2024. Of course there are still two and a half months left in the year, so I'm ready to be proven wrong!

[Vacillator]

6 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

all those Battle Packs and Modules are more for 2024

Yeah maybe. 

We have of course already had @George MC's excellent RT battle pack and subsequent training scenarios. I love it all.  George, can you 'quickly' knock together another BP please ?  I'll pre-order now...

[Ithikial_AU]

14 hours ago, Vacillator said:

I was indeed aware of this.  I can only imagine - I'm working but not pulling 10-12 hour days thankfully (unless you're paid by the hour of course).

I'm not paid by the hour but I'm comfortable. Job is also quite a bit more secure than those type of casual/contract arrangements. Sadly, when you get to my level it's really no longer a 9 - 5 type of job. I also don't get overtime but time off in lieu at a ratio of 1:1 in hours so it's paid back eventually once there's a bit of slack in the work coming through. You aren't working more hours for less pay is what I'm getting at. There have been times where I've been owed effectively two additional weeks off at a point in time on top of annual leave due to overtime.

It's good to get payback after years of career progression but I'd drop it all in a heartbeat if I won lotto and could become a 'full time' wargamer and hobbyist with less cares in the world.  There's quite a few GMT made hex wargames I'd love to set up an play through over the course of many weeks. Would also drive my partner nuts.  

[Alternativeway]

On 1/30/2023 at 9:30 AM, Battlefront.com said:

A belated and very happy New Year wish to all of you!  Hard to imagine soon it will be 23 years since Combat Mission Beyond Overlord made it's commercial debut.  Time is a strange thing.  Anyway... it's time to give you a view of what's to come for the year.

We did pretty well with our 2022 calendar, but we definitely got hung up at the end with one thing that caused a ripple effect.  I'll start with that.

We are moving to get all of our existing CM games released on Steam and Matrix through our partners, Slitherine.  One of the key features for those releases is supporting their excellent PBEM++ system as well as Tournaments.  The coding for these two things has been, er, a little challenging to say the least.  Some of the unique features of Combat Mission created integration problems that were not well understood when we embarked on this journey.  PBEM++ was solved a while ago, but some of the same problems we encountered with that carried over to Tournaments. 

The long story short, we had to rework how Combat Mission handles scoring because Tournaments (correctly) requires tracking progress per turn for ranking, which is something Combat Mission deliberately wasn't coded to do.  We came up with a work around that doesn't interfere with the normal scoring you're all familiar with.  That delayed breakthrough, unfortunately, came too late to hit our previous marketing window and the field was too crowded for us to squeeze in for Christmas.  Therefore, CMBN got bumped until March as part of the ripple effect.  Now back to our regular scheduled program

 

What follows is a fairly high level view of everything we have planned for 2023.  I will provide more detailed information throughout the year as we get nearer to release times.  I'll also try and answer questions here, briefly, over the next few days.

 

2023 Combat Mission Events Of Note

1. Steam/Matrix Releases

Due to the delay of getting CMBN out all subsequent CM games are bumped accordingly as we are going on a 1 "family" per quarter schedule.  The schedule now is:

    CMBN - release set for March 2023

    CMRT - release set for June 2023

    CMFI - release set for September 2023

    CMFB - release set for December 2023 or January 2024

2. New Content for CM2 Games

Battlefront has retained the ability to release new content to you guys when it is ready, not necessarily when we have a Slitherine release scheduled.  This is why you got George's excellent Red Thunder Battle Pack 1 many months ago instead of having to wait many months more for it to be released.  It is also why you got your hands on CM Cold War months before it was out on Steam/Matrix.  Something like that may happen again, depending on when new content is ready to go.  What is that new content?

    CMBN- new Battle Pack

    CMFI - new Battle Pack

    CMFB - expanded to include late war forces, including Commonwealth

    CMCW - move the timeline forward and some other fun stuff

There is also the pretty much completed CMBS Module that is on hold due to the war.  We plan on reevaluating our embargo on the Module sometime soon, though that doesn't mean we'll come out of the discussion with a hard release date.

3.  Upgrade 5

There was talk last year of an Engine 5 Upgrade designed to improve game performance free of charge.  This is still planned, but it did get caught up in the PBEM/Tournament development headaches.  Ripple effect, again.

4.  CM2 Professional Update

Things are going very well on this front, however as of April 2023 we will pause major CM2 Professional work in order to concentrate on commercial efforts for the rest of the year.  We are currently working on one last project that is due in March, after that it's all commercial work.  Well, at least on the development side of things. 

5.  Patches!

Lastly, patches are in the works for CMBS, CMSF2, and CMCW to fix some bugs and add the latest PBEM/Tournament features.  Yes, that means Slitherine will soon be hosting Tournaments for all three games.  Honestly, I don't know what the exact schedule is, but we should know soon.

 

And there you have it

Steve

Man, we hope you add some more features, fix some issues and improve the game and also hope you add DLC on CMCW soon, I still support your game series and still looking forward.


so, wish you the best of luck.

[Bulletpoint]

13 hours ago, Panzerpanic said:

Are we supposed to get the cmfb expansion this year?

No, that was last year.

[Grey_Fox]

12 hours ago, Vergeltungswaffe said:

I suspect all the steam stuff has been an enormous drag on what their productivity would have been otherwise.

Battle packs and campaigns are created by volunteers, not BFC staff who would have been working on any steam integration.

It's a whole lot better to automatically get patches than to know you have to periodically search for a notification on a forum or website in case the game has been updated or a new expansion is available.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Grey_Fox

[Bearstronaut]

15 hours ago, Vacillator said:

Yeah maybe. 

We have of course already had @George MC's excellent RT battle pack and subsequent training scenarios. I love it all.  George, can you 'quickly' knock together another BP please ?  I'll pre-order now...

@Mr.X is also working on his own CMRT battle-pack of several campaigns. I think he is shooting for a release of before Christmas.

[kohlenklau]

From my point of view you have these "official" BFC endorsed battle packs that are integrated into the DRM with a license key and such and make a small bit of money for BFC to do whatever. The guys who make them do a top quality job and have the BFC template briefings and I guess the proper playability in all 3 modes (H2H, vs axis AI and vs allied AI). These guys do it out of pride and loyalty to BFC and I guess do not get a sliver of the profits. I have no idea. None of my business.

In my 2 cent opinion, I think BFCElvis is the only real productive member of the BFC team. He is on top of so much and can be on the Golf course and handle an issue with somebody. I THINK he is the guy who mails/mailed the old hardcopy CD-ROMS and booklets. I think. Steve is 24/7 manning the Ukraine Thread working on his PhD thesis for post-war exploitation and sales of BFC training products such as "CM Pro" or whatever it is called. Charles works 60 hours a week according to Steve. Maybe we'll see the fruits of Charles's efforts at some point. Picture in picture drone video? Flares? Jack in the box turret explosions? You got me. I do sincerely wish BFC the best of success. 

I am obviously disgruntled to some degree because BFC doesn't do what I personally want. That is life. I moved on and try to extract the maximum joy out of the game.

 

[Vacillator]

1 hour ago, Bearstronaut said:

@Mr.X is also working on his own CMRT battle-pack of several campaigns. I think he is shooting for a release of before Christmas.

That's a very good point, he is and it looks great (and what little I've tested is indeed great):

In his case of course he and his BP are totally independent from BFC at this point in time, so I imagine the BP will be a download from Bootie's repository rather than a purchase from BFC.  I wish him the very best for such a great effort!

EDIT:  Frank has just made the above a little out of date:

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Vacillator

[kohlenklau]

Another comment on official BFC battle packs...

For whatever reason, it seems they routinely pile the entire battle pack on a single guy. This started with the CMBN battle pack with Jon Sowden. Then the GeorgeMC battle pack for CMRT and now the future CMBN battle pack by Ithikial.

I am not a big battle pack fan, not bashing them, did they all have to be done by the same guy? Maybe they had to. I don't know.

This seems inefficient in a way. Maybe in some circumstances they should/could have their "stable" of BFC approved scenario writers all or some of them kick in a scenario and get it out quicker. Right?

CMFI battle pack is dead quiet. Maybe nobody wants to do it or they backed out? Mentioned by Steve under an assumption or what? I don't know.

[CarlXII]

Don't you guys worry ...BFC have repeatedly praised themself for being better then many other gamecompanies when it comes to providing updates and communications...

On 10/17/2023 at 3:50 PM, Vacillator said:

INow who can I ask about the other BPs ? @BFCElvis?

 

 

 

On 10/17/2023 at 3:54 PM, BFCElvis said:

Yes.

What more could you possibly ask for...

[JoMac]

Well, and whatever ends up happening...Just give me Update 5 and CMFB CW Forces, then BN, FI, RT, FB will be complete.

Yes, Scenario packs, etc are nice, but not as necessary as the above.

Then work on the WWII Middle/Early years, which I don't think BF will do unless they come out with CMx3.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

6 hours ago, Grey_Fox said:

Battle packs and campaigns are created by volunteers, not BFC staff who would have been working on any steam integration.

It's a whole lot better to automatically get patches than to know you have to periodically search for a notification on a forum or website in case the game has been updated or a new expansion is available.

Well aware of your first sentence, but I was just saying that what BFC has time for affects everything going forward, not just BP's and campaigns.

As to your second sentence, my post didn't bash Steam in any way.

I have Steam, but I would never put CM on it as I don't think it's better to have it automatically patched.

[BFCElvis]

55 minutes ago, CarlXII said:

.........BFC have repeatedly praised themself for being better then many other gamecompanies when it comes to providing updates and communications...

Quotes or it never happened.

[Vacillator]

16 minutes ago, BFCElvis said:

Quotes or it never happened.

The closest quote I could find in 10 seconds of searching was this:

2 hours ago, kohlenklau said:

I think BFCElvis is the only real productive member of the BFC team

Just joking John - but Phil is right, you do a great job.

[CarlXII]

28 minutes ago, BFCElvis said:

Quotes or it never happened.

I have no intrest in scanning though these forums to find quotes that are years old...This one may not be the best one but it is one that is somewhat to the point and fairly recent...

On 2/7/2023 at 9:33 PM, Battlefront.com said:

 

Sometimes it's quite frustrating for me as well.  Sometimes there's answers to your questions that I can't share with you for one reason or another.  Very often because it's not the right time to have a discussion (like what features are going to be in X release that is still 8 months away), sometimes it's because it's too complicated to explain in a useful way.

In the end we're more transparent with you guys than most game companies, in part because you have a direct line to the decision makers.  Try that with a AAA title   But it's still imperfect and subjected to the usual issues of technical people trying to have a conversation with non-technical people.

Steve

 

[BFCElvis]

2 hours ago, CarlXII said:

I have no intrest in scanning though these forums to find quotes that are years old...This one may not be the best one but it is one that is somewhat to the point and fairly recent...

 

Ah. You're referring to somefink different than I thought you were. I thought you were referring to things like release dates. Battlefront, since way before I was an employee, has always been a "it will be released when it's finished" company. Bristling at giving release estimates. Even more so now that Slitherine's marketing department does so much with Steam. A good example is the CMFI release on Steam recently. Unlike other releases they wanted to announce it's Steam release live during their big annual wargaming stream. So, even though I knew the exact date for that, they wanted to make the announcement. 

Do we interact about the nuts and bolts more than most other game makers? I don't know. I'd defer to Steve's quote above on that because my experience is kinda limited to just Battlefront. So, I have no point of comparison. There has never been another game, for me, that I cared enough about to follow the developers and notice what kind of interaction they have. You, and probably everyone who sees this post, likely have far more experience with that kind of thing than me. My sample size is : 1. 

[Phantom Captain]

5 hours ago, Vacillator said:

That's a very good point, he is and it looks great (and what little I've tested is indeed great):

In his case of course he and his BP are totally independent from BFC at this point in time, so I imagine the BP will be a download from Bootie's repository rather than a purchase from BFC.  I wish him the very best for such a great effort!

EDIT:  Frank has just made the above a little out of date:

 

I've been testing Tiger Trail for at least 9 months now?  I think it's been even longer in that I tested some scenarios for one of his other corresponding campaigns also?  I can whole-heartedly tell you all that...IT'S GOOD.  I'm appreciative that @Mr.X has not put a lot of pressure on me and that I think we both want to make sure that these scenarios work, and are FUN!  I'm hurrying along as fast as I can.

I am thoroughly in the camp of you all WILL NOT be disappointed.  

[Vacillator]

17 minutes ago, Phantom Captain said:

I'm appreciative that @Mr.X has not put a lot of pressure on me

Same here, I have been embarrassingly slow in testing but have not been made to feel embarrassed.

[Lethaface]

 

On 10/18/2023 at 9:14 PM, BFCElvis said:

Ah. You're referring to somefink different than I thought you were. I thought you were referring to things like release dates. Battlefront, since way before I was an employee, has always been a "it will be released when it's finished" company. Bristling at giving release estimates. Even more so now that Slitherine's marketing department does so much with Steam. A good example is the CMFI release on Steam recently. Unlike other releases they wanted to announce it's Steam release live during their big annual wargaming stream. So, even though I knew the exact date for that, they wanted to make the announcement. 

Do we interact about the nuts and bolts more than most other game makers? I don't know. I'd defer to Steve's quote above on that because my experience is kinda limited to just Battlefront. So, I have no point of comparison. There has never been another game, for me, that I cared enough about to follow the developers and notice what kind of interaction they have. You, and probably everyone who sees this post, likely have far more experience with that kind of thing than me. My sample size is : 1. 

I guess it depends on the beholder. I have never made a study or analysis about this subject (nor will I ever) but I'd say it is pretty rare to read about why certain decision, positive or negative, have been made in 'plain text' right from the decision maker. Usually there's some layers of PR people (window) dressing such communication. 

Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on what communication styles people prefer.

I personally subscribe to the 'no news is good news' adagium and think empty updates or window dressing are a waste of (my) time. But other people obviously differ.

In the end it is what it is, everything can theoretically be improved upon but energy can only spend once so choices have to be made.

[Vacillator]

7 hours ago, Lethaface said:

I personally subscribe to the 'no news is good news' adagium and think empty updates or window dressing are a waste of (my) time. But other people obviously differ.

I have the view that my chirpings on a forum will not alter in any way what BFC (and/or others) will choose to do or be able to do, but at the same time I'm quite interested in updates and news on what is or might be coming along the tracks.  Hence the occasional chirp, but never a complaint.

[SonsofUltramar]

On 10/18/2023 at 6:55 AM, kohlenklau said:

Steve is 24/7 manning the Ukraine Thread

 

Like many of us, I have been here since CMBO demo days, under various forum names as I have lost access to old email addresses in the early/mid 2000's. CM has been a part of my life, off and on, since CMBO - much like ASL since the 80's.

I am very curious to see what our New Years bone will look like for 2024. I am very unsure what the future of content for CM looks like. While I think all of us would love to see a CMx3 series of games, I dont know if that is even under consideration from BFC.

Ill be honest, it is disheartening to have 100's of posts from Steve on the Ukraine thread, and one or two posts a month about the actual game. Thats not a rub on you Steve - I have a business to run as well, and need free time somewhere to balance my life.

I want CM to succeed - and I am very happy to see the team up with Slitherine, and for CM to be on Steam, opening it up to many more new players.

But, outside of expansions made by the community, what is the future of CM?

Rooting for you guys. 

Chad

[Lethaface]

On 10/20/2023 at 10:13 PM, Vacillator said:

I have the view that my chirpings on a forum will not alter in any way what BFC (and/or others) will choose to do or be able to do, but at the same time I'm quite interested in updates and news on what is or might be coming along the tracks.  Hence the occasional chirp, but never a complaint.

Well people have all right to complain if they feel it is warranted and I didn't mean to say liking updates is wrong or whatever. Just thought to chime in to paint the picture not everyone has the same Comms preferences.

Although I also like bones, but preferably meaty bones

[Lethaface]

22 hours ago, SonsofUltramar said:

Like many of us, I have been here since CMBO demo days, under various forum names as I have lost access to old email addresses in the early/mid 2000's. CM has been a part of my life, off and on, since CMBO - much like ASL since the 80's.

I am very curious to see what our New Years bone will look like for 2024. I am very unsure what the future of content for CM looks like. While I think all of us would love to see a CMx3 series of games, I dont know if that is even under consideration from BFC.

Ill be honest, it is disheartening to have 100's of posts from Steve on the Ukraine thread, and one or two posts a month about the actual game. Thats not a rub on you Steve - I have a business to run as well, and need free time somewhere to balance my life.

I want CM to succeed - and I am very happy to see the team up with Slitherine, and for CM to be on Steam, opening it up to many more new players.

But, outside of expansions made by the community, what is the future of CM?

Rooting for you guys. 

Chad

I guess the Ukraine thread investments will eventually pay out in the form of a new installment where that information has been processed into an improved simulation. Although it could also just be a hobby