Big announcement... Battlefront is now Slitherine

[Lieutenant Ash]

On 8/31/2024 at 10:31 PM, laurent 22 said:

Glad to read that CM is not changing its formula and continues to optimize its assets.

CM's strength is to offer us a one-minute cinema sequence of which we are the director. With the improvement of the engine, we have gone from imagination with playmobiles, to sound and visual immersion with CMx2. With Unity we will be in contemplation. I hope you will not get tired of remaking games on the 2nd GM, because I am waiting for them as a priority.

Even if CMx2 is still far from current standards, your 3D and 2D teams do an excellent job with the constraints of the engine. The visual aspect has been consistent since the beginning, their work is full of tricks bypassing the limits of the engine. It is often these small teams of developers bridled by constraints who are the most creative and competent. 

I have a good image of the company Slitherine/Matrix. I sometimes followed their "tea time" conference when they talked about CM. I had the opportunity to exchange with them during the Shock Force invitational tournament, and their technical support was responsive when I encountered a problem because of their servers. Only one criticism : visually, I don't like their website at all, I preferred the BF.C website. Slitherine/Matrix takes Steam as its model, but it works for Steam because the platform sells a very wide range of genres, while Slitherine specializes in story games. A user interface with a warmer color palette,  would be more in line with the universe of the games, but especially not these electric greens, rather olive green for example. For the pages presenting the DLC, they should use the logos that you had already created for each module. On the positive side, the illustrations for CM games are cool, especially those of FI, RT and FB.

My wish list for CMx3:

• Vehicle wrecks. A little more than the impact hole, and the lowered gun, especially when the vehicle is in a big hole hit by a bomb of several kilos. Without going as far as gore, I don't know how you envision the visual effect of the flamethrower on the infantry, but sometimes a little abstraction is useful, so don't change anything
• A better modeling of the soldier: the bent arms are too long. When the soldier runs, his elbows go down almost to the thighs, except the elbows are at the waist level.
• A little more ragdoll.
• A better animation for soldiers in motion with the "hunt" command.
• A better dispersion of soldiers in motion.
• Black soldiers for Buffalo Division.
• Special effects for shells falling in water or snow.
• Special effects for bullet impacts on the ground, on walls. Results of shots on the facades of buildings in real time. Windows breaking, for example.
• A special effect for fires. An improvement of the smoke special effect, put an end to the smoke columns.
• Traces of the passage of an armored vehicle in the snow, sand, muddy ground, fields and tall grass.
• Animation of walls, barriers, wooden objects, and trees crushed by a heavy tank.
• Sidewalks in cities, stairs. More abandoned civilian vehicles, trucks, trams, trains in stations. Emblematic buildings of Paris (Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, quays) and Berlin (Reishtag, the Brandenburg Gate, Gendarmenmarkt square). More visual elements to represent the interior of factories, I am of course thinking of Stalingrad. Better modeling of cities destroyed by artillery. Women civilians.
• Dressing the interior of houses with a few objects, tables, wardrobes, beds.
• Real trenches and foxholes.
• Shots stopped by friendly vehicles. Thus, soldiers can protect themselves behind the wrecks of enemy vehicles.
• The animated sequence of a WWII tank firing should logically follow the steps: the turret turns its gun towards its target, the crew calculates the distances, aims, then fires. The animation sequence in CM reverses everything: the tank sees the target but doesn't turn the turret, despite everything the crew seems to calculate the target, aim at it without aligning the target with cannon, then as soon as the turret turns its cannon towards the target, the shot is almost instantaneous.
• A view a little closer to the ground to better appreciate the reliefs, and thus be closer to the soldiers, would be welcome. This is why it is necessary to remain attentive to the details of the 3D/2D model of the soldier, because the player becomes attached to him, experiencing a phenomenon specific to cinema and any story: identification with the character/hero. I really appreciate historical scenarios with the real names of the officers as in the last Battlepack of BN.

CM will become a must-have for a wider audience !

What he said, plus:

Vehicle cook off animations, flames shooting out of hatches,T72s tossing their turrets across the map etc.

Tracks and bogy wheels blown off when a tank hits a mine (or is damaged by shellfire).

Buildings progressively damaged when targeted, the damage happening in the area it is hit ,partial building collapse occuring in that area eventually.

More specialised building types, large factories and rail sheds, platforms for rail stations, large industrial chimnies, power pylons, radio towers etc,etc.

Basements for buildings, covered trenches with fighting positions, the ability for antitank gun crews to leave their gun to take cover from artillery and then reman it afterwards.

I could go on but I won't !

[hank24]

Concernig the wishes for CM3 expressed here - I think many people would be extremely happy to see a good 'Follow the Road' and/or 'Follow other Vehicle' algorithm.

[PEB14]

This thread is turining into CM3 whishlist...

Guys, there's a nice dedicated topic here:

 

[CarlXII]

The step from CM1 to CM2 was almost a complete remake of the game...I'm hoping for something simular with CM3...not just a bunch of tweaks to the current CM2 engine !

When it comes to things like AI programing, map design, scoring and objectives etc i hope BFC will ditch all of it and start from scratch. CM2 was 'good enough' when it was released a long time ago but not so much today.

Throw it all away...Perhaps with the exception of the unit roster selection screen in the editor...I kind of like that 'reversed selection'...

 

Edited September 2 by CarlXII

[sttp]

3 hours ago, CarlXII said:

CM2 was 'good enough' when it was released a long time ago but not so much today.

Throw it all away...Perhaps with the exception of the unit roster selection screen in the editor...I kind of like that 'reversed selection'...

Maybe...?? But the other side of that is something I've wondered about for years: as a thought experiment, just suppose that Battlefront did nothing more than upgrade the graphics / models / animations, but kept all the same logic and same feature set... okay, yeah, with maybe with some tweaks to the TacAI.

That would still be a vast improvement over CM2, one that many players would pay a lot of money for.

Of course BF will do more than that, thankfully, but the point is that they don't need to fix what's not broken, and given how successful and unique CM2 has been, there's a ton that can be rightfully classified as "not broken." At a minimum. So I'm not sure that starting everything over from scratch is necessary.

Edited September 2 by sttp

[CarlXII]

25 minutes ago, sttp said:

So I'm not sure that starting everything over from scratch is necessary.

Let me first say that i still considder CM2 to be the best of its class...It's not broken...But it is getting old.

I belive that it would be a missed oppertunity to spend huge amounts of time to improve CM2 compared to developing a brand new game engine. 

CM3 games should remaine 'best in class' not only for a year or two but rather for ten times that lenth...I seriously doubt that will be possible with an updated CM2...

Good graphics might be nice as you mentioned but graphics has never been combat missions main selling point. Improving the tactical challange put on the players when playing the game and simplyfing scenario design and flexibilty is far more important than 'good looks' imo.

 

[Redwolf]

19 minutes ago, CarlXII said:

and simplyfing scenario design and flexibilty

Map editor with external interface possibilities so that we don't have to do it with OCR and simulated clicks anymore. XML format for the map is one possibility.

[weapon2010]

so am confused, is engine 5 abandoned in favor of CM3?.......if it is I'm fine with that

[Lieutenant Ash]

15 hours ago, weapon2010 said:

so am confused, is engine 5 abandoned in favor of CM3?.......if it is I'm fine with that

I asked that last week, but didn't get a reply. From what has been said by the developers there will be a new engine for CM3 based on 'Unity' rather than 'Open GL' (CM2 uses this). Personally, so long as the new game 'plays' like CM1 /CM2, but looks a little more up to date and still has a accessible map and mission editor I will be happy. Keep the good stuff then build on top of that.

[callada]

More resources and the same designers sounds great to me.

[Centurian52]

On 9/2/2024 at 6:02 AM, Lieutenant Ash said:

Vehicle cook off animations, flames shooting out of hatches,T72s tossing their turrets across the map etc.

Tracks and bogy wheels blown off when a tank hits a mine (or is damaged by shellfire).

Yes to all of that. Getting the tactical simulation right comes first of course. But once that's accounted for all the immersive aesthetic details they can include will be welcome!

[Centurian52]

19 hours ago, weapon2010 said:

so am confused, is engine 5 abandoned in favor of CM3?.......if it is I'm fine with that

I haven't heard a definitive answer on that one way or the other. But if it has been dropped, I doubt it has anything to do with CM3 rendering it irrelevant. I expect CM2 will remain relevant for a while. The first CM3 game released can only cover one setting. Meaning that, until more CM3 games are released, you'll still need to go to CM2 if you have an itch for any of the other settings to scratch. If the first CM3 game is set in the modern day, you'll need to go to CM2 if you're itching for some WW2 or Cold War action. If it's set in WW2, you'll need to go to CM2 if you're itching for some modern or Cold War combat. If it's set in the Cold War, you'll need to go to CM2 if you're itching for WW2 or modern combat. I think formerly BFC/CM department of Slitherine understands that. So I think it's more a matter of whether or not engine 5 is even technically feasible. In the 2024 part 1 thread Steve said, regarding engine 5:

Quote

Know that I’m aiming for this even though it might turn out not to be feasible.

It's an old game engine that has become increasingly difficult to maintain (which I believe is a large part of why they decided to create a whole new engine), which is why there's a possibility that it might not be feasible. But it's often not possible to know whether or not something is technically feasible until you're already pretty deep into trying to do it. So the reason we're not getting a definitive answer may be that they're not sure themselves whether or not engine 5 is still on the table.

[FlammenwerferX]

IIRC Engine 5 was just going to be performance improvements w/o new features.. I would guess that it's been dropped.

[Centurian52]

15 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

IIRC Engine 5 was just going to be performance improvements w/o new features.. I would guess that it's been dropped.

Actually the focus on performance rather than features is precisely why I don't think it's a given (yet*) that it's been dropped. Features are exactly the sort of thing that will be rendered irrelevant by CM3. But improvements to performance are just what's needed to keep the CM2 series going until CM3 can fully replace it. And it is going to take a while for CM3 to fully replace CM2. Again, the first CM3 game can only have one setting.

*Pending some sort of official confirmation one way or the other. There's a chance it has been dropped. But if it has, I'd guess the reasoning has to do with it being too technically challenging.

Edited September 3 by Centurian52

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, Centurian52 said:

Actually the focus on performance rather than features is precisely why I don't think it's a given (yet*) that it's been dropped. Features are exactly the sort of thing that will be rendered irrelevant by CM3. But improvements to performance are just what's needed to keep the CM2 series going until CM3 can fully replace it. And it is going to take a while for CM3 to fully replace CM2. Again, the first CM3 game can only have one setting.

*Pending some sort of official confirmation one way or the other. There's a chance it has been dropped. But if it has, I'd guess the reasoning has to do with it being too technically challenging.

100% agree. 

[Battlefront.com]

I don't have a definitive answer on Upgrade (Engine) 5 at the moment because there isn't a definitive answer

Centurian52 got the gist of it correct.  We want CM2 to live on for a few more years, but the march of technology may preclude that unless we take action.  Engine 5 was intended to make longevity more sure.  Therefore, CM3 doesn't have any bearing on that concept.  Where CM3 has some bearing is the age old dilemma of finding the line between benefit and distraction.  Put more directly... how much CM3 energy do we want to divert into CM2?  That's something we can't answer quite yet.

As was said above, Engine 5 was never, ever, ever intended to add game features because doing that definitely crosses the line I just mentioned.  There's no point adding Feature A into an old code base and then having to recreate Feature A again in the new code base.  It's not necessarily twice as much work (it could be less or MORE than that), but whatever that number is it's greater than zero.

Steve

[jspec]

Thanks for the update!

Not the best news, but not the worst either - appreciate the answer (even if it's not 'definitive' it's much better than wondering what's going on).

Hopefully it will work out, there is so much incredible content in the CM2 family it would be wonderful to have it receive an upgrade that could squeeze some more performance/life out of it for the years to come.

[chocice]

Tech numpty here. 

What's the difference between CM3 and Engine 5?? .

[Aragorn2002]

11 hours ago, jspec said:

Hopefully it will work out, there is so much incredible content in the CM2 family it would be wonderful to have it receive an upgrade that could squeeze some more performance/life out of it for the years to come.

Absolutely. CM2 has still a LOT to offer. Apart from that I'm not in a hurry for CM3, since the graphics and performance of CM2 is good enough for me. Personally I don't need more details or better graphics. It would be nice, but it's not essential or very important. I'd rather have CM2 Afrika Korps or Stalingrad, than to start all over again with CM3. Just my opinion of course.

[Redwolf]

2 hours ago, chocice said:

Tech numpty here. 

What's the difference between CM3 and Engine 5?? .

Engine 5 is a performance boost for existing CMx2 games.

CM3 is new games with the Unity engine.

[Aragorn2002]

1 hour ago, Redwolf said:

Engine 5 is a performance boost for existing CMx2 games.

CM3 is new games with the Unity engine.

And my generation isn't prepared to wait for CM3.

On the other hand, something to look forward to when one retires...

[chocice]

1 hour ago, Redwolf said:

Engine 5 is a performance boost for existing CMx2 games.

CM3 is new games with the Unity engine.

Thank you for the clarification.

[Centurian52]

On 8/27/2024 at 3:55 PM, Grey_Fox said:

The CMBS Charge of the Stryker Brigade campaign was updated to correct errors in the campaign, but wasn't listed on the Battlefront.com updates page. The reason I'm bringing it up is that I believe that the Steam version has the old, non-updated campaign file in the installation.

Coming back to this, I'm actually not sure which version of the campaign I've currently got in my Game Files folder. I've currently only got the Steam version of CMBS installed, so I may have the non-updated version of the campaign. Is the corrected version of the campaign posted anywhere?

[Albert DuBalay]

6 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Absolutely. CM2 has still a LOT to offer. Apart from that I'm not in a hurry for CM3, since the graphics and performance of CM2 is good enough for me. Personally I don't need more details or better graphics. It would be nice, but it's not essential or very important. I'd rather have CM2 Afrika Korps or Stalingrad, than to start all over again with CM3. Just my opinion of course.

Cannot agree more with that

[CarlXII]

7 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Absolutely. CM2 has still a LOT to offer. Apart from that I'm not in a hurry for CM3, since the graphics and performance of CM2 is good enough for me. Personally I don't need more details or better graphics. It would be nice, but it's not essential or very important. I'd rather have CM2 Afrika Korps or Stalingrad, than to start all over again with CM3. Just my opinion of course.

I don't feel a huge need for better graphics either...Modde CM2 is good enough for me.

What i'm very much looking forward to though is to see how CM3 will improve upon the LOS/LOF system further. I'm looking forward to having a much more 'thinking', adjusting, reacting AI opponent that will more closely resemble an atleast  half decent human being...Not having an AI that is resticted to its 'turn 1 plan' regardless of whats happening in a two hour scenario...That will indeed be GREAT !

A much improved scenario editor...That will be GREAT !

More options and higher resolution for the briefing screens...Will be GREAT !

More options/flexible objectives...Will be GREAT !

Persistant map damage...will be GREAT !

Some additional command and controll functions for the player...Will be GREAT !

Co-operative multiplayer...Will be GREAT !

I'm sure we will see all these things and more in the new CM3 game ...

Getting Stalingrad, Barbarossa, north africa etc in CM2 would be great and i would buy them day one...

But getting a completally new game taking full advantage of 20-ïsh years of computer development since Shock Force 1 will be even better !