Big announcement... Battlefront is now Slitherine

[PIATpunk]

Dear god, it's Declan!  I thought you'd been assimilated.

[Aragorn2002]

On 10/5/2024 at 4:18 PM, Lieutenant Ash said:

I'm hoping for curved roads in the new engine.

And larger trees.

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Aragorn2002 said:

And larger trees.

While we are at it. Record orders and apply them with different units, a little like 'Actions in PS'. Example once you plot all the waypoints of a truck on a road you should be able to give following trucks the same order. It becomes like recording a video and replay them as often as you like. 

[FlammenwerferX]

12 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

And larger trees.

and toggle to 'transparent trees'

[Centurian52]

2 minutes ago, FlammenwerferX said:

and toggle to 'transparent trees'

I think the current toggle to see tree trunks only works well enough to let me see what's going on in a dense forest while still letting me see where the trees are so that I can plot vehicle movement paths around them (vehicles move a lot faster through forests when you plot paths that avoid tree trunks). What I'd really like is a toggle for building transparency. The current system of building transparency works well for telling me what I need to know as a player. But it would be nice to be able to turn building transparency off for when I want a cinematic view of the battlefield rather than situational awareness of what's going on in the game.

[Bannon]

11 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

I can plot vehicle movement paths around them (vehicles move a lot faster through forests when you plot paths that avoid tree trunks)

I can attest to  @Centurian52 ability to quickly navigate through a forest. I've been there and done that with him and I have the dead units to prove it!

Edited October 8 by Bannon
added Centurian's label

[Centurian52]

1 minute ago, Bannon said:

I can attest to Centurian52's ability to quickly navigate through a forest. I've been there and done that with him and I have the dead units to prove it!

Thanks. I'm pretty sure I had more dead units in that battle (you were a tough opponent). It's just a shame we never got to see the end screen to be sure. I did make sure to give my Shilka crew posthumous 'Hero of the Soviet Union' awards.

[Dynaman216]

Toggle on and off highlights of all kinds would be nice - showing where these things are with an icon. Doors and windows on buildings, hedgerow gaps, TRPs (larger and more vibrant icons at any rate), Minefiels (if you know they are there - and once again more noticeable on the top down view versus the current mine symbol on a flag).

[Redwolf]

Heck, I would use the CMx1 "unit size" toggle if it was available.

That was a really handy option to get an overview of the situation on a bigger map.

[Vacillator]

4 hours ago, Bannon said:

I can attest to  @Centurian52 ability to quickly navigate through a forest

He's a 'bit of a bugger in the bocage' as well.  Almost achieved some alliteration there...

[sttp]

10 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

... What I'd really like is a toggle for building transparency....

Yes! In fact what would be nice is a toggle for everything that's artificial inside the battle environment... i.e., one key press and then no more TRPs, no red casualty crosses / halos, no transparent buildings, and no [whatever else I just missed]. If not one key press, give them their own key combo. It'd be really nice for making video AARs... which is a form of advertising for the game if you really think about it. 

Also, an easy way to force the game to run in "safe mode" or use default files only so that you don't have to move all of your mod files.

Edited October 9 by sttp

[thilio]

18 hours ago, sttp said:

one key press and then no more TRPs

Yes no more ugly TRPs will be fine !

[Bannon]

I'm not sure if this would be possible but stitching together the replay videos in a way that you can watch the entire battle afterwards. This would be great for those who do these awesome AARs.

[nposborn]

10 hours ago, Bannon said:

I'm not sure if this would be possible but stitching together the replay videos in a way that you can watch the entire battle afterwards. This would be great for those who do these awesome AARs.

This is genius and such a massive QoL improvement for content creators who provide free advertising. Would very likely increase content about the game online imo

[Lieutenant Ash]

15 hours ago, Bannon said:

I'm not sure if this would be possible but stitching together the replay videos in a way that you can watch the entire battle afterwards. This would be great for those who do these awesome AARs.

This has been asked for since the days of CM1, but other priorities have meant it has never happened. Maybe with the extra development resources now available it can go on the 'possible' list.

[Centurian52]

1 hour ago, Lieutenant Ash said:

This has been asked for since the days of CM1, but other priorities have meant it has never happened. Maybe with the extra development resources now available it can go on the 'possible' list.

I don't think this one was about a lack of resources. In fact I heard they actually did do something like this for the Pro version. But it was so clunky that there was no way they would put it in the commercial version. So I think the issue was that getting a "stitch together replays" function that was acceptable for commercial release was just too technically challenging to retroactivelly build into CM2. CM3 is a new game engine though, so anything is possible.

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Centurian52 said:

I don't think this one was about a lack of resources. In fact I heard they actually did do something like this for the Pro version. But it was so clunky that there was no way they would put it in the commercial version. So I think the issue was that getting a "stitch together replays" function that was acceptable for commercial release was just too technically challenging to retroactivelly build into CM2. CM3 is a new game engine though, so anything is possible.

Yes, the Pro version has this feature.  However, it is clunky, slow, and takes up a huge amount of disk space.  The biggest issue, though, is it only works for PBEM and not single player.  Definitely not a viable feature for the commercial market.

As for how this applies to CM3, it doesn't.  I will not get roped into a discussion about what is/isn't in CM3, but I provide a little help envisioning what CM3 isn't; CM2 with a fresh coat of paint.

CM2's engine was a fresh start from CM1, CM3's engine is a fresh start from CM2.  Constraints for CM2 are not necessarily present for CM3's feature sets.  The constraints that do carry forward are mostly related to the usual one... limited time.  As with CM1 and CM2, there's a ton of features that could be done in CM3 but won't because they do not provide there simply isn't the time to do everything that would be cool to have.  The other constraint is that some things people think are cool aren't

Steve

[Artkin]

14tb enterprise drives are $100 on ebay

[Battlefront.com]

29 minutes ago, Artkin said:

14tb enterprise drives are $100 on ebay

Yeah, but that's the easy part. 

Putting out something into the commercial market that is narrowly, and clumsily, tailored to satisfy an institutional need is a really bad idea.  So you can have a stack of 14TB drives and the fact remains the feature is not commercially viable.

Steve

[Grey_Fox]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

The biggest issue, though, is it only works for PBEM and not single player

That's not true, it works for all WEGO regardless of whether it's single player or PBEM.

That's still a useful feature. And if you're worried about disk space, you can make it a feature which can be toggled.

It serves more than just an institutional need, it's wildly useful for people who want to make AAR reports for social media like YouTube, which is how a whole pile of your customers like me showed up and gave you a heap of money over the years.

Edited October 10 by Grey_Fox

[Centurian52]

44 minutes ago, Artkin said:

14tb enterprise drives are $100 on ebay

Yeah, storage is relatively cheap these days. I got a 4tb external SSD a couple years ago that wasn't too expensive that I've got all my saved games and mods backed up to. And if you're willing to go back a generation to HDDs then, like you say, you can get upwards of 10tb at a reasonable cost. That probably solves the "it takes a huge amount of disk space" issue. But it still doesn't really help with the remaining "clunky, slow, and only works for PBEM" issues.

There's no point asking for more CM2 features anyway. All further "give us new features!" energy is probably best directed exclusively towards CM3. At most I'm hoping that any further CM2 work might fix some of the bugs that have built up over the years (it might be possible for them to get to more of them now that the team has expanded (assuming it makes sense to bring any of the new programmers up to speed on old code that they won't be working with for the majority of their future working on CM)), and possibly improve performance depending on the state of engine upgrade 5 (I'm not sure if its fate has been decided yet).

Edited October 10 by Centurian52

[Centurian52]

16 minutes ago, Grey_Fox said:

That's not true, it works for all WEGO regardless of whether it's single player or PBEM.

Ah, well I guess that narrows it down to just "clunky and slow". Still, when a dev says "We really shouldn't include this feature" my inclination is to trust them. You just know there will be an enormous storm of complaints if it's even half as bad as they say. Plus I still don't see the point of asking for more CM2 features with CM3 on the horizon.

Edited October 10 by Centurian52

[Battlefront.com]

2 hours ago, Grey_Fox said:

That's not true, it works for all WEGO regardless of whether it's single player or PBEM.

That's still a useful feature. And if you're worried about disk space, you can make it a feature which can be toggled.

It serves more than just an institutional need, it's wildly useful for people who want to make AAR reports for social media like YouTube, which is how a whole pile of your customers like me showed up and gave you a heap of money over the years.

Of course it is useful for some purposes, otherwise I doubt someone would have paid us to create it.  However, it is not a commercially viable tool.  That is our call to make and it was made years go.  You can make your own call for your own game based on your own knowledge of your customer base.

Steve

[CarlXII]

4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

As for how this applies to CM3, it doesn't.  I will not get roped into a discussion about what is/isn't in CM3, but I provide a little help envisioning what CM3 isn't; CM2 with a fresh coat of paint.

[Grey_Fox]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Of course it is useful for some purposes, otherwise I doubt someone would have paid us to create it.  However, it is not a commercially viable tool.  That is our call to make and it was made years go.  You can make your own call for your own game based on your own knowledge of your customer base.

Steve

You claimed it only worked for PBEM, but that's not true. When you made that decision, were you operating under that misapprehension?