Is there a method for moving from building to building on city maps?

[Abbott]

I have noticed when one plots movement between buildings with walls that border one another the AI re-routes the movement commands that are issued. Many times re-routing around the bordering walls into the streets (or terrain), exiting the building and then back into the target building. I have seen this on several maps where large heavy buildings share common walls.

I am wondering if there is a method for movement from one building to another without exiting the buildings?

[aka_tom_w]

Short answer.....

I don't think so.

I think this has been brought up before but I'm not sure.

I think the game models those kinds of building with no door to door access in between?

any other comments?

-tom w

[Guest Madmatt]

While there has been discussion on this in the past, CMBO does NOT model breaching or mouse-holing between buildings.

You will need to exist and re-enter to go from house to house.

I am sure with the urban heavy environments of CM2 we will need to again look at this though.

Madmatt

[This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 09-25-2000).]

[Bruno Weiss]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I am sure with the urban heavy environments of CM2 we will need to again look at this though.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ooooo, a sneak trailer... Me thinks I schmell Stalingrad, Kharkov, and some other points East.

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"Wer zuerst schiesst hat mehr von Leben"

Moto-(3./JG11 "Graf")

Bruno "Stachel" Weiss

[Guest Madmatt]

Well do you expect us to release a game on the Eastern Front and NOT have Stalingrad in it at some point?!?

Where else would people deploy their Elite bands of HamsterJaegers?!?

Madmatt

[David Aitken]

I'm starting to get the impression that this hamster stuff isn't a joke any more, and CM2 really WILL have hamsters. Now that Madmatt's on board, God knows what'll happen... =)

David

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They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

[russellmz]

just have an easter egg where you press SHIFT-CTRL H and the GIs become gerbils and the Germans become the Borg.

(egad my first gerbil/borg reference and in the same line)

edited to fix a missing word

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"They had their chance- they have not lead!" - GW Bush

"They had mechanical pencils- they have not...lead?" - Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

[This message has been edited by russellmz (edited 09-25-2000).]

[Juardis]

You can only enter a building from the outside. Once you know that fact, then you can plan accordingly. It's very important in a scenario such as "A Second Job" where it's a city battle with plenty of adjacent buildings. It makes getting into certain buildings a huge benefit since there may only be one way to get there and that's across an intersection that may or may not be in the field of fire.

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Jeff Abbott

[RMC]

I don't understand why the engine does this anyway. Every building is accessible through every side except when you place them adjacent to each other. Two passable walls together = impassable? I can understand there being a need for this in some maps as a designer thing like rowhouses, but as a universal limitation it is very frustrating.

I would have thought CM would have been more concerned with this problem than CM2. Stalingrad is famous, but Western Europe was more developed than the USSR and built up areas more common.

[This message has been edited by RMC (edited 09-25-2000).]

[Herr Oberst]

When CM2 comes out I'm sure we'll all see the famous HamsterenPioniereTruppen, who can create hamsterholes for moving between buildings without exiting into the street..

and the SelbstmordHamsterenPionereTruppen who can scurry into your opponents buildings with a block of C4 on their backs...

[mikeadams]

>>I don't understand why the engine does this anyway. Every building is accessible through every side except when you place them adjacent to each other. Two passable walls together = impassable? I can understand there being a need for this in some maps as a designer thing like rowhouses, but as a universal limitation it is very frustrating. <<

But just because two buildings are adjacent, why should they have a connection? Certainly rowhouses have no doorways from one to the other, nor do stores or office buildings. If the ability to move directly from one to another is to be modelled it should be by blowing holes through connecting walls. In this case it would not be common and might required engineers.

[Slapdragon]

Now you know why I lit that building on fire Abbott!!

[Abbott]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon:

Now you know why I lit that building on fire Abbott!!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I lost 2 platoons of infantry in that city fight because I was unaware of the movement limitations Now you know why you were gunning them down in the streets. I was dumbfounded every time my troops left cover and waltzed outside into the streets with signs that read "Shoot me, I'm easy".

[RMC]

MA,

What I am curious about is the bit of coding that makes the rule that buildings that are adjacent automatically have to have an inpenetrable wall between them. This deprives a scenario designer from making large buildings in shapes other than squares that can be considered a single building. It is always gonna be several buildings stuck together to try an look like one big one. I recognize that there will be many cases where you would want to have the buildings separate to simulate rowhouses or whatever. But we can't do large factories or any other building that is not a variation on the rowhouse.

[Shades]

I had a this problem a few times with the large buildings not realizing each small building is independant of the adjacent building even though it clearly should be one large building(hotel, headquarters). I'll have a machine gun crew in the building having to rout of the building right in front of tank or infantry instead of being able to enter farther in the building.

In defending large buidlings, I now have to make sure they have another route of retreat even though the large buildings which aren't necessarily supposed to be small individual buildings.

Would it be difficult to make walls coded as passable/unpassable with adjacent buildings?

[Splinty]

Will CM2 model sewer fighting? That was one common way of entering structures on the Easrern Front(or anywhere else for that matter)

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Nicht Schiessen!!

[USGrant]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by RMC:

MA,

What I am curious about is the bit of coding that makes the rule that buildings that are adjacent automatically have to have an inpenetrable wall between them. This deprives a scenario designer from making large buildings in shapes other than squares that can be considered a single building. It is always gonna be several buildings stuck together to try an look like one big one. I recognize that there will be many cases where you would want to have the buildings separate to simulate rowhouses or whatever. But we can't do large factories or any other building that is not a variation on the rowhouse. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm bumping this back up looking for a response from BTS on the adjacent building coding issue. I just got done playing the "A Walk in Paris" scenario and grudgingly came to the conclusion that CMBO really does not work too well for urban combat.

I've learned to live with the catastrophic destruction model of buildings and the difficulty of selecting locations inside buildings (on my low-end system things get very jumpy when placing waypoints in buildings; and forget about moving an in-building waypoint, it will jump out of the building and won't go back in - conversely, I cannot seem to ever move a waypoint into a bulding that was accidently or on purpose place outside). However, forcing troops to run into the street in urban environments as they advance down blocks just doesn't seem right according to my readings and impressions. I did a tiny bit or research and found the following article which confirms my unease about the current movement algorithms http://147.238.100.101/dtdd/armormag/nd99/6casey99.pdf The author paraphrases and quotes the U.S. Field Manual FM31-50 which instructs:

At the squad level, soldiers were cautioned

to avoid moving on streets as

“they are usually well covered by enemy

fire.”21 Instead, it was preferable to move

through buildings, over rooftops, and

through backyards. Blasting entry holes

in walls with explosives was preferable to

entering through doorways and windows

that would be covered by the enemy

within the building. In general, soldiers

were instructed to enter the building from

as high as possible and fight downward to

drive the enemy into the street where he

could be killed by supporting forces.22

I think, given the abstractions already included in the game, that allowing movement directly from one adjacent building to another would be a reasonable representation of the preceeding. It would also allow representation of large buildings, and model the small scale terrain (gardens, alleys, rooftops, exterior stairs) not depicted in the game.

I wonder if changing the coding to allow movement between adjacent buildings, perhaps with an extra delay, is feasible?

BTS?

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USGrant

When the game is over, the kings and pawns go in the same box. - Old Italian Saying

[This message has been edited by USGrant (edited 11-19-2000).]

[Ales Dvorak]

Madmatt,

CM 3 Neretva?

[chrisl]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by USGrant:

and the difficulty of selecting locations inside buildings (on my low-end system things get very jumpy when placing waypoints in buildings; and forget about moving an in-building waypoint, it will jump out of the building and won't go back in - conversely, I cannot seem to ever move a waypoint into a bulding that was accidently or on purpose place outside).

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Use view #5, and zoom (with the square brackets) if you need better resolution. This doesn't answer your other question, but should reduce your problems with placement.

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Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

[USGrant]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by chrisl:

Use view #5, and zoom (with the square brackets) if you need better resolution. This doesn't answer your other question, but should reduce your problems with placement.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks, I'll try that. View #5 always seemed to be just the wrong scale for whatever I was trying to do at the time, and I have tried is so infrequently that I never connected the zoom feature with it.

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USGrant

When the game is over, the kings and pawns go in the same box. - Old Italian Saying

[OGSF]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Juardis:

You can only enter a building from the outside. Once you know that fact, then you can plan accordingly. It's very important in a scenario such as "A Second Job" where it's a city battle with plenty of adjacent buildings. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree this needs to be taken into account as the game model now stands.

However, "mouseholing" or blasting through adjoining walls to get from building to building was a tactic specifically developed by the Americans in the ETO 1944. Streets *were* death traps, covered by machineguns etc.

For urban warfare to be properly modelled this ability needs to be included. However, I believe the ability ought to be restricted to engineer squads, and so that they can "target" a wall for demolition, without blowing up the whole building!

OberGrupenStompinFeuhrer

[Berlichtingen]

Yes you can, but it is dependent on the map designer. The trick is to never place two stone two-story buildngs next to one another. Intersperse two-story wooden buildings... that way there is a gap.

[Maximus]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David Aitken:

I'm starting to get the impression that this hamster stuff isn't a joke any more, and CM2 really WILL have hamsters. Now that Madmatt's on board, God knows what'll happen... =)

David

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Just as long as it contains the Top Secret Russian weapon of the Kitchen Sinksky.

[Dr. Brian]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by OGSF:

However, "mouseholing" or blasting through adjoining walls to get from building to building was a tactic specifically developed by the Americans in the ETO 1944. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Are you certain? From all the accounts I've seen and read, it was done in practice first by the Red Army, and culminated at Stalingrad, with the bleeding of the German 6th Army. That's two years before in 1942!

I think the US was the first to write it down, but, clearly, the Soviet Union used it on a large scale first.

In any event, the current model seems to a-historical for city fights.

My 0.02 zlotey.

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Doc

God Bless Chesty Puller, Wherever He Is!

[This message has been edited by Dr. Brian (edited 11-20-2000).]

[Guest Germanboy]

First, the European multi-story buildings from before the war that I know have very strong firewalls between them. Nothing you can just get through by butting a hole with your carbine or by setting off a hand-grenade. I think that if passage through the walls is made universal, it will be equally unrealistic as the current system with no passage is, therefore there will be no gain. Dobler in 'Closing with the enemy' says that in Cherbourg and Brest, the US troops made a bit of a meal of city-fighting, but learned from it, and when they were taking Aachen they did an excellent job. (by the way, the MOUT website has an excellent account of Aachen).

So to reiterate, I think that passages should only be allowed to be made by units equipped with demo charges, it should take time to do it properly, and it should be very difficult, if not impossible, to do it while under fire. It should also take longer depending on unit experience, and engineers should be given a bonus (shorter time).

Comments?

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Andreas

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/greg_mudry/sturm.html">Der Kessel</a >

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

Germans - they come here, they shag our anteaters. (Angus Deaton)

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 11-20-2000).]