REAL TIME OPTION ADDON FOR CM/2

[CPT STRANSKY]

I enjoy the game alot and i play all formats cept lan/ipx which will hopefully be made soon.

I was wondering for single player or lan/ipx if a addon for the game could be made where the game flows and instead of stopping we can give orders as the battle wages.

Just a thought for those who can get sick of stop / starting. I like a bit of variety also an idea for cm2.

I like stopping and giving orders, but at the same time i woould love to issue me orders and watch the battle flow without having to stop.

Makes the game more realistic as well.

The problem wiht this is it may require a major overhaul programming wise and also possibly system wise.

Although for people with nice systems , they should be able to enjoy an option that maybe there systems can handle.

The thing here is as well i dont want to just sit and basically watch the computer play the game with me issuing the odd order.

U may as well watch a war movie hehe

Its has to stay interactive with maybe more control work needed on part of the commander.

Anyways any idea comments to this would be great. Cheers Battlefront for a great game.!

Cpt. Stransky

Prussian Aristrocrat

Quote from "THE IRON CROSS"

=============================================

U want to fight on the eastern front?"

"U Heroic Horses Ass"

=============================================

[Fionn]

Stransky,

CM isn't going to be real-time ( or rather, continuous time which is the more correct definition).

If you want that you can wait until Atomic comes out with a 3D-engined game or some other company does it.

[CPT STRANSKY]

Ok thats fine

I was just wondering if that would be made

thanks for that

some games are huge and i though it may have helped speed them up a bit as well vs another human opponent etc if u were playing ipx etc as well

well what where playing nop is the bomb so i guess we should be grateful for that in itself.

cheers

Cpt. Stransky

Prussian Aristrocrat

Quote from "THE IRON CROSS"

=============================================

U want to fight on the eastern front?"

"U Heroic Horses Ass"

=============================================

[David Aitken]

Stransky -

If you could play Combat Mission in real-time, you must be barely realising a fraction of its potential. It's far too complex to be played effectively in real-time.

Moreover, I think it would be less realistic in real-time. Consider that it takes far longer to tell a computer what to do than a person, so you can't just bark out orders - you've got to spend a while laying waypoints to 'explain' to the computer what you want it to do.

David

[howardb]

Was just going to point out what Aitken said but consider this. With all the big maps and many troops you got in CM your forces will suffer somewhere because of lack of command.

[Zamo]

"This is not a brothel...This is a war!"

Man I love CofI, there are so many good quotes in it. Good handle Capt.

I also think the beginning and ending use of stills and footage for the credits is some of the most moving in any war film. Very good. Now, my dear Captain Stranski, go read the book...

"Follow me and I'll show you where the Iron Crosses grow!"

Zamo

Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men,

for though the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch who bore him is in heat again. -Bertholdt Brecht

[Airborne]

I say, "leave it alone". It works as is. It would be interesting to be able to watch the entire battle or save video scenes, however.

---------Chris

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Land Soft--Kill Quiet

[killmore]

It will not be less realistic in real time. (If done correctly)

The real reason for no real time is that code was written long time ago when real time did not seemed possible. Major code rewrite is probably needed and BTS want to keep profiting from the code they already have without spending another 2 years to release next version.

Even now you would probably need 1000MHz machine to run real time.

I think real time option would be a benefit. It seems achievable by modyfiing turn time to be 1 second and adding another thread for accepting user commands.

[Fuse]

It seem's like it would be entirely too difficult to manage a 5000 point battle while issuing orders in real time to all of your units. Especially if you want to play using the contours of the land as opposed to just giving them a location and hoping that the land worked in your favor. No way to successfully pay attention to all those men. It's hard enough as it is, even with pauses and replays. Just sort of get sucked into one part of the battle and forget about everything else.

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Upon the fields of friendly strife, are sown the seeds of Victory.

---Douglas McArthur

[Holdit]

Originally posted by Zamo:

"This is not a brothel...This is a war!"

Man I love CofI, there are so many good quotes in it. Good handle Capt.

Just out of interest, how many people have read the book by Willi Heinrich? It was also printed as "The Willing Flesh" (sounds like something else entirely, doesn't it? ). I thought the movie was visually good, except I hate slow motion - if an event is dramatic enough, it doesn't need it; but I thought the film made a bit of a mess of the story and was disappointed with it overall.

For a start,in the book, Stransky got his transfer back to France, and the rearguard was left alone at the beginning of the story; not as part of a plot to kill Steiner, but because Stransky didn't have sufficient initiative to disregard the usual procedure and pull them out. That's what really started all the trouble.

Anyway, it's a great read and has a lot more depth than the film. It's out of print now, but if you get the chance, snap it up. There's another one by Willi Heinrich called "The Savage Mountain", also known as "Crack of Doom" with some great scenes that give an insight into the problems of divisional command.

BTW unlike Sven Hassel, Heinrich really did fight in Russia.

Quote from the book: <I/>"...flowers and weeds grow in the same soil, or are things different in East Prussia?"

[This message has been edited by Holdit (edited 07-28-2000).]

[deanco]

Oh NO!! Please!! I am touting this game as the answer to RTS!! Everybody wants to know what the next big thing will be, well, I think it's exactly this "wego" concept. It's the best of both worlds, you get the time to plan your moves and you get the action too. I'm predicting a "wego" game with killer graphics and less deep gameplay, perhaps with a futuristic setting, to hit the market in 1-2 years as the developers play catch up. (Does anyone remember Krush, Kill, and Destroy?)

DeanCo--

[killmore]

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

Oh NO!! Please!! I am touting this game as the answer to RTS!! DeanCo--<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

(there is diff between RT and RTS - I hope you mean RT)

No one wants to force it to be RT. But RT option would be nice. I don't have patience/time to play 500 pts game in 2 hours. RT would make it faster.

Now to handle rapidly developing situation in RT we could slow the game down say 1/4 RT.

(Every RT second is 4 seconds in the game)

[DanE]

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

(there is diff between RT and RTS - I hope you mean RT)

No one wants to force it to be RT. But RT option would be nice. I don't have patience/time to play 500 pts game in 2 hours. RT would make it faster.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

First off, CM will be EITHER "realtime" OR "wego". Otherwise, they would have to have to seperate engines in the same game which I can not see happening.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Now to handle rapidly developing situation in RT we could slow the game down say 1/4 RT. (Every RT second is 4 seconds in the game)

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But what if my reflexes are just not as fast as yours or somebody elses? Should I be penalized because I can not click as fast as my opponet. So lets give people like me an option to slow it down even more. Perhaps 1/10 RT or 1/30 RT. Perhaps even more for those really big battles where I need to do a lot of scrolling to see all of my force. But then it isn't "realtime" anymore, is it, if you slow time down.

And we haven't touched on the "gift" that RT games give their commanders: the ability to issue orders to any unit the moment their plan goes up in smoke thus greatly reducing the cost of bad planning and rewarding good/fast clicking.

------------------

Dan

[David Aitken]

killmore wrote:

> Now to handle rapidly developing situation in RT we could slow the game down say 1/4 RT. (Every RT second is 4 seconds in the game)

You're basically saying you can't handle all the necessary commands in real time. Most battles ARE rapidly developing situations. Slow it down... slow it down... a bit more... oh, it's stopped.

A variable-speed battle is one of the most bizarre gaming concepts I've heard of. If you don't have time to play a battle, play half a battle, and finish it later. If you couldn't be bothered, go and play Quake.

David

[Fionn]

I think the "Willing Flesh" was the German-language only name. It was only ever printed in English as the "Iron Cross" IIRC>

I'd imagine quite a fair number of forum members have read it as it was a popular film and book AND most of the old-timers here have done a LOT of reading.

[Scott C]

Also, the huge problem that has not really been touched on yet - there is no home computer on the market, nor will there be for a long time, that could possibly hope to model CM in continuous time. GHz machines don't even begin to cut it. Consider this - during the execution phase, just displaying a large battle pushes the system pretty hard. AI thinking can frequently take a minute or so even on a very fast system (don't believe me? Try the Carentan operation, multiple minutes on any machine), and the AI necessary to handle continuous time would be far more sophisticated than the present version, with correspondingly more crunch time. Calculating the outcome of the battle, particularly with large numbers of vehicles on the map, can also take about a minute, even on a high-end machine (again, look at Carentan for a stellar example). So, just taking all that into account, you would need a computer several times as fast as anything currently on the market to do the job - and when you consider the huge demands continuous time would make on the system even beyond what I've listed here, the only ways to make CM continuous time would be (a) restrict it to very small battles. ( make it far less detailed and sophisticated a simulation. © run it on, say, a 5GHz machine - maybe more, while a lot of the people here are running right at the (low) minimum sysreqs already. In short - Ain't gonna happen.

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Questions, comments, arguments, refutations, criticisms, and/or sea stories?

[Zamo]

I saw the movie as a youngster back in around '77, then read the book in High School and re-read it in college. I agree whole heartedly that the book kicks all over the movie, though the movie is great too. It's almost as though they are two excellent, mutually exclusive versions of the same thing. I just watched the DVD after posting that last Zamoistic post, and I really do enjoy this one. I have an old, worn paperback of the book and I think I shall dig it out again.

Cheers!

Time for Friday night Brew-ha-ha!

Zamo

[killmore]

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

But what if my reflexes are just not as fast as yours or somebody elses? Should I be penalized because I can not click as fast as my opponet. So lets give people like me an option to slow it down even more. Perhaps 1/10 RT or 1/30 RT. Perhaps even more for those really big battles where I need to do a lot of scrolling to see all of my force. But then it isn't "realtime" anymore, is it, if you slow time down.

And we haven't touched on the "gift" that RT games give their commanders: the ability to issue orders to any unit the moment their plan goes up in smoke thus greatly reducing the cost of bad planning and rewarding good/fast clicking.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Gimme an option. Don't play RT if you don't want to. The time setting depends on the player - the idea is to give you a choice RT/WeGo/SlowRT whatever. Once you have a choice you can play the way you want to. No one forces you to play RT. This is up to you! So stop complaining about your reflexes. Mine are just as bad that why I don't/can't play clickfest RTS games. If you want 1/30 speed when there are 100 units thats OK with me. The choice is yours!

Please stop giving the argument that RT OPTION will force you to play RT and ruin the game. I don't want to take WeGo from you and me. Such option will only atract more players even if they come from CC board/darkside. I could make more money for BTS.

Now you DON'T need two separate engines to run RT/WeGo. All you need to do is to stop RT engine every minute.

Commanders gift to correct orders? - So what let player fix orders, just add some delay before unit reacts (already in CM). Whether that's accurate simulation - I just don't care.

I don't think any current PC can run RT CM with appropriate speed. I don't want to take WeGo from you. The current CM engine might not be able to handle RT in any reasonable way - a major rewrite might be needed. (You could make turns 1 second long and allow to issue orders all the time but even that might not work in current CM engine).

I don't want to force BTS to rewrite anything. Such decision is up to them alone. I can't see all implications on their code.

If CM will continue to be WeGo thats OK with me. Currently find multiplayer boring since it takes 2 hours for 500 pts battle. RT would help that. I don't have 2 hours to play multiplayer. I am also bored to death while waiting for other guy.

Single player is exciting and great as is. I LOVE IT.

I also don't expect BTS to have RT CM for very long time.

[crossfire]

On the other hand it is good to remain BTS from time to time that there is significant interest in ability to play CM in RT.

[Loki]

The problem with giving an option to play in real time would be code related.You'd almost have to program 2 games instead of 1.That would cut down on some of the details in the game that we all love so much.

There is also no way in hell you could play a complex battle in real time.But if you must have real time there is always Close Combat or Sudden Strike. Of course Sudden Strike looks to be more of an insult to war gaming.

[tss]

Holdit wrote:

It's out of print now, but if you get the chance, snap it up.

The English translation has been recently reprinted as a paperback. I think that it is in the "Cassell Military Classics" series but I'm not certain.

And just to inform other Finns around here: the book was translated to Finnish in 1969 with the name "Kubanin sillanpää". I don't know if it has been reprinted after that.

- Tommi

[Mikeydz]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>No one wants to force it to be RT. But RT option would be nice. I don't have patience/time to play 500 pts game in 2 hours. RT would make it faster.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

On the small scall, it probably would be playable in RT but still would be frantic trying to make anything close to effective use of realistic tactics.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Now to handle rapidly developing situation in RT we could slow the game down say 1/4 RT.(Every RT second is 4 seconds in the game)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, if the standard game is about 30 turns, which is 30 minutes of "action" then turning that into RT, but slowing it down to 1/4 peed would take you 2 hours to play, whic you said is to long. That, and I scream enough at the screen for my tanks and troops to move, move, move to bear to watch then crawl at 1/4 speed...

[Holdit]

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

I think the "Willing Flesh" was the German-language only name. It was only ever printed in English as the "Iron Cross" IIRC>

B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In fact it was printed in English as "The Willing Flesh" in both paperback and hardback. I'm guessing sometime in the 70's. The paperback was by Corgi, I think and was slightly abridged. And if I ever get my hands on the hoor who stole my hardback version...