john-boy Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Do any of you guys think it would be possible in future CM's or in a patch to give the vehicles track marks? If a 40 ton tiger goes over a wet field it does tend to leave a mark! Also it would allow you to track vehicles you don't have line of sight on. One final question... HAs anyone ever shot down one of those planes? And if they have didi it crash on the battlefield??? Oh and yes i know thats two questions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airborne Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 I agree that it would be pretty neat eye-candy to see tracks. Also, dust from vehicles and lingering smoke from heavy weapons fire would be good.. However, the game is great the way it is...... ------------------ Land Soft--Kill Quiet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crash Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/001640.html paraphrasing bts: "would be nice, but is not possible". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 I have shot down a plane... several times... just exploded... never came down... ps. you cant use 88 and 90mm for AA duty in the game... just so you know ------------------ Wof, wof, wof, wof... Thats my other dog impression. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lord General MB Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Soldiers, BTS has put out a great game right? So why don't they STOP, and start working on really cool inprovments. (Think last updates: Only lots of bug fixes.) Some NICE eyecandy would really boost the value of the game. Tracks, vehicle smoke in dry conditions, and planes! (planes can be done by using sprites!! {since all you see is the top, because you can't look UP in CM}). Crashing planes Would be nice... ------------------ Cheers, Lord General Mr. Bill, 1st Army Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisl Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lord General MB: Tracks, vehicle smoke in dry conditions, and planes! (planes can be done by using sprites!! {since all you see is the top, because you can't look UP in CM}). Crashing planes Would be nice... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Most of these are likely to cause major frame hits (been addressed a bunch of times). Look for them around CM5, once the hardware has caught up. OTOH, if Charles wants to really crush everyone's machines, I know where he can get a Cray for about $35K (plus shipping). He can do development on that and show every last cigarette in the mouths of the troops, but then nobody else could play it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lord General MB Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Soldiers, Better yet: Why not have tracks only apply to standard ground? So if the tanks was moving in marsh; no tracks. why not steal the code from Carmegeddon? Tracks dissaper after a few turns. Come on! ------------------ Cheers, Lord General Mr. Bill, 1st Army Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lord General MB Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Sir, Look: I'm running a G3 350mhz, with 96 megs RAM, and a RAGE orion vidoe card. CM runs FAST. Takes almost NO time to load, looks great! BTS has something here and has the technology to use it. Calling a game finished is a bad misstake. Thier is ALWAYS room for improvement! ------------------ Cheers, Lord General Mr. Bill, 1st Army Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pham911 Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 If you look at Ground Control by Sierra, they manage to provide quite a bit of eye candy while still rendering vast areas of land at once, along with individual soldiers in squads(that move independantly of each other when fighting), tanks, explosions, planes, etc. I realise that GC doesn't attempt to model realistic combat, but that's not the issue. If CM can model the combat already, there's no reason that graphics improvements *can't* be added. Maybe they won't be, but that's not the same as can't. I don't really expect that it could be done for a patch, though. It would be such a revision to the game engine that it would be a real drain on resources. I'm hoping for some improvements like these in CM2, but I'm not really counting on CM2 being anything but the same engine w/some mild tweaks and a different theater of operations. Maybe other games companies will see BTS's success with CM and start making eye candy rich clones. Heresy, I know, but I'd personally love to see more CM type games out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lord General MB Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Sir, Pham911, I agree about TWO things with you. 1) CM can AND SHOULD add some eyecandy. 2) CM2 not going to be much of a change. Now: 1) There is only ONE CM No Clones. 2) CM is THE best war game I've seen yet. 3) To keep things fresh I visist the CMHQ and download there mods. but this is not enough. Mods only change the already set graphics. NEW THINGS CAN AND MUST BE ADDED! OR ELSE I"M SURE THAT CLONES WILL APPEAR! Does BTS wan't that??!! ------------------ Cheers, Lord General Mr. Bill, 1st Army Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minnesota Joe Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Eye candy will also help sell more units. This couldn't be called "selling out' as CM would still hold its reputation for realism. I am all for full squad representation (as a toggle, of course) and other things like tire/tread tracks and dead bodies for each KIA. I also hope that each building level will be represented as a building level. I'm love this game, but I'm kind of sick of this "Its represented in the game, but you can't see it, so just imagine its there..." stuff. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Look: I'm running a G3 350mhz, with 96 megs RAM, and a RAGE orion vidoe card. CM runs FAST. Takes almost NO time to load, looks great! BTS has something here and has the technology to use it. Calling a game finished is a bad misstake. Thier is ALWAYS room for improvement! - Lord General MB<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I have an even lesser computer and CM runs very well. I will be getting a new computer soon and I don't think that representing each soldier or adding marks on the terrain will slow me down. ------------------ Ah scheist. [This message has been edited by Minnesota Joe (edited 09-10-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisl Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lord General MB: Sir, Look: I'm running a G3 350mhz, with 96 megs RAM, and a RAGE orion vidoe card. CM runs FAST. Takes almost NO time to load, looks great! BTS has something here and has the technology to use it. Calling a game finished is a bad misstake. Thier is ALWAYS room for improvement! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm running a G3/300 laptop with 192 MB RAM and a RageLTPro. CM runs nicely in 640x480 (harware rendering), but not so well in 1024x768 (software rendering). They've repeatedly stated that they want CM to be accessible to people with "low end" machines. There are people running CM with significantly lower end machines than me, and they don't want to shut them out. I'll eventually get a new machine, but it will probably be another laptop (I travel a lot, and don't really need two machines). I was quite happy with the beta graphics, and to many players the game play is far more important than the graphics. Does Ground Control do 3D terrain in the kind of detail as CM? And are there as many vehicles driving around (I've played a few scenarios that had more than 30 vehicles per side). There has been about 1-2 threads/week on most of these subjects since the Gold demo came out (if not before, but there were far fewer people on the forum then). I'd rather see CM2 sooner than eye-candy added to CM1. For BTS comments on the full squad represention, do a search-- the gist of it is that there's no real value to it unless you're going to model in that kind of detail, and that would require a lot more CPU power. It would also look funny and a little crowded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirocco Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 I'm reminded of the progression from CC1 to CC2. Now that BTS know that they can do this - and there will have been plenty of times when they doubted that during the games development, even in private - they can add the "eye-candy" that we'd all like to see. I, for example, would love to see real cornfields, tall enough to visually hide a German 50mm AT gun, or to reach the waist of an advancing infantryman. We will look back at CM and wonder at how "crude" it looks - and that's a goal I have no doubt BTS have set themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M Hofbauer Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>HAs anyone ever shot down one of those planes?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> since I already used this quite a while ago in another thread I might as well recycle it here: ------------------ "Do want a game that works???" (CPT Stransky) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M Hofbauer Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 Sirocco - wrong, cc1 to cc2 was exactly the other way around. cc1 did show track marks, it could do that because it used a tile-based map system. tiles that a tank had driven over were simply changed from "regular wheatfield" to "distorted wheatfield" etc. cc2 couldn't do that anymore since it used the new fairy-tale style maps. even on those it would be possible to patch track marks onto the landscape in just the same way as craters are patched onto the background. but Atomic wouldn't have none of this, as they said it would suck up too much memo. It would have been very cool esp. for cc3 to have those tanks plow tracks into the snow. Having such an interactive background would really help immersion, instead of those untouchable maps right now over which tanks are hovering without touching the ground beneath. The tiles in CM seem to big for the same crude but effective tactic of tile-change that cc1 employed. My hope, also in regard to other problems related with the current tile size, is that CM2+ will advance in so far as that in a first stept they will introduce smaller tiles. yours sincerely, M.Hofbauer oh, and btw: AA fire is way too effective in CM. Usually all it takes is a pair of 3.7cm or a couple of 2cm to effectively neutralize the enemy air threat. It wasn't like that in reality. If it had been, things would've looked quite a bit different. ------------------ "Do want a game that works???" (CPT Stransky) [This message has been edited by M Hofbauer (edited 09-10-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john-boy Posted September 10, 2000 Author Share Posted September 10, 2000 Thanks for the reply guys. I'm sorry if i'm re-hashing old topics, however, i know i should keep going back searching to see if a topic has been done before. But the game does change with patches etc..so it is possible that old news is out of date. On the subject of the tracks. I personally feel they are a big thing.They would really add to the feel of the game. The people upstairs are always going on about realism, and they can add mortar holes to individual tiles...! I'm not a computer game writer and i know bugger all about code and sprites...all i know is that "ground control" has great 3D graphics with tracks but the game play is cack compared to CM. But saying that i remember playing "M1 tank platoon" on my old Atari 520 and i loved to watch the aircraft flying into sight as you looked about the battlefield. However i still feel that Cm is the best most involving game i have ever played. I was always going on about close combat, however this game pisses on it from a great height. I would like to say that i would rather have combat mission with all the bugs and without any mods, than suffer in a world where it didn't exist! Lastly.. Heres a good tip for you all... If you turn up the sound, the explosions drown out the wife moaning about you not cutting the grass/putting up the shelves Etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisl Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by john-boy: On the subject of the tracks. I personally feel they are a big thing.They would really add to the feel of the game. The people <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I think one of the biggest reasons is FOW, as mentioned in the link above. If you leave tracks behind, then they'll give away your position, unless the FOW engine can be modified to hide terrain (which has also been discussed to death). With shellholes it's not necessary-- you fire HE, it makes a big explosion, everyone can see it. With tracks they have to be factored into the FOW calculations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sirocco Posted September 10, 2000 Share Posted September 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by M Hofbauer: Sirocco - wrong, cc1 to cc2 was exactly the other way around. cc1 did show track marks<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, I wasn't actually referring specifically to tank tracks, but to the progression from CC1 to CC2 in terms of presentation - "eye-candy" in general. And I did miss the tank tracks from CC1! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seanachai Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I am all for full squad representation (as a toggle, of course) and other things like tire/tread tracks and dead bodies for each KIA. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It amazes me that no matter how many times BTS(not people posting on the Board, but BTS themselves) explains that these three features will not, and cannot, be added to the game, people keep returning to them and insisting they must be added to the game. The Developer's (again, not Board members, but the game's creators) have discussed these innumerable times, at some length, and explained why they're not in, will not be in, and cannot be in, certainly not for CM1, and very unlikely for CM2. I understand why people would find some of these things interesting, but besides the fact that technical issues make them impractical(and not, as people keep saying, merely to keep low-end machines CM capable; BTS has stated that even the highest end machines out there would have trouble with any of these aspects, let alone all three), I think putting in any of these, let alone all three, would have a horribly negative impact on Fog of War. ------------------ After witnessing exceptional bravery from his Celtic mercenaries, Alexander the Great called them to him and asked if there was anything they feared. They told him nothing, except that the sky might fall on their heads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PzKpfw 1 Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lord General MB: Sir, Calling a game finished is a bad misstake. Thier is ALWAYS room for improvement! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well theirs also a time to move on to the next project at some time all projects have to be considered finished, so others may be began. Charles & Steve have done a great job adding or fixing this or that, for us. Now the question I have is would everyone prefer a) BTS keep expending resources tweaking CM, adding this or that per ppls wishes,indefintly,? or b)start putting their resources towards CM2?. Personely I would answer CM2, I also believe adding graphichs for tracks etc, even if it was feasible in CM , would take some time to do as well. Regards, John Waters ------------------ Make way evil, I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hamster! [This message has been edited by PzKpfw 1 (edited 09-10-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Lord General MB Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 Sirs, full units on toggle CAN be done. It would be good for small games (platoon, or 2). if a troop gets hit, just nock it out of count forget KIA... You can judge how well a unit is doing by (physically) SEEING how many members it has left. I KNOW some things can't be done on a 3D system: like... Wait: Every thing can be done. it just depends on what system you have, or what, your computer can handle. ------------------ Cheers, Lord General Mr. Bill, 1st Army Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Aitken Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 Lord General MB wrote: > full units on toggle CAN be done. LOL Welcome to the monthly Full Squad Representation Anonymous convention! ------------------ 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." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pham911 Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Seanachai: It amazes me that no matter how many times BTS(not people posting on the Board, but BTS themselves) explains that these three features will not, and cannot, be added to the game, people keep returning to them and insisting they must be added to the game. The Developer's (again, not Board members, but the game's creators) have discussed these innumerable times, at some length, and explained why they're not in, will not be in, and cannot be in, certainly not for CM1, and very unlikely for CM2. I understand why people would find some of these things interesting, but besides the fact that technical issues make them impractical(and not, as people keep saying, merely to keep low-end machines CM capable; BTS has stated that even the highest end machines out there would have trouble with any of these aspects, let alone all three), I think putting in any of these, let alone all three, would have a horribly negative impact on Fog of War. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> What a load of rubish. Not just your comments, but all the naysayers who feel compelled to explain time and time again how it's impossible to perform feats in a game when I've played games which perform more complicated tasks. Tank tracks? It's been done, and it's been done without disturbing FOW. Dead bodies? Done and done. Pushing many as fully rendered objects around the screen as CM does? Been done many times. Here's some food for thought. CM was made by a wargaming company that had, as far as I can tell, little, if any, experience with 3d engines prior to this game. It's not state of the art 3d technology. It's very well done, but it's not the greatest game ever made, graphically speaking. And, more to the point, if these things that are requested *can't* be done, then there are games on the market now that are impossible. I'll say again, CM2 will *not* be a leap forward with the game engine. It won't include any of these things that are being requested(and then shot down with the same "can't do" attitude that made this country so great). It'll be CMBO, but with different Allied forces. I'm saying this to attempt to stifle the "stop asking for things that I don't agree can be done because Steve said so" crowd. I'm not asking for any of these. It'd be nice, but it ain't happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pham911 Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 Addendum to previous post: I fully expect Steve to lock this thread shortly, as certain types of criticism seem unwelcome here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mirage2k Posted September 11, 2000 Share Posted September 11, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Pham911: I fully expect Steve to lock this thread shortly, as certain types of criticism seem unwelcome here. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Oh come on. However you feel about the design decisions made by BTS, that post is going too far. You're implying that your criticism is "unwelcome" because you're somehow exposing the Truth about CM. Rubbish. Your criticism is unwelcome only because others (often with better arguments) have posted it countless times before, and BTS has stated their official position on it in many of those threads. The fact is, BTS operates their board in one of the most liberal fashions I have ever seen. As for your argument, when you try to convince all these board members of the Truth in your position, remember that Steve and Charles made this game. You, to the best of my knowledge, have not developed a piece of commercial software (a post proving me wrong would be appreciated), nor have I. Therefore, I'm going to trust their word over yours. 'Nuff said. -Andrew ------------------ VOTE BLAH FOR PRESIDENT! Throw me a frickin' smiley, people! Your one-stop-shop for gaming news is www.SiegersPost.com ! Hit it! BLAH IN 2000! [This message has been edited by Mirage2k (edited 09-10-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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