More on Horses Controversy

[Snake Eyes]

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

...Now one thing that ASL didn't do, was train artillery and carpet-bombing. Now we'd be talking!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I attended a pre-ASL release Q&A session hosted by Don Greenwood, the ASL developer, in which the question of whether carpet bombing was going to be included in ASL. He gave a quizzical stare at the questioner, chuckled and then said, "Just pick up the mapboard and shake it." So you see it is included.

[Mace]

I'm not particularly fussed with the exclusion of cavalry units from CMBB.

Why?

Because I wouldn't buy cavalry units when selecting forces for a Quick Battle (which I seem to play the most) when my opponent could be buying AFVs....and I'm quite happy to buy trucks or HTs to pull gun pieces around mainly because they can get the gun piece from one part of the map to another far quicker.

So Horses serve no purpose for me (although I must admit having them available for historic scenarios may be interesting)

Mace

[Tero]

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

Hey tero -

Weren't the Finnish horses and reindeer better than everyone elses?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But of course. :cool:

The Finnish horses became so good the Finnish farmers had a rough time after the war in getting them to plow the fields properly as they would seek cover in nearby woods or sheds every time they heard an airplane approacing. Or the horses would hit the deck when they heard a loud bang, like a car backfire.

That bit of cock'n'bull is actually true BTW.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Schrullenhaft:

tero - actually it is pretty hard to animate the horses to the expected quality level in CM.

The question is: is there really a need to actually animate them ? Nobody complains about the absence of dust clouds and exhaust fumes coming out of the tailpipes of vehicles and how they affect visibility and spotting.

Are you aware of any game that has horses modelled in 3D and not just animated sprites (I'm not saying that they don't exist, I'm just not familiar with what is out there) ?

No. But then again I do not know any CM level game that has truly animated models of soldiers either. Not that it would not be cool to see panic in the face of the squads that are in panic-mode.

Another, even bigger, issue is that the horses would need a separate AI to handle their behavior correctly since they would exist as a separate entity once dismounted.

I rather look at the horses as trucks or jeeps on foot. Slightly slower but able to traverse rougher terrain.

And as opposed to the cavarly the pack mules/horses and horse carts are rarely dismounted by the crew. OK they are actually but for all intents and purposes so are the trucks and jeeps.

As for correct behaviour: the cavarly horses are not left unattended if the cossacs dismount to fight on foot. They stay put unless they panic and gallop away uncontrolably. They die and are captured pretty much the same way as infantry units are so no insurmountable problems there either.

All in all the current engine isn't setup to model horses correctly.

Depends how "correctly" is defined.

They could probably be put in, but there would be so many complaints of unrealistic behavior or 'bad animation', etc. that it may not be worth BTS' time to put them in (despite the clamor for such units). Such features will probably have to wait until the engine rewrite to model correctly.

Yet another storm in the glass of CM water

[Tero]

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

We all look forward to your wargame. It will no doubt adress the glaring omissions of German mapping in France, covering every nook and cranny, the fact that the Finns just could not be beaten by anyone, and horses. Good luck, although I am sure you won't need it. With your superior Finnish knowledge of coding, it will be one hell of a game, making BTS weep at how they could ever attempt to peddle the clearly inferior product that CMBO is.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I went on a 20h boat cruise with the wife and we left the kids to my parents. I got laid, I suggest you do the same.

[Sergei]

Here's an old message from Steve.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>(...)and I don't see it very probable to include any sort of animals, were they dogs, horses or Swedes. We actually have them built-in, but I'm gonna disable the feature from final versions, because it would cause waaaay too much controversy. The reason is, we have already received lots of hate-mail from environmentalists, because they say it's a good tactic to set forests afire. Now, what do you think the response would be, if you could kill dogs and horses in the game? Who would be responsible, if a CM'er would suddenly turn berserk and murder his dog? I'm sure the media would just love it. And no time before Animal Liberation Front would start hurling molotov cocktails to our office and scratch the paint of my brand new Kübelwagen...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, my brothers. We live desperate times.

[Sergei]

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

I got laid, I suggest you do the same.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't know about Germanboy, but are you sure your wife approves this?

[Tero]

A human loaded down with a pack and a rifle can run, at full speed, at about 6 miles an hour max, I would guess. A horse, ladden down with packs and a 200 pound human, can gallop at over 20 miles an hour, depending on ground conditions and the fitness of the horse in question. Also, after about 2 minutes of full speed running with a pack and rifle, even the fittest of humans tire. A horse, to my best knowledge, ladden with packs and a 200 pound human can gallop for upwards of half an hour or more, once again depending on terrain conditions and the fitness of the animal in question.

Yes. But a more common scenario in combat conditions would be a team of horses drawing a gun with the handler riding on the limber or walking, leading the team and the gun crew walking not far from the gun, ready to unlimber and deploy it at the first sign of trouble.

Oh, and common, admit it, in the back of your mind somewhere, in the dark subconsciosness known only as the inner tero, you know you always wanted to see a cavalry charge.

Not from the receiving end.

Also the fact that using a human model to represent cavalry won't appeal to many, visually speaking.

Actually the human model should be used to model the horse teams "human" aspects, ie panic under fire etc. The visual representation is a separate matter.

[Tero]

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

So it's pretty much my fault.

-dale<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Are you for real or are you just a fall-guy ?

[Andreas]

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

[QB]

I went on a 20h boat cruise with the wife and we left the kids to my parents. I got laid.QB]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Was that before or after you became a master of game programming?

[Schrullenhaft]

tero - I doubt that anyone here is asking that horses not be included in CMBB and BTS would probably love to accomodate them. But there are too many technical, quality and possibly censorship/bad PR concerns to put them in.

As for the quality of the animation that may be expected from players... it may not be very high (approximate to what current foot infantry do), but even that is apparently pretty hard at the moment as Steve mentioned (in Mace's post near the beginning of the thread). With the attempts made in the past to model horses the upper body didn't want to match the legs, so it would look more than awkward. It will look bad enough that some people will ask why BTS bothered to put it in and we're not even talking about nuanced movements of a large animal, just the most basic movement. I remember before CMBO came out when it took Charles a lot of effort so that units could move beneath an overland bridge. So you may get an idea of what it may take to properly animate even stiff-legged horses with troopers on top (who would preferably have a different animation for riding).

As for an AI for the horses... All the vehicles have a certain prescribed behavior when they come under fire, move, etc. Horses would constitute a new type of transport unit that could take casualties/attrition, become panicked, etc. At the same time BTS would have to model that only a part of a squad could remount if their horses took casualties (and one/two less men in the unit if they become dismounted and move away from their horses, but leave someone behind to control/corral them). Some work arounds with squad structure would probably leave a number of people unhappy with this (the current split squad capabilities of CMBO). Otherwise horses would have to be considered either invincible or have all 9-15 of them act as one unit (alive, dead, abandoned-panicked) - another undesirable compromise. I'm sure Charles could probably hack horses into the current engine given time, but the results may not be to everyone's expectation and Steve has mentioned in the past how much Charles hates to hack up the code to support certain features since it leads to an overall greater probability of problems.

As stated in the past; there are certain levels of presentation quailty that are expected. No one expects to see 'stick men' in CM and stiff-legged, unanimated (or 2D sprite animated) horses may give a similar impression of CMBB's quality. I'm sure a number of people on this board could live with such crude representations, but undoubtedly BTS would get a lot of flak for such a "sub-par representation" and receive endless requests/suggestions on how to make it better.

[The Commissar]

Originally posted by tero:

[qb]

Yes. But a more common scenario in combat conditions would be a team of horses drawing a gun with the handler riding on the limber or walking, leading the team and the gun crew walking not far from the gun, ready to unlimber and deploy it at the first sign of trouble.

We're talking about different things here, then. Although I realise that having horses towing guns, men, and supplies was more common then cossack raids, I am a lot more interested in the later employment of horses. Using cavalry is a lot more interesting then using an organic truck. Thus I make my case for cavalry, and wrote details about their employment.

[Kingfish]

If we're going to include horses then I say we also include a 'horse whisperer' unit as well. The sole responsibility of this unit would be to rally 'panicked!' horses back into the front line. For total immersion we can even mod the figure to have Redford's face.

[Thomm]

I have some excellent reference material on walking cycles of horses (just in case BTS is interested)

Regards, Thomm

[Bruno Weiss]

Well if not horses, then what about camels. Must have been a camel or two in the southern Caucases. I'm sure we'd all walk a mile for one.

[ASL Veteran]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Snake Eyes:

Having played SL/ASL for many years, I've had the opportunity to use cavalry, as well as wagons, sledges, motorcycles and bicycles. Although each provided some interesting aspects of warfare and required the player to develop ways to use them to best advantage, I found all to be extremely vulnerable. The idea of riding any of these conveyances into battle is folly. Their best use is to move troops and weapons to jump off points at which time combat units dismount and fight on foot. Pretty much the way one uses trucks. Sure, it would be nice to see horses, et al, in CM2, but I doubt that they would add much to the game.

Are there any other SL/ASL players on the Forum willing to share their experiences?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I've played "Assault on a Queen" a couple of times. The most fun was when I played as German. My guys rode in (amidst numerous Harley Davidson / leather jacket jokes) - Tienham and his platoon mostly got knocked off their bikes and died with serious cases of road rash :eek: , but Obr Greup got into the tower where the Queen was hiding. Unfortunately when he finally grabbed the queen in the tower all the Dutch reinforcements came in driving their trucks (my friend rolled a boxcars so 12 squads came in ) and they promptly surrounded the tower where Obr Greup and his boys were holed up. I was trapped and couldn't escape, so my friend mimicked speaking through a bullhorn and said "we have you surrounded, come out with your hands up!" Yep, I lost. However, from that day forward, anytime the German 10-3 was in a game and had a platoon stacked with him they were referred to as "Obr Greup and the Raiders" .

Anyway, I could have sworn I saw written on this board that they were going to include motorcycles in CMBB, but no horses or bicycles. I can't recall where I read that, but I'm pretty sure it was on this board. I did see in one of the articles with a mag that they said that Partisans were in though.

[dalem]

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

Are you for real or are you just a fall-guy ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, I'm for real, but the fact that this discussion is still going is not.

-dale

[Vanir Ausf B]

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

I would think the problem is not with coding as much as with personal biases.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As usual, you've hit the nail on the head.

Not only does this bias manifest in the absence of horses, but also mine dogs, dead cows, and other assorted barnyard critters. Now, exactly what it is they are biased for/against (PETA? Greenpeace? Teamsters Union?) I don't know, but your explanation is the only logical one I have seen.

[ 08-20-2001: Message edited by: Vanir Ausf B ]

[Panzer Leader]

I can give you a thumbs up on partisans, they have been confirmed both on this messageboard, and in two(2) published articles. As for the motorcycles, I am drawing a blank.

And, finally, as for horses, being a cavalry fan (from SL days) there were numerous (albeit rare) instances where cavalry took to the field of battle. In Poland, though not part of CM:BB there were two battles, one fought by the venerable Hans von Luck, where the Polish cavalry charged the panzertruppen with lance and rifle. They were told the tanks were wooden mock-ups.

Some notable battles where cavalry was used was in the Operation Little Saturn. Cossack cavalry weilding SMGs charged alongside the Northern attack group as the tanks breoke through first the Hungarians and then stormed the airfields. THEY FIRED FROM HORSEBACK. Also, many of the Parisans were on horseback.

There is in the German army a section of Recon devoted to Cavalry. They were given the task of Recon and often had to fight outpost or surrounded Soviets. In another famous battle (can't think which one) the Cavalry was supposed to coordinate an attack on the Soviets (I think it was crossing the Dnieper). The cavlary were the only one to make it across and were under heavy attack for the better part of the next day. Granted, thee were mostly dismounted battles I'm sure.

With cavalry, a new type of scenario would be possible: the raid, where the objective would be either to simply MAKE it to a point, or to maybe destroy a certain unit or number of units. Of course, that is a whole different topic.

As for modelling, I would suggest they be done like a crewed weapon. One, maybe two horses per unit, and it could use the same type of "abandoned" setting if the rider dismounts or the horse is killed. However, the rider would have normal weaponry.

Maybe two horses, two riders per unit, and they are treated like half-groups, where two dismounted units could join to make a half-squad.

I know it is futile to expect cavalry, but it is nice to want. I think the graphicsw are what really hold this feature back.

[The Commissar]

I think you were under the influence of serious narcotics, ASL Vet. Next youre going to tell us CMBB will have running MG42's

Seriously though, partisans are in. I haven't heard anything about motorbikes.