Damaged/Knockedout BMP's in CM2??

[Lordfluffers]

I was wondering last week (away from my pc for the weekend) whether CM2 will have damaged/destroyed BMP's for vehicles when they are knocked out. Currently the turret just gets pushed to the side etc. but I think it would be cool having destroyed BMP's showing blackened tanks or vehicles with pentration holes. On the outside chance, it would also be cool if, say a turret got hit but the shot deflected or something, then there was a damage BMP showng the vehicle in a less than perfect condition. Will this happen or be possible???

[Sherman]

Thats a good idea!

[David Aitken]

This would be purely eye candy and serve no practical purpose. It would be misleading for the texture on the vehicle models to degrade or show damage, because it would bear no relation to the actual damage inflicted. I doubt BTS are going to spend any time programming something without a purpose.

We can expect to see this kind of thing in the distant future when the graphics engine is WYSIWYG. Then when a shell is fired, you see the precise path and exactly where it strikes and what damage it inflicts. At the moment what you see is simply a secondary representation, so there is no basis for greater detail with the current engine.

David

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

This would be purely eye candy and serve no practical purpose. It would be misleading for the texture on the vehicle models to degrade or show damage, because it would bear no relation to the actual damage inflicted. I doubt BTS are going to spend any time programming something without a purpose.

We can expect to see this kind of thing in the distant future when the graphics engine is WYSIWYG. Then when a shell is fired, you see the precise path and exactly where it strikes and what damage it inflicts. At the moment what you see is simply a secondary representation, so there is no basis for greater detail with the current engine.

David

There have been a couple of threads about damage to terrain and vehicles. The game already does this with shellholes and craters, I'll point out. I agree, David, that vehicle damage would serve no purpose and be hard to incorporate - but I also agree with you that down the road, it can and probably will be done (farrrrr down the road).

I would love to see the gouges in the front of a King Tiger or Panther from the puny 75mm shells that bounce off of it. But of course it would serve no real purpose...and is a long ways off!

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

This would be purely eye candy and serve no practical purpose.

David

Except to INCREASE sales....

and keep up with the competition

I would suggest it would not be unreasonable to expect to see 3D rubble and special textures and 3D models for buildings in at least 2 or 3 different states of partial destruction in CM2. We already have the * and ** astrick system to "sort of " show us that the building is damaged, so the game engine knows that, why not (with the NEW 32 Meg VRAM min) code in some additional 3D rubble grpahics and a few different states of building destruction.

I do hope we see this kind of attention to graphics detail in CM2 and yes I amd one of the folks here who believe nicer graphics and more eye candy in CM2 is a good thing

-tom w

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 01-28-2001).]

[Louie the Toad]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

This would be purely eye candy and serve no practical purpose. It would be misleading for the texture on the vehicle models to degrade or show damage, because it would bear no relation to the actual damage inflicted. I doubt BTS are going to spend any time programming something without a purpose.

We can expect to see this kind of thing in the distant future when the graphics engine is WYSIWYG. Then when a shell is fired, you see the precise path and exactly where it strikes and what damage it inflicts. At the moment what you see is simply a secondary representation, so there is no basis for greater detail with the current engine.

David

BTS, please do not waste time on this.

Why would we ever want to be able to see the precise path of a shell and the exact damage it inflicts. This type stuff is directly opposed to Fog of War. It flies in the face of what makes CM great. It belongs in some other game that you can play on your TV.

Don't try to be another game. Be a leader.

[argie]

They will do damaged/knocked out BMPs in the Modern War version, along with T 72s and the like

Sorry, I couldn't resist

Ariel

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

This would be purely eye candy and serve no practical purpose.

If BTS can find a way to do it in CM2 - and I woudn't expect it - they'll do it. Whether or not it has a practical purpose it will simply look cool.

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"He belongs to a race which has coloured the map red, and all he wants are the green fields of England..."

- Joe Illingworth, Yorkshire Post War Correspondent

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Louie the Toad:

BTS, please do not waste time on this.

Why would we ever want to be able to see the precise path of a shell and the exact damage it inflicts. This type stuff is directly opposed to Fog of War.

That would depend on whether or not you could follow the flight path, and whether the impact point was in your line of sight.

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"He belongs to a race which has coloured the map red, and all he wants are the green fields of England..."

- Joe Illingworth, Yorkshire Post War Correspondent

[David Aitken]

aka_tom_w wrote:

> Except to INCREASE sales....

How will overloading the game with superfluous eye candy increase sales? I'd have thought striving for detail and realism was the goal. Don't confuse the two.

> and keep up with the competition

What competition?

Louie the Toad wrote:

> BTS, please do not waste time on this.

Why would we ever want to be able to see the precise path of a shell and the exact damage it inflicts.

Interesting point. Many people want WYSIWYG terrain so that spotting can be done visually. I wonder if there really is an argument that it should remain an approximation for good.

[Lordfluffers]

I dont mean accurate damage, just, say a replacement texture showing random damage. if the left hull side got it, then that a left hull damage texture could replace the original one. I understand it would be difficult to accurately portray the damage done by individual rounds etc.

[aka_tom_w]

bump

[ASL Veteran]

Personally, I would like it if knocked out tanks were shown with their hatches open. Yes, it is just eye candy, but I think it would be neat. I would also like it if wrecks pushed off a bridge dramatically tumbled down to the ground / water below rather than teleporting. Does it serve a useful purpose? Sure - I would think it looked cool.

[Slapdragon]

Originally posted by Lordfluffers:

I dont mean accurate damage, just, say a replacement texture showing random damage. if the left hull side got it, then that a left hull damage texture could replace the original one. I understand it would be difficult to accurately portray the damage done by individual rounds etc.

One way to do this would be to give each vehicle more than one bitmap. I have suggested it for allowing each vehicle a much wider array of camo schemes to have primary and alternate schemes, but there could also be a damaged scheme, allowing people to actually make a dead tank mod.

That would be for CM2 though.

[David Aitken]

Lordfluffers wrote:

> I dont mean accurate damage, just, say a replacement texture showing random damage. if the left hull side got it, then that a left hull damage texture could replace the original one.

We gathered that much. But then how many people would complain that the graphic suggests their Sherman was taken out by a forward hull shot from and 88 when it was actually a rear hull shot from a 20mm cannon? In other words, are BTS likely to program something which is simply misleading and unrealistic? As I have said, I would expect them to model damage when it is possible to do it accurately, but that would require a fundamental rewrite of the game engine.

David

[Guest Mikey D]

CM1 was originally done on a shoestring.

With the sale of every new CD, BigTime software has a couple more research bucks to plough into CM2 design. I see one of three scenarios happening for CM2:

#1: It'll be just like CM1 except with Russian equipment.

#2: It'll be very much like CM1 except with cool lighting effects, directional shadows, a few extra 'goodies' thrown in. The AI will be a bit more clever.

#3: It'll be so bloated with useless crap that it'll crash halfway through every game.

[Lordfluffers]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

But then how many people would complain that the graphic suggests their Sherman was taken out by a forward hull shot from and 88 when it was actually a rear hull shot from a 20mm cannon?

David

David, there is a BMP for the frotn of the turret, and one for the back. If the back was hit, it would show damage using the back turret damage BMP. If it was hit in the front then the front would look damaged. Its not hard to program, the damage would have to look quite generic and generalised i.e. you couldn't have damage modelled specifically for individual weapon types like a 20mm damage BMP, 75mm damage BMP etc. but it would be interesting just to have an idea of how your tanks look by the end of a battle. Slapdragon has got the idea.

BTW David, tank crews often knew where a shell might have hit them from. You can hear the thud, vehicles rocked when hit etc.

[Capt Canuck]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

We can expect to see this kind of thing in the distant future when the graphics engine is WYSIWYG. Then when a shell is fired, you see the precise path and exactly where it strikes and what damage it inflicts. At the moment what you see is simply a secondary representation, so there is no basis for greater detail with the current engine.

David

David...

I'm sorry, if this is a stupid question, but what exactly does that stand for? [WYSIWYG]

And if you may, could you explain this to me...

Thank you very much,

David

[Maximus]

Speaking of following the flight path, what I like to do is to 'Lock view to target', then hit View #1. Then go to 8x Zoom. From there you can watch the projectile fly toward the target as a pretty cool effect.

[fubar628]

WYSIWYG = what you see is what you get.

Computer teckie term

[Slapdragon]

Originally posted by Capt Canuck:

David...

I'm sorry, if this is a stupid question, but what exactly does that stand for? [WYSIWYG]

And if you may, could you explain this to me...

Thank you very much,

David

"Wizzy-Wig"

The term was invented for the early Macintosh computer since its printer output and screen output were the same. What you see is what you get. Even today a PC uses a "Print Preview" to show how an image will print, and the color is not gamma corrected or synced to output (which is why print and video / multimedia people use so many macs). This is easier on the processer and speeds up things, but it also means that you cannot guarantee that a letter or a video or a color slide produced on a PC is what you see is what you get.

In game turns the question is does the little red tracers represent an actual flight path of a set of shells. The answer is no, the game does not generate wysiwyg flight paths for shells when it makes a tracer, the tracers are an abstraction. The engine generates an exact 3D flight path, but the screen does not show it -- so no wysiwyg.

[Slapdragon]

The concept, if not the term, for WYSIWYG was invented at Xerox Palo Alto in 1973.

[David Aitken]

Lordfluffers wrote:

> the damage would have to look quite generic and generalised i.e. you couldn't have damage modelled specifically for individual weapon types like a 20mm damage BMP, 75mm damage BMP etc. but it would be interesting just to have an idea of how your tanks look by the end of a battle.

How about catastrophic explosions? Or a thrown track? It would require a separate (and much more complex) 3D model. By the same token, simply changing a bitmap will not properly represent damage inflicted on a vehicle. Was it a single high-calibre penetration? A burst of .50 cal or cannon fire? Which angle did it hit from? There are simply too many possibilities to be covered by a single 'damage' bitmap (or even a score of them). And in many cases, the actual damage would amount to an insignificant hole which you'd only notice on extremely close examination. It would be a heck of a lot of work for little point to represent damage, and even then it would be inaccurate, misleading and very often exaggerated.

David

[This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 01-29-2001).]

[Slapdragon]

Originally posted by David Aitken:

Lordfluffers wrote:

> the damage would have to look quite generic and generalised i.e. you couldn't have damage modelled specifically for individual weapon types like a 20mm damage BMP, 75mm damage BMP etc. but it would be interesting just to have an idea of how your tanks look by the end of a battle.

How about catastrophic explosions? Or a thrown track? It would require a separate (and much more complex) 3D model. By the same token, simply changing a bitmap will not properly represent damage inflicted on a vehicle. Was it a single high-calibre penetration? A burst of .50 cal or cannon fire? Which angle did it hit from? There are simply too many possibilities to be covered by a single 'damage' bitmap (or even a score of them). It would be a heck of a lot of work for little point to simulate damage, and even then it would be inaccurate and misleading damage (of a kind more suited to action games).

David

The question of course is how it was done. To many changes and it needs to be done with decals, which would require a fairly deep reprogramming of the application since right now decals only are placed on terrain tiles. Otherwise, modders would need to do a mod for a dozen types of damage.

CM2 may or may not be able to handle this.

[Bruno Weiss]

Slapdragon wrote:

The concept, if not the term, for WYSIWYG was invented at Xerox Palo Alto in 1973.

I thought Al Gore invented that! Dag, you mean I voted wrong after all?

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open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)