How long would you wait for a REAL CM2?

[Claymore]

In the realm of the purely hypothetical let me pose a question or two.

1. How long would you the CMBO faithful wait for CM2 if BTS were to delay the product in order to fix the largest bugs in the code?

My answer...as long as I waited for the original product and probably a good deal longer since all I had in those days was the demo to play (over and over and over :eek: )

So in round terms...let's say...another year or more.

2. What are the "Bugs" that BTS would have to fix to make the software truely an incredible, kick-ass, world class product?

My answer:

a) A more complete and accurate modelling of the effects of terrain. For example, currently the reverse slope algorithms are completely and totally unrealistic. Only tanks gain a quirky and poorly rendered HULL DOWN status. For all other assets every other factor from smaller visible size to shielding effects for BLAST is ABSENT.

A truer modeling of LOS, moving beyond the quirks and under representation we have now. Currently you are never sure what to trust...what is just "eye candy" and what will block LOS? For example, consider what the game would be like if tanks (non-burning) blocked LOS. Incredible! Infantry advancing behind the shielding mass of armour! Wow!

A point here that pursuing a solution to the "absolute - relative spotting" IMO is a Crazy Eddie task, that is, not worth pursuing . More money and brains than that at BTS's disposal has been applied to the current wargaming software (or even chess). The result? Currently human judges watch over the play and ajudicate legal tactics. Humans are just far too good a positional tactics and computers must rely on brute force and "maximal strength" logic trees. I am sure that some approximation of relative spotting could be worked into the code but it would be as far from modelling reality as the current code.

c) Cleaning up all the individual weapon platform quirks. For example, unarmoured vehicles vs AP/HE or MG effectiveness. This is a large bag, holding many personal crosses the CMBO faithful bear in vain every day on the CM forum.

Ok...grind away boys.

Cheers

Murray

[Schrullenhaft]

I believe some of the issues will be addressed in CM2. Some others ("LOS quirks") may get addressed in the CMII engine rewrite, but possibly not to the level that you and others desire.

BTS is plowing forward with CM2 right now and CMBO is considered a "finished" project. Since BTS now has more employees there is a greater need for cash flow to keep things running and employees paid; and with the amount of time that it takes to field a CM game, their efforts have to be geared towards a new item that they can sell. I don't think we are going to see any patches for CMBO in the near future.

Depending on how much we plead (most effectively after CM2's release) and how much time and effort it takes to do; we may see some of CM2's improvements patched into CMBO. But that is probably at least a year away. The future holds all sorts of unpredictable changes and BTS has not committed to back-coding CMBO.

[Michael Emrys]

I too would be willing to grant BTS an additional year to get the product "right" (or a reasonable (term undefined) proximity thereto). But two things militate against that happening.

One is that I expect that you and I are in a small minority. The remainder of the fans want CM2 yesterday and are already starting to froth at the mouth.

The other is possible business reasons. If BTS doesn't bring out an East Front game based on the CM engine pretty quick, you can bet one or another of the clone makers will, stealing a good portion of BTS' thunder in the process. Sure, it would probably be a second- or third-rate ripoff, but that would only serve to turn off a portion of the game-buying and playing public to WW II tactical wargames. I'm sure we'd all rather not see that happen.

Michael

[Wilhammer]

This argument reminds me so much of Squad Leader.

1977 Squad Leader is released. Avalon Hill is shocked by its success. Many abstractions, especially with armor rules.

Armor rules addressed in 1979 (I think thats right) with Cross Of Iron, which also brought us the Eastern Front in a detail never seen before.

1980, Cresendo Of Doom. We get some really interseting enhancements (bypass movement, around the corner LOS, A/C, paras) and the early war which had never really been addressed before.

Finally, its 1983 and we get G.I. Anvil Of Victory, a return of sorts to Squad Leader, and then ASL, which pretty much scraps all but the boards from the previous release.

CM revolutionsizes the wargame genre, and BTS is pleasantly surprised, and now our new "Cross of Iron" is on the horizon, and so and so on.

My point is this, even though we have some "bugs" (more like design compromises), we still have the best tactical wargame ever made, and optimism for the future.

I am all for fixing certain things in CM, but lets be realistic here. BTS desreves to turn a profit, and that means CM2 must be kept on track, without having to go back and do massive code changes to CM.

The basic CM engine will go through 2 or 3 more releases, and then we will experience the CM II engine and a return to the whole war with what will have evolved into a system of unrepeatable detail (excluding plagiarized attempts).

Bring On CM2.

Now some who have read my posts ight think I am back pedaling a bit, but I am not. I want some things fixed, but the reverse slope and the unarmoured vehicle tergeting compromises are not going to happen for this release. I'd like to CM 1.13 do something about the smoke issue and maybe put some thin plate on the German 7 HTs, but I want this only if it does not impact CM2.

[Tiger]

So CM2 (and hence CMBO) is a buggy game because you've labeled possible features which likely may not exist unitl the next engine rewrite as bugs?

My CMBO cd doesn't make coffee for me either, is this a bug too?

1) There apparently is going to be a rewrite of the code apparently for the next CM engine, after the East front game IIRC.

2)It is not going to happen for CM2 the East Front game due out hopefully later this year/early next; this is going to use the base CMBO program with whatever enhancements it can handle/there is time for, IIRC.

3) The items you mention are possibly desirable features, possibly not; certainly not bugs. These bugs you list are nit-picks over items that BTS has explained their position on over and over.

Answer: Not willing to wait ANY extra length of time for such hypothetical ideas for CM2, especially since the reason for not having these has already been logically explained by BTS. So BTS says this or that is currently not possible, that means they should delay the next game until these things are possible? Non-sense. To remain viable BTS needs to put out another great product in a somewhat timely fashion, or another game company will do so. Don't think it can happen? Think again. Sure BTS will have the loyal hardcore following but this small group is not enough to make the big sales.

Who knows, they may not even care about the money. Do the BTS guys want to see the East front done (and play it) as badly as we do?

I'd prefer to wait and see what CM2 the East Front has to offer us first before anguishing over what it doesn't (or can't)offer.

[Jarmo]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> ]How long would you the CMBO faithful wait for CM2 if BTS were to delay the product in order to fix the largest bugs in the code? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmm.. and what would I do instead of waiting?

Jump off a tall building?

To not buy the game after it's been done? Sure.

In short: Fixes or no fixes, I'll wait as long as I have to.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I'm fairly sure both A and B would have to wait for the engine rewrite, so they are probably out of the question. It could be 2 year before that is done. No way would I wait that long and BTS needs to get paid sometime.

C is hopefully doable for CM2, but I have no idea now hard/easy it will be, or even if BTS intends to do anything with it at all.

[Deuce]

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

Crazy Eddie<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I thought I was the only person who used that phrase. However, on the gripping hand...

[ 04-10-2001: Message edited by: Deuce ]

[Olle Petersson]

How long would I wait?

- As long as it takes to fix all major bugs.

What "bugs" are considered major, IMO?

- Those that make the game unstable. There can't be many of these (if any) since the game engine is already very stable.

- Those that can't reasonably be fixed later on. Not treating soft targets like "real" targets that can be targeted directly by large calibre weapons is one.

- Leaving unit's out of the game because "there was no time to make the 3d and data model". (Like the exclusion of the M16 AA halftrack in CMBO.) A fairly quick and dirty way to solve this would be to do everything but the textures. The supplied textures could be very simple single coloured ones, leaving it up to the large community of mod-makers to supply the "real thing". (Especially since most players use mods for almost everything anyway...)

Cheers

Olle

[Claymore]

Aaahhh I've only stirred up but a few wasps.

Heer Schrullenhaft,

I believe some of the issues will be addressed in CM2. Other than the hard-coding of the new Soviet and German units that saw action I haven't heard of any changes in CM2. Creation of the imbedded code for these units appears to be a non-trivial task from past BTS statements. We all remember that inclusion of Allied mobile FLAK was dropped because of the work would have delayed the delivery of CMBO.

Some others ("LOS quirks") may get addressed in the CMII engine rewrite, but possibly not to the level that you and others desire. My postulate was that CM could become a true tactical simulator by including the changes put forward in my message. I also used poor verbage in choosing "quirks" to describe the problem. IMO the current CM engine gets a failing grade for all of the parameter mentioned in my original post.

BTS is plowing forward with CM2 right now and CMBO is considered a "finished" project. Since BTS now has more employees there is a greater need for cash flow to keep things running and employees paid; and with the amount of time that it takes to field a CM game, their efforts have to be geared towards a new item that they can sell. I don't think we are going to see any patches for CMBO in the near future. Which are decisions based properly (or not) on business factors. My post posed a hypothetical question which removed business from the delivery equation.

But your point being considered now...hmmm...is it good business sense to delivery essentially an "add-on" package to CMBO? I would argue that this is the conventional software (or even the entertainment industry!) business model and has been a rut too often traveled upon, and not guaranteed of success. What is the ratio of good software or movie sequels to the unimaginative dross? BTS broke the mold by creating CMBO in the first place. I would say that there are firm arguements for continuing to move forward just as aggressively. Now is not the time to "pick the low-hanging fruit". If I can make a wild analogy then...evolution made giraffes a UNIQUE success by allowing them to forage on foliage undisturbed by the other savanah dwellers. CMBO should leave the "short-necked ground dwellers" behind and stretch forth to browse on we CMBO faithful (the high succulent leaves).

Depending on how much we plead (most effectively after CM2's release) and how much time and effort it takes to do; we may see some of CM2's improvements patched into CMBO. Plead? I believe that BTS has been immune to any arguments that were not based entirely on fact and logic. I doubt whether this would bear any fruit at all.

The future holds all sorts of unpredictable changes and BTS has not committed to back-coding CMBO Not back-coding CMBO...it appears as though a new engine is required.

Cheers

Murray

[Windopaene]

Well, as I have a similar thread going, I'll add my two cents here as well.

I think the things you describe, (with the possible exception of the HE vs. Halftracks issue), are very non-trivial, and I doubt we'll see them dealt with until the engine rewrite.

As for BTS turning a profit. Are you kidding? Three, (or more), sellouts, no middleman to take a cut, high price...I think they've made some money. I think that they will make even more when the sell the CM2 "add-on". You make a good point about "add-ons" being the way "traditional" software companies have operated. Hadn't ever thought about that really. Perhaps not a good trend?

Will I buy the "add-on"? If I think my PC can handle it, you bet. Not everyone will, as we've seen in other threads, some people, (who are clearly insane ), aren't interested in the Eastern Front. Shouldn't BTS go the extra mile to keep those folks happy and singing their praises until CMII?

I'd guess CMII is going to take a hell of a lot longer to ship than CM2. There will probably be some good games coming out between now and CMII. They will be knock-offs of CM, but that's business.

OK, enough of this

[Schrullenhaft]

Claymore - Business is always a factor. Time is money and time spent on CMBO to code it to everyone's satisfaction is time that BTS doesn't get paid. BTS needs to create and sell products or their cash flow dries up and it becomes kind of hard to pay the bills and paychecks. I don't know what the volume of sales for CMBO is over time, but I assume that the sales aren't as great as they were the first few months that it was available. BTS is not a big company, so they don't have dozens of projects going on with cash coming in for each one spread throughout the year (ever wonder why the "big companies" are always pushing to get a product out the door - even if it's buggy ?).

CMBO is not a perfect product. I'm sure many of us agree on this and so does BTS. I would love to see a patch for CMBO to address some of the issues in the game before CM2 is worked on (and there are limitations as to what could actually be addressed in a patch too). But that isn't going to happen (as far as I know). Some of your issues (and others on this board) can be addressed in a patch. Others can't without an engine rewrite.

There are limitations to the engine that CM uses. Compromises were made to make the game playable on computers that are actually available (rather than requiring an NSF grant and a warehouse to house it in). BTS tried to get their engine to depict combat as realistically as possible, but they acknowledge that it won't duplicate every situation perfectly (unfortunately it is too easy to find the situations where the engine doesn't model combat they way we believe it should). Some of the "bugs" you and others have mentioned would require the engine to be rewritten so that the path of a projectile is tracked throughout its flight path, terrain is modeled on a much smaller scale, and a host of other things that would have to be changed to elimate these "bugs". It's not an impossible task, but it is a time consuming one and decisions have to be made for minimum configurations, etc. It can be complex coming up with a balance for the product in terms of features and how long it would take to create. Past posts from Steve indicate that the intention is to incorporate some minor engine rewrites in CM2 (a step towards CMII). So some features that we want will appear in CM2 (which won't be just a simple change of units using the same engine - though the engine will mostly be what CMBO is running) without having to wait for the CMII engine.

In effect what you're "pleading" for here is that CMBO's engine be rewritten to fix the bugs that annoy you and others. Are you willing to wait 2-3 more years ? I'm sure that BTS doesn't want to wait that long for another product to sell. We all want these changes; the sooner the better. I won't begrudge BTS for selling products in the mean time that are in line with achieving the goal of an "incredible, kick-ass, world class product". In the meantime we will get a couple of great games that we can play that show the gradual improvements that are being made (and new units to boot). Yes, it is the same business model that other companies use when it comes to "sequels", but considering the alternatives I don't think it's that great an evil.

While some of the issues that people bring up here can have a severe impact on the game in certain situations, it isn't the end of the world. I guess we will have to concentrate on what is good about CMBO (which there is plenty of) and not dwell on some of the shortcomings. BTS has proven that they are a company that cares and they want to create a great product, but business dictates that you will be unable to please everyone without going broke (and grogs are simply the worst audience to cater to ).

[ 04-10-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[JoePrivate]

Well said Schrullenhaft. Even if CM2 comes out in December 2001, that will be 18 months since CM:BO was released, close to half of that time spent tweaking and enhancing CM:BO. I think there were very good reasons to take the time to get CM:BO, being the 'first', right from the start. Now with the 'rightness' of the game established and a satisfied customer base, BTS probably has to consider more practical matters. Personally, I would be willing to wait 'until it's done' because CM:BO is the best game I have ever played, however I want to see BTS continue making games and would understand if they have their own internal deadline for business reasons.

[Claymore]

Michael,

I too would be willing to grant BTS an additional year to get the product "right" (or a reasonable (term undefined) proximity thereto).

How long did you exhaustively run the demo before CMBO came out? Now that we have CMBO I would venture to guess that the pain threshold for "real CM" would be much longer than a year.

But two things militate against that happening. One is that I expect that you and I are in a small minority. The remainder of the fans want CM2 yesterday and are already starting to froth at the mouth.

BTS ignored the "twitch crowd" and lovingly created CMBO. They have demonstrated themselves to be forward thinking (at least in the past) The same mindset would also allow them to ignore the current business model and not deliver a simple "east front" add-on to CMBO

The other is possible business reasons. If BTS doesn't bring out an East Front game based on the CM engine pretty quick, you can bet one or another of the clone makers will, stealing a good portion of BTS' thunder in the process. Sure, it would probably be a second- or third-rate ripoff, but that would only serve to turn off a portion of the game-buying and playing public to WW II tactical wargames. I'm sure we'd all rather not see that happen. A rip-off or poorly done tactical wargame...hmmm...like some other notable failures...which shall remain nameless. I believe that we've had numerous east front wargames and none of them have either cornered the market, jaded the turn based hordes, or any other prophesy of doom.

Cheers

Murray

[Tiger]

Cm2 is simply an '"east front" add-on to CMBO'?

I wonder if BTS feels the same about this.

If this were the case I'm guessing a simple add-on would take only a couple months to do.

here's an idea Claymore: don't buy or obtain CM2 the East Front when it's released. YOU wait until the next engine rewrite, we'll all be enjoying Barbarossa and Beyond (or whatever the game is going to be called). Of course, then you can come to the forum and tell us how bad and full of bugs it is then. ;p

[Claymore]

Jarmo

Hmm.. and what would I do instead of waiting?

Jump off a tall building?

To not buy the game after it's been done? Sure.

In short: Fixes or no fixes, I'll wait as long as I have to.

Agreed...agreed...agreed. Even if I consider CM2 to be in reality be only "eye candy", I will be one of the first to pay out my hard earned zlotychs on the product. The tactical model may only have changed by 10% and the skins on the armour include little red stars but I'll happily support BTS with my purchase.

Cheers

Murray

[Tiger]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The tactical model may only have changed by 10% and the skins on the armour include little red stars but I'll happily support BTS with my purchase.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Christ, Clay you don't expect much from the next game (sorry, "EXPANSION") do you?

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

[Kwazydog]

Actually guys, we definitely do *not* see CM2 as simply an add on. A lot more work is being done than simply sticking new models and textures into the old engine.

I cant go into details at this point but there will be many enhancements to the CM engine to simulate combat on the Eastern Front better than the current CM engine can, and even graphically it will be improved over CM1. If you do some searching you will probably find some hints from Steve as to what some of these enhancements may be.

Remember guys that CM2 is going to involved the entire 41-45 campaign. It has taken me the best part of two months to get on top of the Russian vehicle models for the game. All this time and more Charles has been coding, and has plenty more planned. I am hoping that people are going to be pleasantly surprised at to what will be in CM2, I know I wish I could be playing it already, hehe.

As for the initial question, Im not quite sure what’s being asked as such. As others have suggested points A and B will need to wait for an engine rewrite, as the CM engine wasn’t designed to handle such abilities and the average computer probably isn’t up to a point to handle them without long delays calculating turn resolution. Point C is another matter though.

The engine rewrite itself will take some time...I can only guess at this point but probably along a similar time scale as CM's coding time. You’d certainly be waiting more than an extra year Id say.

Anyways, back to those models

Dan

[ 04-10-2001: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

[Michael Emrys]

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

Even if I consider CM2 to be in reality be only "eye candy", I will be one of the first to pay out my hard earned zlotychs on the product. The tactical model may only have changed by 10% and the skins on the armour include little red stars but I'll happily support BTS with my purchase.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good lord, Murray, nobody's asking you to make the supreme sacrifice. If the CM2 demo comes out and you don't consider it anything more than "eye-candy", for Christ's sake don't buy the damned thing. I never thought CM was especially pretty; in fact a couple years back I think I may have hurt Steve's feelings by referring to an early screenshot as "ugly as a warthog".

In short, for whatever faults it possesses, and I have been one of the ones to catalogue those, it's still a mighty impressive attempt to portray WW II tactical combat. Speaking for myself, if I ever feel that any iteration of CM falls short of that standard, I won't buy it. But frankly, I'm not spending that money on anything else just yet.

Michael

[Tiger]

"Actually guys, we definitely do see CM2 as simply an add on."

Does this mean it'll be priced like an add-on?

[Kwazydog]

Doh I was just fixing that when you read it, should have read 'do not'

[ 04-11-2001: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

[Claymore]

I've been at work all day reading the messages and trying to compose responses between salving my sponsors. Now that I'm at home I'll try and get a few of them in.

First, Schrullenhaft,

Business is always a factor. Time is money and time spent on CMBO to code it to everyone's satisfaction is time that BTS doesn't get paid. BTS needs to create and sell products or their cash flow dries up and it becomes kind of hard to pay the bills and paychecks.

Nothing in my premise to this thread mentioned the if BTS's business model would support delaying their product. When the topic did get raised I again pushed it a more philisophical realm...what would I like BTS to aspire to?

A bit of background now...I am the leader of a team which invents never before seen one-of-a-kind high technology widgets on a 1-2 year development cycle. I must comb the real world and find sponsors, both government and private, willing to spend about $1M/year to support these efforts. Then when the development ends...start the whole cycle over again (actually it never ceases, but continues unceasingly). If I don't bring in enough money to cover my salary, my team's salary, materials and overhead then the company I work for will escort me and my charges offsite in a heartbeat. C'est tout fini. Now in order to be successful I've found that sponsors are enthralled and seduced more by the "revolutionary" than the "evolutionary". This is what my team is very very good at. If we produce a widget in one funding cycle, then the next widget will be faster, better, cheaper by factors of 10, not two or three. Now...am I guilt of wishing BTS to aspire to "revolutionary" as they move to the next widget? Yup. Don't you?

I don't know what the volume of sales for CMBO is over time, but I assume that the sales aren't as great as they were the first few months that it was available. BTS is not a big company, so they don't have dozens of projects going on with cash coming in for each one spread throughout the year (ever wonder why the "big companies" are always pushing to get a product out the door - even if it's buggy ?).

Which may be why software companies are so ephemeral. BTS broke the mold when it came to tactical wargames, entertain a thought experiment where BTS closes its doors and announces it will not return for X years until it unveils CM2! My thread was created to ask -- what X is your pain threshold? and what would need to be addressed.

Don't make it into something it's not.

BTS indeed never even read this thread, check its spelling or grammer, or date my sister for all I care. The BTS CMBO is the de facto location to discuss topics such as these with people of common interest. They can happily follow whatever business model they wish. I am only interested in what the CMBO minions feel about the questions I asked.

CMBO is not a perfect product. I'm sure many of us agree on this and so does BTS. I would love to see a patch for CMBO to address some of the issues in the game before CM2 is worked on (and there are limitations as to what could actually be addressed in a patch too). But that isn't going to happen (as far as I know). Some of your issues (and others on this board) can be addressed in a patch. Others can't without an engine rewrite.

Back to the original question...what if BTS closes its doors and announces it will not return for X years until it unveils CM2! My thread was created to ask -- what X is your pain threshold? and what would need to be addressed.

There are limitations to the engine that CM uses. Compromises were made to make the game playable on computers that are actually available (rather than requiring an NSF grant and a warehouse to house it in).

A team at my company (12 members) developed and currently maintains the wargaming program for the US Army (not sure if the Marines use it) which runs in real-time on a PIII. It can be done by triumphing brains over brawn. I would venture however that the current CMBO engine in incapable of being patched into solving the problems originally stated above. To me, who has labored under the unfair burdens of paper punchouts, basement floors poorly sculpted to approximate terrain, and endless arguements between opponents over what and who was in LOS...I, me, would gladly play CMBO for another 2-3 years awaiting the development of a REAL tactical simulator. After all, I awaited CMBO for more than 30 years, thus 3 years is but the blink of an eye. How about you? Would you really be truely pissed off if BTS announced that they were shutting down to develop the product I outlined above? Really? Not me. I am grateful in the extreme to Steve et al., and they owe me nothing. If they shut down to produce nothing and moved to the Bahamas I would still salute them everytime I turned on my laptop.

BTS tried to get their engine to depict combat as realistically as possible, but they acknowledge that it won't duplicate every situation perfectly (unfortunately it is too easy to find the situations where the engine doesn't model combat they way we believe it should). Some of the "bugs" you and others have mentioned would require the engine to be rewritten so that the path of a projectile is tracked throughout its flight path, terrain is modeled on a much smaller scale, and a host of other things that would have to be changed to elimate these "bugs".

And so...how long is your pain threshold for the above? This is all I've asked.

It's not an impossible task, but it is a time consuming one and decisions have to be made for minimum configurations, etc. It can be complex coming up with a balance for the product in terms of features and how long it would take to create. Past posts from Steve indicate that the intention is to incorporate some minor engine rewrites in CM2 (a step towards CMII). So some features that we want will appear in CM2 (which won't be just a simple change of units using the same engine - though the engine will mostly be what CMBO is running) without having to wait for the CMII engine.

And here is my point entirely. I would be happy if BTS never produced anything before the unveiling of CMII. You (and many of the others above) have difficulty digesting my remarks. They are an advocacy for BTS...an affirmation of their courage in developing CMBO. During a particularly difficult bit of the Normandy landing a Lt. had difficulty getting his men to follow him and assault a series of a dozen strongpoints. While they watched in relative safety from a distance the Lt. assaulted the buildings in succession, killing whoever was not flushed into the next building. The Lt. was joined at times by individuals from the squad, but they were often made casualties leaving only him to go on.

In the end he cleared all the strongpoints.

In effect what you're "pleading" for here is that CMBO's engine be rewritten to fix the bugs that annoy you and others.

READ the original post. I have made no entreaties to BTS. They can ignore this discussion at their pleasure. I am only curious what the other CMBO minions believe.

Are you willing to wait 2-3 more years ?

Finally a glimmer of understanding...yup...2-3 years is but a blink of the eye. I am glad even to have CMBO at all.

I'm sure that BTS doesn't want to wait that long for another product to sell. We all want these changes; the sooner the better. I won't begrudge BTS for selling products in the mean time that are in line with achieving the goal of an "incredible, kick-ass, world class product".

Gawd...that "kick-ass" comment makes me sound like a sixteen year old in retrospect. Oh well...email is forever.

In the meantime we will get a couple of great games that we can play that show the gradual improvements that are being made (and new units to boot).

IMO without the above changes it really is the same game.

Yes, it is the same business model that other companies use when it comes to "sequels", but considering the alternatives I don't think it's that great an evil.

Not evil...just unfortunate IMO.

While some of the issues that people bring up here can have a severe impact on the game in certain situations, it isn't the end of the world. I guess we will have to concentrate on what is good about CMBO (which there is plenty of) and not dwell on some of the shortcomings. BTS has proven that they are a company that cares and they want to create a great product, but business dictates that you will be unable to please everyone without going broke (and grogs are simply the worst audience to cater to ).

You obviously have been in the company of my children...they are IMPOSSIBLE to please.

Cheers

Murray

[Humus B. Chittenbee]

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

I don't know what the volume of sales for CMBO is over time, but I assume that the sales aren't as great as they were the first few months that it was available. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

HEY!!!!

I've recruited two new guys in the last two days! Both complete strangers... and one of them was over the phone!!!

Combine that with the attention CM is getting in the PC gamer mags, and BTS' sales may have gone up lately!

[Sgt Schulz]

Who's truly finished playing CMBO...after a year and I still have yet to get through all the scenarios...shoot halfway would make me happy right now. :cool:

[von Lucke]

I'll wait for CM2 as long as I waited for CM1: As long as it takes.