Battlefront.com Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 UberFunBunny I'm pretty sure my idea was original!Ah... now I sorta remember that thread No, I am not sure it is original. But original or not, it certainly isn't something that people have been asking for. Not even in a round about way EXCEPT to yield unrealistically precise control over movement (which is inherently already too exact as it is). I think the standard of stomping is subjective, and could be suffering from "grade inflation".... Could have been the presentation or something that someone else said. Dunno, don't remember. But presentation is often everything. I and others, as we should, do react to things to some degree based on how they are written. Demands are generally not responded too very nicely, not that I am saying this is what you did. I guess that "stompping" is as subjective as "rationaly and reasonably suggesting". And yes, they are both in the eye of the beholder Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UberFunBunny Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 Steve, to yield unrealistically precise control over movement (which is inherently already too exact as it is) Does this mean that the "Move to Contact" and "Seek Hull Down" orders are history for the new engine? My idea for a "Seek LOS" order is really just the logical equivalent of these new types of orders introduced in CMBB. And aren't SOPs (potentially in the CM new engine) much more precise than the current orders system? [ February 07, 2003, 05:56 AM: Message edited by: UberFunBunny ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 Stalin's Bastard Son The entire crux of the problem hinges on how the code works, not how a flow chart of its end product does. I have absolutely no clue why the game can not be "tricked" into spitting out two files, or better yet one file with an extra bit stuck on the end. This was exactly what Charles looked into trying to do. He thought it was possible within a reasonable timeframe. But after looking at the actual code (i.e. not a flow chart) he concluded that it wasn't practical. This was 2 years ago or so and therefore I do not remember the specifics of his explaination. But I prodded and poked him at the time and was satisfied that he didn't miss something obvious. Everybody here should just accept that. The only thing I sorta remember is that Charles was more afraid of the unknowns than the knowns. He did feel that it wouldn't take much effort to basically get it working correctly. The problem is that "basically" is not good enough. So perhaps 1-2 weeks of doing the initial coding, aother 2-3 weeks recoding stuff he didn't think needed to be, and then more weeks doing even more of that when testers send him screwed up PBEM files. The bottom line here is that CM is a very complex codebase. As you programmers know, once certain things are set up as the foundation they can be VERY difficult, if not impossible, to correct without major rewrites. For example... At one point we had pre battle casualties now showing up in the display at the beginning of the game. Meaning, if you had a 9 man squad with 4 casualties before the game it showed up as 5 men with 0 men in the casualty display. This was the way it should have been because it allows the player to see what casualties were taken during the game (important) without getting confused about how many of them were taken before the game (unimportant). Sounds easy, yes? No. It worked 98% of the time just fine. Then we started to get some strange bug reports about units losing or gaining men during a battle. This was very distressing because this type of bug in development is almost unheard of (I tell you Charles is one of the best ). But it happened infrequently and was hard to pin down. Finally we figured it out... the problem only happened with a unit that had pre battle casualties at the start of an Operation and this problem wouldn't show up (if it did at all) until the next battle. Or somefink like that Charles looked into it and found the problem, which was unfortunately "terminal" and the feature had to be removed. The problem could only have been fixed by a rewrite of a huge section of code, which would have taken months to ensure was done correctly. Programmers should KNOW that this is what happens when you screw around with stuff without carefully considering the unintended consequences. The difference between a great programmer (Charles), and a horrible one (I can not utter his name ), is that the great one codes cleaner and therefore has a better handle on what can or can not be safely changed. And more importantly, how it can be safely changed. A poor programmer doesn't have a clue about either. But no matter how good the programmer is, if he is working on a massive project with intense pressure to complete, the code will not be as clean as an IT professor would like. And since Charles did go to graduate school for programming, He is aware of this In short... theories often run smack into a wall of reality. If CM were a car being driven at 100 mph down a slippery road... who would you trust to decide if he should take a left or right up on ahead? Charles who is driving, or Fuerte who is locked in the trunk and has no clue which road they are on? Fuerte might be a better drive than Charles, but it doesn't matter since he is not in any position to make the call. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 UberFunBunny, Does this mean that the "Move to Contact" and "Seek Hull Down" orders are history for the new engine?Most likely. My idea for a "Seek LOS" order is really just the logical equivalent of these new types of orders introduced in CMBB.As I know I have stated before in other threads, and I think yours, there are probably dozens of "logical" orders that could be added to the game. The problem is that quantity is a killer even if each order is in its own rights perfect. And aren't SOPs (potentially in the CM new engine) much more precise than the current orders system?In some ways yes. The player will be able to better control the BEHAVIOR of their units. No in regards to how much exact control they can exercise over their unit's decisions. In other words, it might be possible to instruct a unit to "Sneak through this terrain until you can get a shot at that APC. If you get a shot, stop and take it". The difference is that in the new engine the unit will NOT be able to do this unless it has its own personal, first hand knowledge of where that APC is. This is the benefit of Relative Spotting vs. Absolute Spotting. In short... control of the unit's behavior will be in many ways more exact, but control over the interaction of it with the environment will be far less exact than in CMBO/CMBB. The end result is more realistic control over unit behavior to stimuli, but less control over the conditions in which that stimuli is encountered. This will make the overall interaction of units and situations more realistic. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
86smopuim Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 Originally posted by Battlefront.com: As you programmers know, once certain things are set up as the foundation they can be VERY difficult, if not impossible, to correct without major rewrites. (..snippage...) Programmers should KNOW that this is what happens when you screw around with stuff without carefully considering the unintended consequences. From a somewhat disinterested, nuetral third party: For non programmers out there who think the above is just lip service, and being a programmer of *many years*, I can attest that the above statements are 100% true. BFD, A few extra emails per battle. A simpler solution would be to find opponents who email in a timely fashion. ( Edited to sound less like a fanboy ) [ February 07, 2003, 01:41 PM: Message edited by: 86smopuim ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WineCape Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 Me thinks that Charles and Steve need more SA wine to smooth the edges and keep on the great programming/interaction with their client base. Fuerte, I'm using your PBEM Helper and it is a God-send. Thank you. But if Charles tells you that he tasted "bacon" in the Kanonkop Pinotage 1998, you better believe him... Regards, Charl Theron 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UberFunBunny Posted February 7, 2003 Share Posted February 7, 2003 Originally posted by Battlefront.com: UberFunBunny, </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Does this mean that the "Move to Contact" and "Seek Hull Down" orders are history for the new engine?Most likely. My idea for a "Seek LOS" order is really just the logical equivalent of these new types of orders introduced in CMBB.As I know I have stated before in other threads, and I think yours, there are probably dozens of "logical" orders that could be added to the game. The problem is that quantity is a killer even if each order is in its own rights perfect. And aren't SOPs (potentially in the CM new engine) much more precise than the current orders system?In some ways yes. The player will be able to better control the BEHAVIOR of their units. No in regards to how much exact control they can exercise over their unit's decisions. In other words, it might be possible to instruct a unit to "Sneak through this terrain until you can get a shot at that APC. If you get a shot, stop and take it". The difference is that in the new engine the unit will NOT be able to do this unless it has its own personal, first hand knowledge of where that APC is. This is the benefit of Relative Spotting vs. Absolute Spotting. In short... control of the unit's behavior will be in many ways more exact, but control over the interaction of it with the environment will be far less exact than in CMBO/CMBB. The end result is more realistic control over unit behavior to stimuli, but less control over the conditions in which that stimuli is encountered. This will make the overall interaction of units and situations more realistic. Steve </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schoerner Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Originally posted by Dschugaschwili: On the other hand, if somebody can hack the calculation or do something else to alter the outcome of the calculation, being able to do so every second turn (read: under the current system) should be more than enough to secure a win... Dschugaschwili Stalin, it would be VERY easy to make a cheating utility already (i.e. simply based on the same principles like my AntiCencorshipLoader). Therefore i agree, the security reservation, that the turns are calculated on one computer only, shouldn't be an argument against it. [ February 07, 2003, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: Schoerner ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lumbergh Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Originally posted by WineCape: wine wine wine sip sip ahhhhhh I've got truckloads of it and you have none. Don't you wish you could have some? You need some sort of link in your signature since you keep making me thirsty! I'd guess that you could probably convert half of the non-French forum types to SA wine...of course, BFC might put the kibbosh on selling wine on their website, but you could always send them "incentive" in the post.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eden Smallwood Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Originally posted by Battlefront.com: [...] it might be possible to instruct a unit to "Sneak through this terrain until you can get a shot at that APC. If you get a shot, stop and take it". The difference is that in the new engine the unit will NOT be able to do this unless it has its own personal, first hand knowledge of where that APC is.The unit will not be able to do *what*? Accept the command? Or decide what to do about an APC it hasn't yet seen, or... wha? Could you be bothered to rephrase that? Clearly this is the golden nugget of the thread! Eden 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WineCape Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 You need some sort of link in your signature since you keep making me thirsty!But the link is me. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Rommel Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 posted February 07, 2003 07:50 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by Battlefront.com: [...] it might be possible to instruct a unit to "Sneak through this terrain until you can get a shot at that APC. If you get a shot, stop and take it". The difference is that in the new engine the unit will NOT be able to do this unless it has its own personal, first hand knowledge of where that APC is. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The unit will not be able to do *what*? Accept the command? Or decide what to do about an APC it hasn't yet seen, or... wha? Could you be bothered to rephrase that? Clearly this is the golden nugget of the thread! I think this is what he means. Lets take Side A and Side B Side A has a APC behind a hill Side B has a Anti tank team in some woods on other side of hill.. Now with the current engine you as the commander can see the APC and order the Anti tank team to sneak up and destroy the APC even though the AT team does not have a LOS to the APC so would not even know that the APC is even by the hill in real life.Now in the new engine..you would not be able to order the AT team to attack the APC even though you as the player know its there..Because the AT team in actuallity does not know that the APC is behind the hill cause they may not have spotted or heard it..So you would need to have the AT team actually see or hear the APC sirst hand to be able to get them to attack it..This is just my analysis but if i am wrong please correct me. [ February 08, 2003, 04:10 AM: Message edited by: Erwin Rommel ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dschugaschwili Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Steve: What you wrote pretty much confirms what I already thought. I don't want to say that you should bother Charles again with this topic. And as a programmer I know what can happen when I change something without thinking about the consequences. You used the pre-battle casualties as an example. I think there's an even better one. I still remember very well what happened during the development of the TCP/IP multiplayer mode for CMBO. I don't know exactly how much development time went down the drain when it turned out that different processors were rounding floating point numbers in different ways, so only sending the orders and calculating the movies on both machines locally led to different results, ruining the game. But I remember quite well that it delayed the CMBO 1.1 patch significantly. There are probably a couple of other things that ordinary forum members never were told of. So, I can live with the fact that a faster PBEM system will not be in CMBB. If you promise to include it during the engine rewrite, that's perfectly fine with me. And thanks again for explaining how the game system works. Schoerner: The difference is that you knew exactly what you were looking for when you wrote the anti-censorship loader: basically a couple of strings. But you don't know where you would have to look to find accuracy data for certain guns or something else you need to change to make a cheating executable, so changing the gameplay is much more difficult than changing a few (mostly cosmetic) screen outputs. At any rate, the PBEM system has nothing to do with the difficulty of hacking the executable anyway. Dschugaschwili [ February 08, 2003, 06:39 AM: Message edited by: Dschugaschwili ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eden Smallwood Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Originally posted by Erwin Rommel: So you would need to have the AT team actually see or hear the APC sirst hand to be able to get them to attack it..The problem with that interpretation is, What happens then? If you can order the TH across the hill regardless, then you have a TH team standing next to an APC, it would be strange if he didn't attack it. If you cannot give him an order to move, then it's a strange sort of a game where you can't tell your guys even where to go... See what I mean? There's something missing here. Eden 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted February 8, 2003 Share Posted February 8, 2003 Dschugaschwili, Thanks! Thanks a WHOLE HECK OF A LOT I had blocked that rounding problem from my memory until you reminded me of it! Good GOD was that a nightmare. And now that you mention it, this rules out some of the suggestions here even if we wanted to put the time into it. The processing MUST be done on one system in order to ensure there are no problems like what we were smacked with last time. Eden, Rommel is correct in principle. What I was saying is that because of some major new features (all of which will come from Relative Spotting in some way) means that the "Borg" problem will be greatly reduced. This translates to less exact tactical control to some extent. It might be that you can still order that unit over the hill, but you will not be able to order it over the hill and specify the target ahead of time. If the unit gets to the other side of the hill and doesn't see the APC for some reason, then it won't aquire it as a target. Remember, with Absolute Spotting units are routinely capable of shooting at things that they probably wouldn't have spotted on their own. But I am getting into something that is really best left for later on when we have a more firm idea how this system will play out. You can, however, do a Search for threads that discuss "Relative Spotting". I have had several long and detailed conversations about this in the past, and it sounds like they will be quite informative for you. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuerte Posted February 8, 2003 Author Share Posted February 8, 2003 Originally posted by karch: We gave each other our password.. We got 1 full game turn per email and never cheated. here's how it goes.. I'll skip setup. 1) I move, computer turn save doc 2) I open file with HIS password, cover the screen and fast forward to the end of the movie and save the doc 3) I open it with my password, watch the movie and then make my next turn and save the doc. 4) I then send him the files from turn 1 and 3 This way we turned arount 1 full turn per email.. you sent 2 files to each other. 1 movie file and 1 file with your moves pre-plotted. It was very fast, and I trust my good friends to play like this. If you're concerned about cheaters, then don't play this way.I had to quote this once more. I analyzed this, and if I am correct, you get in fact two turns per e-mail (once the setup phase is over)! Unbelievable. And what is the best, it can be implemented with full security in CMBB+. My future implementation in PBEM Helper will not be 100% secure, but it should work for people that are not willing to cheat (they don't accidentally see information that they should not see). I'll have to say, thank you Scott Karch for inventing this (or if it was your friend). I'll post the detailed system description later. I'll have to double check it first, it seems to be too good to be true. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biltong Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 Just saw the 1st pages of this thread. Unfortunately I must agree BFC does not care for it’s customers. Years ago I played WF/EF by a company called Talonsoft (don’t know if they’re still going – be surprised if they are). With their ‘excellent’ system someone could replay the movie until they got the result they wanted. Consequently you would start a game with some unknown guy and 3 or more weeks later start wondering about the miraculous luck your opponent has every now and then… Then you would have the dilemma: Do I accuse him.... swallow the crap and carry on... or make some lame excuse and stop the game. :mad: This kept on happening and was driving me nuts!! Then a guy called Ken Talley told me about a game being coded that makes cheating impossible…. So – 3? Months before the CMBO demo came out I stopped playing that ‘other game’ and waited… To get back to my 1st point. I’ll never forgive BFC for those months of unbearably painfull suspense – waiting for that bloody demo!!! :mad: Who can remember those days – Oh! How we suffered!!!! Julle domdonners!!! Bitch & Complain!!!!! Julle het nie 'n fokken clue nie!!!! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.