CMX2: A Plea for Open Standards.

[tar]

Since there seems to be a fair bit of CMX2 traffic here, I thought I would put in a plea for "open standards" insofar as this is reasonably possible.

By that I mean something like published formats for things like the maps or the scenario setups. The point of this is to make it easier for the horde of hobbyists to add value to the CMX2 product with various utility routines. For example, a campaign map program or a translation from digital elevation maps would be easier to produce if the map format were documented somewhere.

Similarly if it were possible to generate unit setups for the game.

Even more ambitious would be if there were some sort of API for extracting information from the gameturn (such as spotting and combat reports) and also to issue orders to the units -- but that may be asking a bit too much

Still, a map and scenario file format that were published would go a long way to making it possible to develop additional tools for creating scenarios and running linked games.

I realize that some items might need to be restricted for security, but perhaps something like the "tournament save" mode could allow for both open and secure operations.

[Renaud]

It's a commendable idea. I'd love for CM to be more user-group campaign friendly. If they would just seperate the map from the TOE (units), and allow import of either units or map (currently you can only import units or not with a map, not import just the units to a 2nd new map.

But if there's anything less likely to occur than this idea or the ones you presented, I don't know what it is.