Attention CMETO grogs & modders

[John Kettler]

Wanted to let you know that the History Channel just aired, and presumably will reair a few hours from now, a remarkable 2 hour program called Brothers in Arms: The Untold Story of the 502.

In a phenomenal joining of footage from the games, historical footage, aerial recon imagery, maps, interviews with historians, locals, and above all,

a whole bunch of veterans, the story of the 502's run up to D-Day, the harrowing jump, and the ferocious combat for days on end which shredded the unit (one company had 13 men left) is told, in the kind of program the History Channel ought to be doing routinely.

The program is full of great terrain, building, and even color uniform shots, some of which are period, no less, and can be had at the History Channel site.

Also, there's one on now all about the tankers, which so far is terrific, with loads of great color footage. We're about to learn all about Sherman vulnerabilities. It's now 4:11 p.m. PST.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Rocket-Man]

I saw some of that program the other day, but unfortunately couldn't watch it for very long.

Showing computer animated footage of the soldiers was definitely an interesting choice by the director.

Do you know what program they used to create the computer animations?

[John Kettler]

Rocket-Man,

From this, I believe it's the Unreal 3 engine. OTOH, that game's in development and covers Arnhem, whereas the program drew on the first two BiA games:

Hill 30 and Earned in Blood, thus the engine may not be quite that advanced. Still checking.

Okay, tracked the info down. More than you ever wanted to know about the guts of the first game in the series. These should show via contrast the power of the Unreal 3 engine.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/brothersinarms/media.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[Rocket-Man]

More of a first person shooter game then, not really my cup of tea.

It did add an interesting flavor to the program though.

Thanks for hunting down the information John.

[John Kettler]

Rocket-Man,

I've played a bit of the first BiA game head to head on split screen and watched my friend play parts of the campaign. Call it a mixture of the brilliant and the suicide inducing! The terrain and building modeling is fabulous, the men and weapons look great, the firefights are intense and so forth, but these elite warriors literally can't jump, can't climb, and can't get over a 3 foot high stone wall, never mind a high one. There are also lots of annoying invisible walls, at least in the X Box version I played. You can issue orders to your squad, but the AI running the men is pretty dim, as in deploying the men on the enemy's side of the wall! The StuG comes complete with a sixth sense of what you're doing and incredible maneuverability too. CM StuG operators only wish their StuGs could do this! Most buildings aren't usable, either, forcing the paratroopers to mostly fight outside. The firepower of a tank in infantry support is stunningly shown, and you can do some pretty cool things in the game (blow up Rommel's asparagus and 2cm Flakvierling positions), but you can't, say, use one of those lovely guns, though German rifles and SMGs are usable. Some twit, though, welded all the tripod MG-42s in place in their sandbagged emplacements,

meaning you can't even turn them around. This is the basic problem with the game, IMO, that the very things that would be both cool and logical to do, you can't. Also, it's very easy to get disoriented and get shot to pieces. Was it a groundbreaking game? Yes. Did they get it right?

Not, IMO, by a long shot.

Regards,

John Kettler