Official Patch Version 1.04 Thread

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OK I'm going to play devils advocate here as well, but I must preface it by saying that CMAK has been a gaming bargain and has given hours of fun. However statements like 'our historical research is the best out there' are a bit too much. There were and remain some absolute howlers in CMAK which a cursory understanding of the theatre or modest attention to detail would have picked up.

For example those godawful mountains glowering down around the map in North Africa, or the fogs which prevail in howling gales. Scenarios such as Beda Fomm which ship with the game are complete historical claptrap, the British TOE is flawed, with no mixed tank platoons (AT/CS), infantry battalion availability dates are all over the shop and those silly flamethrowers inflate their price and don't belong. Early war scenarios have been radically unbalanced because the Cruiser series have all been given the 'burns easily' trait for no valid reason. The 25pdr doesn't work as historically, ATR carriers are missing a pintle mounted Bren MG, and some odd ammo loadouts especially MG ammo loadouts in tanks are there.

That's a few off the top of my head, and all of these have been flagged and pooh-poohed or ignored as are some very well informed board members. That is a very disappointing but understandable trend. However, this remains a fine game, all time top ten, extremely worthwhile etc. As BFC have washed their hands of the engine, any chance that a large scale Mod project could get cracking at the code to satisfy all of us whingers (ala Rome Total War Realism)?

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Pheasant Plucker:

As BFC have washed their hands of the engine, any chance that a large scale Mod project could get cracking at the code to satisfy all of us whingers (ala Rome Total War Realism)?

A high-moderate reverse engineering effort could probably fix some items like the artillery pricing, burns easily and the 25 pdr problems moderately easily. It would work like the Waffengrenadier patch, just overwriting what you don'y like in memory after program startup.

Other things like the omission of MGs in German airborne, no gammon bombs and mandatory flamethrowers for the British are probably much more difficult to fix as you would have to change the contents of composite data structures.

Games like Quake expose all this in a DLL and make it changable directly.

I have no intentions to learn Windows programming to do any of that, though, and it would leave the Mac folks behind.

[stikkypixie]

Originally posted by Pheasant Plucker:

However statements like 'our historical research is the best out there' are a bit too much.

Well if you know a game that has done better historical research please share with us.

I know there are flaws but BFC have stated often enough that some of these were due to the engine itself. Concessions had to be made during the writing of that engine like it or not. Some historical flaws were there unavoidable. They did their best and the CM series are the results.

And maybe modding isn't as easy as we think. What makes you think that anyone else can do a better job than BFC? This is as far as I know a unique engine, and modding it would require learning the whole awful thing inside out.

Plus the fact that it would hurt BFC financialy, remember this is their job as well as their hobby.

They have to make a living of this.

As for the patch I understand that they want to move on. I wouldn't want to spend time correcting some program I wrote four years ago!

Now stop whining, so that CMX can get here faster.

[Moon]

Michael Dorosh, you might have missed that from the second paragraph on, I directed my post to YD. Didn't mention your name anywhere. As for my sarcastic remark about you specifically - I could have slammed you for posting stuff you heard from somebody who heard something else from somebody close to somebody else. Instead I have used sarcasm and posted my opinion about why you keep being an ass ever since that patch incident. And if you continue to post hearsay and make it sound like somehow you know what we give a **** about or not, you will continue getting sarcastic remarks from me. I will not get off anybody's back who posts rumors which all too quickly are taken at face value. How quickly that can go was demonstrated not long ago in another thread.

If you really believe in what you wrote in the rest of your post, that I or anybody else at Battlefront is out to hunt people who want to help out just because we have nothing better to do, then I cannot believe that you have been a member of this forum for a few years now.

Now, I suggest that we either end this discussion here, or take the rest off-forum, because there is nothing public about it.

Pheasant Plucker - your post contains a number of good examples which show that sometimes what players think is easy to do, really isn't. I'll pick out one: mixed tank platoons. Due to how CM is coded this isn't possible without major recoding, weeks at least. Same reason why it's not possible to have CW Firefly platoons in the TOE. This has nothing to do with attention to detail.

Martin

[Thomm]

:eek:

Calm down guys!

This is not pretty, anymore!!!

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

:eek:

Calm down guys!

This is not pretty, anymore!!!

"I'm calmer than you are."

--Walter Sobchak

[YankeeDog]

Thanks for your responses, Moon.

I can certainly appreciate that putting up with the content and tone of some of the stuff posted here at the forums must be trying at times, to say the least.

Without singling out any one person or group specifically, I do think the overall tenor of the debate on this forum is more acidic than it needs to be right now. Criticizing people, rather than their ideas, rarely leads to any productive result. Getting pissed off at someone just because they are able to present a compelling counterargument to your own thesis is also poor form. Again, I am NOT trying to direct this to any one person or individual -- BFC employees included.

*Shrug* I'm happy knowing that my complaints and concerns have been heard. Not all of them were acted upon, but that's not really my call. Obviously, I didn't get everything I wanted in CMAK, but I certainly got far more than what I needed to make it a worthwhile game.

My big hope now is that BFC will remember these TOE and unit structure issues as it develops the new engine. There is more to this issue than simple updates to tables and unit data. I think some fundamental changes could be made to the way TOEs are presented in the game, and how the player ultimately goes about selecting his OOB that could dramatically improve the game.

But this is a subject for another time in another thread.

Regards,

YD

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

*Shrug* I'm happy knowing that my complaints and concerns have been heard.

FWIW I am editing the initial post of this thread to keep up with other undocumented features that are cropping up - MG34s on inventory for the Australians would appear to be the latest such feature.

[Europa]

Michael Dorosh. -> Give it a rest. The remaining stuff won't get fixed.

Madmatt, Moon -> How rude. I have allways held this chat high when it comes to maturity and manners. This is partly due to the clientel and partly due to the nice moderators. I understand that you might find some of us a bit whiny but most of the post regarding you and your products are all praise. Instead of going into conflict with some of us, something that will only do damage to all parts, you might just explain some of the problems regarding patching some things. The explanaition regarding the fireflies are good, I have suspected that that was the problem, you should have offered it earlier.

Now you all shake hands :mad:

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Europa:

Michael Dorosh. -> Give it a rest. The remaining stuff won't get fixed.

Showstoppers will, if there are enough of them. Moon as much as said so in this thread. Why not catalogue them? Missing BMPs, system crashes, loss of PBEM functionality and equipment listed under the wrong nationality count as such, don't they?

[Sergei]

Michael, what makes you think that the MG-34 for Aussies is a bug? Missed all the other captured equipment they got in 1.02 and the line "various small updates to Australian TO&E" in readme?

[kipanderson]

Hi,

The last thing I am interested in is another patch for CMAK.

Madmatt/ Moon may not get everything correct;) but they hit the nail on the head this time:)

My interest is very much in what Madmatt/Moon and co. are cooking up with the next engine.

Desperate for the new engine!

CM is dead, long live CMX2!!!

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

PS. Yes.. in the next engine we do need, my view, to be able to edit weapons data….. and morale separately from troop quality. But sadly… not everything can make it into even a new engine. (To get round the “cheating” problem with weapons data editing you have the option of using the shipped weapons data on the launch screen, seen by both players. As with the type of FOW used. If you follow me;)

PPS. Did someone mention the Cold War?

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by kipanderson:

PPS. Did someone mention the Cold War?

I don't think so, but I will.

It's be great to do Cold war forces up to the 1970's, or thereabouts. 1980's sees the appearance of some of the current stuff, which is still largely classified. "Approx. 850mm RHAe" doesn't really cut the mustard as far as CM goes, IMHO

Between 1945 and 1970 (to pick an arbitary range) sees some really interesting developments, and there's a fair amount of data to verify any simulation, like CM.

The emergence of wargaming was, AFAIK, an attempt to model future or potential conflict. It is a simulation to predict a response, so the argument that 'no battle of X type (say NWE) occured' doesn't really matter. I don't want to refight only what did happen, and I don't imagine most current CM players do either, as is evidenced by the number of QBs played.

Sorry about that. Went a bit Off-Topic.

[Flenser]

Jumped into this one a little late, but here's my two (tardy) bits. As a non-grog, but someone who finds the subject matter fascinating, this is hands down the best thing out there. God knows how many hours (and games) I've lost to this damn piece of digital entertainment.

Originally posted by Moon:

Keep also in mind that - unlike most of the other things going on at Battlefront these days, which are made by independent developer teams - making patches does cost us the one most valuable resource we have: Charles' coding time. That time, we all probably agree, is best spent on working on CMX2.

Martin [/QB]

Nary a single soul other than Charles is coding? Yeeeeegads.

As someone who can relate to being the only coder on a large project, I feel for the man. To this day, hearing the phrase "let's add this" causes the voices in head to start telling me to do very bad things.

[Sergei]

They did try with Madmatt being the second programmer. The results weren't very encouraging, though, and that engine was sold to Eric Young.

[Tim The Enchanter]

Originally posted by Pheasant Plucker:

OK I'm going to play devils advocate

Please don't friend! It greatly adds to the noise factor and we have come to expect much better from you.

[Flenser]

Thank you, Sergei, for ruining a perfectly good day via mention of the dark one. Hope you choke on your turkey.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Tim The Enchanter:

It greatly adds to the noise factor

Give us a break. You are the noise factor here.

[Madmatt]

So, I see how you guys are. I try and be nice for months at a time and I get emails and comments asking "Hey Matt, whats wrong?" and then when I decide to come down hard on someone for posting simply by quoting (which I think is bad form) I get everyone whinning that I am picking on someone.

Interesting... I am not sorry for what I said as I found junk2drives post rather annoying and un-neccesary, at least when done so without any personal comment. If someone wants to take a position about something we did or how we operate, fine, then show some balls and do so with your own words, but just quoting us repeatedly with no comment will do nothing but piss me off.

Hey, you know what guys? I would LOVE to go back and add all those things you've all mentioned in the past and add a bunch of fixes and changes and add new vehicles and new sound effects and new textures and expand the TO&E's even more and a million other things. I really would, but the reality is that the CM engine as it stands has been pushed, tweaked and coddled as much as we can afford to do. It's old, cumbersome and takes far longer to make what would appear to be easy changes than you would ever believe.

As Moon said above, there comes a time when you reach diminishing returns with regards to continual work on a product and we are at that point. Okay, so Germans don't have MG-34's during a couple of months in 1941. Fine, its a mistake, a mistake I hasten to add NO ONE seemed to notice for almost a year since it was like that in version 1.01.

Alright, Dorosh, you mentioned a few other issues above which could constitute a new patch, let us looks at them.

PBEM issues...Yup, and it was fixed less than 72 hours after it was noticed with the v1.03 patch.

Crash Issues... I haven't seen one yet that was due to the patch or game itself. Its always something else and I can usually tell the person what to do to fix it (i.e. reconfigure the firewall).

Missing BMP's for the captured L3/33, fixed less than 24 hours after it was reported and since that time the 1.03 patch was updated with those files.

You know, everytime something like this comes up there is always a group of forum posters that want to lament some kind of "change" that Battlefront.com has gone through. "Oh woe is me, they are out to make a buck and don't care about us grogs anymore!", "Oh they have lost their focus and sold out!", blah blah blah...

Well you know, here we are now 5 years and counting after the release of CMBO and we have more exciting titles coming and in development than ever before. You know, if you don't like how we do things, great, LEAVE. It's simple as that. Hell, I will hold the door open for you and wish you all the luck in the world. No hard feelings at all!

If you want to stay and try to affect change thats cool too, but you had better do so with maturity and respect. I think we have earned that, as many of you have earned the same from us. You also need to understand that it doesn't matter how many posts you make listing out all the things you dont like in CMAK, it doesn't mean will will address them all.

We have our reasons for doing business the way we do. Sometimes it means you get what you want, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it means we get to do what WE want, sometimes it doesn't. But our business model has been run, from day one, to make sure we are still here on day two, day three and beyond.

Regardless to how much devolopment and testing time is exerted, there will ALWAYS be bugs in code. All we can try and do is minimize the amount and more importantly their severity and document them so that if the oppertunity presents itself, they can be fixed. Right now, that window of oppertunity is no longer open for CMAK. If that changes, I got a laundry list of little things I want Charles to look at and I argue more vehemetly for changes in patches than you guys might ever know!

So, unless the current situation changes, and thats not likely, this crusade for yet another CMAK patch is OVER.

Madmatt

[Tim The Enchanter]

Enough of this madness friends!

Treating CMAK like the initial release of World War Two online is madness!

CMAK is a great game made by a great company who have both great customer interaction and support for their five star games.

Friends, it's obvious that they are working their tails off and it's the day before Thanksgiving!

Do you know what the meaning of Thanksgiving is friends?

I am going to take the time to thank BFC for their excelent products and support for their products rain or shine.

Keep up the good work BFC!

[aka_tom_w]

Is there ANY chance that his one comment was EXACTLY ALL that needed to be said in this entire Thread????

" It's a bit like this:

-"These guys made the most accurate historical simulation every, there is nothing out there"

-"Yeah, but their third game really is missing some LMGs, FOs, and stuff."

-"No way!"

-"Way! And... and... and they promised that it all would be there. Everything. All that I ever wanted! Yes they did! Now it isn't."

-"Oh boy, that really bothers me!"

-"Yeah, me too. I really should be in closer proximity to the design team myself, then things like these wouldn't happen!""

I have read the entire thread and the signal to noise ratio hear is VERY high. i.e. WAY too much noise and some good info (signal) from BFC.

just in case you missed it:

"

It's a bit like this:

-"These guys made the most accurate historical simulation every, there is nothing out there"

-"Yeah, but their third game really is missing some LMGs, FOs, and stuff."

-"No way!"

-"Way! And... and... and they promised that it all would be there. Everything. All that I ever wanted! Yes they did! Now it isn't."

-"Oh boy, that really bothers me!"

-"Yeah, me too. I really should be in closer proximity to the design team myself, then things like these wouldn't happen!""

this is really all you need to know about this entire thread

(this note if for "quick" readers who start at the last post and the last page to see what is "new" in the thread

"We're DONE here!"

-tom w

Originally posted by Moon:

My gosh, did you notice - Michael Dorosh is still angry that he's not "in close proximity to the design team" himself, isn't he?

YD, thanks for your constructive criticism. I am sure you'll understand that it's very frustrating to hear some of these things.

It's a bit like this:

-"These guys made the most accurate historical simulation every, there is nothing out there"

-"Yeah, but their third game really is missing some LMGs, FOs, and stuff."

-"No way!"

-"Way! And... and... and they promised that it all would be there. Everything. All that I ever wanted! Yes they did! Now it isn't."

-"Oh boy, that really bothers me!"

-"Yeah, me too. I really should be in closer proximity to the design team myself, then things like these wouldn't happen!"

Now for a more serious statement:

The comparison junk2drive posted is not contradicting what we delivered. Our historical research, including TO&Es is the best out there. We never claimed that it would be 100% error free. Nothing can ever be, especially not a computer game.

Keep in mind that CM is a highly complex program. It is not point-click-boom. You cannot open the code, throw in a bunch of changes and close it again. It is not that simple, not even for something appearing as simple as adding a TO&E entry here, or subtracting something here. "Hey, why can't they simply add a command to have artillery arrive in a pattern?" Well, guess what, it's not as simple as adding an entry in the on-screen menu

1.02 showed clearly that there is a point of diminishing returns. We cannot keep fixing small stuff at the danger of breaking other, more serious stuff. Yet that's what's going to happen when you fiddle around with a program too much.

Some issues that are going to remain are due to human mistake, some are due to "making the wrong choice when presented with conflicting research", some are due to information simply not being available at the time. But some are, and we've admitted this early on, due to design decisions made very very early in the process of designing CMBO. These cannot be made undone short of coding an entirely new engine. Which, incidentally, is precisely what we're doing. It will be quicker to do this than trying to fiddle around more in CM.

Keep also in mind that - unlike most of the other things going on at Battlefront these days, which are made by independent developer teams - making patches does cost us the one most valuable resource we have: Charles' coding time. That time, we all probably agree, is best spent on working on CMX2.

So like Matt said - 1.03 is the end, unless some serious issues crop up. We do continue keeping track of issues, however, and When we'd unexpectedly have to make 1.04 for some reason, some of the other minor issues mentioned might be addressed too, in full, partially, or not at all.

Martin

[kipanderson]

flamingknives,

Always good to have our support for the only rational choice of topic regarding CMX2, Cold War!

However, slight difference in preferred period. My vote would be 1970-1989. I do think there is plenty of reliable information on 1980s equipment weapons data.

The important thing is that the time period is such that we are playing with toys of a completely different character from WWII. For example, that fully mature ATGMs are available. Even if first generation ones. If the 1980s is too late, then the 1970s would do the trick. 1960s as the latest period would have me a bit worried. Toys are often just much improved WWII toys in character.

A new set of toys to play with would be mind blowing…

Fulda Gap here I come… 3rd Shock Army in the warpath:)

All the best,

Kip.

PS. Hope to have Andreas over this side of the channel for London drinks sometime in the New Year… will be in touch.

[poppy]

Happy Holidays, 150 bucks for 4 years of gamming, not bad,not bad at all. poppys

[Sergei]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

just in case you missed it:

No, we didn't miss it. We read his original message. Then you quoted it. Then you quoted it again. And then you quoted the whole original message by Martin.

[Tim The Enchanter]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Tim The Enchanter:

It greatly adds to the noise factor

Give us a break. You are the noise factor here. </font>