newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 It may have been suggested before (but the number of posts on campaigns is quite daunting). Suggestion: Provide an API which would allow other programs to start a battle, and then be able to read the results. This has several benefits for you guys. A) It means YOU don't have to code a campaign game, and can simply tell those wanting one to build it themselves. and Should someone make a really good game that uses it, it most definately increase sales of CMBB. What's more, if you make it an open licence, you're product remains much less tied to the fate of the other games. Basically, all you would be doing is making it easier for guys like those at CMMOS to do their stuff more fluently, provided they write their own code. The premise is similar to TSR's (WOTC or whoever they are now) open game license. Anyone can use their core rule system for free providd they give proper credit. TSR makes out because for every other game system that ties into them, means that a few more people are likely to buy the Player's Handbook which is the profit maker for TSR. The API idea is similar, for every game out there which allows a player to start a CMBB battle, means more people are likely to purchase CMBB. Finally, this might be something you could patch on after CMBB's release so that it wouldn't delay the game to the delight of the pack of rabid wolves around here who call themselves fans. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 I hate typos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slapdragon Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 This has been suggested before, and the reasons against it would be It would open the game to cheating in PBEM files and It would be a lot of work for no financial gain. For CMMC type games however there is a better casualty screen coming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer Leader Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 Ha! That'll be the day. Let me tell you, the software publishing world is not so kind and polite as the literary publishing world, and the computer game world is much more vicious than the friendly world of board (or what-have-you) games. See, if that were to happen (and I don't need to be Steve {Moon?} to say it won't) we would suddenly be inundated with crappy little knock-offs soo fast your head would spin. It would be like dropping a nice big snail into your aquarium and a few weeks later finding the thing FULL (and I mean FULL) of runty little ugly snails. And if you're wondering why I used such an off-the-wall example, its because that appened to me and I'm still pissed. As for campaigns I have always ben pro-campaign, and around November there were two lengthy threads with some GREAT ideas for how it could be done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Slapdragon: This has been suggested before, and the reasons against it would be It would open the game to cheating in PBEM files and It would be a lot of work for no financial gain. For CMMC type games however there is a better casualty screen coming.I'm not thinking of having another game actively interface with CMBB while it's running. I'm more thnking that another game basically spits out a scenario or even just a QB setup, lets the people play it, and then reports back the AAR to the other program. There would be no need to involve the data transfer from PBEM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Panzer Leader: Ha! That'll be the day. Let me tell you, the software publishing world is not so kind and polite as the literary publishing world, and the computer game world is much more vicious than the friendly world of board (or what-have-you) games. See, if that were to happen (and I don't need to be Steve {Moon?} to say it won't) we would suddenly be inundated with crappy little knock-offs soo fast your head would spin. It would be like dropping a nice big snail into your aquarium and a few weeks later finding the thing FULL (and I mean FULL) of runty little ugly snails. And if you're wondering why I used such an off-the-wall example, its because that appened to me and I'm still pissed. As for campaigns I have always ben pro-campaign, and around November there were two lengthy threads with some GREAT ideas for how it could be done.As for knock offs, I don't see how this would generate anymore than CMBB alone will. Maybe if someone creates a GREAT campaign game that connected in, you might see a few people try to make cheap things that connected into the campaign game, but they wouldn't be the people interested in anything CM like anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer Leader Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 Isn't it all about cracking codes? Isn't that why they are so "top-secret" about everything? That's what I always assumed, but I could be wrong. I think of game codes as being likr treasure maps -- if you can get it, you can get the gold! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Don't think like Microsoft here. Think like Linux. BTS has said repeatedly that they are not interested in a campaign game. Fine, let other people make those games. But make the CM series a valuable game that can be plugged into the campaign market, and you increase your own market. BTS makes quality products and cheap knockoffs should be no threat to them. However, the market place will change. The more success the CM series has, the more other people will want to get in on the action. Therefor, something like the API done now will allow BTS to have more say in where that market goes. Hell, in a future CM, maybe you could even stop the action, plug in a FPshooter, and play the critical taking of the large factory yourself, then bonce back to CM8. Then bounce back to Panzer General 5 and redirect your offensive. TRS did not do what they did because they are in a "friendly" field of publishing. They did it because it made good business sense to put themselves at the core position in the PRG business. It protects their own products by making companies want to cooperate with their system rather than make competeing ones. This reduces the risk that a group like White Wolf will take over the dominant RPG spot. The comparison doesn't completely overlap with CM, but enough of it to be worth thinking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Panzer Leader: Isn't it all about cracking codes? Isn't that why they are so "top-secret" about everything? That's what I always assumed, but I could be wrong. I think of game codes as being likr treasure maps -- if you can get it, you can get the gold!BTS doesn't have to open their system up to allow other computers to communicate. If they want, the other games dumps a text file, CMBB reads it, plays out, and then dumps back a different text file. The file it reads and dumps back could be in plain english if they want it to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FinnN Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 Oops I missed this when I posted in a different thread. I couldn't agree more, import/export of battle results would be easy to implement and I don't see how on earth it could threaten Battlefront - after all the engine itself is their game. I can only see it generating more sales with people who are more interested in campaigns. Of course you can run campaigns in other ways, but getting a computer to run it has to be good way to go - after all look at how much easier to play CMBO is compared to a traditional wargame? Have fun Finn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cameroon Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 Don't worry newlife, I understand what you're describing. AAR generation that another program could process would be pretty straightforward I would think. Doesn't open any internals either so in that respect it's safe. The crux of the problem lies in starting. The reason is that one either has to tell people how to write the map-file format (not going to happen) or create a "generation syntax" which also isn't going to happen (lotta work). If one had the AAR report, however, one could go a long way to simplifying the campaign GM's life (well, with the proper tools processing it anyway). Your upper level tools would have the starting unit list, do their magic with the AAR, and then tell the GM what's what. Then the GM can take that and go edit what needs editing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Cameroon: Don't worry newlife, I understand what you're describing. AAR generation that another program could process would be pretty straightforward I would think. Doesn't open any internals either so in that respect it's safe. The crux of the problem lies in starting. The reason is that one either has to tell people how to write the map-file format (not going to happen) or create a "generation syntax" which also isn't going to happen (lotta work). If one had the AAR report, however, one could go a long way to simplifying the campaign GM's life (well, with the proper tools processing it anyway). Your upper level tools would have the starting unit list, do their magic with the AAR, and then tell the GM what's what. Then the GM can take that and go edit what needs editing.Thanks FinnN and Cameroon, Maybe we can combine your ideas, and leave out the CMBB auto-startup and simply create a seperate way within CMBB to import the data (Load Campaign Battle Setup). Then CMBB will read the other programs data dump and spit out it's own. It wouldn't exactly be seemless, but it would be beter than nothing. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Cameroon: Don't worry newlife, I understand what you're describing. AAR generation that another program could process would be pretty straightforward I would think. Doesn't open any internals either so in that respect it's safe. The crux of the problem lies in starting. The reason is that one either has to tell people how to write the map-file format (not going to happen) or create a "generation syntax" which also isn't going to happen (lotta work). If one had the AAR report, however, one could go a long way to simplifying the campaign GM's life (well, with the proper tools processing it anyway). Your upper level tools would have the starting unit list, do their magic with the AAR, and then tell the GM what's what. Then the GM can take that and go edit what needs editing.Sorry, read your post a little backwards and just now understood what you're saying. Yeah, I gues it would require a very specific syntax on what units would need to be loaded, especially if people want them named a certain way. The real difficulty would be translating the syntax into something the engine could read and place units. The base requirement would be just having the units present as you get them in a QB. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to actually "place" units in a particular way. Oh well, something for the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer Leader Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 I believe these two threads sum it up best: There should be a Grand Campaign CM2 Campaign Proposal Your idea has merit, and Steve even mentioned that a patch for a text file into and out of CM is a "potential" that they may take the time for later. Man I hope so, it would be perfect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzer Leader Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 The last time Steve mentioned it, he said the following (origins of quote lost in time): Steve Said: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- External Campaign System -> we currently have THREE folks asking to make a huge campaign system of one form or another. All three have made multiple detailed pitches to us. All three have started by saying all they need is the file format. All three have then described a system that requires much more involvement from us than just that to make their system work. We haven't rulled any of the three out (yet), but to be honest... I just don't see how it will be possible to do any of them. We know there is interest (though we don't think it is more than a decent minority of customers), but on balance it isn't as important as the other things we have to do. Remember, any campaign system is only as good as the tactical battles they contain. If we skip something major in order to do the campaign stuff, everybody suffers the loss.{correction. I made this sound worse than it really is. Let's just say that we are skeptical that "just an export file" will be enough. So we porceed with caution, but are still looking at the proposals I mentioned seriously Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newlife Posted February 12, 2002 Author Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Panzer Leader: The last time Steve mentioned it, he said the following (origins of quote lost in time): </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Steve Said: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- External Campaign System -> we currently have THREE folks asking to make a huge campaign system of one form or another. All three have made multiple detailed pitches to us. All three have started by saying all they need is the file format. All three have then described a system that requires much more involvement from us than just that to make their system work. We haven't rulled any of the three out (yet), but to be honest... I just don't see how it will be possible to do any of them. We know there is interest (though we don't think it is more than a decent minority of customers), but on balance it isn't as important as the other things we have to do. Remember, any campaign system is only as good as the tactical battles they contain. If we skip something major in order to do the campaign stuff, everybody suffers the loss.{correction. I made this sound worse than it really is. Let's just say that we are skeptical that "just an export file" will be enough. So we porceed with caution, but are still looking at the proposals I mentioned seriously </font> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 Originally posted by Slapdragon: ... For CMMC type games however there is a better casualty screen coming.:cool: :cool: Slap, can you say any more about this? Regards JonS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killmore Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 I have been asking for such API for a very long time. (like a year) And by the way I made a campaign for Close Combat 3. Yes - it works and there are people playing it. [ February 12, 2002, 04:24 PM: Message edited by: killmore ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priest Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 CMMC uh I mean.... CMMC and by that I mean CMMC what I meant to say was CMMC! If you want a detailed realistic CORP level game then CMMC is it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stoffel Posted February 12, 2002 Share Posted February 12, 2002 If you like large campaign battles try Microphoses Across the Rhine from about 6 years ago. Look at how they managed to build up a campaign regarding casualties/replacements/fatigue of units Its the only nice thing about the game its 2D and you can man a tankturret as commander or gunner yourself Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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