When Is Combat Mission Going To Look Like This?

[Voxman]

Very nice, what game is that from ?

Originally posted by Colonel_Deadmarsh:

I take it this game uses pixels to represent 3-D instead of polygons like CM...

[Battlefront.com]

Lord General wrote:

I recall hearing Dan say something along the lines of, 'CM3 will beat those graphics out the door'

That is the plan There are three reason's WW2RTS looks so damned good:

1. It is coded for high end systems. These systems will be mid range by the time CM rewrite is released.

2. The game uses 24 bit grapics. CM only uses 16 because at the time the game engine was written most cards couldn't hack 24 and none could handle the VRAM 24 bit graphics would have demanded. No big problem with today's hardware and it only gets better.

3. The game will not have the kind of unit density that CM has. This has been, is, and will always be a serious limitation for CM since we will likely keep the same scale for all future CMs. However, today's hardware does a pretty good job and we expect that by the time the game is done it can handle WW2RTS' look and CM's unit counts.

Oh, and Oleg's team are VERY good, so I guess that is four reasons

And yes folks... we do not think WW2RTS is going to offer direct competition to CM. The game is designed to take players down a different route. And I will tell you, I for one am glad! Because I fear competition? Nonsense... because I want a freak'n cool game like this and it is nice for once that we don't have to make it for ourselves to be able to enjoy it

Steve

[Snarker]

Plus Steve and BF.C can just send a promo of CMBB and get a promo from Oleg!

It's good to be the King.

[The_Capt]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Lord General wrote:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I recall hearing Dan say something along the lines of, 'CM3 will beat those graphics out the door'

That is the plan There are three reason's WW2RTS looks so damned good:

1. It is coded for high end systems. These systems will be mid range by the time CM rewrite is released.

2. The game uses 24 bit grapics. CM only uses 16 because at the time the game engine was written most cards couldn't hack 24 and none could handle the VRAM 24 bit graphics would have demanded. No big problem with today's hardware and it only gets better.

3. The game will not have the kind of unit density that CM has. This has been, is, and will always be a serious limitation for CM since we will likely keep the same scale for all future CMs. However, today's hardware does a pretty good job and we expect that by the time the game is done it can handle WW2RTS' look and CM's unit counts.

Oh, and Oleg's team are VERY good, so I guess that is four reasons

And yes folks... we do not think WW2RTS is going to offer direct competition to CM. The game is designed to take players down a different route. And I will tell you, I for one am glad! Because I fear competition? Nonsense... because I want a freak'n cool game like this and it is nice for once that we don't have to make it for ourselves to be able to enjoy it

Steve</font>

[OGSF]

Originally posted by The_Capt:

Put a dollar a week away (just 4 quarters) and in one year you'll have the money set back with out even noticing. I doubt we'll see the next release before 12 months is up! :^)

[Battlefront.com]

The_Capt:

Well Steve you should fear competition cause a lot of people only have $50 bucks to spend every so often and I am guessing that the demographic for CM is in "the older with kids and no money" crowd.

True, but only becase you said "to spend every so often". If our products both came out at the same time, in retail, both of us would suffer if both games were good and equally promoted. If one was better at both, then it might not be such an issue but it WOULD still be an issue.

However, since we are NOT in retail this doesn't concern us. Which is why we are not in retail for our core business (CDV is another matter entirely, but that is for them to worry about) If WW2RTS and CM3 came out on the same day, and a major chunk of CM fans could only afford ONE game AND chose WW2RTS (three large assumptions), no sweat. When they save up another $50 bucks in a month, 6 weeks, 4 months, 8 months, or whatever... guess what? CM3 will still be there available for purchase. So WORST case is that our revenue model is less "frontloaded" and more evened out, but in the end we will get the same income. And for us, that is ALL we care about. It is nice not to be slaves to the system

Or was the Sep release to pre-empt GIC an accident?

Accident. CMBB was released when it was ready, not a day before. Fact is GIC was supposed to ship before CMBB long before we had a firm ship date. After we had a firm ship date it had already slipped but was STILL supposed to ship before us. As it turned out we put out both the demo and the final goods before GIC's demo came out.

Plus, your theory rests on the assumption that we thought GIC was even going to ship, or that if it did CMers would like it. Bad assumption If we are surprised by anything concerning GIC's development it is that they appear to have something which will ship at all. So if we think the game might not even be finished, why base our marketing strategy on their release dates? For more of my thoughts on GIC, check out the General Forum.

As an aside... CMBO's demo was released at the same exact time as Matrix Games' Steel Panthers upgrade (it was the full version for free). The public's and reviewer's reaction to both was decidedly lopsided in favor of CM. In fact, hardly any discussion was going on about SP, even on Matrix' own BBS (compared to on ours). This lead one (or more?) of Matrix guys to accuse us, in public, of doing the release on the same day on purpose. The truth was we felt no compultion to do it even if we had known their release date, which we completely did not. Matrix knew more about CM's release schedule than we did theirs.

Anyway, aside from all that, how long is the Engine re-write going to take? If I were a bettin man I would say you have had someone working on it during CMBB so it probably won't be another 2 yrs.

Correct. This is what we have said all along. Likely 2 years.

Steve

[ October 27, 2002, 12:06 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Captain Wacky]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Correct. This is what we have said all along. Likely 2 years.

Steve

2 years? Is there anyway we can get Charles addicted to crack so he won't need sleep? It'll cut the wait in half!

[Canuck]

Originally posted by The_Capt:

Well Steve you should fear competition cause a lot of people only have $50 bucks to spend every so often and I am guessing that the demographic for CM is in "the older with kids and no money" crowd.

[/QB]

Better than the demographic being "young university smart-ass who also has no money but does know away around the newsgroups" crowd.

[MrNoobie]

Sust 2 sux! just d/l the mods, like WAW or APRM they adjusted the tanks to their real life counterparts. The mods added sound and some extra graphics most recently modders are now adding some tanks in game like the Maus

[The_Capt]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The_Capt:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Well Steve you should fear competition cause a lot of people only have $50 bucks to spend every so often and I am guessing that the demographic for CM is in "the older with kids and no money" crowd.

True, but only becase you said "to spend every so often". If our products both came out at the same time, in retail, both of us would suffer if both games were good and equally promoted. If one was better at both, then it might not be such an issue but it WOULD still be an issue.

However, since we are NOT in retail this doesn't concern us. Which is why we are not in retail for our core business (CDV is another matter entirely, but that is for them to worry about) If WW2RTS and CM3 came out on the same day, and a major chunk of CM fans could only afford ONE game AND chose WW2RTS (three large assumptions), no sweat. When they save up another $50 bucks in a month, 6 weeks, 4 months, 8 months, or whatever... guess what? CM3 will still be there available for purchase. So WORST case is that our revenue model is less "frontloaded" and more evened out, but in the end we will get the same income. And for us, that is ALL we care about. It is nice not to be slaves to the system

Or was the Sep release to pre-empt GIC an accident?

Accident. CMBB was released when it was ready, not a day before. Fact is GIC was supposed to ship before CMBB long before we had a firm ship date. After we had a firm ship date it had already slipped but was STILL supposed to ship before us. As it turned out we put out both the demo and the final goods before GIC's demo came out.

Plus, your theory rests on the assumption that we thought GIC was even going to ship, or that if it did CMers would like it. Bad assumption If we are surprised by anything concerning GIC's development it is that they appear to have something which will ship at all. So if we think the game might not even be finished, why base our marketing strategy on their release dates? For more of my thoughts on GIC, check out the General Forum.

As an aside... CMBO's demo was released at the same exact time as Matrix Games' Steel Panthers upgrade (it was the full version for free). The public's and reviewer's reaction to both was decidedly lopsided in favor of CM. In fact, hardly any discussion was going on about SP, even on Matrix' own BBS (compared to on ours). This lead one (or more?) of Matrix guys to accuse us, in public, of doing the release on the same day on purpose. The truth was we felt no compultion to do it even if we had known their release date, which we completely did not. Matrix knew more about CM's release schedule than we did theirs.

Anyway, aside from all that, how long is the Engine re-write going to take? If I were a bettin man I would say you have had someone working on it during CMBB so it probably won't be another 2 yrs.

Correct. This is what we have said all along. Likely 2 years.

Steve</font>

[Gremlin]

GameSpot posted a preview back in May on this WWII RTS. Just do a search on their site.

[ October 27, 2002, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Gremlin ]

[Apache]

I must iadmit id does look the business but I can't help thinking it'll be a little bit like Medal of Honour. That's no bad thing I suppose but it isn't what I'd class as a wargame (not that that matters - except to those who like wargames and not shooters).

If CM3 is ANYTHING like this I have to say life will have to stop altogether

[Jard]

Just to get all aspects into perspective :

I do not know anything about wwiirts other than what has been discussed here but I do know Oleg's work in IL-2 which is indeed the CM of flightsims as it was said. I think we can expect a lot more then a MOHAA..

Thus said (and although I admit I'll take a closer look at WWIIrts), where can I preorder CM3 ? ? ? ?

[Rebus_Badger]

What is with people around here? Why do so many people feel the need to copy the entire preceding post?!?! And graphics to boot!?!

Bah! You're killing me and my crap modem! Bah!

[Jard]

hmmm,maybe serious lack of long term memory ? ? ?

[MikeyD]

Y'know, if you want CMBB to look that good just do some VERY VERY high res mods to the already great polygons and only play tiny scenarios on high-end machines.

A lot of the 'quality look' in that shot is all style. If BTS shifted all its art to sepia-tone, gave your normal view a x1.5 zoom, and applied a trace of light fog even on clear days then the apparent differences in art would be significantly reduced.

[ October 28, 2002, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[dfgardner1]

Yeah, yeah pixels, hexagons, IL-2, who cares.

The real question is: what grass mod are they using?

[Guest Mike]

Also keep in mind that the "engine" for the WW2 RTS is already done - it's existing tech - the CM rewrite is, at best I guess a few notes, ideas or maybe it's started development - but it is future tech.

the speed of graphic development these days means that anything you can see today is going to look fairly ordinary in 2 years time!!

[aka_tom_w]

My guess is that Fancy pants WWII RTS game won't ever run on a MAC or OSX so I am REALLY hopeing Steve et al. get it together for the CMII rewrite (for combat mission on Mac OSX) so I don't have to by a freakin' windoze PC just to play the latest REALLY cool wargame with GREAT graphics!

-tom w

[ December 06, 2002, 03:18 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Major Jerkov]

Anyone here ever play Sacrifice? Ground Control? Giants? Although all are RTS, they provide beautiful graphics, with lower end systems. Graphics are what you can make of them, you have a sweet graphics engine, it can run on even lowly systems, and still look damn hot! These games have alot of units on the screen at one time, plus 3d landscapes, its all about the coders being up in cutting edge technology(per se). A game like CM shouldnt nearly be as demanding on your system as it is, effecient coding is the key. Maybe thats the overall price of a non-commercial product...

[Lumbergh]

Originally posted by Major Jerkov:

Anyone here ever play Sacrifice? Ground Control? Giants? Although all are RTS, they provide beautiful graphics, with lower end systems. Graphics are what you can make of them, you have a sweet graphics engine, it can run on even lowly systems, and still look damn hot! These games have alot of units on the screen at one time, plus 3d landscapes, its all about the coders being up in cutting edge technology(per se). A game like CM shouldnt nearly be as demanding on your system as it is, effecient coding is the key. Maybe thats the overall price of a non-commercial product...

Poppycock. The fact of the matter is, it is extremely difficult to program a game engine that will be really efficient. Microsoft products are the *most* "commercial" products available, and they are all extremely system-intensive.

I would actually guess commercial releases tend to have more code and are more taxing on your system, simply because they have more resources. More resources means they can afford to use brute force methods to get around problems inefficiently. More resources devoted to development means they are under time pressure, leading again to brute force, unelegant programming.

Everyone in this thread is lauding the Il-2 game engine, which is an example of an efficient engine made by a talented programmer. Do you think Il-2 would have been helped by having the budget of GTA?

Plus the CM engine has to display a lot of stuff...I have no idea what ground control shows, but remember CM has 10s of tanks, 100s of troops, explosions, smoke, wind blowing through trees, etc etc. I bet there are a lot more polygons in a CM battle movie than in, say, an UT2003 game.

[Major Jerkov]

Have you noticed all the trees/soldiers weapons are 2'd sprites? ala doom? Its definitely a good way to deal with repititious items, such as trees, but... There is alot on the battlefield at one time, I'm not saying there isnt. It was a fine engine in the "year 2000", although, outclassed. Sh00t, MaxPayne at highest resolution and details runs much smoother than, this... and those are photorealistic textures/nicely defined polys. Do you deny this? I'm not saying this is a terrible game or insinuating anything remotely to that. I love this game, cheese-mo graphics and all. Take a look at some of the games I mentioned, and report back, so you can give a more educated response.

[Major Jerkov]

"Everyone in this thread is lauding the Il-2 game engine, which is an example of an efficient engine made by a talented programmer. Do you think Il-2 would have been helped by having the budget of GTA?"

I've only seen SS's of this game, never actually played it, so I couldnt give you an informed response. Although, that other game there working on looks quite nice.

[theike]

One shouldnt forget that CM's primary task is to give us a battle-zone like experience with great tactical abilitys...games like these surely must be played tacticaly but wil never get in toutch with CM's huge scale of units nore of its wideness in landscapes to go round on.

Pic's like these are surely ns to see and lovely to play on...but most probably its just another 3d shooter experience with zome new twitch to it in teams and such...nothing new.

When i want a 3d shooter i play Unreal Tournament.

As it is as far as i know still the only basic fighting game without too much bla bla bla.

And for my lifetime love for the kids game of stratego i play Combat Mission.