Can CMBB be used to play Western Front Scenerios?

[Stardog]

THis may be a stupid question but can western front maps and units be made for CMBB if one were inclined to like the western front better but wanted to bennefit from the new improved graphics and gameplay? Like maps in particular and units?

Thanks for any insight you can provide here

[Sitzkrieg]

Nope. Vehicle and unit data is hard-coded. CM:BO is not compatible with CM:BB as far as scenarios and maps are concerned either. Only thing the should work (with some changes) are the graphic and sound mods.

Keith

[Shatter]

I would also say a definate nope, as 3d models and terrain types are differnet in CMBO & CMBB.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by sitzkrieg:

Nope. Vehicle and unit data is hard-coded. [snips]

You baffle me strangely.

Why on earth would the unit data be hard-coded? Madness. I refuse to believe it. It may not be accessible to the user, but that's a different thing. I can't believe that a development team talented enough to produce something like Combat Mission would hard-code data like that unless they were crazy on acid.

All the best,

John.

[Lawyer]

I hope the mod experts will be able to produce western front units. I've got some scenario ideas from my recent visit, and nobody will play CMBO anymore.

[Panzer Leader]

No, I'm sorry, Lawyer. We have no experts of that type here. You are out of luck, perhaps you'd be interested in a trip to the Ukraine? Volgograd (excellent theme park) or the beloved city of St. Petrersburg?

The west front is, well, how to put it? Passe.

[Mud]

It would have been nice, but not possible until an engine rewrite or two.

If they'd worked and worked until the very first engine was complete with all the features we've screamed for (e.g. full-battle movie replays, allowing arbitrary pairs of opposing nations e.g. Heer versus SS, a dynamic lighting model, solid vehicles...) maybe it would have ended up as late as (the still AWOL, as far as I know) rather ambitious _War in Russia_.

I'm guessing that the small size of BFC (well, BTS when they released, IIRC) and the need to actually release and generate some revenue to support themselves meant that they had to make a /lot/ of compromises, like hard-coding. Hopefully many of these will be rectified in a rewrite or two.

[gibsonm]

Well you could in a very limited way using the lend lease equipment.

So you could have Shermans (vanilla only I think) with red stars on them and Soviet infantry (would have to imagine they were Americans) but you wont see Pershings, Cromwells, etc.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Mud:

[snips]

I'm guessing that the small size of BFC (well, BTS when they released, IIRC) and the need to actually release and generate some revenue to support themselves meant that they had to make a /lot/ of compromises, like hard-coding.

This makes no sense to me at all.

Presumably tanks (say) in CM all have the same attributes. It needs less coding to read the values of those attributes from a file than to set those attributes with a spearate statement for each kind of tank. Hard-coding is not a "compromise", it's a complete waste of time; so I find it hard to believe that it's been done. They haven't hard-coded the visual representation of tanks; why should they hard-code the logical representation?

All the best,

John.

[rune]

John,

Actually it makes a lot of sense. 1. The tank models themselves are and always have been hard coded.Only the skins that go over the models

2. The data is hard coded. The reason is that so many games didn't, and people would make things like a panzer IV with a 128mm gun. To keep the game playable over the pbem and tcp/ip, the data was hard coded. It makes sense to do it this way.

Rune

[WWB]

Yeah, what rune said. A better way of putting it is the unit data file is compiled within the executeable, making it effectively hardcoded to the end user.

WWB

[Dschugaschwili]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

This makes no sense to me at all.

[...]

All the best,

John.

This makes perfect sense to me. Having all the game data in the executable makes having different versions of CM in the same install possible. Some time ago there were a few problems with PBEM games when a new version of CM was installed. The way the game is done I could just rename the old executable before moving the new one in. That way I could continue ongoing games with the old version.

I have every single version of CM since 1.02 in my CM folder, so I can re-view every PBEM battle I have ever played. And all this with only one install.

Dschugaschwili

[Firefly]

Originally posted by gibsonm:

Well you could in a very limited way using the lend lease equipment.

So you could have Shermans (vanilla only I think) with red stars on them and Soviet infantry (would have to imagine they were Americans) but you wont see Pershings, Cromwells, etc.

Well we had the desert mod for CMBO, so something similar could be possible with CMBB, at least they've now got PZ-IIs, IIIs and early IVs to play with as well as the lend-lease stuff. Allied infantry will be a problem though.

[Kuma of Finland]

Originally posted by Firefly:

I would love to see a nice balanced scenario, where all the moddable has been modded for Western front; like terrain tiles, AFV's and infantry units. Then suddenly the British infantry goes berserk, starts running through bogace and overwhelms German bunkers constantly shouting URAAAA!!! (Human wave on Western front, lol)

/kuma

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

Yeah, what rune said. A better way of putting it is the unit data file is compiled within the executeable, making it effectively hardcoded to the end user.

WWB

I fully understand the decision to prevent user access to the unit data. That is why I distinguished this aspect from the question of "hard-coding", which is quite separate. Rune seems to have failed to understand this.

It is a precept of the most elementary kind of software engineering that you don't do things multiple times in different places if you can do them once in only one place (the principle of locality).

If you actually type the values of unit category attributes into the code -- what "hard-coding" means -- you might, it could be argued, only have as much typing to do as if you type the same numbers into data files. Maybe true for the first time. However, as even a first-year (well, okay, maybe second-year) computing undergrad could tell you, this leaves you up the proverbial creek without a paddle when you want to add new attributes; you have to change a dozen, or a hundred, or several hundred statements in your code, instead of merely adding a column of data to your data file (however implemented) and modifying the single "read_AFV_attibs" (or whatever it's called) routine.

Now, I don't know exactly how CM does this stuff, but I can't imagine that hard-coding is the way, as apart from anything else it makes life harder for the developer.

All the best,

John.

[rune]

John,

You mixed two things and I did understand, you didn't. The models of the tanks are most definitely hard coded. Only the bmp skins can be modified, not the model itself. They are made in a 3d program then converted into code that goes into the executable. The penetration forumla itself is hard coded into the executable. There are no table lookups for the armor penetration.

As for the values of the tank's armor itself, that I am not sure. A string variable for each tank hard coded wouldn't be that hard to do. If an update needed to be made, one string would be changed.

Rune

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by rune:

John,

You mixed two things and I did understand, you didn't.

No, not at all. I distinguished the two things I was talking about (hard-coding and use accessibility), in an attempt to avoid exactly the confusion you seem to have fallen into. I'm not the one who has mixed the two things up.

Originally posted by rune:

The models of the tanks are most definitely hard coded.

And your evidence is...?

Originally posted by rune:

[snips]

The penetration forumla itself is hard coded into the executable. There are no table lookups for the armor penetration.

I am not talking about table lookups for penetration. You seem to be becoming more confused by the minute.

Originally posted by rune:

As for the values of the tank's armor itself, that I am not sure. A string variable for each tank hard coded wouldn't be that hard to do. If an update needed to be made, one string would be changed.

Rune

This is what I'm talking about (and not only armour, but all the other attributes of a kind of tank, vehicle, gun, personnel unit). And you're "not sure". So on your own admission you do not really know that these are hard-coded. Thank you. We got there in the end.

As for "a string variable for each tank hard-coded wouldn't be that hard to do", it seems that my comments about the principle of locality were not understood. I'm afraid I can't think of a simpler way to explain it right at the moment. I'm mildly surprised that someone with "computer analyst" in his profile seems to be having such a hard time understanding such a trivial point.

All the best,

John.

[imported_argie]

Charles has developed a tool that translates 3d models into tank C++ codes for use inside the game.

[rune]

Argie, Thanks, wasn't sure if Charles ever said that in public. Of course it is true, it is imbedded in the executable.

From BTS:

CM doesn't need this as all databases are closed off to the end user. There are MANY reasons for us doing it, most of which are technical. We don't have spreadsheet like data tables, so there is no easy way to edit numbers.

Also John, I have worked with them since the CMBO Alpha, and do have an idea of what I am talking about.

Oh, and i sent a note off to the BFC gang, and will send another message after they answer me.

Rune

[Madmatt]

John, settle down now, its seems you have some giant chip on your shoulder about this issue but have a listen for a moment please.

Over the past several years we have always referred to game resources as either being "hard-coded" or "modable"

With regards to Combat Mission (both CMBB and CMBO) the term "hard-coded" means that the data is stored in the main game execuatble itself in a proprietary or at least closed architecture format. Depending on the data it could be in some lookup table or it could be merely a variable in some long and complex formula or maybe a recipe item for some sort of Blood Ritual to Cthulhu that Charles has coded for, I don't know.

Regardless, what it means is that bit of data is NOT modifiable by anyone other than us, or more precisely Charles (aka the brain in the jar).

As to the models, they are each and every one created in a 3D rendering program, then that data is exported out into a format that Steve and Charles use on their Macs, then the 3D surface plots and positions are input into the code itself for every model. Its is a VERY long process and is the single biggest thing that we can't wait to re-write with a new engine.

People need to understand that while much of CMBB is improved there is some that is still based on code that was designed 3-4 years ago. The model system is one such element although it was and still is more than adequote for our needs.

Textures and sound effects are examples of resources that are modable, as they are of an open architecture format which is easily changed.

That is all...

Madmatt

p.s. and by the way, next to Charles, myself, Steve, Martin and Dan, RUNE knows more about how CM works than any other human living or dead. Unless stated otherwise, believe what he says with regards to CM.

[ September 04, 2002, 04:56 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

[imported_argie]

Originally posted by rune:

Argie, Thanks, wasn't sure if Charles ever said that in public. Of course it is true, it is imbedded in the executable.

Rune

And who said that Charles said that in public?

MBWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

He forgot to wear his tinfoil hat once, and that was enough!!!

[Lawyer]

Originally posted by Madmatt:

Textures and sound effects are examples of resources that are modable, as they are of an open architecture format which is easily changed.

Madmatt

Back to the original issue, this seems to confirm that western front skins could be put on the German and US equipment in CMBB, along with the right uniform mods, just as new skins have been added to CMBO.

So it would seem that mods for western front units could be used in CMBB with its terrain and other features to create western front scenarios. If so, I look forward to seeing it happen.

I'm happy to welcome CMBB with its new features, and open to trying the eastern front. But right now I don't really have the feel for it like I do for the western front. I enjoy visiting the western front battle sites on vacation to get a feel for what happened there. While I can enjoy a good eastern front bang-up for a change of pace in CM, I have no desire to spend vacation time or any other time in Russia.

[rune]

Lawyer,

It means new mods would have to be made, the skins fron cmbo will not work with the newer models in cmbb. It also means that the "us" troops will be carrying russian weapons. As long as you don't mind that, it could be done.

Rune

[rune]

Hey the first double post in a long time

Rune

[ September 05, 2002, 08:41 AM: Message edited by: rune ]

[Agua]

Originally posted by rune:

Lawyer,

It means new mods would have to be made, the skins fron cmbo will not work with the newer models in cmbb. It also means that the "us" troops will be carrying russian weapons. As long as you don't mind that, it could be done.

Rune

Same as DFDR & progeny, except the firepower & damage models underlying the German units will match the units they're portraying.