Bone, please! Are the full-game movie replays in CMBB yet?

[Kwazydog]

Barrold, glad you agree

And to be mroe realistic, its probably some of the more recent features that may have not made it in....again, I know which Id prefer

Hehe, the clown tanks are rapidly dissappearing...in fact we just got the Panther in game and they are looking pretty good I think. There will be plenty for modders to play with after release, but Im happy to be able to give you guys a lot of detail right of the bat with CMBB.

Dan

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

I'd certainly pay extra for the movie payback feature.

BTW, anyone taking bets on game day release. I'm betting 22nd June for some strange reason.

Thank god I didn't put money on it!!!

Regards

Jim R.

[ParaBellum]

That's one of the reasons why I have so much respect for these guys.

From the very beginning they made no promises, but rather told us "...we'll look into it, but there are more important things to do in our opinion...".

And IMO they're right.

Maybe it would've been easy for them to give in to this very popular request and leave other features THEY consider far more important (MGs anyone?) out.

But they decided to stick to their agenda and have rather substance than eye-candy.

I guess the problem is just to try to incorporate as many important features as possible.

What is important? And what can be done with limited manpower and time?

"Hey, you want better simulated MGs?"

"Yeah!"

"You want relative spotting?

"Sure!"

"You want scantily clad female partisans?"

"Of course!"

In the games bizz I've seen so many broken promises...Hell! I've seen features advertized on game boxes that never actually made it into the game!

BFC is an unusual exception in this bizz.

*sniff*

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by ParaBellum:

"You want scantily clad female partisans?"

One of the first mods for which I will look.

Steve

[-Havermeyer-]

Thanks Dan. It was rather jihadish of me, BUT I HAD TO KNOW!!! It's obviously not a gamebreaker-- but would have been very cool for all the reasons people have given here and elsewhere.

And I know you guys knew that, and probably thought it was cool yourselves.

[Andrew H.]

You could always put a video camera in front of the screen and tape it that way. That could even be replayed on your TV!

Seriously, I agree with barrold713 on this - it would have been a nice feature to have, but given how well the MG covered arc thing works, and how cool it seems based on Jason's AAR, BTS definitely chose to focus on the right enhancements.

[Sgt CDAT]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

Cut out the cover arc command and sure, we could have had full movie playback

Any chance of having it be in a patch?

[Guest Panzer Boxb]

Hrm, put tons of effort on adding full-length battle movies in...or get to work on the engine rewrite that will have the feature built from the ground up. Hrmmmm...

[mattpeckham]

Darnit, this should have made it in, given all the requests for it. Heck, even the venerable X-Wing had full archival playback!

Yes, I know it's a codebase thing, but how sweet it could have been...

[Sir Uber General]

I gotta say I'm dissapointed. I would have happily skipped a few lesser known vehicles for movie playback. The wow factor is way high with movie playback, and although I know this is a wargame blah blah blah, it is still a game and sometimes, just sometimes, you get a feature that is so lacking in terms of enjoyment that it should go in. Doh. If I had full battle reply, I'd be able to get so many more of my friends to play, but its not to be, bummer.

That said, I'm still going to love CMBB, dont you worry about that!

[Kwazydog]

General, leaving this feature out is nothing to do with vehicles, but it has to do with game features. We could have put it in but some of the game features would have to be missed out becuase of it, such as wind, cover arcs, different aircraft load outs, greatly enhanced armour penetration calculations, etc.

As it was a choice of a better war simulation or movie playback, we chose the simulation first

Dan

[Sgt CDAT]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

We could have put it in

The way it sounds, it is not a matter of whether or not it could be done but a time factor. With that said, could it be possible that it be put in with a patch like the tcp/ip was?

[ July 17, 2002, 02:57 AM: Message edited by: Sgt CDAT ]

[Kwazydog]

CDAT, I doubt it unfortunately. This seems to be something that would take some time to get right, and is best left until we rewrite the engine so we can do it properly.

Dan

[-Havermeyer-]

Always with the tradeoffs, Kwazy! Aways with the tradeoffs. The opportunity costs of this and that and whatnot!

But we want it all and we want it now!!!!

[Andreas]

Originally posted by barrold713:

Keep up the great work. Even the clown tanks look absurdly cool.

BDH

They're the best. Nothing like a bunch of clown tanks with clown-car support in front advancing on the terrified enemy... I will keep a beta copy with clown tanks to just chuckle away at it. You all don't know what you are missing

[Leeo]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

As it was a choice of a better war simulation or movie playback, we chose the simulation first

Dan

Please continue to make choices with this same priority!

[Schoerner]

CMBB will be a big step forward and i'm sure it will become an even bigger deal for Battlefront than CMBO.

So the chances are good, that CM3 will come out.

Till then we all will be fascinated by CM2 and i'm sure, CM3 will have the full-game movie playback.

Am i allowed to dream about an additional special replay function with rendered motion-capturing units and vastly improved operative elements, where CM's battles are part of big operations with lots of human players?

I hope CM will make it to CM10.

And all the Battlefront guys should become millionairs - they really deserve it.

Thank you all for making such a great game/sim and even surpassing it.

[Sgt CDAT]

Originally posted by KwazyDog:

CDAT, I doubt it unfortunately. This seems to be something that would take some time to get right, and is best left until we rewrite the engine so we can do it properly.

Dan

Hate to here that but understand . Its a given that it would be in the rewrite I would just like to see CMBO and CMBB have it to! O well thanks for the replys KwazyDog!

[Thraka]

that was the only thing i was looking forward to.. looks like i'm sticking with CMBO..

[Barrold]

Tharka, you can't be serious.

With all the improvements that are codified and the overall huge enhancement to the entire system, I am almost forced to think that you picked the wrong graemlin and are actually being ironic. I respect your opinion and all, but in my barely credible view, if you like CM:BO and have even the remotest inkling of an iota of interest in the theatre, you will love CM:BB.

If you don't like it, I'll sell some more blood and buy your copy to give to a friend for Christmas.

Inconceivable!!!!

BDH

[Thraka]

LOL

Yes I'm serious. I do NOT play singleplayer I only play Multiplayer.. and I usually only play with 1 guy.. And we both REALLY want the replay feature.. Thats really all I was looking forward to.. Maybe I'll buy it later if the price drops but I really dont want to pay around 45$ for a slightly better engine But thats just me..

[Grisha]

A grog here, so I'm very glad to hear that the game itself was given priority rather than chrome. Full game playback while very nice to review, is certainly not essential for accurate or intuitive gameplay. As it is, the turn-based playbacks are more than enough. And, in fact, by having playbacks on a turn by turn basis, the ability to learn from them is greater, since it allows for better indexing.

It would've been a severe blow to CMBB, the wargame, if something like the covered arc command had been dropped in favor of full game playback.

All the best, BFC

[YankeeDog]

I also feel that there are more important features for CMBB than full movie playback, and if was a choice between cover arcs or whatever and full playback, I think BFC made the right choice.

I still would really like to see it, tho.

My apologies if this has been suggested before, but would it be possible to just 'stitch' the movie files together? IOW, create a feature that would allow you to merge all of the movie files into one larger file (no more HD space than just saving all of the movie files one by one).

You'd still have to click on the 'Done' button at the end of each turn to load the movie file for the next turn, but at least you wouldn't have to shell out back to the intro screen and load the next file.

This would be particularly good if CMBB would add the ability to save movie files from single player and TCP/IP games.

Obviously, this is not as cool as being able to watch the whole movie uninterrupted while zooming the camera around at will, but it would certainly be a considerable improvement IMHO. 'Twould be very nice when you are picking up a PBEM after a week hiatus due to the intervention of Real Life to refresh your memory as to what's already happened in the battle without constantly shelling in and out of the game to load different movie files.

Anyway, just a suggestion. I have only a very general knowledge of how stuff like this is coded, but my guess is that this would require substanitally less recoding to implement than true full movie playback.

Cheers,

YD

[dragoon19]

Movie re-play is not mentioned in the CDV software preview of CMBB, so my guess is that its out - that is not in. Could be nice to have as optional add on patch later on.

See http://www.cdv.de/english/_index.html

nice screenshot also I do like the SiG IB even if it looks really wierd.

Regards

[Grisha]

dragoon,

Further up the thread, Kwazydog has already responded on behalf of BFC, saying that fullgame playback will not make CMBB, though it will be given serious consideration when they do the engine rewrite.