Combat Mission & the future

[Manx]

I firmly believe that CMBB deserves to be "Game of the Year" (ain't seen nothin' better), and inevitably the corporate "suits" will be looking at CM and the wargaming genre very closely.

With that in mind, i really hope that the guys (BFC) pull out all the stops on the next version of CM. The two games they have released in the series so far have been ground breaking in both their originality and attention to detail. Other (bigger) companies are already starting to tread the water and copy what you have done and realising that there might be a few bucks in it for them, they will be able to pour massive amounts of money into graphic designers, programmers, advertising etc. etc.

What worries me is the fact that while BFC will probably have to draw some compromise on graphics (to keep hardware requirements down and so maximise potential customers), other companies who can afford to ignore this, won't.

Sooner or later i believe that BFC are going to have to face a serious challenge to the CM series and i hope they don't let those copycat companies take the lead.

Don't know what others think, but i would definately go for high-end graphics in the engine rewrite. Computers/hardware are coming down in price all the time, and ppl will always spend money on quality and on something they enjoy.

So BFC, keep yer noses in front, and don't let those bastards in suits steal your thunder!

[ December 17, 2002, 08:28 PM: Message edited by: Manx ]

[Madmatt]

Don't worry Manx, we got plans!

Madmatt

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Madmatt:

Don't worry Manx, we got plans!

Madmatt

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

-tom w

[Manx]

Originally posted by Madmatt:

Don't worry Manx, we got plans!

Madmatt

You do realise that now that you've said that we're all gonna be asking "so what have you got planned?"

[Captain Wacky]

CMBO was a revolution. CMBB was more of an evolution of CMBO, refining the things that it didn't do well and adding new features. What will the engine rewrite bring is what I want to know? Will we get a game that's significantly different than what we've already seen? Will the hybrid turn base/real time system stay in place, or will it be changed in some way?

[Redwolf]

I don't think it is a good idea to go for very high graphics and CPU hardware requirements.

Besides narrowing down the customer bae, and especially in the traditional wargamer audience why are afraid to upgrade their running PCs, there is actual programming work to be done to exploit all the graphics capabilities. I think I'd rather seen execessive amounts of programming done elsewhere.

[MikeyD]

Sounds like you've got a plan a plan for BFC to shoot themselves in the foot!

I've seen so many products that went bad because they felt the needed to 'hit one out of the ballpark' every time. Remember Babe Ruth held the title for most home runs... but didn't he also hold some sort of record for most strikeouts too? - er, I think he did.

Well, my point it I'd like to see BFC knock another one straight down the middle, good enough to get them to secoond base. Hell, the CMBB engine's fun enough I wouldn't mind it if they punted next time!

[Manx]

I reckon it goes without saying that BFC will get the data under the hood right. The point of my query/concern is how CM will evolve graphically. Okay, so eye candy on it's own isn't important, but if we are to get the full effect of what it must have been like on a WWII battlefield (short of being shot at and being scared ****less), then the next CM MUST immerse us deeper than it has done so far.

[Captain Wacky]

Steve has confirmed at least a general idea of their expectations for the grahpics, which they expect to be as good if not better than the screenies we've seen from WWII RTS.

[Manx]

Sorry guys, but don't you think that once the hard, set-in-stone data is done (ballistics, penetration alogrithms and so on) the only thing that CAN be improved is the graphics. Sure, you can argue to what degree and form those graphical enhancements take, but a T34/Sherman/PzIV is going to have the same characteristics no matter what version of CM we're on.

The only way CM can stay ahead of the pack and evolve now is through the way it stimulates the senses and gives the impression of "being there".

[ December 17, 2002, 09:25 PM: Message edited by: Manx ]

[Schrullenhaft]

Actually Manx, I disagree with you on your last point. While a lot of unit and AFV data has been researched and put into the game, there are still a number of details that are 'abstracted' currently with the CMBB engine. The engine rewrite will reduce some of this abstraction and require more details (most of which should be available with the already researched data).

The biggest improvements and probably most of the work for the next engine will not necessarily center around the graphics. The new spotting routines and further refinement of the 3D world (for calculation and LOS purposes) will end up consuming quite a bit of that CPU horsepower that's expected to be available 3 years from now. Graphics will obviously see some improvement too over what's currently available with the CMBB engine (32-bit color, more complex wireframes, 3D texture features, additional battlefield and weather effects, etc.), but these improvements will almost certainly be behind the FPSes of the day (or whatever passes for 'hot and new' by then).

It is these 'differences' that BTS/BFC will work on, not the graphics, that will differentiate future versions of CM from the chattle that the rest of the industry will most likely put out. Sure, some other games available by then will be spectacular in their graphics, but most of them will be mind-numbing in their actual play value. There'll be few games that will actually stand up to the quality that future versions of CM will offer.

The preceeding wasn't a paid announcement or endorsement... do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

[Jussi Köhler]

MadMatt, please please PLEASE just dont sell this concept to Electronic Arts

Would be kinda cool with a Bf1942/CMBB crossbreed, eehh...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Manx:

Sorry guys, but don't you think that once the hard, set-in-stone data is done (ballistics, penetration alogrithms and so on) the only thing that CAN be improved is the graphics. Sure, you can argue to what degree and form those graphical enhancements take, but a T34/Sherman/PzIV is going to have the same characteristics no matter what version of CM we're on.

The only way CM can stay ahead of the pack and evolve now is through the way it stimulates the senses and gives the impression of "being there".

I disagree completely. There are tons of refinements and enhancements that can - and I hope are - added to gameplay, long before I would care about the graphics.

- victory conditions are the biggie

- campaign mode? not a priority, but would be a good way to resolve some problems

- improved operations modes, especially setup zones, reinforcements (ie realistic withdrawal of shot up units between battles, as a unit, rather than leaving them on the map, etc., etc., etc.)

It is not the hard data I'm talking about, but how the hard data is used. CMBB hardly represents the pinnacle of this. Consider all the stuff in ASL that we can't do in CMBB. I'd like to some day -

glider landings

amphibious landings

cliff scaling

commando raids

setting up wrecks and abandoned stuff in the editor

abandoning guns and vehicles and recrewing them (Steve talked about this recently too, and is just one of the nice-to-haves they are working for in the engine rewrite IIRC)

caves, tunnels, steeples

THE ENGINEERING BATTLE - cutting wire, mouseholing, etc.

Lots to consider before graphics become an issue.

[mike the wino2]

Did anyone mention 2-turret tanks? How about motorcycles MGs? Imagine a LMG 34 zipping around the map.

[Thomm]

The future lies in smoke! That and lots of dust!

[Major Jerkov]

"The preceeding wasn't a paid announcement or endorsement... do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. "

You dont play UrT, do you? Heh.

[James Crowley]

All, that has been mentioned previously, would be wonderful if it could be somehow incorporated into the new engine, graphics included (why not?)

However, I would happilly swap it all for a solid advance in the AI that allowed it, among other things, to conduct a more adequate attack; to build proper trench lines, wire lines and minefields etc.;to handle river crossings and amphibious assaults and to do all the little things that we complain so much about on this forum.

That is not to say that the AI, as it stands, is not half bad. On the contrary it is very good. But it is still, IMO,too limited to be able to provide a really good challenge to a competant human player. And I do not buy the line of "the AI will never be as good as a human etc.. so lets not bother".

Everything in life can be improved, if there is a will to do it. My fear is that the "eye candy" and details will be improved, thus providing a better two player gaming system, but possibly at the expense of improving the single player experience. Hopefully this will not be the case.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Manx:

I firmly believe that CMBB deserves to be "Game of the Year" (ain't seen nothin' better), and inevitably the corporate "suits" will be looking at CM and the wargaming genre very closely.

[snips]

Sooner or later i believe that BFC are going to have to face a serious challenge to the CM series and i hope they don't let those copycat companies take the lead.

AIUI, Battlefront was set up precisely as an act of rebellion against the slick-suit, fast-buck, knit-more-spaghetti-you-codegrinding-scum approach of the bulk of the games industry. From companies run by chumps in suits who cannot let a bandwagon pass un-jumped-on, we may certainly expect to see a deal of imitation of some aspects of the Battlefront approach. However, I think it is going to be much harder for imitators of the CM genre to achieve a comparable level of quality without some elementary changes to the way they do business.

Speaking selfishly, I would very much like to have all the game companies in the world copy the fundamentals of Battlefront's approach, as that would mean a perpetual oversupply of superbly playable, convincing, addictive, unbuggy wargames for me to choose from. The sheer wonderfulness of such an outcome is, I think, suficient reason to believe it won't happen.

All the best,

John.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Manx:

Sorry guys, but don't you think that once the hard, set-in-stone data is done (ballistics, penetration alogrithms and so on) the only thing that CAN be improved is the graphics. Sure, you can argue to what degree and form those graphical enhancements take, but a T34/Sherman/PzIV is going to have the same characteristics no matter what version of CM we're on.

The only way CM can stay ahead of the pack and evolve now is through the way it stimulates the senses and gives the impression of "being there".

That is not entirely true....

"sorry guys, but don't you think that once the hard, set-in-stone data is done (ballistics, penetration alogrithms and so on) the only thing that CAN be improved is the graphics"

What about improvements to the user interface in the editor?

What about improvements to the AI?

What about improvements to the game interface?

What about suggestions like SOP's for units?

What about some additional "hints" for the AI so that scenario designs can hint the AI so it can adquately defend its self or mount a complicated mulitpoint co-ordinated attack or counter attack.

AND of course the game graphics could look a little more current or sophisticated. Those screen shots WWII RTS sure do look impressive.

-tom w

[ December 18, 2002, 07:06 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

worth repeating

Battlefront.com

Administrator

Member # 42

posted September 15, 2002 04:57 PM

Hi guys,

Just a bit of info to clear things up...

We have made no official statements about what we are going to do next, beyond saying that we are

rewriting the engine from the ground up. We haven't even come up with a good name for this project

yet

One thing is for sure... the Pacific Theater is not in the cards. As has been mentioned by a few

posters here, it is not going to happen. The main reasons are that CM is what it is because Charles

and I (and to a large extent others as well) have a lot of personal knowledge and interest in the ETO.

We do not have either the knowledge nor the interest to do the Pacific Theater. Therefore, we do not

feel that we could do that theater very well both from a technical and from a motivational standpoint.

And since it is a much less popular theater than the ETO (in terms of ground warfare at leeast), it

also doesn't make much sense to move to the Pacific. This has all been said before, but obviously it

needs to be said again

The new engine will *not* be a "wargame developer's kit", so do not expect to be able to plop in your

own 3D models, game data, units, terrain, etc. Even if we wanted to hand out this much game to

people, it is a very difficult design goal to obtain (you have no idea how difficult!). If we were going to

sell an open system we would probably charge $100+ for it since we would be pissing away sales

opportunities. Unlike Halflife and other whiz bang games, an open CM engine would be a viable form

of competition for us for at least 3-4 years. This is not true for whizbang games because every 6-12

months some new hardware/software technology comes out that outdates previous versions. Not so

for wargames, which CMBO proves. So a combo of very difficult engineering tasks and a near suicidal

marketing startegy rules this out completely.

What the new engine WILL be is far more flexible for us. That means we can perhaps do a new game

in less than a year with perhaps even more improvements when compared to CMBO->CMBB. It will

also allow us the flexibility to move the game engine to other time periods or game types if we should

decide to. Currently CM is hardwired for certain types of WWII ETO combat only and can not be easily

adapted to anything else (it took 2 years to model a different front!).

How we are going to utilize this new engine? As I said above, we are not quite sure yet. But when we

are, you guys will be the first to know

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

from this thread:

"Some thoughts about the next generation of this engine...."

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=002404;p=2

the NEW CMII engine possible new features like:

* NO more Borg Spotting (Relative Spotting)

* LOS & LOF blocked by LIVE AFV's (i.e. infantry have "some" cover behind live and dead vehicles that

are not burning)

* Same as above, vehicles and other units CANNOT shoot through other live or dead vehicles that are

not burning

* Full movie replay

* Roster (for those would think they need it)

* Multi-turreted vehicles like the Allied Grant and Lee

* Amphibious units

* Dynamic lighting effects (two fold:

i. As visual effect and more important

ii. Integration into fire- and detection algorithms

* change PBEM format to only require two e-mails per turn

* Realistic modelling of visibility at night

* collision detection for all projectiles, even those that would hit

*smaller terrain tiles ( 10 x 10 m or better )

* Programable SOP's for all units:

(e.g. "Wouldn't it be great if an order could be given to the commander of company "A" to "take that

hill" or "move to that position and set up a defense" and watch as the orders are dissiminated down

throught he ranks and the varios platoons begin to try and carry out your orders. Yes, much as it

happens with "Airborn Assult".)

"with a little help from my friends"

-tom w

TSword

Member

Member # 7457

posted October 25, 2002 08:00 AM

1. It is absolutely necessary to give the Scenario-Designer more control over AI behaviour and setup.

Example: AI in Operations usually does a very poor setup (If there is wood AI will cramp everything in

it), true one can work around, but with open maps this becomes a problem of first order.

Solution: The designer can suggest zones of terrain suitable for setup.

Also some guidelines for attacking/defending AI would be great, like areas of approach, objective

zones, type of general AI behaviour like stubborn defense, counterattack, timings and the like.

This is a wide field but in general leave AI as is (No hope of much improvement in this field) but enable

more options during scenario design

All this together would enable much more challenging AI-battles and more possibilities to generate

more historic acurate battles (I mostly play the AI, since PBEMs go forever and need a lot of discipline

especially for the loosing side...). Covered arcs set by scenario designer would be great.

2. Atleast direct firing Artillery pieces should be able to fire delayed fuzed shells (when firing a flat

trajectory shell bounces off the ground, at first impact fuze is activated). This was done very often on

the german side with tanks HE, 88 AT, and all Artillery pieces. If used correctly this results in

devastating fire.

3. It is principally wrong not to enable on-board artillery to fire indirect. In the case of german heavy

howitzers (150 mm) the guns were very seldom placed farer away from the front then 4 km and

often relocated only below 1 km. This of course fits into the dimension of CM. Again this would allow

for additional realism and more possibilities in scenarios (Gamey inbalances can be corrected by

purchase prizes easily).

4. More terrain types with variyng degree of concealment together with further refined LOS

calculations. More possibilities for open terrain battles.

More terrain which give Inf concealment when being prone while only partly restricting LOS for AVFs.

5. Active visible camouflage of all sorts of weapons for same reason as point 4.

6. Ability for mounted troops to shoot from vehicles, and proper loads for trucks (much more then 1

Squad infact).

7. Dynamic lighting visible and taken into LOS calculations

8. Turret down for tanks or generally fighting vehicles for observation purposes.

9. "Debug"-Mode to check AI-behaviour for scenario designers. Simply an additional battle parameter

where the player can see all the AI units all the time while AI behaves according to set FOW settings.

10. Vehicle crews can remount an abandoned vehicle

11. Horses, bicycles, bikes

12. A small API-set:

- To read unit database (all values currently

visible during unitselection)

- To write to the map generator or map

selection (All the values currently

editable by the user)

- To write to the unit selection

Thus allowing 3rd party extensions for

campaigns and the like

13. Correct representation of relative plate

sizes on AFVs for hit determination. (eg.

Large T-34/85 turret, small T-34/76 turret).

14. Option to allow same "casualty"-rules as in

night battles also for daylight battles. They

are obviously much much more realistic then

the daylight rules.

15. More finetune options for Operations in

determing new setup zones for next battle.

(For instance in the "Assault" mode the

possibility to determine the weight of flank

and middle and treshold for cutoff units),

now it's easely possible to have the whole

force being

cutoff although not a single enemy unit was

behind their line when previous battle

ended).

16. New operation type "mixed" where scenario

designer can determine the sequence of

attacker (thus operations where attacker can

actually change from battle to battle) either

unknown or known to the player. To simulate

counterattacks something completely missing

now. Actually the same should also be

possible in battles where a certain formation

(for instance reinforcments) event triggered

would counterattack.

17. Moving vehicles produce dust dependend of

region and groundconditions. Heavy weapons

like tanks, artillery shells and the like

produce a lot of smoke which could change a

battlefield dramatically LOS wise..., nice to

see in open terrain battles...

Greets

Daniel

[ December 18, 2002, 07:08 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Manx]

I'm not advocating that BFC should concentrate solely on turning up the eye candy at the expense of everything else.

[Quintus]

Put me down as a vote against eye candy at the expense of anything else.

I must admit I would like to see :

*) Multi Turreted vehicles (ala T-28)

*) Indirect fire on-map cannon

*) Motorbike-sidecar combos

*) The ability to print out / save the OOB you start the game with so you can compare it with the AAR at the end.

*) Truck capacity to be upgraded. Perhaps more types of truck/lorry

Real pie-in-sky wishlist

*) The ability to perhaps buy 'air cover' Fighters tasked to keep the enemy bombers off your back, rather than bomb the enemy.

*) More Light / Medium bombers (Did the Finns ever use those Blenheims in anger?)

[Andreas]

HTML Briefings

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Andreas:

HTML Briefings

what is the advantage of HTML briefings?

I just don't understand the suggestion

:confused:

Has this come up before.

Why do we need HTML briefings?

-tom w