pzgndr Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 the poor horse has been beaten into an unrecognizable pile of goo........ No horse is too dead to beat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Desert Dave Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 As originally posted by Ron: If Hubert was to seriously try to make SC 'more' of a wargame, he would have to revamp the whole system to make it coherent and then it really wouldn't be SC anymore. Or, You might have a new! game that retains the very best of the old and adds in some truly innovative schematics that would allow the game to be more, ummmmmm, exacting in strategic and tactical decision making. The essential point also being that you can "edit" the new game to suit your own inclinations, making it as basic, or as Xtra complex as you care to. As you say Ron, time will tell, but... I am quite confident that SC2 will still be loads of fun, and ALSO a true and a lasting challenge for all those who also like deeper, and more involved Economic, Diplomatic and purely hard-corps Military considerations. :cool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 Originally posted by Desert Dave: Or, You might have a new! game that retains the very best of the old and adds in some truly innovative schematics that would allow the game to be more, ummmmmm, exacting in strategic and tactical decision making. The essential point also being that you can "edit" the new game to suit your own inclinations, making it as basic, or as Xtra complex as you care to. As you say Ron, time will tell, but... I am quite confident that SC2 will still be loads of fun, and ALSO a true and a lasting challenge for all those who also like deeper, and more involved Economic, Diplomatic and purely hard-corps Military considerations. :cool: Don't get me wrong, I am definitely not against complexity! as long as it serves its purpose, however the biggest charm of SC was its inherent simplicity combined with its challenging gameplay. I guess what I was going on about was there is room for all sorts of games but there have been precious few with the qualities of SC. I am not really afraid that SC2 will contain a myriad of details bogging down gameplay like HOI for example. Everything you and others have reported has all sounded very positive and will only add to the gameplay I'm sure. Ron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retributar Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 I found 'HOI' hard and difficult to learn at first...but, once i had learned how to play the game...it was easy after that!. It's complexity didn't bog-down the game for me after the initial learning curve was passed!. I prefer deep, complex, realistic, historically accurate games myself!...but, i too, also need 'Beer and Pretzel' games (Like 'Empire-Deluxe' in the days of Old)...for the times when im not up to the effort of an involved game...or for when i need a change of pace!. There's always room for games like that!. In the end...i don't really care whether 'HUBERT' uses Hexes or Tiles as long as it doesn't adversely affect the game. In fact im looking foward to seeing just what this 'Tile-System' can do!. [ May 22, 2004, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: Retributar ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sgt. Emren Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 Retributar, As long as we can both agree to wait for the tiles, I really don't think we need to spend any more time debating this... I saw you mentioned TOAW... different game, different style, but far superior to SC in terms of realism. I love it. I also always liked the original Panzer General, and that game had no stacking... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fantomas Posted June 1, 2004 Share Posted June 1, 2004 How to send an image with a message on this forum, please? (Hum! I know: I am a little ignorant... :eek: ) I would like to put an image bmp. to show the icons that j'ai manufactured (projects of mods for SC2 when it leaves: "Soldies of Fire, "14-18, barbarossa, Napoleon, etc...) thank you for the information ( I saw it had images there on the discussion "Tiles gold hex") Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce70 Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 Been a while since I posted on this (Battlefront) forum, but since I feel a need to procrastinate (from writing my thesis) I will now. SC2 will probably be a great game, and I will assess it when a demo is available. (Loved SC1 BTW) However, if it is successful, it will not be because of the change to tiles. None of the reasons for changing to tiles really adds up to much. All of the improvements, supposedly made possible by tiles, could have been applied to hexes. For example: Larger map size: Hubert himself has said that this is nonsense (though he didn't put it quite that strongly). Anybody approaching this subject with an open mind can see that. The fact that some people blindly agreed (or thought they agreed) with Hubert clearly demonstrate the sycophantic attitude common on these forums. 3 units attacking front: Actually, with an attack range of 1 tile, only one unit can attack the front with a square grid. The only reason 3 units can attack in the system proposed by Hubert is that he has increased the attack range to sqrt(2)=~1.41 tiles. You can achieve exactly the same thing with hexes by increasing the attack range to sqrt(3)=~1.73 (In the context of this thread, you might call that a squirt attack for hexes). Isometric view: No reason this cant be done with hexes. Programming difficulties: While there may have been some efficieny issues in the early days of computer games, in todays world hexes have a negligible effect on performance. From a programming viewpoint, hexes are a very minor annoyance. Only a very lazy programmer (which I know Hubert is not) would make a decision on this basis. The one possible programming reason is that Hubert has found an isometric engine that he likes and it uses a tile system. If that is the case then I understand 100%, it is a pretty big task for a one man team to write his own engine, and if you are still using Eiffel then I guess your options are limited Hubert. If there is any argument for tiles that I have missed then please let me know. As for arguments against tiles, they are mostly that it increases complexity slightly, and this is something that we are told SC tries to avoid. While this added complexity is not a "game-breaker", I still find it difficult to understand the decision. For example: Extra complications with movement to allow diagonal moves: 2 APs, 1.5 APs, 2:3 APs or 5:7 APs? Extra complications with spotting ranges: Same as above. Extra complications with fronts: This one is a little more subtle. If a diagonal front is allowed then you have to introduce extra ZOC rules, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it is a slight added complication. Furthermore, with this rule you can now build a zig-zag front with the same number of units it takes to build a straight front. Or put another way, a diagonal front covers 1.4 times the distance of a vertical or horizontal front. Hopefully the diagonal will run N-S, but even so this will lead to strange artificial tactics, and IMO this is the worst feature of a tile system. Finally, I would like to say a few words about stacking (Probably should put it in another thread). Firstly, this is not necesarily a good solution to the static front problem. Secondly, I have not heard a good argument not to include stacking. It does not have to increase the game complexity at all. The stack does not have to be literally a stack, simply put two units side-by-side in the hex. Force concentration is one of the fundamental principles of warfare, to not allow this is quite strange to say the least. Although, I must say that it didn't really bother me in SC1, so again it's not a game-breaker for me I just don't understand the arguments against it. The same could be said for a retreat rule, but I don't believe Hubert has said one way or another whether that is in or out. [ July 14, 2004, 07:44 PM: Message edited by: Bruce70 ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retributar Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 I again agree with the aformentioned argument as i have agreed with a similiar argument a couple of months ago!. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaMonkey Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 Bruce70, I like that idea...."Put two units side by side in one hex/tile". That creates all sorts of combined arms bonus possibilities.....and isn't that what "Blitzkrieg" was all about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
With Clusters Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 The only point of having stacking would be if multiple units were able to execute attack commands simultaniously (which I wouldn't mind seeing, but which I don't think is going to happen), or you wanted to allow a defender to get a serious defensive bonus (very serious in a game where attacking units can only go one at a time against effectively "doubled" units). If those options aren't on the table, no point in it. Might as well just make more and smaller "tiles"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ev Posted July 15, 2004 Share Posted July 15, 2004 Bruce 70, You seem to know more than a bit about game programming. Instead of Eiffel, what game engine would you use for a game like this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hubert Cater Posted July 15, 2004 Author Share Posted July 15, 2004 Yes Bruce brings up some interesting points for discussion for sure Just some background on Eiffel (and to clarify), it is just a programming language much like Visual C++, JAVA etc., while freely available game engines would be something separate, although most likely written in C or C++. For me using Eiffel is not a problem, and while it may not be for every game programmer it was in fact desired. For one, it was the language I'm most familiar with, and secondly there are all the inherent advantages (my opinion of course ) over some of the other languages, like Design By Contract, Garbage Collection, true Multiple Inheritance, smartly designed development environment etc. Admittedly there are drawbacks, one of which (and this was a problem for consideration way back when SC1 coding started) is that there are not many (in fact probably none) code samples available in Eiffel for game programming. I probably still have the only ones set up on line for an open source project I started a few years ago. I believe this is what Bruce is partially referring to when he discusses game engines. Now it's not a huge problem, since in the end, as with any language, you can interpret generic algorithms, pseudo code and so on to fit your language of choice. In fact, this is exactly what I ended up doing, whereby, the entire game engines for SC1 and SC2 were both written from scratch, in Eiffel, but using many of the code samples found on the net for path finding, movement, map generation and so on. The benefit though (of sticking with Eiffel) is that while SC2 has moved to tiles much of the existing framework for hexes in SC1 could be reused (due to the inherent similarities) without too much of a headache Hope this helps, Hubert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce70 Posted July 16, 2004 Share Posted July 16, 2004 Originally posted by ev: Bruce 70, You seem to know more than a bit about game programming. Instead of Eiffel, what game engine would you use for a game like this? I don't claim to know too much about game programming, but I have dabbled enough to have a lot of respect for Hubert. I believe Hubert pretty much answered your question about Eiffel. Eiffel is a very nice truly object oriented pragramming language, not a game engine. I haven't done any programming in Eiffel but I had thought that Hubert might be using someone elses engine written in Eiffel. Apparently that is not the case, which means I still don't understand the tile decision, so I'll just have to wait for the demo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afrika31 Posted July 17, 2004 Share Posted July 17, 2004 wow longest thread i have ever seen. So ok why are people against tiles? if you can attack with more force why whould that be a bad thing? if you can move more freely why would that be a bad thing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Exel Posted July 17, 2004 Share Posted July 17, 2004 Originally posted by afrika31: wow longest thread i have ever seen. So ok why are people against tiles? if you can attack with more force why whould that be a bad thing? if you can move more freely why would that be a bad thing? The main reason, I think, is the looks. Combined to other gameplay issues of course. It makes the battlefield look more blocky, since each tile has just 4 corners instead of 6. Tiles also add some complexity in the form of ZOC rules, movement costs, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce70 Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Originally posted by Exel: The main reason, I think, is the looksWell to me at least, that is the least important reason. The only thing that concerns me is the extra complexity of movement, spotting and ZOC that you mention. These issues will need careful attention if tiles are used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KDG Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Three or four plays through the demo and I believe we will forget about this tile/hex debate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lioneyes Posted July 19, 2004 Share Posted July 19, 2004 Maybe he's using tiles instead of hexes because the tiles are needed to interface with the new Strategic Command: Pacific Theatre, which will be out next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afrika31 Posted July 21, 2004 Share Posted July 21, 2004 we can all hope lioneyes!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liam Posted July 21, 2004 Share Posted July 21, 2004 Give me Tiles any day. So long as the game is kewl and rocks. Hexes and Tiles aren't sooooo different, as with territorial/province setups. I remeber some of the old SSI Wargames were Tilelike and I prefered it. In the end you've only got so many directions you can attack in. It's a setup. Provinces would really rock, but that would be such a complexity to create that it would take years to design the gameboard. I hope Hubert doesn't allow Air to kill Ground units, as far as retreat rules are concerned. I will not every play SC2 in a scenario where that is possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuniworth Posted July 27, 2004 Share Posted July 27, 2004 I have to say guys that Hubert is da man and sc2 will rock. Now let's move on to new discussions and suggestions while there are time left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce70 Posted July 29, 2004 Share Posted July 29, 2004 How very strange that you should say that 6 days after we "moved on". :confused: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuniworth Posted July 29, 2004 Share Posted July 29, 2004 Originally posted by Bruce70: How very strange that you should say that 6 days after we "moved on". :confused: Well obviously you are still here... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John C Posted August 1, 2004 Share Posted August 1, 2004 Originally posted by Kuniworth: I have to say guys that Hubert is da man and sc2 will rock. Now let's move on to new discussions and suggestions while there are time left. I would say that Hubert has proven he can make a good game. He understands the strengths and weaknesses of his creation and he has rationale reasons for wanting to make a change in the next iteration. I have historically preferred hexes but I intend to buy this game. I trust his judgement and I support attempts to learn new lessons. They won't all work out but I've bought many wargames in my life and I expect to buy many more, so if we learn one or two things in each iteration over the long term it is a good thing for games and for all of us gamers. I believe in supporting the people who bring us good games so that they can continue to make a living doing it and continue to bring us additional new and better games. But also, I suspect this game will be fun. And whether I enjoy it for a couple of weeks and decide it didn't hit the mark or whether I enjoy it for years to come, either way it will provide many hours of entertainment and be a bargain in terms of cost per hour of enjoyment. In that way computer games, and especially complex games that require a while to master, remain one of the best entertainment bargains available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackbellamy Posted August 5, 2004 Share Posted August 5, 2004 So sad. Just came across a couple of Hubert's discarded hexes while jogging.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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