(CM:SF = optional RTS ) Had your Coffee yet?? check this out major news of the day..

[mbtanker]

{{{Well you can always play WeGo until you are comfortable with RealTime. [smile]

and you can always just play smallish little scenario's in RealTime until you get good at it.}}}

Player ability really has nothing to do with it. I play RTS games all the time and like them. They are not wargames. I play CM for a very different reason and expect a very different type of play from it. No matter how good the interface and no matter how good of a player you are you simply cannot deal with two simultaneous engagements in any quality way.

How many times have you played CM and one ten second period in a turn had action going on all over the place? Taking away the ability to see or react to that entire ten seconds fundamentally changes the game and the experience. It doesn't make it more realistic either. No a real commander would not have 30 minutes to ponder everything but a real commander also wouldn't be expected to do or make half of the decisions a player of CM makes. But making those decisions and seeing what is going on is what makes it a fun game.

My point is simply that without a way to rewind and intervene in events, RealTime CM would be a fundamentally very different experience and a very different type of game. It would not be better or more realistic; it would just be different.

I've blathered enough on this topic and will try and refrain from boring folks anymore. Just put me down for keeping WeGo as an option.

[ November 08, 2005, 05:12 PM: Message edited by: mbtanker ]

[Treeburst155]

I agree, mbtanker. Having RT and WeGo in the same game is, in effect, having two very different games for the price of one. Neither would be better than the other IMO.

My only concern is that human v human play may evolve into a realtime only situation. Unlike Steve, I'd rather play one game thoughtfully in a given span of time, than play six twitch games in the same time.

Having said that, more options is always a good thing. IF we get PBEM, RT, and WeGo, I'm sure I will be able to find opponents who share my preferences.

[Battlefront.com]

Unlike Steve, I'd rather play one game thoughtfully in a given span of time, than play six twitch games in the same time.

So would I, which is why I don't play twitch games very often

Don't confuse the medium with the message. RT is inherently nothing. WeGo is inherently nothing. TurnBased is inherently nothing. They are simply conventions that game systems operate in. You can have very dull, tedious, uncreative games in any of these three mediums. You can have exciting, deep, and thoughtful experiences in all three. Each lends itself better to a type of game design than another, for sure, but that is just it... lends itself. It can work if the elements are done right. For example, there have been some excellent TurnBased "RTS" type games, and dozens and dozens of horribly crappy RealTime "RTS" games.

Just punting that out there because I see, far too often, the stereotyping of the game system. When CMBO came out it was the RealTime guys claiming that anything short of RT wasn't fun, wasn't exciting, and wasn't at all like real combat. In a way they were correct, but only when viewed through their narrow definition of what fun, exciting, or realistic was.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Recently, in this or another thread, I described the different types of wargamers in terms of their desire to micromanage. Just because you are spending tons of time agonizing over each and every little thing in that could possibly happen doesn't mean you are having a more meaningful gaming experience than someone who makes decisions from the gut. I like turn based gaming... always have. But I have never, ever been the one to get out the ruller and argue about if that 1mm of map means I can pass through or not. I don't care if I have some units sitting around not engaging in battle every second of every turn. I rather be focused on real world tactics and respond to battlefield outcomes.

In that sense I am far more prone to a "command" style game than I am something like "miniatures". However, I also like getting my hands dirty with specific units doing specific things. That is something that should not be possible to do in a command style game, and it is something I would miss as a gamer (with one exception I'll get to in a sec). I am also painfully aware of the limitations of AI and so I'd rather err on the side of me directing things than a faulty AI. So I'm not in favor of a true command style game, though I do feel a kinship with people who see that as the ultimate form of gaming.

For me, I think the ultimate wargaming experience would be RealTime with many cooperative players, each one having a very narrow and realistic range of command. I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can be a Platoon Leader, be it a Stryker Rifle Platoon or a Panzergrenadier Platoon. Yeah, it will be an entirely different experience from being a God of the whole game, but that's not a bad thing. Variety is the spice of life

Steve

[Treeburst155]

Are you saying that RT CM2 cannot be accurately described as a "twitch game". If so, I agree with you if we're talking small battles. I just watched a CM PBEM "movie" with a moderate amount of action. If I could have interacted with that movie, I would not have had to tax my mousing skills.

However, I like to fight large battles. I just can't imagine not "twitching" in a battalion sized engagement fought RT. Perhaps I'll find the company level more enjoyable with the new engine anyway, regardless of the WeGo/RT issue.

[Treeburst155]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

For me, I think the ultimate wargaming experience would be RealTime with many cooperative players, each one having a very narrow and realistic range of command. I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can be a Platoon Leader, be it a Stryker Rifle Platoon or a Panzergrenadier Platoon. Yeah, it will be an entirely different experience from being a God of the whole game, but that's not a bad thing. Variety is the spice of life

Steve

Yes...I would really like this....a platoon leader in RT, with nothing to worry about but my platoon and our orders.

[Battlefront.com]

I guess it is all how you define "twitch". For me it means a game where physical reflexes are the primary thing that matters. All games, even twitch games, have some amount of thinking (which one to shoot first, which unit to move where, etc.), but without fast reflexes there is no way to progress in the game.

By this definition, most arcade type games are twitch games. Most RTS games have a strong twitch element, but fast reflexes alone won't win you many games. Serious vehicle sims require a lot of skill and knowledge to make the reflexes meaningful, while arcade type vehicle games do not. The current batch of FPS games out there are sometimes more like arcade games and sometimes more like flight sims. Totally depends on what the game is all about.

Close Combat, for all its faults and shortcomings, is not a game I'd consider a twitch game. Reflexes mattered, but only if you had a good sense of tactics and the capabilities of your units.

CM:SF in RealTime will be more along the lines of serious vehcile sims and Close Combat in terms of the importance of reflexes. Therefore, no, I do not see CM:SF as being a twitch game. It certainly isn't the same as a turn based game, where reflexes only impact how long it takes a person to complete a turn, yet it isn't at all like Space Invaiders. It isn't even like a vehicle sim, where one wrong reflex and that's all she wrote. In CM:SF, WeGo or RealTime, allows for mistakes and miss opportunities without dooming you to ultimate failure.

Steve

[Tarquelne]

However, I like to fight large battles. I just can't imagine not "twitching" in a battalion sized engagement fought RT. Perhaps I'll find the company level more enjoyable with the new engine anyway, regardless of the WeGo/RT issue.

I almost always play smaller LAN games with timed turns. I've chosen to believe CM:SF is getting RT just for me. It's a warm feeling.

I think I'll miss guessing where my opponent is at in the replay by watching them wince. (Or, less auspicially, hoot.) But it'll be fun trying to pick up on what the OPFOR's commander is up to and seeing in Real Time. Hmm... or trying to fool him...

[mazex]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

CM:SF in RealTime will be more along the lines of serious vehcile sims and Close Combat in terms of the importance of reflexes. Therefore, no, I do not see CM:SF as being a twitch game. It certainly isn't the same as a turn based game, where reflexes only impact how long it takes a person to complete a turn, yet it isn't at all like Space Invaiders. It isn't even like a vehicle sim, where one wrong reflex and that's all she wrote. In CM:SF, WeGo or RealTime, allows for mistakes and miss opportunities without dooming you to ultimate failure.

Steve

But still, the frustrating parts of Close Combat are the ones where you are acting squad leader at 4 dispersed places in the same time, and trying to be company commander at the same time! If the TacAI in CMx2 isn't VERY good and able to take decisions like "Yes - this is the time to rush to the other side of the street" it will never be realistic as you (the battalion commander) is also the one that has to make those decisions at squad level while deciding what to do with the tactical reserve...

We all know what happens when high level commanders mess with an operational level that is much lower... Hitler giving orders to battalions outside Stalingrad anyone? If we want to be both battalion commander and squad leader it will never be more realistic in real time unless we get the large multiplayer Co-Op game mode.

[aka_tom_w]

One thing about head to head play in RealTime via TCP/IP would there be any time left for taunting your opponent? :cool:

Perhaps for the defender early in the game he can say something like:

"Ha Ha I can see you and you can't see me", or something like that (as you can see I am not that good at that aspect of the side-game), but in the heat of battle in RealTime I would guess the trash talking and taunting would be in short supply. BUT thats not really a bad thing. (Presuming for the moment the "taunting feature" with the radio squawk carries over from CMx1)

-tom w

[ November 09, 2005, 05:42 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[undead reindeer cavalry]

i sure hope that the real-time play is not the reason why we could not have all the sweet stuff, like the line-of-fire calculations, in the [WEGO part of the] game.

[Battlefront.com]

We have line of fire calculations for both

Having said that, yes... we made a decision 2.5 years ago to make the engine "real time capable". At that time we decided that we would make reasonable sacrifices to allow this to happen. What I don't think WeGo fans understand is that CMx2's WeGo experience is overall much more detailed, less gamey, and far more flexible for future needs. So if there are a few sacrifices here and there because of the real time core, overall even the WeGo experience is overall better off.

A quick example of this are artillery shells and missiles which are still in the air on the 60th second of the turn. In CMx1 we had to have them impact before ending the turn. That was quite unrealistic. Because the game system now thinks in terms of real time, this problem inherently goes away.

Sure, we could probably have specifically coded an exception for things still in flight and had the game system still be pure WeGo like CMx1, but that would have been a poor decision to make. Better to eliminate the entire problem, for all situations all the time, in one fell swoop than to agonize over the effort to fix a small handful of problems retroactively.

Steve

[ November 09, 2005, 08:46 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Battlefront.com]

If we want to be both battalion commander and squad leader it will never be more realistic in real time unless we get the large multiplayer Co-Op game mode.

Well, for most CM:SF's Campaign games you'll more likely be the equivalent of a Company Commander, not a Battalion Commander.

Steve

[PAEZ]

posted November 09, 2005 12:35 AM

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I guess it is all how you define "twitch". For me it means a game where physical reflexes are the primary thing that matters. All games, even twitch games, have some amount of thinking (which one to shoot first, which unit to move where, etc.), but without fast reflexes there is no way to progress in the game.

By this definition, most arcade type games are twitch games. Most RTS games have a strong twitch element, but fast reflexes alone won't win you many games. Serious vehicle sims require a lot of skill and knowledge to make the reflexes meaningful, while arcade type vehicle games do not. The current batch of FPS games out there are sometimes more like arcade games and sometimes more like flight sims. Totally depends on what the game is all about.

BFC.

I'm starting to hear CMSF AND CM2 for the

XBOX360 and PS3 :0

[mazex]

Originally posted by PAEZ:

posted November 09, 2005 12:35 AM

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I'm starting to hear CMSF AND CM2 for the

XBOX360 and PS3 :0

Quick - get the stake, the silver bullets and the crucifix!

Mazex

[Battlefront.com]

I'm starting to hear CMSF AND CM2 for the

XBOX360 and PS3

If you could tell us how to do this without us having to spend all the money we've ever made let us know, because we'd be interested in expanding to the massive box audience

Seriously, box games aren't a possibility for us so we don't even think about them.

Steve

[Peter Cairns]

Does that mean that CM:SF will come in a Packet....

Peter.

[Tuomas]

Hi!

I think both the limitations and strongpoints of RTS and WeGo have been brought up and discussed quite throughly during this thread. I will try to be constructive and bring out a concrete scenario decipting possible problems and maybe come up with possible solutions for discussion.

Consider a case where a squad is advancing on a city street when suddently it comes under moderate small arms fire. The squad leader decides to scramble the squad to cover. After securing that everyone got out of harms way he propably is concidering how to counter the threat to complete his original mission. I think everybody agrees until now the TacAi will do a decent job, but after this the unit needs player input weather to circle around the threat, advance through houses or weather to charge straight for the enemy. This all depends on circumstances wich are out of reach for TacAi atleast for few years still!

Now in WeGo-mode human player should notice this during the playback phase and give new orders to the unit on the next turn. As many here have pointed out, in RTS-mode however the player might or might not happen to see this. If the player is "wearing the wrong hat" i.e. as the company commander pondering where to hide his Strykers or telling a squad on the other flank to clear that house from insurregants anyway doing a task that prevents him observing this and as a consequence knowing that he should issue further orders to the squad under fire. There have been suggestions ranging from text messages to audio ques to notify the player that there is something going on.

Realisticaly how soon should the squad react? Well that really depends on the original order. If the order was such one that the unit is unable to fulfill anymore, the squad should report this and await further orders from up. But if the unit was completing a task which can still be fulfilled, the squad leader should be the one who decides what to do. So in the first case a notifiable delay is realistic but in the second case, atleast with more expirienced leaders, the decision should be fast or even instant (gut instinct). As the player hast to put the squadleaders hat on and make that decision, atleast in more complicated situations, he should be alerted and made available to decide for that unit.

Now what are the UI-related problems? First consider that there are several of this kind of situations occuring the same time, and now the player has to be able to making multiple decisions simultaniesly. (Remember the scenario is that squadleaders are the ones deciding (simultaniesly), not the CO!) This problem can be overcome by slowing gamespeed down. (In the other case the player obviosly should not be able to decide the case for everyone instantly. Form the game designers POV these situations are unforunatedly difficult or impossible to distinquish.)

Secondly there is the problem that while making these decisions the squadleader is aware what has just happened. On the contrary the player alerted to the scene just now has only some knowlidge what has just happened. Maybe this is enough to deduct a reasonable reaction for the squad, maybe not. If there is a squad covering and being supressed and a enemy unit is nearby the first thing coming to mind would be that this squad has come under fire. What if there was a IED that went off on the street? The readtion to these situations could be wildly different. For the player to "roleplay" his role as a squadleader should be also aware what has happened. The suggested short replay is a way overcoming this aspect, unfortunatedly Steve said it was not possible to do.

Another possible way to solve this would be a window inside the main screen showing the happenigs of that unfortunate unit. The window might appear when the firing starts, or if it is hard to decide wich action is worth showing, player could be able to split he's screen showing different locations before hand or according to reports he is getting from he's units. Or there even might be several of these smaller windows decipting various places in the battlefield that the player could suffle through. Or even multiple screens on different monitors! So in short my idea is to allow the player to follow the events on the battlefield in more than one place simultaniesly.

Of course this is just a work around to allow the player to (even try) control more units simultaniesly and the real answer would be multi-multiplayer where each player controls only a platoon or so! But your comments anyway?

-TNT-

[Bruce70]

Tuomas,

I'm guessing the response will be something along the lines of: "With CMx2's realistic C&C network that's not necessary."

Can't wait to get more details on this C&C network.... (hint)

[Treeburst155]

Imagine a Close Combat done right (by BFC) that takes advantage of today's powerful computers. This may be what we have in CM2. I think those of us who enjoy larger battles may have to scale down a bit for the new game; but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Besides, we do still have WeGo for those big battles.

I'm really looking forward to CM2; but I may wait for the WWII game before buying. That is, if I can hold out after playing the demo.

[juan_gigante]

Imagine "To The Volga" real-time. You'd die trying to give half your troops orders!

I think that, especially with the inclusion of real-time, regimental and divisional actions are a thing of the past.

I once made a level for myself wherein 2 or 3 divisions of Soviet infantry (just infantry, mind you) assaulted a dozen or so Sturmtigers and a dozen or so 150mm IGs across around 1500 meters of open ground. That was a fun one. I always, of course, played as the Germans.

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by juan_gigante:

Imagine "To The Volga" real-time. You'd die trying to give half your troops orders!

I think that, especially with the inclusion of real-time, regimental and divisional actions are a thing of the past.

I once made a level for myself wherein 2 or 3 divisions of Soviet infantry (just infantry, mind you) assaulted a dozen or so Sturmtigers and a dozen or so 150mm IGs across around 1500 meters of open ground. That was a fun one. I always, of course, played as the Germans.

I think that "To the Volga" would just be one of those games that you didn't play real time - in the same way that you probably wouldn't play it TC/PIP. But - to the extent that RT can be seen as part of the development toward Co-Play - imagine playing one company of TTV real time, along with 10 other German company commanders, each of them playing their own companies. *That* would be awesome.

[MikeyD]

The biggest difference in realtime play might be in Moon's checking account after the game hits the market!

I know more than a few fierce gamers, history buffs, and weapons freaks who simply turned their noses up at CMx1 because realtime play was an immovable baseline expectation. It didn't matter how historically accurate or addictively fun CM was, or how much CMx1 fans praised the game, it was WeGo so they went.

I suspect that after we get our hands on CMSF a consensus will soon imerge about which method of play is going to be most fun/efficient. But simply having realtime play as part of the description on the boxtop (assuming there will be a boxtop) could exponentially increase sales potential. The only downside I see is if you want to play WeGo and your oppponent insists on realtime. I see a potential for fistfights!