CM2 WW2

[M1A1TC]

Id call this the Perfect Strategy Control System, PSCS

[McIvan]

Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by McIvan:

Pausable realtime with rewind is essentially what we have now (for WEGO) but with rewind allowed anytime.

I disagree. Right now in WEGO you can only issue orders in Pause mode, and cant change them until Active mode plays through.

A Real Time with pause, with ability to issue orders in realtime and in pause mode, with ability to rewind last 60 seconds would be Revolutionery, and is not at all what WEGO is </font>

[General Jack Ripper]

I think having both RT and WeGo is important.

If all I have is a platoon of troops and some vehicles, I think RT is the way to go, as you can easily keep track of all your men, and RT make such battles quicker and more streamlined.

However, if you have a company or more with supporting elements, I think WeGo is preferable so you can take your time to use all your men effectively.

I don't really get drawn into pause and give orders stuff, because I tend to start watching the action and forget to pause and give orders. Thus the sixty second auto pause is useful for me.

When I first got CMBO the cool little video playing option with play, pause ff and rew was the real reason I bought all of the CMx1 games. (I like to make my own instant replays of tanks and buildings blowing up

So for me, I would prefer having the option of using either RT or WeGo. Some form of hybrid PSCS is not desirable for me (good idea though M1A1TC).

OK I'm ranting now, but what I'm getting at is there is no need to compromise between RT and WeGo, as it seems many people seem to like them exactly the way they are.

(Although, I do miss being able to have shopping list of troops for quick battles.)

[rollingt]

Originally posted by Pandur:

the game i played had methode 2 installed if you liked it. ovcourse if you run out of puase you have a realtime game essentialy, again. so for me that was and is no option to end up in a realtime game at some point, and i think for many others too. i dont want a game where you battle for who uses his pause up first to anhilate him while he is stuck in RT mode. he still can issue orders in your pause but for the most part thats not enough as these pauses are not timed with his needs. i played that mode and it distracts totaly from the fighting itself i have found.

Actually with method number 2 (all of them really) you cannot run out of pause, but having read some of the other posts I can see why some people want WeGo to remain (just).

[FAI]

Maaan, this RTWEGO iz da bomb

[Freeboy]

ok, how about a real answer from someone and not this ambiguity.. AGAIN IS THERE REALLY PLANS FOR A WW2 OFFERING ?

HELLO, PLEASE LOSE THE ATTITUDE OR EVEN MORE FOLKS WILL PISS OFF BF, and take there business elsewhere

Caps intentional DOH

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Freeboy:

AGAIN IS THERE REALLY PLANS FOR A WW2 OFFERING ?

Yes.

First come some CM:SF modules, though, US Marines being covered in the first one.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Cid250]

Originally posted by KiloIndiaAlpha:

When is it planned to develop and release a WW2 version of CM2?

Thanks

Mike

Version 1.0 Beta is already out... It's called "Theatre of War".

It's a Real Time Strategic Game based on WWII, with accurate ballistics and such. You know... mouse click festival, or constant pause disruption when playing online with a human, due to being released without true WEGO support over TCP/IP.

Tiny battles are perfect for good gameplay in real time, but you can not expect much more gameplay diversity.

[Battlefront.com]

For some reason I lost track of this thread for a week or two. Time to catch up

We will not get rid of WeGo. I've said it for a few years now and nothing has changed. We added RealTime to broaden the base of interest in CMx2, not to replace one group with another (although the RT market is vastly larger, of course).

If we had felt WeGo didn't have value we would have never put it into CMx2's game engine to start with. Despite the complaints and accusations that we slapped it in there to get a few extra people to preorder CM:SF, it took a LOT of time to get the WeGo stuff in there and working. It STILL takes a lot of time to support it. BELIVE ME, if we didn't find value in having it in the game we would cut it lose without second thought. Reducing unnecessary headaches is a desirable thing for any sane development team. Since WeGo is there that is the strongest indication that we value it.

I think CMx1 WeGo gamers are much the way a 2 year old is when they realize that the new baby is eating into the exclusivity of the relationship with mommy. There have even been documented cases of the first child trying to kill the new competition. I've seen a LOT of this over the past few months, but it's stretches back to the day we announced the RT option would be present in CMx2. Just like a good mom in real life, there is enough love and attention there for both kids and therefore is no reason to get jealous or nasty.

I'm not meaning this as an insult to WeGoers, rather I'm trying to use an analogy that is extremely well documented and understood by a great many people regardless of culture. Though if pressed I will say that I do think some people have behaved far less maturely towards the RT option than a reasonable person should expect

So that's really the bottom line. CMx2 has two methods of play and will continue to have two methods of play. Neither side should think that the existence of the other is a liability. Sure, it does take more energy for us to support two systems than one, but we are willing to put in the time and effort. It would be nice if that were understood and a sense of mutual cooperation shown instead of petty bickering.

OK... so what sort of things do we envision for the future of the two systems?

For WeGoers we are already adding things that have been requested that probably won't appeal much to the RT players. Previous patches have introduced some, version 1.06 will introduce some more, and future patches still more.

For RealTimers some sort of "rolling replay" is HIGHLY desirable. A lot of RT players would love to see this, and I'm sure a number of WeGoers would be more inclined to play RT (even if infrequently). There are technical issues with this that preclude it happening in the near term, but we think we'll work through them.

We would also like to have a "full game replay" for both modes of play. It is probable that in our efforts to get a "rolling replay" for RT that we'll figure out some way to do this. However, we have no idea when this might happen or if it is actually practical for most gamers due to hardware requirements.

And yes, WeGo TCP/IP is still on our ToDo List. However, the main stumbling block to it is the transfer time of the replay data. Streaming state changes in RT is a completely different thing than batch sending the whole thing at once. It's technically possible to do this, without any doubt, but it takes a lot of time to work through. Because PBEM is a viable alternative at the moment we haven't ranked this feature higher than other things, such as Enhanced LOS and general game improvements. Remember, we can't do everything at once so we have to prioritize and, I think, the majority of CM:SF gamers would agree that TCP/IP WeGo should not trump everything else.

At some point we will have the time/resources to do CoPlay, which is our term for multiple people working cooperatively on one side to do battle against multiple people working cooperatively on the other side. This isn't something that is going to happen anytime soon, unfortunately.

So there are some things to chew on

Steve

[Cid250]

Sounds better than the comments posted several months ago about the same issue, but...

Will you "fork()", the development?.

WEGO has "less" time constraints to the Tactical AI use of CPU. Any plan to take advantage of CPU time in the WEGO branch of development?.

As a side note, for a WEGO player, the TCP/IP option is much better, even if upload times are long... because the WEGO nature, allow you to take advantage of the planified pauses... because if you finish your move first you can spend your extra time to read a book, go for a beer, coffe, write an e-mail, etc... Something that can be felt as very disturbing in a RealTime pause of your opponent, because time is organized as mandatory "continuous action" input from the player.

The idea of Saving the whole engagement in one file... is quite good... even if it takes Gigabytes of Hard Disk, it's a desired feature for many players.

[Pandur]

great news!

[Freeboy]

I really just wanted some courteous answers to my qeurry and thanks for it.. I really do not have much interest in certain genres and periods, but I always thought cmbb was an all timer and if this next game is a newer better version I will be happy, but I apretty easy to please eanyway.

[Taki]

Im really Glad taht BFC is working on Making CMSF the Game that People expected patch by ptach comming.

No Rushing,. 2 Patches and boom the Next "Buy this Modul".

Thats what i like about BFC. Hope there are more Patches to come. There is still a way to go.

[H.W. Guderian]

Thanks for the update Steve.

[Zemke]

I like what I am hearing about TCIP WEGO. Frankly I seldom played CMBB or CMAK against the computer once I learned the game, nor do I play CMSF very much...because... I prefer to take my game to the next level, human opponents, and there is no better way to do that then TCIP. WEGO in TCIP (with the time limates) makes the game feel very realistic, you feel like a commander under presure to make decisions, but not have to micro-manage everything all the time. Co-Play TCIP WEGO will be the ultimate way to play and the most realistic, players will then have the very real problem of battle field coordination to deal with.

[bodkin]

It would be great if it were possible to have various WEGO turn time options. At the start of a game the player chooses RT, or turn based 60 seconds, turn based 30 seconds etc.

As some have said they prefer RT because 60 seconds is too long to leave your troops alone on the modern battlefield, however if you had a WEGO play option of 30 sec intervals this would negate this problem to some degreee.

[mikewhol]

"So that's really the bottom line. CMx2 has two methods of play and will continue to have two methods of play. Neither side should think that the existence of the other is a liability. Sure, it does take more energy for us to support two systems than one, but we are willing to put in the time and effort. It would be nice if that were understood and a sense of mutual cooperation shown instead of petty bickering."

Great to hear Battlefront! All the CM games rock!

Now for something really odd!

I like both WEGO and RT, love the flexibility of having both. I love RT in single player small battles, but I sometimes want to game out a larger battle, WEGO is nice for that.I want it all!

Oh BTW, the ideal of being able to watch a replay of the battle is awesome, I've wanted something like that since CM:BO!

[Battlefront.com]

Cid250,

Sounds better than the comments posted several months ago about the same issue

My answers are no different than then, so I think something else must have changed.

Will you "fork()", the development?.

I don't understand your banter

WEGO has "less" time constraints to the Tactical AI use of CPU. Any plan to take advantage of CPU time in the WEGO branch of development?.

No. The constraints on the AI are less to do with CPU cycles than time needed to code the functions in the first place. CMx2's AI is, as of v1.06, much more complicated and diverse than CMx1's, yet it can fun in RealTime.

One great thing about having a code that is inherently RealTime is that things have to be efficient. I think most WeGo games, including CMx1, spend more cycles getting less done because the discipline isn't needed.

Bodkin,

It would be great if it were possible to have various WEGO turn time options. At the start of a game the player chooses RT, or turn based 60 seconds, turn based 30 seconds etc.

In theory this is possible, though I don't know when/if it will be introduced. It's the sort of thing that is theoretically easy to do but is likely to have a lot of unintended consequences that need to be addressed.

Mikewhol,

I like both WEGO and RT, love the flexibility of having both. I love RT in single player small battles, but I sometimes want to game out a larger battle, WEGO is nice for that.I want it all!

And you shall have it since we're going to continue supporting both for the life of the CMx2 engine. And before anybody reads anything into that, I am only specifying CMx2 because we have zero plans to make make a CMx3 game engine since we don't think one will be needed. CMx2 is designed to morph and improve with time, unlike CMx1 which was a deadend before we started on CMBB.

Steve

[Cid250]

Steve... "fork()" is a unix function to spawn a second process, so i only mean "two branchs of development".

WeGo will work better with different rules... for example, the delay in action, when orders are too much complex.

Even with Good coding discipline, there isn't any good Real Time game in the industry, with rich AI solutions. I mean... that AI is really dumb in RealTime.

I see a great advantage in the WeGO, due to the more relaxed restrictions in CPU time. Why not to take advantage og it in the WeGo design of TacticalAI?. Yo can include even a much improved LOS algorithm, for example... even better than the one that you will include in the next pach. Because Real Time leads always to a constant shortage of CPU time.

[Pandur]

I see a great advantage in the WeGO, due to the more relaxed restrictions in CPU time. Why not to take advantage og it in the WeGo design of TacticalAI?

as far as i understood WeGo is now calculated in realtime too. means as soon as you hit the GO button(no wait time), you have the same load as on the RT playing PC.

CMx1 calculated the results in advance(blue bar anyone!?) and played the video after. thats why it was possible there, but not here anymore.

[Steiner14]

@Steve/Battlefront,

i think Cid250 makes some very good points about the negative impact of RT on WEGO. You know, WEGO-players want the best possible AI and the highest possible realism.

I understand perfectly, that it is impossible to implement things for WEGO-only, since the engine is RT.

So my idea is the following: could it be a solution, to make a kind of "maximum AI and LOS/LOF" mode, that is optional for the engine itself?

That way, WEGO players would get the highest possible realism with the best Tac- and Strat-AIs possible AND RT-players could use that, too, if they can accept the slowdowns or hickups.

[flammenwerfer]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Freeboy:

AGAIN IS THERE REALLY PLANS FOR A WW2 OFFERING ?

Yes.

</font>

[Other Means]

I'd like the ability to switch between RT and WEGO, with a save game maybe. I've been playing RT games and released it was getting away from me so I wanted to drop down to WEGO, or play a WEGO game and RT through a boring bit - any chance?

[GSX]

Originally posted by Steiner14:

@Steve/Battlefront,

i think Cid250 makes some very good points about the negative impact of RT on WEGO. You know, WEGO-players want the best possible AI and the highest possible realism.

I understand perfectly, that it is impossible to implement things for WEGO-only, since the engine is RT.

So my idea is the following: could it be a solution, to make a kind of "maximum AI and LOS/LOF" mode, that is optional for the engine itself?

That way, WEGO players would get the highest possible realism with the best Tac- and Strat-AIs possible AND RT-players could use that, too, if they can accept the slowdowns or hickups.

In essence isnt WEGO simply an RT pause that enables you to send an email? Camera minute aside, is WEGO simply this?

A minute is a long time to leave you guys without any orders as I have seen when testing WEGO Vs RT. When playing the same scenario with both I get much better results in RT as I can pause the RT but of course not have to leave my forces to their own devices for a minute.

Example of this is a Stryker drives up a slope and spots a T-72 on the far hill. In RT, I can pause, order it to reverse and it usually will. In WEGO it gets to the top, dithers around, tries to engage with its puny MG and then its fate is in the lap of the Gods. The AI should slam that baby into reverese surely?

Anyway, if WEGO is a giant pause, why not just have pausable RT with a 1 minute rewind facility? I'm not even sure that this is possible, just thinking of a way around some of the RT to WEGO difficulties.

[Pandur]

In RT, I can pause

you can not in RT multiplayer thats more important, and i stated befor why unlimited pause in RT multiplayer is not desireable.

however WeGo works in multi as single, the same way with fixed rules.

when the TacAI is tweaked to the level it should be this discussion become obsolete anyway.

dont get me wrong, i partly enjoyed the total war series wich has RTwP battles.

but in CM RTwP isnt right for me, i dont want to pause every few second to change a few little details every moment. and that is what i "would" do if i would get the possibility in my hands.

1 minute is fine, the opponent has the same 'problem', and you can watch a minute warmovie without unrealisticly micromanaged super results.

no matter how they will try to modifie RT it wont replace WeGo in the end. it can only recreate it in some ways for people wich miss the replay for example.

also i still "dont get it" why so many people are whining about features already included, but dont like to choose them!?