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this is what he says:

Posted by: Battlefront .com 6/30/2006

Martin has been bugging me to write something for this new blog thingy we have going. I guess I gotta do what he says. He is German after all (or Polish, he can't make up his mind!). Plus, the new pattern of June Monsoons that we have here in the Northeast US (you soccer moms out there, keep using those SUVs to buy a quart of milk!) has ruled out lazing in the sun all day like we game designers are prone to doing.

It's why games are always late, doncha know! Speaking of that, I'll move onto the topic at hand; Combat Mission: Shock Force development update.

Many of you out there have been with us long enough to know that we have a hard time getting anything out of the oven until we're 110% happy with the way it looks, smells, and tastes. Or something like that. Well, considering this is the game engine we plan on using for 5 or more games, this is not the time to change our ways. The side effect of this is things taking a lot longer than we imagined or would like. But the good news is we're just about at Beta. Probably 2 weeks more.

What does Beta mean for you all? Not much, other than I'll probably post some screenshots of some sort in the middle of July. I wanted to do it in the middle of June, but thanks to ATI's well known attention to detail when it comes to their drivers, that wasn't possible.

Charles has a video card that works and Dan and I have ATI cards. In order to get CM working well enough with smoke and dynamic lighting on my computer, Charles had to also acquire an ATI card so he could experience the broken graphics for himself. He did that this week (it involved buying a new system) and spent 2 full days working around ATI's brilliant "features" contained in the driver. He's almost done, then he can move on to finishing off the user interface work and bingo... I can take some shots for you guys.

The in-game art is still pretty rough at this point. Since this is a new game engine we've been spending all our time making sure everything works right before going ahead and doing a bunch of art. Back in my previous life of corporate game development they never understood this.

3 artists would crank out a small mountain of artwork only to have it thrown out a couple of weeks later when the development team figured out things weren't going to work that way after all. While it would be nice to have the money to burn on wasted efforts like this, we don't so we have to be smarter about how we do things. That means the game looks like an early Alpha even though it is nearing Beta, as opposed to the corporate games that look like Beta but are in fact early Alpha.

The dirty secret is we both ship based on what we call the game. You can figure out what that means on your own :)

Well, I guess that about does it for my first Blogfront entry. Hope you found it entertaining. If you also find it enlightening, so much the better. For me, I'm just glad to get that German (or Polish) guy off my back. Hint to all you budding entrepreneurs out there... if you are a slacker by nature, don't hire a German (or apparently Polish) guy to run your company. Instead, go for someone who is happiest to let things be. Like an Australian. Dan (aka KwazyDog) NEVER bugs me for anything. Hmmm... maybe it is time for a management reshuffle at Battlefront? Hmmmm....

Steve

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Originally posted by ParaBellum:

Yup, good news indeed.

As much as I'm concerned, BFC can take all the time they need to build a great engine. I'm still busy with CMBB and CMAK anyway.

smile.gif

All the time spent on these forums made me pick up CMBB and CMAK again too :D .

//Salkin

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Originally posted by First Sergeant:

good news.

2 plus weeks to beta means they are probably on track for a fall release.

It looks like nvidia will still be the card of choice to play CMX2.

good news indeed on all fronts for me.

My newly purchaised system will be able to run this thing then hurrah.

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Hmmm, once upon a time this thread would already be 7 pages long on the basis of such long-awaited news.

I am starting to get a little excited about this one. We enjoyed stalking prey with a Panthers and Tigers, imagine the same rumbling an Abrams down the road.

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Yes, playing with Abrams is gonna rock. I hope I can mod one to look exactly like I used to command. I got plenty of reference photos smile.gif I hope its animated in a way to show the gunner scanning for targets. Its better have a wind sensor, unlike the Battlefield 2 version :( I did e-mail DICE prior to game release about some other details, and they changed their model, but never added wind sensor. You need it to shoot straight! Also, if the track breaks, it would be neat to see the crew work on it

I also hope that plow and mine roller tanks are in

[ July 04, 2006, 05:14 AM: Message edited by: M1A1TankCommander ]

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