Are we all playing the same game??

[The_Capt]

You know that scene in the second Pirates of the Caribbean where the really old crewman on the Jolly Roger (I think that was its name), comes out of the wall to tell Johnny Depp something really important and then goes back to his full time job of lamp holding?

Well imagine that old fossil getting off the Jolly Roger and walking into a bar he used to hang around in during his serious boozing days. Before he cleaned himself up and got a job on a ship of the damned.

Well that bar has undergone a few changes. The moosehead has the bras taken off the antlers in what must have been a fit of political correctness. Someone finally got the A-HA music of the juke box and looks like Dorosh isn't allowed to bring his big Ken-Doll around anymore.

Well this is what I feel like posting again on the ol BFC forum. I stopped a few years back mostly because I got tired seeing the same Bren-gun tripod thread again and again.

Well then I got wind from a guy on the inside...lets call him Wil. Who put me on the wise to this new fangled game coming out from the shop, called "Shock Force". The grandson of Beyond Overlord...a new king to light our way into a brave new future!!!

So I skimmed by every now and then to see how thing were going...the usual pre-release chatter "When will it be released?" "Will my computer be able to run it" "Will it have the Syrian Dog Walkers Bde?"

Then the day comes and all hell breaks loose. There are threads to the right bitchin about WE-GO. "Where is WE-GO??!!!" You would figure that this is a sign of the freakin apocalypse, right next to the whore of Babylon slinging a flaming ten-sided sword.

Threads to the left on how CMSF is a bug ridden train-wreck. Cripes!! Based on the wailing I have expected the game to crash my hard drive, deplete my sperm count and then reach through the screen to scorch my very soul.

Then the flak started up on the graphics, user interface and AI pathfinding. I seriously think the guys at the front edge of Picketts charge put up less of a fuss.

I can tell you I was a little nervous putting up the dough for this one. I was downright scared ****less loading it up...wincing, cringing and other cowardly expressions of fear.

So up she loads...installs flawlessly...and then runs absolutely solid.

Ok good so far...now to see about the gameplay...

Sweet Jebus on a popsicle-stick!! This beast is a thing of beauty!! Let me hit a few items:

WE-GO. Ok lads, I know it has become dearer than your own children but you think it may be time to move on? The aim of the hobby was always to simulate realistic tactical combat and have fun. last I checked we don't live in WE GO, so what is the issue with real time? I mean there is some mouse clicking going on but I just put a Coy Group through a city fight and managed not to cripple myself. We all loved WE-GO back in the day because it replaced turn based, which was a serious snore after awhile. Back then the thought of both sides "shooting at the same time" was revolutionary. Give RT an honest try, you may actually like it.

AI. This one had me really worried. Bad AI can kill a game, particularly where you have to trust your little pixel troops with actual decisions. I can tell you CMSF AI is at least as good as CMAK was. True you can get a drunken swagger from a Stryker if you plot too many points and if you do not watch vehicle clearances your vehicles can do some really weird stuff. But until you've been in a tourney and watched your last Firefly stuck in a do-loop, trying to decide which Panther to show its ass too, you've got nothing to complain about.

Graphics. CMBO version 1.0...unmodded...then you will know what it means to suffer for your hobby.

My hats are off to the guys at BFC.

I don't write reviews anymore but from the 10 hours or so I've played, this thing would be headed for a solid 8-9 score with only hit points on a steep learning curve with the new GUI and possibly bugs (which I haven't seen a-one I might add).

These guys have taken a leap forward in game design. CMSF may be the first true Real Time Tactical game put out there. Rather than do a modern version of CMAK "now with lens flare" they went in a new and more realistic direction. I can't wait to see what they can milk out of this engine.

So if you are a hardcore wargamer willing to take the leap from the WE-GO walker this is the game for you.

[KNac]

You can still play we-go anyway

With few limitations and not over multiplayer (yet), but all will come.

I had a similar experience lto yours. All the whining and the game is running smoth for me, I must admit though that right now I am playing the camaping in turn mode, but I'll play it RT when I've learned better the controls etc. (hotkeys and all that need a rework IMO).

Sure it could be better, but anyway it's better than anything out there, and more revolutionary. But if you just keep watching the bad things....

[Bil Hardenberger]

Welcome back Warren

Bil

[Sergei]

Originally posted by KNac:

You can still play we-go anyway

No you can't, because there's no Blue Bar.

[Speedy]

Yeah having no blue bar sucks.

Hell having no any bar sucks.

[Dennis50]

I don't need no sucky bars ..even blue balls suck.

Regards,

Gunz

[Joe Shaw]

Great post Capt.

I was reminded of the words of a former SecDef ... "Henny Penny the sky is falling".

Joe

[Pandur]

Give RT an honest try, you may actually like it.

this again...

[Deathsai]

At least in CMAK, all of my infantry move when I give them a move order. They don't hang out in a building and remain stuck there for just about the entire round.

I wish I could just order the whole squad to put the muzzles of their rifles in their mouthes and pull the triggers. But then, one of them would probably get his rifle caught in a doorway that his body had already passed through.

[Stirling]

Sorry, but if you haven't seen any major bugs, then you haven't played the game ten hours. Or ten minutes.

And real-time is not more realistic. Not by a long shot.

[monkeezgob]

You're right The_Capt, it's perfect just the way it is!...Come on! Get a grip!

[monkeezgob]

Originally posted by Pandur:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Give RT an honest try, you may actually like it.

this again... </font>

[HawkerT]

Stirling!

Please do not call The_Capt a liar! That is simply disrespectful!

Remember that everything is in the eye of the beholder and that even many of the things you call 'bugs' might be seen differently by others.

I am not saying that CMSF does not have bugs, I am simply saying - Do not call The_Capt a liar!

Respectfully

Frans

[Hertston]

Originally posted by The_Capt:

So up she loads...installs flawlessly...and then runs absolutely solid.

For you. And indeed for me, allowing for a rig that is rapidly approaching permanent retirement. And for most others. But for more than a few there were, and are, huge problems with CMSF.. and it's hardly 'whining' to complain about them until they are fixed.

We all loved WE-GO back in the day because it replaced turn based, which was a serious snore after awhile. Back then the thought of both sides "shooting at the same time" was revolutionary. Give RT an honest try, you may actually like it.

Hmmm... I don't think so. As I recall the major competitor for people's computer-based tactical wargaming time was not turn-based, but the (real-time) Close Combat series, which had been around several years before CMBO was released. Both were attempted solutions to the same problem, and a decade on we have the same solutions to the same problem.

I don't actually disagree that RT (at least in a pausible form) is the way to go, but it is in no way inherently superior to WEGO. Despite the repeated, ludicrous, attempted analogy with CMBO, CMSF is no 'paradigm shift' or anything like one. It's an attempt, and by no means the first one, at a 'realism' 3D RT tactical wargame, with a fairly pointless implementation of WEGO bolted on to keep the loyal punters quiet.

I wouldn't disagree that CMSF is by far the best of such games even unfinished, and it's certainly the most realistic. However it suffers from almost exactly the same faults that every other RT tactical game suffers from to some degree or another, whatever degree of realism it claims. With a 'realism' game, though, such faults are rather more obvious. Even un-pausable RT is OK provided you don't have to spend the majority of your time playing nanny to stop your troops doing something really dumb; usually involving exposure to enemy fire (and dodgy in the extreme LOS). I'm impressed, but if BF fix the troubles that have afflicted so many games, I'll be REALLY impressed.

[Pandur]

I wouldn't disagree that CMSF is by far the best of such games even unfinished, and it's certainly the most realistic.

TRUE!

i dont say all too much positive about the game becouse that makes me, again, playing it

but i have to underline that statement, even as a person wich is unhappy about the "semi" wego implemenation [i mean that its not in all play modes...i dont mean the blue bar, but i saw somehow the sens behind it ] and the other little downsides wich are, when faced combined, in a scenario a bad taste next to all this shiny stuff.

[Guest]

Folks with different playstyles and focuses will most certainly find different -- or in this case, very few -- oddities.

I like to play using infantry. I like to zoom in to watch my infantry do their job. On one hand, I *love* the fact that CM:SF allows me to do this.

On the other, I notice pretty much everything that they do that is patently incorrect. That's why I report TacAI problems with the infantry. You may not see them when you play, but they're there.

Some people may get particularly heated about the bugs that they notice... that may be because those bugs seem particularly egregious, or the person feels emotionally attached to the issue at hand, or any number of other reasons.

The best thing to do is to acknowledge those reports, triage them, and then allow the person to freely discuss them until they're fixed, which is precisely what BFC has been doing. I think all's well, we just need to understand -- rather than everyone saying everyone else is crazy -- that everybody looks very closely at different parts of the product.

Cheers.

[Becket]

Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

Great post Capt.

I quote this simply because it needed to be said again.

[Battlefront.com]

Cool... The_Capt is back!!

Now, since you've been gone for a while I want to make sure you are aware that I take bribes to influence when Canadian stuff gets into CM:SF. Yup, 2nd Gen CADPAT and Arid CADPAT sent to my address can have a significant impact on the development schedule. Sorry, Marines still come first. They paid up already

Steve

[Joe Shaw]

Originally posted by Becket:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

Great post Capt.

I quote this simply because it needed to be said again. </font>

[Becket]

Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

Great post Capt.

I quote this simply because it needed to be said again. </font>

[GreenAsJade]

We all loved WE-GO back in the day because it replaced turn based, which was a serious snore after awhile. Back then the thought of both sides "shooting at the same time" was revolutionary. Give RT an honest try, you may actually like it.

RT and WEGO are two different kinds of game.

It is definitely not the case (IMHO) that "RT is the next evolution from counters after WEGO".

Rather, they are forks in the road.

WEGO is all about strategy and tactics.

RT is about "realism" at an individual commander level ... decisions on the fly and all that good stuff.

Neither is truly realistic ... commanders don't get to issue commands for many different platoons in real time like we do in CMSF RT, nor do they have hours to plan each minute, like we do in CMSF WEGO.

Rather, each approximates some sort of realism that we find enjoyable to *play*.

Saying that WEGO gamers might enjoy RT is like saying basketball players might enjoy baseball. Sure - they might. They're sportsmen, afterall. But basketball players are likely to want to keep playing basketball.

Similarly, tactical/strategic wargamers are likely to want to keep playing WEGO.

GaJ

[FaxisAxis]

ahh, poor stirling doesn't like the game, because he can't get it running right and its not realistic enough for him. Then go shoot yourself in the foot punk!

[ August 07, 2007, 04:37 PM: Message edited by: FaxisAxis ]

[Battlefront.com]

Which is why we will continue to have both WeGo and RealTime

The thing is that we could not have RealTime without an engine based on RealTime, so in that sense the WeGo people have to deal with some of the side effects. Having said that, I can't think of any There were some side effects because of other design decisions, such as not having randomly generated QB maps because the terrain abstractions were reduced and the diversity increased. True enough. However, that affects WeGo and RealTime equally since that is not a WeGo feature. Other side effects, such as the lack of WeGo TCP/IP, were simply due to the fact that even after 3 years of near round the clock work we couldn't include everything.

WeGoers would like to think, it would seem, that the core RealTime based engine is at fault for this or that. It isn't. They also might like to think that WeGo doesn't benefit from a RealTime engine. They are wrong about that. I can't tell you how many improvement requests we got in CMx1's long development cycle (roughly 5 years) that were not possible or practical simply because the engine wasn't RealTime. We put as much tape, staples, and bandaids as we could to get CMAK to where it was, but we knew the road was at an end 1/2 through CMBB's development.

So there you have it. A new engine that benefits both WeGo and RealTime players. Are both sides happy with all the decisions we made? No, obviously not. But we're moving forward on evolving both halves of the game for the next bunch of years. WeGo will never be replaced by RealTime.

Steve

[The_Capt]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Cool... The_Capt is back!!

Now, since you've been gone for a while I want to make sure you are aware that I take bribes to influence when Canadian stuff gets into CM:SF. Yup, 2nd Gen CADPAT and Arid CADPAT sent to my address can have a significant impact on the development schedule. Sorry, Marines still come first. They paid up already

Steve

Hey Steve,

I'll see what I can do but the stuff I have now still stinks like that bug juice you spray on before heading out to the Big Brown. You know the 100% Deet stuff that is lethal to 3 out of 10 rats and makes your hands blister.

As to Canadian stuff...one word...Coyote.

As to the rest of the posts...tomato...cinder block...rain in spain...always depended on the kindness of strangers...and all that.

Was worth my 47 dollars (gotta love that new exchange rate !!!!) Bring on the first CMSF Rumblings of War Tourney baby!!!

[Battlefront.com]

The_Capt,

I live in Maine. If I couldn't stand the smell of DEET, then I would have moved away years ago

And thanks for bringing up the exchange rate. If you could fix it so I can get my $6 CND beers in Quebec City for $4 USD again, I would put in whatever vehicle you could dream up. Even that APC from Aliens. This new exchange rate reality suuuuuuuuuuuux.

Steve