WEGO, RT and the blue bar that gets no lovin'...

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by Elvis:

First, is Para theory that because the whole minute isn't procesed before you watch that the result is somehow watered down and not as complete.

I never said anything like that.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The problem is that, as Thewood points out, we had to choose to make the engine inherently WeGo without ANY chance of RealTime, or inherently RealTime with a perfectly viable WeGo.

The problem is that I feel that WEGO in CM:SF, although viable, is actually a step back from CMx1, where indeed it was perfectly viable. In CM:SF it's just there. I do well understand the decisions that led to CM:SF becoming primary RealTime, but I don't have to be happy about it.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Putting aside the obvious "I hate RealTime, therefore everybody should hate RealTime, therefore the game should be WeGo only" line of thinking (because it is arrogant and rather insulting at best)...

I never said I hate RealTime per se. I've been gaming RTS since Dune II and greatly enjoy a Dawn of War skirmish with its frantic pace every now and then. But unless someone can show me how I can control an infantry company with armour and artillery support in a MOUT scenario in RealTime without pressing the pause key every 3 seconds and missing half the action because I can't rewind in RealTime mode I consider WEGO as in CMx1 the better, more enjoyable mode of play.

I see that I shouldn't have mentioned the blue bar in the topic title, since it derailed the discussion from my main point, e.g. the need for a rewind feature for RealTime mode. I merely mentioned it since that little bar has in the past become something like a synonym for an antiquated feature that BFC was so happy to lose, while for many WEGO-Fans it represented the core of what made CMx1 so enjoyable.

[Thomm]

The same discussions over spilled milk as months ago, yet no new info or answers whatsoever. Oh my.

But why not join the party!

I guess that a rewind feature for real time, which would make the CMx2 engine as close to perfect as possible, is about as (un)sexy to program as an undo feature for the editor. And probably as impossible to add later.

Discuss.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Other Means]

I think it could be done reasonably easily if you were OK with it being a massive RAM hog.

[ParaBellum]

That's why I suggested only a limited "rewind time" for RealTime, something like 10-15 seconds.

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Other Means:

I think it could be done reasonably easily if you were OK with it being a massive RAM hog.

But the PBEM files are not impossibly big, are they?

I think it is more that the last-in-first-out nature of the necessary buffer is difficult to program!

Best regards,

Thomm

[aka_tom_w]

are there other games that feature the RealTime play back you are asking for?

I wonder about this.

Seriously, I have always wondered why games like Myth for the Mac that were 3D realtime RTS games (no resource collecting and no building) had the capacity to be replayed. Myth is an OLD game but at the time 7-8 years ago it was a ground breaking ballistically realistic 3D RTS and you could rewind it (but not while playing real time)

so I have always sort of wondered about that

I agree with OM's RAM comment if we all had 16 gigs of ram on board the game could probably be made to rewind in real time and it would magically all happen in RAM.

[Thomm]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

I agree with OM's RAM comment if we all had 16 gigs of ram on board the game could probably be made to rewind in real time and it would magically all happen in RAM.

Where do you think it happens in current WeGo?

Without having played WeGo, I would bet "magically in RAM". The whole 60 seconds, that is.

Best regards,

Thomm

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

are there other games that feature the RealTime play back you are asking for?

I know of no game that lets you pause and rewind the way I described it. But there are many Sims/RTS that let you "save" a whole battle/mission and watch it again later.

[DaveDash]

Well I know for a fact Allied Force, Falcon 4.0, and Falcon 3.0 had ACMI modes that you could hop into in game and review to your hearts content. Well Falcon 3.0 might have been after the mission, but I'm fairly sure Falcon 4.0 ACMI mode was real time.

[ December 04, 2007, 07:11 AM: Message edited by: DaveDash ]

[ParaBellum]

No, in Falcon 4.0/AF you can only watch saved ACMI tracks after a mission. You load them via the ACMI interface from the main screen.

[DaveDash]

Ah - well then, F1 99-02 let you review the last 15 seconds of the race. NHL 07/08 on the Xbox360 allows you to go into instant replay mode and review the last X amount of time (can't remember) of the match from different angles, etc.

There are games that do it, but their calculations etc are not as complex as CM:SF.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Other Means:

I think it could be done reasonably easily if you were OK with it being a massive RAM hog.

But the PBEM files are not impossibly big, are they?

I think it is more that the last-in-first-out nature of the necessary buffer is difficult to program!

Best regards,

Thomm </font>

[Ryan Crierie]

The problem is that, as Thewood points out, we had to choose to make the engine inherently WeGo without ANY chance of RealTime, or inherently RealTime with a perfectly viable WeGo. Since one choice was vastly more inclusive than the other, and far more marketable to boot, the choice was stupidly easy to make

If I wanted a game engine designed for real time, I would buy a Close Combat game, NOT Combat Mission.

WEGO is now the poor bastard stepchild to the RTS mode.

It's now virtually impossible to play realistic games in a reasonable amount of time due to the deletion of the blue bar "fast forward to end" feature. It makes long end marches around an excruciating feeling.

I never subscribed to the "mythical blue bar makes things better" crowd; it just made the game a lot more playable, because you could fast forward through the humdrum parts, like road marches, or waiting for the enemy to attack.

Now, if you try to make WEGO once again FEASIBLE within the "always suffer through 60 seconds, even when nothing is happening" paradigm by having the scenario start with units near or in contact; the game is essentially over very fast, due to the high lethality of modern weapons.

[lannes1809]

The problem is that, as Thewood points out, we had to choose to make the engine inherently WeGo without ANY chance of RealTime, or inherently RealTime with a perfectly viable WeGo. Since one choice was vastly more inclusive than the other, and far more marketable to boot, the choice was stupidly easy to make

And why didn't you make both systems? If you feel that RT is necessary for market matters (I don't agree but that's ok) then make an engine with RT and another with true We-go, I mean, CMx1 We-go.

Because be sure about one thing, I speak for Spain, and spanish players... there are 3 CM spanish web sites since many years ago, and they are very active sites with many players registered, more than a thousand. Some of us bought CMSF thinking it was a true CM, and at the present NO ONE is playing CMSF any more. NO ONE likes RT in CM. Of course no one will buy CMSF as it is developed now and no one will buy any other CM based on this engine even for WWII because it is not a true We-go. You can believe or not, but at least for spanish old CM players that's the reality. CMx1 is still there after many years, we have just begun an international tournament with CMBB between 10 different CM web sites, from many country around the world http://www.mundial.cmhq.pl/index.html Who is playing CMSF after 5 months?, no one.

Of course in Battlefront you can take the decissions you think is better but I think you have to know what old CM players think about it.

[acrashb]

Originally posted by Other Means:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Other Means:

I think it could be done reasonably easily if you were OK with it being a massive RAM hog.

But the PBEM files are not impossibly big, are they?

I think it is more that the last-in-first-out nature of the necessary buffer is difficult to program!

Best regards,

Thomm </font>

[Other Means]

Originally posted by acrashb:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Other Means:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Other Means:

I think it could be done reasonably easily if you were OK with it being a massive RAM hog.

But the PBEM files are not impossibly big, are they?

I think it is more that the last-in-first-out nature of the necessary buffer is difficult to program!

Best regards,

Thomm </font>

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by JonS:

Can't you just imagine that the first play through of each turn is the blue bar growing for 60 seconds, instead of something interesting to watch? :confused:

The blue bar would usually be shorter than 60 seconds, and more importantly, it depends on the speed of the PC. If you have a fast PC, then it is much shorter.

More importantly, CM:SF does not only "spread" the blue bar into the running turn, the amount of computation done is now limited by what you can do in those milliseconds between frame displays. In particular it means that the enemy AI just gets cut short in computation if you ran out of time. That has all sorts of implications, not the least that slower computers have different turn behavior than fast ones.

Or to explain it from a different angle: if you computer is slow and you turn is very complex, then the blue bar in CMx1 could actually take 90 or 120 seconds. But in CM:SF it gets cut short to 60 seconds minus graphical computation, no matter what. "Unimportant" computations are dropped as required.

I think this is generally undesirable in a realistic wargame.

[c3k]

Redwolf,

Those are my thoughts as well. Of course, not having access to the algorithms, or any way to judge the possible outcome of the two approaches since only one approach was done, all this is moot.

Would it be possible to conduct a true experiment for this? ("This" being the assumed foreshortening of AI due to ALL computations having to occur between video frames.)

I'd think two computers with the same saved game file with VERY different CPU's would be a starting point. Click "go" or whatnot and watch the outcome.

The object would be to try to find divergent behavior based on CPU.

Thanks,

Ken

[c3k]

^^^^

Another variable could be the amount of cycles BETWEEN video frames. Would a high power graphics card pumping out 120 frames a second result in half the cycles available to the AI as one pumping out 60 frames a second?

Thanks,

Ken

[DaveDash]

More likely the high powered video card would be bottlenecked by the slower CPU as it made its calculations.

If the CPU can only do enough calculations to display 15 FPS then it would do so.

One example is to load up a game such as Medieval Total War 2 and put 20,000 men on the battlefield, each with individually tracked morale based on facing, health, blah blah blah.

Even if your video card is top notch, each moment of calculation will be displayed smoothly, and camera movement will be smooth, but even couple of seconds the action will freeze as the CPU calculates what it is doing next.

A game like CM:SF would do the same thing.

The turn will take 60 game seconds regardless of processing power I imagine, but 60 game seconds may be as long as 3 real minutes if your CPU is struggling to calculate everything in time. Anything more it will probably crash.

Maybe it's worth testing by creating some Battalion sized battles in Urban terrain on two different specced PC's to see what happens.

[dalem]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

In particular it means that the enemy AI just gets cut short in computation if you ran out of time.

But I thought that this particular issue was the one that BFC explained/countered.

-dale

[thewood]

Dave, I have an old computer and have seen 1 sec. game time take 3 sec. in real time, but it seems graphics were the big factor. It only happened when smoke was present in quantity.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by dalem:

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

In particular it means that the enemy AI just gets cut short in computation if you ran out of time.

But I thought that this particular issue was the one that BFC explained/countered.

-dale </font>

[Battlefront.com]

Well, I'll stick with this discussion a bit longer event though it is largely a pointless rehashing of many previous threads. Some people have long since made up their minds about the direction we've gone in and nothing short of spending 3 years recoding the entire engine will make them happy. Since there is no way in Hell we're going to do that again, even if we agreed that we screwed the pooch (and we most definitely do NOT), such people should probably just stop thinking about Combat Mission and start looking for some other game system to play. CMx1's system is dead and buried from a development standpoint and it will never be seen again by us. CMx2 will be the basis of every game we ever make from now on. Even CMx3, if we even call it that, will be based on CMx2 code. You don't have to like this, but you must accept it as reality or you'll drive us all crazy

Personally, I don't really care if some of you gamers didn't see all the problems that were inherent in the previous game engine's approach to simulation. Charles and I had to work with the game guts and that's really what matters. The inherently turn based approach was a nightmare to work with. So many things were hacked and shoehorned into CMx1 that we couldn't do more than make minor tweaks to the engine as time went on. This was partly because of the way the engine was coded, but it was in no small part due to the limitations of simulating reality (which works in real time) in an inherently artificial way (turn based). Again, you can disagree with this until you are blue in the face, but it won't change the facts. You're wrong, we're right and that's all there is too it.

Now, what is up for grabs is a person's personal opinion as to whether they like the results better than what they had before. It's personal preference and I can't say someone is wrong for their opinions any more than they can say I am wrong for having my own. This is why I get a pretty good laugh out of someone trying to sound smart by telling me that RealTime is useless, not fun, a complete waste of time, etc. In that person's opinion, perhaps, but in my opinion it is exactly the opposite. Most of our testers agree, even though nearly all started out very cautious of RT. So when someone tells me that their opinion of such things equates to fact, I can't help but think that person is stepping over the line and becoming a self righteous bigot. Again, you don't have to like CM:SF RealTime, but you can not tell others that they aren't enjoying it when if they in fact are. It just doesn't work.

OK, getting back to some of the usual ideas...

1. a running replay ability of some duration within RealTime. I for one would LOVE to have this feature, and it is something I've discussed with Charles. Technically it is possible, though it is tricky to code, test, and debug. I'd guess that at some point we will get this implemented, though I can't say when that might be. Not likely any time soon, unfortunately.

2. the ability to record and replay the entire battle. Technically possible, though at present Charles thinks it would slow down the game resolution too much because there isn't enough RAM to hold a whole game and dumping it to disk opens a can of worms in terms of I/O hits. Things like fragmented harddrives, not to mention basic hardware capabilities, could mean rather choppy gameplay. It might be tolerable, but we don't want to invest a lot of time only to find out it isn't. Streaming the game to a second computer, via TCP/IP, would be a much safer thing to do. However, this means you have to have two computers to record a game and that's not a very marketable feature.

3. Time compression until contact. Possibly, though it is certainly a halfassed feature and it could still run into the compression problems I talked about above because just because nothing "interesting" is happening it doesn't mean the CPU is sitting around with nothing much to do. This could mean, for example, that you have 59 seconds of fairly laid back computations, but for 1 second there was a flurry of LOS/LOF/Pathing calcs that require a full second to calculate. This means that time compression would not be smooth. I'm not sure if players would really like that, I'm not sure if the code would either. I do know that Charles said in theory time compression is possible, though it might not be practical.

Steve

[ParaBellum]

Steve, let me just say that even though I do not agree with all your decisions (and I really don't have to, it's your business after all and I'm just some dude playing a computer game) I really appreciate you taking the time to post here in response to my rants.

Originally postes by Battlefront.com

1. a running replay ability of some duration within RealTime. I for one would LOVE to have this feature, and it is something I've discussed with Charles. Technically it is possible, though it is tricky to code, test, and debug. I'd guess that at some point we will get this implemented, though I can't say when that might be. Not likely any time soon, unfortunately.

If this would be possible I'd burn my WEGO altar immediately and convert to the church of mighty RT in a heartbeat.