First Impressions

[Childress]

Did notice one thing: the enemy doesn't surrender any more! No more marching the prisoners off the map edge as in previous CMs. Do the Syrians posses more of that fight-to-the-death spirit than their Iraqi (Or Egyptian, or Jordanian or...) confreres?

[Swift]

And why no right-click menu? Don't say that you cant fit all the options in a menu. Just make sub levels like the start button on windows does. I have way more then 36 folders and it manages to show them all quite fast. Or use a modal menu.

And why not make a customizable button panel so everyone can put the command buttons they would like in it.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Swift:

And why not make a customizable button panel so everyone can put the command buttons they would like in it.

You can customize the hotkeys by editing the txt file in the data folder.

[Moon]

For the former - not functionally better than what is there.

For the latter - that's a good idea. I can say that because I don't have to code it But then the six most used commands (Target, Quick etc) are available with direct hotkeys as is.

Martin

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Moon:

For the former - not functionally better than what is there.

If you're talking about the right click menu, I'd have to disagree. It's awkward having to drop down to the right of the screen, click the right commands button, click the desired command, then move back up into the main screen. Unless dropping the right click menu is part of some grand plan we're unaware of it's about as good an idea as not including the adjustable waypoints.

[Swift]

I disagree with the functionality Moon but that is a design issue. I could live with out it if there was good alternatives like my 2nd suggestion or better hotkey mapping.

The "customizable hotkey" function is awful. To be forced to edit a txt file to change key bindings is not what I expect in a game of this quality.

There could least be a stand-alone program with GUI for that (that way I would be able to map numerical keys, something that I am sure works but nothing about it is mentioned in any manual I have seen so I can't do it). Such a program would take a good programmer less then a day to make (most likely a couple of hours).

[Battlefront.com]

Swift,

The "customizable hotkey" function is awful. To be forced to edit a txt file to change key bindings is not what I expect in a game of this quality.

I agree, but it works. And the time Charles didn't spend making a pretty ingame feature for this was instead spent on making a better game itself. We'll smooth out rough edges like this as we go along, don't worry The most important thing is the game, the game, and the game. For other developers it is the fluff surrounding the game that gets top billing.

The terrain LOD issue is something I'm going to talk over with Charles. It would be nice, I think, if there were more control over when they kick in. Turn off Anti-Aliasing to have the trerrain less smoothed out.

As for the Commands UI. Use the keyboard to issue Commands an the mouse to move the camera. It does take some getting used to, that we freely admit, but after you do you'll probably see why we have kept it this way for something like 6 months at least. Not to say there is no room for improvement (there always is), just that after you use it I think you'll at least find it not as bad as you think it is today.

Steve

[B00M$LANG]

Originally posted by Captain Adultery:

awesome

wimpy javelin sounds...can hear them launched on youtube and they have a lot more "ommph" on launch

as does the automatic grenade launcher on the striker...sounds like its firing high speed bags of flour...no "crack" of high explosive going off.

the ability to see all pathline and targets? cant seem to find the comand for that

im sure the sounds will have a mod soon

overall, just finished the tut and loving it

Have you ever heard a Mk19 firing? I have, and this is a relatively good representation...same for the Javelin.

[Panzer76]

Originally posted by Childress:

Did notice one thing: the enemy doesn't surrender any more! No more marching the prisoners off the map edge as in previous CMs. Do the Syrians posses more of that fight-to-the-death spirit than their Iraqi (Or Egyptian, or Jordanian or...) confreres?

Or indeed the US forces.

[Rik81]

A Request: Please could you provide "tool tips" for all the stuff down in the UI? It would really be helpful.

[gstelmack]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Swift,

As for the Commands UI. Use the keyboard to issue Commands an the mouse to move the camera. It does take some getting used to, that we freely admit, but after you do you'll probably see why we have kept it this way for something like 6 months at least. Not to say there is no room for improvement (there always is), just that after you use it I think you'll at least find it not as bad as you think it is today.

Steve

I'm old. If you think I'm going to remember all of the hotkeys for all of the orders, you've got another think coming The two-step process to issuing at least several of these commands also gets in the way. The map is where I'm playing, and where I want to give orders, so that's where I really, really want them. Besides, I already place waypoints using the mouse, there is no way to get around overloading the mouse for cameras and orders. Why not integrate it? Use SHIFT and CTRL for camera movement, right-click for orders. I'd say a reasonable compromise is to use SHIFT or CTRL for orders, but right-click is the traditional, trained-into-me-via-every-other-Windows-app key for a menu like this.

[C'Rogers]

This is my literal first impression. I have played the game once, and avoided other people's reviews for the most part. Also I didn't read the manual so I went in blind (though skimmed the manual before posting this).

First game: Quick battle, real time, open territory, blue attack, tiny force, forget the other settings, controlling blue. Elite difficulty (if difficulty is the term).

Result: Overall victory

Simple strategy for this one. I had 8 strykers and two platoons of infantry. Allowed my strykers to pound away on the Syrians for about ten minutes and then marched my infantry, got a total surrender with about two minutes to go.

Play Experience: Positive but not blown away.

The first time I played CM:BO I did something similar (played without reading about the game). Then I knew I was playing something amazing, everything was very clear. This time it was a lot more hazy. Because I didn't buy the units really I didn't have much of an idea what was what. Strategy wise I didn't find it very hard, I think much more of the "relearning" has to do with the change of engine then modern combat.

Main Problems: Hot Keys - Besides seeming a fairly illogical setup the fact that I couldn't access them all at once was annoying. I went to move a stryker and then give it a face order, only to find out I need to change tabs (because K was used for both hunt and face for some reason).

I understand this can be partially edited, hopefully I can get all of the hot keys set.

Figuring out what was going on - Even on a tiny battle in real time I was having trouble tracking what was happening to my guys. This may just be an experience issue with the old UI but that seemed a lot clearer (I didn't know until the end of this battle if I had any injured men).

Point over terrain/simplicity - In the last game from what I remember there was much more scroll information. Scroll over land, it told you what it was. This time I just had to go on appearance (which at a high angle view was a fairly hard thing to tell).

Also there are a ton of icons in the game. I thought I would be able to tell what they meant by scrolling over them but nothing popped up (those I ignored most unit info, which didn't really cause a problem). I hope there is a simpler way to learn them then just looking them up in the manual again and again.

Well those are the only problems I noted so far, unlike others I had no trouble moving the camera around (and didn't really use the mouse much). I bought four copies of this to play with friends and am still kind of worried about multiplayer. As a non-PBEM player who wants to play live seeing that real time was the only option was a huge disappointed (at first I honestly felt somewhat gypped that this had not been mentioned when there were 8 million PBEM threads).

So I enjoyed the game I played and it looks interesting single player wise, though not the amazing level of CMx1 so far. But multiplayer and the replayibility of quick battles is the real test to come on that.

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by Ryan Crierie:

First impressions; using the ATGM ambush scenario; with graphics detail set to HIGHEST on both my GeForce 6800, and the game itself:

Not that great.

Foreground detail's good, but far away detail is worse than CMBB/AK/BO.

I brought this upseveral weeks (months?) ago and made the same comment.

In many ways the LOD and terrain in CMBB looks a lot better than this game. In some places sharp jagged ridges are realistic. A distant ridge in CMBB looked as good as most modern games. Only when you zoom in could you see the CMBO vintage.

Another issue is the way the bushes in the distance are at full colour saturation even after the grass textures are invisible. It needs a bit of haze? not exactly haze but have the textures less bright out in the distance.

Even some of the closeup details in CMSF look worse. CMSF looks like pool table with texture attached, even with piles of crap here and there.

How about a few rocks or tufts of grass?

A few tweaks and this game will look magic, but ATM it doesn't look great at all.

[ July 28, 2007, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: Hoolaman ]

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[Kwazydog]

Originally posted by Hoolaman:

A few tweaks and this game will look magic, but ATM it doesn't look great at all.

Just so you guys know, this is something that we will be looking into. We have a few more important items on our list first, but this one is pretty high up there.

Originally posted by AdamL:

About the hotkeys - they are much better now imo. I can access everything, all the menus and commands without moving my hand.

Adam, II like them too, as well as the camera control. I actually find it hard to go back to CMx1 now as it feels rather clunky to control in comparison. Im not saying that improvements cant be made, but I think its important that people give themselves some time before making a final descision.

[Battlefront.com]

Rik81,

A Request: Please could you provide "tool tips" for all the stuff down in the UI? It would really be helpful.

This is high up on our list for enhancements as we move along. We can never get everything thing into one release that we want. Heck, CMBO went out the door without TCP/IP

gstelmack,

If you think I'm going to remember all of the hotkeys for all of the orders, you've got another think coming

Which is why we have the system we have There are a total of 36 possible Commands for a unit (though I don't think any one has all at once). If we had unique hotkeys for every one of them, as we pretty much did in CMx1, even youngsters would have a hard time remembering them all But the way the system is it is visual. You place your left hand over the 9 keys that represent all the orders. You look down with your eye, if need be, to see the relative position of the Command you want. Then you just move your finger and hit it. You don't have to remember what that key is, just it's relative position (which even an old feller such as yourself can handle, right? ). This allows you to use the keyboard to control the Commands while the other hand concentrates on the 3D space above. And if you feel like it you can also click on the Command button. It's all there in front of you.

The problem we have with the popup menu is that in RealTime it is impractical. In fact, I never used the popup menu in CMx1. Always keys. Our beta testers originally complained about both RealTime and the Command interface. They are now firm believers in it. Why? Because they took the time to see if we were right to change what was instead of assuming we were wrong. OK, at first they assumed we were wrong but they stuck with it anyway

C'Rogers,

Besides seeming a fairly illogical setup the fact that I couldn't access them all at once was annoying.

I won't argue with your opinion that it is annoying to you (each to his own ), but I can argue about the illogical comment. Nothing we do is illogical The mechanics are that way because there is no practical way to display 36 buttons. Well, not without going with abstract symbols and using up most of the UI. So they are in 4 logical groupings based on functions and they are accessed as needed. You'll find you generally only need to flip between Movement and Combat. There are hotkeys for that, as there are hotkeys for commonly used commands such as Target.

Hoolaman,

A few tweaks and this game will look magic, but ATM it doesn't look great at all.

It's at the near top of our list. Some more recent changes appear to not have been in the right direction from a visual standpoint.

AdamL,

About the hotkeys - they are much better now imo. I can access everything, all the menus and commands without moving my hand.

Adam "gets it"

Steve

[dima]

Is anyone having trouble getting Syrian ATGM's fired? I was playing first battle (Abu Susah) and the ATGM (the one that was destroying my guys when I played as US) when I played as Syrians I kept targeting enemy vehicles and during the whole game it NEVER fired one missile.

I've been seeing a lot of Syrians not firing when given order and the target is in plain sight. And I am talking "not firing" for 5 minutes. If I didn't know any better I would've thought that my computer has a virus.

[Kineas]

I have only seen the demo so far. My impressions:

Positives:

- the game is very spectacular. Watching the action unfold is just awesome, I didn't really care about the mission objectives, just set up duels and firefights. Probably the 1:1 representation will mark the beginning of a new age for wargames. This also has implications for the realism factor, a trench will no longer withstand dozens of HE hits, and people will fear the mortar too.

- The best physical engine what I've seen, and I've seen a couple.

- Arty Wizard is superb

- thanks for the excellent zoom function

- camera controls are good

- performance is great an an old rig (P4 2.8, 1.75G RAM, ATI X800). Smooth as silk, at least for the 2nd demo scenario.

- no crashes at all on that machine

- I loathed the selection icons but start liking it now

- sounds are very good

- tracers are very spectacular too

Negatives: later, another day

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[Janster]

Arty Wizard - A bit cumbersome yes? not sure why I have to wade through menues just to get some arty off.

Turnbased its not so bad, but as this is now a RTS, its simply too slow.

Janster

[Rik81]

(from Steve's post above) "The problem we have with the popup menu is that in RealTime it is impractical. In fact, I never used the popup menu in CMx1. Always keys. Our beta testers originally complained about both RealTime and the Command interface. They are now firm believers in it. Why? Because they took the time to see if we were right to change what was instead of assuming we were wrong. OK, at first they assumed we were wrong but they stuck with it anyway "

The comment about RealTime making the right-click menu impracticle makes a lot of sense to me. OTOH--I don't play RT. Consider adding it to WEGO play. However, I can see that would be a LOW priority, if even possible.

After playing some more, the most annoying thing for me is having to stick the mouse cursor in the upper corners to get the camera view to "rotate". Not a smooth enough control there. Any suggestions?

[ChrisND]

Right click and hold and drag the camera around, it works great.

[Rik81]

Originally posted by Normal Dude:

Right click and hold and drag the camera around, it works great.

G;ad ot does for you, for me, not so good.

[Tzen]

Moving the camera with the mouse is fine and dandy, but moving the camera around with the mouse AND keyboard like an FPS is infinitely more fluid, precise and intuitive. Panning AND rotating at the SAME TIME *gasp*, etc. It needs to be fixed ASAP.

As for right-click pop-up menus: waste of time for either RT or WeGo, but I think they should still put them in for the stubborn people who don't want to spend 10 minutes using the keyboard hotkeys to realize "holy sh!t, this is so much more efficient."

[Sgt Joch]