The Wrong Left Turn and the Uncanny Valley

[thewood]

This right here is my issue. We have mostly conjecture on how things work. Every time Steve has come in to answer a small specific point of contention it creates more confusion because its out of context. I need, maybe I'm slower than most on these boards, a concise, thourough walk through of exactly how the grid impacts all aspects of the game. Otherwise I am stumbling around and getting frustrated. Bugs just magnify this because I am still not sure what's a bug and what is a design issue.

I have seen some beta testers say not to worry about the grid and just play like you would CM1, yet I keep running into things that not only don't look right, but have a negative impact on gameplay.

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

**so much good, constructive, historical, and thoughtful stuff said here in original post**

Michael, thanks for this post and the time it took to write it. Thanks alot.

Lt. Stahler (9-2) would have been proud.

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by Abbott:

Steve did say that we got "to much" from earlier releases for our dollar and that less for more is what they need to provide to stay viable as a company (or sumfink like that). I guess that may mean that once all the modules are purchased for a particular release it will be what I (we?) were expecting from BFC and their long line of fantastic Combat Mission games.

I have no idea if this is a true statement, or true paraphrase of what Steve has said re:CMSF / the future.

I recognize that BFC is a small, talented, dedicated team - committed to making a very specific product that I enjoy.

I'd like to state personally that I would happily spend up to 2 (maybe even 3) times more for *EACH* CMX2 game/game module if it was a product that met what "I / we" are expecting from a circa 2007, 1:1, version of Combat Mission.

Exactly what those "expectations" are is - and of course has been recently - open to much detailed discussion.

[C'Rogers]

why did we never see this sort of thing in the previous games?

I think this goes back to the "abstractness/imagination" issue. For example, unit darts between two houses. In Cmx1 you could say "well maybe it suffered a ton of casualties from entering the building" or "well it looks like I had a good shot but maybe the guys jumped through the window or something and I didn't get anybody".

No matter what happened your mind could explain it because the unit/building was not suppose to be an exact representation. Maybe the unit in CMx1 did in fact screw up but how could we tell?

Now we see a unit running around the house and circles and we slap our heads in frustration.

[dalem]

I'm going to ramble on a little bit about the "design for effect" (DFE) concept that MD brought up, and stir in a little whining about scale mismatch.

I'm going to broadly claim that DFE works best, and is best for, a game. If we posit that there is a counterdesign to DFE, might it be logically called "design for cause"? I will place another stake in the ground and claim that such "DFC" works best, and is best for, a simulation.

What the heck am I on about?

As Dorosh already pointed out, one of the penultimate successful implementations of DFE is Advanced/Squad Leader. It sounds crazy to use the word "simple" in the same paragraph as "ASL", but in the end the core mechanism is short-bus simple. It CAN be simple because first you decide how many end states, or effects, you need, then you build a reasonable system to allow for the creation of those states.

In ASL, your unit is always going to be in one of four states: Good Order, Pinned, Broken, or KIA. There are minor gradations in some cases, but essentially your unit is either fine, pinned down and ineffective, running away or dead.

The game doesn't care how it got that way. It could have been the result of incoming fire, the messy death of Captain Klop, or a truckload of bad chow for breakfast. All that matters is that something happens, a unit checks a stat against a chart, and determines its status.

Even the scary vehicle stuff is DFE - the vehicle is basically either fine, in trouble, or KOd. The game cares a little about how it got that way, and so the mechanics are more complex, but the mechanics still reflect the need to be in one of those 3 states - Fine, Shocked, or Wreck.

In my opinion the DFE core is why trying to distill detailed "realism" out of ASL is so relatively difficult - the constraint is always the end state and its justification. That often demands new mini mechanics and rules, usually tedious ones, and that can have serious unintended consequences.

On the other end we have design for cause, DFC. Someone mentioned MS Flight Simulator earlier on this thread (I think). There you have to get all the flying parts right - you can't just say the plane is either landed, crashed, or flying, and then build a simple interface to reach those states and still call it a simulation.

To me, CMSF really really suffers from trying to be a simulation with a game dropped on top. I suspect that IF the simulation itself was working perfectly, or very well, you could wrap a decent game or games around it. The need for "action spots", the lack of "realistic" interactions of figures with terrain, and some other core problems, clearly indicate that the underlying simulation of CMSF is not up to snuff, therefore any game wrapped around it is going to be that much more difficult to play well.

-dale

[76mm]

Originally posted by thewood:

This right here is my issue. We have mostly conjecture on how things work. Every time Steve has come in to answer a small specific point of contention it creates more confusion because its out of context. I need, maybe I'm slower than most on these boards, a concise, thourough walk through of exactly how the grid impacts all aspects of the game. Otherwise I am stumbling around and getting frustrated. Bugs just magnify this because I am still not sure what's a bug and what is a design issue.

I guess I don't understand how people can say here that CM:SF's version of 1:1 works well, or even that it is actually 1:1 at all, if we are that much in the dark about how things work?

So is CM:SF essentially just a more complicated set of abstractions hidden under a 1:1 graphic representation? Obviously all wargames are abstractions to one large degree or another, but to me 1:1 means that individual soldiers are considered to be located in specific coordinates and may fire, suffer casualties, and take other actions only to the extent that such should occur at such coordinates. I'm sure that other valid definitions of 1:1 exist, but it can sure get confusing with everyone talking about this undefined concept.

In any event, if no one other than BFC knows how the mechanics work, how can anyone even make claims about the validity of CM:SF's 1:1 credentials?

[thewood]

76, may I call you 76, that is the problem I still have. I don't know where the squad starts and ends, and where the individual starts and ends. This especially stands out when a squad is spread out along several action spots. I have seen several contradictory comments on what that means and its impact on the game.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Originally posted by Adam1:

Squads also seem to "chase" their floating icon, and LOS also seems to be drawn from the icon, not the men.

The initial LOS check is drawn from the square the squad is in. If a squad is in several squares, the initial LOS check is made from each square where those respective squad members are in.

[Cpl Steiner]

The action spot grid should be totally invisible to the player and used purely by the game engine for calculations. I don't want to understand how it works because that would lead to gamey tactics to exploit or compensate for the underlying grid. I want it to disappear!

Here are the main things that have to be sorted out to reach this happy state:

1. You see units in LOS but can't fire at them. This is because the grid says there may be a valid LOS but each individual man can't make a shot because LOF is 1:1 and takes into account fine detail like intervening 3D objects. To fix: have the game try a shot for you behind the scenes (a virtual shot, not a real one) and if no-one can take a shot, the target unit is not seen and the icon does not appear.

2. No more snapping to grid. The end point of movement and target lines should stay where you click them. Using a bit of simple trigonometry, units should be able to divide fire between two adjacent action spots if the end of the targeting line happens to be at an action spot join. Likewise, a fire team should be able to move to any point on the map. If it ends up occupying several action spots instead of just one, so be it. The game engine should just note which men are on which action spot and calculate LOS and LOF accordingly.

Nothing I have seen in the game so far has persuaded me that the game is fundamentally flawed. It just needs some fine tuning.

[EDIT] One more thing. Before the game came out, Steve used to talk about how the action spot system would ensure soldiers took cover at walls etc. in a realistic fashion. This is kind of like "snapping to the grid" but it is more like how "Full Spectrum Warrior" did it. In other words, if I click a movement waypoint near a wall, I expect it to snap to the wall. I just don't expect the waypoint to snap to an arbitrary point on the grid when I click on a point out in the open. However, remember that in "Full Spectrum Warrior", you could still click on any point along the wall, not just the centre of an 8m section like in CM:SF at the moment. If BFC had just copied the FSW way of doing it, I'd have been happy from day one.

[ November 23, 2007, 11:05 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[Kineas]

Dalem,

good thoughts. JasonC stressed the 'design for effect' philosophy many times, and I think there's much truth in it. I think DFE in a (non realtime) wargame is like this:

- you have a set of rules

- in each turn the player has to make 10-100 decisions /'command span'/, not more

- those things in the game what the player can't influence with his decisions must be abstracted out, and not performed by an AI, and must not have significant impact on the gameplay.

E.g. if you can't control individual men in your squad, then the squad must be abstracted to a single entity, otherwise you will be frustrated why the LMG gunner went in such a stupid position and got himself killed immediately, and things like that. The detailed simulation will only cause distraction.

The abstraction can be a dice roll or a complete simulation (e.g. bullet trajectory), it doesn't really matter. So you can have simulated elements in your game, as CMx1 does too, if it adds to realism but doesn't violate the DFE principle.

Dan Verssen's games are good examples how to get DFE right.

[Mad Mike]

The issues about LOS/LOF got me confused as well, but i guess i am closer to understanding the basic principle now. LOS, which is a prerequisite to LOF checks by each individual entity in a squad, is abstracted to the 8x8 grid. This is the abstraction bit, if the unit (the centre of it in one grid hex) has LOS, more detailed, 1:1 LOF checks will be carried out.

So the more detailed 1:1 "simulation" is based on a still constrained abstarction, which leads to situations like the following:

Sniper in the second floor balcony of a building, my squad storms the second floor, two or three soldiers arrive in the second floor, but the "centre" of the squad is still in the first floor (checked by manually trying to target the sniper, which i could "see" due to spotting by a third unit). Therefore, no LOS from the abstracted squad and consequently, my squad members already in the third floor are not even beginning to think about shooting the sniper. The sniper on the other hand sees the three guys and starts killing them one after another.

In my opinion, the order of abstraction and 1:1 representation is the wrong way around. If LOS is a prerequisite, then it should be checked as detailed by every entity as necessary. The actual LOF (firing of weapons) could be abstracted. For example, say only the three entities in my squad which succesfully calculated LOS then engage the enemy, all the others keep doing what they are doing.

At least, that is how I understand the current implementation based on the information provided in this forum and on my playing experience. If todays computers still can't handle the combination of 1:1 LOS AND LOF (i think Steve mentioned this in one of his threads about LOS/LOF), then "realistic" LOS seems to me to be the more desireable option .. which i guess is giving some support to MDs point, this is a fundamental design decision.

[Michael Dorosh]

I posted the following thoughts on Modern Convieniences at an ASL-themed forum. dalem, you might appreciate this. I think the existence of forums such as the one we are currently using and abusing are a double-edged sword.

Back when I "grew up" with ASL, it strikes me that there was very little interaction between many (most) members of the community and the actual powers that were. If we wanted to know about "Squad Leader" (as we continued to call it), we read The General every two months, and might be treated to a two row mention in the coming attractions column. When the Annual came out, we were blown away by the concentration of ASL content. Sixty-four pages once every year! Unbelievable!

If we had a comment, we sent it in via snail mail, usually to never hear back. I was thrilled to have a letter printed in the second-ever Annual, though horrified that in attempting to correct someone's spelling, I had managed to get it wrong myself. In those days, correcting my slip would have cost another 30 cents or so, and taken two weeks to get to the editor. The chances of getting any feedback on my letter was nil; being an annual publication, with only one page for letters, there would be no chance for meaningful "discussion."

Obviously,then, times have changed dramatically.

Twenty minutes ago, Bill Connor was busting my balls right here in open forum. Growing up on a diet of The General, Bill Connor was some name in a magazine in a part of a foreign country I knew I would never visit. He was spoken reverentially of whenever his name appeared in print. A few years ago, I played several PBEM of Combat Mission with Charlie Kibler, whose artwork on the scenario cards was so dramatic (better than MacGowan, I think) before they took the life out of them and started using the actual photographs that inspired the art. It dawned on me he was a regular guy who liked games and social interaction like the rest of us. I've interacted here with Mark C. Nixon of Anvil of My Eye fame. Would never have dreamed it possible as a high-school kid asking mom's permission to buy Beyond Valor with her credit card because I didn't realize I needed it to go with my new ASLRB.

We get monthly, weekly, even daily updates on upcoming projects by MMP, and a host of TPP to discuss with, debate with (and about), and a hugely interactive community where you can talk to fellows from Switzerland, Finland, Australia, Japan, or anywhere in between with a few keystrokes.

And yet - it blows me away that some still have the chutzpah to complain that MMP doesn't provide regular updates often enough or that the Journal comes out too irregularly, or that they are in the dark about VOTG. In 1989, you wouldn't have even heard about VOTG unless they needed filler space in The General, much less gotten detailed pictures of the box top, counter samples, or mapsheet!

It only struck me today as I was folding laundry that when dad was telling me how when he wanted to play "guns", "cowboys & Indians", or "war" and had to use a hammer (instead of an elegantly crafted replica Thompson SMG by Mattel in high-impact styrene complete with spark-action Cutts compensator and ratatatatat sound effects with every pull of the trigger), I don't think he was wishing for me to have "suffered" without glitzy toys the way he did. I think he just wanted me to be able to appreciate more what it is I had, since I clearly didn't know what it was like to go without. He didn't suffer - he made his own fun and experienced something I didn't. I think he is richer for it. He certainly thinks so.

So too, I think, will it be with ASL as the years go on. Need an overlay? Download the .pdf and print it out 10 seconds later. Want to ask the scenario designer about some errata? Log on to a forum and engage him directly.

But to those of us who came up with it in the 80s, when interaction with "the community" meant sending a letter to Rex Martin and wondering if he would publish it, when getting inside scoop on a game meant reading a passing reference in The General - which you paid the princely sum of 4 dollars to buy sight unseen in hopes that there would be a snippet of ASL in it - I think we're richer somehow, too, for knowing what it used to be like.

In the bad old days, if you wanted your own variant article or scenario card, you did it by hand, or at best on a dot-matrix printer (or typewriter - I have one of those in my collection), then photocopied it - if you could find a photocopier. They were interesting times.

I never did get into the electronic bulletin board scene, and was a latecomer to the internet (hell, I was convinced the computer mouse was just a "fad" until I broke down and bought one). I don't wish to go back to the dark old days, but I am glad to have experienced them.

Some part of me, like dad and grand-dad, wishes that everyone could experience them. I wonder what this forum would be like if everyone did? I expect that much of the friction - such as it is - may simply be experiential in genesis - that those who came up used to being in the dark really don't have the same level of concern as some of the newcomers to the hobby. That is only a guess, I am sure much of it is personality driven also. But perhaps there is something there.

I have no real point to make with this, other than perhaps we have gotten spoiled by our levels of interaction with the "powers that be."

Quality game products don't take any less time to produce these days. But the speed and volume with which we can criticize them has increased exponentially. Perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps not.

[dalem]

Originally posted by 76mm:

In any event, if no one other than BFC knows how the mechanics work, how can anyone even make claims about the validity of CM:SF's 1:1 credentials?

To me it's simple. If a soldier picture X can stand in front of a friendly MG picture Y and not get hurt by the bullets, it's not 1:1.

Because that situation means that either

a) X is not really where he is, or

X is really where he is, but there is insufficent ability to direct him to where he should be.

Either case means the picture of X is not interacting with the terrain or the situation shown, plain and simple.

-dale

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

... and had to use a hammer ...

Pah, how primitive!

At least we had MP40s and Kalaschnikows made from Fischer Technik! (the curved "beams" made excellent AK magazines, and the long red "rails" stood in for bajonets!)

Best regards,

Thomm

[SlapHappy]

Ironically, a hammer makes a much better weapon in real life than a highly detailed plastic gun model.....

Not that I'm suggesting anything....

[SlapHappy]

OK, back to the topic:

What if they had done it this way -

1. Improved the graphics to the level we have now.

2. Used 1:1 squad graphics as we have now.

3. Ditched the idea of RT play for WEGO only

4. Raised the world resolution to 1m x 1m grid.

5. Fractioned the 1 minute WEGO turn down to 20 or even 10 seconds.

Certainly the lower turn length would have helped cut down on the wait for turn calculations, but could make the overall time to complete a game enormous if Steve's calculation times are correct (discussed in another thread). It would also make the game viability hugely dependent on CPU power; such that certain even fairly recent processors would not be capable of playing more than a few turns in an entire hour.

Of course, if you abstract certain elements, then......

Just throwing this out, would this be a game you would be MORE willing to play....that is, if it were very accurate to scale and believability, but took a lot longer to play than the typical computer war game?

Many of you have certainly put in hours for setup and play of board wargames...I know I have.

[MeatEtr]

I never thought in a million years that I would ever say this. But I brushed aside BFCs latest game in less than a month. I tried, I really really tried. Just couldn't get into it, for reasons discussed to death in the forum. I don't think I even bothered playing it with the new 1.04 patch. I stopped checking the CMSF forum, saw way too much bitching and moaning. I just figured why bother with the forum, but more importantly the game.

Still playing CMBB/AK as much as ever. Btw, what's the deal with CMC? Is it still alive? Looking more forward to that than the modules BFC is working on.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

MeatEtr, I can heartily recommend you give 1.05 a try. Or chance, if you will. It's much better. And going by forum chatter isn't perhaps the best indicator. It's chiefly the inveterate complainers you'll hear while their plenty of people who are enjoying the game. They just don't go banging on about it. And on and on and on and on.

[MeatEtr]

Point taken, the complainers are always louder than the praisers. Just to be clear though, I certainly wasn't basing my opinion on forum chit-chat. I played the hell out of it for about a month.

When is the 1.05 update scheduled to be released?

[thewood]

Elmar, I disagree and take a look at the over all web and compare to other "good" wargames. There is always moaning about one thing or another, but weighing what is being said against the positive posts is a way to give a game a fair assessment. CMSF got pretty much drubbed from the get go in many of the CM forums. Now as a testament to whether that was just whining, guess what? No one is even talking about it outside these boards.

Even you have to admit CMSF at best is fairly buggy. Even if we agree that the underlying engine is good, you can't get past the fact that four months after release you are still saying wait for the next patch.

Bitching and moaning by itself is no barometer, but the context of the bitching and moaning is. BFC admits CMSF was released way early and needs work. They deliver a few patches within a month or so that fixed some issues and alleviated a few others. Complaining about bugs continues and they bunker down to get it right for six weeks and counting. Do you really think BFC went quiet because there weren't some serious issues, whether its the market's perception or actual game issues.

Continuing to say people are complaining for the sake of complaining is as bad as people complaining, at a minimum. Even BFC is big enough to admit they made some mistakes on CMSF. I'd like to see some of the real honest assessments from people like you, not just wait for 1.05.

I asked valid game-related question after question about how things were supposed to work and never got responses on these very forums. I am guessing I have almost twenty questions floating around the various CMSF forums that never got answers. But someone mentions that they think they found a bug or complain about how something works, and guess what? You get the same five or six people jumping on you for complaining. That is the absolute most frustrating part of CMSF.

[Webwing]

-

This reminds me so much of when TOW was released....

-

[SlapHappy]

Hi Webwing

I see you've entrenched yourself in the CMSF world now.....

Are you going to revisit TOW when the new patch comes out? MaddMatt is hyping it up like a real winner.....

Yeah, I know, promises...promises.

[Webwing]

When TOW was release the forum was a nightmare of complains. Most of them legitimate. Much as I was anticipating this release I waited. And waited.

After around 3 months and having read all the criticism, bugs and problems and specially the prospects of improvement in the areas that I thought were important for me I finally bought the game. I enjoyed it immensely. I had a fantastic time specially with the powerful editor.

Now CMSF. I only bought it 10 days ago, or less, can’t remember. Same thing. Needs adjustments, bug fixes and all but very enjoyable as it is now. I’m having a great time with the editor as well.

The major topic here is not about fixing bugs but about not agreeing with the underlying design options made by BF. Although this makes for some stimulating discussion, there is not much that can be done about it. Besides a lot of it is just personal opinion/preferences.

Personally I just want the bugs fixed.

----

SlapHappy,

I'm busy now with this RED campaign for CMSF but as soon as I finish that I'm planning on going back to TOW to see how it is maturing.

Thanks.

-

[ November 24, 2007, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Webwing ]

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Being under NDA I can't go in to detail of when and what, I'm afraid. That's up to BFC and as they've said, they are focussing on get 1.05 out the door.

thewood, I think you and I aren't all that far apart on opinions about CMSF. Certainly not on the release version. It's just that I take issue with some of the complaints. I don't require people to sing it's praises but I feel it's important to remain fair. Some complainers do go quite overboard in the slagging off or their wild and at times mean spirited speculation.

Fair point about people jumping on top of legitimate complaints. It does happen, and it shouldn't.