My Grunts simply are too slow

[Battlefront.com]

Holy crap... Charles answered this thread before I did? Sheesh... I'm going to have a good cry I'm so ashamed!

His short answer is correct. The visuals are a matter of coming up with lots of different animations, which is probably not going to happen due to the PITA issues surrounding animations. But the game aspects are things we are working on. Especially house cleaning!

Steve

[Mord]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Holy crap... Charles answered this thread before I did? Sheesh... I'm going to have a good cry I'm so ashamed!

His short answer is correct. The visuals are a matter of coming up with lots of different animations, which is probably not going to happen due to the PITA issues surrounding animations. But the game aspects are things we are working on. Especially house cleaning!

Steve

Not trying to sound like a jerk Steve, but how come the animations issues are giving you guys such a problem? Are there unforeseen problems in the models? The figures not as codeable as expected? I have seen some issues with men when it comes to trenches. I however, love the soldiers in this game (even with some of the graphical inconsistencies)...especially the Syrians.

Mord.

[ September 13, 2007, 03:41 AM: Message edited by: Mord ]

[molotov_billy]

Originally posted by Mord:

Not trying to sound like a jerk Steve, but how come the animations issues are giving you guys such a problem? Are there unforeseen problems in the models? The figures not as codeable as expected? I have seen some issues with men when it comes to trenches. I love the soldiers in this game (even with some of the graphical inconsistencies)...especially the Syrians.

Just an educated guess, but it doesn't look like they're doing any kind of animation blending, so essentially - don't expect the soldiers to ever do more than a single action at once. For example - notice how soldiers have to stop running before they can rotate/turn, or how they never shoot while on the move.

[Taki]

Sounds good. Thx for the Info Charles.

Will there be some fixes related to that Problem on Next Partch?

[ September 13, 2007, 07:11 AM: Message edited by: Taki ]

[aka_tom_w]

ok then

"Just an educated guess, but it doesn't look like they're doing any kind of animation blending, so essentially - don't expect the soldiers to ever do more than a single action at once. For example - notice how soldiers have to stop running before they can rotate/turn, or how they never shoot while on the move."

Good point

I wonder if down the road in the next module with Marines perhaps they can take the next step towards animation blending if that is even technically possible. (?)

[Battlefront.com]

The animations are "blended", but these things still have to be specifically coded. And sometimes blending is impossible so specific actions must be individually done. For example, reloading a M4 is very different when standing vs. lying prone. It's also different from kneeling, just not as much so.

But in general the problem with animations is just the expense it would be to get dozens of different actions in place. Then there is an involved process of Charles coding support and debugging problems with the animations. We could literally spend a few tens of thousands of Dollars and several months doing nothing but animations. Unfortunately, we don't have the budget for this either time or money wise.

Having said that... what you see is not all you'll ever get. There will be more stuff introduced over time. It's just that whatever whishlist you guys have is probably 10 times larger than ours and ours is already 10 times larger than we can afford to do

On the bright side... CMx2 is far ahead of CMx1

Steve

[ September 13, 2007, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Mord]

I am pretty happy with the animations as they are...the only things that really need fixing are the way some of the men lay in the trenches, and the fact that the crews of grenade launchers and the like will reload their small arms with the ammo of the crew weapon..example: The Syrian AGS gunner will slide a fat clip of grenades into his AK if he's using it instead of the launcher.

Other than those, I think you guys did a good job covering what needed to be covered...would I like to see more? HELL YEAH! But what is there is ten times better than what we had before and tells the story adequately if not perfectly.

Mord.

P.S. Is this where I vote for turret popping?

[Taki]

I dont need diffrent Animations for Diffrent things. I just want my Soldiers doing more straight Oder Excecution like "Run in that House straight ahead out of that Striker, no formation bevore that"

[aka_tom_w]

The bunching up at way points thing is sort of a "big deal" to fix or undo code wise in the game engine IIRC. (I think there was a post about this somewhere that the way points and "re-grouping" behaviour was the foundation of something or other, but its a little hazy in my head now) :confused:

The best way to work around it is to use less way points and expect a "regrouping" episode at every way point.

For instance the guys in the back of the stryker can be ordered to "Assault" and you can park the stryker and put the way point directly into the building. Just pick the 9 man team on board the stryker, order Assualt and put the way point in the building (pick the first floor, probably), and let the game do the rest. (Suppress the hell out of the building and every other building within LOS if possible, of course) with no other way points inbetween right?

How's that?

[ September 14, 2007, 04:28 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Cpl Steiner]

Here's my take on how CML:SF could be improved.

At the moment, the underlying action spot grid is far too intrusive. The game would be much better if target points and waypoints didn't snap to the underlying grid.

[Edit]Whoops, just posted this incomplete by accident, so I'll have to continue it as an edit.

I see no reason why we couldn't have every pixel on the screen available for target points and waypoints. The game could decide which action spot this corresponded to behind the scenes.

I also don't think infantry should stop to form up at every waypoint. They should keep moving just like vehicles and only form up at the last waypoint. So what if they get spread out over a wide area. The game should be able to know which soldier belongs where and sort it out once the squad stops moving. Basically the squad leader IS the squad for action spot purposes and the rest of the men are just a tail that follows him around. At least that's how I see it.

[ September 14, 2007, 04:47 PM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[aka_tom_w]

I think you are asking for too much

the truth of the matter is I don't think the game can know these things:

"The game should be able to know......"

Once again the action spots are part of the foundation of why a game of this scope can run on computer hardware perhaps 2-3 years old (granted computers threes old are really only good at WEGO and not RealTiime.)

So....

There must be a very valid technical reason why they had to "invoke" the action spot principle, and IIRC it had to do with spoting and LOS and LOF for EVERY unit and every terrain element ALL over the map and the only way the game could "come together" and run at any decent FPS (and yes they are still working on this aspect of FPS speed) was for the action spot concept to determine how to run/process spotting LOS/LOF checks all over the map without totally overwhelming the processor and the game engine.

IIRC

IMHO

and all that...

[dalem]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

I think you are asking for too much

Just what the game promises.

[dalem]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

There must be a very valid technical reason why they had to "invoke" the action spot principle, and IIRC it had to do with spoting and LOS and LOF for EVERY unit and every terrain element ALL over the map and the only way the game could "come together" and run at any decent FPS (and yes they are still working on this aspect of FPS speed) was for the action spot concept to determine how to run/process spotting LOS/LOF checks all over the map without totally overwhelming the processor and the game engine.

IIRC

IMHO

and all that...

In other words, they bit off more than they could chew, so now you have a "combat simulation" that forces critical unrealistic behavior onto infantry units. That's only assuming the "bunching up at waypoints" behavior is irretrievable of course.

-dale

[ September 14, 2007, 05:59 PM: Message edited by: dalem ]

[thewood]

The bunching up, reorganizing, 8m grid, whatever it is, is almost a killer for me. Of the the things I have seen and set aside in the CM1 or 2 series, its the one that bothers me the most.

The 8m grid thing seems to cause an awful lot of issues: area fire snaping to it, the reorganizing at waypoints, LOS vs LOF issues, taking fire reactions, world hunger.

Maybe I don't really understand it, but if not, tell me how the 8m grid is a step forward. If you are saying the 8m grid is the price you pay for 1:1 graphical squad representations, why do it. You can still track individual weapons and have individual morale without the fancy 1:1 animations can't you.

[Cpl Steiner]

I do not dispute the fact that action spots are necessary. All I am saying is that it must be possible to make them less intrusive. I do not think this is beyond the realm of possibility.

Look at vehicles for instance. If you order them to stop they stop exactly where they are. They do not then do an adjustment to put them in the middle of an action spot.

It should be possible for infantry to do the same. If a squad is moving and ends up with 4 men in one action spot, 3 in another, and 2 in another, that is 3 separate action spots the squad is currently on. The game engine can use all three action spots for LOS/LOF calculations and it also knows which squad members are on each spot. These things are already in the game. There is no need for the movement waypoint to snap to the grid or for the men to artificially group at a single waypoint. When it is safe to do so (i.e. not when under fire and not mid-move) the "tail" of the squad should form up on the squad leader. At the moment, the squad forms up on an action spot rather than a man. This is unnecessary for the reasons I've discussed. The game can already cope with a squad being spread over a number of action spots.

Likewise, area fire always snaps to the grid. This is unnecessary. Of course, behind the scenes, a particular action spot is picked as the target. This is not the issue. The issue is that the targeting line unnecessarily snaps to the grid, thereby ruining the immersion and telling the player there is something odd going on. Have you noticed that the targeting tool only snaps to the grid when you click it? Before then, the game already happily copes with checking LOS/LOF for any pixel you care to move the cursor over. All I am saying is that once you click the target point should look like a pixel rather than an action spot, even though behind the scenes we know it isn't.

I hope this helps to explain my reasoning.

[ September 15, 2007, 12:00 AM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[dan/california]

The easy way to fix area fire is just to have automatic weapons move their aim point a round a little. maybe back and forth across the entire tile or between three action spots. That is why its called area fire after all.

There is something in a thread around here somewhere about the squad regrouping thing being very deep in the engine. In the short term I will happily settle for some idea of which side of the building that they are going to try and enter before I actually give the order.

[SlowMotion]

Originally posted by dan/california:

The easy way to fix area fire is just to have automatic weapons move their aim point a round a little. maybe back and forth across the entire tile or between three action spots.

What if there's no LOS to the entire tile or to those three action spots?

I do agree that it would be nice to have area fire that wouldn't aim at just one point, but I think it should be user definable somehow.

[KNac]

the way of area fire is the same way we use now for arty target area or linear target even.

there is a lot of stuff ingame allready that can be tunned or added to other units/cirunstances. as Steienr said, to make infantry movement smoother or more realistic we don't need thast much new coding, ie. copy the one of vehicles and adapt it to ifnantry singularities.

I KNOW is not THAT easy, but it can be done and is not an impossible. And what is more important: the result and the increased gaming experience justify it.

[Taki]

For instance the guys in the back of the stryker can be ordered to "Assault" and you can park the stryker and put the way point directly into the building. Just pick the 9 man team on board the stryker, order Assualt and put the way point in the building (pick the first floor, probably), and let the game do the rest. (Suppress the hell out of the building and every other building within LOS if possible, of course) with no other way points inbetween right?

Tryed that also but the Result is almost the Same. The Regroup too and start to Slow getting in that Biulding dont fire back and get killed or wounded bevore they get into that Building even when they Suppress that Building bye other Units.

How's that?