Simulation Detail - Blessing or Curse

[Thomm]

A new trend is observable both in ToW and CM:SF: simulation content seems to be limited by comparatively mundane reasons, those being modeling and animation necessities in most cases. For example, ToW's lack of mortars and CM:SF's lack of BMP-3 vehicles is attributed to the lack of these data.

Isn't this development somewhat frustrating?!

I wholeheartedly understand that developing AI routines for new weapon systems must be a extremely demanding task, and makes the inclusion of such systems very difficult!

But missing animations?!??

I understand that the developers want to make their games look as beautiful as possible, but the price seems to be rather high! Maybe I am missing something here!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Kineas]

I can't imagine what animation can be missing for a BMP-3. Rocket smoke trails?

I'd be surprised if this would be a reason for dropping a feature in CMx2. Just think about the airplanes in CMx1.

[Battlefront.com]

We've been working on CM:SF for 3 years. How long would you go without a paycheck and working 60+ hours a week? How much would you be willing to invest in a project that you are sure won't yield any more return no matter what you put into it?

In CMx1 development we got the same whiny and unreasonable levels of expectations. "Why can't you just add x? That can't possibly take that much time". Well, that might be true, but why should we include just YOUR suggestion? What about all the others? Now we're talking about months' worth of work, not hours or days. I just redid the art schedule yesterday and it is 10 months' worth of work. Now you're suggesting that we put MORE stuff on there? There needs to be less, not more.

Even after 8 years of discussions on this Forum it amazes me that you guys still don't get it... in the real world, the one in which developers live in, there are limitations on what can be done economically. It doesn't matter what you want, it only matters what we can deliver. You're still going to get far more than you pay for, so why complain?

Steve

[Aacooper]

Does that mean it will be released next July?

That's the trend in gaming, as graphics get better, the budgets and/or time required to make those graphics get larger and larger.

[Battlefront.com]

A quick follow up...

The problem is the end user wants it all. They want playability, great graphics, cool special effects, deep gameplay, variety, and a whole bunch of things that probably can only be done on super computers. Oh, and they only want to pay a few bucks for it. And did I mention they want it the minute they first hear about it and not a minute later?

The problem is there is finite time, finite resources, finite capabilities, and finite people who are interested. Our job, as developers and publishers, is to sift through all of the things that compete for our finite resources.

CMx1 had a ton of graphical abstractions and limitations built into it and day after day we heard about how you guys wanted these things removed. It took a while to convince you all that it wasn't as simple as you thought, but I think we did get that message home. However, we promised that we would do things differently for CMx2. And we did. 1:1 graphical representation of the real world, Relative Spotting, RealTime (yes, a ton of people requested this), vastly more complex terrain, detailed models that once required a Cray super computer to render, faster turn around of products, greater range of topics simulated, etc. etc. etc. That's what we went out and did. But there is a catch.

The catch is that we couldn't make both a broad game and a deep game. It had to be one or the other. So we chose highly detailed and deep instead of mediocre detail and broad. We feel we made the right choice and we think you'll agree.

We're very happy with the way things have turned out so far. We're looking forward to finishing CM:SF so you can see for yourself why we've got another hit on our hands.

Steve

[Jaska.]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

You're still going to get far more than you pay for, so why complain?

Steve,

These are grogs you're talking about. They are bound to complain, no matter what.

For my own part I'd like to say that Combat Mission is easily the best tactical wargame there is ! And I expect CM:SF to improve even further.

If people aren't happy with that, there's always options (not free, mind), Panzer Command : Operation Winter Storm !

[Battlefront.com]

That's the rub... people complain before they get it and then they wind up happy without it in the end. They still complain, mind you, but the are complaining happily

No, the game will not come out in 10 months. The schedule is if we do nothing creative to get more work done sooner. We're all about being creative CMBB would probably still be in the works if we weren't.

Steve

[Homo ferricus]

i got CMBO when it first came out when i was like, 12.

I didn't even know that squads where 7-12 men, i thought that every rifle squad was 3 men. I thought that the actual mancount was a display of how many wounds a man in the squad could sustain before dieing. So abstraction never bothered me.

and no, i never questioned why a sharpshooter could only sustain one hit as opposed to an MG42, which could sustain 6.

[Moronic Max]

No, the game will not come out in 10 months. The schedule is if we do nothing creative to get more work done sooner. We're all about being creative

Try outsourcing to India.

[Kineas]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The catch is that we couldn't make both a broad game and a deep game. It had to be one or the other. So we chose highly detailed and deep instead of mediocre detail and broad. We feel we made the right choice and we think you'll agree.

Agreed. For me the CM series is the most realistic military game on the market (FPS included). This means it positioned itself in a niche market. Hopefully this market is strong enough not to disappear.

Hint: for 'my game' I'd be willing to pay tenfold price. Maybe others as well. I guess you can max out the income with an appropriate pricing.

[Other Means]

I think what Rollstoy's getting at is that rather than remove mortars etc because to animate each team member and different mortar type individually would take too many of the finite resources we know you have, we would prefer *more* abstraction.

e.g. One generic mortar type representing all possible.

I'd certainly prefer that to removing a useful branch of CA.

[C'Rogers]

That's the rub... people complain before they get it and then they wind up happy without it in the end.

I think one of the problem is that you really only hear from people that have something to complain about.

For example realtime. Just to use hypothetical figures if 80% of the people who love CM were happy with just WeGo, while 20% really want real time, you will just hear from the latter.

The other problem as you mentioned is that those of us on the forum have no concept of time and cost/benefit anaylsis for the game. In the above example the people who would be happy with just WeGo probably say 'Hey, real time option, that is fine'. I am sure if they were told the time it would take to encode certain options then little extras would suddenly be shunned upon. Well, for about a week anyway until we all forgot about BFCs logical explanations and complained again. Honestly I am suprised, plesantly, that BFC still takes the efforts to deal with these threads.

But I guess we all have our indiviual preferences. I still think BFC should drop everything and get multiplayer for more then 2 people in as soon as possible.

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks for the follow up comments, especially Homo ferricus. That's the sort of stuff that keeps us going. One of the goals of CM, now and then, is to get new people into wargaming and military history. You got into it through CMBO, I got into it through 1/72nd scale models. When I made models of German and American soldiers I didn't even know what a Squad was

Other Means, this works only if there aren't knock-on effects, such as AI, spotting code, etc. It also doesn't work if the weapons systems are radically different from each other. Putting in a 50mm mortar for a 81mm mortar is just too much abstraction IMHO.

C'Rogers, you are certainly right that the complainers are disproportionally represented in any Forum. However, don't forget that a discussion usually follows a complaint. If I see even close to a 1:1 exchange I assume the complainer is is really outnumbered 10:1. If I see the complainer outnumbered, say, 2:1 then I assume he is outnumbered 50:1

Something like RealTime is different, though. We had some people say they wanted it RealTime. When this happened there was an avalanche of opposition. They didn't want to be forced to play in RealTime. This makes sense and if keeping the majority happy was the only thing we were concerned about, we wouldn't have gone with RealTime. But there were much larger things to think about too.

For starters, there is a huge number of people out there that never bought CM because it was turn based. So obviously those guys were posting on our Forums at all. How many? I don't know, obviously, but in theory their numbers dwarf our current Battlefront.com customer so many times over I can't even begin to count. Therefore, thinking about making CM more appealing to more people means not just listening to current customers but listening to the market place.

Where existing customer input matters is on how our decisions affect their willingness to purchase the new games. I think it is obvious that if we went RealTime only we would lose a huge number of our existing customers. We might still wind up selling more games with RealTime only (that always bothers the faithful ), but we respect loyalty and would never do something to leave people behind if there is choice. In our case, the choice was to rewrite the game engine to be RealTime and then make sure WeGo works as well. So that's what we did... win win for everybody.

The point of this is that feedback here is always evaluated in terms of what it means to the project as a whole. Sometime this means 5 posts can give us the answer we need, sometimes it takes 40. But we never make them based on how many tally up on one side vs. another side. That would be a bad way to run a game company

Steve

[Thomm]

Was I complaining? About what should I complain? About a game that is not even out yet?!

I was just trying to get the opinion of others on this subject based on the info that we get on these boards!

Other Means rephrased the question correctly: should we allow for more abstraction (for example in terms of animations) to get more content?!?

This has nothing got to do with how you make your games, it is a general question!

Best regards,

Thomm

[luderbamsen]

I dont't know how much we all agree on this, but it seem to me that the typical CM gamer is a true fan of gameplay and content over eyecandy (as am I). Yet when we beg for bones, we beg for screenshots!

And as Steve says, what really, really, matters, is if it will make money or not. Clearly, BFC isn't in this business for the money, but man cannot live on enthusiasm alone.

Personally, I would have preferred even bigger maps and formations than those in CMx1, and I would be willing to sacrifice a bit of detail. BFC chose to move in the other direction. Their decision, and not necessarily the wrong one.

Nobody knows exactly what makes a good game or a good selling game. However, I belive it's evident that BFC is trying to make a game that is true to its predecessor yet is not stagnant, and at the same time try to appeal to as many buyers as possible (as opposed to the increasingly bland mainstream products of which there are far, far too many these days), and that's certainly a promising start.

[ScouseJedi]

I know that Battlefront have said previously that they would like to keep .3ds models and such in house to maximise their follow up module capability but surely when it comes to animations, models and textures there is a community there desperate to contribute.

For instance, if you allowed community members to contribute Im sure that there would rapidly form an OOB for Canadian troops 1914 - 2006 complete with textures, models and animations.

I can see the argument that if the community comes up with a CM:SF-USMC mod Battlefront will have problems selling their own version but I think you give the community too little credit. Would Battlefront ever produce a Spanish Civil War module, a Finnish Winter War WW2 module. The community might - it will come up with all kinds of non commercial nonsense. We are looking to Battlefront for an engine capable of charging our minds, not a set of artwork.

[Other Means]

We don't ask for screenshots - we ask for demos

Steve, the devs from 1C said mortars were in, but the animation (engine?) changed and it was too much of a time hit to re-do them.

Now, in this thread and in the previous one about Iron Man mode, I'm on your and 1C's side. I design web based business solutions for a living and spend half my life fighting scope creep - so I know what it's like.

For this specific issue though, I personally would prefer the 1C guys to come up a level of abstraction. I'd swap visual immersion for CA.

I know, I know, we're talking to the wrong guy here

[Moronic Max]

For instance, if you allowed community members to contribute Im sure that there would rapidly form an OOB for Canadian troops 1914 - 2006 complete with textures, models and animations.

I may very well be wrong, but I'd expect there to be a number of legal issues to deal with there.

[Battlefront.com]

Thomm, sorry for misunderstanding! Your question is actually a good one. I just took it the wrong way at first. However, note that if I thought you were just complaining I wouldn't have answered in detail, so obviously I thought you had a valid point

Opening up the game to model and other art mods is not impossible, but opening it up to entire genre/unit changes is completely impractical for technical reasons. While swapping out a Stryker for a LAV III might seem to work, it would only from a visual standpoint. There is just too much custom coding that needs to be done to make the transition meaningful. And if we provided all of those tools to you guys, we'd first have to code them to be external (no small task) and then go find work somewhere else because we would have just cut off our future income stream.

What we rather do is keep the system in house and find people to help us. This has worked for us before, and is in fact how we found Dan and Fernando. People like MikeyD, Marco, Gordon, JuJu, and a host of others have also made the impossible possible. The art list for CMBB was, well, enough to drive a good development team to either drink a lot instead of work or just link arms and jump off a high building together So the mod community does, in fact, paly a critical role in CM already.

Keeping things in house allows us to keep tight controls, manage the work better, and have more accountability from the commuity since we have hand picked arrangements. And we see that as being the "creative" way to get the 10 months worth of artwork down to something more reasonable.

Steve

[Kineas]

A fully moddable, realistic wego engine is also my dream. Apart from the forementioned problems there is also a danger of splitting the (not too big) community between the mods. But I hope sooner or later it will come true. I definitely want a WWII Germany vs Space Lobsters meeting scenario

[Sixxkiller]

I think you guys should just quit working on CM:SF and get a real job at Walmart!

[Xavier]

I remember when I first play the CMBO beta demo...

My best computer game experience as far as I remember, but I wondered why one of the stugIII whas "bugged" (ie with no skirts)

I must confess I was in the I-want-a-ww2-game-for-cmx2-blah-blah-us-versus-syria-is-uggly group but I'm amazed by the quality of bones seen on this board and I already know I'll purchase a copy of CMSF asap. For me BFC is not only a computer gaming company, it's really a kind of manufacturer of "produit de luxe" as we say in french. :cool:

Sorry for my crappy english

[luderbamsen]

As a general rule, I'm heavily in favor of modding, the more the merrier. Much of it is, well, crap, true, but there are some real nuggets here and there.

To be honest, I often get the feeling that some game makers refuse to support mods either because of hopelessly arcane protectionism, or simply to avoid embarrassment (being outperformed by a bunch of "amateurs" working in their spare time).

With the exeption of Half-Life/Counterstrike, I don't belive that any mod has seriously increased the number of copies sold. However, it is pretty evident that mods have increased the lifespan of some games. And this is important because it is far simpler and cheaper to make the customers buy the sequel if are still playing the previous title.

One of the few games where I haven't seen any serious need for modding is in fact the CMx1 series, which included just about everything. I'm usually very critical of the limited content in realism-oriented combat games, but to this day I find myself with mouth open and eyes bugging out every time I scroll down the list of units in CM, even more so, knowing the unmatched realism and attention to detail of each of them.

Then again, CM:SF is different. Apart from adding realtime capability, BFC has prioritised depth over bulk, and this opens up the doors for endless cries for more content (in fact, it has already started). On top of this, CM:SF will (hopefully) lure new customers, newbies and fringe players alike, into the fold, and their attention span may be rather shorter than the rest of us.

While I'm quite sure that diehard fans like myself will buy all the modules (probably even the one with space lobsters...), newcomers and fringe players may loose interest and that will hurt potential earnings.

As mentioned above, I generally belive that the benefits far outweigh the problems when supporting mods. But, again, CM is different: Apart from safeguarding future income, the exeptionally high levels of realism and attention to detail must be maintained, or else CM becomes something very unattractive indeed ("Command & Conquer: Shock Force" anyone?)

That said, I do strongly believe that BFC should consider any approach to ensure timely delivery of content-heavy modules, at least if initial sales figures (hopefully) indicate that CM:SF reaches beyond it's core fanbase.

Respecfully

luderbamsen

[ September 14, 2006, 07:05 AM: Message edited by: luderbamsen ]

[Darkmath]

("Command & Conquer: Shock Force" anyone?)

ARRRRRGGHHHHHH! HELL NOOOOOO!!!

NO HIT POINT!! NO TANK KILLED BY MG!!! NO M16 COMBAT FROM TOE TO TOE!!! :mad:

Damn, this game is so unrealistic it becomes unappealing to play. (I am talking about the old C&C, of course . Maybe it has changed? )

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

When I made models of German and American soldiers I didn't even know what a Squad was

I am sure most of the FPS-RTS-Twitch crowd have no idea either.