Terrain modeling in CMx2

[Battlefront.com]

Yes

Steve

[Noba]

With the current game, if for example you place a foxhole IN a Tall Hedge your troops pay the penalty of the hedge in the form of movement penalties if they try to leave "out the back door". This makes it very difficult to use a skirmish line defense allowing troops to pull back before being overwhelmed. They usually get pinned in the high movement cost terrain, whereas a defense would have been constructed with escape routes under cover.

Will a scenario designer be able to specify entry / exit points for fortifications ? And likewise, do buildings have specific entry / exit points ?

Noba.

[Battlefront.com]

No, there is no ability to create safe lines of passage. I shudder to think of how complicated that would be from a coding standpoint. And hedges are about the only thing I can think of that really is an issue, which I'm not even sure is an unrealistic issue. Afterall, if the soldiers hacked holes big enough for them to get through with all their gear on, the enemy would have a nice way of spotting where your exit routes are.

Yes, buildings have entry/exit points and windows. Or not. Depends on what the scenario designer cooks up.

Steve

[Lt Bull]

The new terrain model sounds good.

Will terrain like hedgerows/bocage will at last get the treatment they deserve (unlike CMx1)?

Will bocage/hedges/walls be destructible if crossed by a AFV?

Will the unit "footprint" sizes be bigger or smaller than the 8x8 terrain tile? Just wondering how determining what terrain a unit is considered to be occupying given the tiles will be much smaller.

Dynamic lighting was mentioned but will this include light sources being created during a night battle where a tank or building catches fire and lights up the surrounding area?

Lt Bull

[Battlefront.com]

Terrain is deformable. Beyond that I can't comment because we have not coded hedgerows or hedges yet. I expect that they can be damaged, along with walls and other forms of terrain.

Unit footprint is smaller than 8x8. There is no unit I can think of that would be larger than that. However, a foot unit that is on the move might be spread out more than 8x8. There are special considerations for this.

Dynamic lighting... honestly not sure. In theory we can have sources anyplace, anytime, and to any degree we wish. I just don't know what is practical at this point.

Steve

[jeffsmith]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

snip

Yes, buildings have entry/exit points and windows. Or not. Depends on what the scenario designer cooks up.

Steve

a bit of explanation please

I would have thought that buildings would have distinct entry/exits points (coded into the game)

how does that change in a scenario design ?

unless of course they are rubble

[BloodyBucket]

Prehaps the scenario designer gets to tinker with doors/windows/holes in the buildings?

It would be truly great if the player got to tinker with building entry/exit points in game via a well placed explosive round...

[Bonxa]

Now that dynamic lighting has been picked up in this thread: Will the lighting be a purely graphical thing or will it affect the LOS/spotting calculations?

As an example: Will you have working flares? Or units spotted from their gun flashes?

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Steve posted,

“Kip, map sizes and troop density are probably going to start out being a tad bit smaller than what CMAK was capable of. It will likely increase over time, just as it did for the CMx1 family of games.”

I am not surprised; clearly the hardware will be under hugely greater strain with CMX2.

I was just hoping that the limits on map size could be set well above “current” hardware limitations to take into account machines of two or three years time. But I realize this could have resulted in endless complaints from customers that their current machines crash when using bigger maps.

No problem .

All the best,

Kip.

[HarryInk]

Can you give a few hints of what you've suggested with the mad editor?

[JasonC]

I just want to "second" the request for additional height levels allowed, instead of hard capped at 20. I have often wanted to do historical fights on serious hills and 20 levels of elevation change just aren't nearly enough for realistic "relief" in true high country.

A related issue, which 8x8 may help address, is the way height difference "smoothing" happens. I find it almost impossible to get -straight- height change features (e.g. a shallow berm) without tons of "crinkling". Also, I've often wanted a way to "pin" a certain tile at exactly a specified height, without letting the smoothing routine change it. I don't have a specific solution in mind, but I thought you might want to know it is an area that could use improvement - which 8x8 might make significantly easier.

Last on height terrain issues, it would be great if they also produced cover-like effects for infantry fire. Right now, a ridgeline is too strong against HE placement (no hits on the fly modeled) and way too weak as cover against incoming infantry type fire (if you can see 'em, no cover).

[Lt Bull]

Originally posted by Bonxa:

Now that dynamic lighting has been picked up in this thread: Will the lighting be a purely graphical thing or will it affect the LOS/spotting calculations?

As an example: Will you have working flares? Or units spotted from their gun flashes?

Two good questions. If it isn't, then it is really just going to be even "deceptive" eye candy.

ie. in a night battle a unit may on the map look like it is illuminated by the lights from a nearby light source (a burning tank) and appear to be more easily spotted, but the LOS/spotting calcs arent taking it into consideration.

Lt Bull

[Sequoia]

While we're sort of on the subject of height, I wonder if we can get a word on building height as well, i.e. number of stories possible.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Unit footprint is smaller than 8x8. There is no unit I can think of that would be larger than that.

No Maus then! :eek:

[Philippe]

Soory if I missed this, but my mind is mushier than usual.

I'm hoping that there will be multiple image alternatives for the same building.

If you're playing a city fight scenario and it has five churches in it, it would be nice if they didn't all look the same.

And along those lines, I would really like multiple building types so that it would be easier to create the visuals for scenario-specific buildings, and mix them in with other normal buildings. Think of the fall of Berlin, or a hypothetical German capture of Moscow: you want St. Basil's to look like St. Basil's, but you only want one St. Basil's in Moscow.

There are lots of other terrain situations where that crops up besides churches, so if you have a few extra redundant terrain types, a designer can pick one of them and mod it.

By the way, that also means that if I have five models of churches to choose from (and you wouldn't have to do different images for all of them -- the modders would take care of the rest), I want to be able to say that I want model # 1 to show up here, and # 2 to show up there, etc...

[Steiner14]

That is a lot of very good news about the improved terrain!

[Guest ExplodingMonkey]

True dat!

[Battlefront.com]

Dynamic lighting game effects -> honestly I don't know. Not sure what Charles is planning on doing. It likely is something that can be improved upon even if we don't do much with it right away.

Map size -> yes, we always have to keep in mind that when we allow something FAR too many gamers think that means they are supposed to be able to use it, even if they are still using a 486 with 32MB of RAM So to some extent we must hard code limitations because not doing so always comes back to bite us in the butts.

Elevations -> CMx1 was hardcoded to 20 because of limitations to both graphics and the terrain mesh. As far as I know there are no such limitations now. Haven't really discussed it with Charles though, so there might be some limitation I am not aware of. Needless to say, there is more flexibilty now.

Smoothness -> terrain mesh is 1m x 1m. That makes for extremely smooth transitions

Building entry/exit -> designer can decide which side the door is on, or if it is there at all. Same with windows. Can also determine other details I don't want to get into right now. Just imagine the CMx1 system, nuke it, then imagine what you want. What you want is probably a lot closer to what CMx2 is capable of.

Building texture variety -> yes, we are planning on a lot more variety of textures. Mind you there is a VRAM consideration, but otherwise there is a lot more flexibilty than CMx1. More stuff might happen but I don't want to say until coding is done.

Building shape variety -> we do want there to be the ability to have more specific buildings for different scenarios. However, keep in mind that with the narrower focus there is less need. There won't be a single CMx2 game that simulates structures from the plains of central Russia, the villages of Hungary, and the urban areas of Germany. Instead the game would focus on one particular region and therefore not require the variety previous CMx1 games needed. In fact, this is one of the reasons we changed to narrower settings rather than broad.

Building stories -> many There is also now an adstracted concept of stairs, physically represented in the game.

Steve

[Conscript Bagger]

If fortifications are terrain, and (AIUI) are unspotted by default, does that mean the rest of the map is unspotted at game start also? Or are "fort-terrain" and "ground-terrain" treated differently for spotting purposes?

[yuvuphys]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Building entry/exit -> designer can decide which side the door is on, or if it is there at all.

I sure hope bulidings can have more than one door

[Cull]

Now this is what I am talking about, my mans. Christ, I think my head is going to explode.

I have no problem with the 2D thing or the lack of freehand roads or any of the other restrictions I've heard so far. It's going to be a 1000X improved regardless.

[Battlefront.com]

Or are "fort-terrain" and "ground-terrain" treated differently for spotting purposes?

Correct. At least that is the way it is designed to work. We haven't done fortifications yet so hopefully there won't be any last minute code hiccups.

Steve

[Sequoia]

Another trivial question. Can we get haystacks? What's a rural scene without haystacks.

In a WWII game the Germans can hide in them like in the movie Anzio.

Okay I'm just kidding about the last part.

But these little touches add up to a more realistic whole.

[Guest ExplodingMonkey]

I think they said in another thread that there would be more in-game objects (like telephone poles) to spice up the immersion factor. Haystacks would be cool, as would rail cars to place on or around (wrecked) rail lines.

[Battlefront.com]

Corect. More ingame atmospheric stuff is now possible thanks to the 8x8 size. But we won't be going nuts with the stuff.

Steve