I have gone over to the Dark Side.

[KNac]

Yes, and you can have it both ways now

But some people seems to not like this, something which is beyond any human comprenhension.

[Steiner14]

RT had a huge impact on the gameengine. Because the abstractions with action points and the 8mx8m grid for LOS calculations are nexcessary to make RT possible. Not necessary for WEGO.

[Mord]

Originally posted by Steiner14:

More control in RT only seems nice. But it reduces the fun, because the LESS control in WEGO gives an additional thrill RT never owns.

Horror movies work, because you are doomed to watch and cannot change the flow and cannot escape.

WEGO creates exactly that feeling with the right amount of control.

I just received several artillery barrages in a CMBB battle. Will the tanks close their hatches? Will it panick my men? Eternal seconds, where i'm doomed to watch and cannot escape it, by reacting and redrawing them after the first round.

And this thrill lasts not only for a few seconds, but it is even built up until the next movie shows the results of the taken measures.

In WEGO you are doomed to watch.

It's similar to the hours before Christmas for children. Although every child hardly can bear the time to go by, but if you remember yourself about it, this time, where you wish and imagine having the gift, is the really precious one. In German we have the saying "Vorfreude ist die schönste Freude."

And here lies the magic of WEGO.

If you ask a child, if it would like to have it's gift immediately or wait until the time has come, no child would deny to recieve it immediately. Give it to me now!

RT is the instant delivering of the gift. But WEGO ist the ceremony with Vorfreude.

Excellent analogy! Yet another reason I dig WEGO.

Mord.

[Abbott]

IMHO they chose to mess with the WEGO system bad enough to where I am forced into trying to play RTS mode.

Somebody posted earlier (something to the effect) that I should forget everything I liked about wargaming so "I could get RTS mode". I got RTS with Command and Conquer and I played that for a few months, then I went back to Steel Panthers, back to wargaming.

I then moved to Combat Mission for 7 years, now to play Combat Mission I have to go back to Command and Conquer.

I cannot in anyway blame BFC for trying to make a buck and I honestly want them do well and to keep producing fine games. I just hope "I get it" somewhere along the way before I completely give up.

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Steiner14:

RT had a huge impact on the gameengine. Because the abstractions with action points and the 8mx8m grid for LOS calculations are nexcessary to make RT possible. Not necessary for WEGO.

CMx1 was full of abstractions. And remember with CMx1 LOS wasn't relative. That was a huge abstraction.

[Huntarr]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

Never played CM:SF in WeGo mode, not even once!

BUT: I really prefer having WeGo around, and, perhaps more importantly, have people still play WeGo, because they will act as a big quality assurance department for the TacAI.

After all, everything in this respect, that is good for WeGo, is good for real time, too!

Best regards,

Thomm

I agree with you 100%. That's why I only play & test in WEGO. TacAI is without a doubt more important in WeGo. 60 secs is a hell of a long time with modern weapon systems.

[SgtMuhammed]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Interesting thread considering that RealTime is completely unplayble. Or so said some when the game first came out

I would LOVE rewindable RealTime. Unfortunately, I don't think this is practical. Still, it is on my wishlist and I'll continually pester Charles about it until it is implemented (or I retire to collect Social Security ).

Steve

For the record, I never said RT was unplayable. I just never thought I would like it because I am old and slow. I guess an old dog can learn new tricks.

[Battlefront.com]

Ah... the Geriatric Dog Defense... I know it well

Steve

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Interesting thread considering that RealTime is completely unplayble. Or so said some when the game first came out

I would LOVE rewindable RealTime. Unfortunately, I don't think this is practical. Still, it is on my wishlist and I'll continually pester Charles about it until it is implemented (or I retire to collect Social Security ).

Steve

I tend to agree with Abbott's post above. I think people mostly said WEGO was completely unplayable, not RT. And that is why people keep "defecting" to RT, because they are frustrated by the bugs and limitations in WEGO.

[Battlefront.com]

Hoolaman,

I tend to agree with Abbott's post above. I think people mostly said WEGO was completely unplayable, not RT. And that is why people keep "defecting" to RT, because they are frustrated by the bugs and limitations in WEGO.

Flawed memory There were quite a lot of people that said that WeGo was hobbled because we spent too much time on RealTime, and yet RealTime isn't playable. Therefore, we screwed the pooch.

There were a LOT of things tossed around in the early days. My favorite was the Blue Bar Brigade's position that the lack of a blue status bar meant that the WeGo was dead. That was a great one that I will cherrish until the day I die

Steve

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Originally posted by sgtgoody (esq):

I think some of the really big scenarios will have to be WEGO but I think I will be able to live with this.

One of the limitations of a one-on-one contest in the continuous play environment is a ceiling on the number of units that a player can be expected to handle without being overwhelmed. At some point, matters will become so fast-paced and intense that a fella simply can't keep up. There are tools that a developer can employ to help mitigate against this affect, group orders and formations, column, line, defend, advance and so on, but if the game is gonna be fun and playable, it's important to hold the number of units down.

There are a number of games that do this quite successfully, Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Close Combat, for example. One of the keys to both designs was the developers' realization that, at some point, it was all just gonna be too much to handle, so they designed the games with this in mind.

SMG had formation and order tools which off-loaded some of the burden of command to the (limited) friendly AI. It's worth noting that these mechanisms could prove inadequate, AS THE BATTLES COULD STILL GET TOO BIG TO HANDLE. The common sense approach to this was simply to limit the size of the "scrap" to that which wouldn't overwhelm the sensory-motor skills of an average adult. IIRC, the preferred size of a contest in multiplayer was a "minor altercation" with two or three brigades per side and attached artillery, totaling perhaps fifteen regiments and batteries.

Close Combat took a different approach. Rather than employing formation orders which helped dictate movement and posture, the developers severely restricted the total number and type of units that could appear in battles to ten, or so, a number that could readily be handled by most folks, in part because the maps were relatively small. It's also worth mentioning that the developers slowly but surely bastardized the design and yielded to the demands of the game's fanbase by adding more unit-slots, larger maps and AFV in the game, additions that undermined the core-strengths of the game as a nifty little infantry-combat simulator that was quite easy to play, again by an adult with normal hand-eye coordination.

And so it shall be with CMSF. If you want to enjoy the game, you're gonna have to face some limitations on the size and scope of the battles that you fight. Not only will this improve your game-play experience, it's also far more realistic in that there are very real limits on how many units a commander can "control" in the heat of battle, the number of subunits, in fact, being quite small. Obviously, if you want to play Prochorovka and command each vehicle, and have your opponent do the same, this type of game system isn't for you.

PoE

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, that's the inehrent limitation with RealTime play. There is only so much that a person can juggle at once. Once that number has been reached (and it is different for every person), then the player feels control is compromised and therefore so is the fun of playing.

The same is true for WeGo, incidentally, but generally the bar is a LOT higher. Even though a player can theoretically handle an entire Regiment in CMx1, very few wanted to spend 20 minutes per turn issuing Orders to that many units. It is also more mentally taxing to keep track of so many units doing so many different things. You could easily forget about an entire company! So theoretical ability to control was trumpped by actual desire to control that many units. I topped out at about a Battalion myself

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

I topped out at about a Battalion myself

Same here.

Michael

[SlowMotion]

When playing realtime games you probably switch between several key parts of the map repeatedly. I was wondering if it would be possible to make this faster?

Here's my simple suggestion:

the player could define a small number (like 4 or 8) "camera shortcuts". By pressing a key (let's say SHIFT-function_key), you could store current camera place and rotation. By pressing the same key with different modifier (let's say CTRL), camera would jump to the stored place.

This way you could quickly switch between some important positions and as battle progresses you could redefine those places when needed. I would think this would be very easy thing to add, yet would reduce unnecessary map scrolling. Comments?

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, shortcut stuff like that is part of the enhancement plan for CMx2. It's part of a rather huge list of things we simply didn't have time to implement. A good game designer can make a list of features that would require an army of outsourced Indian programmers to implement

Steve

[dan/california]

So call Bangalore and hire one.

[SlowMotion]

Good to know - it will be interesting to see what kind of new things will be added.

[SgtMuhammed]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

I topped out at about a Battalion myself

Same here.

Michael </font>

[Battlefront.com]

sgtgoody,

You're a nut

I got a couple from rune that make my CPU cry and they are only about a battalion (-).

Rune's a nut too And make sure to check out George's scenarios, because he's as nutty as Rune! In fact, we use George's Factory Outlet scenario as the benchmark for "how badly can we make a system crawl on its knees".

Steve

[KNac]

Are these rune scenarios around? just curious

[thelmia]

I tried WEGO once, the RT and never went back. It's just better.

It WAS unplayable in TCP/IP until I figured out that the host has to wait a bit before pushing the red button.

[rune]

Not yet, plan on coming out with a patch. However, I can be bribed...

Rune

[rune]

Oh and george is a puppy, good scenario designer, but still a puppy when it comes to making the guys cringe. Steve forgets the test scenario I had with a division worth of Syrian T-72s against a company of M1s. Or the map of a complete forested area, which forced Charles to cry in his jar.

Rune

[Battlefront.com]

Rune,

Steve forgets the test scenario I had with a division worth of Syrian T-72s against a company of M1s. Or the map of a complete forested area, which forced Charles to cry in his jar.

Well, if you want to call 2 weeks at a therapist's couch and 6 boxes of snotrags used to clear away the excessive goo and tears "forgetting", go right ahead. I personally think of it as damage control to my sensibilities

Steve

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Originally posted by Steiner14:

I just received several artillery barrages in a CMBB battle. Will the tanks close their hatches? Will it panick my men? Eternal seconds, where i'm doomed to watch and cannot escape it, by reacting and redrawing them after the first round.

Respectfully, why not post this in the CMBB forum? I'm sure that the BF staff occasionally attends the venue and reviews the posts related to the now abandoned CMx1 gaming engine. Nostalgia, aside, what's the point?

PoE