Work in progress - The Road to Dimas

[CogNative]

Maybe I should start with 'Perdition' and then on to 'Hasrabit' after I get past 'Harm's Way'. That is a big chunk of fun time for me. Having nice maps to blow stuff up on is a real treat. If Orchard Road is your best it must be a gem.

Thanks PT,

CogNative

[Paper Tiger]

Yeah, I'd start with 'Perdition' too. Another useful thing about Perdition is that if your rig can handle the missions in it, it shouldn't have any problem with the even larger maps in 'Dimas'. The 'Tumah Crossing' map is still big even by 'Dimas' standards.

I've pretty much finished the new airfield map and it's a real beauty. I've also finally learned how to draw highways as well so now, I have that skill under my belt before progressing onto the more difficult built up maps that I'll need for my next project. Because I spent the entire weekend working exclusively on this map,I was able to get started playtesting the battle this morning and even with both sides starting with their full OBs onboard at the start, it's running fine. Perhaps because there are very very few changes in elevation? It's certainly not billiard-board flat but it's getting close to that which isn't unrealistic for an airfield I suppose. I will get round to posting a few screenshots later this week as I KNOW that playtesting this map will result in some significant changes being made.

However, as this project grows in size, so does the length of time required to get it finished. Once I have each individual mission developed, I reckon on between 3-4 weeks of solid playtesting before I release the final version. And the story line keeps evolving as it grows too. I've managed to work in some helicopter support for the player in some of the earlier missions which will increase your tactical options. And besides, helos are my favourite form of support. I love using them.

[CogNative]

'Perdition' it is after I get past 'Harm's Way'.

Good luck on The Road to Dimas. Helos are fun if they hit the bad guys.

Thanks CogNative

[Paper Tiger]

If you can hang on for a few more days to start, I will be posting a new version of 'Perdition' at BF's Repository at the weekend or early next week. Since I've been redesigning these missions to fit them into this much larger campaign, I have found that they are much more playable and still winnable with less forces for Blue. Basically, Blue loses two tank platoons, an engineer platoon, and that module of heavy artillery. In the latter's place, you'll ghet a single module of heavy rocket artillery which is the standard heavy artillery in 'Dimas'.

I am also hoping that the v1.1 patch will be ready by the weekend and that will allow me to test them to see if the AI can use it's artillery during the missions. I tried to anticipate the way BFC was going to impliment the AI artillery before v1.1 and I didn't succeed. Hopefully, I will be able to get this all done by Sunday.

[CogNative]

Great PT. I will grab your new version of 'Perdition' at BF's Repository. Not to worry about hang on as my play time is in fits and spurts as time allows. Your CM creations are plenty to carry me through the holidays. BF's Repository and a new v1.1 patch is great.

Thanks, CogNative

[Paper Tiger]

A large part of my Sunday CMSF time was eaten up today by a visit to the cinema to see the new Bond movie but it wasn't time wasted. I love the new Bond movies!:cool:

But you don't care about that, do you? I am going to hold up on posting the new version of the Perdition mini campaign at the repository until I have had a chance to playtest it with the new v1.11 patch. Unfortunately, it wasn't released in time for this weekend but I have high hopes that it will arrive sometime next week. I really want the AI to use it's artillery in the Tumah Crossings and Perdition's Flames missions. I haven't seen anyhing when I've been playtesting recently because it won't start to use it until half way through the scenario and by that time, I've usually got the mission under control and it never gets a chance to use it. That must change with v1.11.

This last week, I've been working hard to get two more missions near to completion. First, the new airfield mission has been set up and playtested many times and I think I've found the sweet spot so it won't require much more work to get it finished. I'd love to show you some screenshots but Photbucket crashes my computer when I try to do anything there. Something to do with Flashget according to IE7.

Anyways, it has moved into the final stages of development and so I was able to turn my attention to a second mission. It's the mission that is fought on a heavily adapted version of my old "Harm's Way' map. It was originally slated to be another Blue attack across a defended river, the 4th such mission in the campaign, but instead, I decided to make Blue the defender in this action and it all fits into the storyline of the campaign beautifully. Once again, I have some beautiful action screenshots from this mission but I can't get them blah blah blah...

Finally, I feel that I can see some light at the end of the tunnel. I just need one more map to finish the series and that will bring the total number of missions in the campaign to 16. That's enough for me thank you. That means that there will be no finale in the streets of Dimas and I won't be using that Minuteman map in this campaign. Both those maps will keep for my next project which I'm already getting quite excited about.

Anyway, the current status of the campaign is this

mission 1 Petani finished

mission 2 Hit and Run finished

mission 3 Orchard Road 90% finished

mission 4 Sabatani finished

mission 5 SAM Hill finished

mission 6 Sagger Point finished

mission 7 Sulit Part 1 no map

mission 8 Sulit airfield 75% finished

mission 9 Where Farmer's Dare finished

mission 10 Burning Bridges finished

mission 11 The Lakes about 50% finished

mission 12 Road to Amarah finished

mission 13 The Jameelah Bridges 75% finished

mission 14 The Tumah Crossing finished

mission 15 Dimas Part 1 about 50% finished

mission 16 Dimas Part 2 - Perdition's Flames finished

The finished missions will all need one playthrough with the new patch to ensure that they're all still winnable but otherwise, most of my work will be concentrated on getting the new Sulit map created and playtesting those missions that are as yet unfinished, starting with Orchard Road and moving down the list. I'm really hoping that this will be finished before Xmas as I'm itching to dive into my next project. Actually, work has already started on that one but that's for later.

[handihoc]

Dude, you're a star.

[CogNative]

Do you like your campaign shaken or stirred Mr. PT?

Stumped again in Harms Way so... It will be 1.11 time before I get the new version of the Perdition mini campaign. Dimas looks like a few months of play form me.

Thanks PT

[Mikkey]

nice Paper Tiger, I'm looking forward to new Perdition and later for Dimas campaig!

[Paper Tiger]

I appear to have solved the getflash problem so I can finally post some screenshots of the new missions. The first is a panorama of Sulit airfield, viewed from the Blue set up zone. 'Sulit' is Bahasa Indonesia for 'Difficult' but it sounds slightly arabic and it's appropriate for the set of missions I have planned here. This is where you'll encounter the Syrian airborne unit I have included in the campaign. So far, playesting this one has revealed that the airborne are tough to take on in a firefight. I have a little bit of work left to do on this one tweaking the AI plan and creating a second plan. With regards to AI plans, most missions have at least two, some more but there will be some with one only. The map is around 2km wide and 800m deep.

The next two pictures come from Saturday's playtest of the Jameelah Bridges mission. The AI uses a lot off smoke to cover it's advance in this one and it's a really nice effect. as you can see, it's a night action. There will be a few of these. the Lakes, Road to Amarah, Jameelah and Tumah Crossings missions are all full night missions.

I want to have several AI plans for the Jameelah attack. So far, it's proving to be easily winnable but very bloody for both sides. But I've been playtesting it with the full Blue OB and of course, your core forces will be somewhat reduced by this stage of the campaign so the difficulty of this one will depend on your success in the earlier missions.

A final word. So far, I've managed to keep most of the missons down to one infantry company with some support, often tanks, and you may have up to a full company of them if you don't lose any in the early missions. However, I don't plan to have any missions in this campaign that have a battalion on board. I play test and play in RT and I just can't handle missions of these proportions. After this project, I'm going to turn my hand to a much smaller but no less ambitious project and it will likely be a Marines campaign although I might change my mind and make it a Syrian Mech Airborne thing as these units are really good to play with. There are a LOT of guys doing stuff for the US players in the community so I might go with the Red on Red option for the next one.

[Sergei]

How about some Blue on Blue? You know, Army vs Marines rivalry finally breaks into an open clash... kidding aside, those screenshots look delicious!

[Paper Tiger]

A Blue on Blue CAMPAIGN?! OMG, the lethality of such a creation.

But it will almost certainly be a Marines campaign. I've been playing around with them in a couple of QBs and I have developed some good ideas for a smallish campaign, NOTHING like this monster here, say maybe between 8-10 missions, maybe a little more if I really get inspired.

Anyway, I pretty much finished Orchard Road yesterday. I almost managed to get a win without losing a single tank so that means that it's about 95% there. I just have to tweak the AI set up a little as I found a couple of FOS teams hiding in a building with no LOS so I'll have to find that plan and correct that error.

[CogNative]

"However, I don't plan to have any missions in this campaign that have a battalion on board. I play test and play in RT and I just can't handle missions of these proportions."

I am really hooked on RT now. 95% of my play is RT. A battalion of RT is more than overwhelming for me. A battalion of RT Blue on Blue in a CAMPAIGN... just light it up, sit back and watch the fireworks. As noted I am a casual player looking for entertainment so CMSF works for me at the < Company size in RT.

Screen shots look great PT. Still 'In Harms Way' and getting about a draw I think. Lots of badness coming at me... but fun.

Thanks.

[Paper Tiger]

It's such a long time since I last played 'In Harm's Way'. Since it was made, there have been several improvements to the TAC AI so I would expect that it has become a tad more difficult. I'll have to review it sometime as it's a long time since I've played ANY scenario as the US side, just a couple of QBs.

Anyway, the last few days have been spent solidly on developing the three Phase 2 battles and in particular, the beast that is 'The Lakes'. I am going to include a small 'interlude' after you complete the 'Bridges' mission so that you go to a tiny scenario where you can save your progress before progressing to this monster. It takes about 15 minutes to load up on my computer and sometimes, I get a CMSF EXE failure Out of Memory warning and the game crashes. I suspect that this is because either the game, or my graphics card, fails to clear out RAM after completing a mission. I might even include the option to skip this mission and chalk it up as a victory for you but at the expense of all the core units within that scenario.

At the moment, that's a reasonably realistic result, except for the player victory when playing 'The Lakes'. I'm gong to have to tone down the difficulty quite substantially in this one or increase the force that Blue has to do the job. Since I don't like the latter idea, I'm going to have to spend a lot more time developing ths one so I'd like to keep it at one infantry company with some tanks in support.

However, the good news is that while playtesting the phase 2 battles, I saw the AI use it's artillery dynamically during two of the missions. In 'The Lakes' mission, it absolutely killed me. Further, in that mission, the first artillery rounds started falling about 30 minutes into a 2 hour mission. I wasn't expecting that and I was very impressed.

Hopefully, I'll have a couple more screenshots to post tomorrow morning.

[CogNative]

You know "The Road to Dimas" is going to be fun from your description PT.

'The Lakes'... 15 minutes to load! Maybe the office will need to upgrade my "work" Mac for me? Better yet, an OS X version of CM2!

Got a minor defeat in 'Harm' but I will go back and try a different strategy now.

AI use it's artillery dynamically. Good thing about BFC... they listen to customers and keep improving their products.

CogNative

[Paper Tiger]

Whew. After several false starts over the last couple of days, I finally found my final version of The Lakes mission this morning. I played it all the way through with Blue's FULL OB and I got very good fps so there'll be no need to include an option to skip it. Or at least, if that option remains, it will be an automatic loss and then you will have to follow a different branch to the end of the campaign. I also managed to win it without too much difficulty. It's extremely unlikely that you'll have the full OB in this mission so the difficulty is probably jusy right.

Regarding difficulty, it's just not possible to make this balanced for everybody to play so therefore, like Hasrabit, it's going to be balanced for ME to play. If you won Hasrabit quite easily, then expect this to present a similar level of challenge. It is certainly a VERY different creature to play from Hasrabit though.

I pretty much finalised the overall story of the campaign last week and that means that I know how many different versions of each mission are required and how they should be different. I've managed to link the three phase 2 battle together in such a way that depending on your success in the first two, you'll go to one of three different versions of The Lakes mission. I've playtested the potentially most difficult version of this mission and found it to be winnable. Now, I just have to create at least one more, possibly two, AI attack plans to keep you guessing. Some folks will definitely require two or more goes to get past this one.

When you DO finally get around to playing this mission, please bear in mind that it is FIRST a tank battle and the infantry action is secondary. If you win the tank battle big then you will be able to utterly destroy the infantry in their strongpoints with scarcely a loss to your infantry force. However, I've tried to time everything so that the crucial phase of the tank battle won't be reached until about half way through the mission so if you sit around waiting for it to be resoved before taking on the infantry in their strongpoints that won't leave you much time to do it.

[Paper Tiger]

As the v1.11 patch won't be released untl sometime later next week, I haven't been able to redo the three Perdition missions. I had also hit a bit of a creative block with respect to my new, final map but I solved that problem nicely last night.

These last few days, I've been reworking the 'farmers' mission to make it more challenging. Since I discovered that I can give each AI group up to 16 commands, it means that I can script a better AI counterattack and so far, it's proving to be very effective. There will be four AI plans too. In the campaign, the Red force will be a Reserve Infantry formation stiffened up by some old tanks and with your full OB, it's quite easy to beat. But I have crafted a Special Forces version of this mission that I intend to release as a stand alone mission before the full campaign is finished. When playtesting the SF version, I could still get a win but at an enormous cost to my core force. A real 'Last man Standing' mission. Great for stand alone but an absolute NO NO for a campaign mission

[Paper Tiger]

Okay. Here's a look at the newest and final map for this campaign. Actually, it's not your first look it's a reworking of the 'Minuteman' map that was posted on page 2 or 3. Its' pretty much finished now, except for the alterations that inevitably get made after playtesting it, and I'm going to try and craft it to be mainly an infantry action.

It will join 'Sulit airfield' as part of Group B's morning actions in Phase 1 bringing the final total of phase 1 missions to 8. It will take place at around 8am when you still have air support so there'll be helicopters in this one. Probably quite a few.

It's actually not as large as you might think. It's about 1500m x 800m and I have plans to expand this map for my Brit campaign. It happens to be based on a real location in Syria as well.

[CogNative]

Your "creative" block is gone. Looks fine PT. Thanks again for the updates.

[Paper Tiger]

Oh yes, it certainly has gone. Once I had my final map all drawn up, the ideas for how to link all these missions together in a meaningful way just started pouring out. So much so that last night, I sat with my laptop and wrote out a long detailed summary of each Phase 1 mission and how they affect each other. It's not too complicated but it does mean that each mission has a REAL influence on the progression of the story line. Much more so than the missions in Hasrabit did.

I got stuck into the new battle straight away this morning and it's shaping up to be a beauty. I have already found the right balance of forces and so far, after about 4-5 hours of playtesting, I really like what I'm seeing. I won't have to make many alterations to the map either as it's already quite 'rich' in posibilities. You'll only have a single BMP Mech Infantry Company and some engineers but you'll have a lot of artillery and helicopters to help you through it. It's looking VERY bloody and it has it's own unique feel to it.

This map is definitely going into my Brit campaign as it's one of my all-time favourites.

[CogNative]

"each mission has a REAL influence on the progression of the story line... after about 4-5 hours of playtesting... I won't have to make many alterations to the map either as it's already quite 'rich' in posibilities."

Sounds fantastic PT. Also sounds like I will need 4-5 weeks to make it through "The Road to Dimas".

Peace,

[Paper Tiger]

Well, I'm at work again and have bugger all to do so I might as well post an update. I have been playtesting the hell out of the new mission and it's called Persik. (Yah Michael, seperti Dewi...) I played around with a couple of versions that had a small armoured counterattack coming in late in the game but it was eating into my AI group allocation and really didn't enhance the experience in any way so it went out and instead, I have developed a more detailed defense. Since it has two quite different AI plans, it will keep you guessing if you really stuff it up the first time. After tweaking the victory point locations to make you work for that win all that was left for me to do with it was win it with the core forces. And I did that quite easily this morning so that's it pretty much finished.

Since the cat is already out of the bag on this one, my next project is going to have much smaller Blue forces, probably as small as a single platoon. I have already developed a couple of maps for this but I'm definitely going to reuse some of the Dimas maps in this project. The new Persik map will definitely go in as it's not too big for a single platoon action, at least if the Brits can split their squads up nicely like the Stryker MOUT or Marines Rifle platoon can. I guess I'm getting a bit burned out playing missions with company+ sized forces and since I play in real time, it should be easier to control a battle at this level. Further, with many fewer units on the map, I should be able to make the maps super detailed.

[panzermartin]

Paper Tiger I'm in love with your maps. Is there a way to extract them to make my own 2player scenarios? Multiplayer is what I mostly play nowadays, it would be great if I could use these beautiful landscapes.

[Mikkey]

campaign for smaller blue force on your maps sounds good!

[Paper Tiger]

Because I've been playing this game almost exclusively Red v Red for the last year or so, I am really surprised when I'm testing these small missions and find that a single US Marines Platoon with LAVs has WAY more firepower at it's disposal than an entire Syrian Mech Infantry Company. (Perhaps not a Mechanised Airborne Company though.) And one thing I really like about playing as Blue is the wide variety of Infantry Support vehicles that you have to play around with. Sometimes, a tank is just overkill in a mission and after the Mech Infantry's rides, there really are only tanks available to back up your boys as Red. Yes, there's the BDRM ATGM vehicle and it's quite potent in an anti-infantry role. But it's very very fragile, especially against tanks.

I like the tanks but they are sometimes just a bit too tough for the mission I had in mind. There are a couple of missions in this campaign where I have contrived the story line to justify a Mech Infantry only action. (Persik and SAM Hill are Mech infantry actions only). And there are some missions where your tank support is substantially delayed to allow you to develop the battle with your infantry first. (Where Farmers Dare and Burning Bridges are a couple of examples of this). Otherwise, you'll always have some tanks at your disposal pretty much from the start. The BMP-3 would be great as a support vehicle in this campaign but I just don't see any way that I could justify it's inclusion in the Rebel forces OB.

Ali Baba :

With regards to extracting the maps from the campaign, I don't think there's any way for us to do this at the moment. The best you can do is keep the game save at the beginning of a mission and treat it as a 'scenario' that can only be played against the AI. As long as you haven't exited the set-Up phase, the AI hasn't yet chosen it's AI plan so it could potentially provide a different experience for you. I do plan to release some of these maps as stand alone missions later though so you'll get your hands on some of them at some point in the future.