Battlefront... is it lonely at the TOP?

[Jaws]

Well I am playing only Battlefront wargames the last years. Waiting like a child of CM Normandy and it seems you guys (Battlefront) are at the TOP of wargaming. Only 1 other wargame I play (War in the Pacific (Expansion coming soon)). Am I the only one or are there good other wargames around I missed? Games like Empire Total War (nice game) is is not a wargame for me.

Congratulations with this achievement Battlefront.

[Topo]

Have you tried "Conquest of the Aegean" of the "Airborne Assault" series?

It's a different game, but iMHO is another great game.

saluti!

[Bopnc]

Battlefront is "lonely at the TOP" on his sector, but some others wargames are very good in a different way (and different timeframes).

I suggest you to take a brief look at :

- Ageod games, mainly "American civil war" (a must have)

- The HPS series (old fashion wargames, but historically accurate)

- the Airborne Assault series ("Conquest of the Aegean")

- "Steel beast Pro PE" (a modern tank simulator, but not really different from a wargame by some aspects)

- "Hearts of iron II" from Paradox (HOI III is scheduled before the end of the year)

- The "close combat" series (with some mods)

- "Battlefront" (the game from Matrix)

- ....

[Meach]

I played several other companies efforts and none seem to capture my interest like BFC's products. For every little thing that seems cool or innovative there are about a dozen other things done better by BFC.

If I win the lottery I think a hefty investment in the company to produce some titles that I want to see would be on the cards

I can imagine Steve saying..."Uhh CM:ACW....thanks, but no thanks."

[Redwolf]

TacOps.

TOAW.

AA, as said above.

[meryphillia]

And when we talk about CMSF don't forget Armored Brigade as well.

[Lethaface]

I reckon they have some magic goin on, since they attract Grogs as well as RTS fans who are looking for some deeper gameplay without having to much hassle.

CMSF is the only 'wargame' I play, hehe. I do enjoy RTS games and some simulators but I cant take the effort to play a game that looks like a boardgame on a PC or when I have to read a serie of books before being able to make any move.

However since CMSF, it is difficult to go back to a rock paper scissor game without deeper gameplay. Got acquainted wtih BF when I bought ToW, because of the nice screens Tried a CMx1 demo before but decided it was not my thing because of the turnbased gameplay.

[Jaws]

Thanks for reply. I will check the websites.

[007_5th]

The best American Civil War games in my book (since sid meier's gettysburg which anyone into ACW should check out) are the Take Command series and the new series (WAR3DII) by many of the same guys.

http://www.madminutegames.com/ -Take command 1/2 Manassas

The new game will be at Gettysburg,

http://www.norbsoftware.com/Portal/

Between those three games and what Battlefront offers. I'm fully content in the wargaming realm. And kinda sorta the Total War series, but it has grown old for me. Empires was a disapointment.

[DaveDash]

I am extremely happy BFC did Shock Force. I'd been yearning for a modern combat war sim for ages. The only other thing out there really was ArmA (and maybe TacOps?), and I question ArmA's "realism".

There was this one game I used to play quite a bit, called "Peoples General". It was based on the old SSI Allied General games. Basically a modern conflict of China/N.Korea vs everyone. It was pretty cool, after all the mods etc.

[Battlefront.com]

Any company that honestly doesn't like competition is a company that is destined for failure (eventually). Competition keeps innovation alive. We have some great titles to offer a wide range of wargamers, from more traditional to cutting edge.

Unfortunately for us, as developers of Combat Mission, we don't have a lot of competition within our niche. I really do mean "unfortunately" because this market could easily absorb a couple more developers like us without cutting into each others' sales. Yes, there other wargames out there and yes some of them are quite good, but there isn't a lot for us (as developers) to learn from them because nearly all are 2D and hardly any are at our scale. Some are a decade behind CMAK in terms of advancing the state of the art in wargaming.

What we've had to keep our eye on are the FPS and RTS games. Not to copy them, but to make sure we don't become them They have good things to take away and incorporate into wargaming, but trying to be like them is a death sentence for us. So yeah... we'll take a look at this or that whiz-bang 3D feature or bit of UI because it's directly applicable to a part of what CM is. Other than that, we're pretty much doing our own thing.

The upside of that is we are continuing to push wargaming into new territory, the bad part is that being a trailblazer (a lone trailblazer) means we have to take all the heat for progress. If there were 5 wargames out there that were similar to Combat Mission the pain and gain could be shared. Not that we really mind keeping the gain to ourselves

Steve

[Redwolf]

Steve, you could easily fix that by OpenSourcing CMBB/CMAK

Boosts the total audience for that class of games without realistically ever going 1:1 and fine detail like CMx2 does.

[General_solomon]

The main things that drew me to cmsf was the real time and 1:1. The other game that tried to accomplish 1:1 was squad assault. it came out a few years ago and most computers could not run it and people lost interest. Even though it had a map editor like cmsf. not as easy as cmsf but you could make your own maps.

i am installed it again in preparation for cm:Normandy.

like i have alway put out my challenge: find a game like cmsf. you can't, i tried.

btw when can we expect the nato module after the release british forces.

[Battlefront.com]

Redwolf,

Steve, you could easily fix that by OpenSourcing CMBB/CMAK

Heh... nice try

Boosts the total audience for that class of games without realistically ever going 1:1 and fine detail like CMx2 does.

The thing is we already have that market, so it probably wouldn't do much for us. What it would do is kill off current CMx1 sales which, as small as they are proportional to everything else, still bring in cash. Therefore, going OpenSource would on balance cost us money even if zero new features were added. Whatever features could be added (remember, we think the code is horrible to work with and we're the ones that made it ) probably wouldn't be the sort that would push the envelope. If we thought that were possible we'd still be working with the code ourselves

General_Solomon,

like i have alway put out my challenge: find a game like cmsf. you can't, i tried.

A couple of games are mentioned here and there, but the comparisons break down pretty quickly after "this other game is also 3D". As I've said, nobody but us appear stupid enough to make such a complex and detailed game for such a small audience

NATO will likely show up MUCH faster than British took us to make. Lots of one time investments should start to pay off starting with that one. Things get only easier after. Especially for the thing that has really been dogging us... internal construction of TO&E. Charles and I just finished up the data redesign a few hours ago and oh boy am I going to be a much happier camper once it's implemented

Steve

[theFightingSeabee]

Coincidentally, so are we!

[silverstars]

NATO will likely show up MUCH faster than British took us to make. Lots of one time investments should start to pay off starting with that one. Things get only easier after. Especially for the thing that has really been dogging us... internal construction of TO&E. Charles and I just finished up the data redesign a few hours ago and oh boy am I going to be a much happier camper once it's implemented

Out of curiosity Steve, will this data redesign for TO&E be significant in ways other then speeding up your end? For instance, will it possibly become feasible for the user to edit TO&E for user-made scenarios? Or use it to make up your own versions of Infantry companies, Heavy Weapons companies, and so forth? And if so, will this play a part in the new quick-battle system for CM:France '44?

[Battlefront.com]

For now it's something which makes development a lot easier, faster, and more accurate. This in turn gets the TO&E to scenarios makers faster, which allows them to make real scenarios sooner, and that means play balancing is also sooner.

One tiny problem with this... it won't do any good for NATO because in order to use this new system now I'd have to go back over the thousands of existing entries (yes, thousands, which is 10s of thousands of individual lines ) and conform them to the new system. Since we only have the NATO Module left to do this enormous amount of effort would take longer than it would to just stick with the current system. Normandy will be the first game built with the new system. Which should be OK since NATO is just about finished except for the TO&E anyway, so that's really the only big thing that we have to concentrate on.

Now, in the future the new TO&E data format will allow us to do some interesting new things with graphics because they'll be easier to define. But we don't know how much of that stuff we'll get into Normandy, so no specifics can be given at this point.

As for the end user UI of arranging/purchasing units and what not... completely different thing. That's higher level UI which really doesn't care how the TO&E data is organized. So old or new TO&E system is just as good from that perspective.

Steve

[Thomm]

... I'd have to go back over the thousands of existing entries (yes, thousands, which is 10s of thousands of individual lines ) and conform them to the new system.

I understand the implications of your statement, but nobody would ever do that manually. Let Charles write a converter program.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Meach]

Would there be a NATO and Brits double pack done? If they are so close to completion together then later on down the road folks might want to buy both at once?

[BigDork]

Would there be a NATO and Brits double pack done? If they are so close to completion together then later on down the road folks might want to buy both at once?

I think that BFC may shoot themselves in the foot if they answer that question right now. A lot of people would probably hold off on buying Brits and just hold out for the double-pack.

Now I could imagine a time down the road a year or more from now where maybe they release CMSF Ultimate or something like that but at this time I don't think it would make the most sense from a business aspect.

[zwobot]

I don't think Battlefront will release the British Forces and NATO close together because they want to keep us entertained until CM Normandy will be released. So I guess Brits will come in one or two months and a few months later we will see NATO.

[Redwolf]

The thing is we already have that market, so it probably wouldn't do much for us. What it would do is kill off current CMx1 sales which, as small as they are proportional to everything else, still bring in cash. Therefore, going OpenSource would on balance cost us money even if zero new features were added. Whatever features could be added (remember, we think the code is horrible to work with and we're the ones that made it ) probably wouldn't be the sort that would push the envelope. If we thought that were possible we'd still be working with the code ourselves

I'm not seriously thinking this can go through, but just as a correction:

the trick here is that you OpenSource the *.exe file so that people can modify the code (for compatibility, bugfixes or functionality, whatever they like) - but you do not OpenSource the artwork.

This is the same that iD software did with the Doom1/2 and Quake1/2/3 source. A user can download a new *.exe file that some OpenSource group made - but to use it you have to plug in the textures and sounds from the game CD that you bought for money.

Theoretically people can make sets of from-scratch artwork and then there would be a playable game without paying you. But that would be some time off, in the case of the iD games it took years. The people who feel passionately enough about the game to hack up the source code own the commerical instance anyway and they won't spend their time on work that doesn't benefit them such as trying to "free" the artwork.

I speculate that CMx1 might see a boost in sales when a new *.exe file appears with some bugs fixed (say the CMBB fortifications bug and no command delay in turn 1), the 1600x1200 resolution limit lifted and not to mention something can probably done to correct the DX10 NVidia situation. Of course you probably won't see much of it since people will tend to buy the cheapest source of the artwork which would be the CDV antology, but still, it would be sales and I don't think the BFC/CDV mix would change much from today.

Of course people might pirate the artwork, but I see no reason why the percentage of piracy would be higher than it already is right now. On the contrary, OpenSource groups usually strongly nudge their users to obey to fulfill remaining licensing restrictions.

[TempV]

I put CM to the top of tactical wargames (battalion/company level). As for operational scale games nothing beats Decisive Battles series and their derivatives, Battlefront and Kharkov: Disaster at Donets, IMHO. Of course there is little competition in both of sub-genres. "New" Close Combats are just remaded and resolded.

[kipanderson]

Hi,

My interest in CM comes from a military history view point. The only PC games I play are the CM series the Take Command series.

[sNIP]

In their own way, in Civil War terms, the equal of CM.

No other wargame company comes even close to Battlefront.. in my very prejudice view… .

All the best,

Kip.

[Battlefront.com]

Thomm,

I understand the implications of your statement, but nobody would ever do that manually. Let Charles write a converter program.

You mean the guy who already has too much on his plate, or someone else? Seriously though, of course a programmer could write a tool to batch process the TO&E files. We just don't think it's worth the effort at this point in time. If we were just working on the Marines or British Modules now... different story. But we're only talking about me having to suffer through this for NATO. And since there's absolutely no difference to the customer (unless we spent a lot of art and other resources, which costs time too), it's not worth the expense from our perspective.

Redwolf,

Theoretically people can make sets of from-scratch artwork and then there would be a playable game without paying you.

hehe... you should have said "theoretically people might pay for what they can get for free" There's already enough artwork out there as free Mods that there is no theory about making such artwork because it already exists.

As I've said hundreds of times before... we have looked at this dozens of different ways at different times and from our perspective it makes no business sense to go down the OpenSource road. This is coming from guys whose very existence is daily proof that we don't follow conventional wisdom, therefore if anybody should see overall benefits from such a thing it should be us. And we don't. Not for a lack of looking and thinking, but because we understand our business far better than any customer does.

If people really do want us to rethink our entire business model then we'd start by first asking ourselves "why the [exploitive] are we putting so much of our lives into products which appeal to small numbers of people who have an ingrain need to complain regardless of how happy they are playing them. And not only complain right after getting a hold of them, but complain consistently for 6-10 years and thousands of hours of play."

This, my good friends, is a question you do not want us to sit down and seriously ask ourselves

Steve