News from the Brits Module & Patch 1.2?

[Paper Tiger]

I'd be VERY disappointed if RED air power wasn't included in the future modern era titles. However, judging from some of Steve's earlier posts about this I'm confident that it will be in.

Just as long as scenario designers don't give both sides air support in the same mission. Now THAT would be unrealistic.

[Scipio]

I took this from another threat:

...As I've said earlier, the coding, artwork, voices, etc. are all done. We're working on the Campaign and stand alone battles only. We learned our lesson with the Marines Campaign's glitches, so we're taking our time getting the campaign ready. We also learned our lesson about how long the TO&E takes compared to everything else, so as I've said before we've recoding the entire TO&E structures and tools to address that issue. Unfortunately, since nobody's done anything like this before (complexity is a major component) there's a lot of "learn on the job" stuff going on here. That despite the fact that we've been in this business for what seems an eternity some days ...

Steve

If I understood Steve right, the most timeconsuming thing on the Brits module is a)battles and campaigns and b)TO&E, because that have recoded this, but it's one time effort and can be done later much easier.

Well then. If artwork and coding can be done relativ easy, how about an 'units only' module, including shall we say, the IDF, the French and - what's important missing for the Syrians? Only the T-80s come to my mind.

Unrealistic? Maybe.

Would it harm future sales, even if people create some complete new wars from this - but who cares? It's unlikely that we return to a modern war in a desert setting within the next 5 or 6 years, if ever!

[Battlefront.com]

Some things can be done in parallel, some things have to be done in sequential order. Models, for example, can be done at any time and then gather dust until they need to get into the game. But they still take the same amount of time to do no matter when they are done. It's just that with some stuff, like models, we have more flexibility as to where it goes in the development schedule.

Some things are also possible to live without for a while. Models are another good example of this. While it does screw things up a little to have placeholder models in the game, if the placeholder is "close enough" (like T-62 vs. T-62MV or Abrams M1A2 vs. Abrams M1A2 SEP) there isn't much game impact. So if the artist has to stop and do something else for a different project for a couple of days it doesn't tend to screw up anything.

This is not true for things like TO&E. TO&E takes a long, long time to research, input, test, tweak, re-research, test, tweak, etc. There's so many details that it's impossible to get it all in and correct quickly. But until the TO&E is "frozen" we can't make scenarios or, especially, the campaign because if the TO&E changes that makes the already made stuff out-of-date (usual case) or crash (worst case). And since scenarios and campaigns take a long time themselves to make, test, tweak, retest, tweak, etc. there's a cumulative total elapsed time.

With the British Module we figured out that the way we had TO&E setup was causing a pretty big bottleneck. It was too time consuming to set up, too error prone, and too difficult to efficiently go back and tweak. So I've taken care of that problem for Normandy along with Charles by introducing a streamlined TO&E system which better conforms to how the TO&E needs to be rather than how we thought it should be back in 2005.

Now, as for the vehicle pack... the artwork for the British Module was pretty much finished a long time ago, true enough. But those artists have moved onto doing Normandy and its Modules. So it's not like the artists are sitting around idle with nothing to do. Therefore, adding a CM:SF vehicle pack to the mix means taking them away from Normandy and the other stuff they are working on. We could theoretically hire another artist, but we don't see that as being viable for a number of reasons. Therefore, we're sticking to our plan of NATO being the last CM:SF Module.

Steve

[Scipio]

Well, I didn't meant to take resources away from the Normandy game. As long as German Leopards will be once in, I'm fine anyway . I just had this idea since people frequently ask for IDF forces, for example.

For me personally it would be much more important that we get detailed visual vehicel damage modelled (in CM:N and following). Right now it's pretty much the same as in CMBO, what's pitty. I think it would add 100% fun to see parts or even a whole turret flying away, broken tracks and such.

More realistic buildings and villages/town with a naturally grown look is another important point.

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

Original name for this post is News from the Brits Module & Patch 1.2

Answer is something like everything is going good, we are just doing campaign and scenarios...

I think if it will be so "good" we will have already option to buy this game in pre-order? Or am i wrong?