Lt.Chris Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 is battlefront now intending to do a co-op module next to tie off one of the biggest holes in the MP of this game? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Field Marshal Blücher Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Not that I've heard of. The next module is NATO forces (well, some of them anyway. Germans, Dutch, and Canadians). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lt.Chris Posted August 5, 2009 Author Share Posted August 5, 2009 and then is co-op module after? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVulture Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Nothing has been said about when, or if, co-play is making an appearance. Steve has said that it is something they want to do, but it is a lot of work and I don't know of anything that has been said about how far up or down the priority list it is. I think you'd better consider it "on the wish list but not on the timetable" in the absence of any further updates from Steve. And don't hold your breath. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 5, 2009 Share Posted August 5, 2009 Yup, no breath holding please The amount of work to make this a commercially viable feature is massive. CoPlay without the ability to have the AI competently act as a "wingman" is not something we feel has much chance of giving us a decent return on investment. With a competent "wingman" AI... yup, a real winner of a feature for sure. Unfortunately, the engineering for the networking, UI between players, and wingman AI is too much for us to tackle in one go over the short term. CoPlay, with wingman AI, will happen at some point down the road. The only way we see it happening sooner is if we land a military contract since that's the #1 feature they are after. The resources that would provide us would fix things up real nice. However, we're not actively trying to sell the military on CMx2 because we've run into a chicken and egg situation. We know various militaries want CMx2 with CoPlay, but until we have CoPlay already in and working they aren't very interested in it. But that's not practical without military funding. The result is we've had many (and I do mean MANY) promising starts which wind up faltering because someone with control of the checkbook doesn't have the required imagination/understanding to sign off on the project. Each attempt sucks up our time and energy and we're tired of going through the hoops only to have it go nowhere. The closest we got was 2000/2002 timeframe and that's why, ever since then, we're not out there actively looking. Chasing military contracts is a lot less profitable than making commercial products. Such is life, eh? Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASL Veteran Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Yup, no breath holding please The amount of work to make this a commercially viable feature is massive. CoPlay without the ability to have the AI competently act as a "wingman" is not something we feel has much chance of giving us a decent return on investment. With a competent "wingman" AI... yup, a real winner of a feature for sure. Unfortunately, the engineering for the networking, UI between players, and wingman AI is too much for us to tackle in one go over the short term. CoPlay, with wingman AI, will happen at some point down the road. The only way we see it happening sooner is if we land a military contract since that's the #1 feature they are after. The resources that would provide us would fix things up real nice. However, we're not actively trying to sell the military on CMx2 because we've run into a chicken and egg situation. We know various militaries want CMx2 with CoPlay, but until we have CoPlay already in and working they aren't very interested in it. But that's not practical without military funding. The result is we've had many (and I do mean MANY) promising starts which wind up faltering because someone with control of the checkbook doesn't have the required imagination/understanding to sign off on the project. Each attempt sucks up our time and energy and we're tired of going through the hoops only to have it go nowhere. The closest we got was 2000/2002 timeframe and that's why, ever since then, we're not out there actively looking. Chasing military contracts is a lot less profitable than making commercial products. Such is life, eh? Steve Your strategy for getting pentagon funding is all wrong . You need to be going after your congressman to get a congressional earmark. Just think how easy it would be to get funding for co play if you were operating out of Pennsylvania. Murtha could get you funding for co play with the stroke of his pen. The strategy needs to be to get Murtha playing CM, then if he demands co play he can make it happen. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dan/california Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Any congressman really, or any congressman's kid perhaps. A few of them have family in the military, you should send them all a free copy. And send the people who make the M-32 the bill. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
007_5th Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Why do you need a "wingman" AI? Why wouldn't you just have all the forces under control of either the separate players, or if someone gets dropped or what have you they fall under the remaining player(with handy notification of your new situation)? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlowMotion Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Yes, I think most people who play CM games for fun would see this "no wingman AI" CoPlay as just great. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Destraex Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 I agree you need wingman AI for this to work. Or at least opposing AI. Opposing AI would be the first step and an hopefully easy one. Then the AI would not have to be changed at all. Humans would just have there forces split between them into two.... Thats it, done. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 007_5th, Why do you need a "wingman" AI? Why wouldn't you just have all the forces under control of either the separate players, or if someone gets dropped or what have you they fall under the remaining player(with handy notification of your new situation)? The vast and overwhelming majority of our customers play most of their games, if not all of them, solo. Therefore, the ability to play with a dozen or more people has zero appeal to them. Even a fair number of active multi-player guys say they have no interest in this because they either play PBEM (which is impractical with CoPlay) or because they have a hard enough time finding even one other player with the same schedule to play against. In short, all the work necessary to have CoPlay without wingman AI is completely disproportional to the value it adds to the average CM gamer. Therefore, it's probably one of the worst things we could spend our time on from our perspective as a business and the customers' perspective as, er, customers CoPlay with wingmen AIs allows a single player to fight a larger battle while commanding a much smaller force. Or, if desired, commanding no forces and simply instructing the AI to do stuff for him. The latter is something I think is about as exciting as watching paint dry... but it's something that comes along "for free" with the other stuff, so there is no reason I can think of now that would preclude us from offering this as an option. A restricted option, probably, but still an option. The AI work for wingmen would be applicable to the Computer Player AI as well. So if it's available for one side it's available for the other. Again... it's a great feature with massive potential. We just don't see it getting done any time soon because it doesn't make sense to stop development on everything else for the better part of an entire year just for this one feature. Better to slip it in over time or get Combat Mission funding slipped into the Farm Bill, since that bloated POS never, ever gets voted down no matter what complete and utter unrelated pork is thrown into it. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CptWasp Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Dear Battlefront, Have you already done a real poll amongst players about coop play with opponent AI? I think it would be interesting for 90% of TCP/IP gamers. Are they few? I don't know. But it's the first feature I asked for when buying CMSF 2 years ago. I can live without coop play, but it would be very nice! I hate AI controlled wingmen, never found one doing well. But in real time large scenarios require a lot of pausing (see my thread about the need of a player log), and it would be wonderful to divide units with a good friend and deliver havoc on enemies! Just my 2 cents 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabal23 Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 You know they grants for that type of thing all the time. My sister writes grants for a college for medical /scientific type things and she get millions for the most ridiculous things. Most time it is young students doing the work so a PHD can go publish something. I think you need to look at places like MIT or other esteemed tech colleges and see if you can match interests with a young geek needing a resume builder. I agree with one of the other posters, I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Forget the military. Go academic and if all else fails there is a ton of stimulus money floating around, you just have to know where to look for it. You guys are in a unique position because your product can have very practical applications. Look at what Bohemia did with the VBS series. Granted that is a whole different type of program with very specific audience and a hefty price tag. But from that they have spawned ARMA and Flashpoint. Both destined to be commercially successful on their future releases. I would love to see you make money off another sector and then be able to give us everything our wee hearts desire. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt.Rock of Easy Company Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 I think the reason multiplayer is such a low key element of CMSF right now is because it is harder than it should be to get a game set up. Unless you have friends or clanmates that play as well, getting a multi-player game running is near impossible. What Combat Mission needs is a server browser capability, like most FPS's (and TOW). I think the amount of people who play CM multiplayer would skyrocket, as well as garnering more sales from MP centric wargamers. You could even go as far as have a join-in-progress ability for servers, for missions that have reinforcements that show up (if the option was set at the start of the server). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlowMotion Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 I think CM CoPlay would be best with 2-3 players on one side, rather than 10+ in one game. Getting 10 players would be very difficult. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apocalypse 31 Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Yup, no breath holding please The amount of work to make this a commercially viable feature is massive. CoPlay without the ability to have the AI competently act as a "wingman" is not something we feel has much chance of giving us a decent return on investment. With a competent "wingman" AI... yup, a real winner of a feature for sure. Unfortunately, the engineering for the networking, UI between players, and wingman AI is too much for us to tackle in one go over the short term. CoPlay, with wingman AI, will happen at some point down the road. The only way we see it happening sooner is if we land a military contract since that's the #1 feature they are after. The resources that would provide us would fix things up real nice. However, we're not actively trying to sell the military on CMx2 because we've run into a chicken and egg situation. We know various militaries want CMx2 with CoPlay, but until we have CoPlay already in and working they aren't very interested in it. But that's not practical without military funding. The result is we've had many (and I do mean MANY) promising starts which wind up faltering because someone with control of the checkbook doesn't have the required imagination/understanding to sign off on the project. Each attempt sucks up our time and energy and we're tired of going through the hoops only to have it go nowhere. The closest we got was 2000/2002 timeframe and that's why, ever since then, we're not out there actively looking. Chasing military contracts is a lot less profitable than making commercial products. Such is life, eh? Steve I'd say dont worry about CoPlay AI wingmen. Like many other games out there, if a player isnt detected, then the units automatically go to the human player. I'd just like it for me and my buddy(s) to tackle some of the missions together. Not really interested in 2v2 or any of that, but hey...its always a bonus. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkEzra Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 007_5th, ...Better to slip it in over time or get Combat Mission funding slipped into the Farm Bill, since that bloated POS never, ever gets voted down no matter what complete and utter unrelated pork is thrown into it. Steve "I'm Just a Farmer" Max Yagar, Woodstock 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 No doubt there are many, in numerical terms, that would love to have CoPlay in any form. But percentage wise, it's a very small portion of our customer base. CoPlay with wingman AI... now THAT is something a big chunk of people would absolutely go gah-gah over. However, it's just too much to do all at once so we're going to have to break it up into chunks over time. Yup, having a multi-player lobby is also required. More coding, testing, and support for that too. We've had AI programmers in the academic world try for grants before. Didn't work out. We'll make it work, eventually. But unless someone else underwrites the development (and it is expensive by our standards), it's going to take quite a while before we can have it ready for you. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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