Muddy boots Posted July 18, 2010 Share Posted July 18, 2010 As much as I will forever worship the designers of the CM breed, I find myself being mightily frustrated with the differences between the player movement interface in the first 3 CM games and that in CM Shock Force series; fair enough they do warn us in the manual that it is a case of 'unlearning' CM, but in my humble opinion the new interface is actually a step backwards from the original and makes for some frustrating and time-consuming play. If there is one thing I could ask for in the next CM game, it would be a movement command which allows you to have one unit follow the path of another. This is of course something I noticed in the original CM, but now in shock force things take even longer, for example when I select a group of vehicles and command them all to move straight ahead, I find that only the originally selected vehicle moves in a straight line; all of the others have their waypoints set to one side or the other, so when they start moving you have what looks like an unholy melee of angry cockroaches all trying to get past eachother, and I end up having to select each vehicle individually and move them that way. So in big games the setup phase can take a good half an hour longer. It's a bit like spoon-feeding spaghetti to a dribbling baby...only not so funny Another thing is the way the same hotkey is used for various commands, mainly 'k' being used for hunt and also for bail out, depending on the menu you are in. This has caused a good few amusing incidents. Am I the only one with this grump over the movement interface? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongLeftFlank Posted July 18, 2010 Share Posted July 18, 2010 A FOLLOW command that would cause vehicles and infantry to exactly match the path of the clicked on "leader" unit, maintaining a standard tactical distance, has been requested many many times before. A related ask has been a FORMATION command that would cause a unit to remain roughly parallel (on left or right flank) with a designated leader. According to BFC, it seems such behaviours are a much harder programming challenge, and far more memory intensive, than one might think. I gather it's on their "we understand why you want this and would like to get to it someday once we have QBs, water and some other must-haves ironed out" list. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonny(FGM) Posted July 18, 2010 Share Posted July 18, 2010 No, you're not the only one. I think they had pretty much UI perfection in CMx1 and I don't know how they managed to butcher it so badly for CMx2, my main problem is with the seperate panels, fine for sorting them into different types of commands, but the fact that some commands share keys just makes it annoying. Also the group command does suck, it seems like when you select multiple units and click on a waypoint it tries to send them all to the same one. One thing i will say is that the tac AI is a lot more forgiving if you do mess your road movement plots up, if vehicles drive up each others backsides then the vehicles tend to just pause until a gap opens up instead of trying to drive around which got really frustrating in CMx1. Plus there is the fact that there are no command delays so if the 2nd vehicle in the convoy gets bogged for a sec you don't have to cancel the commands of the other units in order to sort things out again. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zwobot Posted July 18, 2010 Share Posted July 18, 2010 Btw., what ever happened to being able to move waypoints after they have been placed (to a certain degree)? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonny(FGM) Posted July 18, 2010 Share Posted July 18, 2010 It went out with the old engine. From a tactical standpoint it doesn't matter because there are no penalties for deleting and replotting waypoints like there were in CMx1, but obviously from a user friendliness/annoyingness standpoint it does matter. Although I can't say I miss them that much. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoex Posted July 19, 2010 Share Posted July 19, 2010 Muddy Boots and Jonny(FGM), do you guys realize that the command UI can be set to whatever keys you want to use for each individual command, so that two commands from different panes of the UI no longer share the same key? You can find some info on this in the CMSF manual, or check out this thread. You can even use the same keys as in CMx1 if you want (plus some more keys for the new orders available in CMSF). There are also some hotkey files from various users in that thread that you can just copy and modify. To be fair, I don't think very many people use the relative command pane structure where orders share keys and you have to switch between panes to use them. Personally I think it was one of the least useful design decisions in CMSF, totally non-intuitive and cumbersome to use. Luckily the option of assigning an individual key to each order was included... Sorry if this is not news to you, don't mean to tell you things you already know...but from your posts it sounds like you actually don't know this. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomm Posted July 19, 2010 Share Posted July 19, 2010 To be fair, I don't think very many people use the relative command pane structure where orders share keys and you have to switch between panes to use them. Personally I think it was one of the least useful design decisions in CMSF, totally non-intuitive and cumbersome to use. Luckily the option of assigning an individual key to each order was included... I'd like to know if there is anybody who actually uses them. Best regards, Thomm 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jonny(FGM) Posted July 19, 2010 Share Posted July 19, 2010 I do know you can mod the shortcuts, i've just never got round to doing it, i've only just got used to the new layout so I think changing it again is more hassle than it is worth. Does it even get around the panel problem though? IE i'm hitting a key but it's doing nothing because i have the wrong panel selected? The main point is I shouldn't have to mod them, they should have stuck with the brilliant CMx1 system 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gpig Posted July 19, 2010 Share Posted July 19, 2010 Jonny(FGM), I'd recommend trying the hotkey mod anyways. It increased my enjoyment of CMSF by 400% http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84362 p.s. read most of the thread linked to above. There are a few different hotkey mods. One may be better than the other. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoex Posted July 21, 2010 Share Posted July 21, 2010 Jonny(FGM), modding your hotkeys completely gets rid of the hassle with the different panes. An individual key is assigned to each order regardless of which pane the order is in (movement, combat, special, admin). Also regardless of which pane is currently open - when you press an assigned key, the appropriate mouse cursor appears immediately on-screen (and the associated panel shows as well). This way you are totally independent of the panes. I strongly suggest trying this out as it really is the same system as in CMx1. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AkumaSD Posted July 21, 2010 Share Posted July 21, 2010 I'd like to know if there is anybody who actually uses them. I use the default setup. It took a while to get used to the pane layout but now I'm able to use it with no problem. I tried a hotkey mod but preferred the original style. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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