CM:N Safe to say 2011?

[Pvt. Ryan]

Thanks for the info Steve, out of curiosity, how long does implimenting "one fairly simple thing" take? (barring the dreaded "unforseen consequences" of course) I'm not trying to nail you down, btw, I know there may be other development aspects that need to take priority over said "one fairly simple thing" and that you may not get around to it for some time as a result.

The one fairly simple thing is probably the title.

[MeatEtr]

I plan on living to the ripe old age of 100, barring any unforseen circumstances.

[Dietrich]

I have better things to do with my time than worry about something I hate...I'd rather listen to and talk about bands I love.

Sadly, many folks would disagree. High school teaches folks that. When you bring up something you like, you open yourself to being mocked and ridiculed, and such mockery/ridicule feeds on itself. When you bring up something you hate, others can jump on bandwagon-style and concur, à la "oh yeah, I hate that...", "you're right, that sucks", and so forth. Hence the (seemingly) greater prevalence of folks spending more time bitching/ridiculing than lauding/encouraging.

Negativity is cooler than its opposite, because one of the easiest ways to make yourself look good is to make others look bad.

[AslakH]

But the RTS guys...they move on from their hate and disdain...too many games coming out rapid fire for them to linger on one negative...

It's those self proscribed "Real Wargamers" who are the worst ones....basically it boils down to wrath of a woman scorned and all that...they think CM betrayed them by not staying stuck in 2000 so they must constantly ridicule and lash out. They are the fat ugly girl who gets dumped for the double D hottie at the prom.

It's like this, I hate the band Poison...I have for over twenty years...nobody knew that until just now...because I have better things to do with my time than worry about something I hate...I'd rather listen to and talk about bands I love. The guys above, the "Real Wargamers" they'd rather rub poop on their selves like war paint and poke each other with sticks until mouths foam than give up that hatred. LOL. Bizarre.

Mord.

I concur.

I don't mind when people use "lol" on the internet. That's appropriate.

However - It brings my piss to a boil when they say it in a real conversation. I'd rather have the courtesy "Heh...." with the additional awkward silence.

But I will not linger on this one negative thing.

Oh, and if CM:N is announced in october I will literally sweat blood looking at the new screenshots, while oscillating like a crackbaby in anticipation to pre-order.

[Rayak47]

So three months out? Time for a title and a link?!!

[Phoenix]

The game engine for Normandy will be feature "complete", excepting one fairly simple thing,

probably next week. The question then is... how long will it take to polish everything?

It's a question we never have a good answer for, but 3 months for polishing would be rather long.

Steve

Oh Uncle Steve please make this happen. I have 2 weeks off in December and I would like nothing better than to spend 90% of it in front of CM-N.

[panzermartin]

Only three months away? That is disappointing. Where is the tension building? Even the germans knew more about D-Day than we do about CM:N

[Dietrich]

Or at least they thought they knew more about D-Day. Contrary to the snide and bitter claims of some, CM:N isn't being prepared under a massive deception plan à la Operation Bodyguard/Operation Fortitude. Then again, those snide and bitter contrarians would assert that CM:N actually isn't being prepared at all.

[Rayak47]

I need to go back and look at those bones, maybe the vehicles are all inflatables!

[Battlefront.com]

The one "simple thing" I mentioned is not something that will run into technical issues. It's just at the end of our ToDo List. The significant coding work is wrapped up as of next week. No doubt a few more "simple things" will slip in before and after we ship, but for the most part what we have to do is debug and tweak what is in the game instead of putting in big new stuff.

Steve

[GSX]

The one "simple thing" I mentioned is not something that will run into technical issues. It's just at the end of our ToDo List. The significant coding work is wrapped up as of next week. No doubt a few more "simple things" will slip in before and after we ship, but for the most part what we have to do is debug and tweak what is in the game instead of putting in big new stuff.

Steve

Is the campaign done?

[Lt Belenko]

Oh Uncle Steve please make this happen. I have 2 weeks off in December and I would like nothing better than to spend 90% of it in front of CM-N.

That's what I'm talking about!!!

When I got Panzer Blitz for Christmas in 1971 (9th grade), the family did its usual Midnight Mass after which we opened presents. I didn't sleep again until around 10 AM on the 26th, after reading the rules 25 to 30 times. And energy drinks weren't even invented at the time.

[sfhand]

I really hope that moveable waypoints are a simple thing that slips in prior to release...

[dan/california]

OK, Steve just said three months, probably. But if you apply the strict rule of doubling all of Steve's time estimates that has proven an excellent, if somewhat optimistic, guide so far.............

[Battlefront.com]

Campaigns don't fall into my commentary on coding. Separate things. Campaigns, typically, are the final thing completed. So no, the Campaigns are not done. If they were we'd probably be shipping next week, which we're not

Steve

[Mord]

Gonna edit this one too.

Mord.

[Michael Emrys]

Sadly, many folks would disagree. High school teaches folks that. When you bring up something you like, you open yourself to being mocked and ridiculed, and such mockery/ridicule feeds on itself. When you bring up something you hate, others can jump on bandwagon-style and concur, à la "oh yeah, I hate that...", "you're right, that sucks", and so forth. Hence the (seemingly) greater prevalence of folks spending more time bitching/ridiculing than lauding/encouraging.

Negativity is cooler than its opposite, because one of the easiest ways to make yourself look good is to make others look bad.

But then—as you say—that's adolescent behavior. Grownups, if they are truly grown up, have moved on to other ways to cope.

Michael

[undercovergeek]

How 'imminent' does it need to be before you release upon us a forum and a hatful of screenshots?

I havent got the time in stealth mode (at work) to check how long before release there was a CM:A forum

[umlaut]

Or at least they thought they knew more about D-Day. Contrary to the snide and bitter claims of some, CM:N isn't being prepared under a massive deception plan à la Operation Bodyguard/Operation Fortitude. Then again, those snide and bitter contrarians would assert that CM:N actually isn't being prepared at all.

LOL

I actually hope that Battlefront is "doing a Operation Fortitude", though: I hope they catch us all completely off guard by releasing CM:Ostfront next week.

Only problem being that this time the game will be hugely balanced in favor of the soviet side - as the majority of the axis troops will be in France, awaiting CM:N

:-D

[AslakH]

Is this relevant to us who puts BFC way up there on the list of awesome?

BFC is above scented candles and oatmeal(I love the stuff), but still below guitars and women.

I have it like this each time we are blessed with new bones.

link to the relevance:

[Gromit]

If I was betting on it, late November to December would seem a reasonable timeframe for release. Maybe this game is going to be different, but the "debug and polish" phase usually ends up taking a couple of months time at the bare minimum. We shall see, eh?

You guys talking about Wargaming and all got me thinking about something that happened to me just recently. It's been many years since I did any miniatures gaming, but I stopped by my local gaming store- yeah, I know, my first mistake!- and found myself enthralled with the game Flames of War, a 15mm WW2 miniatures ruleset and line of figs that is now in its second edition. If you haven't seen it, FoW is pretty neat. Developed by a couple New Zealanders (what's in the water down there anyway? I gotta get some) and well supported, it seems to push almost all of those wargaming buttons I have.

You know the ones; most harken back to when I was a boy and there is an everlasting link it seems. Ever tried to explain to someone outside our little "community" why you take so much pleasure in the pursuit of wargaming? Not very easy is it? I can't say that my explanations are any better than the next wargamer, and I am empathetic enough to realize that no matter how I relate said interest, it is lost on these outsiders. *shrug* Maybe I am just not very good at explaining it.

Does getting a warm, fuzzy feeling from painting, modelling, organizing and pushing miniatures (or pixeltruppen for that matter) around on a imaginary battlefield make me some kind of nut? I have never worried too much on it, but figure it is some deep buried hunter/warrior gene we guys carry around with us that once unlocked as an adolescent is never quite satisfied, regardless the size of our brain and intellect. I have a number of hobbies and interests other than wargaming, but none of them have been around as long.

All I know for sure is that I am a (war)gamer and will likely remain so until I can no longer see the miniatures or screen in front of me.

Bring on TWMNBN!

[Erwin]

many many eons ago I read a psych analysis that concluded that gameplayers do that due to a feeling of powerlessness in RL. They can at least wield power over their toys. So, yes, you are some kind of nut.

[Gromit]

Yeesh! Tough crowd...

[c3k]

June 6th, 2011!

[Battlefront.com]

This is an old discussion which, basically, boils down to hype vs. delivery. The majority of games out there hype, hype, hype for as long as they can so they can be noticed when (and if) they release. Hyping takes a lot of energy. For this most companies have dedicated PR/Marketing departments. Even at Impressions (a fairly small developer with a small budget) we had dedicated people doing this, plus a room full of people at Sierra's HQ. Keeping such people employed costs money. A lot of money. And anything they do costs money. At Impressions we probably had several tens of thousands of dollars in expenses (plus salary time) spent on a game before it even reached beta. If we, Battlefront, tried to mimic this we'd be out of business pretty quickly.

And why would we need to do this anyway? Our games basically sell themselves because we're one of the biggest names in a very small niche. Also, as I've said before, the speed of sales is completely not important to us, so we don't really care about frontloading our sales. They kinda of do that on their own anyway.

What this means is we're keeping our cards close to our chest mostly because we're not dedicating resources to hyping something that doesn't need to be hyped. Cost containment? Yup

Having said that, the primary reason you guys haven't seen much of Normandy lately is we've been extremely busy with Afghanistan and NATO releases, not to mention our other 3rd party stuff. There's only so much we can do at one time, and since we don't need to be promoting Normandy right now it's taken a PR backseat to things which are (obviously) more immediate.

Note that with Afghanistan done and NATO nearly so... Normandy will get it's time in the spotlight soon!

Steve