unic
1601
So… I ended up picking up Battle Academy, Decisive Campaigns: TBfWtP, and Advanced Tactics Gold in the D-Day sale, as well as owning Field of Glory and Unity of Command since earlier.
(Command Ops ended up not making the cut for now… I found it too hard to understand why things were (or were not) happening, and an awful lot of clicking back and forth / using the various F-keys to try to get an overview of what was going on and what condition units were in… wish they had fitted information better onto the counters. Still, I’m keeping the demo installed, and will probably get back to give it a second chance at some point.)
So, now I was wondering, would anybody be interested in multiplayer in any of the aforementioned games? I am a beginner to multiplayer, so please be gentle (and no huge monster scenarios) (though I’ve played a lot of Checkers variants / Chess variants / other abstract games PBEM or via non-real-time servers). I should manage at least daily turns most days.
If anybody is interested, send a PM or email me at enhorning@gmail.com .
I’m up for some Fields of Glory, if you’re interested.
Canuck
1603
So apparently a new upgrade is coming for CMBN and people are upset because it sounds like either they don’t feel like they should have to pay for it or because in order to play future modules they will have to pay to upgrade or something like that. Nothing more frightening than a spurned wargamer.
Dejin
1604
Are you talking about the new Combat Mission: Fortress Italy? I guess I haven’t paid attention to CM news of late, because that completely came out of left field for me, I thought they were supposed to be doing Bulge next.
That does seem a bit strange that they are looking for a paid upgrade for the Battles in Normandy game. I would have either expected them to not upgrade BiN at all, or to give it free, with not upgrading at all being the most likely route. I wonder if this is a sign they are cash strapped.
Hasn’t Battlefront done this kind of thing before?
Dejin
1606
Yes and no. Last time the game was 8-10 years old. I don’t think expecting support for a 10-year old game is that reasonable, so charging a fee while a bit odd, didn’t seem particularly unreasonable IMO. Battles in Normandy isn’t that old, on the other hand, AFAIK there’s nothing wrong with it and these are just enhancements.
It’ll be interesting to see how much they’re planning to charge.
Geezus, their development direction seems all over the damn place.
- New standalone games (ie CM:Fortress Italy as above)
- Modules - discreet and focused content tied to a standalone game (ie CMBN:Commonwealth Forces)
- Content Packs - collections of content with no related theme (ie building or vehicle packs)
Each module and content pack potentially being highly dependent on a parent standalone game, or game version number.
What makes this worrying is that it seems that there is no unifying ‘engine’. New standalone games will have new features, which will not be patched into earlier games without paying for an upgrade. The concept of CMx2 being the engine that drives everything seems to have gone out the window.
Issues of having to pay an upgrade for pretty basic features that customers have been screaming for since CMBN 1.0 (movable waypoints, armour only target arcs, etc) aside, this is surely going to massively fracture the player base. Good luck trying to get a MP game going when everyone is going to own different games, modules and content packs.
FFS, CMBN has only had two freaking patches since launch. It was not that goddamn flawless. Seems all their time dealing with engine issues will just end up in the next standalone game and previous customers will be left fronting a bill to upgrade.
Bit of a joke really.
Dejin
1608
CMx2 was never meant to be a unifying engine from the customer side. Units developed for CM:Bulge were never meant to be backward playable in CM:Normandy. Think of the CMx2 engine as similar to a FPS game engine. If I develop Amazing FPS 1 using my game engine and then I make a second game Amazing FPS 2 with an enhanced version of the engine, there’s no expectation that I’m going to backward patch stuff. Or from an action RPG perspective, there was no expectation that Bioware would backward patch graphic enhancements from Mass Effect 2 back into Mass Effect 1, even though they were both built with the same engine.
Battlefront could do it by backward patching everything to be sure. But that would mean one of too things either (1) they don’t actually have to do much backward patching because they really don’t do any enhancing either, so all the old stuff just works or (2) they have to do a constant stream of upgrading all the old stuff every time they enhance the engine. At some point approach (2) becomes onerous and requires increasing amounts of developer time. To be honest, it’s not that unreasonable to expect someone to pay if they want a game upgraded. Think of it as similar to DLC, except in this case it is absolutely clear that the DLC was not written before the game was released.
I hadn’t heard about their “Content Packs”. What are those like? Also does anyone know what Fortress Italy means in terms of their original plan for Normandy with 3 expansions, Bulge, East Front 1, Shockforce 2, East Front 2 plan? I haven’t payed much attention for the last year, but this Fortress Italy thing definitely blindsided me, it was never in the original development plans.
Dejin
1610
Interesting thanks for the links sharaleo.
I’ll have to admit I haven’t played much with Normandy. I found the grass textures to be too painful to play with, hopefully there’s someone’s texture pack out at this point that fixes them. I played a fair bit of Shockforce and I thought the engine worked pretty well for desert terrain, but it’s limitations become readily apparent drawing the European countryside.
I certainly would not expect access to new content, but it seems silly to not patch in core features (UI updates, better command options, etc), regardless of whether your owned module actually uses them. I am almost sure Steve had committed to this sort of thing previously (particularly around UI improvements). It is not like the engine development they are doing is not being financially supported, they are selling new content and entire theatres as new games, no problems with that at all!
But consider this:
You own BN. If you buy the next module for BN (Market Garden), you will get the CMx2 v2.x executable.
Your friend owns BN. He has no interest in MG, but loves East Front. If your friend buys the third module (East Front), he will get the CMx2 v2.y executable.
Your third friend owns BN. No interest in new titles. He has the CMx2 v1.1 executable.
Now none of you can even play vanilla BN together.
WTF? Seems like a stupid thing to do to your community, particularly when it is already ‘niche’.
…but it’s limitations become readily apparent drawing the European countryside.
That’s the thing. CMx2 v2.0 apparently has new shaders and engine optimisations for improved performance. Heaps of people had bad or inconsistent performance issues with BN. Now they have to pay for those core engine improvements.
Dejin
1613
Agreed, it definitely seems bad for community unless the newer upgrades include a backward compatibility mode to allow them to interact with friends who don’t have the upgrade.
Nope, the consensus seems to be to keep separate installations or make back-ups of particular executable versions.
What amazes me is that people on the BF forum seem to accept that.
Dejin
1615
But they’ve spent an extra year developing those enhancements after release. I don’t see why there would be an expectation that they would just release them for free. I mean they could, and I would be happy to see that, but I don’t have a morale problem with them not backward patching their work. If this was coming out just a few months after release, sure, it should be free, but not after an additional year+ of work.
As I said in my last post, it’s not like we expect Bioware to backward patch Mass Effect 2 graphic enhancements into Mass Effect 1. We expect Mass Effect 2 to look better, because it’s a year later and Bioware has had a year to work on enhancements to their engine along with creating the next set of environment and story. Same deal here, Battlefront has spent the past year coming up with new stuff and along the way enhanced there engine. I don’t see why there would be any expectation that a previously released and properly running game that was not broken would be backward enhanced for free.
Speaking of Battlefront and bad graphics, I came across Strategic Command WWI recently. “Maybe it’s not very good,” I said to myself last night, looking for reviews. “It’s the only WWI grand strategy game worth playing!” the reviews said.
$45 and twenty or thirty minutes of messing around later, I decided it was money well spent. Unlike a lot of turn-based grand strategy games, it doesn’t devolve into complexity for its own sake. The manual, though poorly organized (I guess using acronyms before defining them is one way to make you read the whole thing?), is actually comprehensive while weighing in at a mere 91 pages. Combat works pretty much the same way for airplanes, ships, and land units. Research and diplomacy use very similar systems (chits in certain categories give you % chance/turn of success). Production is as simple as buy a unit and then place it. All in all, it feels very board-gamey, which isn’t a bad thing. There are two full-WWI scenarios (standard, alternate history where Italy joins the Central Powers when the US joins the war), some miniature scenarios in WWI, and a WWII scenario (surprisingly enough).
The graphics are, of course, abysmal, but fortunately they’re not very important, either. The interface could do with some more tooltips, and the minimap frame expects the game map to be the same aspect ratio as it is, which made it just about useless in the Race to the Sea scenario.
I think some degree of backwards compatibility is expected in strategy games, though-- I can play Crusader Kings II with someone who has a different subset of DLC than I do. More relevantly, I’m pretty sure I can also play Company of Heroes with all the expansions with someone who doesn’t have any of them. Engine improvements do get backported a lot in these sorts of games.
I would argue that plenty of people on the BF forums considered BN slightly broken and in need of attention at launch. Serious frame rate issues, lack of features that seemed obvious inclusions, crappy UI, unintuitive controls. Some of that is subjective of course.
But I would also argue that most of BF’s year since launch has been spent creating new content. CMBN:Commonwealth Forces, CM:Fortress Italy (which it seems was a bit of a bluebird), IOS version of CM, development on CM:Market Garden and East Front. I have zero problems paying for any of that.
Thing is, I won’t, because they don’t really seem all that interested in supporting existing customers. Any improvements, tweaks or enhancements that do not add content are still being tied to new purchases.
I don’t know and really I don’t mean to sound entitled. Maybe we are just spoiled by the kind of support we see from other developers these days (SPAZ, Minecraft, Endless Space, Distant Worlds, heck even SOTS2). Maybe I just expect a little more from a developer these days.
Canuck
1619
What happened to reasonably priced modules? I looks like if I want to play a Normandy game I have to pay $45. If I want to play an Italian campaign then I have to pay $55!
At this point I could probably save money by getting into one of those collectible train games.
See, you haven’t been listening! :)
Italy is not a module - it is a standalone game, so you play full price. Commonwealth Forces is a module that requires CMBN and is cheaper.
See, apparently they use different engines. They added some features to CMx2 and called it CMx2 v2 so Italy is a new game.
Clear?
