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What about a realtime SP?

 
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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [World War II] >> Steel Panthers World At War & Mega Campaigns >> What about a realtime SP? Page: [1]
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What about a realtime SP? - 7/29/2001 9:10:00 AM   
Khan7

 

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Though Grigsby and Co. may work their butts off trying to improve and finetune SP, it will never be a fully realistic game until it can be made realtime. And the best thing about this is that no time compression would even be necessary-- the game in its current turnbased form already takes hella longer than it would in real life! Anyway, I can say without doubt that I would literally pay up to $100 for a high-quality realtime SP. If I'm any indication, it could be quite profitable, as well as being a true monument in the evolution of wargames. A realtime game would also have the chance for more widespread appeal (though I know pleasing the masses has never been a goal of the great guys at Matrix). So I'm basically just throwing that out there, I will probably be back later to give some specific ideas on how the game could be done realtime. Comment away!

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Khan7
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- 7/29/2001 10:24:00 AM   
MacCready

 

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Matrix is working on Close Assualt. And modules

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- 7/29/2001 8:29:00 PM   
Les_the_Sarge_9_1

 

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Real Time games suck! Well after that I guess its clear I dont care for real time games. I see them all the time on my friends computers. What do you get with real time? The priviledge of seeing only a portion of the battle at any one time (the screen never displays the whole battle). The priviledge of constantly chasing units with your mouse (way to much work for a mere arcade grade experience). The priviledge of buying new hardware to play the game (all in the name of a few slightly prettier images and sounds). The removal of anything simulating history at all (dont pretend to tell me that RT games are historically viable, they are just toy soldiers that move on your screen at that point). I see absolutely no value in Real Time Steel Panthers. There is no chance whatsoever in me buying it. I dont have the interest in chasing things with my mouse, and I wont get sucked into upgrades just to play an arcade game experience.

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- 7/29/2001 11:09:00 PM   
Paul Vebber


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Les hit it on the head - Combat Leader maps (hex - based 25m per hex) will typically be something like 200x200 hexes (5km x 5km) though most scenarios will be much smaller. You will be able to make them as large as 800x800, but that will be stretching the game engine some... Close Assault maps will typically be on the order of 1200m x 1200m (A factor of 4 smaler than Combat Leader, the result of its focus on company rather Battalion echelon action) With enough memory and horsepower you can "tile" up to like 3600 x 3600 but that would be again very difficult to control in realtime mode. And we are not sure what "limits" we will put on thigs to prevent folks suffereing crashes - those those upper limits in bothe cases may ultimately be more limited if folks have problems in playtesting - but those are the upper limits and general scales. THe "up side" is more of a problem in CLose assaul with its highly detailed "painted maps" than the traditional top down hex map of Combat Leader.

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- 7/30/2001 12:10:00 AM   
redshift

 

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The priviledge of seeing only a portion of the battle at any one time (the screen never displays the whole battle). Commanders never have the whole picture. Part of the draw of real-time is that it isn't a drawnout game of chess-it's rapid decision making. The priviledge of constantly chasing units with your mouse (way to much work for a mere arcade grade experience). X-Com Apocalyse allowed you to select units and float over to them via the interface; it worked good, I think. Time could also be slowed down, or paused. The removal of anything simulating history at all (dont pretend to tell me that RT games are historically viable, they are just toy soldiers that move on your screen at that point). With that logic, Operation Flashpoint can't have a good infantry experience because Doom preceded it, and is in the FPS genre also. You keep saying how bad current real-time strategy games are. Starcraft and games like it are a joke, I agree, but that has no comparison to a real-time game from Matrix.

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- 7/30/2001 2:13:00 AM   
Belisarius


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Just the thought of having to scuttle your mouse around trying to find troops over maps covering square kilometers of ground.. :eek: It's tough enough as it is, and the OPfire more than makes up for the 'lack' of real-time. My $0.02 ...

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- 7/30/2001 6:40:00 AM   
Tombstone

 

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This is a tired argument between real-time and turn based. They differ enough to make the argument silly. I personally think they both have a ton to offer, and a dislike of either is an indication of lack of experience with the genre or a wierd sort of nationalistic pride for one genre or the other. Tomo

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- 7/30/2001 7:00:00 AM   
Khan7

 

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Okay, looks like I'm going to have to skip straight to my ideas on how this game could be realtime. But first, to anyone who doesn't believe that there are any realistic realtime wargames-- go try Fighting Steel, Sid Meier's Antietam, Shogun: Total War, or quite a few others that I haven't mentioned here-- all of those three are very well researched, very realistic, quite realistic, and very fun. Les is bitter because he's only had experience with the Command&Conquer genre games which are the lifeblood of the sensation-oriented shortened-attention-span majority of strategy gamers. Saying that realtime can't work is ridiculous-- real war is realtime and they seem to have a fine time with it. I should also at this point clarify my personal preferences in games: I advocate turn-based game models, but only if turns are realistic for what you are simulating. For instance Civ2 and the like is realistic with turns, because the periods of time involved are so long. But for battlefield strategy games like the SP series, turns simply don't cut it-- you get to control all of the units and focus on the specific manuevers of each one, you get to see each individual action right as it happens, you make all of the decisions, and you have no stress based on the fact that stuff is happening and you're not quick enough to react. Also the simulation of the combat will never be quite right unless fitted into a realtime model, or at least something where things can run simultaneously. And though a small-scale realtime thing like Combat Leader would be cool, I'd also like to be able to simulate larger engagements realtime. Up next: How I think SP could be made realtime.

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- 7/30/2001 7:30:00 AM   
Khan7

 

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Imagine this-- a squad or individual tank is the smallest distinct unit, but you can only give specific orders to the platoon HQ. In larger battles, you could even opt to give orders to the company commander to carry out. You can give specific move orders, and order different responses to coming under fire or encountering the enemy (keep moving at all costs, skirmish, engage, engage agressively, run away), and they will carry out their interpretation of your orders automatically when contact is made. Moving around individual squads and minor guns would be handled by the platoon or perhaps the company commander. During combat you could go in and tell a platoon or company to retreat, or charge, etc., and even have a certain amount of ability to get them to change their target (although most targeting would be handled by the men on the ground, automatically, as it would in real combat). You can tell a platoon to hold a certain position, tell them to advance or charge or whatever (I think you're getting the idea). On the company level, you could give waypoint orders to the company commander, and order him to set up a battle line in such and such an area, fortify such and such an area, advance on such and such a position, assault such and such a position, give him a certain amount of flexibility to use his discretion, and he'll carry out your orders to the best of his ability, handling all of the units and forces under his command in a smart and realistic manner to achieve the task. In certain situations, such as in organizing a defense, you could come in and reposition a few things after he had set up (which probably would be done somewhat often in any such game we can expect to see anytime in the forseeable future, as good AI is hard to come by). In all of this there could also be an option to simulate the time it would take for orders to be recieved and acted upon based on the situation and the quality and state of communications in your force and in the units in question. I must also note that the large hexes of the SP series would probably be replaced by smaller units of area which might not be as obvious, thereby smoothing out the flow of movement and creating more detail. Probably 25 yards per hex would be about right-- it's a small unit, but not so small that you have to mess around with a squad being in more than one square/hex at a time. And since this is a realtime game, making the units of distance smaller doesn't hassle the player a bit. And one more plus of a realtime game-- it makes a good AI opponent much more possible. I don't have time to explain this, but believe me, a competent realtime AI is much more acievable than a turnbased one. So thus you would get a game that would be like-- a real battle. No more micromanagement. More excitement. Etc. This would be hella hoss. (I hope I was clear in this post, but if not, I hope you at least get the general idea..)

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- 7/30/2001 7:42:00 AM   
Paul Vebber


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You may want to check out the Close Assault (Real time version) and Combat Leader (hex based version) forums (the Combat Leader forum has posts from several months ago before we split the effort) Ideas very similar to these have been dicussed quite a bit. Combat Leader's hex size is 25m for instance...Great minds think alike :D

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- 7/30/2001 8:12:00 AM   
Marty 1

 

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If I recall the SP series has it's roots in the Kampfgruppe series from back in the early 80's. The series was ahead of it's time. That series featured semi-real time, you gave orders and the game ran until you paused it to issue new orders. It even had a better command control system than SP. Every time you gave a unit new orders you created a time delay in carrying them out. Not bad for a single floppy. It certainly can be done and add to the game. There is not reason real time must equate to Command and Conquer RTS type games.

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- 7/30/2001 9:15:00 AM   
Khan7

 

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I'll check out Close Assault.. but from what I hear it would be very small scale.. I have no problem with that (actually it sounds yummy), but I really would like to have a game that can simulate large engagements. The engine I outlined, with a few tweaks, could probably simulate engagments all the way from company-sized up to something involving a few battallions. And it would get rid of the pesky and unrealistic micromanagement. Well, consider my ideas well, they would make a hoss game (disregarding the fact, of course, that they would take quite a bit of [very well spent] effort to incarnate).. in the meantime, I'm off to the Close Assault forum. [ July 29, 2001: Message edited by: Khan7 ]

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- 7/30/2001 9:23:00 AM   
Paul Vebber


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The problem is the "...and he'll fight out the battle to the best of his ability..." AI that does that to a degree acceptale to the average gamer will be a long time coming! We are working on a potential solution in "standing orders" you can configure and issue, but its going to take a while to work them out.

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- 7/30/2001 9:49:00 AM   
Khan7

 

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Evidently you haven't ever played Sid Meier's Antietam. The AI there is really quite good, and you really have to be on your toes to beat the computer consistently. If, using that engine, the power of the AI was used also to give subordinates some initiative, it could be done and done well (with a little tweaking). I'm not joking, that AI is good, and it's like a 3 or 4 year-old game. AI like that is obviously not possible for CL, as that is a turnbased game. But realtime games inherently give AI a boost. I obviously don't know as much about these things as you do, but I really would take another look at it if I were you..

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- 7/30/2001 10:23:00 AM   
Paul Vebber


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Comparing a large scale Civil War Game to a tactical small unit WW2 game is hardly an applicable comparison. The only thing about the AI that real time games give is the computers ability to "click every where at once" that can be a substitute for "AI" in RTS games without a lot of complexity to them (like Antietam), but for a tactical combined arms game, that is not good enough. Compare for instance to Combat Mission, something on teh order of 3 years was spent on teh AI there, and folks still complain it does "dumb things"...

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- 7/30/2001 10:36:00 AM   
Bonzo

 

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Hi Khan7, From my short time (one year) reading Paul Vebber's posts on this forum, I personally would not start any sentence addressed at him with "Evidently you haven't...". There are a great number of other people on this forum to which I also apply this rule. Your views, opinions and contributions to this forum are most welcome. However, until you know which people on this forum have decades of experience with strategy game play & design, I would be more catious in stating what is obvious. Again, welcome to this merry band of friends. [ July 29, 2001: Message edited by: Bonzo ]

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- 7/30/2001 2:36:00 PM   
Tombstone

 

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Antietam is a great game. But part of its beauty lies in the simplicity of the engine. It models hundreds of men as singular entities, and on top of that a lot of what actually happens is scripted. Certainly, the AI is very well done (I also think it's funny that you think anything Sid Meier has done would be easy to emulate) but modern warfare is orders of magnitude more complex... it'll happen one day, I'm sure but not until many other games are made first. Tomo

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- 7/30/2001 4:18:00 PM   
Nemesis

 

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No real-time for me! Don't have the time to think, just rush rush rush... Thanks, but no thanks...

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- 7/30/2001 5:38:00 PM   
Dedas

 

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Never played the "Close Combat" series from the "lovely" Microsoft? There you can certainly give out orders to your men one by one. The game speed is so slooow, but its realtime alright! The only problem is that the number of units one the map are few and this problem cannot be solved easily. Because if you would add more units the the battles you couldn't control them all, even with that slow speed. The only solution to this is to have a pause button i think. That works alright, but it isn't as fun as "real realtime" because of everthing being stopped now and then. This makes the gameplay very slow and you can't wath everywhere on the map to see what has happened after you unpaused. To solve this you have to have a rewind button, and there's when the battles are getting even slower than turnbased. Back to the start again... Conclusion: Realtime work in a small scale with not to much to watch. When the things to control are getting more and more you somehow lose control over the battle making it not very fun to play. (and of course, the AI often is programmed to control everthing at once)

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- 7/30/2001 11:47:00 PM   
Tombstone

 

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The thing about real-time games that make them so excellent is that very fact Dedas. The players attention is a critical resource in the game. It forces a player to choose where he will put his attention. Since he cannot manipulate all of his units at the same time his judgement is called into play. It also challenges planning and organization since there are usually some tools for controlling multiple units... RTS and TBS are so different. TBS lets the player have as much time as is necessary to execute his plans, it's about taking a situation and trying to execute the best response or plan. In RTS the player is challenged by the act of formulating a plan and having to choose courses of action that are influenced by the pressure of time. Both game types shine when played against other humans. RTS games have a hard time making an AI that isn't either stupid, or impossible. A lot of RTS games have much more successful strategic/resource AI's than their tactical AI. In CA there would be no resource management, leaving the tactical AI. That's hard stuff, I don't envy Matrix's situation there... Tomo

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