RE: My Review (Full Version)

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diablo1 -> RE: My Review (12/7/2010 8:39:29 AM)

The common gamer doesn't want to do all that to make a random battle Junkie ole boy. They want to click n go in 5 seconds, you know it and I know it as well. It should be as simple as Combat Mission or Steel Panthers setting up a random battle. It needs a random long term or short term campaign feature as well to be great like those two games still are. It's just almost a necessity for a game to come with random battle/campaign generators anymore....at least for me. I'm spoilt on them now and will rarely buy anything less.



IainMcNeil -> RE: My Review (12/7/2010 10:05:55 AM)

You can - it is integrated in to the user content system. Plus there are 2 built in random missions too. Just download user content by clicking one button in game.



sabre1 -> RE: My Review (12/7/2010 1:41:54 PM)


I understand and agree with Diablo1.

This game is very close to being a great classic, but it needs more content or ease of use. I have played the user made missions. They are not nearly as elegant as SP games. Doesn't take away BA. This is not a complaint per se. It's that everyone loves this game and they can see potential for how much better it could be. Since I'm not a programmer, maybe we are asking for something that is not possible.

I would really like to see larger battles as a choice and more campaigns. I love the game. I don't have time to make my own content, nor do I want to if I did. I want to sit down after a day at work and play. Making my own content is work. You guys develop games. That's your job. [;)]

Steel Panthers, you could point and click and BANG you had a campaign that lasted for a LONG time. You got to upgrade your units etc... You know the formula. WAAAAAA, we want it now. [8D]

Anyway, BA is fun, and I look forward to the next 100 installments. Could you please hurry it up, before this economy kills our discretionary income.



IainMcNeil -> RE: My Review (12/7/2010 1:57:33 PM)

The point is that user content is a lot better than generated content and as you say user content while great cannot compete with the hand crafted missions and assets produced by professional artists and designers who have far more time to create it. Any fully random generator would end up with repeatable and indistinct missions and all the flavour you love would be lost. We'll do our best to create as much content as possible for you guys. We have a lot on the go but there are a lot of technical issues with getting a system to distribute it in a user friendly way which we're ironing out. Once that is sorted we hope to be able to deliver things more rapidly!



sabre1 -> RE: My Review (12/7/2010 2:00:26 PM)

Thanks Iain, I look forward to it.



junk2drive -> RE: My Review (12/7/2010 2:12:59 PM)

I think the people that asked for campaigns from the Axis side are gonna love Blitzkrieg France.



budd -> RE: My Review (12/8/2010 3:06:26 AM)

But when our we going to love it[:D] how soon?
budd



Icekill -> RE: My Review (12/9/2010 12:19:54 PM)

If i'm still on the fence about buying it is because i'm afraid that there won't be a long enough campaigns and/or scenarios.

While the tactical scale is my favorite one in wargames, i like the battles to be chained in some way, to buy/upgrade troops etc like in Steel Panthers, that is why i also would love a random campaign generator. I can create scenarios myself, but... it spoils them for me as i know where are the enemy units, etc so there is no surprise factor.

Of course with enough user or developers generated scenarios/campaigns i would be happy enough :)



IainMcNeil -> RE: My Review (12/9/2010 12:47:40 PM)

There are a lot of scenarios in the base game so many hours of gameplay and more user content coming all the time. We released 2 more campaigns last week. The Blitzkrieg France expansion is also coming soon so no shortage of mission and the MP give s it a very long life even for people who don't normally play MP.



Erik Rutins -> RE: My Review (12/9/2010 4:00:24 PM)

Icekill,

IMHO there is plenty of content for the money, you will get a lot of hours of entertainment per dollar here and the expansions will keep adding new content as we move forward.

Regards,

- Erik



sabre1 -> RE: My Review (12/10/2010 12:49:27 AM)

Icekill,

Have no fear man, they are going to support this title for a LONG time. I have a feeling there will be just as much stuff coming out for it just like Field of Glory, if not more.



junk2drive -> RE: My Review (12/10/2010 1:11:42 AM)

I have a feeling that this game is going to do well at Christmas and next year we will have a whole bunch of new people eager to try their creative skills.



hank -> RE: My Review (12/20/2010 11:32:26 PM)

This game looks like a lot of fun. I never played Combat Missions but did play SPWaW; and I recently downloaded the demo of Win SP:MBT which is a lot of fun.

The art work is great. Reminds me of the days when Sgt Rock and GI Combat were the hot WWII comic book series. I bought dozens of those comics when I was a kid. I especially like the haunted Stuart M5 tank stories.

I may have to jump on this one.



Grim.Reaper -> RE: My Review (12/20/2010 11:41:31 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: hank

This game looks like a lot of fun. I never played Combat Missions but did play SPWaW; and I recently downloaded the demo of Win SP:MBT which is a lot of fun.

The art work is great. Reminds me of the days when Sgt Rock and GI Combat were the hot WWII comic book series. I bought dozens of those comics when I was a kid. I especially like the haunted Stuart M5 tank stories.

I may have to jump on this one.


Ditto for me. I had all those comics, with Sgt. Rock being my favorite. Family purchased this as a gift for me so I still have a few days before I can give it a go...hope not to be disappointed :)



V22 Osprey -> RE: My Review (1/19/2011 3:44:56 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil

The point is that user content is a lot better than generated content and as you say user content while great cannot compete with the hand crafted missions and assets produced by professional artists and designers who have far more time to create it. Any fully random generator would end up with repeatable and indistinct missions and all the flavour you love would be lost. We'll do our best to create as much content as possible for you guys. We have a lot on the go but there are a lot of technical issues with getting a system to distribute it in a user friendly way which we're ironing out. Once that is sorted we hope to be able to deliver things more rapidly!


If the generators has enough customization and features then it won't lose flavor. I recommend you download the free version of WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT. There is absolutely NOTHING you can't do in the those generators. Then you have Generated Campaigns. You can even load custom maps and battle on them without it being a scenario straight to the generator. I rarely even play the human made scenarios anymore. In a few seconds I could be doing a Huey Assault in Vietnam 1970, and in a few minutes be battling soviets in the Soviet Afghan War, all from the generator. Considering BA is a rather simple game, A generator shouldn't be that to add to the game.



IainMcNeil -> RE: My Review (1/19/2011 10:09:58 AM)

BA is a lot more complex than Steel Panthers. When you say anything can be done in SP its not really true as you are heavily restricted to what the designers set up.

Look at what you can do in BA and this is still only scratching the surface http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21073

The engine is almost a wargames construction kit.




V22 Osprey -> RE: My Review (1/19/2011 2:35:53 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil

BA is a lot more complex than Steel Panthers. When you say anything can be done in SP its not really true as you are heavily restricted to what the designers set up.

Look at what you can do in BA and this is still only scratching the surface http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21073

The engine is almost a wargames construction kit.




Again, please use the WinSPWW2/MBT generator and then say that it's "heavily restricted". Let's see, the designers set up the generator to generate any map I want, any terrian I want(Set to my OWN parameters like more trees, less buildings, a river, etc), I can edit the objective locations, I can load a custom map, I can set up defenses(Barbed wire, trenches, etc), the list goes on. I'm sure the game engine itself is more complex because you are working with 3D. Gameplay wise though BA is a more simplified game. I mean, it's not like in BA you are having 100+ units on screen at once with a map that's 200 x 100 hexes big like in SP.



IainMcNeil -> RE: My Review (1/19/2011 4:44:11 PM)

Yes of course, SP is a very complex game, much more complex to play than BA but the SP engine is a lot simpler than BA. The BA engine lets you do pretty much anything you can think of. However it means that a lot more hand crafting is required to make it do all this clever stuff.



rich12545 -> RE: My Review (1/19/2011 5:11:54 PM)

Iain, I think what V22 Osprey and some of us over the last several months are saying is although the clever stuff is nice in hand crafted scenarios it isn't necessary for random scenarios.  That what the game needs is this option.  Be able to set parameters for the map, the units, the victory flags etc with a few clicks and bingo there's a scenario.  He simply used Steel Panthers as one example of what we're all looking for.  There are LOTS of games that have this feature and there's really no reason BA can't have it too. 



IainMcNeil -> RE: My Review (1/19/2011 5:26:48 PM)

I completely understand but the issue is that it is not possible :)

In 2D you just place a terrain type and maybe edge it, throw down the VP's etc - easy. BA maps are built from many different layers and objects and this approach isn't possible. We're not being awkward ;) How many 3D games that are not just generic rolling hills have it - I doubt there any.



Ron -> RE: My Review (1/20/2011 12:58:00 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Iain McNeil

I completely understand but the issue is that it is not possible :)

In 2D you just place a terrain type and maybe edge it, throw down the VP's etc - easy. BA maps are built from many different layers and objects and this approach isn't possible. We're not being awkward ;) How many 3D games that are not just generic rolling hills have it - I doubt there any.



Combat Mission from ten years ago.



PipFromSlitherine -> RE: My Review (1/20/2011 3:35:59 AM)

Without wanting get away from the main point (which is that we are working on a way to have random maps and battles), Combat Mission is an example of why we're not comparing apples to apples. It's maps are much larger and more generic - basically the rolling hills Iain talks about.

The visual style and approach of BA makes it much more difficult to generate good looking, sensible random maps. Now perhaps we are being a little too perfectionist about it, and a lot of people might not care about some of the visual niceness, and be happy with just the bare bones, but our aim is to make any random map approach equivalent as much as possible to the hand built maps that form the current game maps.

I also hope we don't come across in an adverserial way, as that's not our intent. We recognise that in an ideal world it's a great feature, and we're working towards it. And we welcome all this discussion - I've personally grabbed all the games mentioned here to see whether there is anything that can be gleaned from them to help with our work on random maps. So we're just being honest about why we haven't got this feature which we know is popular.

Cheers

Pip



sabre1 -> RE: My Review (1/20/2011 1:24:28 PM)

Thanks for your consideration, and all of your hard work. I think it's just a matter of we all love the game, and want more of everything.



PipFromSlitherine -> RE: My Review (1/20/2011 6:22:04 PM)

And so you should - without you guys keeping our noses to the grindstone we'd have, well, really long noses?

[;)]

Cheers

Pip



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