Dogs Of War Vu
Sim/Strategy/War => Games Discussion => Topic started by: Asid on October 17, 2017, 11:31:08 PM
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Combat Mission Shock Force 2
From the dev, steve, posted 12/10/17
Now let's see, is there anything else to talk about? Well, there is the Alpha of Combat Mission Shock Force 2 we uploaded for testers yesterday. I suppose a few of you might be interested in it, so I'll take some time to do that.
Existing CMSF content compatibility?
Yes, the long awaited conversion of CMSF (pre Engine 1) to Engine 4 is well under way. It's been in the works for more than a year already and, as expected, hasn't been quick or easy to do. Pretty much all the artwork has been overhauled, the TO&E had to be rebuilt VERY carefully, and lots of internal data was reconfigured to work with formats which have changed multiple times over the years. Most importantly, Charles had to delicately code Engine 4 to understand the old scenario file format so everything that was made for CMSF1 works without modification in CMSF2. Thankfully Charles figured out how to make that happen, otherwise we'd not be having this discussion right now. Continuity with previous content was a deal maker/breaker feature.
Now that testers have the Alpha in hand they can start the lengthy process of going over all the original CMSF content to make sure it works with Engine 4. Then they will work on playtesting to ensure advances in the game environment haven't upset the balance of play. No doubt most scenarios will require quite a bit of tweaking.
Current conflict?
When all is said and done CMSF2 will look and feel like all the other CM2 games, except with the unique CM2 content. The game content, in case you are wondering, will not be updated to reflect the civil war that erupted in Syria after CMSF1's release. We also have no plans, immediate or long term, to expand CMSF2 to other potential arid environments.
When?
OK, so when can you get a hold of it? Not until early 2018, which will include the Base Game and all three Modules at one time. When can you see something from CMSF2? Way sooner than that. We just have to, uhm, finish rounding off some rough corners first.
Price?
You will also want to know that Battlefront appreciates the support and dedication of CMSF customers over the past 10 years. Especially in the first year when we all worked together to make the game engine solid enough to expand upon. Since nothing shows appreciation better than discounts, we're offering discounts :D The specifics will be announced as we get closer to release, but for sure it will be far less than theoretical $165 it normally costs to purchase a brand new Base Game ($60) and three $35 Modules. Though I do know for sure the discount price will be a bit more than a $10 Upgrade ;)
There you go... I've officially broken in the new Forum!
Steve
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Price?
You will also want to know that Battlefront appreciates the support and dedication of CMSF customers over the past 10 years. Especially in the first year when we all worked together to make the game engine solid enough to expand upon. Since nothing shows appreciation better than discounts, we're offering discounts :D
Steve
:coffeescreen :laughing4
That right there made me laugh...I think I might have peed...A liittle
Remember, they charged for the CMSF patch when Paradox stopped selling it............
(https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/500x/66237358/i-may-be-batshit-crazy-but-you-love-me-so-whos-the-crazy-one.jpg)
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I'm just not sure I'm going to invest in CM games anymore. I have Red thunder and the total Normandy bundle and paid to upgrade them to the lastest engine and still have plenty to play in those games. I'm not sure I'd feel good about the post from BF, guess we'll have to see what the price point is for the total upgrade of CMSF but doesn't sound like it going to be light on the wallet.
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I hear ya budd. As you know, BF are a very small team. There roadmap seems strange to me sometimes. My preference is for Graviteam titles. Battlefront make great games but I prefer the Graviteam devs :thumbsup
I don't miss buying BF games :happyhappy
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Because we expect them to give away or charge $10 for going to all of the trouble of updating one of their oldest games to the new 4.0 standard. I see!
I know people love to poke at BF for how they do things but their community loves what they do and while I appreciate what Graviteam does it doesn't hold a candle to Combat Mission games for me.
But its a personal thing.
:happyhappy
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Let me qualify my last statement a bit so no one will think I am just picking a side in the comparison of two of the same kinda games.
The reason I feel the Graviteam games come nowhere close to Combat Mission is tactical realism from a commanders perspective. I think they are great games but at their heart they are RTS wargames.
Now if they would offer the WeGo system of command then I might give them more of a serious look as they are beautiful games no doubt but for me WeGo and the option of PBEM is what makes Combat Mission of of the all time great tactical wargames.
Yes you can play Combat Mission as an RTS but you can also put ice in your wine but that doesnt mean its morally correct to do so.
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Because we expect them to give away or charge $10 for going to all of the trouble of updating one of their oldest games to the new 4.0 standard. I see!
Nope
Remember when Paradox stopped selling CMSF? Then Battlefront wanted people to pay so that the bug fix patches, which they gave for free, would work on the Paradox version? That is what gets me.
I have no issue with a company charging for their work. However the Paradox patch thing was, FOR ME, Greed.
As for preference for developer and system? It is just that. A preference.
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Ya I remember. It was a $5 patch to convert the Paradox version to the standard Battlefront version when Paradox stopped supporting the game they sold.
As I recall there was also a difference in price between the Paradox supported version and the digital download Battlefront version.
I get what you are saying though.
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I don't really have a dog in the hunt as i don't own CMSF. It does sound like it will be more than $10 and wonder how those that already own CMSF will feel about it, i'm sure we'll get to read about it :). I'm not sure how i feel about this upgrade issue and your talking to someone who bought some Command Ops modules three times and i know i will be buying the Campaign Series remakes.The third time i bought modules for CO i did start to question my judgement on the matter but i wanted to support Panther and i imagine the same thing for CM supporters. It's so subjective i'm not sure it matters anyway. Developers can price how they want and buyers can buy or not
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but i wanted to support Panther and i imagine the same thing for CM supporters. It's so subjective i'm not sure it matters anyway. Developers can price how they want and buyers can buy or not
Exactly :thumbsup
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Well I think you are right, the diehard fans of CM and especially Shock Force like me will pay whatever they ask for it and for others who just kinda like CM might not see it as worth it.
No one is really right or wrong, everyone has to decide what its worth to them.
I have no issue with them charging for it though, its quite a task updating a game that old to the new engine.
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Pre-order is live
https://www.battlefront.com/shock-force-2/
The price? Typical BF pricing ::)
NOTE!!!!!!! Pre-orders only at this time. Discounted Upgrades for CMSF1 owners will follow after the game is released, therefore do NOT Pre-order if you intend to take advantage of the Upgrades!!
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I'm expecting the demo to drop in the next few weeks so i'll try it out before I decide but unless its spectacular i'll probably give it a miss. I already have most of their recent titles but have skipped on many of the expansion modules and still haven't upgraded all of them to the latest version. I did upgrade a couple of my fave titles to the new, so-called "Engine 4" which turned out to be the same as engine 3, with only contained a couple of noteworthy new features - one of which was a bug for their TAC AI which made units in cover run out and get shot. This was a year ago... they still haven't fixed that.
I read the forums at Battlefront and see people offer legitimate criticism of many aspects of CM: price, year long waits for bug fixes or their development schedule but the devs are generally silent and the local sycophants defend them instead.
And if you really want to enjoy the game its necessary to download a couple of gigs of mods/maps/sounds/user interfaces/terrain textures etc. They haven't updated the sound for the game in over 10 years... which is kind of shocking to me given the great sound effects that are in games today like Post Scriptum etc. I see their new version of SF still contains many textures from the first game, so I'm not expecting them to have done much with the sound this time.
Having said all that, i'm still a fan of their games and regularly play Black Sea and Final Blitzkrieg but find myself frustrated with the developers, which is ironic as I'm generally happy with their games, its just everything seems to take forever with BF.
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The problems and frustrations are still there for me with the CM titles.
I started with the originals but got disappointed with the company and its attitude. I will not go into deep detail but I will list some of the issues:
• DRM
• Company attitude towards customers
• Update costs
• Update methods
• Patch/fix frequency
• News/Press releases
FOR ME, Graviteam do more things right. I haven't purchased any CM titles for a while.
This is NOT a Graviteam v Battlefront post. They can both live together on the same hard drive.
Life is to short to argue with developers and fight with DRM :Wag finger
Regards
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Shock Force 2 Demo is out... finally
Battlefront Forum Thread:
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/133389-cmsf2-demos-released/
Download Links:
Windows: https://battlefront.sharefile.com/d-s25afa9e71ca4e789
MacOS: https://battlefront.sharefile.com/d-sf03b551361e40989
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Hi Jace
I noticed it had been released but was caught up in this post (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/133207-they-meant-september-of-next-year/) . The way the developer treats the customers is :bullshit
They could take some cues from the Graviteam devs :thumbsup
THANK YOU for posting the release :thumbsup
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Hot off the press:
We're close to release, but not quite there yet! The Demos are now out for all to enjoy while we finish things up. Let me explain...
When we set out to remake CMSF1 into CMSF2 we made a decision to release the Base Game and the three Modules all at once. This allows people to purchase Bundles right away instead of facing the decision to buy sooner, one full priced piece at a time, or wait until we have everything out for a bulk discount. Since it would suck for you guys to face this choice we opted to release everything at once.
The downside of releasing everything at once is having to rework the content of effectively 4 games at one time. That's a total of something like 150 battles (stand alone + campaigns) that needed reworking. As you can imagine it's not just adding the updated style of Briefings, it's about making sure the scenarios are properly balanced with all the game changes from the past 10 years. Adding FoW fortifications, AI Plan overhauls, touching up maps, etc. and then going through the testing cycle make sure everything works right takes a long time to do. More than we expected, that's for sure.
OK, OK, OK... I know you're wondering what this all means in terms of a release timeframe. What we've decided to do is stop making you wait until every single scenario and the 6 campaigns are totally done. Instead, we're moving towards releasing all the stand alone scenarios, the Base Game campaign (TF Lighting), and the campaign for Marines (Semper Fi!) in one go. That's a couple hundred hours of entertainment right there, not to mention what QuickBattles adds to the mix. That should keep you busy while we finish reworking the British and three NATO campaigns :)
I don't think we can get it out the door by the end of October, but we don't want it to be much longer than that. We released Upgrade 4 at Christmas time last year and we'd rather not do that again for understandable reasons.
I'll give you guys another update at the end of the month.
Thanks for your patience! This has been a labor of love for sure, with almost equal emphasis on both the labor and the love!
Steve
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Shock Force 2 released
https://www.battlefront.com/shock-force-2/
CMSF2 Base Game $60.00
(https://www.battlefront.com/images/products/thumbs/cmsf2-bgv4.jpg)
CMSF2 Marines Module $35.00
(https://www.battlefront.com/images/products/thumbs/cmsf2-m1v4.jpg)
CMSF2 British Forces Module $35.00
(https://www.battlefront.com/images/products/cmsf2-m2v4.jpg)
CMSF2 NATO Module $35.00
(https://www.battlefront.com/images/products/thumbs/cmsf2-m3v4.jpg)
Discounts when you buy module(s) + base game
CMSF2 Big Bundle $165.00 $125.00
(https://www.battlefront.com/images/products/cmsf2-b5v4.jpg)
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And here´s the page for upgrading CMSF 1 products:
https://www.battlefront.com/cmsf1-upgrades/ (https://www.battlefront.com/cmsf1-upgrades/)
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And here´s the page for upgrading CMSF 1 products:
https://www.battlefront.com/cmsf1-upgrades/ (https://www.battlefront.com/cmsf1-upgrades/)
Hopefully it will not be problematic and confusing like it usually is :punishment
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And here´s the page for upgrading CMSF 1 products:
https://www.battlefront.com/cmsf1-upgrades/ (https://www.battlefront.com/cmsf1-upgrades/)
Hopefully it will not be problematic and confusing like it usually is :punishment
According the feedback in the forum its not problematic, cos people only have to fill in the old and the new serial when the installer asks about.
There are few exceptions, for exemple if someones got a retail version of CMSF 1 from somewhere else. Then the helpdesk is needed to issue the matter manually.
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BTW, Brits and NATO modules arent reworked completely yet, so for now only TFT and Marines is playable. Thats my available info at least.
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Thanks for the info Sandman :thumbsup
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I was able to upgrade to CMSF2 by contacting support. They were responsive (same day) and helpful (gave me the upgrade). My issue was that I had originally purchased the Paradox boxed version of CMSF1 at a local store (a long time ago). Battlefront said they don't track or have record of the Paradox versions sold. Fortunately for me though, I did purchase the Marine module a while ago from the BF website. Their logic was sound when they stated 'who would just by the module and not the main game?"
Now...having said that; I've played a couple of missions and am in awe. Not of the game, but of how GOD LIKE the AI is. It's very frustrating to see the AI behave as though it was impervious to weapon fire. Two LAV engage an RPG team at some distance, and are joined by a machine gun from a light vehicle. Despite this, the RPG gunner casually knocks out one of the LAVs. I guarantee you, because I've seen this first hand, no one--not even Chuck Norris--would be able to do that. So suppression doesn't seem to me modeled--for the enemy AI that is. Meanwhile, a couple of pot shots from the AI at my soldiers and they run like pansies.
Very frustrated / disappointed. #notfun
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must admit it's a mixed bag, with some buyers saying it's good and others saying it's not a great AI either.
so i guess it really depends on your play style, your outlook and ability and understanding on how real life is and how unreal some games are, don't own any so can't really comment, played a few of their demo's, which tbh didn't make me want to go out and buy it either, but that's the point of a demo, choice, for me it was a no, but have many friends who said yes and own this and there other games and quite enjoy them.
:howdy
so in the end you can't please everyone and each to there own :doubt :thumbsup
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Now...having said that; I've played a couple of missions and am in awe. Not of the game, but of how GOD LIKE the AI is. It's very frustrating to see the AI behave as though it was impervious to weapon fire. Two LAV engage an RPG team at some distance, and are joined by a machine gun from a light vehicle. Despite this, the RPG gunner casually knocks out one of the LAVs. I guarantee you, because I've seen this first hand, no one--not even Chuck Norris--would be able to do that. So suppression doesn't seem to me modeled--for the enemy AI that is. Meanwhile, a couple of pot shots from the AI at my soldiers and they run like pansies.
Very frustrated / disappointed. #notfun
Is it something that can/will be addressed?