From the Battlefront forum from long time CMer Winecape:
Part one in post 1 here:
http://www.battlefront.com/index.php...per&Itemid=259
CM: Normandy Synopsis & Posts
Here then for those to lazy to read through various CM:Normandy threads. I will add more later...
Timeline for the coming CM Normandy? Will Paradox or CDV be involved in the initial Normandy release?
All we're saying at this point is 2009, sooner is better for everybody than later. We're saying sometime in 2009, that's all at the moment. Progress is going very well, but we're really not going to start in on the potentially time consuming stuff (like the new QB system) until after CMSF British Forces ships. Once we get a couple of the intensive coding things done we'll have a better idea when Normandy will be done.
No.
Terrain - Normandy
We're confident that we can get the look and feel of the Norman countryside without major changes to the code we currently have. For example, the system is already set up to do things like haystacks, for example, as Flavor Objects. Flavor Objects in CM:SF are specific to that setting so pretty much all of them (metal barrels perhaps not!) will be tossed out and new ones added. We don't need air conditioners or ATMs for Normandy.
CM:Normandy will definitely have a lot more variety and detail to its buildings than in CM:SF. That was yet another reason we chose to do an arid setting first... a lot easier to do! Since the CMx2 is something that continually evolves we chose to put the bulk of our efforts into making CM:SF a solid base for which to work off of for years to come.
Flavor Objects provide the possibility of Cover (depends on what it is and the unit behind it), but no concealment beyond what the base terrain provides.
Yup, we definitely are looking into sacrificing the functionality that CMx2 has over CMx1 for more "atmospheric" types of structures. Good thing is we don't have to jettison the flexible stuff... just *add* less flexible stuff to use for more flavor. It's an unfortunate situation where flexibility and aesthetic qualities are, pretty much, at odds with each other.
I'm pretty sure we'll get artillery illumination. The game is mostly set up to handle it right now. What is needed is the physics of simulating the shell's behavior once it lights up. Wind, height, that sort of thing.
Buildings do need to be a lot more complex/detailed than the ones in CM:SF. That's one of the many reasons we went with the arid Middle East setting for our first go around. Much easier from a graphical standpoint.
Special effects... well, there's only so much we can do with that. The Rise of Flight explosions involve a LOT of physics. They do look really cool, but not worth the programming time. Better effects for burning vehicles is something planned, though I don't know when we'll get it in.
Maps & Tiles
Map importation won't work. As I said before, the filters would have to understand the terrain being fed to it and match it with the available terrain in the game. Since maps that are being fed in won't have the sort of details that CM has, it's simply not a practical solution. We looked into this years ago when it was a requirement from a potential military client. With them paying enough for us to offload it to another programmer... sure, it's possible. Short of that it won't be considered.
The file format for CM (of all flavors) has always been compressed to minimize RAM and disk footprints, as well as reducing I/O and Internet transmission times. We'll never open up the file format because it introduces cheating to the game and that's something we've always hated about hackable file formats. This is a philosophy we've had since before we made CMBO and it shows no signs of changing.
Yes, the Mega Tile approach was inspired by various Avalon Hill and tabletop wargames, particularly Panzer Leader. Panzer Leader is the one I think of most since that's the one I'm personally familiar with.
The idea is that the Mega Tiles will come with no height information. Instead, the topography is generated randomly according to user settings just like CMx1. Then the Mega Tiles are selected, based on user settings, and laid over the topographical info. Roads and rivers would then be laid out according to the topography and/or the topography gets modified to accommodate them. Not sure which yet.
It's definitely not "over engineered" as this is the easiest way for us to get great looking maps with significant details. Of course, people can also play on user created maps just like in CM:SF.
Quick battles
A completely new QB system is the primary game mechanics focus for CM: Normandy (things like equipment, units, terrain, weather, etc. obviously must come first!). The new system will be more like CMx1's system in that people can Cherry Pick once again. More details later.
---
Time period & Content of Modules
The initial base game will cover June 1944 through roughly August sometime. The whole Family will cover up to roughly September 1944. We're not big on hammering down exact dates (e.g. June 6, 1944 - August 12, 1944) at this point because they're not entirely relevant.
By that I mean if we said "the game will only simulate June 7 - June 10th, 1944" you could still make plenty of historically accurate battles going into about September with a careful selection of forces. What you couldn't do is simulate a battle in September which used equipment/units that weren't available in June.
Oh, and quick thing about the total content with Modules. Since we're breaking the Western Front up into two Families it's pretty clear that neither one of them will have the same, or more, units than CMBO since CMBO covered that entire period. However, I think when the two Families are added up they will have more units than CMBO did. Either Family will have more terrain possibilities than CMBO, and combines they'll dwarf CMBO's variety. Sheer volume of game data... the first CM: Normandy release will likely track more data than CMBO did, when you consider the 1:1 portrayal and much greater depth of detail for vehicles and soldiers alike. Definitely more defensive works available in the basic CM: Normandy game than CMBO. More detail in the terrain, both in terms of variety (as mentioned) but also in terms of effects (deformable, explicit simulation of hedgerow breaching, etc.). And other stuff as well.
I can't say for sure if any one of you will find the offerings in future CM games as compelling as previous CM games. For sure some won't, for sure some will. As long as we are happy with the net result (i.e. enough people happy) then we'll keep on chugging along.
Snow in first CM:Normandy release?
Nope, no snow since the first WW2 Family ends around September [1944] or so. Which is one reason why I didn't mention weather as a specific where the first Family will outshine CMBO, because obviously it won't.
H2O - I hope BFC solved the problem with water in CM Normandy? That's why I would like to see some screenshots very soon?
There were no problems to solve. It's a very straight forward process that simply takes a great deal of programming time to pull off. Since there was little need for it in CM:SF we felt it was a good idea to do other things that were more relevant and save water for Normandy. Definitely can't have Normandy without water.
Water will probably be tackled fairly soon. Bridges are basically done already, though at the moment I only have Charles' word on that because I haven't played with them yet.
We are not planning on releasing screenshots at all, of any sort, in the near future. That's because so far we've been focused on game stuff that isn't generally of a visual nature, therefore a screenshot as it stands right now looks a lot like CM:SF.
We got away with a water texture in CMx1, but only just barely. Water in CMx2 will be "alive", though to what extent is yet to be determined. … I am hoping for splash effects even if it really is overkill.
Amphibious operations?
No, we are not planning on amphib ops in CMx2 any time soon. Certainly not for Normandy. As stated a few posts ago (by moi), there is so much more to it than just having a vehicle graphical 1/2 submerged while crossing water. Because of the rarity of such events, we don't feel the effort is worth it.
Non-confirmed target ID / mis-identification:
We're going to change how information about the enemy is shown when we get to Normandy. More uncertainty.
(a) Are the Question Markers only visual aids for the player or do they really give a spotting bonus?
They give a spotting bonus, but only for a short while (i.e. when they are relatively "new"). Old "?" marks - which start to fade - don't give any spotting bonus.
(b) Do Question Markers give the AI information about the unit type the marker represents? Does this influence AI behavior?
No. Remember, giving the AI information does nothing unless the AI is programmed to interpret and then act on that information. Interpreting is a very difficult thing to get an AI to do well.
(c) Does the AI actively look for and try to identify Question Markers?
No, because once again that would involve a level of AI programming that wouldn't be worth the effort. If something appears as a "?" the AI is aware that something is there, but that's as far as it goes. Through the AI's other actions the identity is either revealed or it isn't. There's no special effort to do carefully considered "recon" which, in turn, other AI decisions are based on.
We're taking a fresh look at non-confirmed target identification for CM: Normandy. One thing on our list is misidentification. A much loved feature we didn't have time to implement for CM:SF, though we felt it wasn't as important there since the range of possible hardware of a particular type was either limited or not very relevant.
Sound contacts are something we aren't sure what to do with. In CMx1 they were far, far too easy to get compared to real world. Here's all the reasons why sound contacts don't happen:
1. Depending on circumstances units may be completely unable to make sense, or even hear, noises beyond a certain range. Battle noises, terrain makeup, topography, weather, etc. all play a role in real life.
2. Too much noise "clutter". Noise tends to cancel out noise, depending on strength, wavelength, etc. Individuals who are firing weapons, or are significantly close to those firing weapons, have a very limited range of sounds they can hear and the distance they can be detected. If there are friendly vehicles idling nearby, enemy vehicles on the opposite side of those vehicles won't likely be heard. Wind whipping through trees pretty much eliminates noises such as soldiers walking, at least while the wind is gusting. Fellow soldiers shouting and running about causes confusion and uncertainty about what similar sounds belong to. Etc.
3. All sorts of physiological things can happen to reduce hearing. Direct stress on the ears, such as nearby firing, and general stress to the body, especially adrenaline, reduce hearing capabilities. The latter is because when the body gets really excited there is a biological low level flight/fight response which causes the brain to focus on getting the body to do things like run and physically attack at the expense of hearing, smelling, peripheral vision, and fine motor control. There was a really cool study done about this relating to police officers discharging their weapons during the course of duty. Our brains are pretty smart
So what this all means is we're not quite sure what to do about sound contacts going forward. Whatever we do it won't be as broad and uncontrolled as CMx1. At least I hope not. …
What could improve is simply increasing the frequency of spotting checks. That's simply a function of computing power needing to increase quite a bit more before there can be substantially more checks. CMx1 had serious limitations in terms of frequency of spotting checks as well, despite them being vastly more simpler than what CMx2 has. We love proving that we can gobble up CPU cycles as fast as chip makers can give them to us.
Again, we're still evaluating our options. One thing I will say is I don't want us to repeat the CMx1 modeling of audio clues for the CMx2 engine. I think that would be a mistake.
It would be neat if US units were easier to spot to due to too much verbal commands as opposed to German units.
Not going to happen because we purposefully avoid putting in "national bias". A lot of German officers said they thought the Americans couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, so once you start down this road it's a bit of a problem finding the place to stop.
Oooh… HEDGEROWS !!
For sure CMBO's treatment of Hedgerows was extremely simplistic and overly generous. We knew that at the time. The same will not be true for CM: Normandy.
1. We have destructible terrain now, so we can simulate explicate holes knocked into hedgerows. And those spots can be less abstractly simulated respective to terrain and speed conditions than could be in CMx1.
2. We are planning on directly simulating the cutters on tanks, therefore if you have 2 out of 5 tanks with cutters only the 2 with cutters are worth a damned. Lose them and that's that.
3. Because of the above we can better simulate affects of failing to breach a hedgerow, such as bogging/immobilization and vehicle damage.
In short, the system we'll have for CM: Normandy won't be anything like what we had in CMBO. Not even close.
I’m a Model and too sexy for my shirt and my family ...
The first Module for Normandy will definitely be Commonwealth Forces. We're already pretty far along in making the models for them. As I said in another thread, this is one of the beautiful things about CMx2... we can now do things in parallel.
… the first WW2 "Family" of games only goes up to the change in the seasons … There's all kinds of things which change about the time the Allies got into the woods along the German border. Far too much to do for a Module, therefore the second WW2 Family of games will cover from Fall 1944 until Spring 1945. We plan on 3 Modules for the second Family as well.
The second Family will ride out the war in the West to the very end.
Each time we make a new Family of games we will examine the details to see what existing stuff is not applicable any more and what stuff needs to be added to address specific issues in the new Family which weren't needed before. Some of these things are obvious to users, others will likely be taken for granted. For example, CM:SF has no code to support AT Guns or tank hull MGs. No point delaying Family X to support features that aren't needed until Family Y .. All we have to do is leave hooks for the things we know will come up sooner rather than later.
One interesting thing we can do in CM: Normandy that we couldn't in CMx1... “Acquire” for Bazookas. German and British forces had dedicated teams for Panzerschreck and PIATs, but US forces kept their Bazookas as general use weapons. In CMx1 we had to create artificial Bazooka Teams by permanently removing two soldiers from a Rifle Platoon. Now we don't have to do that because current US Army doctrine regarding Javelins is identical and therefore the code already exists to allow correct modeling of Bazooka use.
Panzerfaust part of the family…
Panzerfausts will be treated like AT-4, RPG-18, ILAW, etc. are in CM:SF... they are by default issued to the unit and the unit takes them wherever they go. It would be no problem to have them sit in a halftrack from a code standpoint, but we don't think that would be good from a user standpoint. Players would complain that they have to manually load up their units since why would you not take the Panzerfausts with you? Weapons like Bazookas, on the other hand, are a burden and the player should have the option of taking them or leaving them behind. We're going to have to code something new to allow this to happen for forces that don't have vehicle with them, since at present something can only be Acquired if there is a vehicle present with that particular item.
We've had many long discussions about the use of enemy weapons within the scope of a CM type battle. The conclusion we have come to each time is that it's not worth simulating since it happens so rarely in real life (all kinds of practical issues). Therefore, it won't happen in CM: Normandy.
CM: Normandy, which actually isn't it's real name, is designed to simulate everything up until the battles along the German border starting in the Fall. That's because terrain, seasons, TO&E, and a lot of equipment changes happened starting around then.
Back to modules …
The Modules are designed to be flexible so we're leaving some final details to be hammered out when we get closer to needing decisions made. For now we're going forward with the no-brainer stuff.
Unlike CM:SF, there will be significant German stuff added in each Module. That's because the Germans have an ungodly HUGE amount of stuff to simulate. This means that the Commonwealth Module will have quite a bit of new German TO&E and vehicles. The best example of this is the "Royal Tiger" (as the Brits called it) with Porsche turret. Since they were the only force in the world to go up against those beasties, it makes perfect sense to have it go along with the Commonwealth Module. Still, the focus of each Module will be on the Commonwealth forces since that stuff will be brand new while the German stuff will be adding to German forces which already exist.
The Module concept allows us to entertain all kinds of things that we wouldn't be doing otherwise. Will there be extremely rare vehicles in CM: Normandy's initial release? No. Will there be a Module which has such vehicles in it released at a later date? Chances are yes, at least to some degree.
We will continue the CM:SF model in terms of the campaigns. One campaign per release from the perspective of the attacker. In the case of the Normandy setting, this means Campaigns from the Allied perspective with a single unit at the center. Since end users can make their own Campaigns we have no doubts that German campaigns will come out. Mortain, for example, might make an interesting topic even though the Germans were ground into the dirt.
There's no difference in the workload between a fictional and historical setting as far as the game goes. TO&E, weapons, vehicles, and technologies are actually going to be easier to deal with because we already have them documented *and* none of them are in flux like the modern stuff is. Scenario creation might actually be easier too since history books give designers a lot of stuff to work with.
The biggest drag is simulating a completely different environment. Not only in terms of climate, but also in terms of weaponry. No single thing is a big time suck, but the couple of days for this and that adds up. For example, we don't have AT Guns in CM:SF, but obviously they are required for Normandy. So Charles had to spend a couple of days coding them to work correctly with everything else. Not a huge amount of time considering, but that's just one thing.
If a Module were to contain NOTHING but a few vehicles and textures (i.e. no scenarios, no new TO&E, no new features at all) then we could crank out a Module very quickly. But Modules do contain a ton of other stuff which adds up because often the time is consecutive (A needs to be done before B can be started, etc.). Plus, we can't help ourselves... we keep adding new stuff into the game itself.
Gpig: “I want Bayonets!”
Generally speaking we have to be very careful about dedicating time to "outlier" possibilities. There are a million things that probably happened here and there over the course of such a huge campaign as that of the Western Front (Eastern Front goes well beyond huge. My best example of this is one I've been using since the CMBO days... what I call the MG42 Bovine Meat Sponge situation. In brief...
A platoon of US infantry was pinned down by a single MG42. Everytime they tried to flank it the thing blazed away on them. Well, some enterprising soldier found a barn with a bunch of cows in it. They herded them into the kill zone and ran behind them to get into a dead zone which, in turn, let them flank the MG position. The MG42 killed the cows, the American infantry men killed the MG42 crew.
Points to consider:
1. This is a historically documented event which is entirely plausible.
2. It had a tactically significant impact on that battle.
3. It would probably be practical to do it within the space of a typical CM battle.
4. There is no code for cows, nor any code for using them as a wall of hamburger helper.
The question is, should we support such a thing because it happened? I think 99.9999% of you guys would say "no". Intuitively we all know that this maybe happened one or two times out of a couple million or so tactical engagements at this level. Any time spent supporting such a massive outlier would be a gross misallocation of development resources. Right? Right.
However, it goes a step further. When we provide support for a particular tactic, even if unintentionally, it will get used if a player perceives it to be beneficial (perception is more important than actual results in our experience). The use of that tactic can then be far, far out of proportion to how it was used in real life. This then leads to a fundamental problem with supporting outlier type situations:
The outlier situation is supported to make the game more realistic, but if it is used unrealistically often then that lowers the overall realism of the tactical environment.
Or put another way, if the Bovine Meat Sponge thing worked, then every time cows were found in a scenario the player would likely try to find a way of using them ("friendly cows") or killing them to denny the other player use of them ("enemy cows"). This in turn leads at least a portion of the battle to be twisted into focusing on something which is completely wrong to focus on from a historical perspective.
ASL veterans often begrudgingly admit that there were a some detailed features in ASL that were abused. The one most often cited is the ability to set fires to things. This was not a common tactic in WW2, to say the least, but according to the ASL players themselves it was common to see in ASL games. Some players probably adopted it as a signature tactic, which likely earned them the nickname "firebug". The use of such tactic is "gamey" and therefore, no matter how realistically portrayed, something which lowers the overall level of realism.
Did non-heavy weapons crews man friendly heavy weapons in real life when the situation was just right for it? Sure. Did this happen often? No, definitely not. Same thing with manning enemy weapons. It certainly happened that small arms were used when the situation was desperate enough to justify the risk, but those instances were few and far in between. Use of larger captured weapons usually did not happen on the fly, but rather after said weapons were retrieved, serviced, deliberately crewed, trained on (even if hastily), and then sent back to the front with clear knowledge of that fact given to the surrounding friendly units (Germans using T-34s in combat, for example) in order to minimize the risk of friendly fire.
As with any rule there are exceptions. The German's love of the PPSh, for example, is one of the rare examples of a systemic use of captured enemy weapons. And since it was relatively common we supported it in CMBB. But it wasn't done on the fly and so CMBB didn't support that. It also wasn't something that could have unbalanced the game since, effectively, it's just a MP40 with more ammo (not that we simulated that in CMx1, but it is simulated in CMx2).
The conclusion we always come to when discussing these things is that the improvised use of enemy weaponry within the context of a CM sized battle is uncommon enough that supporting it would lower overall realism of the environment, not increase it. The ability for friendly units to man weapons they are not trained on is also uncommon enough that we shouldn't do it.
The one exception to that would be something like a MG. Soldiers would know how to fire it and keep it fed with ammo even if not explicitly trained to do so. If a friendly MG crew was taken out of action without damaging the weapon, and the conditions warranted sectioning off some men to crew it, it probably would be recrewed even if temporarily (i.e. until it jammed or the ammo ran out). Unfortunately, this poses some pretty significant coding and UI issues that would have to be coded around. Therefore, we're not planning on supporting this type of weapons swapping for CMx2 as we didn't for CMx1. However, this is something that is on that line between outlier/uncommon and outlier/common, so there is actually a case to be made for including it. We're simply saying we don't think it's crossed the line into being worth dedicating the resources to making it happen.
Hope that adds some perspective.
Unallocated weapons/ammo:
In CM:SF this is accomplished by having them stuck in a ride of some sort. This approach has run into very few problems except for what to do with the rides are left out of the scenario. Usually people include the vehicles since that would be SOP in real life, but in WW2 the rides often weren't present on the battlefield. As AKD pointed out they were stuck in a soft-skin truck in the rear and brought forward "as needed". This means in CM: Normandy we're going to have to allow scenario designers (and QB users) the ability to have unallocated weapons optionally pre-allocated. There's no UI support for this yet, but there will have to be.
Could it work to have something resembling an MG pit (a large-ish foxhole surrounded by sandbags on three sides and covered with camouflage netting) serve as a micro weapons cache?
Yes, and we've already thought about that. However, we haven't gotten to the point of deciding if that's a good thing to do or not. From a code standpoint it's no extra work, so it's merely deciding if there are gameplay reasons to not do it. Without having thought of it that much, I tend to think it's something that would be a good thing to add.
CP’s & OP’s.
Another one we're planning on doing are Command Posts and Observation Posts. Basically, "vehicles" which have nothing more than higher and lower levels of communications equipment in them. That gets us a MUCH better simulation of field phones and non-portable radios than CMx1 had because if they aren't manned or are destroyed their C2 functionality is lost. In CMx1 you could move around HQs with very little regard for historical reality.
Are there any plans for the map editor in CM:Normandy?
The system for drawing roads in CMx2 is nearly the same as CMx1, so I don't agree it's a step backwards. It's just not a step forward since what we all would rather have is the ability to drag the cursor around and have the road assemble itself. That sort of thing involves a considerable amount of programming time, so it is an extremely low priority.
Overall the CMx1 Editor was "easier" to use because it has only a fraction of the options that CMx2's Editor offers. Kinda like a normal pocket calculator is easier to use than one of those $300 scientific ones simply because it's more simplistic.
As for the UI, it's not only designed for you guys it's also designed for us on the development end. Since CMx2 is an open ended system we built an open ended UI so we can easily add and subtract features without upsetting everything that was already in there. The old CMx1 UI was a hardcoded mess which made adding or subtracting game features and terrain extremely difficult. Difficult is never a good thing for either us or you guys.
In a perfect world we'd have the resources which would allow us to make the Editor easier to use. However, we don't so like CMx1 the CMx2 Editor will continue to be functional with slight improvements over time.
How will aircraft will be represented in the game. Will it be similar to CMx1?
The graphical representation will be the same as CMx1 (probable) or like CMx2 (doubtful), but not like TOW (absolutely).
The UI will not be the same as CM:SF because .. that would be ridiculously unrealistic. However, when we get to the second WW2 Family (later war Western Front) the US will have Forward Air Controllers available. Extremely rare, more limited than in CM:SF, but definitely better. I'm going to have to brush up on what the status of tactical air control was for the Germans in 1944. Obviously they rarely had aircraft available in the first place, but earlier in the war they had the equivalent of FACs.
Ground fire will matter like it did in CMx1.
Take care of him. I have a buddy wounded
Buddy Aid will definitely be in WWII games. It might be a little less effective, but maybe not. Gunshot and fragmentation wounds aren't that different and the "tools" available to the soldiers in the immediate area aren't necessarily all that much better now than they were back in WW2. What is MASSIVELY improved is the system of taking wounded off the battlefield and getting them to the level of medical attention they need.
Fordability - Will there be a shallow water tile fordable by infantry/vehicles? Will my little pixeltruppen hold their rifles above their heads wading through a flooded field?
Like CMx1, there will be specific spots which can be crossed by infantry and/or vehicles. I'm trying to get in some shallow streams that would be a different type of "water" altogether. Basically slows things down but it's too shallow to prevent fording. Plus, they would look nice.