Getting this game back on track

[JFalk68]

I have noticed a lack of posts and resonses to questions lately on the forum, I get the vibe there is some growing apathy towards COH and I want to help it!

I want to see this game/franchise succeed, so much so that I am even willing to donate some $dollars via kickstarter or whatever periodically. It might not be much but $50 or $100 here and there and if enough people get involved we might have a more persuavsive agrument to continue working on this title and get the results we all want.

I think Eric Babe along with Matrix are working hard to try to give us the game we want but I feel the last graphical update falls short. I realize time = money and that balanced by overall sales there comes a point when it's no longer cost effective to update a game that is not giving any more returns on the dollar.

I want to see Storms of Steel and I want it too look like the board game...enough said!

[hugi]

Slow down ...

who says that this game is not successful for matrixgames? Ok, strategies wargames has not the same sells that other games, but I guess it is also cheaper to develop.
Look to the Panzer Corps game, this is also such a game. But they develop and sell many add-ons for a fair price.
I think if CoH has a small but good community, which buy the future add-ons, everything is fine. The add-ons should be cheaper to develop and so small cash-cows.

I spend 40 bucks on this game and I think it is worth the money. Ok, it has some glitches and bugs, but today software matures at the customers. (I'm not happy about this, but it is true)
The developer will improve the game with updates and after some time, they will more money from us for new content. Then you can spend some money.

So, slow down and enjoy the game as it is (I hope you do so).

Greetings
hugi

[Richie61]

Get PBEM up and running and people like me would buy it. It looks like my boardgame, but I have friends that have the PC unit & tell me not to buy it because of the lack of true PBEM.
Time will tell.

[grosbil]

Well I'm afraid COH is not a game who allow pbem...
There are too many interactions between the players.
A 'ftf' game using the lobby is the best way to enjoy it.
Sure you have to be connected but games are fast so it is easy to end a session in one hour.

[Jamm]

No it is not suited for pbem at all.

My question is why play a game over a period of a month when you can meet up in the lobby and play it in an hour and a half?

[Jamm]

I think this game will evolve for those of us who enjoy it.

It is by far the best wargame I have purchased in years.
I have wasted a lot of money on lemons looking for my tactical fix and this game has the balance and feel I was looking for.

Can it be improved? Sure. And it seems like they're trying with the updates.
I for one will buy every expansion when it comes down the pipeline.

Waiting,...patiently,...

[junk2drive]

I understand that it is vacation season and that WCS have other projects but I expected more interaction from the staff in this forum.

[michaelincol]

eric and gil are pretty good about forum interaction so I am thinking (and hoping) work is being done on that other project and this one, too, and perhaps another update and even a release of the other project are upcoming.

[hugi]

@gamerincol: This is because this is the beta version. You can only play on the official multiplayer-server with the latest stable release. The beta version ist only for testing.

You could install both version simultaneous, if you want play online and test the new version.

Greetings
hugi

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: junk2drive
I understand that it is vacation season and that WCS have other projects but I expected more interaction from the staff in this forum.

I'm the only WCS staff supporting the COH forum. I don't have the luxury of being able to do this every day.

I haven't been quite sure what to say to the people who want to be able to read the numbers when the camera is zoomed out so that the numbers are only 2 or 3 pixels wide. A 3-pixel-wide number isn't going to be legible, and there's not much I can do in the way of programming to change that. Erik Rutins has asked me to investigate whether we could add a feature that makes units much larger upon mouseover to help with legibility, but I get the feeling that the people who are telling me that they want the screen to look exactly like the board game aren't going to be happy even if I do that.

I'm looking at possibly doing more work to allow for higher resolution map textures so the maps will look a little better when the camera is closer to the ground -- the reason we didn't include these in the original game was precisely because of this limitation -- but this solution might prohibit the game from running on certain video cards.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: hugi
@gamerincol: This is because this is the beta version. You can only play on the official multiplayer-server with the latest stable release. The beta version ist only for testing.

You could install both version simultaneous, if you want play online and test the new version.

That's correct. The beta version is a test version and won't run in the lobby.

I hope to make 1.6 an official version soon, but it doesn't seem that the flat map art is being well-received. Many people had requested it, but there are only very few people responding to the beta patch, and those who are seem to be complaining about the flat map art. So I'm not quite sure whether to put more work into it or to scrap the flat map art altogether: I'm reluctant to put more work into it because the things people seem to be complaining about, namely that 3-pixel-wide numbers are not clear and legible, is not actually something I can fix. We'll have to wait till somebody sells a 6000 pixel wide monitor.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: JFalk68
I have noticed a lack of posts and resonses to questions lately on the forum, I get the vibe there is some growing apathy towards COH and I want to help it!

I want to see this game/franchise succeed, so much so that I am even willing to donate some $dollars via kickstarter or whatever periodically. It might not be much but $50 or $100 here and there and if enough people get involved we might have a more persuavsive agrument to continue working on this title and get the results we all want.

Thank you for the kind sentiments. I can say that forum traffic doesn't always track with game sales. This is our fourth Matrix game, and actually seems that forum traffic relates more to game complexity than anything else: the more complicated a game is, the more people there are on the forum asking questions and requesting rule changes.

[hugi]

I think the problem is the image downscaling (downsampling) of the tokens.
At the moment they have high textures, which is good.

But if you are downscaling (zoom out) this images with the wrong technic it can look bad. It works to sharp and so the result is not readable.
I think the best way to handle this is to use 2 or 3 versions of the tokens with different resolution.

Than you can change the image of the token if the user zoom far away or very close. (Android Apps you the same mechanism.) Our you could use a better algorithem but this is more difficult.

Ok I visited a computer graphic course at my university ... [:'(]

But I looking forward for the official 1.6. I like the graphics with boardgamestyle and the los calculating!

Greetings
hugi

[ericbabe]

Than you can change the image of the token if the user zoom far away or very close. (Android Apps you the same mechanism.) Our you could use a better algorithem but this is more difficult.

That's a good idea, but I'm pretty sure that the textures on the chits are already using something called mip maps, which is a way of implementing this idea. I'll double check to make sure the "build mip maps" flag is on in the model importer. It may not be: there was a little bit of rush to get the new unit graphics finished.

ORIGINAL: hugi
I think the problem is the image downscaling (downsampling) of the tokens.
At the moment they have high textures, which is good.

But if you are downscaling (zoom out) this images with the wrong technic it can look bad. It works to sharp and so the result is not readable.

I believe the game uses bicubic sampling on the texture mip maps (and anisotropic sampling on the ground textures). Bicubic sampling should be OK in this instance -- we'd switch to anisotropic if the camera were often near the ground plane and looking out parallel to the ground, but I doubt players often play this way. Players can adjust their multisampling settings in the preferences manager which helps improve antialiasing, but won't affect the graphics much in this case, I think.

However, even with the best possible settings, nothing can make a 3x3 pixel number look legible. The "2" in the image below gets downsampled in the program to look like a backward "C." In a 3x3 pixel grid, I can't see how downsampling is supposed to make a "2" look any more legible than this. I fear there is nothing I can do with software to make 3x3 pixels look more like 9x9 pixels.

[demyansk]

My problem is I keep buying the games, play once or twice then decide to go and play Battlefield 2. can't figure it out?

[hugi]

@ericbabe: Thanks for the samples. I think you are right. There is no way to improve the quality with this resolution. I think it should be good enough then.

I'm not sure how other game developer handle this problem. Maybe they do not allow to zoom out so far. Our they change the images. You could remove all unreadable numbers and make the unit image bigger. So you can see the most important thing: the unit type. If you then want more information you can hoover the token and read the information in the bottom of the screen. Its like google maps, display only the information that is important for this zoom level (far away: only big streets; very close: all streets with names).

@demjansk: What? Ok BF2 is a cool game but do you want really compare this games? I mean ... you can also make little children. Costs nothing and makes fun. [:D]

[ericbabe]

Erik Rutins has suggested experimenting with making the units much larger upon mouseover, which would make them more legible when the camera is zoomed out. Adding optional tags to the units that would identify them as to type when the camera is zoomed out might be useful, though I'm not sure this would please the people who are asking that the computer game look exactly like the board game since there are no tags in the board game.

[wodin]

ORIGINAL: hugi

Slow down ...

who says that this game is not successful for matrixgames? Ok, strategies wargames has not the same sells that other games, but I guess it is also cheaper to develop.
Look to the Panzer Corps game, this is also such a game. But they develop and sell many add-ons for a fair price.
I think if CoH has a small but good community, which buy the future add-ons, everything is fine. The add-ons should be cheaper to develop and so small cash-cows.

I spend 40 bucks on this game and I think it is worth the money. Ok, it has some glitches and bugs, but today software matures at the customers. (I'm not happy about this, but it is true)
The developer will improve the game with updates and after some time, they will more money from us for new content. Then you can spend some money.

So, slow down and enjoy the game as it is (I hope you do so).

Greetings
hugi

Panzer Corps was a massive success for Slitherine\Matrix, you can't compare the two if your talking about future expansions etc.Check the post count for PC over at Slitherine games forum to get an idea. What put me off this game was the map graphics, more than anything, I'd have rather it been 2D and stuck to the great artwork in the boardgames, or at least try and give the buildings\trees etc etc that boardgame had drawn look. Or even better made two versions 3D and 2D map. I don't know just something about it. I've been looking at the recent spate of HOS screenshots over on LnL FB page and I have to say it looks beautiful. I also like the things the PC is being used for in that game aswell. So I'm going to carry on waiting. I'd have preferred with this game if they had taken it further and really used the PC to do things to complex to do in a boardgame, like individual casualties, less abstraction etc. HOS is bringing in new rules that would be too complex in a boardgame, this is what I'd like to have seen here.