Briefings

[JudgeDredd]

Can I mention something? Of course I can....

One of the things I find extremely boring is written briefings. I find them very, very tedious to read through and, in fact, seldom do.

Is there no chance that briefings could be made vocal? I'm sure it wouldn't take too much effort...a little bit of creative voice over acting and away you go.....plllleeeeaaase?

Of course, don't get rid of textual briefings so that non-english speakers still know what's going on.

As an example, S.W.A.T. 4...now I will look at every single briefing because they've made them "real" with voices..which only state exactly what is written.

Out of all the scenarios I've played in COTA, I've read exactly 0 briefings (probably why I get my ass handed to me)...same goes for Combat Mission...the briefings just make my eyes bleed.

Please, please think about adding in voice over briefings. It would completely tranform the games for me!

[GoodGuy]

Briefings with voice?
Well, voice overs will cost money, and they have to be done by pro or semi-pro voice-over artists, if you don't wanna make ppl laugh or kill the immersion. Also, I doubt that the current engine supports it right now. If there'd be a campaign system, really good sales and a big community with tons of custom scenarios (or even campaigns) it would make sense to "up" the level of presentation with goodies like that.
For me, it'd be just a hmm ... gimmick, not worth the money/effort right now.

But i think that something has to be done to these briefings, too, as the small fonts, displayed in the briefings, use to make me suffer (I'm using a 17" CRT).

How about adding a preview screen to the briefing window (displaying the briefing in textual form PLUS a scaled-down version of the map before you start a scenario).

Or even better: add several small maps, looking like military maps (programs like XARA xtreme turn real maps/pictures into vektor graphics that look like concept art work or hand drawn maps created by military personnel, with the press of a button), which show what historical moves led to the encounter/operation currently selected. Arrows (i.e. like in the american/russian newsreels produced during WW2) showing counter attacks, defensive perimeters, thrusts or main goals of the operations.

An additional goodie would be here to give ppl the opportunity to print out these kind of maps, so that you'd get 1 or 2 A4 pages of proper material without hurting your eyes. [:D]
Even if it would just be displayed on the screen, players could easily gather the key infos without having to read a massive text.

My 2 cents.

[Fred98]

They would need to be done with a Sydney accent as it's the most common.
 
Do not allow a Queenslander or someone from adelaide to read.
 
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[Fallschirmjager]

Better and more cost effective would be to make them almost like powerpoint presentations with a map and then cirlces, arrows etc showing objectives and suggested movement paths as well as enemy concentrations and movements paths as show both sides were reinforcments are expected to enter from as well as enemy reinforcments.
I think this would be much much more useful that voice overs and could be pretty easy and cheap to work up and would add alot to the pregame.

[JudgeDredd]

I know it's being banded about that "it may not be within the game engine to perform it", but exiting to run anothe rapp which does support what you want to use to do the breifings would be fine by me...

I just need something else from the briefings....something "kind of" interactive...as I said, maybe voice overs are being too specific...as mentioned by Fallschirmjager...something along the lines of a power point presentation...just anything to stop me having to read and scroll through lots of little text!

[e_barkmann]

Do not allow a Queenslander or someone from adelaide to read.

 
well that's all fine and well until the scenario briefing has to mention something about a skewl near a pewl.....  [:D]

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

I just need something else from the briefings....something "kind of" interactive...as I said, maybe voice overs are being too specific...as mentioned by Fallschirmjager...something along the lines of a power point presentation...just anything to stop me having to read and scroll through lots of little text!

Well, resizing the briefing window to add a map (or several maps, note: not ingame screens but maps that can be read/understood within a few moments) should be possible.
The extended briefing wouldn't even have to be accessible ingame (the engine does not allow that right now anyways, afaik), pointing out directions of thrusts, main goals, etc. when selecting a scenario.

A few sequels later (2010? [;)]), I could imagine the engine integrating movies with the look + feel of a WW2 newsreel, pointing out the most important features of a mission (maybe like those WW2 b/w animations). Voice overs wouldn't be necessary here.... or maybe add some musical score, like in the HttR intro, with a bit of a variation for each scenario.

Another item for my personal wislist: In addition to the text-briefing being displayed, when highlighting a scenario in the current scenario browser, at least a mini-map (just like the ingame mini-map) should be displayed, to avoid that players start the wrong map. Players will rather memorize the graphical "fingerprint" of a scenario (the map) than some misleading scenario name. This would be a real goodie for head to head games too, as it would speed up the decision-making process.