PC Map Editor

[madorosh]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

Wood,

Thanks for your post.

ORIGINAL: thewood1

From someone who does not do official map making or do any playing around with 3d modelling. Take a look at this thread: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1905309

I know it is kind of like watching the sausage being made, but it reinforces, to me anyway, MR's point about the flexibility being a two-edged blade. There is no way someone with out specific knowledge comes into this forum looking to see how to build a map and is not somewhat intimidated by that thread.

That thread has nothing to do with map making or the map maker [&:]

Can I suggest that the only thread worth reading now on the map maker is http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1893360, everything else written is as you say like watching a sausage being made or the mess inside a workshop before the finished product.

That is what will keep people from using MM. MM is not even officially a release at version 0.9. I don't mean to denigrate the work people like Rick and Stridor do, but this isn't some out of the box organic program like CM's map maker. You need some external programs, a 0.9 MM release, command lines, layers, etc. I used to do a lot of 3D CAM programming and many of the discussions about MM turn me off.

You do need to download MM that is true. I know I sound like a parrot but the ONLY external program you need is a paint editor, like the free MS paint which comes on everyone's machine. I don't know where this business about command lines comes about [&:] but you don't need to know anything about command lines (unless you are referring to the knovix program which has nothing to do with map making).

My philosophy has always been that if a scenario/map editor is too complicated and is percieved to be out of reach of the non-passionate, casual player, grapical mods will outstrip scenarios and maps. I think that has become the case for PCK, as well as CM2 to a lesser extent.

I agree.

What is the solution? I really think a Matrix sanctioned, and approachable mapmaker needs to eventually addressed. Even if it means limiting some of the functionality.

Looking at this from the other side as someone who has actually built a map editor, looked at how many other companies who do 3D maps for their games have done it, and understand the requirements of the underlying PCK engine ... I think personally that it is highly unlikely that it will happen the way most people who are reading this thread hope it will.

Regards

S.

Why post a link to a tutorial on how to use this mapmaker, but not tell anyone where to get the mapmaker itself? You say "any comments can be made in the map maker beta thread" but you don't link it. There might be more people willing to help if just finding the download was something less of a scavenger hunt.

Can I trouble someone for the URL to

a) the actual beta
b) the tutorial

And can I suggest putting everything into the initial post of one single thread so others can find it; or at the very least cross link the threads?

[Stridor]

MD,

Thanks for your posts.

I never intended MM to be a scavenger hunt. At the moment it is beta by invite only, that is because the download is rather large (~ 100MB) and I wouldn't be able to find all the bandwidth if I made it open slather.

See this link

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1893360

This is the tutorial thread.

This link

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1832837

Is the beta comments thread (which is now very long).

The tutorial covers in detail the operation of the MM. It is very comprehensive as I attempt (poorly) to explain every little knob and switch the MM offers.

I am in the process of preparing another "point release" (read another 100MB) main distro download for those who would like to be involved. I will pm you when it is ready if you like to have a look.

Regards

S.

[madorosh]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

MD,

Thanks for your posts.

I never intended MM to be a scavenger hunt. At the moment it is beta by invite only, that is because the download is rather large (~ 100MB) and I wouldn't be able to find all the bandwidth if I made it open slather.

100 Megs!

Good grief!

My mistake, then. I was assuming this was an open project. Obviously sounds exciting, hence my disappointment/frustration at not being able to find it! Also obviously wishing you luck with it, as I think it would add a lot of appeal to the game once functional.

Yes, would be interested in any details of newest build once you're comfortable with them.

It still baffles me why Matrix wouldn't be willing to invest in an "official" map maker, or to support you more directly in your own endeavours, even if all it meant was hosting some server space.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: Michael Dorosh

People are still playing the first generation Combat Mission and visiting the official forums - and there are all kinds of other forums out there devoted to the game, years after official support for the game has ceased - because of the open-endedness. This forum, on the other hand, lies dormant for days, sometimes weeks at a time.

Battlefront has indicated the following as regards sales of their CMx1 products:

CMBO sold better than CMBB
CMBB sold better than CMAK
There was no reason to believe that a fourth title, one modeled after the previous versions would deviate from this downward trend in sales. Hence the project wasn't economically feasible.

Is there any reason to believe that a Koiosworks clone of the old Combat Mission would sell any better? Were the developer to invest in a CMx1-style fleet of vehicles and other weapon types, along with an easier to use mapmaker and editor, could they recover their costs? Or has the market for sales of that style of game decreased dramatically? I don't know the answers to these questions, BTW.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[madorosh]

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl

ORIGINAL: Michael Dorosh

People are still playing the first generation Combat Mission and visiting the official forums - and there are all kinds of other forums out there devoted to the game, years after official support for the game has ceased - because of the open-endedness. This forum, on the other hand, lies dormant for days, sometimes weeks at a time.

Battlefront has indicated the following as regards sales of their CMx1 products:

CMBO sold better than CMBB
CMBB sold better than CMAK
There was no reason to believe that a fourth title, one modeled after the previous versions would deviate from this downward trend in sales. Hence the project wasn't economically feasible.

Is there any reason to believe that a Koiosworks clone of the old Combat Mission would sell any better? Were the developer to invest in a CMx1-style fleet of vehicles and other weapon types, along with an easier to use mapmaker and editor, could they recover their costs? Or has the market for sales of that style of game decreased dramatically? I don't know the answers to these questions, BTW.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

CMBO involved the Americans and Germans in Normandy which would account for its popularity on the U.S. market.

I also don't think BFC ever said that CMBO outsold CMBB; you'd have to point me to that. I'm not necessarily disputing it, but I don't recall it. I do recall them saying CMAK sold less than CMBB however.

Though I'm not sure what exactly this has to do with anything. A "CMX1-type" game can refer to any of dozens major features, and a map-builder is a common feature to just about any kind of game, from fantasy to military to science-fiction.

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Michael Dorosh

100 Megs!

Good grief!

Whilst the MM program itself is quite small, the entire distro includes lots of new 3D graphical content (even new 3D map models designed by some of the beta guys) which is why it is so large.

It still baffles me why Matrix wouldn't be willing to invest in an "official" map maker, or to support you more directly in your own endeavours, even if all it meant was hosting some server space.

Yes, puzzling isn't it?

S.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: Michael Dorosh
I also don't think BFC ever said that CMBO outsold CMBB; you'd have to point me to that. I'm not necessarily disputing it, but I don't recall it. I do recall them saying CMAK sold less than CMBB however.

I'm pretty sure that Steve posted a thread explaining his rationale for moving to CMSF back when that game was announced. Beyond economic realities, he also described his team as being burned-out on the older system. What I took away from his comments was that, given a choice between doing a fourth CMx1 and doing no game at all, they'd do no game at all.[/quote]

Though I'm not sure what exactly this has to do with anything. A "CMX1-type" game can refer to any of dozens major features, and a map-builder is a common feature to just about any kind of game, from fantasy to military to science-fiction.

When I make mention of a "CMx1-type" game, I'm talking about a tactical-style computer game, featuring squads, crew-served weapons and AFV, and one that uses the WEGO movement system. It's not all that generic when you think about it, which partly explains why so many people first sat down in front of PzC and became frustrated when they discovered that they weren't playing Combat Mission. At a glance, the games appear just that similar, albeit with the older game featuring superior utilities and greater content.

Back to the big question, though, if Koiosworks made a Combat Mission clone, one which included stuff like a tile-based mapmaker, would people buy it in sufficient numbers to warrant the cost of developing the game? I simply don't know, but I am concerned that the pool of buyers who are interested in this style of play is in decline. Apart from anecdotal evidence regarding sales, I simply don't know, though. In that same vane, it'll be interesting to see how the CMC game from BF sells, but sometimes, I think they don't have their heart in that, either.

We'll see.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: Stridor

ORIGINAL: Michael Dorosh


It still baffles me why Matrix wouldn't be willing to invest in an "official" map maker, or to support you more directly in your own endeavours, even if all it meant was hosting some server space.

Yes, puzzling isn't it?

S.

Could it be that your mapmaker sorta freaked them out? What you've created is one powerful little tool. Perhaps they'd like to keep some elements of content-creation in the game proprietary.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[madorosh]

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl
Back to the big question, though, if Koiosworks made a Combat Mission clone, one which included stuff like a tile-based mapmaker,

Interesting question, but who was suggesting either?

i.e. that PzC should

a) be a CM-clone, or
b) that a map-maker should be "tile-based".

The roads in the CM map-builder, for example, were atrocious. They're still atrocious in the new game engine, and in fact, they're a step backwards because in most cases, what used to be able to be accomplished in one click now has to be done in two or even four.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: Michael Dorosh

Interesting question, but who was suggesting either?

i.e. that PzC should

a) be a CM-clone, or
b) that a map-maker should be "tile-based".

You certainly never have. All that I can glean from your posts is a desire to have the developer do what it can to stimulate interest in its game. Common-sense suggests that it would be to their advantage to do so.

With that understood, there has been more than one post made here declaring that the maps in CM were visually superior to those found in PzC. There have also been posts praising the virtues of tile-based mapmakers like those found in CM, as if there's simply no other way to go about the matter.

On a completely different criticism of the newer game, there was one poster who wanted to kill off the "relative-spotting" feature in PzC because, he claimed, turns took longer to resolve than in CM. I spent something on the order of half-a-dozen posts trying to talk him off the ledge, before I finally gave up.

Items such as those lead me to believe that there is a constituency for the "clone" idea. If I approached you with the possibility, its because you did so much to chronicle the Combat Mission saga. If you're not an expert on the game and the people who played it, who is?

The roads in the CM map-builder, for example, were atrocious. They're still atrocious in the new game engine, and in fact, they're a step backwards because in most cases, what used to be able to be accomplished in one click now has to be done in two or even four.

I didn't use the mapmaker the way that many players did. Rather, I used the map utility to create maps to test different parts of the game that I was interested in, to play out a tactical vignette, and see if my assumptions about the outcomes held up. So long as I stuck to armour and anti-tank guns, I did pretty well, BTW. Conversely, if I wanted to play a non-stock, customized scenario, I'd use the creator's maps. Aesthetically, they struck me as the sort of map that I might play a miniatures game on, rather than anything "realistic or lifelike."

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[madorosh]

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl

You certainly never have. All that I can glean from your posts is a desire to have the developer do what it can to stimulate interest in its game. Common-sense suggests that it would be to their advantage to do so.

Yeh. Well, Matrix is bigger than BFC; I don't think PzC is that much of a "high priority" project - certainly it is in an accepted niche topic area. I'm grateful they are interested in developing it. That certainly doesn't restrain me, or you, or any of us from having opinions. Hopefully useful ones.

With that understood, there has been more than one post made here declaring that the maps in CM were visually superior to those found in PzC. There have also been posts praising the virtues of tile-based mapmakers like those found in CM, as if there's simply no other way to go about the matter.

Well, I don't agree that tile-based mapmakers are the way to go. They're easy to use, obviously. I have no idea how easy they are to code. They don't produce great looking results - the roads in CM, the way the buildings never really meshed with the terrain (sometimes they disappeared altogether when elevations were too steep), etc. But they're workable. But hey, if you've got a game in which 3 soldiers stand in for ten, I think you're agreeing to a certain degree of abstraction off the bat to begin with. That was never an issue in CM. So - any system they come up with would be welcome.

How do the game's designers do it?

On a completely different criticism of the newer game, there was one poster who wanted to kill off the "relative-spotting" feature in PzC because, he claimed, turns took longer to resolve than in CM. I spent something on the order of half-a-dozen posts trying to talk him off the ledge, before I finally gave up.

There's one in every crowd.

Items such as those lead me to believe that there is a constituency for the "clone" idea. If I approached you with the possibility, its because you did so much to chronicle the Combat Mission saga. If you're not an expert on the game and the people who played it, who is?

CM was good, but so completely unfinished, that a clone won't do. The maps in PzC already surpass them in some ways, so going back to tile-based would simply be a step backwards. I say, keep moving forwards.

[thewood1]

The CC reference is actually a good one.  Puts kind of a hole in my theory.  I played CC daily until CM came out.  I still play CC with the real red mod now and then.  In fact I stopped playing mostly because I got bored with the maps.
 
Take a look at this BFC thread.  Note Big Duke's comments on complexity of the editors.  Basically a different way of saying what I said.
 
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=85083
 

[madorosh]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

The CC reference is actually a good one.  Puts kind of a hole in my theory.  I played CC daily until CM came out.  I still play CC with the real red mod now and then.  In fact I stopped playing mostly because I got bored with the maps.

Take a look at this BFC thread.  Note Big Duke's comments on complexity of the editors.  Basically a different way of saying what I said.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=85083

BigDuke6 likes to hear himself talk, nothing new there. He inadvertently calls battlefront BFI, which is the name of the garbage collection company in Calgary, which had me howling. He also lists JasonC as one of the leading scenario designers in the CM community which is stunning. He's put together mini-campaigns and he's uploaded some stuff to the scenario depot that I always thought were mostly historical studies, not really intended for serious "fun". It goes to show we all pay attention to different people, I guess.

As to his main point, though, I expect it's no surprise to anyone that if you make the scenario editor more complicated, it will take more time for people to use it. It's what I said up above, too - we are all saying variations on the same theme. In CMX2 every stretch of diagonal road now has to be done with two alternating map tiles (and you have to click in the editor three times to do it - once on each side of the road, and once to change tiles).

Programming the AI in CMX2 is not only cumbersome and time-consuming, but the result are sub-par, and there is currently no way to test it because there is no accelerated time feature or AI vs. AI gameplay. So if you have a reinforcement group coming in at the 1 hour and 20 minute mark and want to see how the timing of that works, you need to slug it out for that long, and you also need to play as the appropriate side, or do it with fog of war off, and stop the game at the right time to see if you got the right result. Totally user unfriendly.

Of course, once you have a way of making the AI play itself, you take away some of the magic and mystery of the game itself also, so there are tradeoffs.

But then again, you have two of BFC's betatesters who just took a hit of the Kool-Aid start to post their fanboy blather like:

for all the hundreds of CMx1 scenarios made, I probably played/downloaded already more CMx2 scenarios than I actually played in all of the three CMx1 games combined. That does not mean that CMx1 was not a great game system; it was. But for me the current engine just offers much more fun in a shorter time frame.

and

I'd have to disagree with BD6 that quality is going down. IMHO compared to CMx1, quality CMSF of scenarios is soaring! Getting the AI to do something halfway decent in CMx1 takes, for all it's simplicity, twice the expertise then cobbling something together in CMSF. I've not done much at all with the CMSF editor but already I've gotten it to do things that were beyond my wildest dreams when toying around with CMx1 battles.

So it's hard to take the rest of the thread seriously. The latter is particularly puzzling, but if he's talking about having a broken AI stop cold when in the player's gunsights as one of those things he's always wanted CMX1 to do but couldn't, or having the enemy refuse to counter-attack lost objectives, he's probably right on the money.

I hope Panzer Command continues on the path it's going. Having objective flags and a dynamic AI is far superior to the weak programmed AI that BFC built into CMX2.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl

With that understood, there has been more than one post made here declaring that the maps in CM were visually superior to those found in PzC. There have also been posts praising the virtues of tile-based mapmakers like those found in CM, as if there's simply no other way to go about the matter.

Don't misunderstand a desire for simplicity in the ability to make a map with the desire that the editor look and feel like the CM editor. I personally could care less if they are tile based or pixel based, rastor or black and white......just make the process as quick and easy as you can. The idea that there must be a representative terrain type on the planet, that can be made for each map, is beyond what I think the game system needs to encompass. That in turn makes what MM can do, IMO, too complex. For the average scenario maker.

Items such as those lead me to believe that there is a constituency for the "clone" idea.

There definitely is a "clone" group in the tactical wargame community. I think if even half the improvements discussed for PC3 come about it won't be a clone of CMx1 but BETTER than CMx1. At least I think it has that potential.

I didn't use the mapmaker the way that many players did. Rather, I used the map utility to create maps to test different parts of the game that I was interested in, to play out a tactical vignette, and see if my assumptions about the outcomes held up. So long as I stuck to armour and anti-tank guns, I did pretty well, BTW. Conversely, if I wanted to play a non-stock, customized scenario, I'd use the creator's maps. Aesthetically, they struck me as the sort of map that I might play a miniatures game on, rather than anything "realistic or lifelike."

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

I used the CM map maker in more than 100 scenarios, plus the small vignettes that you talk about. I haven't seen anywhere that CM has been touted as having more realistic terrain than CM. Or that CM's map maker can do half what MM can do. What we are saying is that there are THOUSANDS of scenarios and maps made by CM scenario designers...THOUSANDS OF THEM...while at the moment there seem to be less than a dozen people making maps for PC. SOMETHING is wrong!!

You think the gamers that own PC don't want new custom made maps and scenarios? Maybe that's it. They just don't want new battles and scenarios like the old CM gamers did....in the end we are just discussing. Matrix will do what they think is the right way to go with the editor.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Stridor]

What we are saying is that there are THOUSANDS of scenarios and maps made by CM scenario designers...THOUSANDS OF THEM...while at the moment there seem to be less than a dozen people making maps for PC. SOMETHING is wrong!!

The PCK installed user base is probably 2-3 orders of magnitude less than the CM user base at a guess.

I doubt at this stage that even if PCK offered up a MM which could directly read your mind and then make your map in a blink of an eye, that anything would change.

At any rate no MM for PCK was ever advertised or promised by Matrix.

As a curious side note I know from download statistics that more than 50% of people who have download the MM have had little trouble making maps for PCK.

Regards

S.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
You think the gamers that own PC don't want new custom made maps and scenarios? Maybe that's it. They just don't want new battles and scenarios like the old CM gamers did....in the end we are just discussing. Matrix will do what they think is the right way to go with the editor.

I’m mainly concerned what I can do with the system. Thanks to Stridor’s MapMaker the one thing that was missing from letting me to use the game for a very long time has arrived. Now I can make the maps for battles set in France, Italy, North Africa, Sinai, the Goland Heights, Pakistan, Vietnam or even the Fulga Gap. The open system allows me to make tanks and guns for other times and places and put then on those maps and fight battles if I wanted.
(However, WWII remains the overall most popular timeperiod.)

It would be nice to see Matrix add a few more things to give the game more depth and more flexibility. I don’t always want one side to fight as Germans and the other as Soviets. And fans get encouraged by there being work done on the game.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

ORIGINAL: Mobius
I’m mainly concerned what I can do with the system. Thanks to Stridor’s MapMaker the one thing that was missing from letting me to use the game for a very long time has arrived. Now I can make the maps for battles set in France, Italy, North Africa, Sinai, the Goland Heights, Pakistan, Vietnam or even the Fulga Gap. The open system allows me to make tanks and guns for other times and places and put then on those maps and fight battles if I wanted.

When I first read this, I wanted to disagree with you. I wanted to say that you can't do those other theatres until you can make larger maps, at least 2Kx2K. But, I thought about it some more, and believe that there's a more serious issue that will keep you from doing all those other nationalities and battles.

It may be that you're never going to get where you want to go until the developer reworks the game so as to do away with the orders delay that the "red-side" suffers through. It's a real possibility that the effects of the mechanism are so severe, so frustrating for the Russian player, that no one wants to play that side.

I'm dying for a North Africa mod of the game, but I honestly don't know if PCOWS/PCK can get "there" from "here."

[Erik Rutins]

The next release will have a lot of things that you all have been hoping for. I would like to say more and I wish things had moved a bit faster, but yes there will be a next release and it should be at least as great a leap over Kharkov as Kharkov was over Winterstorm.

Regards,

- Erik

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: Prince of Eckmühl

ORIGINAL: Mobius
I’m mainly concerned what I can do with the system. Thanks to Stridor’s MapMaker the one thing that was missing from letting me to use the game for a very long time has arrived. Now I can make the maps for battles set in France, Italy, North Africa, Sinai, the Goland Heights, Pakistan, Vietnam or even the Fulga Gap. The open system allows me to make tanks and guns for other times and places and put then on those maps and fight battles if I wanted.

When I first read this, I wanted to disagree with you. I wanted to say that you can't do those other theatres until you can make larger maps, at least 2Kx2K. But, I thought about it some more, and believe that there's a more serious issue that will keep you from doing all those other nationalities and battles.

It may be that you're never going to get where you want to go until the developer reworks the game so as to do away with the orders delay that the "red-side" suffers through. It's a real possibility that the effects of the mechanism are so severe, so frustrating for the Russian player, that no one wants to play that side.

I'm dying for a North Africa mod of the game, but I honestly don't know if PCOWS/PCK can get "there" from "here."

It's the easiest thing in the world to change the scale. The game works with whatever scale you want to feed it.
I made a mod to test with Junk2Drive that had T55s fighting M48s at 1000=2000m scale. The map was essentially 2km x 2km with the values of gun data table.

Plenty of sides can be run with the Russian delays: Italians, French, N. Koreans, Syrians, Egytians, modern Russians again.
In fact the Soviet delay in PCK is not as bad as it was in PCWS. In PCK the delay is only 1/2 phase to 1 phase depending on what orders are given. I play a lot of Russians and am pretty used to working with the delay. Since targeting and withdraw in the Reaction phase are instantaneous your main problems (other than artillery delay) with the delay is getting the units moving.

If we had the models we could make many N. Africa maps for battles. We have Google Earth to get accurate data. You could make maps with MM of N. Africa of extreme accuracy.

Erik, I'd even settle for a little leap or a couple little leaps instead of a superman like leap. [:D]

[rickier65]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

The next release will have a lot of things that you all have been hoping for. I would like to say more and I wish things had moved a bit faster, but yes there will be a next release and it should be at least as great a leap over Kharkov as Kharkov was over Winterstorm.

Regards,

- Erik

This is very good news. I've been concerned that perhaps things were not moving forward. thanks!

Rick