How's the online for this engine?

[Arjuna]

Re Side Objective Locations. A good idea but there is a lot more that needs to be done than just changing the UI so you can draw a shape or line. The AI has to be able to do respond in a meaningful manner and this will take work to achieve. Changing from a location with a radius, which effectively gives us circles, to elipses and rectangles is pretty straight forward. Changing to a free-form polygon or to a line is another matter altogether. It's not impossible but it would mean overhauling a lot of code that relies on the locations. I'd rather be first addressing things like minefields, mounted/dismounted infantry, off-map fire support etc.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
Hey, Ray, long time ...

I miss you and Eddy together. PG is far too mentally stable for my tastes these days!

They don't let me post too often from the looney bin aka "work", but I'm still around.

Great to see you started a BFTB AAR - looking forward to reading it.

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[Arjuna]

You better look out Eddy - that overseer with the lash is coming back real soon. [;)]

[GoodGuy]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Changing from a location with a radius, which effectively gives us circles, to elipses and rectangles is pretty straight forward.

"Straight forward" means easier to implement?
If so, community designers would really appreciate/enjoy such an "interim-solution", I am absolutely sure. I knew that the polygon version I had in mind is hard to implement, though, so I suggested elipses and rectangles (with adjustable width/height -> via values). So, would that be possible?
I mean, I suspect that you see adding of SM features as less important, as you may think that it'd be just a tool used by very few people, but I think adding things like these either help to get more people interested in creating scenarios or help current designers to come up with more or more sophisticated scenarios.

Anyway, I just threw in my original polygon idea as well, as reference for improvements in the future (umm maybe very far future). [:)]

[Arjuna]

GoodGuy,

Understood and appreciated. [:)]

BTW if we allow the setting of rectangular and eliptical objective areas in the SM then we also need to support that in the Game, both in terms of providing a UI so the player can have his forces defend the same area as the objective requires but also getting the AI to do that as well. So it's not as simple as just adding it to the SM.

This is too big to squeeze into BFTB. But I've added it to the list for the next title.

TT3801 - UI - AI - SM - Allow for Rectangular and Eliptical Objective Areas

[GoodGuy]

Thank you Sir! [:)]

[JayTac]

The amount of pauses should be limited, that's a must IMO, along with a pause timer.
 
Will there actually be online servers though, or just IP connect? For the price we must have more than just an IP connect.

[06 Maestro]

Hi JayTac

ORIGINAL: JayTac
The amount of pauses should be limited, that's a must IMO, along with a pause timer.

I've never had a problem with pauses being abused. There is an in game chat, so if someone wants to stop to take a screen shot, reorganize, or take a nature break it is no big deal to inform your opponent. From my experience, pausing for getting a grip on whats happening with your forces during IP play is rare. Playing against a human I (and my opponents) use either slow or medium speed. Only during periods of low activity is it put on high speed. I doubt that you would ever find an opponent that pauses and leaves you hanging. The larger scenarios of CotA can take 10 hours or more to complete. BftB is going to have some that are even longer/bigger. From my experience that time would be split into several different game days. You can still easily have sittings of over 2 hours-to take a five minute break a couple of times is a good thing. Its good fun to be able to simulate the battlefield the way these games do, but there is no point in denying yourself a cup of coffee and cookies in the middle of a battle-winning or loosing.[;)]
Anyway, if you and your opponent spend a few minutes before play to come to an agreement about pausing, you will not have any problem.

And welcome to the forum.

Will there actually be online servers though, or just IP connect? For the price we must have more than just an IP connect.

The IP connect actually works quite well. The first connection can be a little bit of a chore, but after that (generally) its a breeze. Actually, the problem I had 2 times was in finding and matching the correct game files with my opponent. That was my fault-or his fault-a server really would not help in that situation.

Just this evening I saw a link at Armchair General for a gaming site that has a meeting room for CotA players-and a whole lot of other games. Its called X Fire. I'm going to look into that. Currently I use Hamachi for game connections-its free and works great. There are apparently many gamers who like the X Fire setup too.