Combat Leader Eye Candy

Charles2222 · Post by **Charles2222** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 12:11 am

gmenfan: Understand, that I don't know all that encompasses CL in the 1st place, so given that I will go back to the most pertinent substitute, that being SPWAW. I'll try to explain here.

Let's say the enemy is in his phase. In this portion of SPWAW it cannot be paused, and of course no circling with some graphic is possible, but both would be handy in the following instance. Suddenly hidden fire is encountered, coming three hexes due east and one hex north, of the tank furtherest east of your force. The problem is, I can see, particularly with such local fighting, what hex it comes from without seeing the enemy unit itself, but the game won't allow me to pause to write down what detail I can gather from that. Without the pause, even if I have enough time to record that first hidden position, I will miss any other events ongoing, including any more hidden positions that revealed fire coming from it. Another problem is that if I'm operating with memory, which is often the case, I cannot take much advantage of it, because for one thing there may be so many battles that I forget it. 3 hexes east and 1 north of what tank now, etc.?

The need for an e-pen is the most extravagant, but it can still be accomplished with a enemy battle phase pause, alongside the mouse revealing, while in that mode, just what the coordinates of each hex are, and what the known units id is. In current SPWAW, during the enemy phase, your estimation of trying to remember where one hidden fire was, may be difficult enough, but the fact that such mouse movement during that phase makes id'ing things all but impossible, as there's no hex or unit data as there is in the player phase.

This all comes down to what the author envisioned the hidden fire was supposed to promote, and perhaps even so, CL may want to take some different approach. My thinking is that the hexes show fire coming from them, so you'll maybe put bombardment to the hex to flush out the hidden state. As the game is programmed, that's fine and good when you just ran into the first enemy fire of any sort, but when the game progresses it's well nigh useless. IOW, if the force is supposed to take advantage of hidden fire, and it's not just some not very well thought out graphical nuance, then the force should be able to react to each and every instance of it, and it cannot.

With an e-pen, and a pause, the player could pause the battle when he sees fire from a hidden hex (and truly some will remain hidden due to the map not being viewed at a far away enough level) and circle it so that he can take advantage of his troops spotting the hex with the hidden fire. The other alternative would be a pause which will identify all hex coordinates. Now that I think of it, hex coordinates would be all that is necessary to pull this off, and of course a pause.

If one the other hand, SP was made without the user intended to take advantage of the hidden fire coming from hexes, and indeed CL wants that, then there is no point in showing the graphic of fire emitting from a 'definite' hex. Even so, you can see how the user would want some manner of flagging what's goin on that the game will not allow him to keep up with. Perhaps CL covers this by making a square of four hexes together and placing a question mark there, for one to guess which one it came from, or even the same treatment for just one hex, which of course would solve a lot. Even if that is so, if I were watching and saw hex 49,49 fire out HMG fire, as opposed to 49,54 having ATG fire, I would still want to have some means of remembering just which hex put out what. If one wishes to say that battle doesn't allow one to distinguish between types of fire very successfully, if at all, and I don't know that, from individual hexes, then there's no point in much of any identifying of enemy fire is there?

I am curious, because it is something of a sizeable hole in the SP series to see fire coming from a hex and then be not be able, except in very isolated instances, of being able to track it down and use it.

Bernie · Post by **Bernie** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 2:13 am

Originally posted by Marc Schwanebeck
Yes you can toggle of things like unit shadows (those are engine casted and not part of the graphic), various animations, weather effects etc.. However the game takes some ressources, that is due to the very very flexible map design.

Thanks for the fast response Marc!

I suppose I'll just have to wait and see how it plays. I think memory will be my biggest problem (64m and they stopped making DIMMS for this antique a year ago) followed by speed (433 Celeron), but at least my 32meg ATI Radeon video card should handle it. If not, what the heck, I can just get a new system and skip paying the rent for a month or two...right?

NaKATPase · Post by **NaKATPase** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 3:54 am

Charles,
obviously I'm not on the CL design team, but from what I've read on the CL board, while your exact idea will not be incorporated, there will be a means of having information about enemy units that you have not identified but which have fired on you...

I think Mr. Vebber referred to "ghost units"... so unlike a SPWAW case where a unit shoots, and then no information is left behind, in CL, if a unit shoots at you, then its location will be marked by a generic ghost unit... at least until such a time that the enemy is more precisely identified...

As for that screenshot, why isn't it posted on the CL website??

It is gorgeous.

Supervisor · Post by **Supervisor** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 4:38 am

Charles: I think NaKatPase hit it on the head as for the ghost unit icons, I think this will be a feature that closely resembles what your looking for, I'm double checking to make sure this feature is still a go in CL as this topic was from months ago, also checking on an in game pause feature.

Charles2222 · Post by **Charles2222** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:32 am

NaKATPase/gmenfan: Thanks, I had the same ideas in mind about what I too heard of the ghost unit thing, but what if there's a ghost of a ghost unit?

It's just when I saw the red outline I was starting to think an e-pen had been applied to the game, in which case, assuming it worked during the enemy phase on pause, it would definitely solve the problem. Ghost unit works for me, but only one flaw would be, if, for example, you saw HMG fire come out of a hex, didn't remember during the enemy phase the hex it was in, or necessarily recall the type of fire, and then just have a ghost unit on your turn, it would be a lot more useful if the type of fire also was shown.

Assuming it's good for the user to know what type of fire came from the ghost unit, and the enemy phase would show fire type, and the hex, while the player turn would see only ghost unit with no fire indicated, the game would still suffer from the player having a glimpse during the enemy phase of the type and place of fire, but be totally unable to put that altogether back in one's turn. While the question mark is a nice addition, I'm not entirely sure, assuming the parameters of this situation, that the need for a pause that would allow for the reading of hex coordinates wouldn't still be necessary.

I do wonder, if when the enemy phase is on, will it place a question mark and then the fire comes from it, or does the question mark or ghost unit wait until the player turn to show up on the map? Of course, if the ghost unit provides information besides, something fired from there, such as: HMG fire, rifle fire, ATG fire, unit movement, etc., that would solve everything. In most cases, I would assume especially for something in the ghost stage, the precise fire might not be a very good idea, but the generality might, such as rifle fire, etc. Then as the unit becomes more revealed the type of fire might get as specific as 98k etc. Seems I've heard of things like this, but I don't think it was explained in light of the idea of addressing the SP hole of not being able to follow the information from hidden units during the enemy phase, so I might've missed something there.

Charles2222 · Post by **Charles2222** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:41 am

You know something I'm starting to hate about waiting for CL? I think I'm asking relatively the same questions I asked over 6 months ago, and the pathetic thing is that in many cases I don't even remember the answers. But, then again, I usually go out of my way to mention things I hear nobody else voice, so with maybe only a vague answer, or even one definite answer, if nobody else discusses that aspect beyond that, then you start to wonder if you ever asked it, or just thought of asking it.

Excuse me, while I go and, as a high school acquaintance was prone to say "forget my brain".

Supervisor · Post by **Supervisor** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 8:25 am

Charles: From the designers/developers, yes to the in game pausing and on the ghost units technique, it is a major feature on the "list of new concepts for the game as compared to SPWAW", but right now it is unclear if they will work out the way we want.

If they are too annoying, too confusing, or otherwise unsatisfactory they may get the axe. (Please note that this is a possibility with every new feature. But ghost units remain one of the top priorities to figure out how to make it fun and be in the game).

So, to sum up, "probably".

chief · Post by **chief** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 10:10 am

Bernie saw where you had DIMMS, heck I got EDO RAM, to upgrade to 128 would run approximately $120.00+ for additional 64 Mbs. Anew mack hind would be cheaper in the long run but would it continue to run all my old games....NOOOO...there ain't enough room in this room for 2 comps....ah such is life on Easy Street.

Bernie · Post by **Bernie** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 11:27 am

Originally posted by chief
Bernie saw where you had DIMMS, heck I got EDO RAM, to upgrade to 128 would run approximately $120.00+ for additional 64 Mbs. Anew mack hind would be cheaper in the long run but would it continue to run all my old games....NOOOO...there ain't enough room in this room for 2 comps....ah such is life on Easy Street.

Ain't that the truth chief! I'll probably have to wait until I hit the lottory...again. I hit it once about 6 years ago for around $15k, and was dreaming of the new computer system I'd get, right up until I walked into the lottry office and found out that the *blankety-blank* New York Daily News printed the wrong *blankety-blank* numbers!

Ah, such is life...mine anyway!

Charles2222 · Post by **Charles2222** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 8:50 pm

gmenfan:

Charles: From the designers/developers, yes to the in game pausing and on the ghost units technique, it is a major feature on the "list of new concepts for the game as compared to SPWAW", but right now it is unclear if they will work out the way we want.

Oh yes.

If they are too annoying, too confusing, or otherwise unsatisfactory they may get the axe.

Oh noooooo!!!

Belisarius · Post by **Belisarius** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 8:59 pm

Bernie; That's life in a nutshell! Every now and then one gets the feeling that everytings' gonna be OK, and then Life comes along and slaps you in the face!

For all you stone-age computer owners out there, you can get a decent rig (at least one that'll run CL) for under $300.

Grenadier · Post by **Grenadier** » Sun Feb 16, 2003 12:55 am

The ghost units take some getting used to. You fire at one and hope you are hitting a real unit, but then you take fire from another location where the real unit is. The feature can be turned off in the realism settings

Bernie · Post by **Bernie** » Sun Feb 16, 2003 7:03 am

Originally posted by Belisarius
Bernie; That's life in a nutshell! Every now and then one gets the feeling that everytings' gonna be OK, and then Life comes along and slaps you in the face!

For all you stone-age computer owners out there, you can get a decent rig (at least one that'll run CL) for under $300.

I just checked my bank account and according to the balance of my checkbook I've got just over 2% of that...yayyyy! Only 98% to go!