Matrix Games Forums

Is there a choice between "counters" and sprites?Noticed from AAR screens from game looks like "counters"(which I prefer).Also can someone who purchased this give me thier opinion.I loved Cross of Iron.Is this more or less the same?Are there better graphics etc.?

I don't have CoI, but I believe this is the best one yet. Night time effects and the always good graphics of CC5.

ORIGINAL: bairdlander

Is there a choice between "counters" and sprites?Noticed from AAR screens from game looks like "counters"(which I prefer).Also can someone who purchased this give me thier opinion.I loved Cross of Iron.Is this more or less the same?Are there better graphics etc.?

Hi,

I really like this game, its great to be back in CC.

I'm pretty sure that the counters is when you zoom the map out, then the units is represented as nato symbols.

Cheers
Mark

ORIGINAL: Cougar_DK

I'm pretty sure that the counters is when you zoom the map out, then the units is represented as nato symbols

It's not actually, but that's an excellent idea!

I noticed that in Close Combat: Modern Tactics this is the case. You see the NATO symbols when you zoom out. With Wacht am Rhein and The Longest Day, though, when you zoom out you see counters. It's very useful during gameplay, I think, as it provides a clear and concise view of things and there is no way to miss anything because everything is showing.

If there's an option to change this from counters to NATO symbols, I haven't found it yet.

There is no option for switching, but the icons are all from one image packed in the Graphics\CCImage.pix file. It would be easy for you to replace the icons with symbols, NATO or not. Could be little furry animals or flowers, if one was bent oddly enough.

The CCImage.pix file can be extracted and repacked by GadgetMunger by our erstwhile TheBlood! and by Mafi's RtBTool.

what I mean is would prefer option of counters instead of sprites during gameplay,so it would be more like the old Squad Leader boardgame.I did purchase TLD it is good.

Glad you like it bairdlander.  I was going to say this earlier but opted not to but I figure now it's more appropriate:
 
It's possible to mod in counters instead of sprites.  I suspect given the size you'd have to make the icons it might be a drag on system resources.  The animations you'd be replacing have several parts.  Instead of each frame having a different pose in the overall movement it'd be a static counter that was identical for each and every frame.  If you wanted to get really crafty you could devise your own symbol system which would indicate the state of each unit at any given time since there are different animations for running, prone, firing, defensive, surrendered, dead, incap, etc.  A color bar or change of background color could represent those different states.  You'd swap out the graphics in the soldier animations for the counter style icons.  Instead of sprites moving across the screen you'd then have counters moving across the screen.
 
It would be considerable work since you'd have to have multiple states for each unit type counter and there are hundreds of animation sequences.
 
One pitfall to this idea is that all infantry types (rifle, BAR, command) would all be some generic infantry type icon.  It's not possible (iirc) to have separate icons for each team type because of the fact that soldier animations are used for multiple team types.
 
Another con that just occurs to me is that you'll have multiple icons within one team since the animations are repeated for each soldier in the team.  So you'd either be stuck with doing really tiny icons to represent a single soldier or something else.
 
There may be other hurdles to overcome that I'm overlooking that would prevent this from working right or being modded.