Matrix Games Forums

Hi Guys

The have a screenshot of Flashpoint Germany up on the main page of Matrix Games.

David

20+ views and no comments.

Looks good to me. Nice and original. The fields look slightly repetitious (city is great) and on my monitor the green of the units and the white markings might do well with a little bit more contrast.

Is that a static bitmap as background?

Oh, and I hope the background is not just a nice backdrop (read: there will be different kinds of terrain as represented in the map).

The map for any given scenario will be a static background, but there will be multiple maps to choose from.

There will be different kinds of terrain as represented on the map. Terrain will be modelled on a 500m grid (for scale - a 500m square is a little larger than one of the unit counters).

Elevation will also vary as well. Both elevation and terrain type will affect LOS.

We'll work on more variation in the field texture.

Thanks for the feedback

ic

Sounds good to me then. I'm interested in having a game of this scale.

It was mentioned in another thread that us players should not be overburdened with micro-management. What does this mean in terms of the number of units in a given game? The brigade size or less sounds very interesting as I served in brigade and army corps level signal corps (network command and surveillance) and EW duties. I hope this game would be the first one to model those aspects as well. At least to some extent as they are pretty much neglected as it is .

Is it possible to make more scenarios (some kind of editing ability) or small random engagements?

Sorry if the questions are slightly off-topic in this thread but you got me started

I like everything in the screenshot except the city representation- it looks a bit like tiles on a bathroom wall. I'm a little ashamed to say it because in a game like this, looks should tend to be a secondary consideration, but that's the first thing I thought of when I saw it. I noticed the units were company-sized: I like this scale.

An EW guy? They're going to love you. I got me some questions that I've always wondered about. Presumably you are either familiar with Soviet EW capability or could at least infer some capability from our own doctrine.

1. How quickly could the Soviets zero an HQ in for special treatment?
2. What level headquarters would they target? Division? Brigade? Would they smother a battalion if it was in a key position? Would they always target combat headquarters or would they also jam service support?
3. How quickly could they react if the target switched to an alternate frequency?
4. How effective do you think the Soviets were at targeting, say, a HQ located by EW? Were they coordinated enough to get off a good artillery strike based on that information? Air strikes?
5. I was always taught to keep transmissions short. So we'd break up a long message into several shorter transmissions. Does that do any good?
6. Never having had it happen to me, how effective is jamming? Will is completely shutdown a particular frequency or is it merely annoying?
7. Did the Soviets have, in the late eighties, enough EW to make it a regular threat, or would it have been fairly rare? How often could various level HQs expect to be jammed?
8. Were we set up to target jammers for artillery strikes. That is, if the Soviets set up a jammer on a hilltop, would we locate and target that unit for destruction?
9. And so on and so forth. I'd love to know more, and I'm sure the designers would as well. They'd indicated on this post that they wanted to do EW right.

I'd be happy to answer but, since it's all highly classified, I would have to kill you after .

To be honest, I'd be happy to dicuss the general aspects that don't go too specific (fortunately they didn't tell me any particularly secret details but still) but merely answering your inquiries will make a lenghty post and will take a while to write.

Besides, it's quite off-topic so I'll start a new thread or something.
Perhaps there are some other EW guys out there. I'd also like to hear other peoples' educated guesses .

Oh, and should the developers be interested I'll help in any way I can. Being a programmer myself I have sometimes pondered about the idea of making a wargame that models those aspects but, alas, doing it really well would need enormous research, depending on the general abstraction level of course. And as such real-life applicable data would be hard to come by I have opted to improve my skills as a programmer instead .

Oh, and should the developers be interested I'll help in any way I can.

Uh Oh! Now ya gone and done it!

Hey David! Get over here.... we found another one

Haha

In life, I'm first and foremost a programmer and only during a time of crisis an EW man having done the compulsory military service. I did keep my eyes and ears open (and I still do) because, lets face it, I'm also a military nut .

In life I am a physicist who got seduced by the dark side and now they let (or make) me manage engineering projects.

You tell me how I got a job making maps for Matrix in my "spare" time...

Originally posted by Hub
I like everything in the screenshot except the city representation- it looks a bit like tiles on a bathroom wall.

I was trying to think of how to describe my disappointment with the town, but this hits the nail squarely on the head. Iain, please don't take any of this personally, because you are doing incredible work. I also understand that this is probably very early in the process, and you work magic.

But the town does lack texture. Moreover, it seems very symmetrical - very north/south and east/west. There's not a town in Europe that has a straight road longer than 10 meters, and are generally confused, twisting, random affairs based on road lines that are centuries old. I may have some small scale maps, e.g., 1:25,500 or 1:10,000 kicking around that you could use as models.

Thanks, for the feedback. I'll keep working on the textures.

You'd be surprised though, cities actually look a fair bit like that in satellite photos on this scale - which is basically what I was using as a model.

Still, I agree that there is room for improvement.

Actually I thought the city looked better (even pretty nice) than the fields which in my eyes looked a bit regular . The cities could use some unaligned roads and perhaps some blocks could be rotated so they are not so perfectly aligned (at least none of our cities have that neat blocks).

I took another look at the screenshots and decided I could do better with the city screenshots.

Since you fellas seem to be a select group I'll break the usual rules and show you a bit of work in progress. (nobody tell David, OK?)

There are actually several different textures in the city to try and simulate various kinds of neighbourhoods. It still looks a little monochromatica as well, but I can work on that...

I can't guarantee this will ever make it into the game, but let me know if you think it's an improvement.

I agree with Mac on the field textures and I working on them as well.

Whoops, that's not gonna work after all. I can't seem to attach a file.

Hmmmmm....

I'll have to find a way to put it somewhere that you guys can see it. I'll put it up later tonight.

Sorry about that

Sorry for the delay

Perfecto

Oh yeah- that's much better- photorealistic. "Mr. Christie, you make good cookies."

Mr. Christie, you make good cookies."

Hub,

Full marks for content but none for originality

Thanks