Pirate or legal earlier versions?

[MarkShot]

Probably will have some thoughts on the manual and the game after the weekend. I have already completed the tutorial. It was adequate, but nothing special.

My gut feeling is that there seems to be more raw information CCAW. However, there are a number of quick shortcuts in CAW like quicky strikes, waypoints, map zoom ... not in CCAW.

Screenshots are posted by clicking on the upload checkbox at the bottom of the post box and then click on embed picture check box.

Good night, all.

PS: Goodguy, someone was asking me if it was worth buying CCAW just for the manual. So, I thought it was pertinent to cover not just the contents, but the quality of the print medium. Since I always see gamers commenting on the medium when they purchase games.

[MarkShot]

Regarding appearance of my one CCAW screenshot, I decided to set ASPECT=FALSE in DOSBOX. The window is a little smaller, but this keeps the games original fonts from being distorted. After all, it's not like it is hard to read on a 20" CRT. Probably at the time the game was being sold, 1994, 15-17" CRTs were standard.

One other comparison between the games. CCAW is somewhat less realtime than CAW. It looks like practically in most screens and displays CAW can continue to run. CCAW only really runs when at the main map level. For giving orders and stuff, the game auto-pauses.

For those who have been discussing strike results known before the animation in CAW, it is the same CCAW too. However, it makes more sense in CCAW. The strike result is actually the one liner summary you get if you turned off the animation anyway. You always get that even if you have the animation on. The one liners take the place of the event log, since CCAW does not have an event log. In CAW, it makes less sense, since you only get the premature summary if you have the animation turned on.

That's all for now.

[JD Walter]

Ahhh... got 'ya. Thanks, MarkShot! [:)]

I was missing that the "Click here to upload" was actually a hotlink (and just checking "embed picture in post" only). Doing both works now.

[MarkShot]

I have read about 2/3s of the game manual and thumbed through the scenario creation manual. I doubt I am going to read the scenario creation manual (or not in the near future; scenario design just isn't my thing).

Although I haven't been reading the CAW and CCAW manuals side by side, I did not find myself reading the CCAW and being granted amazing insights. Mainly, I was reading it to understand how to navigate the CCAW screens which conceptually are not that different than CAW. The portion of the manual that deals with game play strategy is only three pages.

As far as tables appearing in the manual. There are some sample tables which appear in tutorials for scenario design, but there is nothing like a comprehensive set of tables describing all objects in the game.

Here it is - BOTTOM LINE: I don't think the CCAW manual is worth $37 USD as an adjunct to the CAW manual. Probably just sticking around the forum here over a month or two will teach you more than you are going to learn from anything additional in the CCAW manual. However, I do think CCAW, the game itself, is well worth $37 USD if you enjoy playing older games. I do as I play: AOD, SH1, RTD, 1830, ... The game seems very nicely designed, lots of scenarios, and appears to play well directly under XP or DOSBOX. Like the other classics, I mentioned, it just feels like fun.

[BoredStiff]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

Here it is - BOTTOM LINE: I don't think the CCAW manual is worth $37 USD as an adjunct to the CAW manual.

I'm curious, does that $37 include shipping? They're advertising the game itself for $27.

[MarkShot]

My mistake $32.70 with shipping. However, my opinion still stands.

[MarkShot]

A few of more CCAW differences:

(1) The maps aren't labeled due to low res graphics. So, you need to use the movement base/port option in order to ID various locations if you don't just recognize the maps.

(2) Costal watchers are implemented as sightings, but there are no icons on the map to indicate their presence.

(3) Bombard and invasion missions do seem to take place. However, they behave implicitly as opposed to have an actual order which is issued for these.

[Adam Parker]

Argh - I really appreciate the screen shot but I couldn't do this to myself!

I think the money here is best spent with CaW 2007 and let the SSG guys come up with some expansion packs which if I'm judging the mood of this game right should follow.

As for manuals, remember the release of East Front 1 - the entire world of wargaming errupted in protest at what I think was a thin 20 pages of nothing? Grognards, their wives and offspring wrote petitions to the Great Rose. It took East Front 2 to come out with the thick, meaningful rulebook collectors have today. It's acronym was TRWSHHITFP.

"The Rulebook We Should Have Had in the First Place".

[mjk428]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot


Here it is - BOTTOM LINE: I don't think the CCAW manual is worth $37 USD as an adjunct to the CAW manual. Probably just sticking around the forum here over a month or two will teach you more than you are going to learn from anything additional in the CCAW manual.

I agree completely that buying CCAW just for the manual is probably a terrible waste of money. A reason that might makes sense, other than collecting and enjoying old games, would be to buy it for the 40+ scenarios. Might also be helpful for scenario designers of the new game.


For comparison, here's a rundown of what's included in the manuals I have of the old game:

CAW Mac (Total War collection) - About 35 pages devoted to game mechanics and a tutorial.

CAW 2 PC (1992) - About 130 pages*. 55 pages is a nice little history of the Pacific War - the rest is game mechanics and design notes. An old school, nicely done, manual.

CCAW - About 170 pages. 32 pages on how to play the game the rest is on scenario design and scenario building.



* The print is large and the pages smaller. Makes for easy reading but the higher page count does not necessarily equal more info.

[MarkShot]

Mjk428,

I have searched the Internet, but did not find anything. Would you happen to have any custom scenarios that are not part of the CCAW package? If so, I would appreciate it if you could zip them up and email them to me.

Thanks.

[mjk428]

Sorry, I'm sure I don't. I never messed with the construction kit for the PC. Any scenario tweaking or inputting from Run5 mag by me was done on the Apple II.

So many scenarios came with the the CCaW that I never even looked into finding more. I do still have my Run5 mags but it's my understanding that those scenarios were all included with CCaW.

BTW, did you find these scenarios (Midway variants and Problem IX) at grognard.com?

ftp://ftp.grognard.com/download/comp/msdos/caw-scen.zip

[MarkShot]

I have those. Just copy them to my scenario directory?

[JD Walter]

Thanks for your comments, MarkShot.

I think I will take your advice and continue reading the forums, instead of spending any more to buy CCAW for its manuals. I am an old-time CAW fan, and am fairly well familiar with the battles presented in the two games. I have DosBox, and although I too enjoy some of the older titles like yourself, don't feel a pressing need to add CCAW whilst I have CAW loaded on my PC.

Sounds like I will get along just fine with CAW and the books recommended to me at Amazon.com.

[RSGodfrey]

Mark, the essential question for me is your assessment of how gameplay and challenge differ between the old and new versions. Have you formed an opinion yet?

Still waiting on my copy of CAWC and on the fence regarding the new version owing to price and limited scenarios.

Richard

[Toby42]

Where does one pick-up CCAW???

[RSGodfrey]

Tony

go to http://www.ssgus.com/


Richard

[mjk428]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot

I have those. Just copy them to my scenario directory?

Don't know. I think they're CAW1 scenarios. You might need to load them into the editor first to upconvert them to the CAW2 standard. Backward compatibility was a touted feature so it should work.


BTW, wouldn' t it have been simpler if the new CAW was titled CAW3? It's like the original never existed.

[MemoryLeak]

Hi MarkShot,

I was intrigued when you mentioned the game 1830. I would like to purchase it but I can not find it on the internet. Do you have any information on where or even if it can still be bought?

[MarkShot]

A few have posted questions for me on this thread. I am in the middles of a system failure and will try to respond at such time that my PC is working better.

[MarkShot]

RSGodfrey,

Well, I was messing around with CCAW until yesterday. Two bad DIMMs in three months!!! (on my laptop at the moment)

The question you ask about comparing game play and AI between the two versions is not something that I can answer with so little experience with both of them. I can tell you that CCAW feels like fun and now that I have got it, I definitely intend to play it. It is likely that I will invest time first with CCAW and give CAW some time to be patched and perhaps have some more content developed.

Now, here is something I cannot really explain. When I was play CAW, I quickly turned off the animations as they got old for me fast. Yet, with CCAW, I decided to leave the animations on while playing. Clearly, CAW has better animations than CCAW. Yet, the CCAW animations to seem fit in better for me with the rest of the flavor. Go figure!

Sorry, I don't have more to offer you.