Battlefront 2024 plans….

[Grim.Reaper]

Hi everybody!

It's that time of year again where I do my best to lay out what the next year means for Combat Mission.  Well, half a description in this case as I need to make this a two part update.  There are a couple of things that need a wee bit more time to get ready for you.  You'll see the second half of the update sometime this month.

Before talking about what's coming up next, I'm going to continue with my tradition of summing up the previous year's outlook with where we wound up.  Last year there were 5 areas listed out in detail, so here's how each went:

1. Steam/Matrix Releases

This all went nearly exactly as planned.  At the end of this month all existing CM2 products will be available through Matrix (Slitherine) and Steam.  All releases have Slitherine's PBEM++ player matching system as well as support for Tournaments.

2. New Content for CM2 Games

When it comes to the new content announced last year, we hit a bunch of snags.  Many of you might know that we outsource most of the Packs to the very same folks who have made lots of awesome stuff for you in the past.  You get the best of the best and the authors get some well deserved spending money for beer or haggis. 

In the end everything works out great, but these guys work on top of their normal jobs and whatever else is going on in their lives.  This means that if something important and unforeseen comes up, there can be delays.  Not only that, the way real life works means people don't really know when things will get firmly back on track.  We had a couple of those delays last year.  Fortunately, everything is back on track and humming along nicely. See below for more details.

ADDITIONAL NOTE - the planned expansion for CMBS has been permanently shelved due to the ongoing war.  This decision was our own, however Slitherine was 100% in agreement with us.  It is nice to work with people who don't value money over all else.

3.  Upgrade 5

Engine Upgrade 5 is the free upgrade designed to bring some of the slowest legacy code up to current technical standards.  This has been a bit of a technical and scheduling struggle to deal with.  The code we most need to change is, unfortunately, some of the hardest to deal with.  There's been some false starts which have cost us time.  Also costing us time is this has to be done on top of everything else that needs to get done.  I really don't know when we'll have something ready for you.

Releasing patches for all CM2 games at one time really sucks (think of all the testing that has to happen!), therefore we try to do it only when we have something huge to role out.  However, because Upgrade 5 is taking longer than expected I'm going to try hard to get you something significant as soon as it's ready instead of waiting until everything is done.  Know that I'm aiming for this even though it might turn out not to be feasible.

4.  CM2 Professional Update

CM2 Pro development work was, as promised, paused last year so we could concentrate on commercial stuff for you all.  Other than me writing a few white papers for one customer and making sure everybody is happy with what they have, we're still very much focused on the commercial side of things.  That will not change for the very near future and, thankfully, our professional customers are OK with that.

5.  Patches!

All the patches we had in mind at the beginning of 2023 were released, including adding the ability to use the PBEM++ and Tournament features for existing CM2 games (CMFB coming up in a couple of weeks!).  Of course there were a bunch of unplanned for patches and for sure there are known bugs that still need to be addressed.  That's the downside of having so much detailed content to maintain... seems there's always something to fix!

 

Now for the fun stuff... where things are going from here!

CMBN - Utah Beach Battle Pack

We are getting to the end of the process for the next addition to CMBN - Utah Beach Battle Pack.  This is a pretty big one for a Battle Pack.  It contains two large campaigns played from the perspective of the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne Divisions, plus a short campaign featuring the 101st Airborne and 17th SS PzGren divisions.  There are a number of stand alone battles as well as the infamous Master Maps to play with.  Here are some screenshots to ooh and ah over (I know I did!)

CMBN Utah Beach 1.jpgCMBN Utah Beach 2.jpgCMBN Utah Beach 3.jpg

CMFI - Battle Pack 1

This is coming along nicely and we will make some more noise about it soon.  I wasn't able to confirm some of the details with the guy heading this project in time for this post so it's probably best to make a more detailed announcement a bit later.  What I can say is the focus is on giving the various oddball forces in CMFI some time to shine.

CMCW - BAOR Module

We're well underway with this one.  Now that our artists are freed up from Downfall and other work you can expect some juicy Cold War bones very soon.  With that will come a more detailed laying out of what you can count on in the final product.  I'll also make sure the guys behind it are the ones to answer your questions as "that's not my department" :)

And finally...

CMFB - Downfall is Released!

If you didn't pick up on it in the above, as of right now we have just opened preorders for the much anticipated Module for CMFB - "Downfall".  This is a massive Module that brings CMFB right through to the end of the war, including adding Commonwealth forces and the plethora of the Third Reich's last gasp formations and equipment.  Some of which you've seen fighting on the Eastern Front, some unique to Downfall.

I'm not going to post any images or details of Downfall because all of that is available by heading over to the CMFB section of our website.

https://www.battlefront.com/final-blitzkrieg/cmfb-downfall-module/

The EXACT release date is up to Slitherine, but we're on track for an end of month release.  And yes, you cheeky little buggers, I do mean this month :)

 

And with that, I shall end Part 1 here.  Thanks for staying tuned and looking forward to 2024 with us!

Steve
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