Battlefront's Combat Mission Eastern Front Sneak Peek

[Zulu1966]

So please - all the whining naysayers - point me to all the other games that do anything at all close to what CM does. Its pathetic.

Achtung Panzer/Graviteam Tactics.

Boom.  Game, set, match.

CM isn't the only game in town for this sort of thing, anymore.  So no need for the melodramatics in it's defense.

In your opinion. And boy - thats some huge list. I have all the graviteam games - and while I like them the tactical AI stinks. You get no where near the kind of control you get in CM - and infantry dont take cover when they should. All the maps in those games are essentially just large wide open spaces with trees. I have mot seen a single wall in any of the maps in the games - and thats because the Tac AI - wouldnt know how to use them. The buildins while nice - are essentially just simple single storey boxes to put things in.

They look kind of pretty - but they are all essentially fights on a unflat billiard table - try to get a landscape any more complex than that - such as bocage for example - and the game falls apart.

[Apocalypse 31]

Except on the largest maps it can do - and they have to literally have a couple of battalions on them as well and be covered in trees - I have NEVER had any performance issues with the CM games. And with the recent patch - not only do the draw distances for most everything now extend to the edge of the map - even those large heavily populated maps now run fine.

If the game runs slow on your machine - take it from me its your rig and not the game. And no - I didnt see any slow down - I think thats a case of you seeing what you want to see.

Bottom line: I think you and I have different perceptions of 'good performance'

For me, textures that don't render correctly, and either non-existent shadows or poorly shadowed objects (how about blinking shadows) does not equal a game with 'good performance'.

Unrealistic as it may be, the IrisZoom engine, in my opinion, has 'good performance'. RUSE, Wargame:EE, Wargame:ALB. The engine for those games runs well on all of the systems that I own - both new/old, high/low end systems.

[undercovergeek]

but theyre multi million dollar dev teams - at most BF is 4 guys - maybe victims of their own success but just because 4 guys sell a lot of games doesnt make them a massive dev team with a massive budget

ive seen a lot of complaints about CMBN - but this could be the first time ive seen someone unhappy with the graphics and performance, beyond the grass is too green or the sky is too dark

[Nefaro]

This cannot be the first time you've seen someone complain about the CMx2 graphics performance.

I've ran it on three different machines over the years.  It wasn't very optimized and ran sluggish an all of them.  The shadows had terrible looking lines running through them and would flash on and off all the time. 

If the graphics were great, then I'd expect the game to run so sluggishly but they weren't. 

I don't even frequent the Battlefront forums but I've seen these complaints often enough.

[Zulu1966]

Except on the largest maps it can do - and they have to literally have a couple of battalions on them as well and be covered in trees - I have NEVER had any performance issues with the CM games. And with the recent patch - not only do the draw distances for most everything now extend to the edge of the map - even those large heavily populated maps now run fine.

If the game runs slow on your machine - take it from me its your rig and not the game. And no - I didnt see any slow down - I think thats a case of you seeing what you want to see.

Bottom line: I think you and I have different perceptions of 'good performance'

For me, textures that don't render correctly, and either non-existent shadows or poorly shadowed objects (how about blinking shadows) does not equal a game with 'good performance'.

Unrealistic as it may be, the IrisZoom engine, in my opinion, has 'good performance'. RUSE, Wargame:EE, Wargame:ALB. The engine for those games runs well on all of the systems that I own - both new/old, high/low end systems.

Well - personally I think the graphics in that game are nothing at all to write home about (stupid door stop hills for example)  - and if it performs better (though I still have no idea what that relates to in CM) thats because it simulates an environment orders of magnitude more simple than CM.

[undercovergeek]

This cannot be the first time you've seen someone complain about the CMx2 graphics performance.

I've ran it on three different machines over the years.  It wasn't very optimized and ran sluggish an all of them.  The shadows had terrible looking lines running through them and would flash on and off all the time. 

If the graphics were great, then I'd expect the game to run so sluggishly but they weren't. 

I don't even frequent the Battlefront forums but I've seen these complaints often enough.

No don't get me wrong - stripey shadows seen it done it..... sluggish systems - nope never had/seen an issue, I'm sure there are people that do but a dev simply cannot accommodate every nuance of system and there will be issues

What i meant is I've never seen a serious player of this game and let's face it we all know it's supposed to be more than just a game, complain that there's no rag doll physics, particle bollocks and probably lens flare - I would out these requests in the same bracket as 'why don't their heads explode?'

[SgtRock]

Until Battlefront get's rid of their god awful DRM (a license system based on a non-changing PC is stupid) and learn how to auto-update their games, it's no sale.

[Sir Slash]

I'm in. I love the way those Russian soldiers sit calmly on the back of their tanks while the arty's landing all around them. Must be the vodka.

[Staggerwing]

Or the armed Party officials keeping their rifles trained on their own men...

[panzerde]

And that's EXACTLY why I get so frustrated over the CM series. There's not much else out there that comes even close. I just cannot get over the game performance.

Even watching this new trailer - you didn't see the game slow down a significant amount when the artillery came crashing in? Games made within the last 5 years shouldnt do that sort of thing.

Try doing some reading.  They have made significant optimizations to the game engine, particularly with the release of Market Garden.  The video is from unreleased, pre-alpha footage.  You are being neither rational not fair in your assessment.

[Pinetree]

And that's EXACTLY why I get so frustrated over the CM series. There's not much else out there that comes even close. I just cannot get over the game performance.

Even watching this new trailer - you didn't see the game slow down a significant amount when the artillery came crashing in? Games made within the last 5 years shouldnt do that sort of thing.

Try doing some reading.  They have made significant optimizations to the game engine, particularly with the release of Market Garden.  The video is from unreleased, pre-alpha footage.  You are being neither rational not fair in your assessment.

Um, hang on, bit of a contradiction there. Shouldn't even pre- alpha footage of a game built on an optimised engine show better performance than that shown on the video? I'd give you the pre-alpha explanation if it was showing the tank riders dismounting, as that would be a new feature, but Artillery has been in the game since year dot and it is still showing significant slowdown?

[ComradeP]

What keeps me from buying Combat Mission titles is that a) most battles depicted in AAR's seem to come down to an at least somewhat balanced meeting engagement, which isn't particularly interesting if one side has much better equipment and isn't historically accurate for the campaign in Italy or Normandy. b) tanks/AFV's seem be way too good at attacking. In a number of the recent AAR's, attacking tanks got the first shot in instead of the defending tanks, which makes very little sense. One player, playing as the Italians also consistently has his tanks load HE when engaging armoured targets.

The argument that Borg spotting is gone is also significantly weakened by people using scout teams without radios as their eyes and ears. It seems to be a standard move to send 1 or 2 guys into the enemy rear, who will you perfect information. That's the problem with most tactical wargames: even when your individual units can't spot a certain target, you might still know where it is and can point them in just the right direction or prepare an ambush for a unit that they would normally not have known anything about until heard/spotted.

Those things, combined with the strange spotting that seems to be going on from time to time, means I'm not going to jump in. To me, the series just loses too many points on realism by having meeting engagements and very effective attacking tanks.

The higher than historical casualty rates and the quick attacks are things you get used to when playing wargames, and they don't necessarily give the attacker or defender an advantage, but the way the attacker can use his tanks and scouts in particular keep me from buying the games. Punishing DRM or a fairly high price for new modules are things I can live with, provided the game is really good.

Also, regarding the performance: in the teaser video, you can clearly see the forested terrain on the right glitch for a couple of seconds after about 21 seconds.

[WallysWorld]

The shadows in the latest CM games are a killer for me on my i7-920@4Ghz with a 660 Ti computer. I lose a good 10-15 frames per second if I leave the shadows on even for the latest version of CMBN.

[bayonetbrant]

{mod voice}
It's fine to have some strong opinions.

Let's please just make sure we focus on discussing games / rigs / performance / etc and not stray into any personal attacks please.

No one's done it yet; let's make sure we don't.

Thanks!

{/mod voice}

[Nefaro]

{mod voice}
It's fine to have some strong opinions.

Let's please just make sure we focus on discussing games / rigs / performance / etc and not stray into any personal attacks please.

No one's done it yet; let's make sure we don't.

Thanks!

{/mod voice}

;D

:P


Considering all the past heated discussions, this one has been relatively level-headed.  Nicely done, sirs.