CM Red Thunder page is up

[Redwolf]

when i tried to explore the different UI settings (RTS and FPS) it somehow ruined the key bindings... (i am not the only one, it seems to be a little bug, when i checked the technical forum my game time substracted from RL on a Saturday in full swing was already used up ... will explore more today!  or i hope so ;))   

There is a thread on the official boards about that. It is a screwup in where CMx2 versions store information in your homedir (as opposed to the game install dir).

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=114417

You're always so quick to jump on the "screw-up" bandwagon. CM:FI and CM:RT both split the install between the home directory (My Documents) and the Program Files. I don't know why this is, and it is definitely different from the way CM:BN did it, but it seems deliberate and is consistent in both the new games. I can only presume this will be the standard going forward?

No, you misunderstand. There is no "this", as in a single "this".

What I am saying is that they screwed up the homedir location, with two homedir locations being in play. It isn't just a different location from CMBN. Looks like picking a new location but forgetting to tell all the relevant code pieces about it.

I understand completely, but you're posting as if your interpretation is the only possible one. Occam's Razor suggests it is a deliberate splitting between My Documents and Program Files. Either way, it's not a huge deal. It's an inconvenience to be certain, as a user, having to work in two major directory locations when installing mods and desiging scenarios/campaigns. If the coders themselves are confused to the point that game features are being mis-directed, it is also an obvious issue - but one presumes easily rectified. But perhaps there are other planned engine upgrades that require the install to be split this way? I have no idea. Seems odd that a major error like this, if it is an error, could occur in CM:FI, go unnoticed, and then be identically perpetuated in CM:RT.

The one who's making a big deal out of it is you.

I was directly replying to a poster here who had this problem and told him it is a known problem and gave him a link to the solution.  Then you can in and took objection to the wording I used.

[Michael Dorosh]

I was directly replying to a poster here who had this problem and told him it is a known problem and gave him a link to the solution.  Then you can in and took objection to the wording I used.

The thread you posted to has nothing to do with key mapping, incidentally, so I'm not sure what it is you thought you were referring to? The "fix" in that thread appears to be to configure H2HH correctly, not consolidate the folders into a single directory.

[Redirected]

Its not just about remapping keys.  They put the FPS and RTS keys in for a reason...someone like me just trying them out will pretty much punt their key commands.

I agree.  It really puts a damper on this feature's 'premier'.  It will probably be fixed easily enough, hopefully soon and they will cough up a hotfix for this and other quickie-fixes. 

The product does have a "rushed to market" finish around some of these details.  Not completely broken, but I wonder just how many of the older testers just stuck with the 'Standard' controls?  Personally, I like the effort to at least try and put something into the UI.  I would like to customize the FPS even more.  Not sure I will give RTS a spin again.

[Redwolf]

I was directly replying to a poster here who had this problem and told him it is a known problem and gave him a link to the solution.  Then you can in and took objection to the wording I used.

The thread you posted to has nothing to do with key mapping, incidentally, so I'm not sure what it is you thought you were referring to? The "fix" in that thread appears to be to configure H2HH correctly, not consolidate the folders into a single directory.

Oops. Too many tabs.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=114428

[Redwolf]

Its not just about remapping keys.  They put the FPS and RTS keys in for a reason...someone like me just trying them out will pretty much punt their key commands.

I agree.  It really puts a damper on this feature's 'premier'.  It will probably be fixed easily enough, hopefully soon and they will cough up a hotfix for this and other quickie-fixes. 

The product does have a "rushed to market" finish around some of these details.  Not completely broken, but I wonder just how many of the older testers just stuck with the 'Standard' controls?  Personally, I like the effort to at least try and put something into the UI.  I would like to customize the FPS even more.  Not sure I will give RTS a spin again.

As people use one vendor's products intensely for a long time they give up more and more on customizations. Because they see them break way too often. Not statistically relevant often, but their exposure to the software in question amplifies it.

On the other hand, they use the software enough for muscle memory to kick in to get around oddities and inefficiencies in the UI. So they can afford to stick with the defaults even if the custom things are indeed better from some form of independent standpoint.


In general I think a major part of why the UI in CMx2 is as bad as it is is muscle memory on part of the hardcore users, which are all that BFC ever talks to.

[Bletchley_Geek]

I've been very busy playing the game (not that I had too much computer time this weekend, mind you).

Some random observations:

• Load times have been further improved, compared with the CMBN 2.12 and CMFI 1.12 versions. In my machine, of course.
  
• Animations and troops models have also been improved (nothing too big). There are some goofs with pixeltruppen doing some air-guitaring (Maxim HMG team on the move). Vegetation looks to me much, much more lively than before.
  
• Command lines help a lot to relate C2 with unit reactions to casualties or intense enemy fire.
  
• Automatic weapons fire feels very different. Machine guns dominate open spaces even more apparently than after the infamous MG fix. I set up a test scenario with a Russian Coy assaulting a German trench line, and man, the Russians couldn't advance more than 30 meters before morale broke up and I started losing control of my troops.
  
• The Red Army totally feels like it should (in my opinion), scenario designers have been careful setting unit soft factors.
  
• Scenarios aren't abundant, but they're indeed very interesting. George McEwan "Studienka" scenario is just wonderful.
  
• The UI feels more polished (adjustable duration for fire commands, LOS/LOF line traced from actual waypoint selected rather than unit location, delay and duration data displayed clearly for artillery fire support missions, etc.), although I don't understand why the orders menu can only be invoked with a right-click on the RTS and FPS camera modes. I haven't tried the new camera/control modes, as I have always been more than fine with the 'standard'.
  
• The infantry Tac AI shows some also subtle improvements (troops look for cover better, and when moving they distinctly prefer to move along covered routes when distance between waypoints gives them room to have a choice in the route).
  
• Limiting FO such that they can only guide one single fire mission is a bigger change than people might initially realize. I also like that you can now combine the fire of several batteries in one single mission. Soviet artillery delays - slightly lower than those of the Italians in CMFI, but substantially worse than Germans or Western Allies - combined with the former - very reasonable and realistic - limitation, go a long way to have players use artillery assets in a more realistic fashion.
  
  The bottom line is that I am enjoying this one immensely.
  
  PS: Echoing what others have already said in this thread and elsewhere: it's indeed an evolution, rather than a paradigm shift. I see the package more polished, and less clunky. But if you had been harboring a deep hatred of CMx2, or you still are rooting for the CMx1 standards in models etc. you're not going to love this one either.

[Michael Dorosh]

I was directly replying to a poster here who had this problem and told him it is a known problem and gave him a link to the solution.  Then you can in and took objection to the wording I used.

The thread you posted to has nothing to do with key mapping, incidentally, so I'm not sure what it is you thought you were referring to? The "fix" in that thread appears to be to configure H2HH correctly, not consolidate the folders into a single directory.

Oops. Too many tabs.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=114428

See what happens when you get worked up?  :P

KIDDING!

Seriously (he said, knowing the horse is already good and dead), that thread also has a simple "fix" of moving the document from one folder to another. I don't see a suggestion anywhere that the two folders are a mistake or that the fix is to consolidate them. I agree with you that the split installation appears more than a little strange (if for no other reason than I don't immediately recall any other software do this, including previous battlefront/CM games including CMBO, CMBB, CMAK, CMBN, CMSF) , but it appears to be standard now?

[Michael Dorosh]

• The Red Army totally feels like it should (in my opinion), scenario designers have been careful setting unit soft factors.
  
• Scenarios aren't abundant, but they're indeed very interesting. George McEwan "Studienka" scenario is just wonderful.
  
• Limiting FO such that they can only guide one single fire mission is a bigger change than people might initially realize. I also like that you can now combine the fire of several batteries in one single mission. Soviet artillery delays - slightly lower than those of the Italians in CMFI, but substantially worse than Germans or Western Allies - combined with the former - very reasonable and realistic - limitation, go a long way to have players use artillery assets in a more realistic fashion.
  

I hope we'll see some more "national characteristic" type distinctions as the series progresses - the 1941 era Russians ought to be particularly interesting.

Beutezug is an entertaining scenario as well.

[Bletchley_Geek]

I hope we'll see some more "national characteristic" type distinctions as the series progresses - the 1941 era Russians ought to be particularly interesting.

I hope we'll be seeing more of that, even if I think that "organizational" differences put in place constraints which go along way to account well for those "national characteristic" differences. For instance, the structure of the Soviet Rifle Platoon (where the Platoon leader is 'embedded' in one of the squads) imposes some very interesting restrictions in how you handle them, as the number of options you have for fire and maneuver are  different from the options available to a German Platoon. I do still, however, find German squads to be slightly ahistorically inflexible (I must say I haven't checked if they have changed how many splits you can make of a German Fusilier/Grenadier squad).

Beutezug is an entertaining scenario as well.

I can see myself going through all of the scenarios of CMRT (as I have with CMFI).

[MengJiao]

I've been very busy playing the game (not that I had too much computer time this weekend, mind you).

Some random observations:

• Load times have been further improved, compared with the CMBN 2.12 and CMFI 1.12 versions. In my machine, of course.
  
• Animations and troops models have also been improved (nothing too big). There are some goofs with pixeltruppen doing some air-guitaring (Maxim HMG team on the move). Vegetation looks to me much, much more lively than before.
  
• Command lines help a lot to relate C2 with unit reactions to casualties or intense enemy fire.
  
• Automatic weapons fire feels very different. Machine guns dominate open spaces even more apparently than after the infamous MG fix. I set up a test scenario with a Russian Coy assaulting a German trench line, and man, the Russians couldn't advance more than 30 meters before morale broke up and I started losing control of my troops.
  
• The Red Army totally feels like it should (in my opinion), scenario designers have been careful setting unit soft factors.
  
• Scenarios aren't abundant, but they're indeed very interesting. George McEwan "Studienka" scenario is just wonderful.
  
• The UI feels more polished (adjustable duration for fire commands, LOS/LOF line traced from actual waypoint selected rather than unit location, delay and duration data displayed clearly for artillery fire support missions, etc.), although I don't understand why the orders menu can only be invoked with a right-click on the RTS and FPS camera modes. I haven't tried the new camera/control modes, as I have always been more than fine with the 'standard'.
  
• The infantry Tac AI shows some also subtle improvements (troops look for cover better, and when moving they distinctly prefer to move along covered routes when distance between waypoints gives them room to have a choice in the route).
  
• Limiting FO such that they can only guide one single fire mission is a bigger change than people might initially realize. I also like that you can now combine the fire of several batteries in one single mission. Soviet artillery delays - slightly lower than those of the Italians in CMFI, but substantially worse than Germans or Western Allies - combined with the former - very reasonable and realistic - limitation, go a long way to have players use artillery assets in a more realistic fashion.
  
  The bottom line is that I am enjoying this one immensely.
  
  PS: Echoing what others have already said in this thread and elsewhere: it's indeed an evolution, rather than a paradigm shift. I see the package more polished, and less clunky. But if you had been harboring a deep hatred of CMx2, or you still are rooting for the CMx1 standards in models etc. you're not going to love this one either.
  

I agree with all of the above with two very minor additional points:
1) I haven't thought about CMx1 or WEGO much since CMSF
2) I mostly play my own scenarios ... which are small, but which are working very well with the improved TAc AI (ie the Germans defend themselves very well)
3) lots of very tasteful improvements, but I think the improved tac AI is the most interesting.

[Bletchley_Geek]

2) I mostly play my own scenarios ... which are small, but which are working very well with the improved TAc AI (ie the Germans defend themselves very well)

What does detract from posting those scenarios into the Repository? If anything, the more examples are available of 'sophisticated' AI plans, the easier would be for possible scenario designers to learn how to use better the AI tools available with the editor.

[MengJiao]

2) I mostly play my own scenarios ... which are small, but which are working very well with the improved TAc AI (ie the Germans defend themselves very well)

What does detract from posting those scenarios into the Repository? If anything, the more examples are available of 'sophisticated' AI plans, the easier would be for possible scenario designers to learn how to use better the AI tools available with the editor.

If I ever make one that is reasonably sophisticated, I will definitely get it out to the repository.

[Redwolf]

Seriously (he said, knowing the horse is already good and dead), that thread also has a simple "fix" of moving the document from one folder to another. I don't see a suggestion anywhere that the two folders are a mistake or that the fix is to consolidate them. I agree with you that the split installation appears more than a little strange (if for no other reason than I don't immediately recall any other software do this, including previous battlefront/CM games including CMBO, CMBB, CMAK, CMBN, CMSF) , but it appears to be standard now?

Yeah. Writing into an application's installation folder is pretty much verboten on every OS now. The idea is that the installation can be write-protected (admin only) so that regular user accounts cannot mess with it.

I don't like it at all because I like to back up the whole thing as a folder.

[Redwolf]

I actually had more play fun today. A bit of an open map helped.  I am still crying that unit size scaling has been lost but what can I do?

Have seen the AI do a counterattack that looked convincing. Didn't see too many deaths due to unrealistic items. Some automatically issued movement commands that made no sense (exposing thinner armor in face of a threat) but nothing major.

Overall the thing that keeps me going is that a whole lot of the problematic areas in the code keep getting better and better. I am not aware of anything that has been made worse. Offhand I can't think of anything since 2007.

[Redirected]

Not sure if this is 'News', but I saw that Tanks, like the infantry FOW change, are not always identified in the panel?  In this one case two Soviet AFV are 'seen' (spotted), and when I click one, I get the info in the panel...T34/85 etc...but I clicked the other (it was 1500 meters away), and no info is shown.  But one only has to eyeball it close up and it was a T34/85 also.  If it had a generic 'tank' model, that would have been cool.  I don't recall seeing this before.