Russian Designers ? ?
 

Hey! When are some of you guys going to design a campaign or 2? Would be nice to see something designed from that perspective.

EDIT: That includes those of you from the former Soviet Union.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

After reading the Russian players machine translations (from last years combat campaign), the text for Russian made scenario's/campaign's could be a challenge in itself.

And thinking about that reminds me, Asidun hasn't sent me a turn in about a year, lol.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

You fancy that 8th Guards Army knocking on the door do you DD.
They might just huff n puff & blow your house in.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

No doubt, especially if your in command. I'm still taking medication from that thrashing you gave me not long ago.

I suspect I'll live though.:happy:

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I know myself and probably few others would be willing to help out in that regard. I'd mainly like to see the storyline they develop and how they put the campaign together.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

What I think would be really cool would be a Warsaw Pact perspective campaign that uses the same maps that Marek made for the Silver Lions II campaign.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

If you know somebody that reads Russian you could have them start looking all the Russian Steel Panthers sites, starting with those links they left at Combat Campaigns. There's a good chance what your looking for allready exsists, but strickly in Russian format.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Checking the site using Google Translator turned up this link to a an offshoot of an original multiplayer campaign I ran:

Multiplayer Crimean Campaign

That was probably the 2nd funnest multiplayer campaign I ever ran although it did not complete (imagine that). Best campaign ever run had to be Red Snow due to player commitment, especially the team commanders Artur and Major Destruction.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I don't think most players know what's expected of them. Mainly meaning getting the lead out and finishing games.

The one you ran last year based on Angola was set up very well,but player commitment was abismal in alot of cases.
I mean if you don't have time to join a bowling league you just don't. Likewise If the players don't have time to properly
be involved in a combat campaign, quite frankly they shouldn't bother.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Alot has to do with the level of detail. Most times it becomes overly complex as many of the harder core players want more detail which keeps their interest up BUT I believe also drives away the more casual players who just want to play and not have to spend several hours a week with planning, creating orders and coordinating with others on a strategic level. I also find you have players who end up playing the same people over an over especially if they have assigned units. That can also lead to boredom.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I think Red Snow's success also had something to do with the fact you were using SPWAW. I haven't figured out why, but ALOT of steel panthers players have a love affair with that version.
I never will. I don't forget so easy.

The major Matrix Games steel panthers failures. (Yup here we go again)

1) Steel Panthers:Modern Warfare. They proudly anounce this on thier website circa 2000, and within about 12 months pull the plug.

2) Steel Panthers:Moderna After thier SP:MW dibacle they anounce that they are going to re release Ija Vahra's SP3-Moderna
mod and greatly improve it. Soon afterwards they ran into "roadblocks" which obstructed them from finishing.

3) Combat Leader- This was to be the "Next Phase" of Steel Panthers gaming. This was actually being slated for a mid 2003 release date. Vebber and Heath just never got it together.
They talked about this game for years until finally failing to produce it. :cold:

Three strikes, Matrix is OUT!

If you look at say the blitz ladder,almost everybody plays or will play SPWAW or SPWAW H2H.

Now dispite my revultion for Matrix, the TCP\IP feature used to be nice. There was really nothing like playing online.
I haven't actually played online since SPWAW 4.5 (2001?) and SP3 Online 1.0 (2000)

Sorry about the rant.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

If you do figure out why let me know.:) Early on I figured it was windows vs Dos thing . Later it seemed to be a strange affection for screwing the AI over more easily with the selective opfire or some deep seated belief that because armour is rated in mm instead of cm it's "more accurate" or maybe it's becasue Matrix was perceived to be a "big company" and we were just "part timers " but really...... IDK.

In the end though we set out in 1998 to improve the game and we're still at it and one way or the other SP "lives on" in both versions. "Something for everyone" I suppose.


Don

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Don,
The only thing missing from Winspmbt and spww2 is being able to play it live over tcp\ip. Any chance of this happening in the future someday? All other things aside I like this game a lot and look forward to each and every patch. I own both cds and would buy them again....

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I suppose the armour in mm is more "atmospheric" bit daft with modern stuff mind. Plus you had to look at slope as was not worked out. The only other thing I can think of is again atmosphere not game play related is that it has a better sound map.
So I would say it appeals more to mainstream gamers except the graphics fail so go figure. Has rarity to but its so bad its a joke forget tanks one game bought 3 regular squads before all I could buy was SS & Paras:doh:
The only other thing I can think of is an English version OOB for WW2, have to admit playing a minor power you dont use often takes a while to see whats what & considered knoking up OOBs with Formations in English.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Here's what I don't understand about the "allure" of live on line play.

Even on this thread it was mentioned that getting players to commit to a PBEM is hard and a stock PBEM allows players to pick the time they have to play a turn. On line co-ordination would seem to me to be a few orders of magnitude more difficult to keep on track especially with a large game.

The lack of TCP/IP has really only been brought up a few times in all the years we've been doing this and by "few" I mean the two times it's been mentioned on this thread might make up 1/3 of the times I recal it being mentioned. From where I sit this doesn't seem to be a top issue with the majority of players

Don

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Would you actually finnish a game then?

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

That may be an example of adding more " historical accuracy " biting us on the bum. It was thought by some members of the team at that time that this would be a good way of adding "atmosphere" to the game. The theory was the players who would never play as Hungary for example wouldn't care and the ones that would play as Hungary would enjoy it.. We did switch over Hungary a few releases ago to all English formation names but left the unit names " Hungarian". AFAIK nobody, and I mean NOBODY ever noticed and if they did they didn't say a damn thing about it.

The issue if switching back to "All English" has been discussed internally a number of times but where to draw the line ? MOST people understand German military terms and abbreviations and I personally don't think changing JagdPz Zug/4 to TD Platoon/4 is going to win over new players ( most likely just piss off a lot of old ones, me included ) . We changed Hungary simply because it was so different and so difficult to understand at a glance ( and the restrictions we have to abide by in regard to name length means that we end up abbreviating things which makes them harder to understand for everyone ). Since we have had zero feedback on that change there has been no reason to further consider others. Admittedly it may not be clear just what "Sec Ametraldora" means when you are buying formations from the Republican Spanish OOB but clicking on it will show it's a combined MG and Infantry unit. That said I know changing ( at the least ) all formation names in the majority of the OOB's to English some people happy but IDK how many hard core " Spanish Civil War " gamers we'd annoy by changing it all to English who would feel we've " sold out" to make a few people who don't want to learn happy.

We've had these " On one hand ........and on the other hand " debates many times over the years and generally it stays the same because first off it's a mother of an amount of work to change over ( I know because I changed over the Hungarian OOB ) and second, for everyone we make "happy" do we make a long established player " unhappy ". However. If anyone can present us with evidence that the national naming issue is what's keeping players away from the game we certainly will consider change. ( I know Andy would be happy......:) Like the TCP/IP issue it's not something I've heard from people as being the reason they don't play the game but then that's probably a discussion that would never occur on our forums since what we are dealing with is the committed player

Don

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I can totally understand this perspective. It would probably be very hard to find opponents that were willing to sit down for 3-6 hours and PLAY a TCP-IP game.

I ask people if they want to play SP3 Online and there's really NO interest.

I've even copied the CD several times and sent it out to some people,hoping to pick up a game. It hasn't happened.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Most players of these games live in different time zones. Even in the same time zone, some may work shifts etc.

So as well as getting someone to commit to probably a 4 or more hours solid chunk of time to play an involved game - you need to be on the same clock cycle. Or someone in say Finland has to play in his wee hours of the morning with his eyelids propped up by matchsticks against someone wide awake and fresh on the other side of the world.

PBEM totally rules out the problem of having to commit to any large single block of time, plus it completely removes the time zone problem.

Andy

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

You won't have any probs getting winSPWW2/MBT games on the Blitz, in fact game offers for SPWAW seems to have become rare.

I switched to WW2 back in 2003. At that time almost everbody at the Blitz assumed you wanted to play SPWAW, today people seem to more or less assume you want winSP.


SPWAW had a slight edge in eye-candy (building icons etc) back in the day and that's about it. SPWAW is also much much more arcade style and while some people might enjoy that I consider it a drawback... and SPH2H was created to remedy some of the failings of SPWAW.

Today, there's no doubt in my mind SPWAW has been eclipsed by winSPWW2.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I used to be a hard core SPWaWH2H player. Something about that version just clicked with me. Its the only SPWAW version I played for many, many years. I think the last time played any SPWaW was about 4-5 years ago if not longer. From what I understand very few play the vanilla SPWaW. They are playing one of many modified versions so that may give the appearance of a larger player base when you combine SPWaW, SPWaWH2H, SPWaW Enhanced. I don't even really know who plays what version of that game anymore other than a few regulars.

Another thing with SPWaW players is that most of them have played the game since it first came out and are real life friends and not just contacts on on the web. Maybe since Matrix had the 1st dedicated SP forums (that were not on Yahoo) it allowed them to pull the majority of SP players to their flag. For me, I regularly visit the SPWaW Depot forums even though I never play SPWaW because many of them are more what I would call friends rather than fellow SP players.

It having been so long since I played SPWaW, I hardly remember most of the differences but there are a couple things about SPWaW I do like better. One of those is abundance of extra building graphics (even though they are only just eyecandy) and the 2nd is the inclusion of the special type victory hexes. Just like TCP/IP capability might be "the thing" for some, the above 2 features are "my thing" especially since I prefer to concentrate on designing and not necessarily playing.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

If you're a "scenario" player and interested in the so called "minor" allies and less "commercial" (:)) battles/opposing forces yes you have a major problem with the language/abbreviation issue. Maybe one (secondary) reason I play MBT regularly and WW2 not so often. No ... don't change anything now. It probably was a "wrong" decision but it was taken anyway. Eventually when my WW2 interest resurfaces I'll probably "dig" in the game (as always - damn addiction!!). The "hard core" players may enjoy it, the "dedicated" players may rant a bit (or not)and play the game but for the new,younger or more casual players it maybe a problem.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

RE natioanal naming

I think most people have got used to the likes of Germans as play regular but because you tend to use the minor powers less my view is as follows.
For taking a side out for an occasional jaunt it does not add atmosphere its frustrating as you have to click on the formation to see what it is. Hence buying takes a long time often just going with what you have found.
In MBT despite the far larger number of nations you can take anyone out for a run with no hassle because the structure is consistent & clear if English is your main language.
Perhaps a poll on peoples views might be worth setting up, change all to English or change Minor Powers or leave as is.
Certainly from a money point of view I think an all English setting will make the game much more accesable to new players.
My first time if I remember spent ages looking at German & its not a hard one but of course your not sure so waste a good deal of time checking to start with. Many people esp if coming from SPWAW might think cant be bothered.
Of course if change to English leaving the likes of Germany as is will look odd & from a new players perspective its the one they will probably try first so will not improve accesability problem for them

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I quite like the national naming of OOBs, although I understand if people might think it's a bit annoying at first.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

I'm 50/50 on National Naming.

I like the "flavor" it gives scenarios and the fact it make it less easy to identify opposition units.

I find it very annoying when I'm trying to play a nation and can't figure out what the heck MY units are.

One of those "damned if ya do, damned if ya don't" things I guess.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Imp,
NO NEED FOR YOU TO COME TO THE AND FORUM ANTAGONIZING ME. I have had someone quit a game on me and never had a problem with it. Me and this individual have played many games. Since you wanna call me out I challenge YOU to a game of mbt. Go to the looking for pbem opponents section. I'll post the details there....DON'T PUNK OUT!

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Back in 1999 we all used to go the a Steel Panthers 3 chat room on MPlayer.com

There you would work out the details. Surprizingly most of the games played where multinational in nature. It would be like US vs GB usually, but you could purchase from any army.

I played three online games back to back in one night once.(8 hr's) My dreams were filled with troops moving around on a hex grid that night.

But there were bugs. Airmoblie was illegal because anti air units didn't fire at the helicopters. Sometimes a unit would die,but still be left on the map. It would show (0) men,but still could move. And it couldn't be killed.

Re: Russian Designers ? ?
 

Anyone have a list of where Russian SP:MBT scenarios might be stashed?