Remake

[Mobhack]

A simple 3-D vehicle mesh (without skins) seems to command about $50-$100 from various websites - I had a look a couple of years back for general interest. Most such meshes on offer were of course, M1, T80 and Shermans etc - nobody is going to have a BTR-Tz or a J-22 Orao available as a 'stock' item!. So my bet is any 'custom' jobs like that would be more expensive as 'to-order' items.

So - if we bought in sufficient third-party meshes to fit every unique unit we model, that could be maybe $3 million plus. It's a few man-years of effort to make them either oneself, or by hiring some artists for $$$. I'll leave the number of actual game units required to be sold simply to break even for the art assets (let alone distribution & manufacturing or even game engine development) of such an enterprise to the gentle reader to guess at.

And we allow games to have a few hundred different vehicles active at one time - load more than a few 3D meshes into a 3D game engine and you will cause the machine to choke, or load one with a few too many polygons, ditto. (Try the Sims with too many people on a lot, or adding a custom 3rd party hair style with a few thousand polys in it! )

Guess why most modern '3D' type wargames have a few tens of different (and common - no SturmTigers!) unit types modelled and/or split things into several sub-theatres with a relatively few units in each game sub-package (France 40, Western Front, Eastern Front, Desert, Italy etc, etc), and have maps that are postage stamp sized (2km by 2km maybe), and allow you maybe 30-40 active units a side?.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

There was one other item I forgot to mention will be in the next patch for both games but this item is for CD owners only and will not be available in the DL version.

-PBEM Campaigns that allow from 3 to 21 battles per campaign

Don

OOPS... wrong spot!

[Marek_Tucan]

I think most 3D models (reasonably textured) I saw together were in some epic battles in modded Star Wars: Empire at War space battles. Needless to say, my PC sometimes acts a bit weirdly under the load. Now I'd say that with full capacities there may be several hundreds (if counting laser bolts etc) models on-screen at the same time but it's simply too much at times.

Besides, I think that for the level SP is best at - ie Bn-to-Bde - the top-down view simulates best what the commander really knows. He don't see what the units see in 3D, he has to rely on map. The units may report him their LOS. Top-down view simulates the paper map the best way IMO.

[plastictree]

"So - if we bought in sufficient third-party meshes to fit every unique unit we model, that could be maybe $3 million plus. It's a few man-years of effort to make them either oneself, or by hiring some artists for $$$. I'll leave the number of actual game units required to be sold simply to break even for the art assets (let alone distribution & manufacturing or even game engine development) of such an enterprise to the gentle reader to guess at. "

Andy, thats fair enough. I reckon there would be plenty of people out there willing to create the meshes/textures/etc., but I agree that with thousands of different units even the basic 3d view I was thinking of (ie. zoomed right out, very low polygon counts) would be a hell of a lot of work.

Still, potential new graphic schemes, as I've mentioned, would only be a bonus.

In my question, I am more focusing on the game engine, such as the big picture stuff like the AI being not great, to the little things like how smoke and vision functions, etc. that are currently chokepoints in how much you can actually get SP to be as realistic as possible. I reckon with what the team has done so far working with the limitations and the vagaries and weirdness of the SP engine, you could make a truly classic wargame (more so) if you could go nuts with it from the start.

[rfisher]

I say this only in the spirit of 'wish list', but I always thought it would be immersive if the map were a static 2D satelite picture. Lifted off Google earth for instance, zoomed to the right scale, and the hexes 'told' what they show (ploughed field, height 1 etc). So it is exactly the same game but played out on a big photo.
I got the idea from a Harrison Ford film where they watch the dramatic scene of special forces storming a camp, but all from the eerily silent, birds eye view of an infra red satelite image.
Could be interesting, though I'm sure there are a million reasons why it can't be applied to the SP games.

[Nightblade]

Personnally, my dream would be a real time (like the close combat serie) version of winsp:mbt featuring the same exact graphics that i already find near to be perfect for my taste.

But i just can't imagine the amount of years animating every sprite would take as the sp:mbt/sp:ww2 serie feature an incredible amount of content that just can't be found in any other real timed game that usually have extremely limited different units.

And just trying to imagine how the AI should be modified to get advantage of real time instead of turn by turn is making my brain bleeding.

That's why it is just a dream i guess

[Wdll]

winspmbt in real time...yeah, I rather not.


Try this instead http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmsf/news.html

[RVPERTVS]

Nightblade said: That's why it is just a dream i guess

Maybe not, the closest (and almost identical) thing to SPMBT in real time you´re going to find, with the same type of graphics and 2D top view, is Armoredbrigade. I´ve been testing it for a couple of months now and I think it is very promising and I widely recomend it. It has an order-while-paused feature so you have all the time you want to think with pretty decent detail. It´s a free download

Main page: www.armoredbrigade.com

Download v4.20: www.armoredbrigade.com/download.html

The full game files take only 23Mb on your desktop with no install neded, just downlad the ZIP, extract and run the exe. I understand it´s made with a tool named "clanlib" which seems pretty functional, never crashed once.

Regards
Roberto

[junk2drive]

The links are not working Roberto. Did the site get overloaded? Are you in contact with the designer?