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"Carry over"


profevil

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its not unfortunly. ... we dont got any campaign-ish tool at all.

Getting a dynamic campaign in SB like M1A1 Tank Platoon had - oh man - that would almost be better than sex. :eek2:

HEY! I'm 60 - wait till you're 60 - you'll see.

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Hrm what was dynamic in that campaign? Or persistent? Other than the crew?

From what I remember you were just wading through endless hordes of outclassed soviet equipment, killing everything with the M2HB.

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You could make a scenario for each possible outcome, then tell the player which one to go to next based on what happens. Kind of like a "choose your own adventure" book. (If anyone remembers those.) :)

Admittedly, the more key vehicles/buildings there are the more missions you need. So it could get complex very quickly.

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Hrm what was dynamic in that campaign?

All missions in the original M1TP (and in M1TP2) were procedurally generated. You started on the defense, and after a series of successful defenses you were eventually presented with assault missions. Beat enough of them in a row, and you got the victory parade (M1s on the Red Square in Moscow). Lose often enough, and you'd be bumped back to a string of defense missions. Lose enough of them, and you'd see ... the victory parade (Soviet tanks in Washington).

Somewhat simplistic, but dynamic and procedurally generated. M1TP2 was even better since it got doctrinal force compositions right and also allowed for tactical surprises in the operational context (e.g. if you managed to move your main body undetected into an unexpected position, you enjoyed minutes of happy turkey shooting before what was left (if any) got themselves organized.

For all its faults and simplifications, M1TP and M1TP2 got a many things right. This, and crew management, certainly were strong parts of it. The developers did a very good job there.

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I believe SB could use a dynamic campaign.

Single missions are all well and good and very enjoyable. But a campaign adds a compelling Reason To keep playing an end goal so to speak the satisfaction one gets in completing

A very difficult serious of missions all linked to to a victorious result.

But i also realise how difficult a task it would be to implement it.But if the retail version Ever materialises in my opinion its a must in order to complete with other military Sims.

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That assumes that we even attempt to "compete" in their field.

Would it be nice?

Without any doubt.

Will it be an efficient spending of scarce development time?

Most likely, not. I'd rather have fewer hand crafted missions that are really clever than an endless variation of the same dull mission. As much as I give credit to the M1TP developers, you really just had maybe two or three different types of missions with varying equipment, be it more or less artillery/air support, M60s or other tanks as auxiliary troops, and enemy in various numerical strengths and force compositions. But all that you would do was either a fighting withdrawal, a prepared defense, or an assault.

That's not to say that there isn't room for improvement in SB Pro, and that isolated scenarios are the desired end state. But procedural mission generation tends to be comparatively unimaginative if it is supposed to be robust, or if it allows for much more variety there's the serious danger of generating silly or contradicting missions.

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Hello

Im starting on a new scenario, and im looking for a way to "Carry over" destroyed vehicles, burning houses etc from the previous scenario if its possible, any ideas?

As Kingtiger mentioned, the only way to do it at present is "manually".

That is record the location of destroyed vehicles, infantry, bridges and buildings at the end of "Scenario 1" and then use the editor to manually place the destroyed vehicles and Infantry in "Scenario 2".

To get the destroyed bridges and buildings replicated you need to place IEDs in them, set to detonate at the scenario start to make the opening scenes of Scenario 2 look like the closing ones of Scenario 1.

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Well, step one for all of this would be to allow in progress saves. This way someone could save the current state (or end state) which would be invaluable to campaign coordinators.

In any case, why do you need a "campaign" when you can always have a much more realistic one coordinated in the community? For those that do not know, the community hosts one every now and then (Operation Variable and Red Leopard are just a couple of examples). Next time a campaign comes along, everyone be sure to participate -- it can be a lot of fun! As mentioned though, in progress saves would make campaign coordinators lives much easier and, well, the feature is planned at some point.

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Admittedly though the community-organized campaigns have more of an event character (they happen once, and only during specific dates and hours) than something that you could repeatedly play alone, whenever it suits the individual player.

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Hrm what was dynamic in that campaign? Or persistent? Other than the crew?

From what I remember you were just wading through endless hordes of outclassed soviet equipment, killing everything with the M2HB.

Which is why the review I wrote for the Wargamer.com at the time described the game as Doom on Tracks.

That said: M1A1 was a groundbreaking tank sim for its time and a very fun game to play (emphasis on game).

The crew being persistent, winning medals and gaining experience thruout the game was great. Gave one a feeling of purpose and continuity.

It's been a very long time since M1A1 Tank Platoon was released. Humans tend to remember those things they enjoyed with rose colored glasses which may very well be the case here.

Still - a dynamic campaign for SB would be something that no one could argue would be a bad thing. Will it ever happen? Who knows but for what it is worth I'm not holding my breath.

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Well, step one for all of this would be to allow in progress saves. This way someone could save the current state (or end state) which would be invaluable to campaign coordinators.

That's a great idea. One wonders how hard that would be to implement?

In any case, why do you need a "campaign" when you can always have a much more realistic one coordinated in the community?

Good question: I'll try to give some good answers or at least answers that may spark some debate on the subject of why should there be a single player campaign.

1. Making time to participate is one very powerful reason. For the type of player who has limited time and cannot commit to regular play in an online campaign a single player campaign option is probably the only option.

Kids, jobs, wives etc make it so that many have to squeeze in games whenever they can. Not always easy - especially in an international community like SB enjoys. For example I drop into the TS Server 3 or 4 times a week. It is rare that anyone is ever there except in the locked out tester/developer rooms. On occasion I've dropped in on Friday to ask a quick question or two but I guess I get in too early or too late to see the TGIF crowd. I'm sure I am not alone in that experience. Add to that that playing in a campaign is a commitment and scheduling a regular play date may not be in the cards for many. As stated before: For that type of player a single player option is probably the only option.

2. Quality of players. Not everyone is equal. Just speaking for myself: I'm a good example of that. I wasn't all that good an online SB player back in the early 2000's but could mostly hold my own especially when playing as a commander. I'm 60 now and my reaction times have slowed way down in the last couple of years. Getting smoked by the AI is bad enough but to jump into an online game - especially a campaign - and lasting less than a minute or so before needing a new vehicle would not be fun at all - nope not fun. Again - I'm speaking here just for myself but I imagine there are others in the same boat. Should those players be denied a single player campaign option?

3. Quality of internet connection. Nuff said

4. Not all players have the personality or temperament to enjoy a multiplayer experience. They simply don't want to go online and interact with other people whom they don't know. That's intimidating to some and downright scary for others. Then you've got those who just can't play nice and don't want to play nice with others. There are even those that go out of their way to worsen the experience for others. There's no reason at all that they would not very much enjoy a single player campaign. They might be assholes but they still pay good money for SB.

There are other reasons too; though too esoteric and debatable to even mention. Hell - the reasons I've given are debatable.

In the final analysis though: the real reason for a single player campaign is MONEY! campaign mode sells. Money is why businesses exist. It's that simple.

I fully understand that creating a campaign system, be it dynamic or not, is, as Ssnake has rightfully pointed out so many times, a case of limited resources. But as it has been said many times through the ages, "to make money you've got to spend it". (and please - no "you can't spend what you don't have" rebuttal - companies borrow money all the time in order to expand their business".

One can easily imagine that a dynamic campaign - or even one not so dynamic - could be released as downloadable content for sale. DLC is the big thing these days for some reason and it's not hard to imagine that that reason is because DLC works, it makes money and gives legs to what would otherwise become stale. DLC is like drugs. Hook'em on the cheap and get 'em coming back for a long time at a not so cheap price. (I know SB has been around sinc - well - forever but that's because of the military customers not because of sales made to the gaming market - if we went away SB would survive with it's military customers - if the military customers went away and the gaming community was its only source of revenue SB would have died back in 2003 to 2005 in my estimation - SB's long legs are not the norm because it's business model re: retail is not the norm).

The problem though is much more complex than the brief answers I've provided. Businesses are complex, dynamic, almost living entities and what it takes to make them successful varies from entity to entity.

Only eSim knows what will/can work for them and their business model.

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There are two way´s to do so.

1st is to calculate the losses in the first Sce. and script the second with this calculated Losses.

2nd is to script a final Text Message with the actual Losses that show up the next Sce. and script 3 to 6 following Sce.

In the Final Massage you will get the Information's for the next Sce. to go to.

But, believe me, is a crap of work to do........

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That's a great idea. One wonders how hard that would be to implement?

The effort is substantial, but we have already put some work into it and will continue to do so, especially end of May/early June, if I understood the intent of the programmers correctly. The problem is that you really need to keep track of everything that goes on in a scenario, which is a lot. So first it is a matter of scrutiny, later on it will be a continuous effort of code maintenance (whenever we change something later in scenario file format, or in network code, it must involve some consideration how it will affect the Save Mission in Progress feature.

It can be done. It will be done.

I fully understand that creating a campaign system, be it dynamic or not, is, as Ssnake has rightfully pointed out so many times, a case of limited resources. But as it has been said many times through the ages, "to make money you've got to spend it". (and please - no "you can't spend what you don't have" rebuttal - companies borrow money all the time in order to expand their business".

This isn't something that money alone could fix. What we need are mission designers that understand how to work with the editor to create missions that go beyond the lowest common denominator. I would ask the community here to help us out. I think that it could be done to first create a linear string of missions and then a few branches to create some sort of a mission tree. But I would need people who are willing to work under guidance and direction, and who can finish a scenario with a specific deadline in order to prevent the project plan from falling apart.

None of these individual requirements are impossible to meet. But finding people capable and willing to do all this combined will probably turn out to be difficult. I don't think that we can afford to actually hire people and pay them a regular salary to crank out scenario files. Payment per scenario - sure, that's possible, and we've done that in the past.

If only it were possible, I'd love to present such a campaign as a tactical task to an officers' school using our software, e.g. as an end-of-course project. But I'm pretty darn certain that such a "sponsorship" is impossible to arrange for a number of legal reasons.

I have a concept for a campaign on my pin board for a couple of years now. It isn't forgotten. I'm just thinking about our options and waiting for a good opportunity. I had hoped that out of the scenario design contests of the last years would eventually emerge a core of talented mission designers that we could eventually assemble for such a campaign project, but the response to our contests didn't allow to progress to this next stage. At least not yet.

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Well, I already made two branching campaigns already. (Fulda and one that hasn't been released yet - hint: somewhere in the desert). I was demonstrating a concept at the time -- it works (basically win this, go to scenario X / lose this go to scenario Y format). Of course the problem is that the losses do not carry exactly, you have to estimate average losses yourself.

Oh well, what I am hinting at is that some are *wanting* a campaign. Ok, that's nice. Well, for years some people around here have made both linking and dynamic campaigns and they have been a lot of fun; they have actually stopped wanting and started DOING. So either people aren't participating when campaigns come up, or they aren't sitting around thinking of ways to make their own campaign. Imagination is the limit with SB, it is as limited in scope as you want it to be, but there is always only a certain handful that are actually doing the heavy lifting. It would be nice if more people got involved -- even if it were just during the actual playing of the campaign part. ;)

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I think this is the only way a single player campaign is going to get off the ground, we need players to join in on the MP campaigns first to see the hard work that is needed to make a campaign function.

Having done a few myself with help, it's a huge comment from a small core of people.

For one (and there is a few here) who do not join in on TGIF or campaigns to suggest that this seems easy is in correct.

Play a few and then make some wishes here along with a commitment.

I'm not bitchin, just saying it needs to be looked at from a players point of view, and that view comes from joining a online campaign or a few TGIFs.

And as above, step-up with your name to make it happen!!

Edited by 12Alfa
long days on the range
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Well, if a reader here like TacBat is seriously interested, capable and willing to devote a significant amount of time (like two hours every other day, or two half days per week), please contact me in mid June. We may then create a mini beta test group that would allow us to start working on some sort of a small operation. Let's see how far we can come. :)

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Well, if a reader here like TacBat is seriously interested, capable and willing to devote a significant amount of time (like two hours every other day, or two half days per week), please contact me in mid June. We may then create a mini beta test group that would allow us to start working on some sort of a small operation. Let's see how far we can come. :)

Hi Ssnake

I would like to participate in some capacity.can you please list what vacancies

Will be available on the beta team.IE mission tester. scripters.researchers.And

How much experience will be required in that area.

Also would one be required to have an in depth knowledge of SOVIET/NATO doctrine.

For the scripting element.

I am only guessing but i assume there would have to be some sort of main plan

All the participants would have to work from.

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Next time a campaign comes along, everyone be sure to participate -- it can be a lot of fun!

With the number of ex-flight sim (where campaigns as well as single missions are usually part of the retail package) players in UK Armour, I'm confident in saying that you can count on us as an enthusiastic participlant in any future events. :)

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