Hard Facts of Life

[ToxLaximus 1]

Problems with a new game can lead to a significant reduction in profit, a game when its new only has one chance to make a good impression, the consumer market is anything but forgiving.

Personally I know this game is gold and can see where its going and its all good, most people do not have the time to get so involved with gaming and games such as this might pass them by.

[mikeap 0]

Totally agree.

I'd say that a fix for pathfinding (coming soon?) will be a huge boost for the game.

[disorder 1]

Remember they are 2 men down atm so I'm sure they are doing everything they can. ARMA2 is still being patched after all this time, I guess CC would get the same love eventually you just have to be patient.

[Tontow 1]

Remember they are 2 men down atm so I'm sure they are doing everything they can. ARMA2 is still being patched after all this time, I guess CC would get the same love eventually you just have to be patient.

Don't they have completly different teams/people to work on each game?

[tortuosit 485]

I'm completely hopeful BI will fix the worst problems and continously improve the game, but it will take long time, because simply there are zillions of necessary, reasonable and possible improvements, which already have been mentioned and reported.

[Dreadnought808 1]

As the original poster has mentioned, the entire Carrier Command release has brought similar questions up in my mind. It being released with broken pathfinding is NOT the programmer's fault, it is down to the publisher's deadlines. While I care little about who's to blame as long as I know for sure this beautiful game will get fixed in a patch, I AM however quite curious what the programmers themselves think about the slightly broken release.

When a product like a game gets released with an initial, relatively product-breaking flaw, it affects all the first (and undoubtedly most important) reviews. When they all say "Broken, do not buy" this will dramatically impact the sales figures. Money that, in my opinion, the programmers most certainly deserve.

As I gathered, there was not enough time to adress the pathfinding before release. Is there an interview or forum post explaining why or how? If not, could I ask any of the developers their thoughts on the matter? I can assume that telling a publisher to move a deadline back is quite hard, but telling them "It's not finished" should do the trick, no? Are there, like, financial penalties for not making the deadline? If so, are they big enough to compete with the loss of sales?

Just curious.

[disorder 1]

Don't they have completly different teams/people to work on each game?

Not sure. If they have a small team I guess they allocate work wherever it is needed. Some devs work on different games at the same time and a lot of resources are sometimes shared.

[Robbson 1]

The topic starter liftoff the right discussion. Good reviews nearly always push sales especially today where customers are being ripped off quite often so they even don't trust big names.

Bohemia most often fail to make a pretty good impression with their games to reviewers worldwide because of their buggy and unfinished products.

Of course, Bohemia is not the only company that suffer from this. But nearly all of their games have such a great potential (you can also read this in the reviews) and their games even always appeal to me (That's saying something, I should be one their best customers) but they have some talent to ruin their best brands... this makes me sooooo angry :rage: !

Well, it's ok if you have some minor bugs in your final product (like most games have) or when some features are missing that you may have announced in an early tech demo. You still get good critics, especially when your game fulfills the standards of its genre on a solid level.

But if you make a strategy game where you are not able to implement some reasonably good pathfinding algorithms (or find some developers who do it for you), then you are in the wrong business. And no, this is not the publisher's fault!

I myself am a software developer and I couldn't think of spending any development time in any other part of the game or even a console port when this fundamental feature for my strategy title is not working! How can you negotiate a deadline when this mission critical thingy is not ready in your early prototype long time ago? I would get a heart attack!! :mad:

Well, some people now may argue that after the release date there will be bug fixes and patches because they know they can count on you... they are so excited about your great long term community support and so on. Hey that's great! But it means nothing (from a commercial perspective) when you failed on the all-important date: the release of your product! Hey, do you wanna earn money? You need paying customers before you can even think about supporting the community, isn't it?

But look what you have done: An average metacritic score of 60% for the pc version and even only 50% for the xbox 360. This is a desaster!!!

All reviews that I have read so far criticize the horrible pathfinding implementation and in user comments below those reviews you can painfully often read sentencess like: "Well it's Bohemia, have you been expecting something else?" This is so embarrassing.

But I've already learnt from this so I tend to buy only Bohemia games when they are 75% off at Steam at least one year after the release.

Then most bugs are fixed, missing features implemented, gaming is fun and relaxing. Spending $20 for the CCGM Beta test was an exception.

Why I should care about bugs, game brakers, strange game design decisions, endless forum discussions, crazy mods, rude members and so on when I just have to wait a year or so to get a final game even for a better price afterwards? I don't need to be an early adopter for games.

Cu on some island when multiplayer is finished,

Robbson

[tortuosit 485]

In another thread I read this - and many people say this:

go and find any other developer, game or productive software, who spends as much time as Bohemia making their product better and more flexible in response to users feedback well after the product has been released.

As someone who has no long Bohemia Experience, but knowing they are still patching Arma II very regularly - I'm curious: Did they change Arma II dramatically since the first release? Did they add massive changes? Do you have examples? Because, a MP mode would also mean a lot of effort. And on the other side I often read, Arma II pathfinding is still ... not optimal. I have no personal experience with Arma II pathfinding, just played some campaigns, am not much into it...

So my question is about "what did we get with Arma -> what can we expect for CC". But to be honest for a prediction we also need to know how big Arma and CC teams are - are there some known facts?

I AM however quite curious what the programmers themselves think about the slightly broken release.

Don't be disappointed if you receive no answer, which would be understandable, job restraints.

Edited October 16, 2012 by tortuosit

[Thygrrr 1]

Sorry to be bursting your bubble here, with a game overdue as long, this is definitely not the publisher's fault, but the developer's and team lead's. CCGM was announced in 2006, if I recall correctly. Usually, a game is announced during or at the end of preproduction, meaning when the actual coding starts. This means the thing was at least three years overdue.

If you look at the game's innards, you see three things:

• a remarkable engine with lots of possiblilities and a very powerful scripting engine
  
• lots of stuff that has been inexplicably hardcoded where it shouldn't need to be
  
• a pile of scripts that are the most hacked-together, disorganized, scattered, unmaintainable code I have seen in a long time

You will also see that probably most of the work was spent on the single player campaign (every .ent file in the data files contains a substantial amount of scripted game code, plus every cutscene XML does, as well). And everywhere you look, so many trivial things are natively hard coded for no apparent reason, I hope it'll be possible to softcode around them in scripts without the game laying dead in the water.

I really hope the game can be salvaged by us modders. I do this as a personal enrichment more than with an actual expectation of success.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Thygrrr

[tortuosit 485]

You will also see that probably most of the work was spent on the single player campaign

*sigh*

[Dreadnought808 1]

Interesting info Thygrrr! I was not aware of that. I stand corrected!

[JdB 151]

CCGM was announced in 2006, if I recall correctly.

The game was announced on August 14th 2008. Bohemia Interactive announched the purchase of Black Element Software on September 30th 2010. The Black Element name was dropped in June of 2011 [speculation] seemingly indicating that the studio had only then been fully integrated into BIS. Perhaps the process before that time wasn't going to plan which may have forced some changes both in development and in the team's abilities.[/speculation]. The studios have been named by their geographical location for as long as I can remember though by various developers so the reason for the name being dropped is only speculation as indicated by the markers :p

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/carrier-command--gaea-mission-follow-up-to-realtime-games--1988-original--hopefully-with-the-same-little-triangular-planes

[Tontow 1]

I think you guys are off by a few years.

Did any one ever think to do a look up on the carriercommand.com domain leass??

http://www.whois.net/whois/carriercommand.com

created: 2004-04-18 05:38:23 UTC

They may not have gone out of the way at that time to let the public know, but as I recall the hard core fan boys found the domain shortly after it was created.

I know this because at the time, I was following an Open GL remake of CC that was shut down shortly after the domain was created. (To this day, the Open GL one is playable and free, but only about 80% complete. That is, if you can still find it.)

I wonder if the google archive still has an old cach of the page from back then?

Edited October 18, 2012 by Tontow

[krycek 349]

In another thread I read this - and many people say this:

As someone who has no long Bohemia Experience, but knowing they are still patching Arma II very regularly - I'm curious: Did they change Arma II dramatically since the first release? Did they add massive changes? Do you have examples? Because, a MP mode would also mean a lot of effort. And on the other side I often read, Arma II pathfinding is still ... not optimal. I have no personal experience with Arma II pathfinding, just played some campaigns, am not much into it...

So my question is about "what did we get with Arma -> what can we expect for CC". But to be honest for a prediction we also need to know how big Arma and CC teams are - are there some known facts?

In regards to pathfinding in A2 unfortunately you're right.It was improved but still far from "doing it's job".At this stage I assume they can't fix it anymore,from what I heard it was because it goes into 'tard mode with so many objects around it.

That's why when I read the phrase "but but they support their games long time after release" doesn't make me feel comfortable one bit.What good is that support when after a few years they'll just say "sorry it's a limitation,we tried workarounds but this is the best we can do".

A2CO still remains my fav game and I learned to live with it's shortcomings because I can't find games like it and it offers so much more,but that doesn't mean BI should take a backseat and think "hey don't worry guys,we don't have any competition anyway".

I understand the games they make are very complex,that's why I'm patient and realize it's no easy task to fix pathfinding and other AI issues,but my patience runs out when after so many years they couldn't improve this area to make it more playable.Let's hope CC and A3 won't remain at this stage too.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Krycek

[Tontow 1]

There record with pathfinding, that is what makes me want them to open up the pathfinding for moding.

Instead of just letting everyone complain about it, give us, the users that are complaining about it, the chance to fix it.

[Hornet108 10]

You guys are all dreaming. They are not going to fix the AI. They are going to hack together some band-aid fix that will somewhat improve it by addressing all the corner cases (somewhat) and maybe hard-coding some specific examples but they will never address the rotting foundations that is the core of their AI code. They would have to re-write it from the ground up and commercially that is just not going to happen.

CCGM is, pun intended, dead in the water. Move on, or go back to hostile waters.

[Thygrrr 1]

I just hope they open up the game for modding more and move more native side code to script side code (or at least optionalize it). I don't believe they can fix the AI without a rewrite.

[species1571 64]

I think the ability for walruses to turn on the spot would help a lot. The inability for it to drive in a straight line to its next mini-waypoint without doing three-point turns is often where it gets stuck. Also increasing the number of these mini-waypoints for a route and making them snap to the nearest road wherever possible would help.

[disorder 1]

You guys are all dreaming. They are not going to fix the AI. They are going to hack together some band-aid fix that will somewhat improve it by addressing all the corner cases (somewhat) and maybe hard-coding some specific examples but they will never address the rotting foundations that is the core of their AI code.

All they need is simple warping mechanic:

If I am at point A and want to be at point B, but my speed is below X for Y time(say 10 seconds) then warp to B and continue

If b is also blocked run the loop again.

[H4mster 1]

This is in walrusvehfight.h

if( dot > 0.9 )

Changing 0.9 to something higher would allow to walrus to keep going even if they was not directly pointing at their destination?

Then again this if probably combat code, need a expert.

			float dot = myOri * wantedDir;
		if( wantedOri == ZeroVec ) // going forward
		{
			if( dot > 0.9 )
			{
				// good enough, keep going straight
				ret = myOri * PATH_DIST + myPos;
			}
			else
			{
				// alter
				ret = wantedDir * PATH_DIST + myPos;
			}
		}
		else // going backward
		{
			if( dot < -0.9 )
			{
				// good enough, keep going back
				Parent.SetMotionOrientation( myOri );
				ret = -myOri * PATH_DIST + myPos;
			}
			else
			{
				// alter
				Parent.SetMotionOrientation( wantedOri );
				ret = wantedDir * PATH_DIST + myPos;
			}
		}
	}

Edited October 21, 2012 by H4mster

[Tontow 1]

We would need to know what ZeroVec , myOri and wantedDir was.

But to me it looks like the code to decide when to turn. Higher would make it so that they would not turn and get stuck. If I where testing, then I would try lowring it. Oddly enough, "ret = myOri * PATH_DIST + myPos;

" looks like y=mx+b (the formula you use to graph with).

[H4mster 1]

I changed to 0.9 and -0.9 to 0, they seem to gun it more when manoeuvring so it seems you were right, but its hard to tell, would have to play a whole game to see if there is any real difference.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2667e90zh3bguqx

You can dl it there, it will only work with the steam version, unpack and copy to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Carrier Command Gaea Mission\"

[disorder 1]

Lol cool, see if you can find the grip settings for physics. I want better grip on those stupid things.

[nww02 1]

Tontow,here's an attempt to psueodocode it...

	
                          GET ERROR between where I am pointed, and where I want to point
                          If the walrus is heading towards the destination
                                If the error is low (walrus pointed at desired location)
                                      travel to a position 'ahead' some distance
                                otherwise
                                     return a position in the 'wanted direction' some distance.
                                If the error is low (walrus pointed directly AWAY from desired location)
                                     Keep walrus pointed the same way
                                     travel to a position 'aft' some distance
                                otherwise
                                     tell the walrus to turn round
                                     travel to a position in the 'wanted direction' some distance. 

	}

0.9 refers to the cosine of the difference between two angles. 1 => 0 degrees, 0 = 90 degrees, -1 => -180 degrees.

so 0.9 means that if the walrus is pointed within about 25 degrees of the desired destination, then to just keep the way its going... after 25 degrees, start turning. ( I think)

Hope this helps.