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(sans sujet)



Hello all,
 
I have only just discovered Crimson Fields and have not been through the full source neither throw the full documents (as usual I just dove into the deep end, woops) and must apologise if any of the questions I ask seem stupid and may have been debated previously!
 
I've been interested in finding a good tactical game since Battle Isle 2 (but then again, when I tried it under XP a few weeks ago, it had lost its friendliness and charm...*) and was amazed to discover Advanced Strategic Command, which tries to emulate it. However it was as buggy as hell, VERY unstable and so I deleted it very quickly once it crashed on me for the 10th time (I had just amassed a great army and was about to crush that pesky AI argh!*).
Anyway in my rage I fled to the net for help and fell on Crimson Fields... What can I say? WOW! [yeah I suppose I can say that] Well done! And it is only at version 0.4.3! It looks so promissing and even in it's current state, it has kept me up late at nights battling away in a state a commercial game could not even push me into!
 
Right, now into some more interesting stuff (sorry about my life story!)
    -First of all I live in France and have started the french translation of Crimson Fields using the source code as of 18/08/04 and hope to be able to send it to you soon.
 
    -I was also wondering if you could plan battles for more than 2 players? (just the thought of a recreated D-Day with 8 players makes me tingle with excitement!)
 
    -If this is possible, could some players be programmed "vegetables" that would either act as a neutral tribe in the middle of the battlefield or if a car-chase was recreated, could one be used as the on-comming traffic (without a purpose, just to block the player from chasing his target)? It could be a possibility when creating a group of civilians (if the units are people) that a player would have to protect (since these civilians would be AI-based it would be more unpredictable and interesting)?
 
    -Next I was wondering about multiple hex units like big "mecha-type" robots that rule over the battlefield or giant bombers fighting giant ships, would that be possible? [Actually out of all these questions this is the one I would really like to get an answer from, since I'm a big fan of robot-dominating-battlefields!!!]
 
    -That brings me onto my next point... What about using the flexible scale of Crimson Fields instead of it being in the "tradition of Battle Isle"*? Could it be used more as an "engine" for tactical war-games than just the Nexus vs. Kand campaign? What about being able to raid a building as SWAT policemen to save hostages, with each hex being a soldier (even if gives it more of an RPG feel with this scale but hey, that's not to bad since you must treat your soldiers as children) and the games would be on smaller maps... to more "epic" scale fighting with Star-Wars-rip-off space battles (even recreate the actual Death Star battle?)... to, who knows, the Riders of Rohan charging into hordes of orcs in a Lord Of The Rings map or a medieval-era carnage? [Here again, it could be possible to recreate a "cinematic" feel to a battle by making the giant carrier ships computer-controlled and by giving different players only a few squadrons who would navigate to the heart of the cruisers and blow their engines up or something to win the battle...] 
 
    -Would this mean that a launcher could be programmed to select the proper tile-sets and map-sets instead of having to rename CFUnits.bmp and CFTiles.bmp if such extentions as stated above would start to pile up?   
 
    [-This last question is pushing the wargame aspect of Crimson Fields and even though I know its first goal is to do this, could scenario information be fed through progressively?  i.e. once the spy, controlled by a player, enters a complex and goes after Dr. Evil, could messages be flashed up once he enters the Doctor's lab ("There are some horrible-looking torture machines scattered around the room and on a table in the center is a sign saying "Out to lunch"... I guess I've got a check out the restaurent.") to update the map objectives (in the example create a new objective "Find the restaurent"), create a dialog between characters or generals... ?]
 
Whew, well that about sums up it up. Once again I would like to congratulate Jens for such a great game and wish you luck with your future and Crimson Field's as well and also plead about multi-hex units, wich I have not yet seen (having only tried 5 maps included with the Window$ distribution)!!!
 
I hope to hear from you soon and I am at your service to contribute as much as I can,
Benji
 
*These three points underline an important aspect of war-gaming: it should grow up! Battle Isle, X-Com (Laser Squad), Syndicate, Cannon Fodder but to name a few are all excellent games however times are changing and with the Web, Wikis and people being able to make games out of love, I believe the reason why these games crash and burn easily today are the fact that they are linear, repetitive, games with no space for sharing new ideas (because of commercial dead-lines or, more frequently, because of the limited possibilities at the time). In the Crimson Fields wiki page on tactics, there is a guide on forming a line, wedges... which are all interesting tactical strategies but are boring after the 100th battle when, once again, I line my tanks up in front of the AI's and we stand it out like the trenches of WW2. I hope that Crimson Fields will make it big and I am sure it will but I really hope it will allow fans to ADAPT by offering new tactical situations (instead of repeating old ones: build, fight, harvest, build, fight, repeat...) in space, under-water, in buildings, on board ships (a pirate boarding?) or in an exotic jungle-location on the run from a predator... I know all this looks like it is more RPG and cinematic-based but it will still take hours of thinking, tough decision making and sweating if we were able to reproduce any one of these scenes since the scale would be as big, if not bigger, than Battle Isle 2 maps!