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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!
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