CM (X) Information surfaces......groovey

[MKSheppard]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/539/539622p1.html?fromint=1

August 17, 2004 - When it comes to World War II tactical games, the Combat Mission series is the best there is. Over three iterations the series has taken us from Normandy to Kursk to El Alamein, letting us try our hand at a wide variety of squad-level combats. And while the depth and accuracy of the combat modeling is unsurpassed, the graphics and visual effects have left a lot to be desired, particularly as other strategy games have raised the bar.

We've known for some time that the Combat Mission team has been working on a new engine, called CMX2, that promises to improve on every aspect of the game's visual presentation. Since the team has only just reached the first few milestones in this process, there's precious little to show right now but we can talk about some of the features that you'll be able to see in the next game. Though we're still holding out for a Pacific Theater game, the Combat Mission hasn't yet decided which theater or time period the game will represent. Regardless of whether or not the game stays with its World War 2 focus or moves on to simulate other modern conflicts, this engine will provide a solid foundation.

It may seem backwards to some but creating the graphics engine first before adding content or designing game mechanics makes sense. This is the lesson the team learned after developing the graphics and game code for the previous game side-by-side. Since both pieces were being shaped simultaneously, the overall Combat Mission code simply wasn't as flexible or focused as it could have been. Admittedly, the standard for graphics among hardcore wargamers is more forgiving than it is for the Warcraft and Command and Conquer crowd, but the Combat Mission team nevertheless found themselves frustrated by trying to retrofit the engine as graphics technology moved ahead.

Before the release of Combat Mission: Afrika Korps the team had decided to go back to square one and create an entirely new engine with the lessons learned through six years of development. This doesn't mean that the team's only concern is making the game pretty; there's still a major emphasis on getting the combat mechanics and unit modeling exactly right. It's just much easier to approach that work once the features and capabilities of the graphics engine have been finalized. Considering that the Combat Mission games have very exact performance data and orders of battle, we're excited to see how much more can be done with this new production process.

Though the previous games offered all kinds of options for map design, you could definitely see the tile-based nature of the system where certain features met. This was particularly noticeable on certain slopes. While the map editor may still rely on tiles for the sake of convenience, you won't be able to see them (or the seams between) as easily as you've been able to in previous games.

The new engine will also blend textures together where two different terrain types meet. Grassy fields will merge into marshes much more subtly now, for instance, and you should see those hard lines along the edges of your riverbanks anymore either. It's important to realize the difference between blending and blurring here; you'll still be able to have distinct textures next to each other of course but they'll intersect much more naturally. You can set the extent to which they mix. If you have a muddy field covered in snow, for instance, you won't see a whitish-brown. Instead you'll either see a few spots of snow over a muddy field or a few patches of mud showing through an otherwise white field.

This new engine will also support "dark mapping." This new feature allows the developers to darken or tint certain areas of the map. This can be used to create shadows or simulate ground that's wet from rains or flooding. It may also speed up map design by allowing the designers to substitute dark-mapped dirt for mud. The feature may also be useful in defining objective areas -- rather than posting flags all over the battlefield, the designers may simply lay out tinted areas that mark key goals.

In playing the previous games, we've spent a lot of time looking at things on the ground, panning across a distant tree line searching for enemies or zooming down the streets of some small European city looking for stray turrets poking out from narrow alleys. And though the action will still be focused on the ground, CMX2 will give you a lot to see when you cast your eyes to the skies. A new sun and cloud model promises to make the world above you seem much more realistic. Some new methods are also being considered to render stars at night.

Though few of the previous games' battles represented more than 30 or 40 minutes of game time, that's still enough time to see the sun move ten or fifteen degrees across the sky. The new CMX2 engine will show the sun's movement, it will also position it relative to the battlefield's location relative to the equator. If you're fighting just on the equator, like at Tarawa, the sun will pass directly overhead. If you're north of this, say in the Philippines, the sun appears to move through the southern half of the sky. At Gaudalcanal (sue me, I want it to be in the Pacific), the sun will be in the northern half of the sky. Even better, should a conflict be set extremely close to the poles, you'll either see the sun spin across the sky without setting or simlpy not appear at all. The same techniques used to manage the sun also apply to the game's moon.

This is assuming that the cloud cover gives you a glimpse of the sun or moon to begin with. Clouds now move across the sky in layers and can be positioned relatively high in the sky or down low to the ground. They'll move at different speeds as well, which helps the effect seem a little more natural. Using the sun as a light source, the game models cloud shadows as they pass across the ground.

Stars are a bit more challenging. They can't be rendered as individual pixels on a bitmap because the size of the map would have to be huge to keep the individual pixels from looking too blocky. Declining to use such a high-resolution texture, the team is currently considering using OpenGL's point object rendering to draw individual stars. As with the sun, the star map will be rendered appropriately depending on the latitude and time of year.

To make sure that the right things are occluded, the game manages each of these assets in layers. The layer with the sun and moon is drawn over the sky or starmap itself, the clouds are drawn on top of that, and finally the mountains or hills on the horizon are added last. This ensures that the sun doesn't stick out in front of the clouds or the moon doesn't rise in front of the mountains. On that same subject, the team is planning to shift the light color and intensity as day turns into night. The texture blender used for the terrain on the ground can also be used here to add color gradients to the sky, simulating the lights of a nearby town or smoke from a battle.

Players of the previous game will remember the graphical shortcuts used to add depth to small environmental objects. The developers called these small objects (things like trees or gravestones) doodads. Though they were capable of presenting the illusion of depth, they were merely flat two-dimensional objects that turned to face the camera as it moved around the battlefield. Though it worked okay (and definitely reduced the graphic's burden on older PCs) there was always something about it that seemed just a bit off.

The new engine has done away with these doodads in favor of two new systems. In the case of larger objects, the engine will represent them as full 3D models. This means that when the camera turns, you'll actually get to see the other side of these objects. To make things easier, it's likely that some of these objects will still be rendered as 2D billboards if they're far enough away that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway. Some of the long grasses in the game that were previously rendered as doodads will now be handled by a new algorithm that simulates depth and volume.

So that's where things currently stand with the Combat Mission team. We'll be sure to bring you shots from the new engine as soon as we can. We'll also have more to talk about once they've decided on the theater and time period for the first game.

[Vympel]

I sent them an email informing them that the CM team finds the Pacific War a boring load of shite, and will never model it.

[SWPIGWANG]

I guess the CM team really want to play around with nice tanks.

Blah gfx, if there is something I want out of a new CM it would be better infantry behaviour. I'm tired of having my infantry crawing *towards* enemy trenches when being fired upon by an enemy in the said trench! Also having night time engragements where both sides break in a split second after firing. (wtf?) Of course there is also borg spotting and all that.

[Vympel]

With Wartime Command something they really need to pull something special with CM(X).