Is a full blown GROUND game planned with CoD?
 

The list of vehicles in CoD is surprisingly huge(!).
More then a smattering then needed for ground targets, enough for a rich ground game if they make it fully functional.
All it needs is troops (which is far from easy).

From here:
well?


PS, their is also a UK Train that I do not think is on list.

It's been hinted that they have such aspirations, yes.

They done it before. Theatre of War is based on the IL2 engine afaik :)

Dunkirk Anyone?

Pitty for the RAF boys there's no crash boat!

Cheers!

My first gripe...

The list of ships is a little disappointing...

Considering the percentage of the map covered in water....I was expecting more armoured/naval units on both sides, as opposed to the apparent merchant units they've included in the list. :confused:

Not a chance in hell unless you want BF1942 realism, theres a reason why RO2 does not do planes and a reason why IL2 does not do ground combat.

http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/da...sking_6480.jpg
http://www.iwindsurf.com/forums/file..._shark_141.jpg

Even a couple years ago, Oleg was talking about a full war type scenario, involving planes, ground vehicles and ships.

In case you fail to get my point, here is why it will never happen.
I could think of a million more reasons but this should be obvious for anyone with a little understanding of game development and time..
Also this post is not meant to bash anyone, its a cool idea and all but its simply not practical or doable even for a large studio.

Maps / Quality:

If you expect a ground simulation on the scale of IL2 maps to work together with IL2 aka a multi simulation that includes tanks,
infantry and aircraft all detailed and simulated as much as possible you're asking for far too much.

First of all lets look at the quality, i assume you'd want RO2 type quality on the ground combat aka
the same quality that Maddox models the air combat but on the ground for both infantry and tanks.

Lets see, RO2 has 10 maps on launch and has been in development for 4-5 years .. they've incredibly detailed maps BUT
remind me again how large they are since they're so detailed? Oh yeh thats right each map is very small if you compare it
to a flight sim map which is a lot less detailed, meaning any kind of detailed world or large scale map would take forever to model in Unreal engine 3 quality.

Fun factor
Even if its a simulator the fun will be completly gone. If you model the distances in a flight sim for the infantry and vehicles on the ground we're talking hours of driving,
not to mention a very dull and undetailed ground world.. something that would be utterly boring from the 1st person perspective.

Secondly you would need thousands and thousands of players to even make it remotely interesting,
or hey lets play 32vs32 infantry combat on a map as large as Britain..

Hardware/Resources/Size
The game would be gignormous not only in size but it would take forever to develop, and what you might get out of a finished product of this type,
is not even close to worth the development cost.. thats without even mentioning how much a game like that would drain your system.

From Twi Devs
The TWI devs of RO2 made a good point, they clearly stated that they're going for realistic infantry and tank combat but to include planes would just be ridiculous..
you'd have them going in U-turns and the simulation scale of the planes would be far lower than the ground experience.. aka more like BF1942. And thats why
a proper & detailed ground + air simulation isn't even remotely close with todays technology.

If development by several third parties all used the same engine, it could work. The complicated/high-detailed modeling and art assets need only be on the client side for each individual sim. Then for example the infantry sim would just have to be told where the planes are etc., and the flight sim would only need to be told where the infantry and tanks were and what they were doing, and need display them at a vastly lower level of detail only compared with the infantry/tank sim itself. Would need some very clever netcode, though. All in all I don't expect it will happen in this generation of games or the next. Would be pretty amazing though.

I am pretty sure that this list is only the stuff given to the beta testers and that there will be a lot more in the release. Just take the trains that are not listed or the entire artillery cannons missing from that list.

Take into account as well that in the actual WW2 theater there were fronts where the ground units were set and much of the combat occured. There would be no reason to make the ground units move as far the aerial units as that would also be unrealistic.

I never claimed they were also considering FPS type infantry either. Just Oleg said they have more or less paved the way for manable ground vehicles. I do think that FPS game play may be a bit out of the realm of possibility, but not so for ground vehicles.

Yes, you would sacrifice graphical bling on the ground for a much larger scale of operation, but would that really be so bad when you would have realistic aerial and ground war going on simultaneously in a "large scale" combat operation? Imagine something like the North African campaign where you have tanks engaging one another while at the same time aerial support on both sides trying to defend their comrades on the ground and simultaneously destroy the oppositions units.

BF1942 in my opinion was the best MP combat game EVER.

The "complete" WWII sim is near, much more near than people believe.

And it was far from realistic, the ultimate ww2 sim is far from here and no one would wanna spend the
amount of resources and time into making it either especially since the reward from doing it would be far from worth it.

I'd say play Ro2 for your inf, armor fix and play il2 for your flight fix and you've got the best of two worlds,
combining them would just result in a mediocre middle ware with far less details and accuracy on their main areas.

I hope to the gods that IL2 CoD will never ever go down that road..
Using the same engine to produce a ground war in WWII, a seperate release, yes, no drama, but I really hope Oleg never goes down the BF 1942 route, that would ultimately lead to the end of a WWII aviation community.

You are grossly incorrect.

WW2 Online has managed to make a reasonably playable combined arms game that uses a few tricks to make the ground war a little faster.
And you do not need very large numbers of players in a local area to make it work. Squad level skirmishes can be very challenging.

The real trick is trying to herd the cats into a reasonable organized force/ That's the challenge, and thats not so much software related.



BTW, what is RO2?
Ragnarok Online 2??

well battleground europe works, and that engine is werry werry old. Maby the rats should look at MR`s new engine......its not a perfect game, but it can be loads of fun....

I think he means Red Orchestra 2 an upcoming fps. After all FPSes are clearly strong simulations of ground combat.

The closest thing that I am aware of to a full war sim is ArmA 2. It has reasonably realistic ground combat over areas large enough for aircraft to maneuver meaningfully. However, the aircraft flight models are extremely simplistic.

Nonetheless I think the game proves that such a game is well within the grasp of home computers in the next couple of years, however it would be a monumental programming task with a restricted market (by the standards of the mass-market game industry) Because of this it would require a daring and dedicated development team, probably from a smaller company. Also even at ArmA 2's level of complexity the game and its expansions have been been plagued by bugs since its release, though it has steadily gotten better and better.

So for now I dream of such a game but I will not hold my breath. Heck I would be super impressed just to see something like large numbers of low-poly infantrymen put into a game like CoD, even if they weren't playable. imagine them scattering for the hedges as you strafe a column on a road! Arguably developers might be leery about putting that in because of the graphic nature.

I wouldnt mind trying RO2, what is the lastest version of the game called that has a demo? I see ostfront 41-45 on google but not sure if thats an old version/add-on

Cheers

Try WW2 Online, FREE offline demo play.

To play other parts of map, after you pick the unit, shift the map to, say, Antwerp, click on Tank or Truck and (Enter).

If you pick airplane, make sure you pick and Airplane mark, ship with ship mark.

you would need 1000 person servers to make it fun and viable, wwIIonline does what you are talking about

I think you are mistaken, I believe it will become exactly that, a full War simulator. Ground and naval forces. Don't get stuck in the past:grin:

Just takes common sense as to why it won't happen, i've already listed some obvious once, sure if you wanna be optimistic about it then go for it, but it's not gonna happen.
Separate simulators definitely, but one gigant multi sim in RO2/IL2 quality lol keep dreaming jesus.. :)

All good points.

However, a situation where there is a close-air-support mission and the option of jumping into the seat of tanks which are about to fight over the same village that the mission targets is possible.

It would be much more like having a ground sim and a flight sim with very little interaction between the two (except at the level of the turn based campaign). It might still be fun though... (and the detailed physics etc. would provide another good engine).

The ground vehicle packs for FS-WWI were quite amusing...

They had to dream about going to the moon before they went, think bigger my friend.

We've already seen Luthier changing aircraft mid-mission in one of the videos. We also know there will be some sort of MDS functionality (AI units in dogfight servers).

Combine the two and you have the solution for the scale problem between the speeds and travel times of aircraft and ground units:

Before logging off the server for the night, set up your mission for the next day by specifying a set of AI controlled units to spawn and move along certain waypoints at a certain time. Next evening you join the server and select one of these AI controlled units to spawn into and take control of.

Voila, you can now simulate a sortie to Berlin on a 1:1 scale map without having to spend a full 6 hours in front of your PC, as well as conduct a combined tank/infantry assault without having to drive all the way to the front. The AI does the navigating for you, you jump in and take control a few minutes before the action starts. Add an ownership flag or a password for the AI units (so that each person can have a choice of his own reserved units to spawn into) and you're good to go.

I don't expect the ground combat part to be as hi-fi as the flight part, just like an ArmA player doesn't expect high quality flight models in what's predominantly a ground combat sim. Sure, when driving panzers in a future expansion of CoD i'm sure the ground textures will seem blurry in comparison to viewing them from the air, but the aim in such a case is to simulate an entire scenario with emphasis on one part, rather than a choice between doing it all perfect or not at all.

I don't care much for ground combat in CoD but it would be nice to have in the future for people with more diverse tastes. However, what i'm very interested in is some sort of mechanic like the one i described to facilitate long range bombing campaigns in an online setting.

Small flying distances and scaled down maps for the sake of playability are one of the top reasons we fly in an unrealistic manner. In reality you don't take unnecessary risks when you have a 500 mile run through hostile airspace before you reach the nearest friendly base, but in IL2 we're usually withing gliding distance of the home base or at the very least friendly lines.

And let's not even get started on the payload considerations, we load up on 25% fuel and optimize for combat performance in a way which was impossible to do in real life for strategic level actions (and even some tactical ones), because we wouldn't even be half-way to the combat area before running out of fuel. We currently have aircraft with thousands of miles of range on a full tank, being flown like go-carts or dragster hot-rods with 25% fuel or less because the small size of the maps permits this.

This takes away a huge chunk of tactical decision making, both in regards to mission profiles flown as well as to how reckless we can be. It's an understandable compromise for the sake of playability, or at least it has been up till now.
However, if there's a way to make other compromises for an overall more realistic picture i'm all for it. I'd prefer having realistic map sizes, payload and tactical considerations at the cost of unrealistically spawning in my bomber just outside the coast of the Netherlands, rather than fly the entire sortie on a 1:3 scaled map with a bomber on a light fuel load that's performing way better than the real ones did in similar missions. ;)

Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 is available on Steam for something like the price of a cup of coffee and is absolutely awesome. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Get it, and start playing on the TWB servers, either the Euro or the US ones. Although frankly, I play on both as ping is not really a significant issue.

There is a bit of a learning curve & it's quite unforgiving, but once you get the hang of it I doubt you'll stop playing it. It always surprises me that there aren't more il-2 players on it, as it caters for the same tastes - realism over drama etc.

Enjoy!

edit:: it's £6.99. Money bloody well spent, if you ask me.

LOL, I just thought: have you ever tried to convince someone that IL-2 was worth playing? That's exactly how I feel trying to sell you lot Red Orchestra. It's niche, it's realistic, it's unforgiving, and it's the very best of its type by a country mile.

Hi Novotny, downloaded steam and got RO Ostfront for $9.99 US, has been downloading for 8 hours now and is only up to 900mb out of 2605mb:( Hopefully will be finished by the time i get home from work

Crap, what is your bandwidth? Sounds like maybe you are on dial up. That stinks.

Hi Kikuchiyo, have cable here but am only getting 200kb's a sec, am in Australia so maybe thats why :(

You could try changing where you are downloading from - go to VIEW - SETTINGS - DOWNLOADS & CLOUD - REGION.

Try a different one.

I'm surprised there are so many that haven't heard of WW2 online. It had fantastic damage models for both aircraft and ground vehicles. The infanty combat left much to be desired in my opinion(back when I played it), but they did exactly what we are talking about here. Large scale, combined arms battles in a simulation. The ground forces never had to travel as far as the planes. That would be silly. You were always 10 minutes or less from the front line. The planes had to spawn farther back, but they were still 10 minutes or less from the front line. I had a lot of fun with that game.

Is there a monthly subscription to WWII Online? I heard there was and that alone put me off.

Are there any aircraft in RO? Again I haven't seen any in screens and it was another put-off for me, although after some of the comments above I'm more inclined to but RO from Amazon and give it a go - do many people still play this online???

:confused:

No aircraft in Red Orchestra I'm afraid - it's strictly land war.

This is me, playing Red O quite badly, last night. My first ever video upload. Can't figure out how to embed it.

http://vimeo.com/20790644

No, it does not.

The real trick is to adjust the active area to the amount of players online.

It is a challenge, but very doable using a number of techniques, but making it work seamlessly is the hard part.

It is monthly subscription.

Do a search for WW2 Online on Youtube.

also http://justin.tv/ww2online (very new, few videos)

Cheers for the vid link Novotny...will have a look later at home...can't view vids at work :( After reading some reviews I think I'll download RO from Steam tonight and give it a go...will keep me tied over until 25th March.

Been looking at WWII Online for some time now...still not sure about the subscription though...but want the air action, not just the infantry and armour. Oh well, we can't have it all.

Thx Novotny, am playing offline atm trying to get the hang of it.

PS if you watch your vid in fullscreen there is an embed icon on the right.

Cheers

Oh I know, it sjut doesn't work on this forum, or I couldn't figure it out.

BTW - as I'm sure you've realised - the bots are worse than useless.