RTW: Simple perfection too simple now?

[KRALLODHRIB]

I can remember how I anticipated RTW. MTW was imo one of the most reasonable gaming translations of realistic millitary tactics. So, after enjoying both the wonderful campaign and the mplay capacities of MTW, I dreamed of an even more intuitive system of battle controls in RTW.

Yet after playing the demo, I have found that the degree of control, from game speed to unit formation has unfortunately become more cumbersome and clumsy. I realize that hotkeys are the way to go, but I missed the ease of use evident in MTW in terms of the onscreen accessibilty of control through mouse use.

Yes, the graphics are impressive but the price is found in the stagnation of the controls available and accessible to the player. I assumed, wrongly, that there would have been some innovations with the controls. I also missed the fluid transistions found in MTW. RTW seems to lag, burp and jerk along on my machine (which is relatively powerful).

It's unfortunate that the game speed is not governed by a slider as in MTW. I especially loved having the ability to variably control it and either view or units in stasis or different speeds.

Obviously I can't comment on the campaign, which inspires me to salivate with the game's release. Still I expected more in terms of the the actual battle features.

However after saying this, I am sure that RTW will still blow other comparable games out of the water, since the series has shown such a degree of simple perfection, that other developers have failed to surpass or even equal.

[kchickenlord]

Im sure the speed bar could be brought back without too much work, id prefer to see the massive bar taking up half the screen reduced a tad, popup menus would help, smaller buttons maybe, could be an option

[pmaura]

Well I have a 1.1GHZ 384mb Ram and 128 GeForce FX5200 and the game ran fine for me. I do wish the speed was a little slower though and that seems to be a consensus out there. The Slider was a great option they should of kept in.

[Al Khalifah]

Its only a demo. There will still be a lot of fine tuning and performance improvements to make before the final release.

Otherwise they'd release it now.

[TomPaine]

Hi Guys In a recent gamespot video interview, one of the developers said that they were almost feature complete, but that all sorts of bugfixing and tweaking was still going on. A neat thing with a bunch of the gamespot interviews is to check out many other games videos from roughly the same space in development (meaning, a month away) -- there are occasionally changes as large as UI improvements still implemented in the final few weeks. Speed of battle, of units, formation AI, all that stuff that they might be concentrating on now. Not that I really know anything about software development, other than the fact that it seems to universally suffer from poor management, in that the employees always seem to have to work 80 weeks for a 6 month "crunch time".

Someone on the totalwarcenter forums broke apart the .pak file in the demo, which included all the texts for all of the events, general's speeches, unit descriptions, virtues and vices and their descriptions, retinue descriptions, etc. Frankly, it all seemed infinitely deeper than MTW; I'd be incredibly surprised if they really, honestly attached such a deep strategic game to a shallow tactical game. That wouldn't please *any* audience, but would do a good job of alienating everyone. Rather, it seems plausible to me that they distributed an arcade-y demo, that hasn't had all of its more complex formation AI etc tweaked, in order to attract more conventional players; they count on us to buy it. But considering that they keep harping, in every press event, on the customizability of the gameplay at every single level -- that anyone can play exactly the game that they want -- I'm sure the end result will be that TW fanatics can play the finest TW fanatic game yet made. But again, giving us the demo, tweaked for our perhaps more discriminating palates, would just be preaching to the choir; the demo's job is to get the C&C crowd to bite. I'm sure the full game will support us more thoroughly than any other TW game to date. But that's just me. ~:p

[kchickenlord]

it is worth bearing in mind there is an arcade and realistic mode in the game, and im SURE i saw a MTW style layout on the small screens in time commanders

[Essex_Cohort]

Apparantly Time Commanders used an early version of the 3D battle engine which RTW will use, and since, it has been updated. The demo isnt too bad, in regards to fitting so much into a demo, & giving everyone a good idea of how the game will look.

Allot of people are worrying for nothing in my opinion, as this will without doubt be a cracking game, and any problems (if any) would soon be sorted out with a patch at any time.

All hail RTW

[fester]

I'm not to concerned. I look at the progressoin from STW to sTW/We , Then on to MTW and all I see is the steady improvement and evoloution of a fantastic game . Also take into account the fact that the CA are making RTW the most mod friendly game in the series and you'll soon sleep well at night .

[phred]

I'm not too concerned either, but

I'm very, very curious about the overall AI in the game. I haven't seen the AI talked about at all in any of the previews and it wasn't mentioned in the Flash file that came with the demo.

Oh well, won't find out till it's released.