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When will the next update? What will be the content?

simovitch

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We are testing a patch that should result in some noticeable gameplay changes. We are hoping to get this out soon. User interface is hardwired and not mod-able.
 

共工熙雲

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We are testing a patch that should result in some noticeable gameplay changes. We are hoping to get this out soon. User interface is hardwired and not mod-able.
Don't you really want the player to make his own creativity to modify the interface? In fact, the interface is really unattractive now, and you can make games more attractive.
 

john connor

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I really like the interface. I don't think it needs any change right now and if it's a choice between the Dev developing other things or that there's a long list of other things that I would think are essential, to do with actual gameplay. I certainly don't want to do any coding or modding myself. Like probably most players, I only want to play the game. That might include making scenarios, but it doesn't include coding.
 

共工熙雲

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I really like the interface. I don't think it needs any change right now and if it's a choice between the Dev developing other things or that there's a long list of other things that I would think are essential, to do with actual gameplay. I certainly don't want to do any coding or modding myself. Like probably most players, I only want to play the game. That might include making scenarios, but it doesn't include coding.
The key is that everyone's aesthetic is not the same. If you want to make a game that everybody loves.

It shouldn't just be producers like it. It should make most gamers like it.

As I talked to a lot of potential players I've developed and people who have become CO2 players,The result is that the interface is not as good as the previous work.

In the face of player preferences are not fixed, if you want more people to buy CO2 to increase revenue for the production team, you should comply with the opinions of the players.

shouldn't be opinionated, just like the article in the forum complaining about why gamers don't buy co2,.Think the players don't understand the value of the game.


In today's world, great content needs attractive packaging.
 

john connor

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Well, I'm a player, not a 'producer'. I'm not sure where you think all these players are that have a different view to mine. I haven't seen them. You have a different view, sure. We'll have to agree to differ.

But it's all academic anyway. You're talking about one part time dev. Lol. It's a fantastic game, but given how 'boutique' it is it constantly astonishes me that it's still going at all. We're lucky it is. Given that fact, griping on is a bit useless, I think. Why don't you get on and do your Nanjing thing instead? Then we can all engage with you a little more positively.
 

GoodGuy

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Well, I'm a player, not a 'producer'. I'm not sure where you think all these players are that have a different view to mine. I haven't seen them. You have a different view, sure. We'll have to agree to differ.

But it's all academic anyway. You're talking about one part time dev. Lol. It's a fantastic game, but given how 'boutique' it is it constantly astonishes me that it's still going at all. We're lucky it is. Given that fact, griping on is a bit useless, I think. Why don't you get on and do your Nanjing thing instead? Then we can all engage with you a little more positively.

What's the exact definition for boutique in your quote's context?
Special? Rare? Expensive?

I learned a new term, at least:

Urban Dictionary said:
Boutique
(Bü-'tEk) n, adj.

1. n. A small retail store offering specialized goods and services. Etymology, French word for shop
2. n. In musical instruments, a specialized brand of very high end, usually handmade items made in small numbers. Generally a term applied to brands like… Guitar amps like Matchless, Diezel, Trainwreck, Wizard, etc. Basses like Status Buzzard, Ken Smith, Tobias, etc. Guitars like Pensa, Manson, Rick Turner, Alembic, etc.

Thank you, I love to pick up new slang terms.

The Urban dictionary also offers this definition:

Urban Dictionary said:
Boutique

A French word that simply means "half of what you expected at twice the price"
We checked into a gorgeous boutique hotel with a room just large enough for our suitcase.

lol

I am not suggesting that CO carries such a price tag, by any means !
 

john connor

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Lol. I like the urban dictionary version. I had in mind the idea of boutique amps for guitars etc - 'a specialized brand of very high end, usually handmade items made in small numbers' That kind of thing.
 

simovitch

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I happen to agree with a lot of what the OP is saying, I'm just resigned to thinking that there is nothing we can do about it with the resources we have.
 
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The game has not been updated for a long time, so we really want to know.And, whether to allow modification of the bottom of the game interface image?
XiYun,

What would be your suggestion for changing the interface?

Those of us who have played the game have become comfortable with its use.

As background, it was developed the way you see it based on input from players earlier in the game's life, which if I followed it correctly, include five releases of the basic game engine to arrive at what you see as Command Ops 2.
 

共工熙雲

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XiYun,

What would be your suggestion for changing the interface?

Those of us who have played the game have become comfortable with its use.

As background, it was developed the way you see it based on input from players earlier in the game's life, which if I followed it correctly, include five releases of the basic game engine to arrive at what you see as Command Ops 2.
I've heard that CO2's current operating interface is using PC to look at maps and display data with PDA. Is that so?
If it is.
So it became another Win8. The combination of the two terminals gives a very uncomfortable sense of operation.
Not as easy and comfortable as the previous works.
In addition, the bottom color of the interface is very disliked. That's the most important thing.
Listen to me. If just ask my personal feelings, I think the interface is actually acceptable, but I hate that color. In addition, these two opinions are not just my opinion. My goal is always to let more people play CO2.These views are one of the most feedback I get when I'm promoting CO2.So I have to respond truthfully to you and let you know the potential player's opinion.

But this is actually secondary, and my main concern is that I hope to be able to officially approve the Chinese version of CO2.I've made the finished product.This is my most urgent need at present.I've introduced the game to a lot of people. But because of the language difficulties,In particular, they can't understand the abbreviations in English terms, leading them to keep a wait-and-see attitude towards the game.They want the game to be like "TOAW" or "Ultimate General", and there is a Chinese version. It makes it easier for them to understand the game. Not everyone has the patience to read hundreds of pages of instructions. They need a more relaxed way of getting started.As someone in the forum said. Many people don't understand that CO2's DLC is so expensive. It's unrealistic to ask the player to understand the developer's hard work and buy a high priced DLC.The development team does not seem willing to open MOD to cause future sequels no purchase. So the only way to do it is to make the game more attractive."As long as the content of the game fun, other is not important" "is not right,I really don't want to see such excellent games because of lack of money and can not develop for a long time. Sorry, I forgot who it is.Someone told me that the chief designer was very poor, and that he was the only one who was repairing and updating the game.
Make the production team rich and have more money to make the game and creativity develop for a long time. That's the right choice.Don't doubt the purchasing power of the Chinese. In the first two days, more than ten people have bought TOAW4 for 70 dollars.
And it's still going on.
 

GoodGuy

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Many people don't understand that CO2's DLC is so expensive. It's unrealistic to ask the player to understand the developer's hard work and buy a high priced DLC.

a) The developer is based in Australia.
b) With the Australian currency, the developer's share of the profit per game varies (goes up and down) a lot, if working with publishers based in the US. As I understand it, it leads to recuced shares, means the margin actually falls below the targeted margin if converted to the developer's home currency (AUS $), too often.
c) It's not unrealistic, as only with high sales figures a publisher can maintain halfway stable (and low) prices. In central Europe, in countries like France, Germany and England, prices for high volume AAA titles have not changed much, usually ranging from 39 to 46 Euros (PC games), some console titles are usually a bit more expensive, but the current no. 1 seller CoD WWII costs around 58 Euros, the PC version 39.99, for example.


The development team does not seem willing to open MOD to cause future sequels no purchase.

I have outlined some of the problems that come with modability here .

Someone told me that the chief designer was very poor, and that he was the only one who was repairing and updating the game.
Make the production team rich and have more money to make the game and creativity develop for a long time. That's the right choice.Don't doubt the purchasing power of the Chinese. In the first two days, more than ten people have bought TOAW4 for 70 dollars.
And it's still going on.

Companies creating titles like Call of Duty are rich. Just take a look at the sales figures:
https://www.statisticbrain.com/call-of-duty-franchise-game-sales-statistics/

CO2 is a niche-game within a niche market, where quite some of the PC wargames have lower sales than boardgames. There are titles like say World in Flames, HOI that attract a broader audience and create higher sales, but just the sales figures of these 2 games probably differ a lot. If you look at HOI 3 you will see that the world got somewhat 3D-ish, but that the interface of the game was still very hmm bland, unattractive, with small fonts, almost unreadable sections, tiny buttons for sub-functions etc. But the game design is still based on ideas that came up with certain boardgames, the first Civilization game, it carries elements taken from the famous Panzer General PC game and even from Bluebyte's Battle Isle 1991 and Historyline 1914-1918 (1992) on the AMIGA.. So, a mixture of basic principles that have not changed much in 26 years, and which is known and liked by many people.

More serious wargames are a totally different story, though. They contain too much realism, or too much number-crunching and too many detail to appeal to the taste of the masses. And even in the wargame community, there is a strong preference (with very few exceptions) to turn-based and/or hexgames. For many of those players, real-time games are gamey, or arcade, even if they are pretty realistic and not RTS. So CO2 is clearly a niche-game inside a niche of the gaming market, and the wargaming market is not an environment that creates millions of Dollars or - as you put it - "rich production teams".

Erm. More than ten people? Sorry, but it is hard to decrypt what you are saying, at times.
 
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john connor

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I think the OP is suggesting that s/he has been trying to spread word of mouth on CO2 in China. So far, in 2 days s/he has persuaded ten people to buy. I think that's what's meant. Great stuff. Hope s/he is able to keep spreading the word. But maybe s/he would need to correspond directly and in private with David O'Connor of Panther Games if s/he was serious about Chinese localisation and whatever 'business plans' s/he might have. Obviously, this public forum isn't the place to do that, if you're serious.

The comparisons with Paradox's Normandy game are apt, for comparison purposes. An animated CO2? No way. That game is a third person shooter dressed up as something slightly more serious. I wouldn't touch it. My son would, of course (he's 12). But I fear it's too late to convert CO2 into something for the younger players. The addiction to FPS type things is incredible, and something we have to struggle with in bringing up our son, as he's more or less the first generation to have this incredible 24 hour access to FPS adrenalin loops. Computers have been around a while, but phones that can do the things he's doing are relatively new, and if he's not on the computer he's on the phone, unless we intervene. I wouldn't want CO2 to come anywhere near that kind of thing. Dave might, of course, for the money......
 
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GoodGuy

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I wouldn't want CO2 to come anywhere near that kind of thing. Dave might, of course, for the money......

I think Dave wouldn't mind going down the road that weird French (I think) developer picked, gfx-wise at least, as their game actually resembled something like CO2 on a pretty realistic 3D-terrain (not sure how accurate the terrain really was or if DGMs - digital terrain models - were used at all), where you could even see supply trucks rendered. There were no woods in early videos, cities were flat/small abstracted blobs. Screenshots and a short video showed unit movements in the Ardennes area, and different units were displayed as 3D units symbols (say some halftracks and armored cars for mech units, 2 or 3 tanks for tank units, etc.), but they would fire and show little animations when being engaged. I can't recall the title of the game, ..... "General something" (?), but user feedback in the Matrix forum was pretty negative, as the AI was pretty retarded, nowhere near CO2's brilliant AI.

PS: Maybe you should put a max. amount of "smartphone hrs per day" for your son? Kids here don't even look up on crossroads anymore to watch the traffic, their eyes are glued to their smartphones. In quite some cities here school teachers collect all cell phones, put them in a box and hand them out again after the lessons. The kids would just be on whatsapp and facebook, otherwise.
 

共工熙雲

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I think the OP is suggesting that s/he has been trying to spread word of mouth on CO2 in China. So far, in 2 days s/he has persuaded ten people to buy. I think that's what's meant. Great stuff. Hope s/he is able to keep spreading the word. But maybe s/he would need to correspond directly and in private with David O'Connor of Panther Games if s/he was serious about Chinese localisation and whatever 'business plans' s/he might have. Obviously, this public forum isn't the place to do that, if you're serious.

The comparisons with Paradox's Normandy game are apt, for comparison purposes. An animated CO2? No way. That game is a third person shooter dressed up as something slightly more serious. I wouldn't touch it. My son would, of course (he's 12). But I fear it's too late to convert CO2 into something for the younger players. The addiction to FPS type things is incredible, and something we have to struggle with in bringing up our son, as he's more or less the first generation to have this incredible 24 hour access to FPS adrenalin loops. Computers have been around a while, but phones that can do the things he's doing are relatively new, and if he's not on the computer he's on the phone, unless we intervene. I wouldn't want CO2 to come anywhere near that kind of thing. Dave might, of course, for the money......
You misunderstood me. I didn't have any business plan. My idea was to give him a Chinese version free of charge. But Dave thinks I'm going to charge. I am helpless......
and is she,thanks
It's not just ten people, it's a lot of people". But many of them only play free scripts. They flinch from the language problem.
 
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共工熙雲

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a) The developer is based in Australia.
b) With the Australian currency, the developer's share of the profit per game varies (goes up and down) a lot, if working with publishers based in the US. As I understand it, it leads to recuced shares, means the margin actually falls below the targeted margin if converted to the developer's home currency (AUS $), too often.
c) It's not unrealistic, as only with high sales figures a publisher can maintain halfway stable (and low) prices. In central Europe, in countries like France, Germany and England, prices for high volume AAA titles have not changed much, usually ranging from 39 to 46 Euros (PC games), some console titles are usually a bit more expensive, but the current no. 1 seller CoD WWII costs around 58 Euros, the PC version 39.99, for example.




I have outlined some of the problems that come with modability here .



Companies creating titles like Call of Duty are rich. Just take a look at the sales figures:
https://www.statisticbrain.com/call-of-duty-franchise-game-sales-statistics/

CO2 is a niche-game within a niche market, where quite some of the PC wargames have lower sales than boardgames. There are titles like say World in Flames, HOI that attract a broader audience and create higher sales, but just the sales figures of these 2 games probably differ a lot. If you look at HOI 3 you will see that the world got somewhat 3D-ish, but that the interface of the game was still very hmm bland, unattractive, with small fonts, almost unreadable sections, tiny buttons for sub-functions etc. But the game design is still based on ideas that came up with certain boardgames, the first Civilization game, it carries elements taken from the famous Panzer General PC game and even from Bluebyte's Battle Isle 1991 and Historyline 1914-1918 (1992) on the AMIGA.. So, a mixture of basic principles that have not changed much in 26 years, and which is known and liked by many people.

More serious wargames are a totally different story, though. They contain too much realism, or too much number-crunching and too many detail to appeal to the taste of the masses. And even in the wargame community, there is a strong preference (with very few exceptions) to turn-based and/or hexgames. For many of those players, real-time games are gamey, or arcade, even if they are pretty realistic and not RTS. So CO2 is clearly a niche-game inside a niche of the gaming market, and the wargaming market is not an environment that creates millions of Dollars or - as you put it - "rich production teams".

Erm. More than ten people? Sorry, but it is hard to decrypt what you are saying, at times.
You misunderstood, I thought DLC was worth the price, but the potential gamers didn't think so. So games need to have some more attractive places to get rid of the high price barriers.
 

john connor

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A Chinese version free of charge? Why don't you do it, then? If you need, on the other hand, access to the code to do it then that's hardly 'free of charge' and opens up a massive can of worms for the developers. I can understand that Dave might not want a free Chinese version that depended upon him giving away the code for free. Especially not to a jurisdiction where - at the very least for practical purposes - copyright enforcement was impossible.

Why don't you just start by doing your Nanjing scenario? That sounds great. You could do a localised version of that - as best you are able.
 

共工熙雲

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A Chinese version free of charge? Why don't you do it, then? If you need, on the other hand, access to the code to do it then that's hardly 'free of charge' and opens up a massive can of worms for the developers. I can understand that Dave might not want a free Chinese version that depended upon him giving away the code for free. Especially not to a jurisdiction where - at the very least for practical purposes - copyright enforcement was impossible.

Why don't you just start by doing your Nanjing scenario? That sounds great. You could do a localised version of that - as best you are able.
I've changed executable files EXE and free scripts into Chinese versions.First of all, I would like to declare that the executable file is not encrypted. The C language is also very simple.But I don't want to decompile core files, which is very impolite to designers.But I hope to get official support.The official language is always orthodox,and the personal influence and scope of influence are very limited. Because a lot of the core content requires source code to translate, In fact, I didn't plan to ask the designer for the source code at all. I just need designers to give me words and sentences, and then I give them the translation results, and they import data. This way I can also accept, I just want to help make the official chinese.
 

GoodGuy

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Nǐ hǎo.
So, I get it. You don't want to translate the manual, but pretty much all the ingame buttons, pointers, messages and unit descriptions, etc., to make the game accessible to Chinese gamers who don't feel comfortable (or whose english proficiency levels are not good enough or even non-existent) when using an English game environment. While I think that the estabs (databank with unit details) could be localized (=translated) and then imported en block, buttons, ingame messages etc. are most likely hard-coded in the core files and not organized in a databank, so that localization may involve quite some manual work on the programmer side.
Since Dave is pretty much the only person working part-time on the game, currently, he might not have the time to do it. A shortened chinese manual might be the better solution.

Quality assurance might be another important factor. Dave does not speak the Chinese language, so he would have to get a translation service to review the quality of your work, for a chinese game version. Your English level isn't bad, but since even native speakers in this forum
misunderstood you several times, it's not quite clear if you'd be able to translate all of the English (military) terms. So even if you do it for free, there might still be some labor and money involved to get it done.

What Chinese language (or dialect) would you use?
There are so many dialects and even independent languages ....

MANDARIN (or putonghua = high chinese),

WU (Yangtse region, Shanghai, Zheijang, Jiangsu),

YUE
or its dialect kantonese (Hongkong, Macau, Guangdong, North America),

MIN (Fujian and Hainan province)
or its dialect Hokkien? (widely used in South East Asia, South China Sea, even used by Chinese living in the Philippines),

just to name the most common languages and dialects.
Looking at your English level, I am guessing that you are either from the Shanghai, the Hongkong, or the Bejing area. No?
 

GoodGuy

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I can understand that Dave might not want a free Chinese version that depended upon him giving away the code for free. Especially not to a jurisdiction where - at the very least for practical purposes - copyright enforcement was impossible.

CO2 can be reverse engineered. And - as I understand it, that's what she did already, to some extent.
She has to ask Dave for permission to do that, even according to Chinese laws, if I am not mistaken. On a sidenote, it's not impossible to prosecute copyright infringements in China anymore, these days.

There is a popular misconception regarding chinese copyright laws, btw. The laws have existed for years already, but Chinese authorities rarely enforced these laws. It got somewhat better during the last 2-3 yrs, after international pressure increased. It's different with patents, though, as the patent agency had a tendency not to grant patents for a good number of foreign inventions/developments (often with the excuse that they weren't sophisticated/new enough), so that foreign companies fell back to protecting and getting patents for small parts, say for a sophisticated tank cap on a chainsaw (like STIHL did, German manufacturer of trimmers, chainsaws, etc.). Chinese backyard factories kept putting out high volumes of chainsaw copies, even up to the point where they copied their color (orange) with a slighty changed logo (say STIEHL, STIL, etc. lol), where then European customers even went to official STIHL retailers for warranty repairs, as they looked pretty much like their chainsaws. lol
With foreign-chinese joint-ventures, the Chinese often forced the foreign companies to either publish the design details of their patents, or even to handover the patents to the Chinese shareholders of the joint-ventures. Many German SMEs moved away from maintaining Chinese production facilities, as they did not want to lower their pants like that, anymore.


Infamous example: The Transrapid train project (Siemens) in China, with a magnetic levitation train line from outskirts of Shanghai to the Pudong airport (30 km). The contract envisioned to establish a testbed line which could serve to promote sales of long distance lines to China and other countries. The concrete track guideways were supposed to be built by the chinese. The contract contained an agreement of a limited knowledge (train frames, guideways, afaik) transfer, but the core of the train drive (encapsuled superconductors from Siemens) was not part of that deal, according to German engineers. During construction, the Chinese kept asking questions about the drive's innerds, looked at blue-prints, etc. After the line was established, they suspended all future plans, saying they would build conventional high speed trains for long distance traveling and Siemens was out of business. The high speed trains (further developments of copies from other countries) and railway lines were built, indeed, but nine years later, the Chinese had also finished their first own Transrapid maglev train, with 100% of the parts being made in China. :p
 
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