PCO: First Impressions

During the past month there has been a flurry of mods and improvements to PCK.

An official patch has been released as well a beta version map maker. While I have yet to make a map with it those that do are showing maps being made in under 10 minutes.

Even at 6 times that long thats a map in an hour. Which would be good for any map editor included with any game.

There are a flurry of vehicle mods coming from all directions as well. PC is designed to be mod friendly.

There is a promised new support release for PCK by the end of the year. (December 2008)

Good Hunting.

MR

MR,
  I was considering trying out Panzer Commander.  I have run the demo for the Winter Storm version, and thought it had promise.

  I was wondering though.  Is it worth getting both the Kharkov and the Winter Storm versions, or just the Kharkov version, as it is upgraded and improved?  I am leaning towards just getting Kharkov, but wouldn't really want to miss out by not getting both.  Still, there is the cost angle, of $40 for Kharkov alone, or $75 for both.  Just thought I would pick your brain on this. 

  Your input would be appreciated.

                               Heinrich505

MR,
  Thanks very much for your input.  I'll have to check with my financial officer to see about breaking lose the funding, ha ha.

                         Heinrich505

I can't help but feel that this game is still smellah, next to CM.  Oh how I wish it was as good as CM, I really really do!!

The demo has such a clunky feel to it... just can't get into it.

Cheers!

Leto

After several start stops to this game, i find that I am totally put of by the order and reaction phase.  They really need to sort this out before it can become a popular game.

The whole thing just seems so clunky to me.

CM still has the advantage and CMSF plays better too, the next CM ww2 game will definitely play better than this as well.

Its not a Turkey though, and you can have fun with it, but for me its one of those games that you come back to every few weeks, play a bit and then move on.  At least it plays in Vista though.

Let me add my first impressions: It indeed isn't CM and I'm missing a few features CM had. On the other hand I have to say with every scenraio I play I like it more and It got a few really nice features I'd have liked to be in CM.
The user interface is easy to understand and quick to master and the shortcuts are easy to memorize. Sounds are nice in general, air support also seems modelled well (in the '44 demo battle the IL-2s almost exculisvely hit their own guys!) and the terrain is easily distinguishable thanks to the "painter option" of the scenario editor. Vehicle models are nice and detailed, which adds to the immersion.
What I dislike are infantry modles (including crews) - those could definitely profit from a facelift, too.

I needed a while to realize what I liked so much about PCO - it FEELS like something, it doesn't just LOOK. And it feels like a tabletop wargame with models and terrain I built myself. Now they only need a good texture artist - most vehicles still look ugly as hell!

I don't mean the models PER SE (although I still spot an error here and there) but rather the textures. Overall a nice effort, but they can be improved upon (very much like CMx1). Still, the infantry could do with a couple more polygons and I'm sure the game would still run on older systems.

My mistake. I thought you were talking about the vehicle display skins.

The textures are a result of how the scenario designer chose to display the terrain. There are two settings with a range from 1 to 999 and two other settings that have a range of 20 more. That's a texture display range of 399,200,400. Then there is a directional display for the terrain texture that covers the 360 degrees of the compass. If you consider that to be 360 more options for display you come up with a total of 12,201,553,224,000  different display options for a single texture in PCO. I'm pretty sure that's not a poly issue. I can display the terrain textures showing from completely smooth to completely rough and everything in between. No other games terrain display features come anywhere near PCO's ability for the designer to show a texture as they wish. Ours are not a single tile that displays only one way in the game but it's a single pixel shown any way the designer wants to show it.

Good Hunting.

MR

The models for PCO are set so that lower end machines can play them. We set the poly size so that when there are battles involving 50 T-34's and 30 PzIV's the game would run. This isn't like a battle with 5 Shermans vs a single StuG! 

This is the Eastern Front! 

Not to mention that there are models for both summer and winter. PCO covers the entire range of vehicles from 1941 through the end of the war in 1945. Not like the 4 months you're used to seeing. If we only had that range of time and season our vehicles could be much better as well.

Instead of a few Hi-Res models we put the emphasis on game play and making the entire theater available to you for your gaming. It was thought that good game play and extreme variety was a better idea than a short time period with few vehicles involved.

The decision was made early on to bring forward the vehicles, scenarios and maps from both PC:OWS and PC:K and have them all be upgraded by the changes made in PC:O. Some of the older models were kept in the process.

Good Hunting.

MR

When you're talking game performance you're not just talking about a single item on the list. Several things come into play. Everybody wants to take one look at a game a cry "Bad Graphics" even while they are telling you that the graphics aren't that important.

PCO has a lot of different game play options that use computing resources. The vehicle models and ground textures are just two simple parts of that equation. I think that once gamers actually play PCO a bit then there will be a bigger appreciation for what's been done.

Also, there is always the ability to add Hi-Res textures and vehicle mods to the game by anyone with the skill to make them. There has already been a PzII added in Hi-Res since the release of the game.

PCO can really end up where gamers and modders take it. The modders have already added 11 mods to the game in the first full week after release. That's a pretty large support effort for just the first week.

I can't wait for PC to move out beyond the Eastern Front to other paces and times. There are already being discussed other times besides 1939-1945 and other places besides Europe. Anyplace could be added with ground textures and of course any vehicle or weapons system can be added by creating the xml files for them.

So, while at the moment, some of the graphics seem a bit sub-par I would tell anyone to play the game and then decide. Do you want the flashy graphics or flashy game play?

Because, in the PC series at least, flashy graphics can be changed with a few mods, flashy game play couldn't be fixed it were missing. Lucky for us it was flashy game play that Matrix decided to focus on.

Good Hunting.

MR