Bien qu’il n’ait pas encore été vraiment annoncé sur le site de Battlefront, un second volet de Combat Mission Shock Force est bien en chantier depuis un bon moment. Ce que ces premières images viennent en quelque sorte confirmer.
Le projet aurait pu n’être qu’un simple copié / collé des éléments du jeu dans la version 4 du moteur de jeu de la série, mais finalement les développeurs en ont profité pour refaire de nombreux aspects qui avaient évolué depuis CMSF 1, sorti en 2008. Par exemple l’utilisation des mortiers, les modèles 3D des soldats, l’ordre de bataille ou encore les scénarios. D’où un délai bien plus long que prévu initialement. L’avantage étant qu’en théorie il s’agira au final quasi d’un nouveau jeu à part entière.
Et qu’il sera aussi possible de facilement mettre à jour tant l’ancienne version de CMSF que ses trois modules allant avec, mais toutefois via un système de patchs payants (10 $ pièces ou 35 $ pour l’ensemble CMSF 1 + add-ons)
Pour plus d’informations sur Combat Mission Shock Force 2, dont la sortie pourrait avoir lieu fin juillet, voyez le site officiel (qui sera prochainement entièrement refait) ainsi que les discussions dans le forum officiel.
A lire également notre Test de Combat Mission Shock Force – NATO.
Communiqués
The state of CMSF2
What I can I say… we continue to be perfectionists! Some of you were envisioning us copying and pasting CMSF1 stuff into the current Game Engine 4. Over and done with within a few months, right? I think we had a similar concept at first, though a few months was never a realistic timeframe in our minds.
Since digging into CMSF1 in detail we found there was a need to redo pretty much everything. Quite a bit from scratch. We even violated our original concept of « nothing new for CMSF2 because we don’t want this project to drag out ». Yes, that means CMSF2 has on map dismounted and mounted mortars, for example. All new Soldier models certainly took up a huge chunk of time. Correcting our original research and predictions for near future TO&E also was no small task. And scenarios… well, let’s just say a lot has changed over the years and that is obvious if you play a stock CMSF1 (Game Engine 0) in CMSF2 (Game Engine 4)! The good news is that original CMSF1 content can be loaded in the Editor without doing anything special. We expect a lot of old CMSF1 hands will have fun upgrading their scenarios to CMSF2 standards.
The upshot of this all is that CMSF2 feels like a brand new game instead of something slightly warmed over from 2008. We think you’ll agree it was the right way to go, even if it meant a lot more time spent in the oven.
This thread now officially announces and confirms that existing CMSF1 customers can upgrade to CMSF2 very, very, very affordably. Here’s what the new website shows you when you select to CMSF1 Upgrades section:
Yup, for $35 you can Upgrade the CMSF2 Base Game Engine 4, Marines, British Forces, and NATO in one go. Upgrades can not be preordered, so for those of you looking to Upgrade you should skip the preorder and wait until things start shipping. And when do we expect to ship? No later than the end of July 2018.
I’ve asked the Testing Lads™ to create some fun screenshots for me to post. Here they are!
Steve
A long delayed update
First, apologies for taking so long to update you guys on where we’re at. We know that you guys care more about new stuff than anything else and so we have been totally devoted to making that happen. However, I’m acknowledging that a bit more balance in priorities was needed and we dropped the ball on communicating with you.
With that out of the way, time to give you an update on what’s going on beyond what our testers have been able to say.
We’ve been working short staffed for the last year in particular. At first we thought CMSF2 and CMFI Rome to Victory were far enough along that missing some hands would be OK. It’s clear to us that wasn’t the best decision we’ve ever made! The time to fix that isn’t now, however we are currently working with someone to help speed things along through the final stages and a new full timer has been lined up for this Fall.
What really buggered things up is that both CMSF2 and CMFI Rome to Victory were both deceivingly simple in concept, but very difficult in execution. Both games have been « nearly done » for most of this year, or so we thought. In reality CMSF2 required about as much effort as a brand new Base Game (if not more) and Rome to Victory ran into seemingly endless TO&E oddities that needed to be addressed. A couple of months ago we decided to put Rome to Victory on hold so we could focus on CMSF2. Focusing on one complex project instead of two certainly was the right way to go.
The result of this strategy is CMSF2 being nearly ready for preorders! I’m going to make a separate post about the options for you all.
As if we didn’t have enough work on our plates already, there was another major project that we had to deal with… our website. The existing website should have been replaced years ago, however we continually prioritized our time and resources on game development. Which was fine, except that the need for a new website didn’t magically go away.
Our new website will hopefully be live within a few weeks. Total redo from top to bottom in all ways. Your store accounts from the old website are going to be ported over so that there’s no loss of order data. We will have to shut down our current site (not this Forum though!) for a few days while all that data and the domain are transferred. We will give you a heads up when that is about to happen.
There’s more to say, therefore I’m going to post a few more announcements over the next few days. And yes, some of those announcements will involve screenshot bones!
Thanks for hanging in there while we get our ducks back in a row.
Steve
