Nick from Me-MW asked me if I had some questions for him to include with his ongoing dialog with EA about B4ME...so I hastily wrote up a good amount of questions, some of them were answered. Not too much new information though I'm afraid...
You can check out the full q/a
here
Quote:
Q. Squads are used widely in B4ME, but would it be possible to create a squad that is made up of different unit types? An example would be a squad of half archers and half swordsmen.
A. You can in fact create mixed battalions by combining two battalions together. This new unit has different AI and some real advantages on the battlefield. The most popular is to include Soldiers with Archers. The Soldiers defend the Archers from enemy troops and even enemy arrow attacks while the Archers shoot over the shoulders of their friends. The soldiers won’t advance on the enemy or move too far away from the Archers, creating a very effective new formation.
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It didn't really answer my question, although if the squad code is anything like the gla mob it is possible.
Quote:
Q. Will there be a properly working mod swapping utility? There was one implemented in Generals, however it wasn't complete (it didn't work like a full directory override and as a result certain tga and ini files weren't read instead of their game counterparts).
A. Right now we are just focused on bringing a quality product to the fans of the films and fans of our RTS games. We want to and will continue to do the best we can to support the mod community but I don’t believe we will be putting a lot of effort into this over the next month.
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If I wasn't accustomed to EA ignoring us, this would piss me off. The code is there, all it needs is some minor tweaks and it would work. I suppose it means we'll need more Blitz2-style mod launchers.
Quote:
Q. Will it be possible to re-use the animations from the Generals infantry for new B4ME-like polycount infantry?
A. I don’t want to say “no” because so many members of the mod community have done things that developers never thought were possible but it does seem unlikely that those animations will carry over well to Middle-earth. The B4ME characters are much more complex than anything that we ever did in Generals.
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This also sucks, which means that most modern warfare projects will need all new animations. I asked flyby about this a week ago and he said that it might be possible...but animations have problems when scaled (which would have to happen, unless you want to put in the generals infantry as-is in all their rectangle shaped glory)
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There were many other questions, which were ignored...that would've given much more insight. At least we know a little bit more about it now, or at least know that EA's attitude hasn't changed.