Listing scenarios in historical chronological order

[Philippeatbay]

Many years ago I was involved with the first iteration of Combat Mission.

Combat Mission was easy to mod and easy to create detailed scenarios for, and after a few years there were at least ten times as many user made scenarios as the standard ones that came with the game. Many of these scenarios were as good or better than the standard ones simply because certain scenario designers had built up so much experience cranking out scenarios that they really knew what they were doing.

So one of the nice things about having over a thousand pre-constructed scenarios (as opposed to scenarios that were randomly generated by the game engine) was that you could always find an historical or semi-historical scenario to play that you had never seen before. This was especially useful in pbem games, where you wanted to maintain the element of surprise for both players.

But this wealth of scenarios left users with a problem. How to sort through the embarassment of riches.

One of my last acts as a CMx1 modder was to gather together all of the scenarios I could find for CMAK and CMBB and sort them into packets organized in historical chronological order. That way, for example, if you wanted to see what scenarios were available that covered the battle of Stalingrad, you could install one of my packets and find a scenario from that period that you hadn't played before.

Now that a fair number of user-made scenarios for Pike and Shot have been written, the list of what's available is starting to get very long. And there is every indication that it will get longer, maybe not to the scale of Combat Mission, but longer than is comfortable to read.

It is very important to be able to list Pike and Shot scenarios in the chronological order of creation. Better yet would be to list them in the order of the most recent update.

But what is really lacking is the ability to sort through the lists by subject matter or historical chronological order.

If I want to try my hand at a user-made scenario from the Wars of Religion or the English Civil War, as it stands I have to read through the entire list of what's available to figure out what I want to play. As it stands the list is already fairly long: imagine what it's going to look like a year or two from now.

Since the scenario date seems to be information that is already provided by the designers, and before the list of user-made scenario becomes too long and cumbersome to make changes to, would it be possible to add a toggle switch (like the one that separates multi-player from single player) to sort scenarios in chronological order by historical year rather than just date of creation ?

[rbodleyscott]

They aren't really listed in the order of creation, the are listed in the order they appear in the list.txt file. As new scenarios are added, they get added at the end.

At the end of day, its a time issue. There is limited time available to devote to adding scenarios to the FTP. Most new ones have to be vetted and corrected before they can be added. They then have to be added to both the Pike and Shot and Pike and Shot Campaigns FTPs, which are separate.

[KiwiWarlord]

Many years ago I was involved with the first iteration of Combat Mission.

My favourite game of all time until P&S appeared. Played CM until the later Windows OS killed it. I did not like the new, more up to date versions, far too much work.
CMBB was my favourite. So simple yet so very good, especially the PBEM against humans....just as P&S / P&S:C.

Thanks for many years of gaming fun.
Brian

[Adebar]

A bit late for a reply, but here it goes:

It's very easy to list custom made scenarios in a chronological order. Just rename the scenario's folders into something like:

1643 - Rocroi
1648 - Lens
etc.

If you want to be more specific:

1643/05/19 - Rocroi
1648/08/20 - Lens
etc.

Then the game automatically lists all scenarios in the correct chronological order.

One of my last acts as a CMx1 modder was to gather together all of the scenarios I could find for CMAK and CMBB and sort them into packets organized in historical chronological order.

Thanks for that! For years CMBB was one of my favourites, and I played many scenarios from your packets.