I add myself to the BJayLandmaker request : when launching war2combat or the widescreen patch (copied in the GoG WC2 game) :
- we can only see the war2.ru gateway
- the gateways of the normal GoG WC2 launcher became corrupted (we have to reinstall it)
Can you help us figuring it ? I would love so much playing with the widescreen patch.
I would like to give you my opinion about people complaining about the widescreen patch.
In a nutshell : keep implementing it, don't listen to nostalgic people, they have the GoG and BNET servers to play with the "original" experience, and don't fear adding options to ENABLE/DISABLE your patch, it won't destroy your community at all.
Here's the arguments :
- People complaining about a new feature are everywhere : they are usually just fanboys trying to defend their masters and gain visibility on forums. On a game like Starcraft 2, there was a debate about adding a feature to UNZOOM during multiplayer, like in replays. There is widescreen (1080p) support in SC2, but every resolution are zoomed in a way that we don't fully benefit from it. So, I was requesting that feature on forums, and the only stupid argument always invoked was "no, because it will handicap people with low-end computers" : indeed, SC2 problem is that it doesn't support multi-CPU, but I tried to explain them that we should not rely on a minority of the players. Nobody understood. And they never will, they have no argument (they even attempted to answer me that people with 1024x768 screen would be disavantaged !!! Wich was a fucking non-sense because they authorized to select 1920x1080 in SC2 settings, and they never debated on the advantage it would procure).
- If we're nostalgic of a vanilla experience, it's a good thing to defend. I'm personnally a very nostalgic individual, and I fully understand this. But there is already a way to play the game with the original experience, so a new version of the game developped in parallel should not be impeded.
- Communities split naturally in every game : options applied during a multiplayer game are enough to split people on various servers. I remember in Wolfenstein Enemy Territory (2003) that in the servers list, you had to enable/disable "password" filter, or "anti-cheat" filter, or "friendly fire", etc, to only show the servers you wanted. THIS NEVER WAS SUBJECT TO DEBATE AS A DANGER TO THE GAME.
- My philosophy in computing/programming is this one : I already suffered enough from bad software design, to not fully commit myself to the dogma of "listening people desires and implementing an option even if I don't feel it as very necessary". In other words : the more option you have, the more your software is reaching perfection, because everybody will meet his goal.
- The result is the opposite of the death of a game : players tend to come more on a game, if there is attractive settings and customization. More communities are born from the original one.
- Moreover : this avoid conflict during communities mettings. I mean that if a group of players are "suffering" from the miss of an option, they will tend to have a bad experience, reject the fault on others, etc. While if they play under their prefered settings, they won't. And nobody will "quit the game" because of a bad experience. As an example : I myself suffer from the very narrow view, and lack of queue-of-orders in WC2, and feel disadvantaged in front of experienced players, because my gameplay evolved with games like Starcraft 2 or Planetary Annihilation.
- Of course, adding a "no-hd" parameter can "split" the players : but people playing on war2.ru are already split themselves from the ones who refuse it. Adding more splits inside the war2ru community will only create more communities in it, and as a matter of fact : people like me will only join war2ru is all the requirements are fullfiled (wich is not the case for now, I will explain it at the end).
- LAST BUT NOT LEAST : as a nostalgic guy, I love being able to play my favorite old games on a widescreen. When I finally passed from a 4:3 to a 16:9, I was suffering from the discomfort of 4:3 games, and was always very pleased to find some 16:9 unofficial patch on obscure forums where dedicated lovers where giving their time to relieve us from our pain.
This may sound as a SUBJECTIVE argument, but why do I not talked about "being advantaged" ? Because it was on the other players to adapt, not to me to avoid a great feature (how can seeing MORE of the game could not be the most wonderfull thing ??). I understand the questioning about "changing the gameplay mechanics", but this is vastely not true and only subtle. Finally, if people suffer from disavantage, all they have to do is to create rules, filters, etc, and let people who want comfort improvement to play between themselves. - Progress does not always destroys good old things ; sometimes it only add good things on the top of it with eventually just a subtle adjustment (it's even the opposite : the adjustment is when you go back to the more "narrowed" screenview ^^).
That's what war2combat is, and I don't see why it should stop going in this direction. Plus, you don't seem to disrecpect the original core-settings like the grid, the dommages, the spells, etc.
You just add more fluidity to the thing (you plan to implement queue-ordering, etc), and this is perfect as long as it doesn't conflict with the aforementioned core-settings.
NOW WHY DON'T I PLAY WITH WAR2COMBAT FOR NOW ?Well, unfortunately :
- People I play with, are on the BNET server.
- War2combat / widescreen patch conflict with the BNEt gateway. This is strange, given that you say in this topic that it would work with the GoG version.
I was using the widescreen patch instead of the war2combat.exe, because I wanted to have the correct gateway (war2combat seems isolated on his own servers). It worked one time, and then, never worked correctly again.
As soon as this problem will be solved for both widescreen-patch/war2combat, I will surely launch the war2combat.exe because I want to benefit from the other improvements. The people I play with are not against me playing with these improvements, given that my skill/level is lower than them. It would only balance things from our points of view ^^
And Jesus, I just want to feel that game flowing into my vein with all its potential ! THANK YOU for improving it 
. having choices is like HEAVEN.
