Schrullenhaft

Wild Bill Wilder ?!? Oh well, I'm bad at guessing games.

Yeah, I agree with guachi... "Plug-N-PRAY !" And those are some freakin' weird resolutions on that card. Some idiot was probably trying to see what he could do with the RAMDAC... Hopefully the older drivers work for you. As Steve & Charles pointed out, sometimes the newer drivers are even buggier than the older ones. It literally comes down to "experimentation" with which driver, Direct X version, etc. will do what you want. Of course the next game you install will usually proceed to trash all of your hard work with an idiotic installer changing everything on you.

Ok, my sugar-addled brain came up with this: "Get off yer butts. Smoke break's over... move out !" Yeah, it sound like an Ami and they're Germans, but what the hey. Back to that sugar...

Actually, I'm with Siemerst on the "unbalanced" scenarios. I don't think that balance is absolutely necessary (this goes along with historicity). It would be nice if scenario victory conditions could give balance to scenarios where the force levels were not even, but I don't think CM will go far enough in that respect. Variability in setups (setup zones in CM), reinforcements and type of engagement could give some more replay-ability to scenarios. However these features are somewhat beyond the scenario editor available to CM right now (though future versions may incorporate more variability). I tend to classify scenarios in three possible catergories. Those that are as historical as possible given game limitations and actual knowledge of the engagement. Those that are accurate in terms of TOE and timeframe, but not necessarily historical and those scenarios created for the sake of playability and balance. It's probably near impossible to successfully combine all three types simultaneously (though it is attempted often). I believe it boils down to what kind of gaming experience you're expecting. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these catergories. There would also be one other catergory: the "super slug-fest", where inordinate amounts of super-heavy/powerful units are included in a scenario. These are entertaining as a curiosity (i.e. - just how powerful would they be and what would it take to destroy such formation, yada-yada-yada), but wouldn't really constitute a playable game in the long run. Well, these are the workings of my feeble mind on scenarios.

I'll probably need more info on your computer to give you more accurate feedback (i.e. - what Voodoo driver version you are using; what Windows version you have, like 98 Second Edition; what color depth & resolution you are running, what version of Direct X you're running, etc.). Make sure that your monitor is defined in the Display control panel. An "unknown" monitor type may not allow you to support certain resolutions. Often you may not find your particular monitor listed (a lot of Taiwanese clone monitors run into this issue), but it may be a Plug-N-Play monitor, which should be a sufficient "description" for it. Next you may want to check out 3dfx's website and find the latest driver for your board. Since 3dfx is the only company putting out the Voodoo3 chipset cards (to my knowledge) the drivers on their website should work fine. These are the WHQL drivers, which should be stable, but aren't the latest (at the bottom of the page, note the requirement for Direct X 7): http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?IOID=15 These are the BETA drivers (which also require Direct X 7): http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?IOID=1670 Follow the instructions listed on the page for the driver you decide to install. Video driver updates probably won't fix your problem, but it is nice to have the latest since most updates fix some problems (and, uh.. sometimes cause them too, so be careful and have a previous driver available to reinstall). I'd also suggest "killing" any other running programs before launching CM and also play around with different resolutions and color depths to see if this has any effect on how CM will load up. There may also be some control panel settings (Control Panels - Display - Settings tab - Advanced button - and possibly some 3dfx tabs will show up) that you can adjust. The 3dfx tabs may have some settings for Direct X, set MipMapping to 1+, Fogging effects can be on (but the demo probably doesn't use this Direct X feature). If you can describe any of the options you have in these tabs, individuals on this board can probably make some recommendations on what to set them to for optimal CM play.

As far as I'm aware hunt52 is right. The vehicles (and all of their attributes) are hard-coded into the program. No custom units or user-modifiable attributes. I guess the concern was maintaining an even playing field for PBEM in regards to unit capabilities. The only thing that will be user modifiable (beyond creating scenarios/operations) are the bitmap "skins". Depending on how popular the requests are (and how willing you may be to PAY for them ), BTS may do some add-on packs for additional vehicles/units for the "Beyond Overlord" CM1 (this is strictly a guess, of course). If the code is what I'm lead to believe, then this will require a new executable in order to get these additional units. Of course, work on CM2 will proceed at some point after CM1's release. How soon the developement starts is up to Steve and Charles (and how well CM1 sells). Any add-on packs will delay CM2. Actually, it's kind of funny to be talking of delays in CM2 while we're still waiting for CM1.

OB&G is probably right, unfortunately. The fix probably lies in updated ATI drivers for your chipset. I would recommend knocking down your Direct X version to 6.1 to see if that would possibly solve anything, but uninstalling Direct X 7 is nearly impossible without a complete reinstall of Win 98. Since this chipset is fairly new then driver updates may be forthcoming in the future (but that would be several months away at the earliest). However, when the updates do come out they may still not fix your problem. baevans suggestion to completely turn off hardware acceleration (Control Panels - System - Performance tab - Graphics button - move slider to complete left side)is probably your best bet for now. If some big-name game has a similar error (missing mouse cursor) then the fix may be forthcoming.

*sigh* I'd guess Gold Demo by late April & shipped product on North American customer's doorsteps by late May. Right now I believe Steve & Charles are working on new textures due to the increased texture sizes that they instituted awhile back. This is going to take some time to redo these, but it is necessary for the even appearance of quality (who wants a "chunky" AFV & a highly-defined bitmap of a building ?). Of course there are other things that they may be working on, but I assume this may be the major task that they are facing before release. Although I'm as anxious as anyone to get my hands on the full version, I'm quite willing to wait while they finish it (though I'd probably get a little testy if they didn't finish it by this summer). I think it is an excellent product, from what I can see in the demo and screenshots, and it is quite remarkable that such a small developement team was able to produce it. Compare what BTS has done to any developement team at other game companies and you will realize just how much of a burden in finishing the product that Steve & Charles have to deal with. Diablo II anyone ? I'm sure Blizzard has a dozen or more people working directly on the product, but are they done yet ? How long has it been ? I think most people on this board are aware of Talonsoft and it's "patch it" system of getting their products to function. Not to slam them too hard, because they do make some fairly good games, but you can talk to most people on this board and they can relate to you their frustration in "waiting for the patch" to fix their particular pet-peeve about a game. This sounds sychophantic, but I think we should be glad that Steve and Charles are dedicated to producing a quality product. Many people on this board keep on saying that "enough is enough" and just ship the product. Well, if we got a full product with all the minor bugs that the demo has, then Steve & Charles would probably be inundated with requests to fix this or that and be accused of crappy testing/programming. Of course a number of you have said "only ship it BUG FREE". Again, what they're doing right now (mostly) is bringing all the graphics up to par with what they've allowed the engine to handle. There very well may be patches in the future, but hopefully they won't be 50Mb patches that some users (timed internet access) will have a hard time downloading. Ugh.. Ok, I'm done ranting . I've just read too many requests from posters who want the game shipped "regardless" of its current state, which is just unrealistic in my opinion. Steve & Charles aren't just writing a database with the "default" front end nor are they just "painting little red-noses" on the grunts. "Life's a piece of sh#t, when you look at it.." Sing a-long now ! [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 03-03-2000).]

Unfortunately your graphics quality is going to be tied to the video chipset/drivers. Many drivers often sacrifice quality for speed. In a lot of applications this doesn't really hurt, but in some games it can show up badly. Since you play Quake you may already be highly familiar with all of these details and are already running the latest and, uh... "greatest". But I'll just assume that you are not... I'm not very familiar with the Voodoo2 based cards and their driver options. I believe you have another video card in your system that is actually acting as the display adapter while the Voodoo2 is strictly just a 3D Accelerator card. I can't recall what options you may have for tweaking DirectX visuals from the Voodoo2 drivers, but you may want to look around your Display Control panel - Settings - "Advanced" button and check out the "tabs" that may be available. For now and the foreseeable future CM will run with DirectX on the PC. Sorry, no OpenGL or (especially) GLIDE versions will be made (though OpenGL may be the API of choice for CM in a couple of years). First off I'd suggest that you get the latest drivers for your video card (if you know what model or chipset it is). Next you may want to get the lastest Voodoo2 driver for your card. Often the 3Dfx reference driver is going to be the latest version available and often they may be more stable than the customized drivers that the manufacturer's tweak for their cards. However you may lose certain control panels and features that may be specific to your version of the Voodoo2. The latest Voodoo2 driver can be downloaded from here: http://www.3dfxgamers.com/view.asp?PAGE=V2drivers Select the "Voodoo2 Windows 9x DirectX 7 Drivers v. 3.02.02" Even if you're not running DirectX 7 these will be the drivers you would want to download. Also downloading the lastest DirectX version or possibly something newer than what you currently have may help (or it may cause you endless grief, so be careful). To find out what version you of DirectX you are running go to C:\PROGRAM FILES\DIRECTX\... and from here there may be a SETUP directory or other files such as DXDIAG. Run the DXDIAG or SETUP and hopefully you should get some sort of run down on the version that you are running. The latest version of DirectX that is commonly available is version 7.0a. You can download if off of Microsoft's DirectX site, but it is about 7 or so Mb. http://www.microsoft.com/directx/homeuser/downloads/default.asp Depending on what games you run you may want to be careful in upgrading your drivers & DirectX. Some games (especially older DirectX games) may show graphic anomalies that they haven't shown before or drop their frame rate performance quite a bit with newer versions of DirectX. Once you have installed the the latest driver for your Voodoo2 (and *maybe* a newer version of DirectX), you can post what options you have in your driver for DirectX (from Display Control panel - Settings - "Advanced" button and then select the 3Dfx "tabs" that may be available). From here we can give you suggestions on improving your display quality. After doing all of this, however, your graphics quality may still not improve to your liking. At that point you are looking at another video card. If you are looking to stick with your current machine you may want to look for a Voodoo3 2000 PCI 16Mb (usually less than US$100) which will act as your primary display adapter in addition to being a 3D accelerator or possibly a TNT PCI 16Mb (though I haven't seen one of these myself). These cards however may require faster CPU's in order to see much of a performance benefit over what you have currently. If you have any furthur questions please give us a few more details on your system (i.e. video card, problem that you're seeing, etc.). Good Luck, Young Skywalker.... [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 02-23-2000).]

Just a note for OB&G. MadMatt may be under a non-disclosure agreement about certain features in the game. Until he has permission to display and reveal such features it would be a mistake on his part to do so. Excuse me if I was unable to discern your sarcasm. I depend too much on them "damn smilies" to discern a person's actual tone of speech.

I vote for more eye candy ! As someone stated earlier in this thread, Steve & Charles, et. al are probably working on just more than the graphics and eye candy. In order to "appease the masses", we are just starting to see these improved smoke images (which were initially worked on a few weeks ago IIRC) as a sign of CM's improvements and progress. CM is Steve & Charles' baby. It's launch and eventual review will have a big impact for their business. Others have posted here in the past saying that some of the graphics were "a joke" and could be a lot better (of course they were comparing it to other 3D games that won't have to render half of what CM will need to). There was a bit of truth to their statements since the primary emphasis for BTS has been to make a highly accurate and functional game engine (the bane of so many grognads has been the "nice graphics, but unrealistic/unplayable game"). Now they have a chance to spiff up the graphics to a level that they feel is acceptable to the reviewers and non-grognards out there who may be seeing CM for the first time and may have no clue as to the complexity of the underlying engine. Most gamers are used to games pushing polygons and not much else ("brain-dead AI"); now BTS has to meet that expectation of the "polygon beauty pageant". As much as we would want BTS to release the game now & have them "pretty it up" later - we are not their only audience that they have to please. Wow... I must have covered some really unique perspectives on this. I guess my comments have brought this thread to its comatose conclusion.

Ugh... Recoding CM/CM2 to OpenGL is going to be a huge task. Attempting to put out both a RAVE API & OpenGL API based game is going to be a huge headache. I'd guess that by the time CM3 is in progress (assuming that is 2 years from now) Charles & Steve will convert over to OpenGL. Maybe they'll poll the buyers to find out what platform/OS that they'll be using (once CM2 is out) to find out if they need to stick to the RAVE API or switch over to OpenGL. Just another one of the joys of developing games in an ever-changing universe of APIs.

KwazyDog is right to my knowledge. MadMatt is using a TNT2 Ultra video card on a PC to do the screen captures. The gamma values on the PC are different from those on the Mac (OS differences ?). A gamma utility should be able to adjust this (PhotoShop *USED* to come with one) and most of the high-end gaming cards either come with such a utility built-in to their driver or as a separate utility. Hmmm... I doubt that answers any questions here...

Uhh... Is that a Creative Labs SoundBlaster LIVE or just a SoundBlaster 16 ? If your card is a LIVE then you should download/install LIVE 3.0. I had complete silence from my game until I installed the 3.0 software. If your card is a SoundBlaster 16 then the previous suggestion of reducing the "audio hardware acceleration" may help. If you have another SoundBlaster card then you may want to download the latest drivers from here (by selecting your operating system & card type - if you don't know what card you have look for the "CTxxxx" number and look through tech support to identify it with that number): http://www.soundblaster.com/support/files/download.asp Basically Direct X 6.1 should have most of the SoundBlaster updates that would seem to be necessary, except for the newer software-oriented PCI soundcards.

This sounds like a video driver problem (yeah, I know, that's obvious ). Matrox's G400 series has a beta driver (v. 5.50.010) which may possibly help: http://www.matrox.com/mga/drivers/latest_drivers/home.htm If this doesn't do the job, then try the WHQL certfied drivers (v. 5.20.013): http://www.matrox.com/mga/drivers/certified_drivers/home.htm Remember, you must run the Matrox uninstaller BEFORE installing the latest driver (you may want to reboot and set your display as SVGA after uninstalling too). Your PowerDesk software may disappear after uninstalling, but apparently this process is necessary in order to install the latest drivers correct. Unfortunately I can't recall the Matrox options in their control panels. Have you tried changing color depths (say to 16-bit color from 32/24 bit) ? If worse comes to worse you can run the Direct X Diagnostic (usually found at C:\PROGRAM FILES\DIRECTX\SETUP\DXDIAG, a shortcut file). Go to the Display tab and DISABLE DirectDraw Acceleration (and possibly Direct3D acceleration). Doing this will adversely affect your display rates, but it may render the missing elements in CM now.

If Fionn has been sacked... will he be replaced by a Llama ? I had to say something stupid in this thread...

Don't know if I have any answers here, but.. Looking around Diamond/S3's website I found the following info on your card. - The OpenGL & Advanced buttons being grayed out are normal for the current set of drivers according to the FAQ (no options exist yet). - If you install Direct X 7/7.0A then your InControl Tools 99 features will disappear (again according to the FAQ). It doesn't sound like Diamond has any plans at the moment to change this. So if you do reinstall Direct X (as previously suggested) you may want to make sure it is v. 6.1A (which is built into Windows 98 2nd Edition - 4.10.2222A). - Unfortunately your dilemma is directly related to what options Diamond/S3 give you in their software. You InControl Tools is probably the only way to adjust your image quality (without a LOT of hacking around in the driver). My suggestions (guesses) are to: 1) Turn ON VSync. This is geared towards gamers in 3D games where they get "tearing" of the image (two horizontal halves) because of large changes in the image (as they move around). Turning ON Vsync slows down your frame rate to make sure your display is fully drawn (in video memory) before displaying. This probably doesn't affect your image quality problem with the textures however. 2) Turning FOGGING ON. I assume this is the Direct 3D fogging effects. I don't think that CM is using them, but what the heck. 3)Turn OFF or SLOW DOWN the 3D Turbo gauge. I'm not sure what this feature is, but it may be related to the the S3 Savage4's texture compression. This may be the closest thing you have to affecting your texture quality. Supposedly the texture compression is lossless, but apparently it may not be in CM's case. The following URL is a BETA driver for the S3 Savage4. It may have even less features than the Diamond software, but it may be worth trying to see if it fixes your texture problem. http://www.s3.com/customer_caretechnical_supportdriversbetaS3_Graphic_AcceleratorsSavage4_%28395%29.htm Hope something here helps.

On the Wurfrahmen I'd guess that it would be more appropriate to have it as some sort of off-board arty element (in terms of CM's gameplay). But apparently it is a direct fire weapon (or more likely a "guess"-fire weapon) with no FO for it (?). This would suggest that an on-screen representation would be appropriate, but I believe it will be lumped with the other NebelWerfer weapons and not represented on-screen if I get the gist of previous posts on such weapons.

OB&G: If you have an Intel BX/LX based chipset motherboard, then I think you will only get AGP 2X type speeds. I'm not sure which chipsets support AGP 4X, I assume the new i820 chipset does and possibly the latest 133Mhz VIA chipsets. So if your board isn't one of these then AGP 4X means nothing (though there may be a jumper on the Diamond board for AGP 4X or 2X selection). The only other thing I could recommend for speeding up your video is to try out NVidia's latest drivers (Detonator 3.68 I think is the latest). If you do install these however, you will lose some of your features that Diamond includes in their release of the drivers (like certain control panel extensions, etc.). OTOH Diamond does a very good job most of the time in tweaking the OEM drivers for performance, so there may be little, if any, performance improvement. Droooolll... BIG, HUGE maps... The ebb & flow of battle... I hope I don't lose my job once CM comes out.

I can only make guesses here. What color depth are you running at ? 256 colors will probably not be enough. Try "High Color (16-bit)", which you can set from Control Panels - Display - Settings tab. The minimum recommendations for video are a 4Mb video card, but the game *may* still run on your computer, but it will look very "choppy" as you move around so you will need a lot of patience to play. If you have any further details on your computer hardware (i.e. - which video chip you have), we can possibly direct you to other solutions if the aforementioned doesn't solve your problem.

Hey, ummm... I just noticed (or have I not been payin' attention ?) that there is snow on the trees also.. Yippee more eye candy... You go Steve and Charles.

Just a guess... (if you haven't solved this one already) Install the lastest video driver for your Sis 6236 (should be dated 7-22-99), AND install the TSR.EXE program to update your video BIOS in your AUTOEXEC.BAT (I suggest installed the TSR.EXE BEFORE installing the latest driver). You should be able to get these files from http://www.sis.com.tw and once you've selected your region. just select the driver drop down dialog on the frame to your left.

My maternal grandfather was a grunt in the 2nd Marine Division (IIRC, can't recall the other unit specifics). He did some time in Iceland and then headed off to Guadalcanal (don't know 'D + what' as to when he got there). He ended up contracting some form of meningitis and got shipped to New Zealand for recovery. There he met my grandmother, a dental assistant in the New Zealand Air Force. They came back to the US sometime in '43 and settled in Northern California. As a young kid I would always ask him questions about his experiences in the war, but I couldn't really get him to talk much about it. He preferred fishing.

29) Secret "cheat code" gives losing side two battalions of reserves. "So what if you just toasted my last Stug... I've just been saved by the Cavalry... an Abeiltung of King Tigers just happened on their way into our sector". 30) Hidden "powerup" has given the last remaining conscript in a Volkstrum squad instant invincibility and it proceeds to trash two platoons and five Easy Eight Shermans.

33... though my chronological age is more a measure of the attrition of life than the possible measure of maturity & knowledge. Philosopher/warrior ?... more along the lines of a Stooge than anything. CM should permanently excise me from being social beyond the CRT. I am surprised at the age range here. I wouldn't have guessed that computer wargaming would have attracted such an age range. I would have assumed that most grognards would be unmarried/disheveled/unsociable types (uh.. maybe that's MY personal situation :eek . Ummm.. I better shut up now, back to the "shadows" with me.