mobear

I don't know what makes you think I'm a white supremacist or neo-nazi. The fact of the matter is that anyone who criticizes individual jews, any of their myriad of organizations or their little statelet of Israel is automatically labeled at least an anti-semite, or more likely, a nazi or some such. But it is actually administrators such as yourself at websites and forums such as this one that are making it increasingly apparent to even some of the biggest dummies within your own ranks as to what is going on.

I, for one, certainly did not attempt to change the course of this topic, nor did I change it to make a political statement. Instead, this was done by Corvidae, which is who I quoted in my post. How do I know? How does anyone know what goes on in the world? By observing cause and effect. What makes you think that only the likes of you know why this war is being fought? At the start, the excuse was that "Saddam" had WMD's. That was a lie, wasn't it? Are you one of the few still defending this lie? Then it was said that he was at least partly responsible for 9/11 and that he had links to "Al Queda", or some such. Well, that is a lie as well, as anyone with any knowledge of Middle East affairs will know. There is simply no way that a secular government such as that of Iraq would have supported religious extremists like those supposedly of Al Queda and, as might be expected, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of this. Of course and as an aside, Al Queda is not a real organization, but instead nothing more than a CIA-invented boogieman, but I digress. Then it was said that the purpose of the war was "regime change" and to "bring democracy" to Iraq and get rid of an evil dictator. Funny how Iraqis were never asked whether they wanted a foreign nation to install a new government in their country - and lets be honest, a puppet government. LOL, you'll have to come up with something better to make your arguments, but no, thank goodness I haven't. You betcha. Seven years in the USAF during the 1980's. And I'm guessing that's probably seven more years than you ever spent in the military. Of course, unlike you I don't use this non-issue to try to score cheap points in a political discussion. Well, you bet wrong. In any case, who have I judged? What are you babbling about? Is this your way of appealing to the administrators of this site to ban me so you don't look so bad with your childish arguments? [ January 12, 2007, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: mobear ]

You mean the post by Corvidae on the previous page? Quote: "He is another nameless face in a picture. A boy from some small German town probably. A believer, who probably thought that "god" was on his side. He probably realy believed that jesus was talking to Hitler. He probably had his rifle blessed by a priest or pastor. He probably wrote letters home to his mother telling her all about the "sinners" he was "saving" on the holy crusade that Hitler was sending him on. And he probably struggled to hold that belief despite the abbominations he saw all around him. And he probably died far from home. In regard to Corvidae's original post, I certainly agree. All I did was up the ante. For many reasons, I find that hard to believe. A picture speaks a thousand words, as they say. Well, look at my posting history and you will see that this forum is not exactly a preoccupation of mine.

He is another nameless face in a picture. A boy from some small American town probably. A believer, who probably thought that "g_d" was on his side. He probably realy believed that jesus was talking to Dubya. He probably had his rifle blessed by a talmudist. He probably wrote letters home to his mother telling her all about the "sinners" he was "saving" on the holy crusade that Dubya was sending him on. And he probably struggled to hold that belief despite the abbominations he saw all around him. And he probably died far from home. (image deleted by Moderator) [ January 04, 2007, 08:34 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

I occassionally lurk this forum and have rarely posted, but it seems whenever I do lurk, I see at least one thread in which the following familiar pattern emerges: 1) Gamer raises important legitimate question or issue. 2) Cheerleaders unable to read plain English mostly (or completely) misinterpret said question or issue. 3) BF representative "answers" cheerleader's "concerns" while mostly (or completely) ignoring original gamer's question or issue. 4) Original gamer has to repeatedly explain and detail his original question (along with giving many examples and what-if situations), even though he had already adequately explained it in his initial post, just to get a modicum of an answer from BF representative - i.e. "pulling teeth"). This is such a thread. I find the entire issue of "Strategic AI" as opposed to "Tactical AI" to be somewhat disingenious on the part of BF. I've been playing computer wargames sine 1985, starting with Gary Grigsby's old titles (Carrier Force, War in the South Pacific, etc.), and this is the only game, the only forum and the only developer that has made this distinction. Now, it may very well be that these two AI's are indeed two separate entities, completely [edit: or largely] independent of each other and coding and implementing them in the game might indeed be two separate issues from a programmer's point of view, but from a gamer's point of view it really doesn't matter what you call it, or whether you make a distiction between the two. I find it hard to believe that "in 9 years of programming", no one at BF has ever come across an idea that was scrapped because the AI (either one) would not be able to adequately handle it. Specifically, for example, I find it hard to believe that BF could not have come up with a more elaborate victory point system for CM, other than the current "capture the flag" system. If indeed they didn't, then I think they do in fact need to start thinking a little outside of the box, specifially, instead of automatically just thinking "computer game", how about thinking "head-to-head human game" and then tacking on the AI in whatever way works best? I don't mean to belittle the important aspect of having a good AI, but the point is that the overall game design should not be compromised just to be able to code an adequate AI - which is the point being made in this thread by Lt. Bull. In other words - and I think this is a big part of what Lt. Bull has already eloquently written - design it primarily from the point of view of a head-to-head game first and only then add the AI to it, as adequately as possible. The isssue raised by LT. Bull in this thread is one of the most relevant I've seen in any gaming forum in my 20 years of gaming and I've had a mind of raising it myself a few times over the years, but realized in every case that it would be akin to pissing into a hurricane. There have been numerous times in the past, with various games, when the developer was subsequently asked "Why didn't you include this in the game", or "Why didn't you design it this way instead of that", where the answer given was that "The AI would not be able to handle it", or some similar response. As for the people who don't like head-to-head play, let me say this: TCP/IP indeed requires both players to be online at the same time and for this reason is not for everyone. I, for one, also don't particularly care for it. But in my 20 years of gaming, including over 10 years of various PBEM'ing, I have yet to hear a legitimate reason for not liking PBEM'ing. The reason most often given is that you can only play one turn at a time. Not a valid argument, simply because you can play more than one game at a time. In fact, most people who PBEM, do in fact play more than one game at a time (not all, but most). In other words, PBEM lets you play as many or as few games as you wish - and let me tell you, when you're playing another person you will find yourself taking considerable more time making your moves than otherwise. From personal experience, playing 3-5 games at a time seems perfect, as there are always at least two or three turns waiting for me when I get home from work. So all this babble about PBEM being too slow, or not being able to play enough is just that - babble, mostly from people who have never tried it. And, may I add, you're also missing out on *most* of the fun in the game by not playing another person. The purpose of this post is not to demean any previous poster or BF, it's just that this is something that I've come across here before and it's an issue that is important. BF wants to know what gamers want - well, here's what at least *some* of us want. [ September 08, 2005, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: mobear ]

Actually, now that I think about it, this is a stupid idea.

Actually, might as well put the timer into the game too, although time spent playing a given scenario might not be such an interesting statistic.

Here's an idea that might be fairly easy to do. Put a timer into the editor to keep track of how long it takes to build a scenario. Start the clock whenever construction of a new scenario is started and from then on keep track of every time those files are accessed and for how long. I'm thinking something along the lines of the game Civilization III, which keeps track of how long a person plays a given game.

I can't find a "main" forum, or any other forum with a CM2-specific topic. Can you provide a link?

I can't find a suggestion box anywhere, so here... I usually find myself turning the graphics off (trees, etc.) for giving orders, because some units just can't be seen amid the foliage, especially in the latter two editions of CM. Unfortunately, this is a necessary part of playing the game. What is more unfortunate, is that many times I forget to turn the graphics back on for watching the movie. The end result, more often than not, is that I end up playing most of a game with the graphics at the bare minimum - and this is a shame. For CM2, how about a simple toggle that would automatically turn the graphics on as soon as the movie plays? - And then turn them off again for the next orders phase. That would be the toggle's "on" position. In the toggle's "off" position, the game would simply work the way it does now. This is actually something that John Tiller's old Battleground series of games should have had also, because the situation was the same - great 3-D graphics that had to be turned off for giving orders, only for the player to forget to turn them on again for watching the action.

OK, I don't want to pour fuel on the fire in this discussion - and frankly I don't really care about this particular discussion - but that statement is blatanty false. I would direct your attention to a previous topic of mine, dated 29Sep02 entitled, 'CMBB Small Error', from the Combat Mission: Tech Support forum. In that topic, I pointed out that the Play/Pause button is reversed in CMBB. Here's what I wrote, quote: The Play and Pause buttons are reversed. (I have the American version.) To which you (Moon) answered, quote: Hmm, srange, they work as intended on my end. They show the current state, ie. when the action phase is playing, it shows play, when the game is paused it shows pause. Or do you mean something else? How about a screenshot? This was the only official response from BTS on this matter in that topic. The rest of the responses were just the typical banterings of the cheerleaders, although I'm happy to say that there were also several people who agreed with me. I again brought up this issue in a topic dated 06Nov02 entitled, 'Add This To The Patch...', in the Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin forum. This time, there was no official response from BTS at all, just the usual bellowing from your Amen Corner, as well as a few sarcastically-worded suggestions of how I should fix the problem myself. Now, just to jog your memory, here's the problem, once again. Presumably you have a VCR at home, or at least a tape player, DVD player or similar media-playing device, so let me ask you this: When you first turn on one of these devices to play the media, which button do you push? I would guess, judging from my own experiences using these types of devices, that you would push the *PLAY* button. Thereafter, if you wanted to pause the media, you would naturally push the *PAUSE* button, right? (Let me know if I'm losing you here.) Why is it then, that after I load a CMBB movie file, the button I have to push in order to play it says *PAUSE*? Consequently, once the CMBB movie is playing and I want to pause it, I have to push a button that says *PLAY*. Why on God's earth would I want to push a *PAUSE* button to play the movie and a *PLAY* button to pause it? Do you see anything wrong with this picture in CMBB? In case you, or anyone else at BTS has trouble understanding this, I would simply direct you to your other game, CM Beyond Overlord, because in this game the buttons are correct, *PLAY* to play the movie and *PAUSE* to pause it. I understand, of course, that this issue is probably not as critical as many other issues in the game, but consider this: If a new player who has just purchased CMBB sees this, and he undoubtedly will, he might wonder what else is wrong with this game, considering BTS can't even get the Play/Pause buttons straight. As I have shown, I raised this issue twice before issuance of the presumabbly final patch (1.03) for CMBB (the first time was even before issuance of the first patch, I think), yet it was not fixed after three patches (why not?). So, in CMBO BTS got it right, in CMBB they got it wrong, and I'm eagerly awaiting CM Afrika Korps for them to make up my mind. This issue belies the opinion of yours that "anytime somebody has to say something meaningful (more meaningful than "this suxx" that is), we listen." Please consider my criticism to be constructive, rather than destructive, so that you might further improve your product.

Better not use the diving board in that case.

The game needs a map preview function. Many players who like to play blind like to at least look at the map first. To the best of my knowledge, this is currently not possible without revealing at least one side's unit setup positions. Ideally, this map preview function should probably be available on one of the scenario setup pages. In addition to showing the topography, victory flags/exit sides should also be shown, to give players an idea of what's involved.

wb_99 wrote: >Not quite. When you are playing, the button's action is pause, hence the pause label. When you are paused, the button's action is play, hence the play label. Well, I don't know what game you're playing, but it's not CMBB because in fact the opposite is true. This minor, yet somewhat irritating issue has already been discussed previously in another topic. When the movie is paused, the button should say "Play", because that is what you would want to do when you press it. And when the movie is playing the button should say "Pause", because that is what you would want to do when you press it. That is the way it works in this world. That is the way every playback program I have ever seen works. That is the way every VCR, DVD, CD and tape player works. And if all that is not enough, that is the way CMBO works too. Don't take my word for it, look at it. [ November 06, 2002, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: mobear ]

The Play and Pause buttons are reversed - please fix.