THAM

The sight magnification should be preset at X1 and X10, or maybe X8, for both the day and thermal imager sights, as is the real-life case. Zooming in and out progressively is way too slow, unrealistic and awkward, This is modelled properly in M1A2, M1 Tank Platoon 2 and Armored Fist 2/3. When one reconfigures the keyboard buttons, there should be a message or function to avoid conflicting settings, as well a reset to default settings if needed.

There was a Korean K1A1 on display at the Defence Services Asia Exhibition in Kuala Lumpur in 1996, and it looked really awesome. The large video screen which they had there certainly demonstrated its superb mobility - the tank was pouncing about like a Grand Prix car. There were PT-91M (T-72M1) tanks on display at later DSA's, but these did not look as impressive. These were the one's that Malaysia bought. The video of the tank's mobility made it look pretty cumbersome. I think too, that the K1A1 was the tank which should have been chosen by Malaysia since its mobility was optimized for tropical and swampy grounds.

Russian games aren't particularly well programmed in terms of gameplay and user-friendliness. [ October 03, 2005, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: THAM ]

Well, I finally installed it. I figured from the "unrar.dll" file that the "T-72.exe" was likely to be an unzipper, rather than a setup program, possibly had bugs. I used WinRar to extract the individual "Pak" files to a folder, copied the other files manually, and the game ran. No sound at first, then I figured the last two "Pak" files were for sound, and extracted them too. The game ran after that. However, when it came to loading the missions, they froze a few times midway. So I used the keyboard's windows exit button, exited, clicked again and went back into the game. The missions managed to load fully then. The game seems to have lots of bugs though. The interface for the driver and gunner seems to have been mixed up in one mission. And when switching from the driver to gunner's position, the tank halts, unless one goes back to the driver again. The keyboard allocations appear to be complicated and difficult to use. It's extremely difficult aligning the gunner's main gun on the target with the arrow keys - the turret swings way too fast, there is no speed control unlike Interactive Magic's M1A2. I can't find the thermal imager either. This game is in start contrast to "M1 Tank Platoon 2", "M1A2", and "Armored Fist 3", in which they all installed properly, ran smoothly and the keyboard functions were all well laid out, thought it must be said that both the last two games were in 2D. It's quite unfortunate Tank Platoon, the sequel to M1 Tank Platoon 2, was cancelled, and there were no sequels to the other two games. [ October 03, 2005, 08:58 AM: Message edited by: THAM ]

I see this message when trying to install "Balkans on Fire" : "The application failed to initialize properly (0x0000006). Click OK to terminate the application." This happens on Autorun, or when I try to click "T-72.exe" manually. I have Windows XP Service Pack 2 on an Athlon XP2400, 512 Mb DDR.