Treetop64

Just wanted to add: While you're at Green as Jade's website, it would be very much worth your while to check out, not some, but ALL of Mikey D's textures. Seriously. IMHO, Mikey D's textures are, by far and away, the best you will find anywhere for the armor in CMBB and CMAK. He's made tons of textures, and each of them are of a very high quality. I've downloaded every single texture he made, and spent an hour or more installing all of them in CMBB/CMAK. Very much worth the time spent. Likewise, there is a series of equally high-quality textures for all the BT-5s, BT-7s, and T-26s in CMBB. I don't know who the author is (not in the readmes) but the quality matches that of Mikey D's work. Gurra's Eastern Front Interface overhaul is another strong recommendation. Mint work, this is!

Ok... It's been a long time since we've heard anything form the developers themselves. It would be nice to hear anything at all regarding Campaigns; snippets, teasers, blogs, anything... Is work continuing? A major snag found in testing? Sabattical? Work cancelled? My life doesn't hang by a thread in regards to reading any news on this product, but it is eagerly anticipated! C'mon, let us know something, kay?

Good to see this project is still alive. I'm actually looking more forward to CMC than I am for Theatre of War 2. Though it may not be as graphicly pretty (unless you're using MikeyD's awesome textures!) CMBB just has so much more depth. Individually modelled infantry, a proper PzI, Pz35(t), T-40, IS-3, etc., and rolling vehicle and tank wheels would really nail it home with CMBB's superiority. It's too bad those can't be modded in. However, I still play CMBB almost daily. My credit card is standing by, guys.

Absolutely download every one of MikeyD's mods. They are arguably the best vehicle mods available for CM.

It's a tough game, man. After years of CMBB and CMAK it took me a while to learn to play ToW well. I was admitedly disappointed with ToW at first but I kept going with it and eventually it got better. Now, I play at the middle difficulty level, as the beginning level gets a bit too easy at times, while the most difficult level tuns into a friggin' meat grinder for me! The method that works best for me is that, while moving my forces across the map, I set them up initial defensive positions for both tanks and grunts, and not issuing the "hold position" order - that just invites too much micromanagement. The tanks in particular will exercise their own initiative when engaging targets, and depending on their skill level, tend to do a good job. After engaging their targets they will reposition themselves to where you initially ordered them to go. This is very helpful since it's almost impossible for the player to individually manage the tactics of each armored vehicle on the board while keeping track of the "fog of war" that inevitably takes it's grip on the entire map. Also, you will want to move armored vehicles in formations of a pair of vehicles or more. They are less vulnerable that way, and will cover each other. The grunts, on the other hand, need a little more attention. However, you really need to think, and plan ahead - as well as employing squad level leap-frogging team tactics - to ensure that you are using your troops' maximum efficiency and minimising your own casualties. And you WILL absorb casualties. You can avoid getting your entire infantry companiy wiped out by not employing foolishly optimistic tactics, but you will lose guys, perhaps a bit more than you might be comfortable with. Get used to that fact. And yes, they do freak out sometimes when being shot at (as in RL, trust me! and will do what they can to protect themselves. Ultimately, one has to think much more in this game than in many others, and the more you think and plan ahead, as well as deploying your forces carefully and with mutually covering movements, you will be more sucessful. Hang in there, man! It gets better, and quite rewarding!

My reaction to the new mod: Woooo Hooooo! Right on, guys. Thanks!

Thank you!

I've asked this before long ago and got "no" for an answer. That's fine, but in the "Widescreen" thread there is talk of scaling and the two black bars on either side of the screen. I'd be MUCH more content with that than with the stretching I'm experiencing now. So, how do you do it? Any help with this would be much appreciated! Thanks!

I hope that 1C and Battlefront makes liars out of most of us, including myself, since I must admit that I was also fairly disappointed with ToW. The beautiful new graphics were certainly recieved with a hearty welcome. However, the small list of fixed missions, no dynamic campaign generation (not even an IL-2 style DGen ground campaign), lack of a mission generator, and the goofy pre-uber patch AI behavior were issues that turned me off. Another big hit for me in particular was the surprisingly small list of available armored units for the eastern front - especially after playing CMBB for so many years! Going from a bunch of different types of, for example, the entire Panzer III series in CMBB, to just one type each of the Panzer III-G and III-J in ToW (no PzIII-H at all!) felt, well, unfulfilling. However, I do like the armor that IS there, and there are a handful of armored units that are in ToW that were not in CMBB (a proper Panzer-I, for starters). Furthermore, the uber patch went a long way in making significant improvements to ToW. The adjustments to the AI, and the inclusion of the battle generator (despite it's complete lack of any random unit generation whatsoever), among other things, were welcome. The infantry/light armored action is a lot of fun, once you get the hang of handling your foot troops so that they don't die in droves, that is... I dunno. Over the years I've grown spoiled over the immense developer support of what ultimatley developed into IL-2: 1946. I've been a huge fan, and daily player, of that series since 2003. I'm hoping that 1C and Battlefront invest equal support into ToW. The apparent potential of this game warrants deserved attention in that regard.

My ATI X1900XTX (512Mb) works great, except that fog effects are not supported . There is no fix for this, so I avoid combat conditions in fog (to eliminate the magic "sudden popping into veiw 30 metres from you" of units.

...and yes, I know; for you guys who already have it you're thinking "What the hell is he waiting for? Get it!" I have the first ToW Seelow Heights demo, but I'm still enjoying CMBB SE quite a bit. And I'm now on a strict budget. So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of moving from CMBB SE to ToW? Is there a jump-in-and-play mode like the Quick Battle mode in CMBB, as well as more in-depth modes? Is there a campaign mode (as opposed to CMBB's stand alone missions and operations)? Can you create your own campaigns? Can you record and replay full engagements (ie. movie making)? Can you pause the game before issuing orders, or do you have to always make them on the fly? Any answers to other questions I've not asked are happily welcomed. And what is considered a decent rig to run ToW? Mine: > ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe PCI-Express board. > Corsair 2GB DDR2 RAM. > Intel P4 @ 3.8GHz (Prescott). > ATI X1900XTX 512MB video card. > VeiwSonic 1680x1050 flat monitor. This setup is overkill when running CMBB (except I get slightly "squished" visuals due to the aspect ratio of the monitor - any help here is welcomed ), but how would it rate on different visual settings in ToW, from sparse and megre settings to the full-switched grandiose visuals? Thanks Doods. P.S. - One more thing. Are multi-turreted vehicles modeled in ToW. Tanks like the T-35 are, unfortunatley, not modelled in the CM series because the game engine does not support multi-turreted types. Kind of renders CMAK relatively pointless for the allied side due to the lack of support for M3s. [ February 11, 2008, 03:19 PM: Message edited by: Treetop64 ]

You've probably learned this already, but CM doesn't like anti-aliasing. Turn that off on your video card's menu, and you will be bale to see the text in-game.

I tried all the available resolutions down to 800x600, just to see what I would get. Still the same. Again, I tried this with different desktop resolutions. Curiously, when I maximized my desktop resolution (some 20XX x 18XX) and started CMBB, a new resolution option became availble (16XX x 14XX or 12XX), but even that gave me the same visual result, only at a crisper resolution. Unless someone has any other suggestions, I guess my only option is to get a smaller monitor! It's just too bad there isn't any way to manually input a resolution parameter in a conf.ini file or somthing similarly simple. It's bad enough I can't get fog effects thanks to my ATI card (which works brilliantly otherwise on this and all my other games).

I've read through all the troubleshooting guides and many forum posts. I have CMBB:Special Eition that came in the CM anthology pack. CMBB recognizes that I have an ATI X1900 video card but the highest resolution CMBB sees is 14XX x 12XX (I don't remember the exact resoltion, sorry!). As a result CMBB appears "squished", or slightly flattened in game, both with the 2D interface and the 3D graphics. I have a ViewSonic flat monitor that supports 1680 x 1050. All my other games support that resolution. Of course, I have all of the latests drivers installed for both the monitor and video card, as well as the latest DirectX. I've even tried to "trick" CMBB by setting my desktop to much higher resolutions than 1680x1050 before starting the game, in the hopes that maybe CMBB will give me the correct resolution option. No joy. I still get the slightly "squished" look in-game. Even if I set my desktop to a resolution that makes it appear vertically "stretched", CMBB still looks "squished". I've even tried to see if I could manually change a resolution setting in the games preference or config file, but it's all encrypted. Sorry for the non-technical venacular, but I love this game and this issue is bugging me out! My Panzer IIIs and IVs look much lower and leaner than they really were an it's killin' me! Please help. Thanks!