CM:BB & Win 7

[OttoBomb]

I've owned CM:BB from the early days. Have the original install CD from the early 2000's.

I now have a Win7 and I'm unable to install the all patches. Patch 1.03 cannot find the folder to update the files. I'm also seeing some remnants on the screen, i've read this is to be expected.

For those whoa re having the same troubles as me, what methods are you people out there using to play CM:BB on a win 7 machine? Is there a patch for it? Any insight is appreciated.

[Schrullenhaft]

Where do you have CMBB installed to ? Is it in your 'Program Files (x86)' directory (assuming a 64-bit version of Windows 7) or somewhere else ? You should be able to manually tell the patch where the game is in order to patch it.

There is a newer patch, 1.04, but it is NOT free. It changes the copy-protection system from the simple disc-based system to eLicense (which can have some issues with DEP - Data Execution Prevention - and security software). The 1.04 patch updated some DirectX calls to be a little more compatible with the drivers that had come from AMD and Nvidia when Windows Vista was released. Back then the games became unplayable with customers running DirectX 10 capable video cards and the drivers available for Windows Vista. A short while after the patch was released, newer drivers got rid of the problem that CMBB and CMAK users were experiencing. However the 1.04 patch does fix an issue with Radeon video cards and some corruption appearing in the 3D screen (a repeating 'glitch' that is a miniature bitmap).

There are still issues with text appearing in the info boxes for Radeon users (requiring the 'Radeon Text Fix'). Also 2D screens can go 'black' and require an Alt-Tab to minimize and then remaximize the screen to refresh it. Fog graphics also don't display for both Radeon and GeForce users with Windows Vista / 7 / 8.

[altipueri]

If fog and smoke don't display properly are they still effective in the visibility calculations?

I'm being lazy because I could try this myself I suppose. Win 7 seems to work OK otherwise for me for CMBO/CMBB/CMAK.

[Streety]

Hi Altipueri! Now come on old boy: load a game, select a flat open battlefield terrain with fog weather. AND SELECT NIGHT - because the effect is more pronounced at night and so much easier to detect. Select a unit and use line-of-sight to see how far it can see. At night it'd probably see no more than 50-55yds (fog) or about 25-30yds (thick fog), whereas on the same battlefield map-type on a clear night it'd be much further, probably 175-200yds. If line-of-sight is affected like this, the game is factoring in the fog effect whether or not your operating-system or graphics card (or game option selections) is displaying it.

Smoke checking requires a tad more effort (and not all buildings, tanks or terrain catch fire or billow smoke and so not seeing it doesn't mean smoke isn't displaying properly) - but start a game (a nice clear day) and deploy smoke from a mortar (or better still from an off-map artillery observer), then 40 to 60 seconds after firing underway, use line-of-sight to try to see through the targeted area.

You get the idea - you can check things with your line-of-sight tool because if line-of-sight is affected then the game is factoring in the effects of fog and smoke.

[Schrullenhaft]

Yes, the LOS limitations with smoke and fog are still in effect, you just can't see the 'visuals' of the fog. Smoke should still be viewable since it uses a different method to display (just moving bitmaps). Fog is no longer viewable since video drivers have dropped support for fog-tables it in Windows Vista and later Windows versions.

[altipueri]

So that's a yes then.

Thanks guys.

Edit: And fighting at night just isn't gentlemanly behaviour anyway.

[Streety]

Now, now young scamp - don't start getting cheeky about not getting a simple answer when you were being too simple to look up the many CM1 threads that have already addressed your query. But perhaps it wasn't clear to you that I wasn't merely answering just you but offering general advice (that might be somewhere, but I hadn't spotted, in those threads) for anyone coming afterwards (who like you already have Win7 or some other new OS) to the effect that if one is unsure then one can test the situation very simply with the Line of Sight tool.

And as for night fighting - well, for old gamers like me we tend to appear better-looking the darker it gets, and a gentleman wouldn't draw attention to it!

Right, I'm off for a spot of tiffin and me afternoon nap - don't wake me unless the Zulus break through the outer fence - and even if they do, bloody-damn-well make sure you bring me an iced Pimms with my sword!

[altipueri]

Don't young scamp me - I've been wargaming since the 1960s.

(Friendly smiley thing except I don't know how to do them - must be an age thing).

[Streety]

Blimey you might be older than me - I thought it was just that you didn't use moisturiser...

Oh I don't do many smiley icony things either. But I'm always smiling on the inside.

Right, where's me zimmer-frame, I'm off up the common with "betty" (my faithful pitchfork) to keep an evening watch-out for German paratroopers...

[John Kettler]

OttoBomb,

Congratulations on your second post!

While I'm surprised to see someone again essaying CMBB, I must confess, that in various bouts of CMBN despair, I've yearned for the older, simpler, much easier to sit down, set up and play CMx1 games whose tourneys and tournaments grace my sig. Further, I miss the much greater sense of community we had back then, rather than the fragmented BFC community we have now. Some time ago, I purchased specialized software which may (note use of conditional) allow me to play my CMx1 games on my OS X Intel chipped iMac.

Even if I did manage to do this, I can see my thought balloons now.

"What's with these abstracted squads? CMBN has individual men!" OR

"The penetration on the OF-xxx AP round is clearly off!" OR

"Who decided 450 was the correct Brinnell number for that Ferdinand's armor?" OR

"Why did BTS fail to model the open breech improvised MG fire through the Ferdinand's barrel?" OR

"My Katyushas suck!" AND

"Where are my 122s/152s/203s for Direct Fire in street fighting? Gah!"

We grogs are a demanding lot.

altipueri,

Now, that's funny! Young scamp, indeed. Aren't we all, relative to Methuselah? I started wargaming when I was 12, AH's Tactics II, which my wonderful maternal aunt and uncle gave me for Christmas. That, I fear, was the end of my really getting into chess. I will admit, though, to getting briefly worked up over that 3-D chess game Spock used to play vs Bones on Star Trek. Now, ever do any Duck and Cover drills? If so, you really do have Cold War chops!

Duck and Cover vid

Regards,

John Kettler

[Streety]

There may be far more CMx1 gamers than are realised by tourney players, as over the decades, nearly half of all the few wargamers I've actually ever met in person are solo-gamers, either sometimes or often (like me) exclusively.

No wargame is perfect - and CMx1 and CMx2 certainly aren't - but the abstractedness of CMx1? Hmm, well, when I played CMx2 a few times I noticed those nicer-looking individual soldiers, doing a stutter-"vogue" like Madonna and walking through each other etc, so if those individuals represent the exact positions of each soldier for the purposes of battle calculations, I'd be a bit worried. But even if not, my two main reasons (and possibly many others' reasons) for still playing CMx1 is that it seems far easier to play bigger battles, whereas CMx2 seems more suited to skirmishes, and CMx1 seems to have a more truly "random-map, random-battle" setup which solo gamers yearn for. Shame it never got it's own proper campaign mode going...

As to historical data, it can often be biased, incomplete, contradictory, etc, and some is partly or purely hypothetical anyway, and so I wonder how close we can now ever get to military-hardware accuracy, let alone accurately model human battlefield behaviour. But, to a certain extent, larger-scale battle-gaming will at least minimise some of these issues by way of averaging them out.

Regarding Avalon Hill's Tactics and Tactics II, it's interesting how some (presumably stateside) websites wrongly declare that "the hobby of wargaming was born in the 1950s with the publication of the game Tactics..." (see http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1574/tactics-ii). For, if one puts aside more abstract games like Chess and playing cards, or military training exercises, in Europe hobby-wargaming that we would recognise today began in the late 18th century with the fore-runners of Kriegspiel: http://www.commonroomgames.com/timeline.html#early. The World's first hobby wargames club (i.e., for hobbyists, that is, not connected with the military) may have been sometime in the late 18th century too, but the earliest officially known of was supposedly started at Oxford Uni in the 1870s. For the UK, the first published rule-books were actually written in the 1890s by no less than John Jane (who started "Jane's Fighting Ships" - probably first researched and published for his naval wargames), and for land-battles it was no less than H.G. Wells! ("Floor Games" and "Little Wars", both 1910s). Of course, he got the idea from me, young scamp! And I still regret to this day telling him that if he didn't put my toy soldiers away and go to bed the bloody Martians would come and show him a real battle! (Despite dying from a full-on man-flu cold, I stumbled over the scene with my walking stick, like a giant tripod, emphasising my words by jabbing the air with my smoking pipe and kicking horse and cannon to the four corners of the mansion, little realising the effect on a disturbed child's mind...).

[John Kettler]

Streety,

Thanks to all the help from you and Schrullenhaft, Keith's not only got the CMBB Demo up and running, but he's already played the first two scenarios and is having a ball. From what I can tell, all it took to have the game work properly under Windows 7 was to download a patch.

Regards,

John Kettler