Schrullenhaft

The CM1 games DO work under Windows 10; the above issues are not common for most users. To my knowledge Battlefront has no intentions on revisiting the CM1 code to update it to anything newer. Nor are there any intentions (to my knowledge) of opening up the game code for open source development by other parties. Another game, strictly limited to the Eastern Front, looks very much like the CM1 games, but the mechanics are a little different: Panzer Command: Ostfront distributed by Matrix Games. It isn't seeing any further development, but it is very much in the vein of CM1 games. The CM2 games are considered the natural development of the series and there's no true change in the scale of the game, other than to have a true 1:1 representation of the units and some sub-squad management. The games do suffer from the need to micro-manage the units, though such management isn't absolutely necessary. It is a common play style however, especially with turn-based play and the desire to issue near perfect orders. I don't know if there is consideration to having some sort of SOP-based orders for future releases of the game. I would hazard a guess that those might not be implemented, but there's a slight chance. But even something more along the lines of SOP-based orders would require more AI coding to address the multitude of situations and behaviors players think their units should react to.

The success screen indicates that you're fully activated and do NOT need to activate any further. The game appears to be either crashing or getting shutdown. What security/anti-virus software do you have ? You may need to make an exception/white-list entry for CMFI (the main game folder and/or the game executable) in it. Do you know what video card/chip you have in your computer ? Most video drivers shouldn't be causing a crash of the game immediately upon launch, but some Intel integrated video drivers do have problems with the CM games.

There is a specific 'Activate New Products' shortcut that MIGHT be on your desktop or it will definitely be in the main game folder. Use this to activate your license keys. You'll need to have the 4.0 Upgrade (possibly the 'primary key' in the big bundle) for the game to launch at all. I don't know how many license keys come with the big bundle and if they're different or what. I assume your first attempt at licensing was 'successful' and you got a green box that listed what was activated. Do you remember what the text was in that green box ? You'll need to use the Activate New Products shortcut several times (with however many keys you have) to activate all of the modules in the Big Bundle.

Your orders for the 3.0 or 4.0 Upgrade should be the all-in-one/master installer. With this one install (for each individual game), you do not need to install any patches (I believe even the latest patch should be part of these installers now) or modules. They simply need to be licensed/activated. The 1.0 base game and the 2.0 Upgrade should NOT be necessary to activate if you have the 3.0 and 4.0 Upgrades (if you do NOT have the 4.0 Upgrade, then the 2.0 Upgrade license key may be necessary to activate). You will need to use the 'Activate New Products' shortcut that may be on the desktop or in the main CM folder for each game to activate modules, upgrades, etc. Launching the game itself may result in an error until you activate enough of the upgrade license keys. I don't think the latest patches will screw up your PBEM games, but they do change the behavior of the units.

Only a few users have reported problems with Windows Defender. Most users haven't had a probelm, but one user who was having issues with CM was able to run all of the CM games by installing a different anti-virus program other than Windows Defender. I don't know if such a situation applied to Erwin's case or not, but it seemed likely since he was running a fairly clean installation of Windows 10 supposedly.

I've installed all of the CM series on multiple computers with Windows 10 (from version 1607 to 2004) and I haven't run into a problem like yours at all. I personally haven't used Windows Defender on a Windows 10 computer in quite awhile, but that is the closest I can come to guessing the culprit in the issue that you've experienced. I don't know why AVG didn't work for you. I've typically used Avast and haven't run into any issues. For a game like CM there really isn't much that would need to be done in order to run it on Windows 10 compared to Windows 7. The CM series are fairly monolithic applications that aren't highly dependent on the OS for their functionality (it is dependent on other libraries such as Qt). OpenGL works the same on Windows 10 and Windows 7, but that really is in the hands of the developers of the video drivers rather than Microsoft and Windows. There's no major handicap that CM is running with on Windows 10 and there's no major re-engineering that is necessary specifically for Windows 10 and CM. While CM uses the OpenGL 2.x API for its graphics, there's really no change that Battlefront needs to make to in order for it to run on Windows 10 and with newer hardware (as long as the video drivers don't stop supporting OpenGL 2.x calls). The copy-protection system is what could possibly trip up most users, but it has been fairly benign and worked in the vast majority of situations. The only issue in regards to Windows 10 was with CMBN 1.x. In that case the copy-protection system wasn't compatible, but an update to the copy-protection system that was part of the CMBN 2.0 Upgrade resolved that situation (I believe the 2.0 Upgrade came out BEFORE Windows 10). I don't believe your issue is a forebearer of problems to come with CM and Windows 10. Admittedly my installs of CM on Windows 10 v. 2004 were in place with an earlier version of Windows before an upgrade of the OS to version 2004. I've typically had Avast installed before CM was installed on my Windows 10 computers (though I don't see that as a significant issue to your situation). My installations have typically gone to their default locations and I've had administrator-level privileges during installation and running of the games. Typically an installation to a custom directory should be a bit simpler since those aren't managed and protected by Windows (such as 'Program Files' and 'Program Files (x86)', but if a custom directory hasn't worked, perhaps trying a default one and seeing how that works out.

This thread is primarily about getting the games to run on Windows. For issues with Mac Catalina (10.15.x) and CM this is what I could find: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/136712-mac-catalina-10154/ This first thread has a few possible resolutions, one of them being simply to wait several minutes as the icon bounces in the dock. The other (which didn't work for everyone) was to open any CM title, watch it bounce, Open System Preferences, go to Privacy and Security and see if there is a message there telling you it can't open, and you can override that (though that message may not always appear). https://battlefront.mojohelpdesk.com/help/article/136663 The second thread mentions this as one possible fix: 1) Right click on the application (whichever CM game), and click COPY 2) PASTE the application to your desktop. 3) Delete the original 4) Copy the desktop version back to the Applications folder

What you're experiencing may be normal. The rendering distance in the game is fairly short. Beyond this distance some items will render will lower quality models and textures (the 'blurriness') and beyond this items may not render at all (trees, buildings, etc.). This can be somewhat improved with the settings in the Options menu (Texture and Model Quality); usually a 'Balanced' setting might be best for maximizing rendering distance, but the difference may be minimal. In game you can also improve what is displayed on screen by moving the camera forward and then back. This can potentially leave some higher quality models/textures rendered on the screen. But when you pull back a bit farther or change something else about the camera view, then these can disappear or be swapped out with lower quality models and textures. This behavior is hard coded in the game and I don't know if the graphics engine has limited capabilities with addressing/managing all of the available video memory or what exactly it bases this particular behavior on.

Yes, I believe you didn't have problems activating, just actually running the game afterwards.

It's worth trying (the Privacy Settings), though I assume this is more along the lines of what data gets shared from your account and browsers than anything else. CM games only make contact with the license servers during the activation process. They do NOT check every time you launch the game. You can play completely off-line once you've activated. Certain changes to your hardware or operating system can potentially 'trip' the copy-protection software and de-authorize your installation, but this won't be due to being unable to contact a server after being activated.

For CM, if you have the 3.0 or 4.0 Upgrades, then the installer for those upgrades is actually an all-in-one installer. You only need to 'activate' the modules since the files are present already and do not require a separate install. Usually even the latest patch is included (though that might not be the case always). Yes, you can re-download from your Battlefront Store account. There have been no download limits for a long time. I don't know the specifics for customers who purchase strictly a physical/mailed copy of the game, but I assume with the 3.0/4.0 Upgrades they'll have access to the all-in-one installers. There's nothing specific about Windows 10 that I can recall. Some customers have run into problems running the games if they are using the built-in Windows Defender Anti-virus, but not everyone has experienced this.

I'm not sure what it is, but Windows Defender seems to be causing problems for some CM users. Supposedly turning off the active protection (which apparently will turn itself back on again, automatically...) and setting exceptions still doesn't help. However some other users haven't seen problems. I don't know if there are slightly different versions out there depending on your OS or what the case may be. Almost anything that offers 'active protection' is probably going to take up CPU cycles. Some programs are worse offenders than others (though the intent is usually to protect you from an even broader number of attacks). I'm not sure how well AVG compares to Avast. In the past I used to use Avira and AVG, but then I ran into problems with Avira (an exception still wouldn't stop the interference) and I can't remember why I switched away from AVG (possibly a similar issue). Most of the free ones are fairly comparable. I haven't done any performance checking to see which one has less of a performance hit on a system (though they may be similar in that regard too). The thing that is probably most annoying are the false-positives any of the security programs can potentially give you. You're more likely to get a false positive than you are to be infected/compromised.

I believe, but I haven't checked personally, that Windows Defender automatically disables its active protection feature when another AV program is installed. If that AV program is removed I assume that it automatically re-enables. You can check your settings by going to Start Menu > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Security > Virus & threat protection > Windows Defender Antivirus options. In my case with a third party AV software installed I just get the option to enable or disable periodic scanning, but with just Defender Antivirus available there should be quite a few more options available. This Microsoft document on Defender Antivirus should hopefully answer questions about using it.

Sometimes seeing text in the initial menus of the games may require that you Alt-Tab out of the game (minimizing it) and then re-maximizing it. This refresh seems to draw the text and make it visible. This MIGHT be necessary with each new text screen in the menus/2D portion of the game.

For AVR - I wonder if the 'qtwebengineprocess' could be interfering with CMFI somehow, since the menu screens are built using the Qt libraries. However if it were, I would assume that CMFB would also have issues. I don't know which program has loaded those into memory (perhaps Dropbox or QuickBooks ?). Try shutting down Dropbox initially and if they are still there then 'ending' them and see if CMFI behaves any better. I couldn't specifically find your particular Lenovo Ideapad 320 model (there are several) that had an Intel CPU and a Radeon GPU. Usually it was either an Intel CPU with the Intel GPU only or an AMD CPU with its integrated Radeon GPU. I was trying to setup up a computer using an RX480 and the latest Radeon driver with Windows 10 v. 2004 and see if I ran into any issues with CMFI, though I would probably need to uninstall Avast and install Windows Defender. If it is a possibility for you, I would suggest installing Avast (even temporarily, if necessary) and see if that offers a possible solution. Typically Windows Defender will remain, but it will no longer have its active protection enabled (a function handed off to Avast in this case).

Perhaps installing something OTHER THAN Windows Defender AV might be the solution, since both AVR and Erwin are using that security software. I've had decent results with Avast, specifically that I've had few to no problems with the CM games. I've had ALL of the CM2 games run fine on Windows 10 v. 2004, though admittedly they were installed and activated BEFORE I upgraded to that version.

The future plans for the Marine Corps do have them integrating a bit more with the mission of the Navy (of which they are a part of). The new emphasis on missiles is part of a strategy for area denial and anti-ship operations (think something along the lines of island hopping in the South China Sea). Some of the Corps F-35 purchases will be of the F-35C naval variant, where they'll provide approximately a third of F-35's for carrier operations (the Navy will still be heavily invested in Super Hornets). I think the Ukraine-Russia war really pointed out some glaring deficiencies in American long range fire capabilities. The US has primarily relied on air power to provide the sort of long range strike power that the Russians and Chinese get from missile artillery. With a need to always differentiate themselves from the Army (to preserve their existence), the new mission of providing some ground-based missile capability for the Navy is something that will differentiate them. The Army itself will probably need to up their missile game far more than they have to take on the Russians and Chinese. For the Marines getting rid of the Infantry Regiment and tanks was a necessity (and differentiating factor) to free up the funding necessary for this expanded capability. However, I feel the next time America finds itself in some sort of ground war with a near peer enemy (God forbid), the Corps is going to want tanks again.

In the long run, it would be very likely that future Macs may not be able to run CM. Apple had previously announced dropping support for OpenGL (which hasn't happened quite yet) in favor of the Metal graphical API. Despite 'Rosetta2' and other features to smooth the transition, it would seem a bit unlikely that CM would run properly on ARM-based Macs (if my experience with every major Mac transition in the past holds). The move to ARM-based Macs may truly signal the end for OpenGL support (though I'm not sure what their Linux support may utilize) since iOS is supporting Metal now too. There's the possibility that future CM engines MIGHT support future Macs, but that is a straight up guess and will depend on the development tools available and how much extra work it will be to support a significantly different platform. Until those ARM-based Macs are actually released and Apple has fully developed all of the tools and software it will utilize to help with the transition it will be hard to tell if CM will work. The old engines (CM2) probably will never work if Apple's past attempts at supporting previous platform software is any indication (moving from Motorola 68xx0 to PowerPC and OS9 to OS X, etc.). Apple has been pretty pitiful in supporting MacOS game developers with a long term stable platform. It may take awhile for Apple to fully transition to ARM-based Macs. There are still a lot of Intel-based Macs around and I expect the ARM-based Macs to have pitiful performance for a few generations in comparison. ARM-based CPUs use less power for a reason - they have much less circuitry, cache, and lower clock speeds, etc. In order to match performance of current desktop CPUs they would have to have A LOT more cores, which doesn't really work for many programs. Multiple cores/threads help with some work loads, but not all, especially many single user applications. Apple's real push here is to bring their software development under one umbrella of iOS and ARM-based code. A majority of personal computers sales now consist of laptops, so the ARM-based CPUs help a little in that regard with potentially longer battery life (and a significant cost - the CPU - almost under direct control/benefit of Apple).

The MV-22's are working fine. Since they're scaling back by 3 battalions of infantry, they justify getting rid of a medium lift, a heavy lift and an attack helicopter squadron each (along with some air-wing support squadrons). It's sad that the Corps is getting rid of their tanks. They've already scaled back on their numbers in the recent past (getting rid of some tank companies). I guess they see such heavy equipment as not being part of their forte, especially when it comes to hauling them around in their MEU organizations that are afloat. They rather see themselves as light, highly mobile infantry with the added mission of having a lot more rocket artillery (to somewhat match what the Chinese and Russians have). I assume a lot of lessons are being taken from the current Ukraine-Russia conflict.

What's strange here is that CMFB continues to work, it is just CMFI that has stopped working, suggesting that something has changed software/OS-wise on the computer. In the past we would occasionally see this with AV/security software targeting certain executables (but not others) due to the 'signature' the AV program would see in the executable. I'm not particularly aware of any issues with AV and the CMFI executable though. CMFB launches directly and does not require launching from within Steam, is that correct ? What laptop brand and model is this and what software is loaded up ? If you could open up the Task Manager and maximize it and then take a screenshot and post it up here so that we can see the 'Apps' and 'Background processes' list as much as possible. It's a long shot see if we can find something that is interfering. I assume with the Nahimic audio control software/utility that it would interfere with all CM games and not just certain ones. Do the video and audio drivers for your laptop come from the laptop manufacturer or have you downloaded updates via Windows Update or the hardware manufacturer's websites (such as AMD, etc.) ? Often with laptops you may be limited to what the laptop manufacturer provides. What version of the AMD Radeon drivers do you have ?

When you get the 'blue circle', do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and launch the 'Task Manager'. In the Processes tab look for the CM Fortress Italy.exe file and see if it is present (and whether it is 'Not Responding', etc.). If it is 'Not Responding', then 'End Task' on it. If it is still present, close up the Task Manager and see what happens (wait several minutes). Do you still continue to get the 'blue circle' endlessly or does that stop ? If it stops, go back to the Task Manager and see if CM Fortress Italy.exe is still present (it can be within the Apps section or the 'Background processes' section. After running the GSClean utility, have you been able to re-activate CMFI (and whatever modules you have) ? If you have activated again, did this require running the game through Steam (to activate) ? If adding the exclusion didn't work try temporarily disabling 'Real-time protection' in Windows Defender. I'm not sure why the game performs with so much lag when launched via Steam. Does the text look good or is it blurry like it was if the game was running on the Intel video ? I don't know what parts of the Steam interface would work with the CM games and if the interface would cause draw performance problems for CM. More importantly, I have no idea why the game would launch through Steam, but not directly. Almost as if Steam were running some sort of interference on whatever prevents the game from running directly from the Desktop. Are you installing CMFI to the default directory or to a custom one ? This shouldn't make any difference to my knowledge. Moving the executable "in and out of the directory" sounds strange and I have no idea why it would have worked in this situation. If it was just the executable I would think that it would have problems finding the other data files to run the game. That particular 'solution' is something I've heard of with Macs, but I'm unfamiliar with it on PC/Windows. You may want to delete the (Nvidia ?) game profile in your GPU control panel/app and recreate it (with only default settings) and see if that makes any difference. Typically the game does like 'Triple Buffering' (an OpenGL setting), though not having that set should not affect the game launching. What are the shortcut properties for CMFB (typically in the 'Compatibility' tab) ? Make sure your CMFI shortcut matches those (other than the game directory, etc.).

If you're running Windows 10, then Windows Defender Antivirus may have become active if you uninstalled your AV program. If that's the case, then you'll want to add an exclusion within Windows Defender for CMFI. You will want to exclude both the game executable and the game folder (just in case). When you uninstalled your AV program was it with the uninstaller (via the Apps control panel) or did you have to run an utility ? You may want to double-check with that AV provider's website to see if an utility might be necessary or helpful in removing the AV program fully (in case something is 'left behind'). Something is definitely interfering with the running of CMFI. I doubt that the game has suddenly become 'incompatible' with your system and it is somewhat unlikely that the game files have become corrupt (a reinstall would easily fix that, if that were the case). Is this a laptop or a desktop ? If it is a laptop and you have both the integrated Intel video and a dedicated GPU, then you'll want to add a profile for CMFI game/executable in the dedicated GPU's control panel/app so that the game will run on the GPU rather than the Intel integrated video. Intel video often can work to a limited degree, but when it does the text can be blurry/unreadable and the performance will definitely be sub-par. Frequently Intel video may run into problems where the game may not run (which you MIGHT be experiencing here if this is a laptop).

The web link to the download appears to still be incorrect: https://battlefront.sharefile.com/share/view/s2e2523832154406a That's the link that initially appears before it changes to an URL for an 'invalid link'

The current Windows CMBN 4.02 'full' installer is a 3GB .rar compressed file. Extracting this will get you the installer (which consists of the setup executable and a number of .brz data files).

Looks like Battlefront Support ( BFCElvis ) will need to correct that Sharefile link. I've sent a message, but don't know how soon the link will be corrected.