Schrullenhaft

Both features of tracers are hard-coded. So no user mods are possible, unfortunately.

This subject, which is probably obvious to everyone here, has been brought up numerous times before. While I kind of like the idea of having all squad/team members represented graphically, there are several reasons against this. 1) Though not necessary, more unique animations for the squad/team members would be desired so it doesn't appear that you have a "clone army". This would take a bit of time to code up and increase the requirements for a system to display such a feature (reasonably). 2) Probably the biggest factor against full representation is one of clutter. If you have several infantry units in an area it can be problematic selecting between them if they are close together ( and this is just with the current 3-man representation). With full representation this becomes even harder. 3) The number of polygons to represent all the members of a squad/team would slow down CM very significantly. This may bring most systems to their knees trying to render/animate the turns and calculate all the other important, background mechanics of the game. Because this would be such a hit and most systems probably couldn't support such a feature, it isn't worth the time to code at the moment. The future is always hard to predict, so some of these arguements may fade with time (computer speed, etc.). But the fact remains that there is a small team to make these changes and with what is currently on the plate in terms of upgrading CM and future versions - this is at the back of a long list.

Northside - your problem seems to be common to a number of GeForce owners and the latest Detonators (6.18). I believe Madmatt is using this version of the driver on his Hercules Prophet II GTS 64Mb, but I don't know if he has had this problem or not. Do you have Themes turned off/disabled and are you using the "default" Windows cursors ? Are you using a generic mouse driver from Windows or are you using software from Logitech, Microsoft, etc. ? If you are using the manufacturer's drivers you may want to experiment with the Windows generic drivers.

This is an old issue for you Scott, but have you tried (with a spare hard drive, if you have one) a completely clean install of Win 98 ? What version is your BIOS on your video card (the latest is v. 1.02.4A) ? This has probably already been mentioned to you before, but there is a BIOS update for your card, but you may already have it: Creative Savage4 Files: http://www.creative.com/support/files/download.asp?reg=0&OS=Win98∏=db_savage4&select=Get+Files Some motherboards may have updates to their BIOS to work with certain AGP cards (though these issues are usually a little more drastic in that the machine won't boot Windows, etc.). You may want to check for the latest BIOS for your motherboard (make sure you match the correct revision of your board as some manufacturers make BIOS updates that are applicable to certain revisions of the board).

Reverendo - try installing the OpenGL 1.1.2 and see if it helps. It may update your QuickDraw and ATI extensions (depending on how old they are). Apple's OpenGL 1.1.2: http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11545 If you're running OS 9.0.x then use your Software Update control panel. If you don't want to use ATI's software (and you haven't installed it yet), there's Apple's update to the ATI drivers. If you're using 9.0.x then you already have the latest and don't want to install these: http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11475

vu95 - Can you look at the motherboard and read the numbers off of the VIA chips (694X ?)? That or tell us which motherboard you have (model number & manufacturer). You may have the ApolloPro 133 (the latest version is 133A). Rizen's tweak is probably adjusting for some AGP differences between chipsets. In addition to this registry tweak I would suggest downloading the latest VIA drivers, which may help a little (but I don't really see it affecting your image quality though): VIA 4-in-1 or AGP driver (v.4.24 or 4.03): http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm

duenorth - When you installed the latest drivers were they from Apple or were they the Universal Installer from ATI ? If you're running OS 9.0.x then the drivers that are available with that OS are apparently the latest. If you're running something earlier then you may want to try the ATI drivers. If you do use the ATI drivers I would suggest performing an uninstall first. This may (or may not) remove the current ATI extensions, etc. Before doing this make sure you have your OS CD handy in case you want to install your previous drivers. Now install the drivers and see if this improves anything. The dialog box that is blank for you says "Computer Player Thinking" and shows a progress bar underneath it (which is light green on my PC).

Purple4Ever - a SoundBlaster Pro eh ? That is quite an old card. Since it is an ISA card it shouldn't be interfering IRQ-wise with your video card, but there is a possibility that it may be having problems with CM. I'd suggest going to your DirectX control applet (C:\PROGRAM FILES\DIRECTX\SETUP\DXDIAG.EXE) and go to the Sound tab. Move the "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" slider to the left (and this may require a reboot) and see if CM runs without locking up. More than likely you're correct about the problem being the video driver. The Detonator 3's are a bit faster than the previous generation of drivers. One major difference with the new Detonators is that they can cache verticies (or something like that). I don't know if this is causing a problem in CM for some users or not. If you have a setting for increasing the "memory" assigned to the card you may want to increase that to see if it helps (it usually should be available from Control Panel > Display control panel > Settings > Advanced button and then one of the nVidia-DirectX tabs. I'm not sure if this setting is available by default from the reference drivers (some manufacturers show it). Otherwise you may want to play around with your AGP Aperture setting in the CMOS/BIOS setup I mentioned a couple of posts above.

Apparently you can't just unzip the files into the BMP folder since there are multiple choices of a portrait for those that are in the game. Read this thread and look for von Lucke's post or do a search in the main forum for "tom hanks". http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/008983.html

CDIC - Yes you should be able to use the Detonator 3 with TNT and newer chipsets. The FSAA is only a feature on the GeForce chipsets though. I would suggest doing an uninstall on the ASUS drivers for your video card (and you'll need to remove the .inf file for it from WINDOWS\INF\OTHER) and installing a plain SVGA driver. After this then install the nVidia reference driver.

Arrow - yes IRQ stands for "Interrupt Request". Since your sound card and video card are sharing an IRQ that may cause a problem. IRQs can be shared (it's not considered a "conflict"), but with the frequency that some of these devices get called upon a shared IRQ could pose problems. If you're lucky, then assigning different IRQs for your devices might solve your problem. You're correct in that you would probably have to move your SB Live sound card to another PCI slot. If you're really lucky your CMOS/BIOS will have settings to assign a particular IRQ to each PCI slot, but few motherboards have this as an option (if you're HP is an ASUS OEM, you may just have this capability). You will also have to check to see if your BIOS is allowing Windows ("Plug & Play OS") to assign the IRQs. If it is (and hopefully you can disable it) then even if you did move the SB Live to another PCI slot it may still use the same IRQ in Windows. To prevent this (and hopefully get a free IRQ for your sound card) you need to search your CMOS/BIOS settings for an option to disable the Plug and Play OS. This setting will probably be somewhere near where you can adjust IRQs, DMA, etc. Before you do this you need to find out if you even have a free IRQ. Apparently you know where to find the IRQ listing in the Device Manager. As for reinstalling drivers, sometimes you need to completely remove the previous iteration you had installed, especially if it was a different piece of hardware. Killing Registry settings associated with these drivers can help too, but that can be a bit complex depending on the device.

On the problem with the non-rotating turret... I believe that if you set an Ambush marker the turret will turn and possibly engage targets. Unfortunately there is a bit of a limitation with the way CM handles turrets, but I haven't delved into this very much. You may want to try "zipping" your PBEMs first and then attaching them. I don't know why Outlook Express is having a problem with attaching a CM PBEM, but a zipped file may attach w/o problem. If you want to experiment with this further you can go to (within Outlook Express) Tools > Options > Send tab > Mail Sending Format section > Plain Text Settings button > Message Format section > you can pick between "MIME" and "UUENCODE". You may want to select MIME and "None" for the text encoding. I suggest experimenting with the settings to see if any of them work for you. If none of them do, then your ISP may be having a problem with the way Outlook attaches the CM PBEMs.

Stoffel - I doubt that there is a bug in v. 1.05 that would cause the crashes that you are seeing. Did the crashes start after you patched to 1.05 ? If you believe the problem is related to the update, then I would suggest an experiment by running an older version (1.04, etc.) where you didn't have this problem and see if you still experience lockups. However I highly doubt that the fixes that have been applied to CM would cause lockups all of a sudden. Have you applied any mods or do you have multiple installations of CM on your hard drive ?

JohnB - What drivers are you using for your TNT card ? Are they the manufacturer's drivers or nVidia Reference drivers ? Are you using a mouse driver other than the default drivers that are built into Win9x ? cyberized - What video card are you running ? This, like the previous post, sounds like an issue between the mouse driver and the video driver. Hopefully an updated driver from either manufacturer might fix this problem, though it isn't a huge deal in this case.

I know the Voodoos have a "post processor filter" that can make some images blurry (you can't turn it off, unfortunately). I don't know what on ATIs for the Mac could have that would cause this though. Some of the textures in the BETA Demo were lower resolution than the Gold Demo and Final. So the blurriness sounds like a video setting in either your driver/RAVE extension or CM. I'm not familiar with RAVE, but is there a control panel that would allow you to change any display options (mip-mapping, detail level, etc.) ? Although you probably have this driver or something newer, this is the latest Voodoo2 driver I found for the Mac (OS 8.x): http://www.voodooextreme.com/hw/Binaries/drivers.html For the ATI Rage PRO on the iMac, here's ATI's latest Universal Installer: Universal Installer 4.2: http://support.atitech.ca/drivers/xclaim.html Note that OpenGL 1.01 or higher is required: http://support.atitech.ca/infobase/3109.html Instructions for using Universal Installer for ATI built-in video chipsets: http://support.atitech.ca/infobase/3085.html If you're running OS 9.0.x then the latest ATI driver/extension comes with it (supposedly). [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 08-29-2000).]

Have you had repeated lockups since ? If you haven't then I would just chalk it up to "bad luck" and the vagaries of computer "magic". If your lockups happen more frequently then you may be having a hardware or driver problem.

Arrow - do you know what IRQs are being used in your system ? Specifically the ones for your video card and audio card ? If they're sharing an IRQ, then you chances for a possible problem go up. Your lockups seem to vary quite a bit. Is there any particular scenario or action that you're performing in CM that may be consistant in all of your problems ? Do you get lock ups issuing orders, playing back turns, scrolling around the screen, etc. ? Are you overclocking anything on your system, especially the video card or CPU ? From here the basic solution is removing drivers, removing devices under Safe Mode and editing the registry (and removing .inf files) then installing default SVGA drivers. After this you may want to install DirectX 7.0a again, install the latest Detonator drivers for your TNT2 and then reinstalling your sound drivers. If you want more details I can give them to you. You may also want to try to reduce your AGP Aperture/Graphics Apeture in your CMOS/BIOS settings. You'll have to look around in your CMOS/BIOS setup to find the setting (if it even exists in your BIOS). Basically if you can't get below 16Mb with this setting, then it probably won't be worth changing (the default is usually 64Mb).

The Demo can run at higher resolutions, there is no limitation built into it. Apparently you've deleted the CM prefs file and, while running at a resolution higher than 640 x 480, attempted to select a new resolution when CM started up ? I'm not familiar with all the G3 Powerbook models out there. I assume you've probably got an ATI Rage Mobility or Rage LT Pro chipset with anywhere from 1 - 8Mb of video RAM (quite possibly 1 - 4Mb is more likely). You do have the RAVE extensions installed for your video card correct (I assume they come installed by default for the ATI chipsets, but I'm not sure) ? When you selected your resolution did it mention "software..." underneath the resolution ? If so then CM didn't recognize your video card as a 3D accelerator and instead your CPU is performing all of the 3D display tasks. With software rendering I believe you will max out at 640 x 480. I would suggest doing a search on the Tech Support forum for "G3" and "Powerbook" to see if any threads come up mentioning resolution problems or solutions. Here are some threads: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000189.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000076.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000270.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000197.html The possible solutions may vary depending on the model of Powerbook and the OS that you're running.

If you're using a PC then you downloaded the wrong patch file. The patch you downloaded was for a Mac. Further down the "Downloads" page is the listing for Windows patches. After you download this follow these instructions (look for Daveman's posting about 2/3 of the way down): http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/009675.html

The problem most people have with Windows 2000 is graphics related, but it doesn't usually produce lockups. What audio chip do you have on your motherboard ? Have you checked to see what the latest drivers for it are under Win2K ? I'm not sure if you've updated your BIOS or not. There is something in the latest BIOS (R 1.05) that is directly applicable to your setup: AOpen AX64Pro BIOS (R 1.05): http://www.aopen.com.tw/tech/download/mbbios/ax64pro.htm I believe that this board is based on a VIA Chipset. Have you loaded the latest VIA AGP drivers ? VIA 4-in-1 or AGP-only (v. 4.24 or v. 4.03): http://www.via.com.tw/drivers/index.htm Also another thread deals with video problems related to nVidia chipsets under Win2K. robo has posted a "certified" driver from Dell for nVidia chipsets on his website that seems to correct the problem, but it isn't based on the latest Reference drivers. I don't know if this driver will help you will your video lockup problem though: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum8/HTML/000502.html [This message has been edited by Schrullenhaft (edited 08-28-2000).]

When you were unzipping into your BMP folder did you get dialog box(es) saying that you were overwriting files ? If not, then it's possible that the files have the wrong names or they unzipped into a "subfolder" (if you zip program is "creating directory structure"). You may want to check your BMP directory to see if there are any subdirectories.

I assume you're using Win98. This is a possible solution, but it may very well be something else. Go to Control Panel > Internet Options control panel > Connections tab. The dial up connections you have created will be here. Below the list of possible connections are some radio buttons. Select "Never Dial a Connection" (or the one below it possibly). This might solve the problem, but I think I've seen times where this didn't affect the problem either.

Are you asking if there is a menu to allow you to select from different textures ? If so, then no. MadMatt and Co. are working on a texture manager (which will operate "outside" of CM) to handle this. If you're asking about modifying the textures yourself, then you will need a program to do that. On a PC you just need a bitmap editing program, but you'll have to know which bitmaps correspond to what you want to edit. On a Mac you will need ResEdit or some other utility to open the resources (fork ?) of the files that contain the textures. There may be some utilities that allow you to grab a texture, edit in some editor and then "paste" it back into the resource (I don't know what they are other than ResEdit). If you do decide to work on the textures I would suggest working on a copy first (especially with ResEdit on the Mac).

You can plot fire to support an attack (that's what your Spotters can do), but it won't be as accurate as a TRP. A TRP suggests that fire has been plotted and spotted with a few rounds to confirm its accuracy. This allows your batteries to just "dial in" the settings and start FFE with the knowledge that the rounds are landing where they should (a couple of other calcs are necessary depending on the prevailing conditions, but that is the essence of it). It basically allows for quick, accurate fire that has been pre-plotted (and, to a certain extent, a battery/batteries have been dedicated/guaranteed to a certain sector of coverage). Most artillery bombardments either targeted known positions or possible areas of occupation by a defending unit. A meeting engagement is generally an unexpected encounter with the opponent - something you wouldn't really be pre-plotting your artillery for.

TRP's represent a very-well sighted/plotted area for bombardment. Their setup would suggest a defensive posture since spotting rounds would have to be shot and observed in order to confirm the plot. A meeting engagement on the other hand suggests that neither opponent has conclusively occupied the area previously (or one side has abondoned it earlier). Using TRPs in the manner you've suggested would be something akin to a "fire-brigade" approach to a defense (with the front-line either having retreated or not present). A battle/op could be designed for this, but a QB just won't allow for it. Sorry if this sounds obvious, it's just the reasoning I assume is behind such decisions.