Kwazydog

Michael, yup, we cant do much with the wheels yet unfortuantely until average system specs get a bit higher. We could easily give them depth, but we would probably have to limit players each to 3 or 4 vehicles per battle to keep the framerates descent...not too much fun on the Eastern Front This is something we will visit again for the rewrite though! Dan

Rex, now that you mention it that is actually heavy snow in the pic, so I guess it must have been a warm sunny day for there to be no snow on the trees. That being said though, we do have a light snow terrain that has small patches of green/brown showing through. We steered away from having an extremely patchy snow tile as the snowy buildings dont like right sitting on grass. What we do have now that is even better is a snowless tile that allows you to create patches of dead grass, so you should be able to build some nice looking terrain with what is available. Martin has created a great little Stalingrad op already that looks great Priest, glad you like her! Dan [ March 16, 2002, 12:20 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Scipio, not 100% sure yet if the models will be changing. Ill let you guys know that when we tie it down. Dan

PL, you cant see it too well in these shots but the vision ports arent too hard to detect in game. They are pretty dark as they are totally in shadow, but they are there. Insides and outsides of the barrel do have to be the same unfortuantely...not much we can do about that until the rewrite (current methods would double the polygons for the vehicle). Hehe, and yes Ill probably add some soot down the track. As I mentioned though, I wanted to keep this one as close to origional as possible as we have posted it for comparison over on the Missing Links site Dan

Actually, CMBB has been like that for many months now, hehe. If the ground condition is only light snow and the temperature is warm enough the trees indeed wont have any snow covering them. Mattis, I was suprised at that too. Steve suggested that they were probably used sparingly to take out specific points (ie. were bought up only when needed) due to their low ammo count. This would also explain how they managed to survive for as long as they did. Dan [ March 15, 2002, 08:40 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Mattias, actually I do tend to agree I left it in there for a couple of reasons though. Firstly, we wanted to show the modellers out there just how close we will be able to get their submissions looking like the real deal once in game, and the slogan reallys adds a lot of character to the vehicle and defines it as Jaris model. Secondly, only a few of these vehicles were made, so they will be reasonably rare in game and you probaly will be seeing them used alone or in pairs. If it was a Panther it would defiantely have to go, but in this vehicle I kinda like it. That said, I still may take it off down the track though, what do the rest of you guys think? Dan

Hehe, glad you like Old Fritz guys. Jari did a great job on that model. Im looking forward to putting some of his other vehicles into the game. This one is the first 'official' model to be put into the game. Thus far the vehicles youve seen in game arent quite final, as weve added more detail and reworked many of them (you can see the jack, ammo containers, etc in this one). Dan [ March 15, 2002, 08:26 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Wrong forum guys, but please feel free to post over in the General Forum... Dan

Ive never heard of this problem either Puff, and havnt seen it myself. Id say its worth doing a search over in the tech support forum as Lars suggested. Dan

Phantom, just so you know multi-textureing plus *much* more will be looked at when we get to the rewrite of the engine. I am really looking forward to seeing what we can do with bump mapping on tanks Dan

Wreck/Tom, this is the way it origionally worked as I origionally explained but using the system ram in this way causes a framerate hit, and quite a significant one too. Its nothing to do with rave, but the speed at which textures can be swapped into and out of system ram via the bus, as I understand it.. Dan

Hiya Guys, Scipio, quick answer Each set of building textures will take up extra VRAM. For instance, using some rough numbers. 1 undamaged building (256x256) = 200kb 1 damaged texture for above buidling = another 200kb 1 heavy damaged texture = 200kb 1 destroyed texture = 200kb Thus, you are using about 800kb just for one 200kb building! Times that by about 25 buildings and you end up with a LOT of used VRAM Keep in mind that all of these textures have to be kept within VRAM during a battle, or you will end up with hard drive loading causing stuttering in game. Hope that helps explain it! Dan PS : Sock Monkey, they are craters...I think Matt will provide more info on this down the track though! [ March 12, 2002, 03:03 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Hi Jeff, At this point no, its not an option. The problem is that it doesnt slow down the framerate just a little bit, it slows it down a lot. Charles told me that Steves framerates went up by over double when he added this code. On another system I tested here the speed was almost 3 times higher. The downsampling isnt too noticable though, so its a trade off that is certainally worth it Dan

Puff, no, you cant do that unless you want slightly damaged buildings to have odd jagged lines through them. Guys, we know that this solution isnt perfect, but it looks pretty damn effective in game and the only alternative is not to have them unfortunately. As it is people with 32mb cards will may have their textures downsampled one level, so we *really* cant push the VRAM any further. Dan

Dittohead, we would like to model that if that was the case! The problem is that the info you provided isnt quite enough for what we need. If you guys have any more info on this shortage, we would like to hear about it Dan

Hi Guys, Just wanted to let you all know about this, posted in our news section The Quarter-Kit Model Shop (www.quarter-kit.com), offering a complete range of miniatures: kits and pre-built and painted models made with resin, white metal or die-cast, is now sponsoring the Missing Links & Battlefront.com WWII Vehicle Modeling Contest by submitting 30 exclusive model shots for Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin! Thanks to Quarter-Kit for their support! Be sure to check out their webpage to see some of their great kits and minatures. They are being a good help to us guys, so please check out their site to see if they have anything you are interested in Dan PS : Looking forward to them Måkjager!

Hi John Thanks for all of the trouble, it sounds like we may start getting some fresh entries through! The soft skinned vehicles are actually listed on the competition page, and we have actually been recieving some models for them, which is great. We havnt listed guns though, as its a little hard to judge them against the vehicles (due to the amount of extra work that usually goes into vehicles). If people would like to enter them though, we certainally will take them into consideration. Thanks again John! Dan

Mord (and CMPlayer), no worries at all as it didnt come across that way, we appreciate you guys passing on your wish lists, thats how we plan for future additions . I think that Ligur was just having a joke, one that I found a little amusing as I feel the same way as you guys (and am constantly asking Charles if we can do this or that) only to be smacked in the facr with reality once again, hehe. Tom, nice idea, but your to be forgetting that it would require a whole new set of textures for buildings, which leads us to the VRAM problem again Dan

Heya Guys, More very quick answers, as its getting late and I have some textures to finish up before bed. CMPlayer, no problems As for damaged vehicles...not sure about this one yet guys. It is something that we have considered doing but there are three very real problems. Firstly, it would double the VRAM usage for each vehicle, something that weve already used quite a bit too much of. Secondly, it adds to the loading time of scenarios as CM need to check to see if there are damaged skins for each vehicle in game. Lastly, Im not sure Chalres will have the time to code it up, as he has much more cool stuff on his list before this, stuff that will make a difference to game play as opposed to how CM will look. Not saying a defiante no at this point guys, but a probable one. Dan PS : Ligur, funny post, hehe. Actually this is one reason why we tend to spread out our bones, as even little ones can tend to lead to people wanting far more than is realistically possible to do (even though we would like too!) [ March 02, 2002, 07:16 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Heya Guys! Fytinghellfish, I think we've got the bulk of vehicles covered now, but we could really do with some more Russian vehicles like the T-26 for variety. Anyone you can talk into entering the como though would be very much appreciated John, thanks for passing the info on! Yes, we will basically accept anything into the comp that may be of use, inclusing soft skinned vehicles and guns. It all helps! We probably will do a couple of mud covered vehicles. Im not sure how common it was off of the top of my head, but I can certainally imagine it was reasonably common (anything would be better than dark grey!). If we dont have the time though, Im sure the modders out there will love to give it a go Thanks guys! Dan

CMPlayer, damage is supposed to represent light damage, not heavy, as that is the level of damage as which the textures are displayerd. Some buildings do have blast damage though, though you cant really see any in these shots. Too much of this type of damage tends to make building look a little cartoony, as we currently dont have any building internals and big black holes in buildings tend to look a little flat. Dan [ March 02, 2002, 03:00 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Mord, there are a couple of reasons... Firstly, buildings take up a LOT of VRAM and adding in yet another set of textures would have trippled the VRAM requirements just for buildings, something that wouldnt even fit onto 64mb cards. Secondly, we only have so much time to code in certain things. In this case for example it would have been a choice between two damaged textures per building another idea which Charles came up with, which Matt said he will post some shots of in a few days. Trust me, this was the much better option Dan

Heya Guys, Just to clarify, we cant do light and heavy damaged textures because we have already hit the 32mb VRAM limit (and then some actually), so this is a VRAM issue, not a time issue. Glad you like how things are shaping up guys Dan [ March 02, 2002, 12:26 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Hehe, they are old models too guys, news ones should start going in in a couple of weeks All final models were taken off of blueprints where possible, so they are about as exact as they can be, but youd be suprised just how much one tank can vary from blueprint to blueprint, depending on the author. Dan [ March 01, 2002, 12:36 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

Hey Guys, lets take the time to read Charles's first post he has had time to make in the past 10 months...it should put an end to this debate Dan