Sgt Joch

German and Japanese soldiers fought to the last man defending a hopeless cause. The Italians surrendered, went back to their wives, had children, grandchildren and lived to be old men. sounds like a smart choice to me.

Reminds me of a quote I had read where Soviet tankers had said that the T-34 engine was very loud and usually drowned out all noises but they could still hear the screams of german soldiers when they would drive over their foxholes, rotate the tank and bury them alive. That technique for killing tanks was part of the infantry training for all armies and in some cases it did work, but for most infantryman it was a suicide mission. [ December 12, 2003, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: JC_Hare ]

Got my copy in the mail yesterday in Montreal, Canada.

I got mine yesterday in the mail, dec. 9th (Montreal). There was no additional duties or cost. I had pre-ordered, so I presume it was shipped out dec. 2-3, although I just got the shipping confirmation email Dec. 5th. Last year, I waited 3 weeks for CMBB. I would think most people who preordered in Canada will receive their copies this week! On another note CMAK is very impressive, some of the desert maps are HUGE, you can't even see them all at level 10! The dust adds a lot, seeing large dust clouds rising from a seemingly flat terrain and heading towards your position is very ominous. There are only 4 scenarios with canadian troops and no Ortona scenario.

CMAK is here! (Montreal) :cool:

Is it in French, perhaps? </font>

Still no CMAK delivery in Montreal, but today I was surprised to see the CDV version "Combat mission 3 Afrika Korps" on sale at Camelot here in Montreal for $59.95. I thought only the mail-order Battlefront version was available in North America.

quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now we will have to start yet another "Anyone receive in Canada yet?" thread!

No the keyboard works fine in other programs. I will have to check but I believe all CMBB hotkeys are frozen although I can still give orders, change the view and the game will still function. I have Windows XP professional with SP1. Other than Windows, the only program I have running in the background is Goback. I turn all other programs including windows messenger and the internet off. My system: -PIV 3 ghz; -1 GB kingston Hyper X DDR 400; -Abit is-7 mb with latest bios; -Antec case with 430 watts power; -PNY GFX 5900/128 mb w. 52.16 drivers; -Hercules gametheater GXP soundcard with latest 6.09 drivers; -WD Raptor 10,000 K 36 GB drive; currently running CMBB special edition ( although the issue also cropped up on my previous regular CMBB install patched to 1.03) with the cmmos mods on disk 2 and Ncrawler's sound pack.

Are all pre-orders to US/Canada being shipped out today?

I have a weird problemm when I play CMBB which crops up intermittently. When I play, I turn on bases, flags and warning labels on during the order phase to see what is going on and turn them off for the action phase. When I play for a long time at one stretch, over 1 or 2 hours, the keys will sometimes freeze in position, meaning that I can't turn off flags, bases or warning labels even though the game still plays normally. Exiting the game and restarting it does not solve the problem, but if I reboot my computer and restart the game the problem is resolved. It's a minor annoyance, but I'm wondering if anyone has seen this and knows what causes it. I originally thought that my computer was not powerful enough, but I recently upgraded from a 1.2 ghz Athlon @ 100 mhz with 512 mb of SDRAM @ 133 mhz to a 3 ghz PIV @ 800 mhz with 1 GB of DDR @ 400 mhz, and this issue still occasionally crops up on my new rig.

Pentium IV 3.0 GHZ @ 800 mhz; 1 GB DDR 400; WD Raptor 10,000 rpm HD; Geforce 4 ti4200...no problems so far, but then again the operation "To the Volga" is playable on my system. :cool: [ November 20, 2003, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: JC_Hare ]

I have owned a lot of ATI cards, including a Radeon 8500 which sees daily use in my son's computer playing mostly Dungeon Siege ...The latest ATI drivers are as good as recent NVIDIA drivers IMHO and the image quality of the 8500 is better that that of the GF4, especially in 32 bit color. The big problem is that many game developpers used to tune their games to work with NVIDIA cards, which is what most people have and neglect ATI. Because of that, many older games (i.e. Jane F/A-18, CMBB, Sub Command) have issues with ATI cards. However, that situation is changing, ATI now has IMHO better hardware that NVIDIA and developpers are now making sure their games run on ATI cards.

Slightly off topic but in the same vein, the ultimate insult for a game developper. Its not true, but it's funny. http://www.thetoque.net/021022/christaylor.htm [ September 19, 2003, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: JC_Hare ]

interesting article at Tom's Hardware which shows that NVIDIA has been lowering the image quality of it's drivers to increase speed.http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030918/index.html I had noticed that the image quality of more recent drivers was slightly worse than that of the 30.82's, especially the FSAA.

Has anyone run any benchmarks to see if CMBB runs faster on a Athlon XP or a Pentium 4 ?

The AI is not a babbling idiot. It's not as good as a competent human player, but then again the AI is always ready to play when you are and will not mysteriously disappear from a PBEM game when it starts to lose or get bored. To get the most out of your AI opponent, you have to be aware of his/it's limitations and put him (or it) in a favorable position. These are my observations on improving the AI experience: 1. Find the right scenario - the AI performs better in a scenario which was specifically designed as player vs. AI. Usually, the designer notes will state that and which side you should play; 2. Use the default setup - the AI has problems deciding where to put his units, he/it is usually better off with the default setup; 3. Play as attacker - the AI is better at defence where it does not have to move much and only has to shoot at your units. 4. Make it easy for the attacking AI - The AI is better at attacking where it has obvious attack routes/numerical superiority. For example, I just finished "Tovarishch Mysh" from the Stalingrad Pack and am now playing "Luga Gateway". Both scenarios were designed as player vs. AI scenarios and in both games, the AI is giving me competent, historically accurate gameplay which often keeps me on the edge of my seat and is fun! What more can you ask for :cool:

New ATI drivers are out and no, table fog is still not supported..

John Ericson put out a two volume set "The Road to Stalingrad" and "The Road to Berlin" which covers the entire war from 1941 to 45. It's a bit dry but contains a lot of strategic and operational level detail.

Kingfish, thanks for the e-mail. I saw in your message that you are still waiting for "..the monster Op of Prokhorovka from Franko.." :eek: Have I died and gone to heaven?

Thanks Kingfish, got your email. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief

I just reinstalled the OS on my PC and am now in the process of re-downloading all the CMBB mods/missions. With Boots & Track down and Der Kessel out of business, does anyone know where I can download the Stalingrad Pack ?

O'connor's campaign in 1940-41 including Beda Fomm.

regarding brew ups, I'm currently reading "Alamein" by John Latimer. The book states that german tanks rarely brewed up which made it hard for british gunners to determine when a german tank had been knocked out, whereas Shermans were called "Ronsons" for their propensity to burn when hit. Also remember that within the CMBB time frame of 20-60 minutes, many tanks might be knocked out by relatively minor damage. A large proportion of tanks which were knocked out in a battle were capable of being recovered, repaired and put back into action fairly quickly. Again in the book "Alamain", in the battle for 'outpost Snipe', british ATG's apparently knocked out 70 german/italian AFV's in a one day battle. The german/italians quickly recovered 20-30 of those vehicles after the battle.

Other possible replacement names: -Combat Mission: Alexandria to the Alps; -Combat Mission: Rommel to Rome; -Combat Mission: Sand storm to San Marino; -Combat Mission: Pyramids to Padua; or my favorite: -Combat Mission: Pita to Pasta! :cool: