Madmatt

As promised last week, we are happy to make available a newly updated Theatre of War Demo which encorporates the new advances offered in the recent "Uber" patch. This new game version offers much better performance over the original demo as well other improvements that have been introduced into the game over the past few months. These include a new advanced Line of Sight system, better AI behavior and improved combat and weapon modeling. This single player only demo features 5 tutorial missions which cover the basics of gameplay, unit control and camera behavior as well as more advanced topics like Line of Fire and Line of Sight. In addition to the playable tutorials there is also one playable mission from the new German Panzer Lehr Campaign. In this battle, tank units of the British 7 Armoured Division attempt to outflank your positions in order to capture the strategically key town of Villers-Bocage. Can your beleaguered troops stop this assault in the face of tough odds and overwhelming airpower? Play the demo and find out! Playable units and weapons in this battle include; StuG III Ausf. G, PzKpfw IV 70 Jagdpanzer and PzKpfw IV Jagdpanzer Tank Destroyers, RPzB 54 Panzerschreck, Panzerfaust-30's, Panzerfaust-60's and PWM HE Grenade Anti-Tank Weapons, PaK 35/36 L45 37mm and PaK 40 L/48 75mm AT Gun's, SdKfz 7/1 20mm Flak 38 and FlakPz 38(t) Anti-Aircraft vehicles, Panzer IV Ausf. H tanks plus infantry units equipped with a wide variety of small arms and machineguns. http://www.battlefront.com/products/tow/demo.html Madmatt

Use any of the links listed on the download page. They are all new. Its possible that they show an older file date, but they have all confirmed to me that they replaced with the newer version. Madmatt

I am the power that "be's" and your welcome. Madmatt

As promised, the *fixed* v1.06 patch for the Paradox Interactive version has just been posted. You can find this patch on the main patch download page located here (more mirrors will be added for sure!): http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmsf/downloads.html Madmatt

As promised, the *fixed* v1.06 patch for the Paradox Interactive version has just been posted. You can find this patch on the main patch download page located here (more mirrors will be added for sure!): http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmsf/downloads.html Madmatt

If the original owner did indeed buy from us, he would have been sent the license code at the time of purchase (if its the DVD+Download) version. If its JUST a DVD, then the license code (assuming it was bought from us, remember there are several different versions now out, only the Battlefront one uses eLicense) would be on the CD case on a white sticker. If he did buy from us AND he ordered/pre-ordered the game and got the DVD+Download version, we will have a record of the license code BUT we will ONLY send that info the original purchaser so HE would need to email us at elicense@battlefront.com and request us to lookup the code. At which point he could forward that info to you. We will not under any circumstance send license info to someone that DIDN'T buy a game directly from us. You other option is to just buy the download version of the game from us which will give you a new working license code that would work on the DVD version as well. Madmatt

First off, remember that Vista is not officially supported, so keep that in mind. Having said that, your video card, cpu and memory are suffecient to give you good framerates so the first thing to try is to set the USE ONLY ONE CPU option from within the games option panel. Compare how the game runs with that ON and OFF. Next, browse through the complete troubleshooting guide as it includes many steps to take to improve performance across the board. You can find that here: http://www.battlefront.com/products/tow/troubleshooting.html Madmatt

If your in the UK, your order will come directly from our warehouse in Europe, not from the US. Madmatt

Okay Pandur, I appreciate your trying to help, but your not giving good advice. First off, the new online system will ONLY work if you bought the game AFTER October 1st, 2007. Sounds like you bought it before then, thats why you can't login to the new system. Because you don't have an account yet. Next, NO, don't just re-download the game from a torrent because you aren't likely to get a Battlefront version. Next, just email us at elicense@battlefront.com give us your full name and the email address you most likely used when you placed the order last year (and it doesn't hurt to mention what game you need the code for) and we can usually both look up the code for you and give you a link to download the game again directly from our fileserver. Thats the only LEGITIMATE and PROPER way to do things. Madmatt

Well, the modification is simple, just delete the old hotkeys.txt file before you apply the patch but I know for sure that Strategy Informer, AusGamers, The Patches Scrolls, Fangaming and Gamershell all have told me that they are now mirroring the new version. Madmatt

Most of the file mirrors already updated their 1.06 patch to fix the hotkeys issues originally reported. Also, a much EASIER fix is to just delete your hotkeys.txt file from your Data folder before you patch. Then it doesnt matter if you got a *newer* 1.06 patch or the *original* one, as either will put in the new hotkeys.txt file automatically. Madmatt

Nothing much new to report other than Sony (the makers of SecuROM) were able to confirm and replicate the crash this morning. Now we just wait to see what they do to FIX it. Madmatt

Thanks for the update..I will go ahead and ask, is there a chance it will be yet today? </font>

I have an 8800GT card in one of my systems and get great performance. What problems are you seeing right now? Madmatt

The gamershell patches should always be close to the same size as the Battlefront.com ones. Paradox patches will ALWAYS be much bigger because those patches need to also include the 1.01 data file while Battlefront and Gamersgate all inclusive patches do not, since 1.01 was the version we originally released. Paradox released CMSF before us and their version was only 1.0. So, thats why. Madmatt

I am hoping that we will have a fixed patch for your very quickly, but if it going to be more than a day or so, I will put up links again for the older v1.05 patch so at least you can play with the previous version while you wait. Most of the file mirrors still offer links to the older patches so even now you can still find the Paradox 1.05 patch if need be. Madmatt

One thing I noticed with the new 8.1 drivers is that you really HAVE TO uninstall your previous ATI drivers before you install the new ones. Now, ATI always tell you to do this, but most people just go "yeah right" and install over the top of the old ones and usually everything works fine. I have installed the 8.1's on two different PC's and each time I just installed them over the top of the earlier 7.11 and 7.12 drivers I had horrible framerates and all sorts of problems. In fact, to Windows, I was effectively just running in VGA mode and was getting no hardware acceleration AT ALL!!!! I fixed it all though by going into my control panel, selecting the Add Remove Program utility and removing both the ATI drivers and the ATI CCC thingy. I then rebooted and when windows came back up and asked me to install new drivers for the display adaptor I cancelled it out. Then I ran the 8.1's setup and everything was fine from that point on. Just an FYI, but since it happened to me twice, its probably a safe bet some of you are seeing the same thing. Madmatt

I had all the mirrors (as best they could) update their patches to a new one I made late last night that forces the old hotkeys.txt file to be overwritten by the new one. Even so, I dont think having the old hotkeys.txt file would cause a crash, it would more than likely just limit which keys you could re-assign at first. Easy way to test though, go into your Data folder, delete the hotkeys.txt file and then reapply the patch. That will guarantee that you get the new hotkeys.txt file. See if it still crashes then. Madmatt

We are working right now with Paradox to get this all fixed and will get a working patch out to you as soon as we can. Don't be too hard on Paradox this time as I didn't catch this issue either and I really should have before I posted the patch for the mirrors to host. I normally perform at the very least a load functionality test to make sure everything comes up as it should. The problem with this issue is that the game DOES load, you just can't click on any units. I will get it fixed though with as minimal a delay as I can. Madmatt

Because it sucks even more to try and coordinate incremental and cumulative patches for three different published versions of the same game and all the support issues incremental patches ALWAYS introduce because people often miss a patch in the sequence. It's far easier to just make it all-inclusive each time. As to the filesize difference, the Paradox patches (which is currently been removed due to a different issue) will always be bigger because the Paradox CD version was released BEFORE the Gamersgate and Battlefront.com versions. Their first release was v1.0 while ours and Gamersgate was 1.01 so each Paradox patch needs to include the 1.01 content while ours(BFC and GG) do not. Madmatt [ February 05, 2008, 12:32 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

Doesn't much matter now does it? The patch isn't working for Paradox customers trying to play our game, so it's really a problem for both of us. We will get this fixed as quickly as we can so hopefully the delay will be minimal. Madmatt

Yup, we have asked Paradox and the mirrors to pull this patch until we can get it resolved. Seems to be some conflict between SecuROM and CMSF introduced due to how the file was *wrapped* (how SecuROM was applied to it). Since this was never a problem before, I have an idea of what it is, and the fix should be easy to do, so hopefully we can get an all new patch up quickly. Madmatt

We are looking into the issue with the Paradox version crashing at this moment. we do know that the Gamersgate and Battlefront versions are working as intended and trying to quantify if the paradox issue is related to a specific hardware conflict or of it is systemic across the board. We will have more info for you soon, but at this time i would recommend AGAINST downloading the Paradox patch. In fact, I am going to remove the links to it from the main download page. Madmatt [ February 05, 2008, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

We are looking into this right now. I will have more info for you guys shortly. Madmatt

Try and use one of the various Windows compatability settings and see if that works. Those settings are accessed by right clicking on the game shortcut, selecting Properties>Compatability. Madmatt