Madmatt

I am not sure but of all the files we host I get more people having issues with downloading the SC patches. Here is the direct link to the patch! ftp://ftp.battlefront.com/pub/patches/stratcom/sc_patch105.exe Madmatt

From reading dozens of first person pilot accounts, straffing an area is normally only used on soft targets like a road column or assembly area for troops. More often than not, its just a waste of precious ammo and those type of targeting conditions are rare in CM. Since most of the time it is armored vehicles that are engaged it makes sense that a plane picks a point target and engages it with each pass. Also remember, this aint Peal Harbor the movie here with planes having unlimited MG and Cannon ammo. Real life aircraft ammo is low in the extreme and planes aren't so gungho to go "winchester" when they still need to fly back home. Most of the CAS gun camera film you will see will show the same, a plane will begin its attack run with a sole ground unit as its target, engage at close range, usually from behind at a steep angle to score hits on the weak and vulnerable rear engine deck and then pull out and bank away to prevent ground fire from damaging it. Get in quick and get out quick and minimize your exposer to enemy fire. Doing a nice lazy shallow gun run is just going to get your butt blown outa the air. Madmatt [ October 24, 2002, 09:08 AM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

The problem more or less is that the message you get is rather vague. A top Penetration message for a Molotov (and I have petioned Charles to work on the wording) really means that the bottle did indeed hit the top quarter of the vehicle. It could also mean that: The bottle broke open and spilled the fuel as intended but the ignitor did not light the fuel. The bottle didnt break open. The fuel was dispersed over a non critical area or did not splash on the vehicle itself. The bottle bounced off the armor and then broke open. And about a million other possibilities. The issue here is the message wording. We used to have it that NO message was given with a Molotov attack, but that wasnt very good either. Charles recoded it to use the shell impact wording which technically is correct but the "penetration" wording is a little unclear to be sure. While this is not changed in v1.01 I will see what I can do for v1.02 Madmatt

Unfortunately the sales account has been rather unresponsive as of late and we are taking measures to rectify that situation. That account is monitored by our order fulfillment company and not a member of Battlefront as such. Just go ahead and email me direct at matt@battlefront.com for the time being and I will do what I can to address your issue and make sure you get your game as ordered. Madmatt

cough cough..and???? Forgetting someone Hubert? Madmatt

The peng challenge is pretty much an institution around here anymore. Yeah much like "we sent pa to the "Institution' for help." It started off as a light hearted taunt and game challenge thread and over the years god only knows what it has become. Like an amoeba, it continues to grow and thrive in filth and scum. At this point, we are afraid to remove it for fear of what might replace it. As such it is allowed to fester, albeit at a 300 post at a time cap, until at such time as it is not alloed to fester. Madmatt

Try with a download manager program like GetRight or Download Accelerator Plus. You should be able to find those easily enough. Madmatt

Yes, we were just made aware of this issue and will fix it as soon as we can. Madmatt

Go to www.nvidia.com Click on the drivers link at the top of the page and follow the prompts for your OS and card type. Download the drivers listed as 30.82 (or 30.87 if listed). Once they are downloaded just doubleclick the file, the drivers should install themselves. There is a more complex way to install drivers which involves removing the old drivers first and rebooting your system in Standard VGA mode but lets try the simple method for now. Madmatt

I sent this reply already in email but here goes again: Dave, did you happen to install the full game over the top of the Demo by chance? if so, go ahead and delete the whole directory and try and re-install. It is possible that the full game is trying to access the demos configuration file and hence failing. If that doesnt work, or if you didnt install to the same location or never had the demo then the other thing to try which usually works in these situations is to first re-install DirectX, which you can download directly from MS at this location: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/downloads/drx81.asp And then re-install your video drivers. Since you have a GF-2 I would strongly suggest the 30.82 or 30.87 version drivers which you can download directly from NVidia at www.nvidia.com I would tend to shy away from the drivers offered by Creative. Try that and let us know if the problem persists. By the way, what resolution do you have the desktop set to? If it is set to 800x600 go ahead and bump it up to 1024x768 for a moment before launching the game the first time. See if that makes a difference. If you ever want to delete the CM preference file on order to have CM scan your system again to set its resolution locate and delete the Combat Mission BB Prefs file which will be in your CMBB directory. You should always delete that file before you launch the game when you trying out different desktop settings or have just installed new drivers.. Madmatt

Are you testing this with the pillbox on a defenders side or as a Meeting Engagment? Units that are defending get additional "camo" benefits (assuming they dont move) but I dont think that applies in a ME. Madmatt

Its a known bug in the demo but it is fixed in the forthcoming v1.01 patch. In the full game this issue does not cause a crash but it is still addressed in the patch. Madmatt [ October 22, 2002, 10:53 AM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

#2, at least for now. Madmatt Seventh Son of a Seventh Son...

That link now apparently points to a SIMS Beta offer. Madmatt

MultiMultiplay is something we are looking at implementing once the engine is fully re-written. Actual Man for Man representation. Call it '****' if you want but there is a lot more with doing that than simply adding polygons. For example the code to properly position, animate and move the units in realistic manner. Also at the scale of CMBB you really dont gain anything by having a 1 to 1 representation. Tracer lights and Ambient Sounds. Sounds will increase with each release, as to tracers emiting light, well they arent phasers, they are bullets and a tracer doesnt really light up the area around it. As with everything else, with each game we make there will be improvements. Deployment Time Limit. Request a Pause to the Timer, if the opponent agrees than the timer is disabled. Amazing what you find when you read the manual. Interface- While I dont share your opinion of the current quality of the interface it could and will continue to be improved upon. Out Of LOS shelling. Use TRP's or a FO. Better Models- Again improvements will be made. Arty effects- The sounds are samples of actual artillery. As to the explosions, well tough, they aint changing. Also, I would warn you that your language could be a little more toned down. No need to cuss here. You can get your opinion across just as well without cussing. Madmatt [ October 21, 2002, 08:27 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

No. No chance.

Actually, we uncovered a few more things we want to address so it won't be ready as soon as we had hoped. In fact, it won't come out this month. Madmatt

The problem is that we do not make card specific changes to the code. The game code conforms to all DirectDraw requirements on Windows but video card makers tend to cut corners when they release drivers. They do these to improve performance and sometimes it just happens because drivers are code like anything esle and are sometimes released with bugs in the. What happens is that with one set of drivers everything works as it should but with another suddenly the text disapears or is fuzzy or the background is all blank. As a game maker we can not continually play catch-up with ATI or Nvidia or anyone else for that matter because as soon as we try they will undoubtablly release a driver update that will screw up everything. We have already seen that repeatedly with Nvidia. Combat Mission uses Fog Tables, ATI on the PC does not support them. They do on the Mac, but not in Windows. Those other games you speak of most likely use Vertex based fog which requires a lot more horsepower and is not appropriate for a game like CM and would also require a considerable recoding effort to implement. As we have said before, if you really want fog in Combat Mission, you need to tell ATI to add full fog table or fog table emulation support for Windows. I can not understand why they would support Fog Tables in MacOS but not Windows espicially when practically every other video card on the market and for the last 3 years has. Madmatt [ October 21, 2002, 01:16 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

Actually the 30.82's (or 30.87's if you download the newly released Microsoft update via Windows Update) are pretty much considered the most stable drivers yet released for the Geforce cards. MANY games have the same problem with the missing or fuzzy text as you reported with the 40 series family and Nvidia themselves has indicated that the 40 and 41 family of drivers are still in beta state. Madmatt

Yeah, I am thinking about something like that actually. Madmatt

We have just combined all the game specific Opponent Finder Forums into a new language specific General Opponent Finder Forum section. We currently are supporting English, German, French and Finnish speaking players in these forums and they will be moderated by native speakers in each of those languages. You can request a game for ANY of our games including, CMBO, CMBB, Airborne Assault, Strategic Command and TacOps 4 in those forums. Now you can find people that speak the same language as you, for any of our games. Have fun and enjoy yourselves! Madmatt

We have just combined all the game specific Opponent Finder Forums into a new language specific General Opponent Finder Forum section. We currently are supporting English, German, French and Finnish speaking players in these forums and they will be moderated by native speakers in each of those languages. You can request a game for ANY of our games including, CMBO, CMBB, Airborne Assault, Strategic Command and TacOps 4 in those forums. Now you can find people that speak the same language as you, for any of our games. Have fun and enjoy yourselves! Madmatt

We have just combined all the game specific Opponent Finder Forums into a new language specific General Opponent Finder Forum section. We currently are supporting English, German, French and Finnish speaking players in these forums and they will be moderated by native speakers in each of those languages. You can request a game for ANY of our games including, CMBO, CMBB, Airborne Assault, Strategic Command and TacOps 4 in those forums. Now you can find people that speak the same language as you, for any of our games. Have fun and enjoy yourselves! Madmatt

We have just combined all the game specific Opponent Finder Forums into a new language specific General Opponent Finder Forum section. We currently are supporting English, German, French and Finnish speaking players in these forums and they will be moderated by native speakers in each of those languages. You can request a game for ANY of our games including, CMBO, CMBB, Airborne Assault, Strategic Command and TacOps 4 in those forums. Now you can find people that speak the same language as you, for any of our games. Have fun and enjoy yourselves! Madmatt

If you guys are having these problems and you bought a copy from CDV then please make sure you contact them for tech support. That is there responsibility to take care of you. Madmatt