Dschugaschwili

I guess I could have explained how to start a PBEM game in my e-mail to you. I probably thought it was too obvious. Lurker's post describes it quite nicely though. Dschugaschwili

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fionn: Actually once we had some phosphorus and magnesium and a big tub of acid...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That indeed does sound nasty... By the way, has anybody noticed how fast a thread can go off topic on this forum? Perhaps the thread titles should be editable so we all can see what we're really talking about. Dschugaschwili

Actually, I doubt that secondary explosions are in. A green unit probably doesn't need a secondary explosion in order to panic when a tank next to them is knocked out. Dschugaschwili

It has been stated before that this is a beta demo bug and has been fixed. Dschugaschwili

Looks like a driver problem to me too. Have you tried reinstalling DirectX after installing your video drivers? I've heard this often helps. Apart from that, could it be that there are still parts of your old G200 drivers hanging around in your system? If yes, you should try to remove them completely. Dschugaschwili

Yet another newbie: Name: Markus Zehender From: Germany PBEM experience: none CM experience: <10 games against the AI Frequence: 1 or 2 turns a week during the next 2 months, more later E-mail: Markus.Zehender@Informatik.Uni-Ulm.de Dschugaschwili

200m kill radius ? Fionn, you don't think such a weapon might unbalance a scenario a little bit? Dschugaschwili

PanzerShark: The correct spelling is "Nähe" or "Naehe" if you can't figure out how to produce the Umlaut. Mark IV: Remark on the grammar issue: "in der Nähe" is used when you are near something "in die Nähe" is used when you move to a place near something Nobody said the German language was easy Dschugaschwili

Pretty hard to believe if you ask me. The half-life of depleted Uranium (i.e. U238) is 4.5 billion years, so the amount of radiation emitted by these shells should be EXTREMELY low, probably even much lower than the natural radiation. Dschugaschwili [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 02-08-2000).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AH64D: Using 5 seconds to drop to the floor is realistic? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> No, but I doubt that the underlying game mechanics use the same time as the animations. Maybe some animations could be faster, but you should also remember that it's not just one guy diving for cover or rotating to face the enemy, but up to 12 of them. It will take more than 0.5 seconds to get them all into cover. By the way, what's the definition of "grognard"? Dschugaschwili

As long as the game mechanics work in a realistic manner and I can identify what's on the screen, I don't care about graphics at all. I really don't think your suggestions have enough weight to justify delaying the game. Dschugaschwili

This has been posted before somewhere, but anyways: I really would like to have the possibility to watch a movie of the game so far. Think about watching the whole battle afterwards. Oh well, this will most likely not be in CM1 (too much additional information required to get it done quickly ). Dschugaschwili

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Major Tom: the Jewish religion allowed for moneylending, Christianity did not. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, that was a reason why people often didn't like the Jews, long before Hitler. In fact, in many countries throughout Europe the Jews were not allowed to have any manufacturing job for several centuries, so they hardly had a choice of profession. Money lending was one of the few things they could do. Of course, you don't get very popular if you do that (and want to live from that). The big difference is that while quite some people didn't like the Jews, only very few would actually take arms against them, let alone kill them all. I don't think it will ever be known what really caused Hitler's hatred. Dschugaschwili PS: As I mentioned in an earlier thread, a good book on Hitler is "Anmerkungen zu Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner. (English: "The Meaning of Hitler")

The darker the line, the worse the LOS is. So, green means good LOS (high exposure of the target), black means bad LOS (little exposure of the target). In other words, the color of the line and the target's exposure correlate (is this spelled correctly?). Dschugaschwili

Thomas, some information on your 3 points: 1. I'm almost 100% sure every card that's available today will have drivers for it on the Win2k cd. 2. Every 3d card out there comes with Direct3d drivers. 3. Only 3dfx cards (Voodoo X) support Glide directly, however, there are (unsupported) "Glide Wrappers" available for some of the other cards (especially for the TNT series) that may or may not work. Most 3d cards have OpenGL drivers (but the quality varies). I will only talk about cards available today here: If you really need Glide support for an older game, buy a Voodoo3. If not, I recommend buying a card with a Nvidia chipset (TNT2 or GeForce). These are the fastest 3d cards today, have a better image quality than most competitors, and they come with a good OpenGL driver (much better than the Voodoo OpenGL drivers IMO). [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 02-01-2000).]

Was there anything wrong with the board during the weekend? Looks quite normal to me at the moment. And if there was, I'm glad I didn't have internet access then

This whole discussion about "could Germany have won the war if Hitler had done something different?" is kind of academic. True, if he had stopped after overrunning France, he probably would have been able to keep Western Europe for Germany. But that's not the point. He had long before decided to conquer Russia to gain the Germans room to live (his "Lebensraum" idea). It was not the interferrence with his generals that cost him the war. This was only a logical consequence of his two long term goals: 1. conquer Russia to gain "Lebensraum" 2. exterminate the Jews With these goals in mind you can understand why he did most things the way he did them. His ultimate failure was caused because these goals were wrong. The "Lebensraum" idea was wrong even economically because industry nations don't need to be large in size (a large size can in fact be a disadvantage). For the second plan, I don't think anybody knows where his fanatic hate for the Jews came from, and even if you leave the ethics of this topic aside (I don't have words for this anyways) it was a mistake because he made enemies out of good friends for no other reason than his hate. I don't think you can blame him for his other mistakes that were direct consequences of these two big mistakes. Those were inevitable. Just my 2 cents, Dschugaschwili PS: I hope I made my points clear. Of course, if you want a much better and more detailed analysis on this, I again recommend the book I mentioned earlier in this thread. [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 01-28-2000).]

100% true indeed. Keep up the good work!

I fully agree with Steve here. I don't care if the smoke looks kind of blocky and thick (btw. to all the people out there requesting translucent smoke, I thought the smoke was supposed to be blocking LOS. How do you do this with translucent smoke ) *tries to turn rant mode off* Damn, doesn't work for a junior member Also, for the system requirements needed for accurate smoke calculation, I suspect Steve is correct too. You could make it looking better by adding more frames of animation or more surfaces, but people would still complain about the graphics. And getting the granularity so low that you almost have a particls system would indeed need exorbitant CPU power. Dschugaschwili PS: Steve, please turn the rant mode off again [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 01-26-2000).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Lindan: The soldiers fought [...] without knowing that Hitler had already forgotten about them. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That's not quite true. Hitler had not forgotten about the soldiers on the eastern front. Hitler had two goals: 1. gain territory (by winning the war), 2. kill the Jews. At the beginning of the war, he tried to do both at the same time. But after his attack against Russia had been stalled, he knew very well that he would not be able to win the war anymore. So he switched to goal 2 and used the army to delay his enemys, ie. to buy him the time he needed to carry out the assassination of the Jews in the territory he controlled. He needed every man on the eastern front to do this, and that's the reason he ordered them not to surrender. If you want to read a book that covers Hitler well, I recommend "Anmerkungen zu Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner. (the English translation is called "The Meaning of Hitler" IIRC) Excellent read. Dschugaschwili

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MantaRay: This is one of the most age diversive arguements that can come from a wargame. Older players do not seem to mind the graphics taking a hit quite like the newer and younger players do. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Actually, there are young people out there who don't care about the beauty of graphics as long as the gameplay is good. (I'm thinking of me at the moment ) My point is, before complaining about ugly graphics or low frame rates I ask myself: do I need them for this particular game? And I don't need them in a game like CM. Actually, I don't need beautiful graphics in any game. The only reason why I MIGHT upgrade my computer within the next few months is the lack of adequate frame rates when playing modern FPSs even on low quality settings. So, to sum it up, I don't mind a game having high hardware requirements if I feel that the required resources are put to good use. But if all you get from your ultra-modern computer is eye-candy without reasonably complex game mechanics behind, then I usually get angry. Dschugaschwili [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 01-25-2000).]

I think it was a short news article at voodooextreme.com mentioning there was a turn based strategy game in the making that uses a real 3d engine. I took the link to CMHQ, found the alpha AAR between Fionn and Moon with about 20 turns done at that point, was quite impressed and downloaded the demo shortly after. Dschugaschwili

So that means the LOS system works about like this: Certain terrain types (like scattered trees, woods, heavy woods, houses, ...) reduce the visibility along a line running through them by a certain amount per meter, and when visibility reachees zero, the LOS along that line is blocked from that point on. In that case your method would work correctly, however, if the calculation is more complex, you would have to move more carefully. Anyways, I would really like to have a feature like "hunt" for infantry, telling them to move until they have LOS to a certain spot on the map. That would really help when setting up MGs, mortars, ... Dschugaschwili

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Fionn posted on CMHQ: NOTHING is so threatening to an experienced player as a seemingly empty treeline.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Is there a good rule of thumb for estimating the line of sight from one point to another without having a unit in this place. It seems I can't position mortars, MGs, ... correctly on the first (and sometimes second or third) try. Most of the time they just can't shoot at anything. On the other hand, if I prepare for an assault I always draw fire before I even start charging forward. By the way, if anyone is willing to play a PBEM game with me, let me know. Warning: Such a game can take a long time because I'm somewhat limited in my internet access (only at the university, so don't expect more than one email per day, and no mails at the weekend ) because I'm still not willing to pay for a private internet access (pretty expensive in Germany ) Dschugaschwili [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 01-19-2000).]

Well, I guess you can write some generic code to do the rendering based on the following data (I think it should work, I don't know how other people do it ): - The sizes of the two arrays below - A vertex array where all vertices for the model are stored - A "polygon" array with data sets containing: + 3 indices for the vertex array (specifying a triangle) + a texture number + some texture alignment data You can load this data from an external file (or from anywhere else) and pass it to your generic renderer. The renderer can then pass the data almost directly to OpenGL. Just my 2 cents, Dschugaschwili [This message has been edited by Dschugaschwili (edited 01-18-2000).]