Lee

Lorak: Actually it may very well be your machine (at least in part). Since DF2 uses voxels instead of polygons your 3D card can't help out on the rendering workload. The CPU has to do all that (it's like trying to run Quake III in software mode, haha). This pushes system requirements for smooth frame rates somewhere into the super computer range. This is one of the main reasons that a lot of gamers don't like the Delta Force games. Well, that and the extremely pixelated graphics at long range.

You fellows might be happy to hear that a remake of the original X-COM is being made as we speak,IIRC.

Hmm, favorite recent computer wargames. TOP is a lot of fun. Pacific War is neat but playing the entire war in the pacific with a turn for each and every day is a grueling affair to say the least (and the U.S. carrier AA defenses are so ridiculously tough that it's seemingly impossible at times to sink one even with full Jap aircraft strikes). Action Stations is the most realistic WWI/WWII tactical naval gun battle wargame there is, but the graphics make TOP look sophisticated. Jagged Alliance II is the best at what it does, turn-based tactical combat at the lowest level (down to individual soldiers). Also if you want to count sci-fi wargames as well as the usual kind, Star Trek: Starfleet Command came out a few months ago and is outstanding. It's a wargame of tactical starship combat, very detailed, great graphics, great sound, great interface, tons of fun. It's based on the ultra complex boardgame called Starfleet Battles (which has rules like a phonebook ). I highly recommend it if you like sci-fi combat at all.

Yes, I would *definately* be willing to pay for a monster patch on a CD that would retrofit the improvements from CM2 back into CM1. And also it would be a lot of fun to match up vehicles that served on different fronts against each other.

For the record, I'm not saying these HE shells shouldn't be able to take out a halftrack. I'm just saying that the *huge* difference in results between the 75mm and 88mm shells that has been reported just doesn't seem to make any sense. And thus would like to see some tests run by Steve and Charles to see if there is a problem there. Hopefully we'll get those test results fairly soon.

Darn, I was looking forward to those test results. Oh well, after the game goes gold you guys can run some tests on this I guess (maybe Charles can disable the tacAI so it won't mess up the experiment next time ). This whole monster thread has got me *really* curious about this issue. And while I tend to doubt Charles would make a mistake in the math behind the modeling of these shells, the results seen seem so odd that one almost has to conclude that something is amiss. I just wouldn't want CM to ship with significantly inaccurate HE shell performance. Someone make note, we have to get back to this issue after CM goes gold. Until then, the mystery lives on. [This message has been edited by Lee (edited 01-21-2000).]

Hmm, don't remember for sure, but I think I came to the BTS site to look at something about Achtung Spitfire! or perhaps just to see what the latest wargame that Charles was working on was about (he's always got something new going on ). And then I noticed the headline about this new wargame called Combat Mission that they were working on. I decided to read what it was about and when I saw what it was they wre trying to accomplish I was immediately interested. So I started reading the message board and it became apparent very quickly that this wasn't just going to be a good wargame but the *ultimate* WWII tactical land combat wargame. Something that would blow every other competing product out of the water in virtually every area you could think of. When I realized just how great this was going to be, then I got psyched. Man, that was almost exactly one year ago. I've been looking forward to CM's release ever since.

Charles, be merciful, please explain these extreme differences in performance between the 75mm and 88mm HE shells in CM. The pain of not knowing is unbearable.

Charles, speak on this issue. We must know!

I'm curious to see what Charles has to say about the effectiveness of different HE shells and how they are modeled in CM. Should be interesting.

I think that point being made about these blast cones was that if a tank fires an HE shell at you it will have a fairly shallow arc and thus have lots of forward momentum in a direction fairly parallel to the ground. And even though the impact with the ground will soak up some of that momentum there will still be a good bit left when the fuze detonates the shell, thus biasing the blast radius of the shrapnel towards the direction the shell was travelling in when it detonated. This would result in a cone shaped pattern to the shrapnel (though probably not a terribly pronounced cone). So the most dangerous place to be when the shell hits is in front of where it struck the ground. Of course, the degree to which this effect would manifest itself would vary with the impact angle (i.e., firing down from a cliff at someone would greatly reduce the cone effect as it relates to shrapnel traveling parallel to the ground). Although I doubt even CM takes this into account.

Yes, CM is truly fantastic. In fact, as far as wargames covering this scale and subject, I don't intend to buy *anything* but future versions of CM. Why bother? They will almost certainly be inferior in one or more important areas in comparison to CM. Why would I want something inferior when I can have the best? I can't think of a good reason, either.

I *really* hope this isn't true. Steve and Charles are some of the last game designers in the world who deserve to have something like this happen to them. They have worked very hard and have kept the highest standards of quality in the design of CM so that we can have the best wargame of it's type *ever*. That should be respected. And for someone who was trusted with a beta copy to do something dirty like this would be extremely low indeed. I hope it isn't true, but if it is, I would strongly encourage Charles and Steve to get absolutely MEDIEVAL on whoever did it. No mercy! Note for those not fluent in English: Getting medieval on someone involves, in one way or another, exacting punishment on them akin to what one might expect in the way of torture while a prisoner in a medieval dungeon. It's a slang phrase.

Neutral Party: Don't all normal kids want their toys to have grenades, stabbing knives and lots of extra mags for their battle rifle?

Too bad they don't have Bruce Lee, that would be cool.

Mark IV: Well every time I have just typed away and let the message board wrap the lines at will it has caused some very bad looking lines of text. I like my paragraphs to be fairly uniform. If you just type without putting in your own line breaks it looks more than ragged, you can end up with one line that is only two thirds or half as long as the line after it. That looks terrible to me, I like my text to be neater than that.

My dad was stationed in Germany during the Cuban missle crisis with the 3rd Armored Division. And he said they were on maximum alert and expecting the Russians to attempt an armored breakthrough at any moment. The problem was that the good guys were way outnumbered in tanks by the Russkies. Our troops were expecting a very nasty fight against hordes of enemy tanks.

Bullethead: The problem is if you just type your sentences at length without hitting enter your spacing will come out all wrong. If you want your sentences to be neat and of fairly consistent length then you have to manually hit enter before you type in enough characters on a given line to hit the right edge of the box your text will appear in after you've posted. Kevi, you are posting the right way already. The real trick is figuring out just how many characters you can type before you hit that right edge and hitting enter before that happens so that the lines come out how you want them to. If these dumb boxes we type in would just exactly match the dimensions of the box that the text will appear in after we post them, then none of this would be a problem. But it seems that every message board I run into has a different size relationship between these two text boxes (pre- post and post-post (no pun intended ) boxes). So I end up having to memorize how many characters I can type on each and every board I frequently visit so I know when to hit enter to keep my post well formatted. It's very annoying. *sigh...* 8)

Yes, those are some of the finest uniforms I have ever seen on an action figure. Very nice.

Having beta tested, I can say for a fact that there is a lot of work involved. So it's important that you be a very big enthusiast of the subject matter to help you get through all the crashes and trying to track down what is causing them. It also helps a lot if you have a high quality, dedicated, knowledgeable group of testers to work with.

Exactly. If you don't have an average of 60-70 fps in many games, there will come times when an unusual amount of gunfire or explosions will occur and this will cause a severe drop in fps. This isn't a problem if you have 30 frames to spare. If you don't have any frames to spare, then it can easily get you killed. Plus it's just plain irritating to be playing a cool game and have it get all choppy on you at some very interesting moment.

Thanks for the info., that's a nice video card you have there. The very fastest of the TNT2 cards. Only the new GeForce cards are faster.

Hmm, not even a few hints as to what CM runs like at that high of a res?

Oh, and if anyone has run CM at 1600x1200 I'd be curious to know what sort of frame-rates you got.

Yep, a good monitor will last far longer than your system will be usefully fast for state-of-the-art 3D gaming. I still have my NEC MultiSync 3D monitor from my first PC. And it's over 9 years old! At the time it was one of the best monitors you could buy and only now that the picture is getting a little degraded am I going to get a replacement. I've decided to get the best image quality 19 inch monitor I can find to take over my PC chores. As far as running 3D games at 1600x1200, I don't think it's really an issue for most 3D games. You might be able to make use of it in CM but if you were playing first-person games the requirements for high frame-rates go up tremendously. In CM if the graphics get a bit choppy you might get annoyed but in a FPS if the graphics get choppy you tend to die from it. So 1600x1200 isn't really an option for the most demanding 3D environments. In those games 1280x1024 is about the max you can run the game at anyhow without incurring serious loss of frames a sec. That isn't likely to change any time soon, so I wouldn't sweat it if your monitor can't run super high res comfortably. I'd recommend for most players to just get a very good 19 inch monitor and you'll be all set for a long time.