johnnymo

I gave it a go, here's a nice low bar for others to beat

FYI, just to add to the list; my CC that was used to buy CMSF2 was compromised, I have a new card now. Just adding to the sample size....

It downloads fine for me, and I can extract and hear the sounds. Do note that it is a .7z file, not .zip. I have to use a different program to extract the files. I'm on Windows 10 (not a Mac). I used a program called 7-Zip (version 16.0.4 from October 2016) to unzip the files. -Johnymo

With the release of CMSF2 imminent, I've replayed a couple CMSF battles, which raised a bug with the old version of CMJukebox. So I've fixed the issue and reposted the tool. The updated program is available for free download at http://www.rubydoogames.com/. Please feel free to use the tool, and share any impressions or bugs here. Now back to joining the CMSF2 refresh monkeys....

One more bug fix: if a drag-and-dropped song did not convert correctly there was a chance that the original song could end up essentially deleted. I've changed the logic so that is impossible now; there is no danger of losing the original song files with the latest update. CMJukebox

UPDATE to the previous UPDATE: there was a bug in the CMJukebox update that I posted yesterday afternoon: songs drag-and-dropped for conversion would not convert if they had special characters or non-ANSI characters in their filenames, which meant most Russian songs with Cyrillic filenames would not convert. I've fixed that bug and updated the files; anyone who picked up yesterday's update (thanks!) should re-download the latest CMJukebox.zip file, which no longer has this problem.

UPDATE: I've now got CMJukebox supporting drap-and-drop file conversion, for mp3, mp4, and wav file formats. So if you have music files on your computer that you always wished could be played in Combat Mission, now you can use them! I've updated the documentation to reflect this new behavior. I hope you find it useful.

I've found and fixed a problem with the dropbox links (they were zipping the zip files I shared, which was confusing to say the least). I've updated the links in the documentation, sorry for any confusion. CMJukebox

I can guarantee it's not a Trojan. It's entirely self-contained and makes no calls anywhere. And I have posted before, but in the long ago and far away, when I did some 'Saving Private Ryan'/'Saving Private Ivan' mods for CMBO and CMBB. That was well before this 'new' Bulletin Board software.

Over my years of playing Combat Mission, mostly via email, I've grown tired of listening to the same old song time after time while waiting for the game to load. So I decided to hone my Java programming skills, while also hopefully contributing to the passtime I love: Combat Mission! After a couple months of programming and using the program myself, I feel like it is time to share this with the community. Without further ado...drumroll please.... Welcome the CMJukebox music management tool! I'll let the link describe the tool in detail. Please feel free to download and use; it is free, and my way of saying 'Thank You' to Battlefront and the Combat Mission community, for bringing my childhood dreams of playing Squad Leader, with true fog-of-war, to fruition. If you download the tool, please feel free to reply to me with any feedback. I'm sure it's not yet perfect, but would like it to become so. As an 'added bonus', I've also formatted some public domain songs to the correct .wav file format; you can download those from the CMJukebox songs site as well. Thanks -johnnymo

You can try out my SPR-AK mods on cmmods.com; I brightened up the terrain elements to try to make things look cleaner and slightly more movie-like (not sure it succeeded). There are low-res versions of the groundcover and doodads, look for the files with 'LR' in the titles. They're not masterpieces, but I notice the infantry and vehicles are MUCH sharper on my computer with the low-res mods in place. Should have noted, they're under 'johnnymo3' as author. [ August 02, 2004, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: johnnymo ]

I've seen this behavior on CMBB sometimes, but only if I've had my computer on for a long time (over 1 week) without rebooting. My assumption is that the computer is running out of RAM somehow (memory leak somewhere else on the machine), even though I don't see anything funky when checking processes. Rebooting does the trick for me when it happens.

**bump** for notice on new "noiseless" 'SPI' ('Saving Private Ivan') mods.

Noise = "graininess". Think of how Saving Private Ryan looked, with apparent 'flaws' in the film quality that made it look scratchy. That's the effect I was going for by applying a 'Film Grain' filter, but it unfortunately doesn't have the same effect as in the movie. In the mod, instead of making it look like a scratchy film, it makes everything brighter and slightly blurry due to the introduced noise (aka graininess). The high-res files I'm working on will not have the noise, so they will not be blurry or grainy.

I see on the SPR-AK files that the high-res files have been downloaded something like 4 or 5 times for every 1 low-res, so I'll get to work on high-res sans noise. Will probably take a couple weeks (just to find the time to do the conversion and get the uploads done).

Since I had a request to do a high-res version without the noise, I've done both hi-res and low-res versions and posted them on www.cmmods.com, with names prefixed with 'SPI' ('Saving Private Ivan'). The "noisy" low-res versions are still there as 'SPR-BB'. Sorry, no screenshots or readme for this batch; they use the same Photoshop script as the SPR-AK mods, so the preview file from that batch should give you an idea of what to expect. -Johnnymo ------------------------------ From the readme (in the SPR-BB-Preview.zip file): The 'Saving Private Ryan - Barbarossa to Berlin' (SPR-BB) collection of mods is my way of trying to brighten up the terrain elements of Combat Mission - Barbarossa to Berlin. I have used Photoshop to add 'film grain', up the contrast, and lower the saturation of most of the terrain elements in the game, while leaving all UI, armor and infantry .bmps alone. This gives the game (I hope!) a look much like many of the old 60s-70s WWII (and western) movies that I watched growing up (with the 'film grain' an attempt to get them looking like 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Band of Brothers'). As a side benefit, this also tends to add some extra 'contrast' to the active participants in the game. Since the 'film grain' noise made the files grow in size, this set of mods (unlike my previous SPR-AK mods which didn't add noise) is only available as a low-res set. SPR-BB is made up of the following zip files: 1. SPR-BB-Preview.zip contains readme and 3 comparison screenshots (with SPR-BB on top, CMBB out-of-the-box on bottom). 2. SPR-BB-BuildingsLR.zip 3. SPR-BB-GrassGridLR.zip Grass tiles only (with gridlines), not 'overlays' or doodads. 4. SPR-BB-GrassLR.zip Grass tiles only (no gridlines), not 'overlays' or doodads. 5. SPR-BB-SkiesLR.zip 6. SPR-BB-TerrainElementsLR.zip The terrain elements are the terrain 'overlays' (like wheat fields), as well as doodads. A quick plug for 'McMMM', the Mod Manager I wish I'd written! It's a great way to install whole sets of mods (like SPR-BB), and back out the changes any time you want! I use it for all my CMxx games. Give it a spin and you may never go back to CMMOS (I know I haven't, and I LOVED CMMOS)! You can find McMMM (and the SPR-BB mods) on www.cmmods.com. Please let me know if you have any problems with these. Hope you enjoy them! -Johnnymo [ February 02, 2004, 12:09 AM: Message edited by: johnnymo ]

bump for the update (gridded terrain and low-res mods)

There are four in the SPR-AK-Preview.zip file. If you want something in particular (maybe a desert shot?), let me know and I'll either email it to you or add it to the Preview file. FYI, I'm working on gridding the grass/sand/snow and will probably post those once I get something I like.

Now posting on www.cmmods.com: Gridded Terrain - I'm not 100% happy with it as it doesn't always link up straight, but now I can see elevations again. Low-Res Grass, Sand, Snow (gridded and standard) and Terrain Elements - Even though the low res mods make the doodads a little blockier, for my machine it's worth it. My armor is sharper (not being downsampled now?), and my scrolling speed is much improved. ----------------------------------- From the readme (in the SPR-AK-Preview.zip): The 'Saving Private Ryan - Afrika Korp' (SPR-AK) collection of mods is my way of trying to brighten up the terrain elements of Combat Mission - Afrika Korp. Screenshots are available in the SPR-AK-Preview.zip file on www.cmmods.com. I've used Photoshop to up the contrast and saturation of most of the terrain elements in the game, while leaving all UI, armor and infantry .bmps alone. This gives the game (I hope!) a look much like many of the old 60s-70s WWII (and western) movies that I watched growing up, while also adding some extra 'contrast' to the active participants in the game. My original intent was to also add some 'noise' to the terrain to make it look more like 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Band of Brothers', but that tended to add too much to the file size; that may come in a future iteration if this pack seems popular enough. SPR-AK is made up of the following zip files (about 190 megs total!): 1. SPR-AK-Preview.zip contains readme and 4 comparison screenshots (with SPR-AK on top, CMAK out-of-the-box on bottom), as well as a Photoshop 7 for PC 'recipe' for making your own custom batch mods. 2. SPR-AK-Buildings1.zip 3. SPR-AK-Buildings2.zip 4. SPR-AK-Buildings3.zip 5. SPR-AK-Grass.zip Grass tiles only, not 'overlays' or doodads. 6. SPR-AK-Sand.zip Sand tiles only, not 'overlays' or doodads. 7. SPR-AK-Skies.zip 8. SPR.AK-Snow.zip These are the snow tiles only, not 'overlays' or doodads. 9. SPR-AK-TerrainElements1.zip The terrain elements are the terrain 'overlays' (like wheat fields), as well as doodads. 10.SPR-AK-TerrainElements2.zip A quick plug for 'McMMM', the Mod Manager I wish I'd written! It's a great way to install whole sets of mods (like SPR-AK), and back out the changes any time you want! I use it for all my CMxx games. Give it a spin and you may never go back to CMMOS (I know I haven't, and I LOVED CMMOS)! You can find McMMM (and the SPR-AK mods) on www.cmmods.com. Please let me know if you have any problems with these. Hope you enjoy them! [ January 25, 2004, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: johnnymo ]

I got a 60/40 draw as Germans by breaking my initial force into 3 groups, attaching a 'recon' tank to each. I used the recon to fast-move for each flag, trying to find where the enemy was hidden around the flags. The other two tanks in each group were 'hunted' into potential hull-down positions overlooking the flags (and beyond). Once the enemy appeared and I realized how deadly they were, I did quite a bit of 'shoot-and-scoot', then went on the defensive and tried to set up ambushes to catch them as they moved forward to the flags. Mostly, these failed. When the halftracks and better-gunned Panzers arrived, I sent the halftracks toward the main hill on the right to offload the infantry, which later moved up the hill (but didn't crest it until near the endgame). I sent one Panzer to help with the far left flag (they were in serious trouble over there, one tank knocked out and the recon tank gun-damaged). The others I fast-moved around the right flank to get some good angles/side shots. I also moved the AT gun up the center road and found it a decent (but as it turned out over-exposed) firing spot left of the road to overlook the two flags on that side. The flanking manuever worked very well, I was able to get multiple side shots with my good armor and knocked out a good number of the Allied tanks; had their aim been better I think I would have gotten a Minor Victory. However I also lost a couple of my initial force tanks since I got greedy and tried to pincer with them, by going right over the top. Not a good idea against Allied armor that has fast turrets and high kill probabilities. When my final reinforcements arrived on the left, I did a poor job with them. The Marders knocked out a couple Stuarts but got killed way too quickly. Even though I kept them back in what I considered 'defensive' positions, I should have found them some hulldown positions to fire from; the Stuarts especially are too fast, and they were more accurate than my Marder crews. The captured tanks spent most of their time throwing smoke (grrrrr) instead of firing. Once I lost the second Marder I decided discretion was the better part of valor and asked for a ceasefire. 2-3 turns later, after the computer realized his forces left of the road (that's my left, his right) were flanked, he also declared a ceasefire. Had he moved forward en masse he would have overrun me and taken those two flags. Don't remember the final tally, but I ended up with the two right flags, the left flag was uncontrolled. I'd lost about half of my total forces, while I think the computer lost a little more than half. Oh how I love this game!

I was having the login problem (using Internet Explorer), but solved it by hitting CTRL-F5 after loggiing in. Looks like the web server is cacheing the page, that key combination forces it to serve you the true current page. (Edited to fix key-strokes: too late a night! ) [ December 13, 2003, 06:25 PM: Message edited by: johnnymo ]

OK, one more ex-SL/ASLer reporting for duty. I may be older, but I'm not wiser! I'd be happy to playtest anything anyone wants to send my way. -Johnnymo

All I can say is...WOW! Talk about fun! It's been so long since I've played SL/COI that I've even forgotten this scenario, which makes it even scarier when those German **spoiler deleted** show up. Thanks for the diversion. It's been an exciting 'final' CMBO battle. Now bring on the REAL Russkies! -Johnnymo

I've always wanted to own Enemy at the Gates, and William Craig is the author of the book I read 10-15 years ago, so I would assume this is the book you want. I may have to buy the paperback, if I can stand looking at the cover. What's weird is I assumed the movie Enemy at the Gates was based on the novel War of the Rats, since it's focusing much more on the sniper duels in Stalingrad than on the overall battle. I would highly recommend reading Enemy at the Gates; it's been so long ago that I read it that I can't recommend how historically accurate it is, but I do remember that it was a good enough read to impress me when I was a teenager. Stalingrad, by Antony Beevor, is another more recent history that I would highly recommend. -Johnnymo

I think this happened to me once, and I believe it was because I was unfamiliar with the system. When I clicked "Done" after watching the movie, I clicked "Go" thinking that all I was doing was watching the movie that turn when in fact, if the "Go" button is there it means it's time for you to issue orders. Once you're done with your orders, THEN hit "Go". This lost turn is of course the reason I'm taking such a beating...