kmead

Karsten: As Karch has pointed out, the Mac you have today will continue to support the ability to run Mac OS9 for as long as you have it installed. It is likely that new Macs next year will no longer have 9 installed as a bootable OS and may not even allow booting into 9. So yes those computers may not run CMBO or CMBB at all unless Apple fixes Rave. This is unfortunate, but it is not a make it or break it issue for Apple and likely not for BTS, although they will certianly miss the market share. As was pointed out by our esteemed forum member above, please get your facts clear before running off and yelling wolf. This is not the first thread on this subject, we have been talking about this ever since OSX was released and so far BTS has not been able to take the time to make the needed changes to the game. Apple has also not seen fit to fix Rave. Apple is the one you should really be complaining to, so please do. In the mean time please throttle back a bit and enjoy the CMBO you have not and CMBB when it comes out.

My post was meant merely to show that Apple is not the only one trying to move users to newer OS's. What it was not was a criticism of MS. OSX is a very good operating system that brings Apple into better feature parity with MS in regards to memory protection etc etc. Eventually MS will be in the same boat, having to be limited to the X86 instruction sets is someday going to become too limited. This also isn't a criticism of MS, Intel or any other PC mfr, its just that time does march on and more capabilities will require a new foundation. Apple is a manufacturer and developer, not a welfare state anymore than MS is. They need to sell stuff in order to keep people employed and shareholders happy. I work for a company that does the same, I like that I get a paycheck. Apple has their way of generating a revenue stream, I find it agreeable and continue to buy their products. Clearly some of you do not and therefore you don't buy their products which is fine. Is it frustrating that Apple will eventually abandon a familiar OS, certainly. Is it the end of the world, no, as OSX will certainly bring many new opportunities and capabilities we will be happy to have. I frankly do not want to ever go back to OS 6, 7 or 8 (much less 1, 2 or 3 or DOS, Win 1.0, Win 3.x etc) regardless of the age of my computer, nor do I ever want to go back to a 68xxx based system, a 601/604 or anything with less than 400mhz processor speed ( ). Would I like Apple to fix the Rave problem so I can play my favorite game? Certainly, but frankly CMBO/CMBB will not be the killer app that regulates my computer buying habits. I just don't play games enough with 6 cars of various ages (as old a 33 years), 3 kids, a house to renovate, a job that requires a minimum of 60 hrs each week, and a wonderful wife who needs nurturing. I certainly will buy CMBB and look forward to enjoying it for many years as I suspect this iMac I am now typing on will remain OS9 bound for the rest of its natural life.

I strongly doubt this upcoming generation of G4 towers will the first OSX only Macs. There is still too much that isn't available for OSX to turn off OS9 right now. I agree with OSRumours that it will be sometime next year. Like Hoopenfuast, I run a ID departments worth of Macs (17) and if I were to buy a new OSX only machine, I would have to also buy all new software or at least rev what we have (a boon to Adobe). This would likely rival the cost of the machine itself and several products are just not available in OSX versions yet (such as Ashlars 3D modelers). Once I rev one machines software I generally have to rev all of them so that we have file parity accross the department. A huge expense for all the software and hardware, especially now when many companies (including mine) are very capital conscious. By the way Apple is not alone in this moving away from older operating systems, today Microsoft announced that they wouldn't be developing any new or revising any hardware or software drivers for Win 98 v2, NT 4.0 or NT server 4.0. My company is still floating in the doldrums of Win 95 on many existing machines (thousands of them) and most of our ProE boxes are running NT4.0. So MS in their own inimitable way are performing the same trick of killing a old OS by neglecting it to death.

For machines that already exist such as yours, you will always be able to use OS9 as long as Apple doesn't change the firmware radically. Firmware is some of the basic boot code (sort of like the lower cortex in humans that controls breathing and heart beating) and if they change that such that it no longer allows for OS9 then your machine would change. I doubt Apple will do anything of the sort. As for new machines, I would say that in the next year as enough apps are created for OSX that Steve (Jobs ) will decree a OSX only machine. We are not there yet and I haven't seen any rumors to that effect yet. So do not hesitate to buy the latest hardware for the forseeable future. Now if Apple would update Classic mode to use a new version of the Rave API, BTS wouldn't have any problem running under OSX. So we all should be showering Apple and Steve Jobs with our vitriole, this really is an Apple problem. A letter writing campaign, shall we?

Really an excellent report, thank you for taking the time. I wouldn't feel too bad about the plasma display versus the 29" monitor... Nice job!

Without a doubt having CMBB running native or in Classic with hardware acceleration would be a great thing and a definite boon to sales. I agree that there will be lost sales as so many computer users are just that, users and not geeks. This I suspect may be somewhat more likely on the part of Mac users than MSW per capita. :confused: Audiophile: I hadn't noticed your member number so it stands to reason that you would not be aware of the CM3 and beyond being on a new engine. The CMBB hysteria around here has been intense so little details like that haven't been brought up as much as they used to. CM3 is expected to be the Mediteranean theatre, covering Greece, North Africa and Italy. CM4 will be the early war covering Poland and then the 1940 push across France and the Low Countries. CM 5 is presumed to be a rework of CMBO. Of course things change so who knows. One thing that we can do to ensure that future development is to buy CMBB I join Gyrene in the beggars can't be choosers category as so few interesting (to me) game titles come out for the Mac. Especially war games that are not FPSs. What I would truly enjoy is a platoon scale game akin to a game I used to have on my Apple IIe that was a top down. What I would like is effectively view one from CM and a top down Map view showing my units and enemy units both known and expected (from intelligence data) that updates as the scenario develops. Maybe even allows for interactive markups. I will try and flesh out this idea sometime using CMBO, Photoshop and a few of my other tools to make a representation we can all look at. Probably in the fall after bad weather sets in.

Schrullenhaft : Thanks for the followup, I have seen some recent posts from the London get together that indicate that my lime iMac will still do the job. Thanks again;

This is great news, I have been very worried about this issue as I plug along at home with my G3 400 Lime iMac. Thanks for that info. Big thumbs up! [ July 12, 2002, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: kmead ]

Audiophyle: First off, we are all lucky enough to be able to voice our opinions here and we are happy you can and do. When OSX really got rolling I was really strong on the bandwagon for a update of CMBO, I suspect to the point that Matt was willing or at least interested in seeing the last of me , happily there were more annoying people around at the time. Yes, its alright to vote with your wallet as well, even an excellent thing depending on the cause. In this case however, I believe you may be biting your nose to spite your face. Not buying the Mac version of CMBB will send the wrong message as the fewer Mac sales they have on CMBB the less likely they may be to continue to develop for the Mac. With CMBB there will be a Mac disk and a MSW disk, so they will be able to very clearly track sales by platform. No one outside of the fine folks at BTS/BFC know how many sales there were, and only they know what their business can support in terms of personnel. CMBO was built by a small team, Charles and Steve. The code I am sure is very personal and therefor most clearly understood by Charles who primarily wrote it. For him to explain to another individual what was done and why and then manage them doing the work is a job in and of itself. Could a team do a faster job? Of course, once the team got rolling. It would be a much different job for Steve and Charles, who both came from big game houses in the past. I think in starting this company they intentionally chose not to go that route for a variety of reasons. Before they hired Matt and Martin to do whatever it is that they do I am sure they thought long and hard about enlarging the company relative to their final aims. Consider that each full time employee costs @100K+ after all the taxes and insurance are accounted for. That means they have to ensure they will earn that money back plus the necessary ROI for putting their or a banks money on the line until the product is sold. Does their approach have a cost? Sure, if CMBB came out a few months earlier they would have more possible selling days for the product (this is a opportunity cost) versus the sunk investment that those selling days would require with more employees. I suspect that BTS has larger personal issues about adding staff: finding the right people who they want to work with for a long time; ensuring that they have a viable business model that can support more people for an extended period so they don't have to RIF people they care about; and others I don't fathom. So can you boycott the product? Yup. Will it help? Probably not. I will buy CMBB for a variety of reasons. First I think it will be a first rate product that I will enjoy and in all likelyhood I will buy the Mac version for myself and the MSW version for my Dad. Second I respect the people that are producing the product, they put their names out there, put their beliefs out there and in general are real standup people. The type that in my circles get referred to as "good people", and therefor worth standing up for as they would stand up for you. So I urge you to do what you want as is your right and just hope that includes CMBB whether it works in OSX or not.

I know this is a bit early, but I do need to plan for that wonderful day when CMBB rolls out. I currently enjoy CMBO on a iMac 400 mhz with a whopping 8mb of vram. This is adequate with minimal mods. With the much greater resolution in CMBB I know my intrepid iMacs will have met their match. I know CMBB will downgrade textures automatically but will it downgrade them enough for me to run it on such decrepit machines as I posess? I have been considering going through all the texures on the CMBB CD and using a PS batch process to reduce the size and resolution (if needed) of each texure. I know there is the larger issue of the number of polygons hard coded into the game for each object. This issue alone may overcome my efforts rendering my iMacs into kids software and internet only devices (ok I can still play CMBO successfully ). Many thanks in advance. (Dan its not that I don't appreciate your textures, they are looking great and all the other great features of CMBB. Its just at the moment with the furniture industry downturn that I cannot justify getting a new computer at the moment.) [ July 06, 2002, 09:31 AM: Message edited by: kmead ]

iMac RevB, 233 mhz, 192 mb ram, 6mb vram iMac SE 400 mhz, 256 mb ram, 8 mb vram I will likely have to upgrade for CMBB, though I may look at reducing texture resolution to allow the SE to run it. By this I mean to use batch process to reduce resolution or size of each texture file. I will see if this will work.

Ok here is my take on a release date for CMBB: July 17 at the Macworld Expo in NY. I can see it now, Steve Jobs welcoming Steve, Charles and Matt to the stage (Matt will be there to hold back the throngs of CM well wishers and groupies) to demo the just released CMBB a simultaneous MacOS and MSW release; and of course its made on a Mac and ported to MSW.... OK so maybe not, but it seemed like a nice dream....

Hmm, lets see, the boys are both in the Independance Day parade and then theres the park afterwards that I could dump them off at with some cash. That would buy me a few hours, but not enough. I like the idea of the traveling roadshow, lets see a forty city tour starting with Chicago, then Grand Rapids, Detroit. winding its way east, south, west and back to Chicago. I can assure you we would all chip in to pay for your hotel room. A night in each city, all night party and then on your way again. Of course a few of us could be roadies to set up the equipment and become the experts on the software so a high quality demo could be done. So what do you say? Sorry I will not be able to attend, but I sure would like to. Maybe Barold713 will be kind enough to come back and enlighten me. Is video allowed? Thanks for the magnanimous offer Rune and BFC.

There are several issues here. First as has been pointed out, once you run off the end of the track you will likely dig in unless you are on pavement or hard ground. You are also likely to move in an arc while on the remaining track and as most WW2 tanks couldn't pivot in place anyway. The next major issue here is time. Even a long battle of 60 turns would not be enough to recover a tank much less repair a track under fire. To tow a tank requires that several crew member exit the tank, take off a very stiff cable attach it to the pintles of both vehicles (and reposition the one working vehicle in the process which requires unbuttoning). Then moving both vehicles to a place of relative safety. In all likelyhood this would be under fire expecially in any of CMBOs games and just as likely with CMBB. You also take the very real risk of bogging the operable vehicle or even causing a mechanical failure of the second vehicle. You also have to have two vehicles or like size or a tow vehicle that is bigger than the towee (meaning a Panther to remove a Panther, Tiger for Tiger and so on). As for fixing a track in place, all tracks weigh a ton, literally. If you look in some of the old pictures (of TIger 1s in particular as they changed tracks after rail transport and added the outer row of bogey wheels after the movement so there arel lots of pics out there of the work) you can see how they used to change a track with a cable wrapped around the drive sprocket to pull the track back over the tension bogey. On a tank without idlers (like the Panther, Tiger or an M113) it would pull the track back over the tops of the bogey wheels relatively easily (considering the bogeys weren't turning and the rubber is grabbing the track). On a vehicle like the Sherman or Chaffee with idler wheels to carry the track back to the drive sprocket you had to lead the track up and over to some degree each idler. Once the track gets to the drive sprocket you reengage it with the teeth and draw the vehicle forward slowly until the two ends of the track are near each other in front of the first bogey wheel. The crew also would have to loosen the tensioning on the tensioning bogey to create slack for the next step. You then have to align the track ends and hold them in plane to drive te pin in with a sledge hammer. This is really hard work for the whole crew and takes alot of time and finesse with really large objects that have no interest in cooperating. All in all, I believe that BTS/BFS were correct in not having this in the current game and presumeably not in CMBB. The time span and the likerlyhood of being under fire makes it very unlikely to do any of thes things in game.

Thanks, we have pointed this out also. I don't know if they will take the time given the market opportunity of OSX only users. If they did do this it would be the ultimate irony as the Mac version is the "master version" and the PC version was translated from it (even tested partially under VirtualPC on a Mac). Anyway thanks for pointing this out, I suspect that at the moment the boys at BTS have their hands full with CMBB. It will be a while before they have time to make additions to CMBO if ever. Immediately after the release they will be chasing hopefully minor bugs and making balance shifts of units and features (armor penetration, likelyhood of hitting, ammo availability and so on), after that they will likely take a much needed vacation before starting on the new engine that will power CM3 North Africa and the Mediteranean , CM4 Poland to Dunkirk and eventually CMBO2 the late western front again. As for CMBB, Steve mentioned an outside chance of finding a way to make CMBB compatible with OSX. There has been no followup that I am aware of since. Heres hoping. [ June 23, 2002, 03:48 PM: Message edited by: kmead ]

I apologize, but I just am not seeing this as a improvement. Most of the detail in these is just going away in the deepened shadows. I personally do not use high res textures myself so I live with lower quality, but this really is not the way I wish to see the vehicles. The one screenshot that looks good to me is the night shot, giving the appearance of moonlight and deep shadow on the off sides. Beyond that this is clearly not for me. Dan, kindly do not change any of the textures one iota, especially not in this direction.

I think this is a good idea. I also think that at the moment, the degree of shadowing is too great and accentuates the blocky polygonal (low polygon count) quality of the current CMBO models. I think that with some addtional adjustment of the values you are using it would be more realistic and attractive. As it is now, it looks crude and really doesn't add to the fine work that the mod artists have provided you with. I applaud your efforts and merely suggest that fine tune your approach. For example, the ground reflects light upward so you might consider applying your effect differently to the lower portions of the bmps like the suspension and lower glacis. Using the rendering mode as a gradient from the bottom to the top will give the effect I describe. In any case keep experimenting to get to where this is a improvement.

Might I suggest the tech forum where they keep the tech gnome? He can answer most any question. Please put a note there, state the type of computer you own, the OS, the type of video card and if possible the drivers. Explain the problem in some detail so that he may assist you more quickly with the fewest number of back and forth notes. If you have already done so, my apologies, have a nice day.

Patgod: I too am a Vermonter, ex patriate for the foreseeable future. When I moved to California in the late 80s I would constantly get "so where in Canada is that?" or "what state's that in?" I am from the Marshfield/Plainfield area (just east of the middle of nowhere known as Montpeculier...) Welcome to the board as full fledged owner of some BTS stock (in trade)! I believe the order fulfill is in Burlington, though that doesn't mean it will get there much faster with the US Snail. [ April 29, 2002, 07:51 PM: Message edited by: kmead ]

This particular issue was noticed back during the beta demo days. There is a scenario in the Beta demo that included Hellcats, they could accelerate hell bent for leather down a steep hill and then stop on a dime. At the time BTS stated the current game engine couldn't accomodate the added code required to decelerate different vehicles at different rates (imagine a road full of mixed vehicles and what would be needed to get them to behave properly). Different speeds, wieghts and brake quality and performance would all be factors. I can assure you accurate info for the braking ability of 50 year old vehicles does not exist. Look at how little accurate non conflicting information exists on turret rotation speed for example. Yes it would be nice, and add to the immersion and cool factor. I doubt mightily that it will change in CMBB, though you never know with BTS...

It is a Grant. The Lee has a larger turret which allowed radio gear to be placed there. The British used the Lee primarily (the larger turret was to their specification), and many Grants went to the USSR. I think the idea put forth above about the Grant being a captured USSR Lend Lease vehicle has a lot of merit. Nice find. You can imagine the infantry on top of that slope plugging the Panther through its bottom plates pretty easily. Though if they missed you wouldn't want to be around for the fireworks...

Very impressive. I look forward to now having three versions of CMBO on my Mac... Seems we will be able to get some idea of whether or not the CM engine could work with island hopping... Nice job

I too see this as a very good thing. It will be a serious drain on time for BTS. In regards to the Direct X issue, I would assume that it will take the direct X version of the game and change all the calls to DX screen calls to OpenGL screen calls. Direct X would not need to be present on the Mac, as all of the code directed towards DX would become Mac OS X code with no Microsoft software involved after the conversion. That is the thing to keep in mind that you would be taking the MSW version of CMBO and translating it into a Mac version. This would be a native OSX conversion and not a Windows version running in emulation (which is what the Mac OS8/9 is doing under OSX today and why it is failing to run properly.) If this could work, it would be ironic as the MSW version is a port from the Mac OS8/9 version of the game as it was never native on the PC. Note that Charles uses a MSW emulator to check basic code on his Mac for the Windows version. Sorry if my verbose explanation was already clear to everyone, but it seemed as if some people are confused about what the finished product would be. The biggest thing that this might do is allow BTS to graft a Open GL conversion onto the Rave based engine without having to redo the base engine. Maybe. Either way it will be a lot of work, I think it would be worth it but if the new engine for the future of the game is moved out in time that alot more potential gamers on both platforms are likely to be lost (ie the opportunity cost of each day of sales missed by not having the new engine in two years is likely a greater cost than is the small number of sales lost to MacOSX users.) Make no mistake, I would love to have an OSX version of both CMBO and CMBB much sooner than later.

Here is the solution to your problem, when your pbem opponent doesn't zip or otherwise compress their file: a. save as text, the pbem is all of that silly text. b. highlight all of the silly text in the message, copy it, open a text editor such as Word, Simpletext, or similar, and paste it in. Save as text file. A more vexing problem I have run into is that my email system (at the time) would garble the end of the file and CMBO wouldn't open it. Or it was not sending the complete file through. Thus I had to have my opponent resend the file compressed. Hope that helps.

When you are on the recieving end, particularly during daylight, tracer is much less noticeable. So as an indicator of shell track to weapon it is not always as obvious as you might expect.