kmead

aka_tom_w wrote: Thats not entirely true on the MAC side. MAC OSX is the killer app and after this Jan 1 2003 new Macs won't boot into OS 9 anymore. That means any new Mac sold after Jan 1 2003 won't play CMBO, CMBB or run Quark Xpress and to Designers that is a BIG one. (ok Maybe Qurak running in Classic under OSX but that is emmulation and it sucks, we now know CMBO/CMBB won't run in classic under OSX due to the RAVE API issue!) I would agree with your point on the PC side (I guess) but for the Mac users MAC OSX takes full advantage of Mulitple processers and if yo are running Dual processors as Most new macs now are you REALLY want OSX to take full advantage of the extra speed. The Next big thing from these guys is slated to run on OSX, they say it will, and I think it will take AT LEAST 2.5 years to GET IT RIGHT and I know they won't release it until they do get it right. -tom w </font>

I am sure that a email to Matt will gain you the knowledge you seek. I suspect a nominal charge along with the cover of your cobbed original manual will do the trick.

I fail to understand where this whole thread is going. The engine rewrite as I have understood it for the last year or more has always been intended to make the graphics much better. The graphics are part and parcel with the AI, battle resolution and all the other shenanigans that go on in this game. Steve and Dan have repeatedly spoken about improving the graphics and how they are added to the game process. BTS clearly understands that graphics are the way to draw in more buyers, but as was stated by several, the current engine was developed to run on the average machine that exists right now. In case you haven't noticed, the computer industry is in a major slump. The average home user is not running out to buy a hot new computer, most applications do not require a hot computer. There is no killer application driving the continuous upgrade cycle. The internet, word processing and minor number crunching are adequately served by the majority of machines out there right now. With the tanking US economy in particular, consumers are buying up cheap consoles for most of their gaming desires. Most people don't want to chase the latest video drivers etc etc. that a high end game requires to run correctly. We here will happily maintain our machines in order to have the heavy crunching ability a console lacks, but we are slowly falling into the minority. Have you noticed how much less floor space at a Best Buy or Circuit City or other electronics retailer is now given over to games for computers versus games for consoles? Clearly CMXX will not be running on a console for the forseeable future, but the trend for general entertianment is established and gaining ground. Back to the original point, I am sure the next game engine will enable much better graphics. The computers available in 3 years will be remarkable in their capabilities. The current RTS will likely be like going to a movie or nearly so. Will CMXX be that good? No but it will model much larger landmasses and features all at once to a greater degree than we enjoy today. I think the resolution of the land will be among the greatest improvements of the new engine from a graphic standpoint. Imagine a much smaller "tile" that we can discern the cover in it (ie lowspots and so on) and the units will actually utilize the terrain feature. Think about the transistions from one type of vegetation to the next, or ditches or small streams versus rivers. Add in all the new game mechanics features and I am sure we will be mightily impressed. Ultimately this game will likely not ever appeal to the unwashed masses. To get good at this game takes alot of time, effort, concentration and a peculiar form of knowledge. Face it there are only so many people on the planet willing to put in the amount of effort needed to even play this game. How many people play chess? Chess has 6 different units. Most of them have very restricted movements and attacks. Most people find it takes too much effort to play. This game is the same only multiplied by 300 different tanks, I don't know how many infantry units and an infinite variety of playing fields. Is it any wonder that we are a rare breed? Sorry for the ramble, its time for dinner. Bye

In addition to some of the reasons stated previously, it is also strongly related to the ability of current computers and the current engine to display and keep track of incapacitated units. This is also part of the whole abstraction issue that is at the basis of this game. CM is not a man for man game, its smallest discernable unit is a squad or in some cases the crew of certain vehicles. What the man left on the field represents is the last point where that unit was a cohesive, combat capable unit that could be directed to complete an action. This issue is the flip side of the 3 man representation of the section. When the CMBO Beta Demo came out, when a unit stopped being commandable, it effectively disappeared. This lead to many debates as to how to appropriately represent units that were no longer available/combat effective. After much debate BFC (BTS at the time) was able to add the simple dead soldier to the game engine. Many wanted blood, guts and gore ala Myth and most RTS games. Charles and Steve (the entire BTS team at the time) chose to not go that route for a variety of reasons. Personally, I think they made the right decision, as I really don't need that level of immersion to enjoy the game. However it has been roundly criticized innumerable times and forms the basis (along with 3 man squads) for some of the strongly polarized debates that have occured with many from the CC/GIC proponents. As I recall, this particular element (the dead/ incapacitated soldier) is unmoddable as it doesn't have its own texture. Charles and Steve did this purposefully, and as it is their game, they have that right. As far as I know, this will not be changed and probably cannot be changed due to limitations in the current game engine. So although you may lament its absence, no amount of request, demand or other communication technique will get it added. If you add your desire to the thread about what the future game engine should include, I am sure that there are others with the same desire. As for me, I don't want more visual elements added as I often have enough trouble keeping track of all the units in some scenarios. I don't need several hundred or even a thousand dead bodies strewn across the landscape as my middle aged little mind can't handle the complexity... [ October 25, 2002, 07:21 AM: Message edited by: kmead ]

You have stated some of what happens in your friends case. Could your friend come on here and be more specific as to the exact problem? What exactly occurs and in what sequence. The vague problem you describe is not widespread and as it is not a recognizable bug, certainly will not be part of the patch. The fix list for the up and coming patch has already been published and is available on the CMBB forum. So to sum up, in order to help we need more info. You have given the first part of the information needed to assist, now we need the rest. Thanks.

Yes, you need to use extension manager to turn off classic rave on machines that are set up to run both OSX and OS9.2.2.

The Rage 128 is in fact a 16mb card. It is adequate but not current. Any of the 32mb cards will do you well. Not all users are having the problem with transparent fog and smoke effects.

The Rage 128 is in fact a 16mb card. It is adequate but not current. Any of the 32mb cards will do you well. Not all users are having the problem with transparent fog and smoke effects.

Kingchupacabra wrote: OS 9.02 is less than ideal. My suggestion would be to run 9.2.2. It is very stable and works well on the DVs. Good luck

Stugs are not uber vehicles, they just happen to be difficult to kill when met on their own terms. Stugs are also quite prevalent, they were among the most produced vehicles Germany had. The point of this game is tactics, not being able to face each unit down 1 for 1. I have had good success with Stugs and gotten my clock cleaned when I have used them, it depends on the tactics, and the situation they are used in. A basic reality of war is that it is not in fact fair or even, The Soviets lost the early war and there was a reason for that happening which included inferior equipment, poor training, a purged officer corp, among many others. The Germans won for the opposite reasons (although inferior equipment does come to mind). Black Void, might I suggest a change or adjustment in tone? Things like, please, thank you, could, is it possible, and other niceties would help immensely in feeling like talking with you. Speaking to others in a strong commanding tone that demands things is a bit wearing for all involved.Please just try not to come on so strong. Have a nice day. Edit: Black Void: I see that you are from Hungary and as such the English that we all use here on the board is your second (or fifth language knowing most Europeans) language. So please accept my apologies if I offend. [ October 21, 2002, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: kmead ]

I have had problems with all games that are left mid game and the computer has gone to sleep. I suspect that the drivers for the video card get corrupt after a while and the machine needs to be restarted. My iMac 400 is left running for days on end (cycling in and out of sleep mode) which seems to be okay for things like Outlook and IE, but is incompatible with games. Yes it would be nice if it could be fixed, but I suspect its as much or more a OS problem as an issue with the game.

In my experience, shutting off the backside cache is not needed. When CMBO came out, it helped some people, but it was a kludge solution. The piece of software you downloaded was intended for a older version of the processors and since yours is much newer than the software it doesn't recognize your newer machines processor. In general disabling the cache is a bad idea and I wouldn't do it. If you are running only OS9 on your iMac, you can disable the Classic Rave extension. Do this by using the extensions manager and restarting. At the same time turn off virtual memory, Mac OS has never worked well with this feature particularly with games. In addition ensure you have given CMBB plenty of memory. I tend to up the amount considerably. For CMBO on my iMac DV I assigned 90mb to it and do the same for CMBB. So far I have had no trouble. Do your self a favor and buy more RAM, its cheap and a bit of extra overhead never hurts.

To follow up on AO's rather anemic reply. There are very few major flaws in the game that would cause your friends problem. If your friend would kindly post the issues they are having along with the OS, video card and related information someone here would likely help them. In regards to AO's comments, ensuring the video card's drivers are up to date would help. As to reinstalling the OS and defraging these could help, but are mainly niceties that would be of questionable assistance.

I don't think this is prevalent or we would see it spoken of repeatedly. I specifically did not have this problem. Have you tried it on several files saved at different times? If it happened with just the one file, it may have been corrupted. If it happens time after time, with multiple files, I would suspect the installation of CMBB. I would reinstall it (from a fresh download).

Sorry if this is obvious, have you tossed your CMBB Prefs file? This contains the video prefs for your machine, and if it was created before your current card was installed it is assuming nothing has changed. The prefs file is in the system folder in a folder called Preferences. Toss the CMBB Prefs file and restart CMBB, it will make a new one utilizing your current hardware. Hope that helps. Secondly is this Titanium a Mac version or a PC version thats been zapped to be used in a Mac?

Yes the AI is a bit inept at attacking. I suspect that there are certain types of terain and units it does better with. CIties would be one of the not so good areas. Units that require subtlety and experience to deploy are also beyond its ken. The AI is there for those times when you cannot find a human to play. The AI is good at defence, but then so are you. In all likelyhood you are not as good at offence as you are defending. Use the AI as a training opponent for honing your attacking tactics. If you want the best out of the game, find a human.

There is no night fighting kit available anywhere in the game. This was extremely rare and is debateable as to whether it was ever used in combat. Especially to the extent we would likely see it used in this game by unscrupulous individuals. IIRC, it was only ever used on Panthers, I could easily be wrong.

Ignatious J. Fathead : I'm not into the culture of these boards and have no idea what this response means. </font>

I suspect that I really should have defragged my HD as I tossed a pile of kids software out to make room. The space was probably parcelled all over the HD. The tip to copy the CD to my HD is a good one and is something I often do, I just didn't have room. I do suspect it was the installer itself that was fairly slow. In either case, as our brethren have been saying: THIS GAME ROCKS! at least if you are a grog.... I don't know if our twitchy friends will even give it a passing glance.

701.4 mb on disk. Need I say more? That was for a Mac only disk. Total install is over 1.17gb. Nearly 8000 files. It took an hour to install. Very impressive.

An hour to install? This is just too much! Over 7900 individual files to install. Come on, you could have kept it down a bit couldn't you? It was bad enough waiting years for it to be finished, then a whole weekend for it to ship, but an hour to install, jeez, I was just waiting for my computer to croak halfway through Really awesome game. I just enjoyed my first quickbattle, kept everything Random ( I don't think I have ever seen the word random repeated so many times). Nice little 20 turn 500 point probe. I was the Germans on defence in April 1945 at the crown of a hill. I kept the Red Army at bay with tremendous casualties. I have to say there are so many great things about how well everything is created. The sounds are fantastic (you really know what is letting rip at any given time, nice!) and all the textures are great, even on my lowly iMac. I will be acquiring a G4 this week so I hope to see some improvement or at least more of all the hard work applied to the visuals. The game runs very well, the AI for vehicles worked very well. A halftrack was getting hits from a anti tank rifle and it moved back out of range, the Stug next to it stayed put as it was just getting ricochets from the same gunner. The infantry worked well and the computer opponent although it lost did a good job of attacking a very difficult to assail objective. A minor quibble. On my measly iMac 400DV with 8mb of vram when I started CMBB it ran fine until the loading of 3d elements (1024x768). I could hear the birds but it wouldn't continue. I couldn't get it to force quit nicely either, I had to do a hard restart using the reset switch. I wish it would do the following two things instead: automatically change resolutions to what the machine can stand, or at least give the user the option to quit the program and change the resolution automatically. Second, when things go bad it should be possible to have it crash to desktop or force quit to desktop rather than having to take the computer down. So just to reiterate, the game is great, and very nicely done. Thank you very much for another excellent job. I still can't get over the hour of install and all the files placed. [ September 23, 2002, 09:47 PM: Message edited by: kmead ]

Happy to have it in beautiful Bland Vapids, MI (that would be Grand Rapids), its been here since this morning but I was stuck at work. Now to pop it into the computer. Need to clear off some of the kids software to do it. Sorry boys...

The tires are faceted to reduce the number of polygons used. To give the appearance of roundness, it would take may many more facets (currently 10 for the 8 around the circumference and 2 for each face). In the future when there is more processor speed and more video ram (on all baseline machines not just you few insane individuals with 256mb video cards). As for the nice round bogeys on the tracks they are painted graphics and do not rotate. That again will require the above improvements in the basic computer configuration. GI Combat has separately modelled suspension parts, and although argueably more accurate than CM they look really dodgey as the tracks don't follow them well. Several other games such as Panzer Commander and Panzer Elite have modelled them quite successfully but both these games ignore or shortchange infantry pretty badly. Basically things like this require compromise, the different companies have made their choices and we can all like or dislike the ones we feel didn't compromise in the right direction. For the most part CMBO/CMBB are not intended to be looked at from very close up as they overall had to reduce the total number of polygons and textures to have alot of units on a given map. Thats why so few things are individually modelled (as 3D objects) but are instead painted on. CMBB has added a great deal of detail in many areas but it still isn't a high resolution model. They are very accurate in terms of scale, proportion and so on. Much better than in Panzer Commander, Panzer Elite and GI Combat in my view.

I would guess a minimum of 2 years to preorder. Likely closer to 3 if they choose not to add a programmer. Given that this is Charle's labor of love he may wish to go it alone. Hard to say.

I just missed that bullet last Wednesday. They let half my department go (well a little more than half 5 out of 9). Now we have one manager for each employee in my group. I suspect it will become "well Karl if you just move the mouse this way we think you will create better results..." The guys who left got 6 mos severance, vacation pay, 6 mos COBRA and retraining at management company. I got , three more people's workload added to mine. :mad: