David Aitken

I once ran 20 yards with a water pistol... I think BTS's modelling is all wrong.

Basebal351 wrote: > You can't tell me these shifts, and drops in national morale and a dedication to a cause didn't affect these troops, as well as native German troops, espescially if it was enough to sway an entire country!! Comments like "it was enough to sway an entire country" are extreme generalisations. The overall picture may be negative, but the situation with individual units and individual battles may or may not reflect this. Regardless of their nationality, people have different allegiances and different goals, and find themselves in different situations. You can't say that the prevailing situation in a country is going to affect every one of its soldiers in the same way. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Basebal351 wrote: > Would it not be unrealistic for a late-war German commander to send a squad of inexperienced men out on recon, who would surrender to the first American forces they encountered? It's realistic, and INTERESTING too. I think this would be highly annoying. The kind of battle you describe would basically involve sitting back and waiting for the enemy to roll up your defences. You need to be able to rely on your men to some degree, otherwise the battle is not worth playing. A situation where everyone is surrendering or running away is a good basis for a psychological study, not a computer game. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Subvet wrote: > We're talking overall trends here. I'm sure there were some real cowards in even the most fanatic units and some heroes that would take incredible punishment in the most green units. That doesn't stop us from having elite and green units in CM does it? We are indeed talking trends, and it is completely irrelevant to an individual battle in CM. Maybe, if you tallied up all the men of Army B who fought in the Second World War, they would be seen to have fought, on the whole, 20% worse than the average for all of the Army A combatants. But where does that fit in to a specific scenario? If a green Army A patrol is ambushed by a group of unusually experienced Army B soldiers, what relevance have the overall statistics of the war? None. CM models specific, individual encounters, and in this situation, anything can happen. As you say, you can still have green or elite troops. But if all men of Army B were to be – to some degree – less effective than men of other armies, then elite Army B troops would always be of a lower calibre than the opposition. This just totally confuses matters – if you want an Army A patrol to be ambushed by slightly better Army B troops, say regulars against veterans, you would find that the veterans do not match up to the regulars, because they are supposedly inferior as a whole. There is just no basis for applying general statistics to specific battles. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Basebal351 wrote: > Russians would surrender by the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, because they didn't believe they could win, or didn't want to fight for Stalin's Red Army. How do you model some squads or platoons giving up without a fight, or hardly resisting at all?? This kind of thing happened in war, but what would be the point of simulating it in CM? Who would want to play a battle where, historically, one side rolled up in armoured vehicles and the other dropped their weapons and ran away? A scenario is not worth playing unless both sides have some chance of making an impact. Having half your guys surrender is completely pointless. CM is a game – it can't possibly model the psychological aspects of war – it can only model the battles where both sides actually fought. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Lawyer wrote: > Where's the racism? They're all white guys. Maybe you mean culturism. Race is not dependent on physical appearance. It can refer to nationality as well. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Maximus wrote: > Now you tell me that there isn't somewhat of a nationality or quality programed into the behavior of these troops. I've also noticed that British troops do the same thing quite often as well. Ironically, the Free French seem to fight better than even the British. Maybe it's that they wear the same uniform as the '44 pattern American troops. So you think BTS have modelled Polish and British troops as cowards, and anyone wearing an American uniform as a bulletproof hero? ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Exactly.

This has been discussed before. Anti tank team problems David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Read this: Anti tank team problems David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Juardis wrote: > Is there a minimum range below which sharpshooters will not engage? Yes. Sharpshooters are long-range weapons – they will not engage in close combat. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

gaffertape wrote: > Anyone know about the potential 'speeding up' of the game if we converted the bmps to B&W? The game will still run in 16-bit even if the bitmaps are monochrome. You can improve performance by making the bitmaps physically smaller, but colour depth is irrelevant. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Freak wrote: > What does the higher resolution do for you. I was making out a list, but I didn't see the point of trying to explain it. Basically, in high-res you can see better. Seeing better is a Good Thing. In CM you deal with a lot of (seemingly) little men and vehicles, so the higher the resolution, the better a feel you get for what's going on. Sure, you can zoom in and examine things, but only in one area at a time. If you were to play a few battles in high-res (on a capable machine), and then go back to low-res, you wouldn't be in any doubt of the benefits. I compromise on framerate in order to play high-res – that's how much I like it. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

aikidorat wrote: > what color depth are you getting with the nexus, say at 800x600? Generally I use 1280x960 in 32-bit colour (millions). For CM I switch to 1600x1200. I actually use low-quality smoke, because high-quality slows the framerate too much. I could obviously switch to a lower resolution, but I like high-res too much. Besides, smoke in itself is the only thing that causes slowdowns, so I don't want it. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Freak wrote: > Does the nexus give you transparent buildings and all the other goodis that are in CM graphically? Ummm... it's essentially one of the best graphics cards you could get for the Mac before the Voodoo 4/5 and the ATI Radeon. It's also the most compatible, considering all Macs in the past few years have shipped with ATI graphics. Up until recently all blue G3s and G4s have shipped with what is essentially an underclocked ATI RAGE 128 Orion. The retail Orion is better, and the retail Nexus was, up until recently, the best. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Mannheim Tanker wrote: > I've read that the human eye can only distinguish between roughly 16 shades of gray This does not mean that an image with only 16 shades of grey will look as good as one with 256. I expect it means that, presented with blocks of colour, you could only pick out 16 which were obviously different from each other. Elijah Meeks wrote: > What hard-coded images? The unit bases spring to mind... > If need be, I'll do it, as I have Photoshop and can operate a darned filter as well as anyone. Anyone with a Mac can just switch their monitor to greyscale. I don't know if you can do that with PCs. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Freak wrote: > The Voodoo 4 has just come out and has 2xfsaa. As far as I know, only Voodoo 5 has FSAA. > I could take the simple route and just get the rage orion card. Its $100 and has full support for CM from what i am told. aikidorat wrote: > I've been using the rage orion since it came out [...] I think the hi res mods that I've added are starting to push the 16 meg vram though The RAGE Nexus I mentioned is effectively an Orion with double the RAM (32Mb), and it's not too much more expensive than the Orion. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

Jadayne wrote: > BTW, why did you remove the link to your website you used to use as a sig? Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't. My website address is in my profile – that button is just for my CM page. I think the PCI Radeon is due out in a month or so. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

I doubt the game engine goes into the detail of specific positions, but I expect the calculations will assume that a soldier is making best use of the available cover. The 'kneeling' graphic is simply to visually distinguish an active soldier from one who is taking cover. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

If you have a beige G3, you want a PCI Voodoo 5500 or an ATI Radeon (PCI Radeon not yet available). For a blue-and-white G3 get the AGP version (I think newer G3s have AGP slots... G4s certainly do). Personally I'd go for the Radeon, as ATI cards tend to perform better at high resolutions, and they're also more Mac-compatible. (I have an ATI RAGE 128 Nexus card for my beige G3, and I play CM at a resolution of 1600x1200 - that's the best pre-Radeon ATI card - you could probably pick one up cheap.) Jadayne wrote: > (about 3 hours before they're both ripped apart and eaten alive by vampires) ** SPOILER for scenario "From Dusk Til Dawn" ** =) David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 10-25-2000).]

I know this isn't a serious topic, but I have some serious thoughts on the matter. Russell's picture illustrates an important issue - without colour, everything merges together and it becomes more difficult to work out what you're looking at. Monochrome is fine for films, as these are artistic and the director spends a lot of time thinking about where to point the camera. But where a control interface is concerned, and what you see hasn't been carefully chosen beforehand, monochrome is just a plain hindrance. Karch brings up an important point - the vast majority of visual records from the war are monochrome, so we end up feeling that the war was fought in black and white. This is unfortunate, and I think we should all make every effort to picture the war as it really was, not as it has been presented to us. Serious mode OFF - two comments: Sepia and Contrast. Plain monochrome is a bit bland, and when you remove colour, you need something else to provide definition. David ------------------ Somewhere between a joke and a conspiracy

I once ran a forward observer across a field towards a treeline, which he almost reached by the end of a turn – and at the very beginning of the next turn, suddenly a Wirbelwind materialised literally in front of his nose and put lots of holes in him. It wasn't in the trees – they were woods, so it couldn't even have come out of the trees. ------------------ Guderian's anger was monumental. He struggled for words. "To say that the troops are to blame – look at the casualties!" he raged. "Look at the losses! The troops did their duty! Their self-sacrifice proves it!" Hitler yelled back. "They failed!" he raged. "They failed." [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 10-24-2000).]

If only Monty had known about that bug during Operation Market Garden! ------------------ Guderian's anger was monumental. He struggled for words. "To say that the troops are to blame – look at the casualties!" he raged. "Look at the losses! The troops did their duty! Their self-sacrifice proves it!" Hitler yelled back. "They failed!" he raged. "They failed."

MichaelU wrote: > I looked at the pics from the Imperial War Museum, only now I'm not so sure meeting you guys is a good idea. LOL They're probably infantry – they all look bloody miserable. ------------------ Guderian's anger was monumental. He struggled for words. "To say that the troops are to blame – look at the casualties!" he raged. "Look at the losses! The troops did their duty! Their self-sacrifice proves it!" Hitler yelled back. "They failed!" he raged. "They failed."

What's with the padlock mania? ------------------ Guderian's anger was monumental. He struggled for words. "To say that the troops are to blame – look at the casualties!" he raged. "Look at the losses! The troops did their duty! Their self-sacrifice proves it!" Hitler yelled back. "They failed!" he raged. "They failed."