David Aitken

Vyper wrote: > I've never come across a negative comment about the M24. The M24 sucks! There, you got one now. =) David

Dienekes - I'm calm, I just like making borderline posts. =P You might consider more carefully your choice of subject lines. I hate statements like that - you're basically saying you're right and BTS are wrong at the outset, even if the content of your post isn't so direct. Another guy recently posted with the subject line "Interface needs work", which I think is a lot more snotty than I'm being. It's like all the headlines I read in the paper - "1 in 5 will die of cancer" or "Why we're all coffee addicts". They're direct, and uncompromising, and usually untrue. So try using questions instead. "Are enough men killed in CM?" That's effectively what you're trying to say - you're posing a question, but your subject line doesn't make it look that way. First impressions are important. David

Dienekes - Remember that in Combat Mission, everything you see is abstracted. Just because your town looks flattened doesn't mean it's actually flat with no cover. As I've said elsewhere, rubble provides very good cover. It's not as easy to kill things in CM as it is in Doom. Remember that each man is not a zombie running towards you with an axe - he's an individual, seeking to preserve himself - and humans tend to be pretty good at preserving themselves. This is modelled in the game. I'm sure any commander from a real war would testify how difficult it is to root out the enemy by any means. Throwing everything you've got at a city and razing it to the ground doesn't automatically kill everybody inside. Everything in CM is soundly modelled. If you've got hard evidence that more men should be killed in a bombardment, let's hear it. If it's just a hunch, forget it and play the damn game. David

John - Almost everything you see in Combat Mission is abstracted. It is just a graphical representation of the calculations the computer is doing. I highly recommend you just buy the game. If you liked Close Combat, you will love this. The engine is incredibly sophisticated, like nothing that's been done before. Then you'll get a manual, which will tell you absolutely everything you wanted to know about how the game works and how different things are modelled. You don't get much of a manual with most games these days, but Combat Mission's manual is indispensible. In situations like you suggest, where a tank should leave a hole in a wall or whatever - this is really not something you worry about when you're playing the game properly. Just be assured that everything is beautifully modelled under the hood. There is less need for a 'roster' in CM than in CC. In CC you've got little pictures of troops scattered all over the place, and you can't possibly work out what is what without a roster. In CM, you've got command lines, you've got unit bases, you've got a lock-to-unit function, you've got a select-next-unit function, you've got an enlarge function, etcetera. I say again - get used to playing the game. Don't try and play it like Close Combat, because while it may look similar, it works completely differently. Decide whether you want the game or not. If you do, buy it. Then play it for a couple of months, and once you've actually got used to the way it works, THEN come back and ask for a roster. Don't just take one look and come running in here complaining that it's not the same as Close Combat. David

To hell with rosters. Combat Mission's interface is beautifully minimalist, and I wouldn't change a thing about it. I don't need a hundred-and-one different statistics panels cluttering up my screen. I have never had any difficulty finding units, even when I was playing at 800x600 resolution. You can keep platoons together by looking at the command lines. Each platoon HQ has lines going out to his squads. John, some advice: 1. Read the manual. 2. Use the forum search functions if you have questions on a particular subject. 3. Get used to playing the game before you start asking for it to be renamed Close Combat 3D. David

snagdad - First off, no, CM would not currently benefit from dual processors. The main app you'll see a difference in is Photoshop, because it has special MP plug-ins. However, I understand that OS X takes full advantage of multiple processors, and I assume it would pass this benefit on to all apps - so buying an MP now would set you up nicely for next year. I don't think MPs will cease to be supported, but they might be something of a 'limited edition'. The MP G4s are still, as you say, very much a stop-gap. G4s are bloody fast - quite possibly as fast as a GHz Pentium - but as long as their MHz is slower they've got a PR problem. Apple is aware of this, hence the MPs. Motorola are desperately trying to pump up the clock speed of their chips, so we should see inherently faster processors before the end of the year. It's been too long since Apple released any really impressive new hardware. The new G4s should have packed ATI's Radeon cards (which kick ass, even compared to Voodoo) - but whether or not they were _going_ to, ATI announced they would, Steve Jobs allegedly threw a tantrum and it was back to the old RAGE 128's. Everyone knows Apple hasn't supported games well enough. iMacs shipped with RAGE Pro graphics chips for quite a while, which was absolutely pathetic. Gaming support is one of Steve Jobs's objectives, though (at least it was, and I think it still is) - they just haven't got their act together properly yet. GameSprockets is quite popular amongst game developers, and OS X will feature a whole new set of technologies to assist programmers. And on that subject, everyone is looking forward to OS X, because it's based on Unix, which programmers love - whereas they all hate the currently Mac OS core which is ancient. It won't be a moment too soon, but come next year, we'll get fast G4s (or G5s), Radeon cards and Mac OS X, and the Mac will be as sorted as it's ever been. David

Okay, who has ever actually used a Hotchkiss? Haven't got that far personally. =) I think battles with large, weak forces are great. The outcome is never so sudden as with small elite forces. For example, if you're playing with a couple of Tigers and some infantry, and your Tigers buy it, you're basically screwed. The other day I did a test battle with an Elite Panther against a Regular Comet, two Challengers, two Cromwells and two Sherman Vs. The very first shot my tanks fired, by one of the Challengers, penetrated the Panther's turret and killed the commander (at pretty long range too). That single fluke shot meant the Panther was now crippled, but he still killed off both Challengers and the Comet before I outflanked him with the Shermans. Best not to put all your eggs in one basket. David

marcusm wrote: > A church with a graveyard makes for a more realistic village imo. Just give it a yard surrounded by bocage - looks great, very medieval. David

Well, it's not impossible that a surrendered unit would be too shocked to immediately jump up and run away when there are no captors in sight. If you surrender, you're in dire fear for your wellbeing, so you're not going to risk being noticed trying to escape. If lots of your own guys show up, that's when you'd cease to regard yourself as captured. David P.S. Playing 'Last Defence' in the beta demo as the Germans, I captured a US rifle squad just at the diagonal row of small buildings on the US right flank. My men swept past and into the bigger buildings, and no sooner had I done so, that rifle squad was shooting them in the back! Naturally I sent my Tiger to have a word with them. =) [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 08-05-2000).]

Yeah, in CM, just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. I hear people a lot saying "there were no X units nearby" - well how do you know? Buttoned (or smoke-shrouded) tanks _constantly_ get taken out by infantry they never see. David

Mark IV wrote: > Well, it does subtract them from the ammo load, one at a time, doesn't it? > And it seems to count time well enough, as in the "Pause 15, 30, 45 seconds" commands. Yeah, I know it counts time, that's what I'm saying. Say your tank is firing for 60 seconds. The game doesn't tell the tank to fire off X number of rounds - it tells the tank to start firing. The tank then fires off rounds at its rate of fire, and keeps a note of how many rounds it's got left, until it's told to stop firing. You might say "well, a bazooka usually only fires a single round at a tank". (Then again you might not, but bear with me. =) ) The bazooka will fire at its maximum rate as long as the tank is within range. However, very often the tank will move out of range, or the bazooka will be suppressed before it has time to fire again. But for as long as the tank is a feasible target, that bazooka is 'switched on'. It is 'firing' even when it's not actually launching a projectile. What I'm saying is, when telling units what to do, the game isn't interested in individual rounds - it's a case of a unit being 'on' or 'off' - firing or not. The unit keeps track of its rounds, but this is only with hindsight. Say it's coming to the end of the 60 seconds. The loader slams a shell into the breech, and the commander is just about to shout "fire" - but oops, time's up, so they immediately 'switch off'. Time is the instruction they're given, and ammuntion is the result they note down afterwards. By the way Mark, I think my time as a web programmer has left an impression on me - I just know how soul-destroying it is when people come back to you asking for this to be changed and that to be redone. In fact, it's the same for my current line of work (illustration). That said, I'd make a very good politician - not always inclined to actually do anything, but do always have a lot to say on the subject! David should be in bed cause it's bloody 5am

It's not shadows that are the problem - I mean, they would be the queen of all bitches to model, but you wouldn't bother trying. The problem is dynamically increasing visibility to simulate the effect of a flare. You could probably increase the visiblity over the whole map, but doing this in a small area would be nigh-on impossible. Okay, you fire a flare - but even if your mortar is able to make out his target, will he see enough to be able to hit it? Once the flare dies, how does he know he's still hitting his target? And what happens if the target moves? Doesn't seem worth it to me. Mortars are useless and night - live with it. David

Why _wouldn't_ we be glad CM is selling fast? =) By the way, when tiny unknown companies with limited finances produce a really popular and fast-selling game, it's never too long before Micro$oft comes calling. David

TeAcH wrote: > what you illustrate begs the question: Why do I need to move to the side? The simple answer is, because you're playing a 3D game on a 2D screen. You can point in a given direction, but the computer doesn't know what depth you want to target at. This is okay when aiming at the ground, but when you're shooting at a deep object like a building, it becomes a problem. It's up to Charles whether or not the game can be tweaked to work around this. David

Disaster wrote: > Halo has not been put on hold, however rumours fly that it will not be appearing on the X-Box. Instead, it would remain a Mac / PC game as intended. If Halo doesn't appear on XBox, I'm a monkey's uncle. I thought that was half the reason M$ bought Bungie. However, all their work on Halo so far has been for the Mac/PC, so I can understand why it might be remotely conceivable that they wouldn't try porting it to XBox. The controversy was whether Halo would appear on the Mac and PC at all. We all reckoned it would be XBox first, and then a delayed release for everyone else, if at all. Bungie were refusing to confirm it would still be coming out for Mac, which was pretty ominous. Alex Seropian confirmed it at Macworld Expo, though. I found it rather galling that he actually thanked M$ for allowing him to show a trailer for the game. David

I don't play anything else. Close Combat annoys me. The last game I bought was Carmageddon II, but it's mindless so I'm selling it (and it's a hardware-devouring monster too). Besides CM, the one game I really like is Marathon (same as buddy). However, I'm not planning on buying Halo, since Bungie sold out to Micro$oft. David

I imagine this would be a complete bitch to code. Don't hold your breath. David

Kingfish wrote: > I can't think of any time during the game where one could command the actual number of rounds fired, so it would require all new coding just for the smoke. I agree! (easy thing to do =) ) I think when people are asking for modifications to the game, they reckon just because something can be imagined easily, it can also be programmed easily. I know from experience - I used to be a web programmer, and EVERYONE thought X change would be easy, just because it LOOKED easy - they didn't understand that it basically meant redoing the whole webpage. I don't think CM counts the number of rounds fired in any situation. I think it is simply a "fire/don't fire" situation, and the unit in question will fire off as many rounds as it can in the time allocated. The number of rounds fired will depend on the unit's rate of fire, so you can't simply tell it to fire X number of rounds. David

Freyland wrote: > This thread seems based on how we should not treat female wargamers any differently, and yet we have ~44 hellos. Just thought I would point that out. Remember that this was not a "hello" thread. The thread was started on the subject of women, and then a couple showed up and said hello, so people have been saying hello back in the context of the thread, not just in the context of the "hello"s. Rex wrote: > the fact that the male posters on this board outnumber the female by a pretty significant amount just proves the point. Like I said, this is not necessarily a barometer of female opinion. Baby boys are dressed in blue, and baby girls in pink. This is not because their parents think the colours are best in each case - it's because society regards blue as a boy colour and pink as a girl colour. Likewise, women who might grow up to be interested in war, are influenced by society's prevailing attitude that this is unfeminine. David

Here's my test. Here's a Cromwell targetting the bottom of a building over a shallow hill. It doesn't have LOS. Try targetting the top floor - the targetting line locks to the top floor, and the tank does have LOS. I think the problems start when units are visible inside the building, and it goes transparent: Try targetting now - perfect LOS, but the computer doesn't think so. However, move over to the side so that you're pointing at the very front of the building, and it works okay. It's just crossed my mind that you might not have transparency enabled. However, this behaviour should be the same. David [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 08-04-2000).]

Lanzfeld - First off, I think all vehicle drivers in CM are complete pansies and will abandon their vehicles if the enemy so much as waves at them. I'm not sure whether an abandoned vehicle needs to be unserviceable, or whether the crew simply decide it's not the best place to be anymore. However, if a jeep were immobilised by rifle fire, the chances are it's in clear view of the enemy, and anyone firing a .50 cal from it is going to have a very short life expectancy. .50 cal jeeps, I think, should be kept well away from the enemy and provide covering fire. Trucks should never even be seen by the enemy. David

I captured an HMG42 yesterday, and I was interested to see that although he was down to one man, he wasn't immobile. What version of the game are you using? David

TeAcH - Try going down to level 1, then moving up to the building and viewing it almost side-on. You've got to target the very front wall of the house, which isn't very easy. If you just point at the house from your unit's viewpoint, the game will assume you're targetting inside the house, which you can't see. It's just one of these situations where you're controlling a 3D game on a 2D machine. The functionality is there, I assure you! =) David

Other World Computing sells Apple's own CPU cards, and they are MUCH cheaper than third-party offerings like Newer Tech or Sonnet. They're also 100% compatible and don't require any software. http://www.macsales.com/

I've been wondering just how unrealistic cities in CM are. Try going down to level 1 - they look much more realistic when you're down amongst the buildings. Let's face it - how often do you view a city from above? I think it's really just chance that country is more realistic from above. Clever map design definitely helps. I haven't spent too long analysing the city maps that came with CM, but I reckon there are ways to make them pretty convincing. I might suggest that Americans wouldn't be the best people to design European maps, but I think the designers involved are pretty clued up. It does help to actually live here, though, and really understand the way everything is and why. I'll maybe try doing a city map sometime and see how much luck I have. David