medlinke

My solution would be to postpone continued work on a CMx3 engine and just license an existing 3rd party 3d engine. There are plenty out there from Epic, Id, Valve, etc. The costs may be high, but quite honestly the look and compatibility issues that have plagued BFC games from day 1 would be well addressed going this route. Additionally, then you're not stuck having to do massive 3d engine upgrades to include new features, etc. The engine can handle largely anything you want to put into it. Given the multi-core and multi-gig nature of most gamer's computers these days the argument about systems not being able to handle simulations is getting tired. When I look at games that are wildly more complex in terms of how many calculations and polygons that are being rendered in multiplayer environments no less I question more and more the argument that it is computers that cannot handle the workload. It's admirable to design from scratch your own 3d engine. At some point, however, that work begins to interfere with end user expectations. There is no reason that wargaming has to be ugly. CM proved that wargaming didn't have to look like a virtual tabletop! It's time to go to the next level and the expense of licensing a 3rd party 3d engine might be a good way to go that route. Heck even govt. military training consultants (3dSolve) in NC are licensing the Unreal engine from Epic to do their work. I'm curious to see how CMx2 continues to evolve as CMx1 had a massive evolution from CMBO to CMAK. Either way...keep up the good work!

Welcome to the boards and stay away from Peng

The map editor is in the demo. I don't think you can save anything, but you can go in and play around with it anyway.

I feel fairly confident in saying this... Anyone using an Nvidia graphics card 8x00 series should steer clear of the latest 175.19 drivers. It was causing lockup problems in CMSF for me. I upgraded to beta drivers and so far that has seemed to fix the issue completely. Now, with those drivers, on my 8600GTS I can go maxed out on everything in large scenarios without slowdown. That said, I've yet to see a ton of smoke, etc. flying all over the place in those scenarios or nighttime with the effects introduced in 1.05.

Those are all great points. My guess is that they are the way they are in the game because the abstraction of individual tactical actions (nades into houses during a breach) is in line with the scale of the game. In terms of the relative weakness/strength of buildings I think that's just a nod to the Syrian forces so they can hole up someplace. There are videos all over the net of what a SAW can do to most rural residential buildings...let alone some kind of anti-armor weapon like an RPG! The wounded soldiers issue is addressed in the game. If you move a healthy squad near a wounded one they will try to patch them up. If you leave the wounded squad alone they may die. After a scenario ends the chances of wounded soldiers dieing is taken into account to compensate for the chance they may die from wounds, or en route to the medical attention they require.

Any ideas on which bmp(s) are the sky textures?

I can foresee a potential problem and that is if the AI uses time as a guide for its action. You'd run into all kinds of nasty side effects potentially. Obviously no time limit in MP would still be applicable, but not for single player.

lol... I didn't realize anyone would believe a schedule from anyone other than Moon or Steve. That was just a guess with a lot of leeway built into it. Hopefully when you say, "nothing to do with our schedule" that's a positive thing!!! More gaming sooner!

I would argue that a huge part of churning out a quality product is not losing interest and remaining passionate about the topic. While I assume there is a degree of capitalistic motivation we wouldn't have such a niche game if Steve & Co. didn't share a passion for the titles they've produced. So while I can appreciate customer driven product cycles, I'd much rather have an excited development team delivering a product that comes out of left field and steals my heart. Want a great example of this...look at HPS Simulation's Campaign Gettysburg. I thought I'd never love a Gettysburg campaign because it has been covered and recovered and covered again in gaming. Those guys made the DEFINITIVE product about Gettysburg because of a passionate persistence to complete what, at times, was an overwhelming product to complete. The thing has 300+ scenarios in it and maps covering like 500 square miles of terrain in historically accurate detail. It's just goofy the level of care and love. I like to think that Battlefront works from the same well of passion + talent + skill to create their products. So I'd hate to see that tainted by a poll.

My thoughts are that recon drones could be done in Brit since they use them as well I believe. In terms of simulating building entry my guess is that getting down and dirty on the ordinance used to clear a room (tear gas, flashbangs, etc.) might be too granular a detail for what's going on in the scale of the game. I think it should depend more on the veterancy of the unit defending vs. the force that's doing the breaching with perhaps some modifiers like time of day, etc. My guess is that we'll see more airpower in the Euro mod & Brit mod. As far as other airpower for the Syrian forces...that's debateable based upon what Steve has said about adding more vehicles for the Syrian force. He wants to keep the game focused on plausable engagements rather than merely tacking on a hodge-podge collection of vehicles (and I suspect airpower). However, I wonder if the Syrians could get more sophisticated Anti-tank options, or perhaps some illicit optics from "across the border" as their conflict widens! I'd love to see a random map generator but the variety of options available to the map editor in CM:SF compared to what was in CMx1 is like comparing a swiss army knife to a butter knife in terms of its intended usefulness. While I'm certain a competent map could be created, I highly doubt a reasonable scenario could be generated from it without becoming very formulaic. I mean look at Medieval II....their random army selection tool always ends up arming one force with like 10 seige cannons and no cavalry while the battle is in an open field vs. archers and cavalry or something equally crazy. The point is...that's a tall order given the complexity of the battle/map creation tool. My guess is that a lot of what you're talking about will be a part of CM:SF 2 in the European setting as opposed to what we'll see in CM:SF! Great suggestions though.

This has already been addressed in many places, but the definitive thread is here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=82127

Yes. I put everything on the lowest levels. I put everything in the balanced levels. I've turned sound off. I've disabled my sound card drivers even to ensure it wasn't a bug with a sound card driver. I used the CPU priority in the on and off positions. I am totally stumped by this thing. The windows event logs don't list anything for the application. It just freezes and never crashes. I can CTRL+ALT+DEL and then kill the app. So I have to be pretty quick when I make the changes. I removed the custom game profile I created based on someone else's recommendations in these forums about possible incompatibilities with the NVIDIA Control Panel. I uninstalled the game and reinstalled it. It's version 1.08 from Battlefront download. It worked previously in terms of being able to get into a game, but it'd lock up at some point. Now the problem is that it's locking up much sooner. I could play 45-60 minutes before and now I can only go about 2-3 minutes at the most whether I'm in the menus or in the game itself. It doesn't seem to coincide with any click or certain set of steps that I take when in the game menus like a certain screen or config choice is causing the problem. It's nearly totally random. I ran memtest86 for 2 hours and it didn't come up with any RAM errors. What is so confusing is that this is a fresh computer. Completely formatted, reinstalled, latest of everything, runs other games smooth as butter! I finally put CS:S back on it last night and had that sucker totally maxed out at 92 frames per second with full HDR on. Anything else I can try?

I think given the nature of unconventional warfare you'd be inviting trouble IRL in a BLUEFOR vs. OPFOR/UNCON scenario. Look at what happened in Mogadishu, Fallujah, Sadr City. The more time you give UNCON the more they reinforce, entrench, and set ambushes. In that sense, you want some real force and swiftness behind your tactical engagements. Now...from an OPFOR/UNCON perspective...I can certainly see the value in time for the stated reasons. Given the fragile nature of both the troops,weapons, and equipment I see exactly why you want unlimited time. OPTION is the key word I guess and I think a scenario designer should have final say on that, but it definitely makes sense now that I read your perspective.

According to what Steve posted in the Marines thread in the main forum... Everything that's going into Normandy won't be ported. Instead it'll appear in CM:SF 2 which will be in a temperate environment. That is, however, good news because it sounds as though all those other items people wanted might make it in to that release...though given Steve's sentiment that each setting should get 3 modules... That could be a LONG wait! Marines Fall 08 Brit Summer 09 EuroForce Winter 10 Normandy Summer 10 1st Expansion Spring 11 2nd Expansion Winter 11/12 3rd Expansion Fall 12 CM:SF 2 Summer 2013

I am totally stumped on how to get this game to work consistently.... I figured it was something with my computer so...I formatted the harddrive and reinstalled everything from scratch with CMSF in mind. Windows XP through SP3 and all the patches Latest NVIDIA drivers for my video card Latest Creative drivers for my sound card Downloaded the latest DirectX 9.0c Downloaded and ran the web component addon for DirectX Defragged my harddrive I THEN installed CMSF. I can't even get out of the menus now. I can't get into the game at all. I got into the battle selection screen once before it froze. I had to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL to get out of the game because the mouse won't move and the game won't actually fail. I don't have a single other game on my entire system that runs this poorly/inconsistently. I have no idea what is causing the problems. I can run Crysis on nearly full detail (for Dx9 anyway.) I can play all the Valve Source engine games at 100fps no problems. Company of Heroes I can play on full detail no problems. The Total War series works great on full detail. There is no reason I shouldn't have this game working either on the default settings. The only thing I can think of is that it's running OpenGL and those other games are in in D3D I believe since they are Windows only. ANY help would be hugely appreciated because I've got a digital doodoo pile sitting on my drive right now basically.

I like the constraint imposed by the time to be honest. I feel like having that time crunch forces me to make more efficient decisions. It also let's me think about how I might do things a bit different to save time / execute the mission quicker. While I can certainly see the validity of this argument, I just thought I'd share the opposing thought.

So will water be back ported to CMSF or will it only exist in whatever product features water? I'm also assuming that water will mean the inclusion of bridges.

Does it happen during the campaign? If so I think the solution was to get a savegame that was passed the point where that problem existed. Redbear was sending it out as per an older thread.

Thanks! I'll definitely bump into those!

I can totally get behind generic trash to grunge up the towns a bit! Generic casualties I could get behind as well. Not necessarily the charred remains or more gruesome aspects of war though. Actually what'd be awesome is if there was a way to integrate Google Sketchup with CMx2 somehow so that you could create your own 3d objects for use in the game.

That might be a bit too graphic to simulate. I'm all for tires, barrels, etc. But littering the battlefield with corpses goes a step too far in my opinion. I'm all for realism, but I also appreciate the sanitized casualty representation in the game. No arms, legs, or heads laying around, etc. That's just my opinion though.

The Euphrates splits the country. Lake Buhayrat al Asad is pretty geographically significant. There are many rivers and watersheds all over the western part of the country. I can certainly empathize with the fact that the vast geographic majority of that country is desert it still stands to reason water and, at a minimum, bridges would be a part of the man-made infrastructure elsewhere. I certainly hope this addition is in the Brit expansion. I don't think anyone is looking for the simulation of creekbeds, quicksand that might surround it, and the gallons per second that the current can pull. I think bridges, crossings, and some simple blue water with maybe some ambient noise attached to it. After all the manual's introduction does remind players that there will be graphical glitches since the focus is on simulation rather than creating eye candy.

I just get an error that says, "Specified Module Cannot Be Found." I ran the fixdll tool and installed the vb 6 runtime libraries. Any other ideas?

Okay so I had another crash. This time, luckily, it was BSOD so there was an event log entry for it that indicated there was a halt in the driver which typically means a video or sound driver. So....I messed around with some settings and made CMSF specific profile for my videocard with the following settings: (NOTE: There are only the settings I changed) Error Reporting: ON Threaded Optimization: Off Triple Buffering: ON Vertical Sync: Force On So far so good. Not only did this address the stability I'm seeing a little smoother animation and, so far, not nearly the amount of screen redrawing that I was seeing previously.

I know for a fact it did not. The Error was: C++ Runtime Error Your computer has experienced a runtime error. Please contact your software provider for assistance. Or something very close to those lines. The problem is... There is no mention of it in my System, Software, or Application event logs....so I have no way to get more specific information on it.