chrisl

I think it was Pondscum that invented that. if he doesn't remotely destroy your computer you might be able to catch him in here...

No, everyone is plotting to let the thread drop to page 2 to make Shaw's head explode like a rotten durian.

he doesn't need to-- the forum runs in a spare lobe of his brain.

You can see Santa Claus come down the chimney and steal all your copies of CM.

And you would be getting the game in the asphalt box...

you can get that much entertainment from the Demo... You also need to factor in: - you'll spend a lot of time playing it so it will save you money on other entertainment. - if you spend enough time playing it will cost you much more than the $70 when you end up homeless and begging people for someplace to plug in your laptop and get a bit of power and wifi to play online. so the calculation is potentially more complicated...

The hotfix also worked for me, though when I first tried it on my way underpowered machine it hung after watching the briefing and asked me for the license key again when I tried to launch it on that machine again. I then quit out of the first page and relaunched and it didn't ask for the key. I'm sure if I wait long enough my video chip will catch fire. When I tried it on my sufficiently powered machine it worked fine.

That's kind of a funny statement. I started with CMBO when I was going to a conference where I'd have a lot of dead time and hadn't played games for a while but searched for "Computer Squad Leader", knowing that such a thing had been in the works. I found the CMBO demo (it was before the CMBO release), and was hooked there. The play options there were Wego vs. AI, hotseat, or PBEM opponent. There was no TCP/IP play of any sort (except email...). I actually looked forward to it when they announced it, but because most of my opponents were either in other time zones or had various other time commitments, I never played a single TCP/IP game, though I played a ton of PBEM. As far as CM:SF not being CM, that's silly. It plays just like CM, except you have to be much more careful of your armor because everyone on the battlefield is carrying something that is 1 shot/1 kill against a large fraction of the armor. I didn't play it because it was PC only and I couldn't justify a separate PC just for that, and I have somewhat less interest in the modern era stuff. But I dl'd the demo and ran it under parallels just to see if it would work (it does) and get some practice with the UI before CMBN came out. It played just like I expected a CM game to, even after not playing for quite a while. The biggest problem is that I still have the hotkeys for various orders from CMx1 stuck in my fingers (I didn't know they were still there) and find myself reaching for the wrong key fairly often. I'll probably end up getting the full CMSF because it was a lot of fun, even just against the AI. CMBN is very much the CM I expect, with a lot of improvements. What *I'd* like is multi-player per side via PBEM--player 1 manages US A Company sends file to Player 2, who manages US B Company, who sends it to player 3 who is running the German A company, who sends it to player 4 who is running the German B company. There's probably a way to do clever file structure to let both players on one side plot at the same time. I think it would make big battles much more entertaining, but I'm not going to worry that much about it-- it can always be faked by sending files around and agreeing not to mess with each others' units.

It also plays better if you spend a good amount of your time plotting your moves in close up. If you're spending most of the game up high, you're missing out on a lot of the tactical detail. CM is in many ways the computer implementation of the incredibly painful things people used to do with miniatures, where you need to stick your face (or at least a string) down on the 3D map/sandtable to check LOS. I was never quite crazy enough for miniatures. There's a whole lot to see at elevations 1-3 that matters for game play. I like to run through the movie once from 30,000 feet, but you really have to watch and plot each little firefight at the closer in views. I have to disagree-- I think they made the right choice because while TCP/IP wego is a natural and obvious step from PBEM, you can get pretty much the same effect by sitting at your computer and emailing back and forth (or using fileshare, since I guess the files can get enormous now). If you don't like the lag due to waiting for the other person to plot/watch, then play two games at once. If they were going to delay things any longer and spend more resources on stuff, I'd be more interested in an expanded OOB and things like flamethrowers, mines, barbed wire, flail tanks, assault boats, etc (some of those may be in there already) than in TCP/IP wego.

So in 6 years we should expect your competing game with TCP/IP Wego? My copy of Squad Leader (and the first editions of all the gamettes) is sitting on the shelf about 5 feet away from me...

He's not coming out and saying it quite this way, but BFC only has two coders. They're pretty amazing coders, but they still have a finite amount of time. Everything that takes coding takes time for one or both of them, and the priority is on getting the game play down first (which is what makes and breaks the game). Adding a feature like TCP/IP WeGo may not be a herculean effort, but it adds enough to delay to the release (due to design, code, test, and debugging) that they made a decision not to implement it in this iteration. But it sounds like they did design CM:BN with the necessary hooks for TCP/IP WeGo so it can be added without too much pain later, but it's an economic decision to get the game out with the game play that will make the hardcore wargamers happy, and then spend the time adding bells and whistles (e.g. TCP/IP wego) later. It's not that they don't want to do it, but they have to pick and choose how to spend their time, and they have to get the game released if they want to continue to be able to eat.

Clearly there's vorticity on the map and the wind direction varies depending on where you are. The wind direction indicator should really indicate the direction as observed by the currently selected unit. It should probably be a thumb or an index finger colored blue on the windward side, and red on the leeward side.

It's just conference calls. If it's not videocons you should have no trouble multi-tasking and playing CMBN with one earphone in and one on the phone. So what if you keep shouting "die die die" during the call-- you probably do that anyway.

should show up soon-- he was going to post both PC and Mac versions. I can see him slurping the mac version from my machine now.

I didn't even get that far-- my fastest machine at home right now is a 2.16 GHz with 2 GB of RAM (and 256 MB of VRAM) and I get a dialog box that says it won't run on that machine. I can fortunately bring home a faster one tomorrow that should work fine, but that's suboptimal. I was hoping that since I wouldn't be playing networked realtime I could get by with a machine just below the minimum...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! The macs I have at home are all nearly as old as Emrys and CMBN checks to see if it will set them on fire... the fastest one is a mere 0.04 GHz too slow (and probably incapable in some other way as well). I'll have to bring home a faster one tomorrow to be able to play....

incoming! file is on the way

ok - it's seeding and announced at publicbt.com

I've got a torrent created, now how do I get it to a tracker or make it otherwise visible? there weren't any default ones in my client, and I don't have a convenient place to host it. I tried sticking it in the CMBO files section, but torrent file types aren't allowed.

They might be adjusting the limit on the fly or something, depending on load. It took me less than an hour and gave me a steady 192 KB/s the whole time. It's copying to my applications folder now!

Got a steady 192 KB/sec for the whole thing! Done downloading and now verifying the image...

The link was quite large enough that even without his +30 reading glasses he should have been able to see it. I can't imagine the lenses he'll need to play the game. He's going to be stuck playing in iron view #1 mode with max mag... And if he's just gone mushy in the head, then it will just make him that much easier to pummel into submission.

That's because you're too pompous. My download is about halfway through.

w00t! Mirror for the mac is up!

mac mirror is up at filefactory! getting 192KB/sec for the free dl