chrisl

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fuerte: It would work. If all calculations would be done with double precision floating point (precision 15 digits), and all comparisons with single precision (7 digits, rounded correctly), for example, then it would work. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This won't work-- a simple square root operation can propagate an incorrectly rounded digit near the least-sig-fig of the double back to near the least-sig-fig of the single (but where it won't be rounded away), and then it won't give the same result on different machines. All numbers have to be consistently rounded by every mathematical operation that's done on them, i.e. you have carry extra (guard) bits around and perform a consistent (from machine to machine) rounding operation after each and every mathematical operation. This is described in the Sun document referenced above (scroll down to the stuff about IEEE 754). I'm not at all up to date on how chips or compilers treat this, but it wouldn't be surprising if you had to use software libraries that give you a performance hit if you want to be IEEE compliant. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ghengis Jim: OK once again I am confused... If one computer makes different computations than another, why not let each computer independantly make its own calculations for speed's sake, then, when it comes time to combine the two calculations to make the movie, simply use ONE of the two computers to make the movie. That movie should be the same, and the both user X and user Y will get the same output on their screen. (???) <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> My impression from the little that I've read is that the initial plan was to only pass the orders files (where essentially no calculations are made (actually LOS and arty time to delivery get calculated, but those would get passed in the orders file anyway)). Then someone would generate a seed for the random number generator, which would be synched in both machines. Since the code is the same, and the inputs (orders and random numbers) are the same, the outputs should be the same, right? Unfortunately, floating point processors are prone to small errors (well described in the Sun URL above) that are different from processor to processor, depending on internal architecture. I wouldn't be surprised if different releases of the allegedly same processor had minor variations (or major ones: the Pentium FP bug) In many cases this doesn't matter, especially in the 7th or 8th or 15th decimal place, but when comparing numbers (as CM must frequently do do determine things like LOS, hits, whether a squad breaks, etc.) a tiny difference in the numbers can make the difference between a hit and a miss. There are ways to deal with this, but they may involve substantial bits of recoding (or at least careful code substitution) that isn't worth the effort relative to the payoff. I.e. BTS could get the patch out in a couple more weeks if they do TCP/IP much like PBEM, where all the computation for generating movies is done on one machine, since the code is very solid already, or they can mess around with a lot of floating point stuff, probably take a speed hit since the FP might be forced into software, introduce a few small and hard to find bugs, and delay the release of the patch several months, by which point everyone will have optical fiber to their homes and it won't matter whether you're sending 300K or 30K, and the only result will be that TCP/IP was delayed to spare users a few bps of bandwidth. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Seanachai: I'm becoming more than a bit worried about Meeks, though. He's never been gone this long, <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> He mentioned something a while back about end of October and Antarctica...then his sister was after him too. I think they could be related (the Antarctica and his topplement-- he's probably not related to his sister at all, though they are both the same person). I got a file from him on Monday, with the statement that he's running out of tricks (which in Meeksian means large bore arty shells, something like 240 mm, as opposed to tanks, which Seen-a-choo-choo is running out of in my match with him), but I haven't heard from him since. And in news from other pool battles: The US 60 mm AT duck does it again against Peng. He left an open topped AFV of some sort and a StuG-like thing parked out in the open, and after numerous ineffective top hits, they were finally dispatched by those sharp little beaks. He's also about to lose a platoon or two of infantry, but seems not to understand that. He's been dropping arty all over the map, but only recently has it actually come near any troops. Mostly it just makes pretty little treebursts, conveniently producing large numbers of toothpicks that his troops can later package into boxes in the POW camp to earn some cigarette money. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

Formation Move - the "move" command moves all units (including vehicles) at the same speed. Force Load - if you target something in the orders phase, it will force loading of the appropriate arrow. Not quite what you want (if something has turned back into a symbol and you can only area target it you're going to get HE) Abandon Position - kind of like an extreme version of "withdraw" which eliminates command delay and can only be done toward a friendly map edge (which I don't think I've ever used, as it can cause units to break as they run) Waypoints for Group Moves - might be nice, but is unlikely for a patch. Maybe CM2 if we're lucky. I haven't seen much need for it, as terrain usually isn't appropriate for this. Fire X Number of Rounds - would be nice. Real fire missions work that way (search under "Bullethead" as author. He does/did arty for a living. Present workaround is to move the target slightly (which means the rounds will have a delay before they come again). Also, if the target point is in LOS the time counts down 1 sec/sec, and when it's out of LOS it's 2 sec/sec, so you can also use that to control arty delay. Salvage Ammo - as described above - infantry never run out of small arms ammo. MG teams do lose 1/n or 1/(n-1) of their ammo when they lose a guy. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fuerte: The only way of doing the comparison right is to round all numbers to some precision before the comparison, as someone suggested. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That's not likely to work either, as the deviations due to machine differences can propagate up if you do multiple calculations with a number. I'm coming into this a little late (was out of town without a laptop), but I find the whole thing very interesting. It's going to result in some entertaining trips to the library... ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by marcusm: I don't care if I have to upgrade to a Cray to run CM. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You may have to. Pittsburgh just auctioned off an old Cray Y-MP C90 (16 GFlop_ for about $45K. It went to someone allegedly named "Steve Blank", a "self-described serial entrepreneur" who claims to be from silicon valley. He said "I'm interested in the history of technology and military history-- and this seemed to be the pinnacle of both" It was probably Steve Grammont, who wasn't feeling very creative when he came up with the fake name and home. "interested in military history" Yeah right, and he hauled the thing off with his Weasel. The Cray was cheaper than buying a used Panther, and probably more useful. Now we know what kind of machines we're going to have to buy to play CM-2, but man, the level of simulation is going to be unbelievable. Get a couple of 50" plasma displays and a good subwoofer.... You just better hope that whatever chip Apple uses next will come close. (note: all quotes above come from the Nov 2000 issue of Physics Today, on page 49) ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

The game will actually save you money: you won't buy any other games, you'll never go to the movies again or rent a video, you'll forget to buy food... ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

One thing with split squads against a human - one you get to level two of the spotting you can tell that they're either split or injured: At level 1 spotting all you see is a single guy At level 2 spotting you see an appropriate number of guys for the unit size so that full squads have 3 and half squads have 2. If you've just run through a bunch of fire unscathed you might convince your opponent that you have twice as many squads (all of which are partially damaged), but if it's first contact it will be clear what's going on. At level 3 you get the full info on the squad. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

I stopped being religious a couple years ago: My powerbook has MacOS, Win95, and Linux installed on it. My machine at work is a wintel running NT, but I can see all the macs on the appletalk net, as well as the PCs and printers. The most problem I ever have going between machines is that sometimes characters (mostly math stuff) gets munged between the Mac and Windoze versions of word. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jadayne: Awful Green Things!!!!! I never thought I'd meet anyone else that played that game. That was a hoot! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Still have a copy at my mom's house. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Elijah Meeks: Chrisl...stands poised like a reed before a hurricane, ready to break and be thrown bodily through my eye, straight into the frontal lobes, though no one would really notice, since I already have the personality of Phineas Gage.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well said! It would however leave you a bit blind, which we might notice. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

ftp://ftp.battlefront.com/pub/patches/ ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Originally posted by Meeks' Sister: blah blah blah rant rave gurgle burble phhht spew growl mewl urgh <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Originally posted by the Cheesehead Poet: blah blah bits of cheap movie dialog with music in a minor key playing sublty in the background piffle boohoo poetic bits snurfle <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> for an update on my games with the logorrhea twins: Meeks, who spent so much time berating OilyGooopyStumpyFinger about his selection of game parameters is presently counting on his soon to be immobilized (if not outright exploded) JagdTiger to keep his attack from sputtering to a halt. What kind of a freak buys a JagdTiger? After shelling out who knows how many points for that monstrosity, then all he's got left is some spare change for a couple of little armored cars (one of which was rapidly brewed by my hellcat before he dropped a lucky house on its head) and some flak halftracks with the guns pointed the wrong way . The flakthingies backed into battle and were rapidly destroyed by puny little riflemen. (Yes PatBoone, I too can play the random typeface change game.) And these flakthingies weren't destroyed by rifle grenades, or demo charges in the hands of the riflemen, but by their stinky little rifles. Oh, yeah, and he got a StuH as well, but as Mr. Rogers says "Now it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. What rhymes with StuH?" (pause) "That's right, BREW". That's right, I can drop houses on witches, too, and I dropped one right on his little StuH, causing it to burn brightly for my defenders to roast marshmellows over. Now all he has is that stupid bunker on tracks and some infantry with impending frostbite. Oh, and aside from the that pile of future scrap metal, headed for the Kondirator, he also bought about 50 FOs, who pounded, with remarkably little effect, my little village full of viscous defenders. (yes, I meant viscous. they're all pretty thick). Oh, yeah, I almost forgot-- he's too busy ranting to send me a file. I hope his sister finishes him off. And CheezyPoof, our senile, tea drinking friend, who won't be able to leave the house until June because of the snow and cold, has yet to return a file. He hasn't even got troops yet, and his feet are getting cold. That's because he's spent so much time typing bits of sing-song into the pool that he's forgotten to turn on the heat, or even pay the gas bills. Well, cheezeboy, send me the file so we can get on with your surrender. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread. [This message has been edited by chrisl (edited 10-25-2000).]

I had the last man of a German MG42 HMG squad killed just as the building he was in burst into flames. I kept him selected as he died, and it switched from 1-5 to 0-6 "eliminated", then he suddenly stood back up, ran out the back of the building, and the leftover gun now said "abandoned". It may be a bug, but I prefer to think of it as zombie troops. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

This has become a recurrent theme. Every week or two someone will post a "Is the peng thread worth reading?" topic. If you really want to know, you should read it yourself, but start with the original peng thread. The Peng thread is a great place to find lively opponents if you can handle the abuse. More squeak than nibble, but those hamster teeth can be pretty sharp sometimes. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

NEWS FLASH After eleven turns of sneaking about, the forces of good, righteousness, and lowercase names have captured a motorized infantry patrol commanded by the forces of darkness. Yes-- we have captured an evil pengian patrol, and we will remove all capitals from their names. Each of the captives will be tortured mercilessly through constant and abusive exposure to smileys. We will keep them conscious and alert while forcing them to view films of smileys doing all sorts of happy things. Smileys on swingsets, smileys on ponies, smileys ripping the wings from small insects. They will be spared no amount of suffering until they provide for us the locations of all their forces and that of their evil leader. In the event that these are specially trained blind troops, their eyes removed to prevent their cracking in the face of evil smileys (which is possible, considering how obliviously they walked into their captors), we will unleash a bit of sing-song recorded from Sneezy-choo-choo upon them. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

Cool. I've been looking forward to seeing Montelimar released. I thought it was a really good op for well matched opponents who want something that will really test them. I too have thoroughly enjoyed all of your scenarios that I've played.

Pasadena.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by :USERNAME:: Ive decided to drop in and check out the endless thread.. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There goes the neighborhood... ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sparky9292: Again, what do softare developers know compared to 5000 ultra anal history majors, war veterans, who play this game? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> How to select a small group of those grogs as beta testers, have them go over it thoroughly, and then integrate all the information received from a variety of sources into an internally consistent, historically accurate, and playable game? BTS has a pretty solid history of taking well researched comments/suggestions/criticism and integrating it into the game. If you go back and look through the posts (and up until the gold recently I had read a substantial number of them since January 00 (and many earlier as well)), whenever someone proposes a change to improve historical accuracy and backs it up with evidence it finds its way into the game. There are exceptions for things that would crush currently available machines, but for the most part BTS is very receptive to well researched criticism. And for such a small company, it's pretty impressive that they manage to go through the criticism and get some work done too. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mother Theresa: [ba box of aluminum foil to give my shermans some more armor. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I thought that was to protect them from the alien transmissions. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

I'm not that sort of a doctor. I can't do surgery. Well, not legally...but if you look at Peng in a few days you might see some of my handiwork. I'm in the process of anaesthetizing him right now. Once I put his troops to sleep I'll sneak in and slit their little throats from ear to ear. You ought to try reading profiles occasionally. Rather than blathering on about how you would love to be an Irish-French-Canadian, swilling beer, chopping trees, and trapping furry little animals in the woods of Kay-bek. I can imagine you now, in one of those throaty Quebecois growls: "You 'amsters, you are de worst 'amsters in de world. I 'ate you all". Yet at the same time, you put on an english personality as well. Are you preparing to secede from yourself? I was at 16th and Park. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I attended, actually, Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ah. That means that you play Ultimate and were a physics major. I think I've met very few people from Carleton for whom both weren't true. I've probably stepped on your feet, then, at some field in St. Paul whose coordinates escape me (right near a bunch of cornfields on the St. Paul campus. With an SA about a half mile away. Oh, right. That describes the whole St. Paul campus. Whatever.), or somewhere on the fields of Fort Snelling. If not, then I would gladly step on your feet (and hard) if given the opportunity. Wearing sharp spikes, of course. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Send me a setup <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> ya, sure. you betcha. (cocks eyebrow as form of extroversion) Some time tomorrow night. Any particular terms? Oh, and Meeks. I've gotta agree with Peng. That was the best thing you've done in a long time. Must be the thoughts of how your toes will soon be cold. Very cold. Colder than Sneezy-teas. Turning black and falling off, like little dead field mice, caught in traps and left to desiccate. And the tip of your nose turning white as snow, then eventually blue, purple and black. Your sister cackles when she sees you again. Bwahahahaha. "Do they make special shoes for people without toes?" she says, "Why don't you just fill up the fronts of your shoes with hamsters and stick your feet in to let them nibble on the remaining bits of scarred flesh?" ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by The Cheesehead who pretends he's a minnesotan who wants to be canadian: Cesspool Minnesotans, they are all either foreigners or lesser americans. I believe we should forego snow, as we will be arse deep in that any time now, as it is. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I went to Evil Doctor School in Minnesota (lived on the edge of downtown Mpls the whole time), but if you called me a minnesotan I'd probably have to crush you in a game with mostly mech troops (representative of my current place of residence). You sure have a big mouth for a minnesotan-- musta been too much time at the U. I'm also a bit surprised that you haven't been demanding a scandinavian mod-- your troops could say things like "Sven- got any more of that lutefisk", or "Sure looks like snow, Ole" And all the tanks would have rusted off bumpers held on with string. I suppose with it nearing halloween you're about due for a ton of snow... ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

CM2 I think the last computer game that I bought before CM was B-1 bomber from avalon hill. That game pretty much sucked, but it was in basic for the apple II. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.

I actually prefer vets over elite. Vets are smart enough to turn around in the face of heavy fire, but tough enough that they'll stick it out if there've got a reasonable chance. Elites will just charge headlong like a bunch of fools into any amount of fire and be vaporized. I did the boat thing once too, as a joke. The thing lasted the whole scenario. I had no idea it would draw fire like that, and then it was unsinkable. I started it hidden and then couldn't even unhide it. ------------------ Slayer of the Original Cesspool Thread.