phil stanbridge

Wow that is serious news. Sorry to hear that. I can't imagine the pain he must be going through if it's enough to stop him modding..

Both look very interesting. Any idea when they will be available in the UK? Amazon, Love Film etc, have no idea.

I adore QB's especially when I give myself the overwhelming advantage in numbers and quality of troops. It's fun to play an absolutely huge QB of 5,000 points + versus a much smaller enemy, but it is equally surprising just how much of a fight they put up. Biggest issue for me, is the terrian generation is most aspects. Although it does more than a reasonable job on most occasions there is the time when it totally cocks up, and that's a shame when you have spent the best part of half hour cherry picking the best units. I don't get a huge amount of time to play long-winded scenarios now, so sometimes there's nothing better than to fire up a smaller QB. But the best way to play is versus another human.

I have to say, ATI are performing better than Nvidia with CMBB/CMAK at the mo! I've tested another Nvidia 260 GTx here which flies but there is no fog support.

Hey that's a fabulous effort thanks very much indeed. I must admit I haven't played CMBB for a while due to getting lost in CMAK, and it lost some of it's appeal after the CMC episode. But I think I'll have to give it another crack now.

I don't get it. I actually only tested the 260 briefly, I decided to go back to my ATi card as my power supply wasn't able to cope with the extra consumption it obviously requires. That said, CMAK and CMBB were working perfectly well with Vista 32 and the latest Nvidia drivers. So I don't really understand how some work and some don't. The GS is a cut down card am I right? Usually associated with mobile platforms. Is the 9800GTX a DX10 card?

No that's fine - in fact a 15" screen will give you a standard resolution which will be ideal. I'm sure the Nvidia gpu will be sufficient for cmbb/cmak although me personally, I would go for something a little beefier, like that X600 with 128mb. If you're only using it with XP then any of those will be fine I'm sure, although you will probably only get the full effects (like fog) with the Nvidia, although I am only speculating at this point. I have tried both games with a number of different cards but never a 5200.

I can run both CMBB and CMAK on my Samsung NC10 which has integral graphics and it works a treat. Okay there is no fog, but it works fine with decent framerates. So the Intel chipset works for sure. Oh and that's Vista too. I haven't used any of those other cards as far as I can recall but all I would say is this - they *should* all work fine providing they are not DX10, and you do not use Vista. I know that the older Nvidia cards definitely work well with CMBB/CMAK.

Some pretty good news guys, I don't know if this is old news but I have just tested the latest official Nvidia drivers with my new 260 GTX and CMBB/CMAK are now playable. It's not perfect, and there is still no fog, and some transparancy issues but the framerates are now much better, and make it playable once again for those of you with the latest Nvidia cards. I've just tested it with the largest CMAK scenario I could find. The latest ATI drivers still offer playable framerates on the latest ATI cards and fog but there is some odd colour saturation going on still. Either way, it's good news on both fronts.

It will only do some specific resolutions - you can delete the prefs file and restart the game to re-enable the resolution setting. But what you see is what you get. There is no support for much larger resolutions, or widescreens as far as I know.

Kudos to you sir, that is very impressive and very helpful. I am still willing to paypal over a few quid as a little thankyou for your time.

I'm interested too (and in the UK) but I think it only fair to compensate you for your DVD's at least.

I found it quite fun once I figured out what the hell to do. I like the graphics and the sound effects although the sound seemed to creep in and out on my speakers which was a bit confusing - almost like the surround settings are too sensitive in the game. Controls are quite demanding however, and I couldn't get the rotate camera to work either. They need some work in my honest opinion. Lastly, lag - there is plenty on my system, which is a decent spec. Dual core cpu, 4850 graphics with 3gb ram. It would take a while to select things, and the interface is really tiny on my 1920x1200 resolution which is a little confusing, especially during larger battles. Overall I can see the potential however, and as I said I quite like it so far.

If you were heading ATI then the 4850 is probably the best bang for the buck at the moment. That allows you to play modern games with decent framerates, and it allows you to play CMBB/CMAK too. You can get good deals on Ebay. Mine was £114 inc. As Redwolf correctly points out too, if you wanted to go with an older generation Nvidia card, then get yourself a 7950 or something along those lines. Something pre Direct X 10 basically. To be honest that would probably be better for CMBB/CMAK but it wouldn't be as good with the latest stuff. My card doesn't run too hot - it's about 60 degrees under load which is more than acceptable.

I'm afraid there is no solution to your problem Ron, other than reverting back to Win XP. You see Nvidia have removed part of their DirectX 5 routine from their driver support. You may be able to use much older drivers of course but then you're at the mercy of them not supporting newer titles all that well. My workaround, (which is a much better solution) is to invest in a ATI card. I am currently able to play CMBB/CMAK with Vista 32 as was intended. Even with fog support. The colour is a 'tad' saturated (if that's the right word) but it utilises the card properly and I get perfect frame rates all the time. It's the only way to play a decent game properly. Even Ansitropic Filtering appears to work!

Ah man the news just gets worse :-\ It's the mods that keep me coming back for more to be honest. I've got 4gb or so worth to date and I'm happy to share these with people if we can find an economical solution.

This is what I was trying to explain. The colour looks a little 'saturated' for want of a better word. I haven't been able to resolve it. Maybe there is a fix, maybe not.

OMG. I can't make this face any bigger, but that's how I feel about this. It looks amazing. I presume those maps (as they stand at least) are too big and complicated for a current scenario in CMBB?

Well I would definitely donate a little something to see development continue.

Ah man that really blows chunks. I was so looking forward to what is fundamentally (in my opinion at least) the next step to the best wargame on the planet.

How very sad. But at least you have had the foresight to release it to the masses as is - I'm sure given enough time we will have something to play with.

My 4850 512mb is working fine with CMBB/CMAK and Vista/DX10 with the latest 9.2 cats. I have noticed some slight colour saturation that I am trying to resolve with the control panel, but it's proving quite difficult. It doesn't stop the game from working, it just detracts a little from the overall effect. But at least the game is completely playable, and I have fog. I'm going to try that Alt-tab switching with the original bitmaps and see if that works too. Because there's no denying it looks better with the onboard VGA than it does through my ATI card. But I can't play anything else with my Intel onboard graphics. Also one other thing I have noticed regards ATI and Combat Mission - if you use Anti Aliasing, turn it off. That is why the text disappears completely.

Yes, there is a fix which works quite well. If you do a search for Combat Mission Radeon_text_fix it will lead you to a bmp alteration. All it does is change the text colour I believe. A simple fix but it works a treat. I'll just add that the ATI cards are the only way to go at getting a fully working game with Vista/DX10.

For real? So if you install Windows 7 (which is still beta is it not?) you can use Nvidia or ATI without issue with CMBB/CMAK?

At the moment at least the only way to have a decent game of CMBB or CMAK is to buy yourself an ATI card, (if you want to use Vista that is). I recently tried an older Nvidia card (a GS model) with Vista and CMBB and it was terrible - and unplayable in my eyes. You guys that say it is playable, well you have a LOT more tolerance than I. I have tried both games in Vista with a 4850 and a 4870 and providing you use the little graphical patch (to show the white text) you can have a battle the way it was meant. That inlcudes fog, and decent framerates. This is the only way round it at present, unless you reinstall XP of course.