Derfel

"Please update your OpenGL drivers" OK, so my old Radeon x1600 card (which chugged along with CMSF without problems) finally gave out, I pop along and buy a Radeon 3850. Install and load latest drivers. The above greets me whenever I try to play CMSF. After an evening of fruitless installing, re-installing, trying any and all available drivers I'm still left with "Could not initialze OpenGL graphics. Please update your OpenGL drivers." I gather from some comments on the site that similar problems have occurred to others, what I've failed to find is a solution. Anybody want to help prevent an apoplexy is hereby cordially invites to give me a tip on how to get the rig going again. If it helps its an HP Evo D310 running XP with 2 Gb RAM. I can provide further specs if you need them.

Thanks for the input. I'll keep it in mind. Also another Bytebattle out; Byte Insurrection, red vs red single player.

Quick update; New Byte Battle completed and ready for dl, our first with A.I instructions for both sides. I would be very grateful for any and all comments on this one as we're still feeling our way with the A.I thingy. The Battle is called "Byte Orchard" and is a Syrian Airborne vs U.S Marines clash in a rural valley.

Hiya, all! We've finally got down to designing a BB with A.I plans for both sides. Not all that sophisticated I admit but it's a start. I personally find it a neat little battle but since I designed it I could well be completely off track. So if any of you would care to try it and give some feedback I'd be grateful. The name of the scenario is "Byte Orchard" and you'll find it at the usual place (www.kretsen.nu/bytebattler/cmsf) Also, thanks a bunch to those of you who so far have not only downloaded our battles but also been kind enough to leave positive comments on them here in the forum. It means a lot to us.

Thanks for the encuragement guys! New scenario up today: Byte Armor. (Might still be a little rough around the edges, we've only tested it a couple of times) Yeah, PBEM apperently does have a version of WeGo but since our group is consisting of impatient types that would rather pull teeth than wait for pbem files we've chosen to give it amiss. The 2 player byte battles should work fine though. And yes, I have updated the intro and my general comments to reflect my views on 1.10. Leon - We haven't experienced that particular bug, but it seems like something to put up in the tech forum.

Ali, Can you tell me what sort of connection and speed you're at. We're testing our way through Internet play and getting somewhat mixed results. Also; any ctd?

Thanks! Good to hear that you enjoyed it! More battles are indeed in the pipeline, perhaps even a Byte Campaign if we can find the time.

uh, yeah... that's what I meant by a "WEGO Light" option. An option where you can have the game periodically pause. Perhaps I should have called it PRTMP instead. (Pausable Real Time Multiplayer).

Ok, at least that is clear enough. No WEGO option (at least not as we knew it) in the Normandy release but hopefully a "WEGO Light" option that at least let's us catch up with the action from time to time. ...and the door not completely closed on "real" WEGO. So, Steve a final question from us at the Byte Battler site; will there ever be a pause and or save function in the present game? As it is a multiplayer battle without either is not a very attractive proposition, especially as the TCP play still seem a bit unstable (though that has been considerably improved in 1.10 and I'm confident you'll get it completely sorted in the next patch or two)

This is rather disturbing, I'd hoped that the stability issues were largely solved by 1.10. We (The Byte Battler Gang) haven't had time to test Internet play yet, but hope to do so next weekend. It would be reassuring to know that improved TCP play is also one the short to-do list, but so far I haven't heard anything to that effect from Battlefront. Still, there was a distinct improvement in 1.10 so no reason to despair.

Hiya, Elvis! Yeah, we did have a couple of crashes during TCP play, only one serious though. After 40 min of play in a 1 hour battle the "client" computer crashed to desktop with the dreaded "Something has gone wrong with cmsf.exe and it has been shut down" message. In the other cases the game crashed when the battle was over and the player tried to return to the main menu, that happened at least 50% of the time. And, yes. Pause and save are absolute necessities, I'm still flabbergasted that they aren't in the game from the start.

Hi! No, we didn't. But bear in mind we didn't have that particular problem to start with. Also you should note that these tests were within a gigabit LAN. Internet TCP play testing is planned for sunday or tuesday.

Okay, enough people have asked me about this to make me put it here: Question: Does the new Marine module solve the problems with TCP (LAN or Internet) play reported on the tech forum? Answer: Yes and no. This is from my thread on the tech forum: OK, troops. Here's the stuff on "Marines" and multiplayer: I'll start with the bad stuff: STILL NO SAVE OR PAUSE IN TCP GAMES!!! WTF doesn't even begin to cover it. Why, why why... BF get a grip! Secondary gripe: LAN games still crash though much less often, definetely progress here. Good stuff (and it is good): Vanishing vehicles have vanished, i.e for us at least this particular problem is solved. Vehicles now work as they are supposed to. Huzza! Many and improved Byte Battles will now be appearing shortly!

OK, troops. Here's the stuff on "Marines" and multiplayer: I'll start with the bad stuff: STILL NO SAVE OR PAUSE IN TCP GAMES!!! WTF doesn't even begin to cover it. Why, why why... BF get a grip! Good stuff (and it is good): Vanishing vehicles have vanished, i.e for us at least this particular problem is solved. Vehicles now work as they are supposed to. Huzza! Many and improved Byte Battles will now be appearing shortly!

Come on guys, where's your sense of Sci-Fi? We didn't get the space lobsters in CMSF but at least we got teleporting infantry! ;-) (Actually this is a good remainder to always, always playtest the hell out of every scenario. Especially in the small ones I usually design, a misplaced reinforcement can completely ruin the scenario)

Thanks, Dave. A thing that just struck me was that the behaviour of the game in TCP play was not unlike the bugs we saw early in CMBB multi-player... or was it even back in CMBO? Units suddenly appearing wildly out of place on the map (sometimes even in the midst of your opponents units) etc. I don't know if this has any significance but it really seemed similar, now that I come to think of it. (Edit) I just realized that I didn't explain that the vanishing vehicles are always visible to the "Host" player. Oh, and Matt; if you want to test the home-made scenarios we used they're available at www.kretsen.nu/bytebattler/cmsf

As for the question of We-Go vs RT it is (to me anyway) a question of how much info you the player need to make a good job of running your pixeltruppen (your digital soldiers that is). CMSF is a very detailed and complex game that gives the player bucket loads of info, and you need it. In larger scenarios RT there is no way to absorb this and act on it unless you pause frequently, and then you're half way to We-Go anyway. Smaller scenarios (like Bytebattles,,, ahem... www.kretsen.nu/bytebattler) can usually be played without too much pausing, but even then I often find vehicles and troops suddenly bursting into flames for no apparent reason and fervently wish I could "rewind" to see what the hell just happened. Multi-player TCP is at the moment sadly unplayable (as Ali-baba notes) due to some severe bugs. I really, really hope something is done with this in the upcoming patch. A line or two from Matt over at the Tech forum seemed to indicate that BF is at least aware of the issue(s).

Oops, meant to include this as well. The pic was taken at Munster Panzer Museum this summer.

More of the same perhaps..?

Hi! Well here's the result of a good few hours of testing. 1. The problem occurs with *every* scenario; prefabricated or home-made, however, it manifests itself a little differently. In the pre-fab scens the vehicles seem to scatter all over the map once the joining player leaves the setup phase. Sometimes they return to their original positions when given orders. 2. The vanishing/dispersing vehicles *always* belong to the player joining the game (i.e not the Host). We tried hosting from both machines. Which I suppose means that the problem is not with the graphics card (as we have different cards in our machines) 3. Toggling shadows on or off has *no* effect whatsoever on this problem 4. Graphic settings has *no* effect on the problem (we've tried every combination we could think of) 5. Some vehicles *occasionally* re-appear during play 6. Vehicles are visible during the setup phase. 7. The vehicles are invisible to the joining player, but they are there and functioning, you can see the outgoing fire for instance. 8. The floating icon also vanishes. Oh, and; 9. The game cannot be paused. How annoying is THAT! Since TCP games can't be saved I can't send any sample. (see above about annoying) Really, really hope this can be solved soon. I mean I started an entire site for tcp play dammit!

Hi, again! Yeah, I realize you're not with the BFC, so of course I don't expect you to rush about forwarding my problems. I'm really grateful for all help and suggestions. As it happens it turned out that we did at complete reinstall on the machine in question (the entire system, not just the game) so any save games files are lost, however I do seem to recall trying the "shadows" tip without any success. We'll try again to-nite or tomorrow with a new install and see how it goes. Thanks again.

Hiya, Meat! (A phrase I use too often, I just realized) Well, I can only tell you that playing CMSF Byte Battles revived CMSF for me and my buddies. In small battles you can (most of the time) tell what's going on and even on occasion influence it. ;-) In addition the possibilities that opens up with asymetric missions are huge in terms of BBs, we haven't really began to explore this yet, but look for missions to eliminate a particular enemy leader, protect a civilian convoy or sabotage an enemy installation. Or we can just blow up lots of T-90's. ;-)

Hi Cugar, Yeah, I'll see if I can dig up a save game, I dont know how much info about this sort of stuff is contained in there though. Also we had the same problem with all scenarios, not just our home-made ones. There isn't any sort of log file in CMSF is there? That would probably more helpful, but I haven't seen anything like it.

Thanks Mark! We'll have a look at them and if they fulfill our stringent requirements ;-) (i.e they are at all playable) we will certainly add them.

OK, so we're finally starting to create Byte Battles for CMSF (see separate announcement in the main forum) and of course testing them is a major part of that. Usually we do it by LAN play. Now, running the game single player on one of the computers works fine, but in LAN play the vehicles disappear the moment the game starts. This computer runs an ATI Radeon 1600X card with the latest drivers, it's got plenty of RAM (2 gigs at least) and a decent processor. The LAN is gigabit cards through a gigabit switch so we shouldn't be having problems with lag. This is driving us nuts, we've tried every single variation of graphic settings we could think of on several scenarios and the damn things keep disappearing! Any and all suggestions are extremely welcome. -Derfel