deanco

I go along with you there. I live in France, and if you visit a small town, you will see that the streets and buildings are "placed" in a more haphazard fashion. But I get the feeling it would be a lot of trouble to program. One can see that the basic tile setup is 'one building per tile', and I can see the reason behind this as it must facilitate greatly the pathfinding AI as any vehicle can cross any tile that has a building on it. Not to mention the other AI's, it must be easier for them when they can analyze each tile according to a standardized formula. Some of the French towns I've visited, I'd hate to have to explain to a computer how to get around them... a real mess! However, I would be happy for a greater variety of building façades in CM2. City landscapes are not really convincing visually because there are a grand total of about 2 'large building' façades wich causes any large city layout to be visually repetitive. 'A Walk in Paris' is a glaring example. How about it, modmakers? Some new building fronts? Anyway, some of the buildings look like they belong in Alsace-Lorraine, not Normandy... so there is some room for improvement on this front, I feel. DeanCo--

I hate to "mitou" as they say here in France but me too, I'd find this really interesting if anyone knows some details about the AI. I'm not asking for any trade secrets, just a general overview of the "thought" processes used by the computer. Thanks. DeanCo--

I'd like to second elementalwarre here. In fact there is something super important happening to PC strategy gaming as a whole here, with the release of CM. I think at least a few people here have never played a wargame in their life until CM. I personally can't see going back to Age of Empires after this. And I think BTS should licence their TacAI and fuzzy logic routines to other game developers to let them make fictional or fantastic wego or RTS games with the same 'all-too-human' unit behavior found in CM. DeanCo--

Just send your turn!!!! Can't you see I'm filled with trepidation?? DeanCo--

Captain Foobar said : "Now THOSE WERE MY OWN GUYS and see what I did to THEM!!! Just think what Im gonna do to YOURS!!!!" Really strikes fear into my PBEM opponents....Who is that snickering out there? It's me, and it's not snickering, It's laughing my ass off I'm doing. Seriously, after having seen a made for TV movie about Rommel and several reruns of The Rat Patrol, I thought I knew how to maneuver tanks. Several humiliations later showed me otherwise. Someone somewhere else said, "eggshells with hammers" and I think that's a pretty good description. It's not like infantry that (usually) wears down gradually. One minute you're king of the battlefield, then your tank dies, and next minute you're saving your men's asses any way you can. Sort of all or nothing with tanks. DeanCo--

Why I like (ok, love) CM: 1 The ungodly, magnificent AI that takes care of my troops. I am in awe, really. 2 The wego system. 3 The advanced fog of war (compared to other games). 4 The 3D graphics. 5 The complex ruleset. If you put all that in another game, (and hopefully improve on it a little bit, especially the graphics, hint hint)I will buy it, period. I don't care if the tanks are colored bright red and blue and have names like Crusher and Annihilator, and it takes place in the 23rd century, I will buy it. DeanCo--

Ahhh, they're just messin' around, shatter50. Don't take it personal, no one is very serious around here except when it comes to historical accuracy. THEN they get serious. Just relax and enjoy the board. DeanCo--

Hi larso, delete the combat mission byond over prefs file Change your desktop resolution to what you wish to see CM in start CM say accept Go back to your desktop and put it back the way it was. Now CM will always start in your chosen resolution. Apparently some older video cards can only go up to certain resolutions. OTT, hope this helps. DeanCo--

Hi winescape I am working on a website that will be exactly that, a 'GameSpot GameGuide' to CM, with only the most basic stuff in it. I'm using good advice I see on this forum, and other sources, to flesh it out. I can't say when it will be up though, there is a ****load of work to do, and nothing does itself. I want it to be pretty complete before I put it up, with sections on tactics, units, maps, etc. so a new player can consider it his one stop shopping place for info on CM. I'll keep everyone posted. DeanCo--

A quick look at the changes shows that vehicules in general have a bit more survivability. Good, hopefully the TacAI will override some of my more stupid moves. And...once again, great support for your game. Thanks BTS. DeanCo--

Man....I didn't want to post, but it happened to me tonight. I live in France, and one of the bands I play with had a gig out near Rambouillet. So there I am in the car, going 'That's about 220 yards, I could just run up to the wall there, then sprint to those scattered trees....oh look, bocage, like in the game....hmm, now that would be woods, now how far can I actually see into that...' Ahhh, 4:30 am, maybe I should just go to bed.... DeanCo--

Few things I've always wondered about FPS and realism. Why can you run backwards and sideways as quickly as you can forwards? Why does the gunsight not jiggle as you run? Why are there (usually) no crawl or sneak commands? I think for a WWII realistic shooter to be made, a lot of FPS concepts are gonna have to be rethought from the ground up. DeanCo--

I gotta jump in here real quick.. quango, you said : Imagine if AoE was turn based!! Actually it is, or could be. There was a Pause button in AoE, and I used it extensively at the beginning. I finally stopped though, because it was tucked away somewhere in the interface, and you could tell the developers didn't want you using it that much. That was a design decision on their part. CM is a good game because the game is, 'you can give orders every 60 seconds', period. It's a conceptual thing, a command decision on the developers part. If it was a wrong decision I don't think we'd all be here. Anyway, give this wego thing a good try before making any pronouncements. Once you understand the rationale behind it, I think you'll find that it makes for a very enjoyable gaming experience. DeanCo--

Hi cward, I believe you can, or at least try. This is apparently a tactic during Operations, setting vehicules ablaze stops the enemy from repairing them and using them in subsequent Battles. At least that's what I've read here. DeanCo--

Haven't seen this many glowing reviews of a game since Half-Life. I haven't seen even a lukewarm review of CM, for that matter. Every review is a good one. DeanCo--

Hehehe...thanks all. This mod is dedicated to all of you with 9600 baud modems...who says DeanCo don't care about the little guy? Of course, now that I have broken new ground with my icon mod, I only have to sit back and wait for the copycats to improve on the idea. I have already heard about 2 similar projects : one will have various Pokemon characters in place of the radio, and another will have the 12 signs of the zodiac. But...watch out...these will be at least 2k in size! Maybe it's time to upgrade to that 14400 baud modem you've been dreaming about... DeanCo--

I like reading reviews...thanks for the heads up. DeanCo--

I had an idea for a map like that...as fair as possible for the 2 sides as far as terrain goes, and balanced forces for the 2 sides. I got the map done, but I have no idea what balanced forces would be, so... Anyway, too bad you can't do a quick battle with a homemade map. Someone mentioned this before here as a patch addon, and I think that's a good idea for these sort of chess-like battles. DeanCo--

After reading how other people have had no problems with the new drivers, improved performance, etc, I decided to get medevil on it's ass. Clean uninstall, generic drivers for my mouse, no custom anything as far as windows goes, then registry search for relevant nvidia and guillemot references, deleted all nvagp.inf, and my CM prefs, then reboot and new driver install. And the end result is my mouse still leaves artifacts and flickers badly, in all resolutions and color depths. Went back to 5.33, and everything works fine. (sigh) Asus P3-F celeron 500 128 mega RAM SB Live value Guillemot 3d prophet geforce 256 DeanCo--

hi all, I'm just wondering...perhaps some of you that feel comfortable installing and uninstalling drivers should try installing the 6.18 drivers to see if mine is just an isolated instance. Maybe this is something BTS needs to be aware of, so they can have an answer ready if this is a widespread (as far as we can tell) problem. Just thinking aloud. DeanCo--

You're welcome, you guys. Glad to be of help. DeanCo--

After installing the latest Nvidia reference drivers (6.18) I'm experiencing cursor corruption and other problems in CM. The cursor dissapears in the game if I don't move it, and it leaves square artifacts in the main menu. I went back to the 5.33 drivers and the problem went away. Everyone's system is different so this may not happen to you, but I've had no problems with any of these beta drivers until 6.18. FYI. DeanCo--

After installing the latest Nvidia reference drivers (6.18) I'm experiencing cursor corruption and other problems. The cursor dissapears in the game if I don't move it, and it leaves square artifacts in the main menu. I went back to the 5.33 drivers and the problem went away. Everyone's system is different so this may not happen to you, but I've had no problems with any of these beta drivers until 6.18. FYI. DeanCo--

another crossover victim...welcome abord! DeanCo--

For what it's worth, dude, I see where you're coming from, but OTOH, there are some guys here that have been hanging out for maybe 3 years on this same forum. Back then the only people posting were military experts and such, a small group of people very interested in the game's developement. Now the floodgates are open and lots of people are posting here and a few of the oldtimers are having a hard time adjusting to it all. Not to make excuses because I've noticed the same thing as you, but if you put yourself in the shoes of some of the veterans here it makes it easier to understand why this attitude MAY (I did say MAY) be present. Hope this helps. DeanCo--