Fuerte

CM is better in many respects. Here is a quick replay of what I wrote in the SPWAW forum months ago: 1) CM is much more realistic. True 3D is very cool. 2) Modern user interface. 3) Better graphics, CM is beautiful. 4) I like the campaign (operation) system better. But SPWAW has its good points: a) Has much more features, paratroops, airplanes, mine fields, different nationalities, bigger time span, etc. Is faster to play. Makes bigger battles possible. c) The user interface has unit list. When the SPWAW 4.5 comes out (within a week), and has the PBEM replay bug finally fixed, I am again going to play SPWAW quite a bit.

Perl is just a programming language, you can program cgi scripts with whatever language you want.

I believe that the current newsreaders automatically ask for the user id and password if needed, so that would not be a problem either. NNTP is easily the fastest system around, it only downloads the unread headers, and the server does not need to build HTML pages all the time. No need to send the same messages in a thread over and over again. And what's best with NNTP is that I could then easily filter out the Peng thread.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by John Hough: The big drawback of doing that is that you need to have instructions about how to view the forums somewhere on the site, and a few less technically inclined people may not see the forums at all, 'coz it's too much trouble to configure the newsreader properly.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> In fact it is very easy to setup a news group. Just have a link like news://battlefront.com/Combat_Mission and when you click it, it is automatically added to your Outlook Express or Netscape newsgroups. But maybe Battlefront.com wants to have a username and password for every user, then it may be a bit more difficult.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: Regular Pershing is faster, can carry a squad of infantry, has a faster turret, faster rate of fire and can hold more ammo.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I bought the Super Pershing instead of regular one in one PBEM game. Guess what happened? Super didn't fire even once before it was killed by a German AA gun. Its turret was just too slow... the German AA gun reversed faster, and the increased armor in Super was not enough for it. It hit three times, first destroyed the tracks and then the gun. My crew bailed out. [This message has been edited by Fuerte (edited 12-06-2000).]

NNTP would be a good thing. Can you setup your own news server? I know that there is already one in usenet, but my ISP does not have it.

Thanks a bunch!

I too noticed this. My tanks were hunting on the flank and behind the pillbox, and they still stopped and started to fire smoke at the pillbox. 1.05. Should be easy to fix!

Ok, I bump this for the last time, in case somebody is still playing PBEM.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by deanco: On my french keyboard, tilde is Alt Gr - 7, and when I press it, the symbol doesn't come up right away. I have to press another key afterwards to get it to 'print'. Makes chatting pretty much impossible unless there's something here I haven't understood. Any French people experience this, or is my keyboard broken?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The same thing happens on the Finnish keyboard. Shift+` does not display it yet, I have to press space after it. In Finnish keyboard ` is left to Backspace. I agree, 0 in the keypad would be about ideal. I don't have Num Lock on usually, but it would be a good solution. Mappable keyboard would be the best one.

0 is between 9 and + in the Finnish keyboard. Doesn't + and - move to the next and previous unit?

Yes, Enter (or Return) opens the unit info, how could I miss that. How about this key: § It is left to the 1 in the Finnish keyboard, just under Escape. It would be fine! But there must be many other unused keys. Function keys? Yes, customizable key maps would be the best solution! I could then map / to something easier, like -.

In fact space bar is used to cancel a menu. But I guess pressing space when the menu is not visible could open the chat. Tab is used to center the view to the selected unit. Enter is used in other games to chat, is it used for anything in CM?

I just played two TCP/IP test games. It was quite fun, but the problems with the real time connection are also very clear. Here are the plusses and minuses: + It was quite fast, both players viewing the recording and making the moves at the same time. - When one player has much more to do than the other, then it must be quite boring to just wait. If one attacks and one defends, then the defender is going to have a boring game, unless the time limit is very low, in which case the attacker is cursing a lot. + It was quite intensive. More than PBEM. - You have no time to see everything, so something important or funny or beautiful is missed in every game. The TCP/IP play is nice to have, but I'm certainly going to play a lot more PBEM than TCP/IP. TCP/IP takes so much time, one or two hours, and you have to sit on the computer all the time. PBEM has freedom, you can play whenever you have the time. And you can carefully plan your turns... and view the recording as many times as you want.

Just played two TCP/IP test games, everything worked fine. Only problem is the chat key, tilde (`) which requires pressing the shift key simultaneously in Finnish keyboard. This makes it of course real hard to use. Another bad key is /, which rotates the view. Again shift is needed... Why can't we have a customizable keyboard? Adding a .ini file wouldn't be too difficult.

This was already in page 5 because of all this TCP/IP crap!

I may be the only one, but I had to uninstall your mod right away. The reason? The fonts were too small and too dark. The original fonts are much easier to read. Also the texts "Knocked Out" and "Abandoned" are too dim. It may be just my eyes...

Problem solved! I have ZoneAlarm 2.1.44, a free firewall program. I guess that it opened a dialog at that point, asking if I want to allow Combat Mission to become a server. Now I manually configured CM to ZA, and it works, at least I got the the waiting for the other player screen. Here are the links, if you want to fix this problem... the desktop should appear or at least pressing Escape should bring the desktop visible. ZoneAlarm: http://www.zonelabs.com/ Download: http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/partners/zonealarm/zonedl.html

I just tried the TCP/IP play. Started the Tutorial scenario, selected TCP/IP, entered the password and then I could not get anywhere. The background music still played and the mouse moved, but the password screen remained, and I couldn't get to the desktop. I had to reboot the machine. I have WinME and DirectX 8. I'm too afraid to try again, don't want to damage my machine. The user interface could be improved by making a simple change to the menu structure. Instead of JOIN MULTIPLAYER button, the two buttons behind it (LOAD E-MAIL and JOIN NETWORK GAME) should be moved to the first screen. I nowadays play only PBEM, so it would save a couple of mouse click every day.

Here is an alternative download site: http://www.nic.fi/~fuerte/pbem.zip

I just finished Diablo II online with a friend. It was quite fun! I also downloaded and tried CC5, but I was not impressed much. CM has probably spoiled me. The little men in CC5 were so hard to find... still it's ok for a real time game. And it shows every man separately, which CM can't do.

Documentation is here: http://www.sci.fi/~fuerte/pbem.htm The setup program is here: http://www.sci.fi/~fuerte/pbem.zip

Here is a screenshot if you are interested. The first one is a SPWAW game, you see that I am waiting for a turn. The next one is just a test game. The last to are CMBO games, I just received them, that's why they are in bold. It also prints the Play in bold so that I know what to do next.

I did a cold boot and it helped. Vanir, do you think that the problem is in the Vortex 2 or in the software (drivers / Combat Mission)? I have not noticed this in any other game.

I just tested with Diablo II and the stereo was ok. Also previously Unreal Tournament was certainly ok. Hmmm... so it should work... I can't find any settings to swap channels in the software, but I remember vaguely that there was some option like that a year or two ago, in some control panel application. So it must be just my system.