Blanar

If you're like me and got a Voodoo card, love the Anti-Aliasing, and was mighty dissapointed with the demise of the company, well there's some good news on the CM front. I've been playing with XP and downloaded the 1.08.04 drivers for XP off the x3dfx.com website. The new driver works great with XP, but of course, no test is complete without the CMBO test! So, I fire up CM and low and behold the mouse dropping problem is gone. No more ugly square boxes when I click on the entry screens. I then ESC to the desktop and open the window again. While there is still a bit of corruption on certain lettering, the important parts of the screen are clear, readable, and most playable. If I ESC and restore enough times, eventually the screen corrupts just as it always did before, but it allows me a few to change background music, fire off an e-mail, or whatever. So, if you've been dreading the move to XP and looking at that Geforce card as the only way to get there, the guys at x3dfx have done a great job and will let you hang onto your voodoo card a bit longer. Later, Carl

I play almost exclusively against the AI. My schedule's too hectic and variable to do much with PBEM or TCP games. The AI is always there when I have time, doesn't mind if I takes weeks to complete my next turn, and doesn't complain if I just walk away and never finish a batttle. Carl

I don't know what the count is up to, but I use it all the time. I've even written some of my own rule sets to handle mods not included in the officially sanctioned sets. Carl

Could you pass it along my way: gatchell@charter.net Thanx a bunch, Carl

Thank you very much! Now I'm sitting here at work with that damn oompah-loompah song playing over and over in my head. This is going to be a very long evening! Oom-pah-dee-do...

Gyrene, Downloaded and installed no problem. Nice feature, that switch box by the intersections. Great work. Thanks, Carl

Jim, With the Voodoo 5 you need to change the FSAA setting from "best performance", the default to any of the other choices. "FSAA 4x" works great on my machine, but your mileage may vary. While the search function may be slow, try checking out the Tech Support section of the forum. There have been lots of good setting suggestions for Voodoo 5's. Well worth waiting for the answer. Good luck, Carl

Panzer Meyer, It's a hardware issue, ATI doesn't support the fog tables. I know it's been discussed several times in the Tech Support forum and a search there may shed some more light. Sorry the answer isn't an easy fix. Carl

While it could do with being a little less white, losing the old sand bags on the side is a definite plus. It's not quite as obvious that I'm reading the forum at work now. Carl

I haven't had a problem with heat but a similar experience with power. Upgraded my father's video card and everything ran fine until we fired up CM. We could watch the intro and sometimes actually get to the first couple of screens. As soon as a scenario was selected, the PC would lock up or reboot. No problems with Word, Excel, Gettysburg or Antietam, but CM would just clobber the system. Finally figured out that his 230 watt power supply was just stretched to the max and CM was the straw that broke the camel's back. A new power supply solved the problem. This game definetly puts your system through a work out! Carl

Apache, Depends upon your sound system of course, but I've been using NCrawler Sound Mod 1.6 since it originally came out and think they're great. It offers several different versions for several sounds. So, although the defaults sound good, you may want to do a little bit more work to see which sound you like the best. Check out http://www.scipiobase.de/ for some other great sound additions. Enjoy, Carl

It's cost me at least 2 strokes on my handicap. I keep playing CM on those weekend mornings instead of practicing before those golf rounds. Carl (Oh, and let's not even talk about my putting!)

E for me!

Just a warning though, while it's the best $45 you can spend, it can only lead to the slippery slope of addiction. You start with that first MadDog mod pack and then a few 3rd party mods, this leads to that new cable modem or DSL line. Now you can read the forum at ligthning speed and download every hi-res mod there is. But where to put them all and the screen is starting to white out. Off to the store or web to buy that new video card and hard drive. Ah, now we have CM heaven plenty of great graphics! Umm, but you know that All or Nothing scenario looks great with these new mods, but it takes an awful long time to figure out each turn. Time for that CPU and memory upgrade. There we go, now it cranks out that scenario! Well, geez, with all those mouse clicks during those new installs your mouse's ball is all gummed up. Have to get yourself one of those new optical mice for more precise movement orders! Now things are great, except you have to choose between music or sound effects. Yup, that latest Sound Blaster card would let you listen to music while you play and it's really quite a bargain at twice the price. Download a few more mods, and you know that .50 cal sound recording could use a bit more base. Why with a few wires you can run the sound right into your stereo! Now, the earth really shakes when those 14" shells land. So, then you read the forum post about the best music to play the game to and start thinking wouldn't it be nice to record your own CD with all the best pieces on it? You bet, time to pick up that CD burner. You probably really needed a second CD anyway since the CM CD never leaves the original drive. Now we've got graphics, sound, and speed! Fire up the game and the PC crashes. Yes, you've overwhelmed your poor little 230 watt power supply. Time for that nice little 300 watt beauty. Next comes the new monitor and the in-house LAN so when friends visit you don't have to play hot seat games. But, then I've always been a weak willed person and I'm sure you're much stronger and this couldn't possibly happen to you... Carl

40 here. My father plays so much I think he burned out his video card, just finished replacing that. He's 67. Carl

If your looking for mods, don't forget the sound mods in MDMP-1 and at Scipio's website at http://www.scipiobase.de/ Those King Tigers are just that much more intimidating with Jon Johnson's heavy tank sounds and Scipio's .50 Cal recording let's you know instantly that someone's day is ruined. Carl

Lmandrake, If you can get one for $120, I'd say go for it. I run mine at 1024 on a 17 inch monitor with a T-bird 800 and the graphics are great with 4xFSAA. Yes, there are a couple of annoyances like the mouse droppings in the initial screen and the ESC to the desktop corruption. Performance wise, you can't compete with the 64Mb GeForce2 cards, but compared to what else you can get for $120 it's a steal. Besides if you can sell your old card and get the price down to around $60 what else can you get for that? One round of golf with cart and a beer ~ $60. One day of skiing with lunch ~ $60. Dinner and a movie with the girlfriend ~ $100. Six months of CMBO with Full Screen Anti-Aliasing ~ priceless! Carl

marsunit, The trees are only figments of imagination, they don't really exist. That is, the amount of coverage comes from the terrain tile you're on and where you are on it. Each time you start the game the PC regenerates and distributes the images of trees, but if your men haven't moved they have the same coverage as before even if the tree they were behind has disappeared or changed. The trees make it look better, but you could turn them off with the hot keys and still be in the woods or tall pines or whatever. Hope that makes sense, Carl

Panzer Leader, The grids do a good job of helping to show the lay of the land. Depending on your video card, monitor, and grass mod your using, seeing a 3-D image of the valley before you isn't always easy on a 2-D screen. It's the same idea as the golf sims out there that use grids on the greens to help read the break and slope. Carl

Try this, Go out to your 3dfx tools and click on the "3dfx Anti-Aliasing" tab. Change your Anti-Aliasing to any thing other than the default of "Fastest Performance". I have a AMD T-bird 800 and the "4 Sample Anti-Aliasing" option works great. That should solve the text white out problem. If you ESC to your desktop and return to the game, your text will be garbled unless you choose "Single Chip Only". With this setting you lose you Anti-Aliasing ability so I only use this if I know I have to ESC out a lot. Couple of other settings you can play with are in under the "3dfx Advanced Features" tab. Check the "AGP Command FIFO", it defaults to AGP 1X. You can up it to 2X if your mother board supports it. Also playing with the "Level of Detail Bias" can make a big difference to the picture, mine's set to -0.75. As always your mileage may vary. A search of both this and the main Combat Mission forum will show a bunch of discussions on Voodoo 5 and may provide other useful info that was in brain cells I've long since killed. Good luck, Carl

I just lowered the volume on that myself this past weekend. It's 171.wav Carl

Made up the name for a character in a D&D game about twenty years ago. When computer games started asking for names for your character, I brought it back out of retirement. Been using it ever since when I need a quick user name. Carl

bcreamer, Check your 3dfx setup for Direct3D and change it to anything other than "fastest performance". I have a similar system and "4 sample Anti_Aliasing" runs and looks great. If you ESC back and forth to your desktop alot, "Single Chip Only" keeps the text from being corrupted, but you lose FSAA. You can also search through both the "Combat Mission" and "CM - Tech Support" forums. There have been several good posts with other setting suggestions to try to further improve the overall look of CMBO with a Voodoo 5 card. Hope this helps some, Carl

It's over 51% now. Carl

You can set up your card to run in "single chip mode". But you lose FSAA when you do this. This also stops the mouse droppings on the entry screens. However, losing FSAA and the quality image just isn't worth it IMO. Carl