bsoplinger

I just did a search for 30 days in all the CM forums for user 909 and haven't seen any post about RAVE 1.6 vs 1.7 Are you sure he posted something about it recently?

Well, if you like Battlefront and CM. Suck it up and buy the game. By not buying a copy, your vote is saying to BF, "Don't bother developing for Mac's any more". If enough people do that, then there will be NO next version in OSX to buy. </font>

I've been running OS X exclusively since almost when it came out, but I'm the odd duck, doing Unix and X-Windows work at home. I was eagerly looking forward to the release of CM:BB thinking I could finally play CM again, not realizing it was mired in the Rave 1.7 that forced the original CM to be played in OS 9. *sigh* a lost sale for battlefront, as I don't need yet another 'have to boot to OS 9 on a machine that really isn't setup to do this anymore." And its a crying shame, as I loved this game and would dearly love to support them, but not to the tune of buying a piece of software I can't use.

Try Aladin's StuffIt. Most Mac users have it installed and they do make a PC unstuffer. Stuffit will also zip files. Since the moves are text they should compress well. In fact, with moves that huge, it may be a good idea to always send a zip or sit file back and forth

You don't need to remove the "-" for use with CM MacMod either. To Marty: You could have tried the FileTyper converters I linked to in the other thread. That probably would have worked for you.

It sounds like you don't have enough video memory to see the high-res textures. I believe there is 1 low-res gridded grass texture available over at CMHQ, you might want to try that one. If that doesn't work, post more info, like machine and video card.

Here's 2 little programs to set file types for people who are having problems with PC graphic files. To make them QT files: http://www.albany.net/~oplinger/PC%20BMP%20to%20QT%20BMP.bin To make them GraphicConverter files: http://www.albany.net/~oplinger/PC%20BMP%20to%20GraphicConverter%20BMP.bin These were made with FileTyper, a great little utility. You can drop individual files or folders of files onto them. They will only decode 1 level deep. I'll be including these as part of my next release. [This message has been edited by bsoplinger (edited 09-05-2000).]

Let me second Dave's request about bug reports. Emailing me directy will get a response much faster than posting in this or a new thread. If it seems to be a general problem I'll sumarize what steps I took with you and post it here as general info for everyone as I've done before. B

This thread should probably continue over in the CM - Tips and Techniques Forum under the Topic: Mac Mod Managers (MCM3 and MacMod) http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum7/HTML/000215.html aikidorat opened that to discuss the 2 managers and discuss what they do, ask for features, that sort of thing. I've already added 2 postings there based on questions I've gotten from people who've emailed me with problems or questions.

The differences? Mine's lots better of course, cause I wrote it Seriously, both do about the same thing. I'm not sure if aikidorat's can export PICTs from a resource to Mac files, but otherwise they do the same things, just do it differently. Mine (CM MacMod) is based on drag and drop. You select all the .bmp's you want, drag them to CM MacMod and drop them on it. You get a side by side view of the before and after pics (and summer versions if you're applying a new winter mod). You can then select to update one or the rest, skip one or the rest or cancel the whole operation. It'll also take PICTs, JPGs and TIFF files along with the Graphics Files, which lets you do a revert type operation, just not as neatly as Dave's will. Dave can describe his better but here's a quick shot at it: You open a folder's worth of .bmp files and get a list and pick and choose which ones to apply.

I had an email exchange with someone asking about using the mod managers and thought I'd put excepts here as it might be info that hasn't been covered, or was in the past but Mac users ignored it because they couldn't apply mods. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I do have a question downloaded the Madmac 2 mods and after viewing them in Quicktime picture viewer I do notice that there is a pink dot and dots in certain parts of the image, e.g. like an alpha channel around the pictures and in certain areas of the pictures like the wheel spoke areas. When I copied one of the mods the Tiger tank to be exact there was some of this pink color in the wheel spokes and so I then tried and down loaded a second Tiger tank 3rd party mod and looked at those pictures in the Quicktime viewer, again the pink spots around the wheel well area. … Is there a way of correcting this ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm going to explain these pink areas in Photoshop terms, although I'm sure the same info is available with other graphics programs also. If by pink, you mean what I'd call purple, use the eyedropper tool to pick it and check the RGB values. If you see R:255, G:0, B:255 that's the color that Combat Mission uses as a mask. The mask is used by the program for areas that are transparent or don't count. For example, a tree would basically be round and the outside of the circle would all be purple, allowing the ground beyond or other trees to show through when drawing that particular tree image on the screen. Hope I made myself clear there. So what that means to you is that purple areas are normal and expected in a lot of the pictures, especially with round or irregular shaped things like wheels, trees, most terrain, etc. That's the quicky answer to "what are the funny looking purple/pink areas I see in the mods?" (I used tree as an example because 536.bmp in the first MDMP was bad and had values of 252:2:254 which explains why if you download the MDMP-1 for PC and apply it you will see odd purple splotches. MadMatt included a corrected version in MDMP-2) [This message has been edited by bsoplinger (edited 09-04-2000).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aikidorat: Well, with all the wasted bandwidth going on, figured I'd bring this thread back up to the front to see what you all think about the mod managers. And, in case anyone missed it, the managers are released! Check out any of MadMatt's posts to get the link. Hope you're enjoying the mod programs. .... dave <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well judging from the lack of email to me, either they're working very well or nobody's using them!

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by gibsonm: I only hope CM will work under the OS X Public Beta. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I don't think there's any chance of that. CM uses ATI's old proprietary 3D API, RAVE. OS X will only support OpenGL I think. I know it won't support RAVE. I do seem to remember the developers mentioning that moving to the OpenGL API was in their plans, so perhaps CM 2 will. [This message has been edited by bsoplinger (edited 09-04-2000).]

Colin got a copy of CM MacMod from me and has been having some troubles and from helping him I think there are a few guidelines that would apply to both of the managers that I should mention. First, you want Quicktime 4 installed and you wanted to have chosen the option to set it to deal with non-Macintosh file types. Its been awhile since I've done the install, but I do remember being asked during the instillation process about setting these items. If you haven't, open the QT control panel and make sure Quicktime Exchange is enabled. You'll also want to make sure you have file exchange enabled. With both of these things enabled, either StuffIt or ZipIt should decode the PC .bmp files as something that's recognized as a PC picture file. This will allow drag and drop to work with CM MacMod and will allow selecting those files for use with either mod manager. If you do have GraphicConveter, there is an option under General:Misc to "configure file exchange" and "use file exchange/IC config" and these can be used to tell your mac what to do with graphic files from the PC world, including .bmp files. You can also use graphic converter to convert 'bad' .bmp files by using the convert more option and selecting the .bmp and choosing the icon/preview choice and making sure that the Save:Misc save file type setting has "GraphicConverter" chosen. You can also just delete the entire folder and re-unstuff/unzip them once you've setup your machine like I've described and restarted.

Final status info. I just mailed off the release version 1.0 of CM MacMod to aikidorat which includes a fancy manual and everything I have no idea when they (both mine and his version) will show up over at the HQ. PS If you're reading this aikidorat, don't release the last test version but the new version I just mailed you

Final pre-release status update on CM MacMod. Sent it out to my testers and aikidorat, looks good. I'll have to package up a nicer readme (making sure to thank the testers) and that's about it. I'll make the REALBasic project available to those who ask, the info will be in the readme. So a saturday release looks good for me too.

Another status update of CM MacMod. Just sent out canditate1 of version 1 to my 2 testers and aikodorat to look at. Looks like things are on schedule for a late Friday or Saturday release.

Quick status update, took a 2 hour lunchbreak and added an export feature to dump the PICT resources to separate mac PICT files. Sent it out to my 2 testers. I'm at version 0.3, the last one before this coming weekend and probably the last addition of features, I'll see what feedback I get. This weekend, after making any fixes, I plan to post version 1.0 of CM MacMod over at CMHQ somewhere.

On the freeware/shareware/donationware thing... I spent 100 bucks to get a version of RealBasic that would produce and app without a timelimit (That's how they do the demo, it stops 30 days from when its built, only runs 5 minutes. A pretty kewl way to try out the program). I'll probably find other uses for it now that I have it, so I'm leaning towards a 5 or 10 shareware fee, but with full features and no nagging, so nobody'd have to pay to use it. PS: After looking at aikidorat's version, I added the ability to drop a resource file on the app, to let you revert back to the CD versions of things if needed. The only trouble with my version, since its visual, it can be pretty slow to skip the first 200 PICTs you don't want to change to get to the ones you do. Perhaps I can add a slider or index, that would be enabled when a resource file as opposed to a graphic file is dropped on the app

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by bsoplinger: Just a followup on mthe status of my Mac Mod maker (gleamed from an email with akiadorat): Things I still need to do: ... the application it creates to support drag and drop. ...use the custom icon I threw together when it builds the app. Intelligently search for the right file, that is, have the user select a 'Graphics xx' file, but then check that the resources are there, and ask what to do it they aren't (allowing for the winter camo schemes). Don't make a backup file of the original until its needed. If I'm feeling horribly ambitious, let the user drag a pic in the preview window (for those rare cases when the thing's bigger than the 128x128 I've allowed for). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, did more work. Got drag and drop working just fine and the custom icon. Both were related to how one defines a RealBasic project. It wasn't clear in the docs what was needed but I found the answer from the mailing list. The app doesn't make a backup until the user chooses to replace a resource. This allows the app to be used as a browser of what's already in the Graphics file. I made up a archive and sent it off to 1 person, he had a favorable impression, so now I just have to figure out how and where to release it. Oh, in re-reading this I noticed I forgot a big step I've included. You don't need anything other than QuickTime 4 installed, the app will open the PC .bmp files directly. [This message has been edited by bsoplinger (edited 08-27-2000).]

Just a followup on the status of my Mac Mod maker (gleamed from an email with akiadorat): Anyhow, I got ambitious this weekend, stayed up late, etc. I've got a pretty well working program. Things in it now: Name of the Graphics file, the PICT #being worked on, a skip 1 item, skip all items, replace 1 item, replace all, preview of the new PICT and the old one (or summer if its winter camo and the file doesn't have a winter), progress bar. The thing also accepts picts and jpgs and tiff files, not just BMPs. Things I still need to do: Convince the @#$% RealBasic to let the application it creates to support drag and drop. Right now you have to launch the app then drag the bmp files to it. (Btw, I found out that the file type is 'BMPf' if its a Quicktime BMP and 'BMP ' a GraphicConverter one) Convince the doubly #$%^ RealBasic to use the custom icon I threw together when it builds the app. Intelligently search for the right file, that is, have the user select a 'Graphics xx' file, but then check that the resources are there, and ask what to do it they aren't (allowing for the winter camo schemes). Don't make a backup file of the original until its needed. If I'm feeling horribly ambitious, let the user drag a pic in the preview window (for those rare cases when the thing's bigger than the 128x128 I've allowed for). Actually RealBasic is a pretty nice package, just a bit sparse on the documention. So I'm sure my problems are most likely due to errors on my part and not bugs with RealBasic

That could be, the reason I asked, is that somewhere, perhaps in a readme or else on the site here, I saw a comment to the effect that version 1.0 sounded much better. And I agree, it does. The problem is that my machine stops everytime a new sound gets processed. Very frustrating, I went back to the current 1.7.x version.

OK, I've been looking at all the mods out there for the PC type folks and I think I've figured out how to make them work on my Mac. Clicking on the little pic loads a big one and shows a Panther A in snow camo. I think I can make it pretty straightforward to automate the conversion process from the things available at the CMHQ. My questions are: 1) Is what I'm seeing 'proof' that the mod installed? 2) Assuming 1's true, would Mac folks be interested in a semi-automated way to xfer PC mods to their combat mission? By semi-automated, what I see now is using Graphic Converted to convert from BMP to PICT resource, then a program to run. I see the program asking for the original (off the CD) resource file, asking what directory has the current resource file, and comparing that resource to the CD to let you know if you've already modified it, and then modifying the resource file is you OK it. It would make a backup and be a drag and drop of the converted PICT resource files to run. Sounds seem trickier, so I'm concentrating on the graphics first. <A HREF="http://www.albany.net/~oplinger/Winter%20Panther.jpg">

I've installed it on my Apple G3 250 (Kanga) notebook. This was the first apple laptop with the G3 processor and is pretty long in the tooth already. It has a rather poor ATI chip and only 1M of video memory, but runs the game quite acceptably. Now granted, the graphics sure aren't what I'm seeing on my desktop with a 16M card, but they aren't bad, moving the screen is acceptable and plotting orders and playback work quite well. So its pretty amazing that the game runs so well. However .... This brings up a good point. Notebooks are notorious for poor graphic chips. I'd hate to see CM2 have such high minimum graphic requirements that it couldn't be run on a laptop other than the latest top-of-the-line machine.

I have a question. I seem to remember having seen in discussions about other games and the mac as a gaming platform that sound sprockets was nice but a huge CPU cycle hog. If this is true, is it possible to not use sound sprockets as an option? Kind of like the different tree options, Sound-HQ, Sound-fast?