karch

Hi all. I'm looking to add new scenarios but grabbing them one by one off the well designed sites seems to take too long. ( call me lazy ). Would anone with a large collection of CMBB ( and CMAK ) scenarios be willing to zip up your scenarios folder and email it out to scott@karchfamily.com if this isn't an appropriate request. my appologies and I'll edit the request out. scott karch

As I've seen submariners joke, Any ship can submerge... but only submarines can come back up!

Here's an update from Mike in Germany - Thanks for all the input from everyone. It's very appreciated. After running down four computer stores, I found one that had apple products about three minutes after closing and talked my way inside. I bought Norton Systemworks 3.0 for 140 Euros, though its in German. Hope it works!!! I'll let you know.

gets prompt screen like booting into single user mode to run fsck -y but only gets a flashing questionmark or something similar. Can't run any commands. I don't think much has loaded by the time he gets that screen.

Hi all. I'm trying to help a good friend who's in Munich Germany right now. He flew to Germany to pick up a new BMW and drive around Europe for a week or 2. He had all his travel plans on his Powerbook G4... at the airport he force quit the computer by holding down the power key too long and upon getting to Germany, can't get the machine to boot at ALL. Are there any Mac users in Munich, or nearby that may be able to help him out. He's an Airforce B1 Navigator if it helps. He can be reached at phone number 0049-89-360020 room 248. His name is Mike Brazda. He has CM loaded on the machine and would be happy to play a game with anyone there too... I've been too lame to play lately. he can also be reached at mbrazda_1999@yahoo.com Any help about finding an Apple reseller that could help him or someone with an OS X install disk to boot from and try and fix the drive would be greatly appreciated. He's a great friend and he's really stuck. Thanks everyone

I can't wait to try it. My company just supplied me with a Windows laptop that plays CM just fine. Now I can try out your app. Kudos. Thanks for all the hard work. regards Scott Karch

I've been gleaning the interweb for the next mac chip choice. I've seen interesting things supporting a few different options. I don't know how much of this is true, it's things I've taken from various rumor sites and reporters. SCENARIO A: Itanium 1) Steve Jobs will be speaking at an Intel conference 2) There were Intel employees mgmt/engineers in the first few rows of the last Apple event 3) Panther will probably be a 54bit ready OS 4) Itanic is a 64 bit chip 5) It's Intel and all the power/respect that brings MAYBE Apple will use Itanics for XServes and high end workstations where heat output isn't as important. The logic boards wouldn't run anything but OS X so they don't have to worry about the millions of Dell users grabbing a copy of the new Intel OS X and slapping it into their boxes... read lose tons of HW revenue. Could make for a very interesting concept. Would Intel be willing to give Apple a few million in development to get Itanium onto the desktop finally? Maybe then get OS X server running on any Itanium server... HP DELL, etc. That could be a nice way of easing into the plain vanilla PC/Server market. Interesting SCENARIO B: IMB 970 The rumor mills have been going gaga over the 970 for some time now. There is mention of the 970 going into full scale production last week. There are also rumors of Apple's new MoBos for the 970 being finished too. Know way of knowing if they are true. I like this option because a. 970s produce little heat and could go into laptops b. 32 bit/64bit design, Alta-Vec included c. fully SMP we could get monster 4 or 8 processor giant servers with Gigs and Gigs of RAM using 64bit processing. d. They would be really fast and e. They aren't Intel You could put these into BOTH workstations and laptops.... you can only get Itaniums into desktops and servers. SCENARIO C: OS X for plain Intel boxes Apple is going up against Microsoft with it's own browser, slideshow program and is rumored to be working on an Office competitor... Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Slideshow, Database Mail integration. With the cool Mac only Apps, iMovie, iDVD iPhoto iTunes, there a chance they could try and turn into a software company and get machines to Dual Boot into OS X and WIN XP. If they could get some sort of concurrent booting like VirtualPC for Windows, that would be cool, but Microsoft bought Connectix, maybe to stop that. The option sounds great to consumers, because users that may like OSX or be interested in it could start using it without buying new hardware and all new Apps. But I don't see it happening as a first step because it would so canabalize HW sales. Now running OS X Server on Itanium servers... that is interesting.. people could get a Massive Itanium server to do huge MAYA renderings, Video editing and Photoshop editing where monster horsepower is needed but without biting too much into sales of their own hardware. Those computers woudn't cost any/much more than Apple's X Serves. Also the work that would have to be done to support the millions of device drivers for video, SCSI, USB, etc etc etc devices that Windows users demand to keep using would be massive and there probably wouldn't be enough driver support out there. Well, there's my 2 cents. I think we'll see 970 chips only with Intel integration moving forward in 1-4 years. regards, Scott

Well, it's both a happy and sad day for this Mac user. My first Mac was a 660av, then a 7600, iMac DV and clamshell iBook. I run OS X on both the iMac and iBook. The 7600 has a G3 card and is running OS X server as my web server and companies backup email server. But because I'm using OS X all the time, I just don't have time to bother rebooting back into 9 to play CM. Anyway, the good news is I can play CM whenever I want now, the bad news is it's on the new windows laptop my company bought me. It's the bottom of the line Dell Inspiron 1100, but you know what? It works as well as my ibook ever did playing CM in OS 9. It should, it's a 2GHz celeron. No speed demon, but I think it works well. I'm just happy I'll get to play CM from now on again. I'd tenatively recommend this option for Mac users running newer machines that can't boot back into 9. The machine costs less than $1000 and has pretty much everything you need for a nice basic machine. I'll still be using Macs at home, but I don't have a problem using this one more often. Scott (please don't turn this into a Mac PC war)

They said CMBB wouldn't be updated to include any new multi-turreted vehicles, but how about a paid upgrade? I would sure pay to see a T35. Probably not enought people that care enough about the odd multi-turreted tanks to bother with, but I want it recorded that I'd pay $20-30 to see those tanks. Scott

I'm a FileMaker programmer. When you buy FileMaker Developer, you are given a cross platform Win/OS9/OSX CD and can make runtime solutions for all the platforms. Just find the install CD and install the tools onto a PC and you can create a runtime solution for Windows. I think that the Mac runtime apps are Carbon apps and will work on both OS9 and OSX. We use Macs for most of our development work but of our hundreds of clients, only have 1 Mac client. In fact, we won't be buying any more Macs at the office either. The only thing that will probably be staying is our OS X server for file serving, mail serving and our OS9 DNS servers since I'm not concerned about hackers breaking into our Mac boxes like with Windows. But that's for another thread. You should have all the tools you need to make a Mac/Win database. I think I did it my self about 1.5 years ago, but never posted it. Good job. Look into the Install Anywhere installer app. It's a bit tricky to use, but then you can create installers for Mac and Windows for free. Scott

Wow, talk about picking up an idea and running with it. I am REALLY impressed. Scott

If they are looking at making the game really expandable and customizeable from the user end, then I wonder if there is any possible way to allow users to create their own 3D models and textures and put them into the game. It would be a huge stretch and probably wouldn't work, or enough people wouldn't bother making their own modelsto make it worthwhile, but it could be cool if it were easy to implement. The Game's 3D models are intelectual property and would stay hardcoded into the game NOT accessable by users. Otherwise you'd probably see the models show up on LOTS of other knock off games. But if you included models and labled them correctly, they would replace the in game models. It would be pretty difficult. you'd have to model the body, wheels/suspension, turret and gun separately and know where they joined. You would then have to figure out the polygons and how to map to them. Do you only use the same number of polys and the same naming conventions (then why remodel) or would there be a custom table to map textures to each specific polygon.... As I think about this, there is probably no way to do this that's easy. Any other ideas on replacing models?

Fuerte, thanks for the mention. I'm a "Stinkin Mac User" and can't use the program. But kudos for automating it. Almost makes me want to switch over to a PC. There are hundreds or even thousands of BMPs. How does the program replace/move/rename the existing BMPs with black ones. Would you mind elaborating on that a little bit? I'm really curious. If you trust your oponents, this is really the way to play. It is REALLY FAST. You play one whole turn per email and get to watch 2 movies each email exchange. Each email exchange contains 2 files instead of one. Try it for a lightning fast PBEM game. Great job guys.

Pretty funny post Humus. I really hope you were trying to be funny. If not, here are your answers. 1) You don't know how to play the game well enough to win. Keep practicing and learn better tactics. 2) If many scenarios were set up like many battles in WWII on the Eastern or Western front, you'd be able to win handily. Try this out. Make a 10,000 point game. As Allies, assault the Germans. Now only allow the Germans to spend about 2,000 of their points and make sure their troops are low on ammo and exhausted. I'll bet you'd be able to win then. CM can't have all the scenarios like that because no one would want to play if they had less than a 1% chance of surviving. QBs are meant to have historical forces on a somewhat even playing field so either side will usually have a chance of winning. Now I hope CM2 will have the ablity to specify games where the defender may be outnumbered 5:1 and has to realize they must pull back or be destroyed. Maybe you're playing a ME QB and are expecting 1:1 forces.. the game could give your enemy a surprise 100% bonus and YOU would have to play smart enough and realize what to do to survive. In that game even if you lost 50% of your troops, if you hurt your enemy somewhat and were able to remove all the rest of your units off the map you could win.. even though you lost more troops/points.

Yeah.. baby diaper. With a 2 year old and a 3 month old, I'll let you guess which one's diapers are easier to change. Hmmm, one drinks mom's milk, the other one had Italian sausage for lunch this afternoon. Here's the little bugger that's keeping us up tonight. Baby Will Taken on Christmas Day. He's also the reason I don't get to play CM much anymore. Just not enough contiguous time ( and the whole OS X situation )

No, not a single vehicle. I now see that he meant that any new vehicle models added to the game instead of all the vehicles in the game, but I still think that it makes more sense for the majority of gamers to either include a similar but wrong model with textures than a correct model with solid color textures. As for the textures, does anyone know how many modders start their own mods from scratch. Creating all their own textures from photos of tanks, figuring out the texture size and positions and creating them all from nothing? I'd doubt many. I'd bet that the vast majority of mods are the original game textures recolored and reworked. If this is the case, it would take FAR longer to expect any textures for these new vehicles and I think would upset more gamers than the current system. And the model couldn't have NO textures, it would be invisible in the game. This means quite a bit of time would have to be used to create all the textures, label them, make sure they are coded into the game correctly etc... and this is still just to get a gray vehicle with a correct model but flat texture. The main problem with the current system is that if CM is your only source of vehicle information, you could be fooled by the wrong models. But the most important thing... the way the vehicle works, is actually modeled correctly. I may have misunderstood the number of vehicles to be created with no textures, but I stand by my first post. They made the best decisioin of the options available to them.

whoops, had to change a diaper in mid typing and didn't know Steve was replying. ( baby's diaper, not mine! )

It's very simple. Because they didn't have time to make all the models and textures. You have 3 options. 1) The vehicles aren't in the game at all 2) The vehicles get in the game but don't have exactly correct models (it's not like they put a US halftrack model in there) 3) The game would have taken even longer to be released. I agree the game isn't perfect, but BFC would be the first to agree with you, me too. Yes it isn't complete with 100% of the features they wanted to include in it, but the order of magnatude of difference between a couple of minor halftracks not getting their own models and EVERY VEHICLE or every added vehicle not having any textures at all is huge. I think you are vastly overestimating the number of people that would bother to buy the game if they had to track down textures just to see what the vehicles look like. Most people either wouldn't buy the game or would be upset that they had to wait for someone else to make textures for the vehicles and then figure out where the were, how to download them and how to install them. Easy for power gamers, but not as easy as you think for many computer users.

you've got to be kidding. i don't have a single mod loaded, and i'd be willing to bet, neither do the majority of cm players. simply put, it would be suicide to sell an incomplete game on purpose. sure i could find and load mods. but frankly, i'd guess it's either too difficult or at least a pain for many computer users to deal with. it's easy to think that you and the other mod happy users are the norm, but i'd bet you are really in the minority. it's just that if you don't add mods you don't post about it..

That is correct. There is NO WAY to currently play CM inside OS X. The only real kludge is a post in the tech support forum about someone getting it to run in Virtual PC. I didn't think ActiveX would work well enough for it to run, but at least one person says they got it to work).

that's been my perception of bfc's answers whenever they answered it. there is a huge licensing fee just to release it.. and the wargaming community just isn't big enough to support the effort.

i was just curious if there had been any preliminary decisions made about: 1) using open gl for mac or mac and windows versions 2) continuing to support the mac ( os x especially ) i'm very curious what percentage of sales mac's currently are. i'd bet they either have slipped, ore will start slipping because of apple's discontinuing os9 booting. if i can put in 1 request for the new game ....please make an osx version. i'd pay double for it!!!!!!!! oh well

i missed the cheap shot about a fundamental change to the program being trivial. please explain to us how you know this to be trivial. and, yes, in case you didn't realize it, you are a whiner.

Hey, if you don't trust someone with your password, then how would any of you trust someone with another system that relies on trusting a player not to create movies and watch them and rerunning them? I've only played PBEMs with people I trust.. not that I get to play much anymore... And what makes you think BFC is as petty as you whiners and would withhold a game improvement just to spite you. Trust me, they won't. And for 2 reasons. 1) You aren't worth it. Don't flatter yourselves into thinking so. 2) Within their abilities (time and money constraints) they will make the game the best it can be. As for questioning how long it would take to make the changes. I don't doubt it for a second. I'm a database programmer, and this is far more complex than I develop, but I understand the situation. We could make every aspect of our applications more scaleable, modular, expandable and everything else, but that makes them initially FAR more complex to develop. Complex and time comsuming. And if you aren't assured your application will make all your money back, or even have enough money coming in to support you because you just doubled your development time preparing for every little possibility that might arise further down the road. Heck, you don't even know if it will sell at all. You have to make hard feature and development concept decisions. It's the way it works. For all of you that are criticizing how much time they have said (many many times) it would have taken, what do you do for a living? Do you develop software? For a large corporatioin or a small company? Do you have budgets and schedules? I seriously doubt any of you work for a small privately held company and are software developers. If I am wrong, I apologize for you may be a far better programmer than I assume, otherwise I think you have no idea of what you are talking about.

back before baby #2 showed up in October and I actually played the game occasionally.. (and before I was running OS X full time... another topic) my good freind and I had a great "TRUST MODE" that let us fly through games. We gave each other our password.. We got 1 full game turn per email and never cheated. here's how it goes.. I'll skip setup. 1) I move, computer turn save doc 2) I open file with HIS password, cover the screen and fast forward to the end of the movie and save the doc 3) I open it with my password, watch the movie and then make my next turn and save the doc. 4) I then send him the files from turn 1 and 3 This way we turned arount 1 full turn per email.. you sent 2 files to each other. 1 movie file and 1 file with your moves pre-plotted. It was very fast, and I trust my good friends to play like this. If you're concerned about cheaters, then don't play this way. Just a thought. We like it.. or liked it back when he played. Scott Karch