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Scipio

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Posts posted by Scipio

    Secret/Missing CM projects?

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    I noticed a little something when I wanted to move Scenario files from one CM title to another.
    As the initiated know, you have to substitute a certain hexcode, whereby the hexcode increases by 2 for each CM title, counted in the order of the releases, i.e.
    00 CMSF (and CMSF2, maybe for compatibility reasons)
    02 CMA
    04 CMBN
    06 CMFI
    08 CMRT
    0A CMBS
    0C CMFB
    0E ???? (could be CMSF2, see above)
    10 ???? (secret project)
    12 CMCW
    Are they working on a secret project? Have I missed something?

    0

    High casualty rates in CM games

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    An interesting debate. I agree that in CM it is not possible to move your troops really carefully. A situation I just saw in a battle: a group is close to a hill edge, on the other side of the edge I have a sound contact. In real life, I imagine, you throw a few hand grenades over the edge first. In CM, you can't do that because you can't give a fire order without LOF. Just as an example.

    0

    The Official Map Conversion Thread

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    12 hours ago, Mad Mike said:

    ...
    1. Open the editor, you will have a basic, open, 320x320 meters map, without any units, plans etc.
    ...
    3. The files should have exactly the same contents, but they all will have different sizes, so there is sometimes more or less raw data being written to a file, for exactly the same thing.
    ...

    Ja, das war auch mein Ansatz und meine Feststellung.

    5 hours ago, Kevin2k said:

    ...
    I've seen some other game's packing, which used random numbers woven into the data. The seed value for the random numbers was hidden with math in the header. It was nasty. But since this data block here is total gibberish, it is even worse.I have no plans to try anything.
    ...
    I suppose a scenario can never be opened in an "EngineVersion" (or is it map format version) older then the one listed in the scenario header.

    Many years ago I decoded the scenario files from the "Campaign Series". The data was finally in simple text files with a simple replacement code. How many places you had to move the characters simply depended on the length of the text line. I suspect that it is not quite so simple here...
    What I suspect: the data are not just packed, because then they would always look the same, because a pack algorithm always works the same (as far as I know). If the data is encrypted, then the key is still in the file, because it is needed to decrypt. It's probably nothing stored in or calculated from the known header data, because they don't change. So probably something randomly generated.
    Apart from that, has anyone ever tried what happens when you lower the engine version in the file?

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    The Official Map Conversion Thread

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Scipio

    On 5/13/2021 at 4:18 PM, Kevin2k said:

    My two cents on CMA+CMSF1/2 versus the other CM-game's map formats. First of: there is always header of the file, which is not all that hard to map out, then after that is large compressed block. The difference between the above game-series is seemingly in the compressed block. When you don't know the compression method there is nothing one can do. I am not saying it is now game-on to find the compression method, but rather to suggest more realistic expectations: Seems to me like a fruitless exercise unless the compression is mapped out.

    Yes, there is always a header, and the guy who programmed ScAn_CaDe obviously mapped it more or less completely. I have already tried to contact him, but unfortunately without success.
    What I would like to know is, has anyone ever tried to convert this however compressed and/or encrypted part of a scenario file into a readable form?
    My thought is that somehow the map data can be converted into raw data that can be read and processed.
    Something like hexcode 01 is an open, hexcode 02 is a beet field, etc. That would bring us - I think - quite a bit further.

    1

    The Official Map Conversion Thread

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Scipio

    Basically right BUT CMSF2 can load CMSF1 maps, so my idea ist to use CMBN v1.0 to load a CMA/CMSF1, then save this in CMBN v1.0, then try to load it to CMBN v4.0, then see what will happen when I try to port it to other v4 games.

    Unfortunatly, I can't get BN V1.0 running due to licensing problems, even if I have all the games & modules purchased. But it requests a license file, not the key!? Funny. Was there a trick for this, or do I have to contact the support?

    Of course it would be much better if the guys from BFC or the brain in the jar show mercy, so that all maps can at least be loaded in the editor, no matter from which game in which game....

    2

    The Official Map Conversion Thread

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Scipio

    On 5/3/2021 at 4:21 AM, Artkin said:

    Historically this has been done though:

    A CMSF scenario to CMRT (Don't ask me how he managed to do that........)

    Since I did the conversion: I had no problem with this scenario back then. Maybe it's just a very compatible scenario, or it had something to do with the engine version back then.

    P.S.: Just found an Engine v3 executable for CMBN and tried to load a CMSF 2 quick battle map in the editor. The map wasn't loaded, but the game didn't crashed. When I try to load the same map with Enhine v4, the game crashed.

    1

    CMSF1 scenarios and the editor

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 2

    Posted

    I tested a bit further and found that the problem in the editor is more likely to occur if you have loaded a scenario before. So
    - I load the CMx1 Scenario 'Test Attack' in the editor
    - I save the CMx1 scenario as 'Test Attack-A
    - I load CMx1 Scenario 'Test-Attack-A' in the Editor -> Crash

    But when I restart CM I can load the scenario 'Test-Attack-A' without any problems and continue working on it. Also playing the scneario is as far as I can tell without any problems.

    So this is a small bug, but it can be worked around.

    0

    Extract/transfer scenarios

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    I have made a few attempts in the past to swap scenarios between the different CMx2 versions, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes it is enough to adjust a special hex number to the respective CMx2 version with a hex editor to at least load the map into the editor of another CMx2.
    However, this still often goes wrong and you always have to redo the complete OOB. So I thought about transferring the somehow packed and/or encrypted scenario data into a raw form or extracting, analyzing and cleanly transferring the contained data, even if the OOB is not that easy to do.
    Mad Mike, for example, had some success reading out the scenario parameters. Has anyone ever achieved more than that, or could one achieve more with the same technique?

     

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