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Letsbe Ave.

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Posts posted by Letsbe Ave.

    A request: printable manual

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    What should be done is that the manual gets updated and then put on the BF website as a free download? Any chance of this?
    I'll be very surprised if the manual is ever updated. What's the point? The target audience would be those who paid for the printed copy, and they are not likely to pay for another copy.

    Those who haven't paid are unlikely to pay in the future.

    BFC have shown that they have no interest in producing a manual that can be printed by their customers, otherwise they would have already taken the small step of releasing a version with black text and no background image. In a patch, if they want to keep the swashbucklers at bay; as a download if they want to improve the lay-knowledge of how to use the non-intuitive interface, and maybe - gasp - spread the game to a wider audience.

    I know documentation is very expensive to develop and maintain, quality documentation is even more so - you know, the sort that doesn't simply consist of large paragraphs of descriptions of features presented in a stream of consciousness fashion, with no particular ordering, no index, thus requiring you to read the entire thing each time you'd like to examine one aspect of the game that is not made obvious by the game controls. But, having made the investment to produce a document, and then, having significantly updated the game-play - as planned - wouldn't it make some sense to include in those plans timely updates to the features guide? And to release the updates so they are accessible in-game, or printable, for reference?

    User documentation is apparently the bane of most software developers' lives - take a look at the paucity of quality documentation for Open Source software, for instance, and you'll see it either doesn't exist, or it adds no explanation to the description of features, or it's out of date, and therefore, wrong.

    If you get it right, though, and/or your software is intuitive to use and single-purposed, the people who would like to use it will be able to do so.

    Let the manual languish, and the frustrations with bugs and features are compounded by the lack of guidance on 'how to drive'. It's like the elusive flying car that we've all been waiting for, but it's uncontrollable by most non-professionals, and the many and varied controls are all in a foreign language. Where's the manual, not only on how to operate the thing, but also how to navigate across country/continents?

    Disclaimer: I bought the game as a download, since I've not been impressed by the previous games' manuals (see above). I use it mostly using email, and I still enjoy CMBB much more (the camera is much easier to control, I understand the control panels on the screen, the software works as I expect).

    Sorry for the soap-box rant, but I'm a repeat customer who is unlikely at this point to pay for any upgrades to this game; some of my reasons are stated above. Please try to convince me otherwise.

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    New PC Advice needed.

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

    ... only 1Gb of RAM. I am considering upgrading the processor if I get a significant performance hit from 1.06.

    I would heartily recommend getting to 2 GB of memory before upgrading your processor. It's very cheap these days, and your setup would certainly benefit from it...
    0

    I say chaps, how does one remove that awful "rock" music

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Originally posted by Other Means:

    I think you just create a sound/music directory with the empty wav's with those filenames in and they will be preferred to the existing ones.

    So now all I need is the name of it.

    Well, the quickest and easiest way to be sure you have all the directory names/filenames correct is to unpack the brz file using the instructions in the readme.txt.

    Here is what your directory will look like before you run RezPack:

    </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Mod Tools\RezPack\input>

    dir/s

    Volume in drive C is Local Disk

    Volume Serial Number is F0BC-FB63

    Directory of C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Mod Tools\

    RezPack\input

    01/02/2008 12:00 AM <DIR> .

    01/02/2008 12:00 AM <DIR> ..

    01/02/2008 12:00 AM <DIR> Sound

    0 File(s) 0 bytes

    Directory of C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Mod Tools\

    RezPack\input\Sound

    01/02/2008 12:00 AM <DIR> .

    01/02/2008 12:00 AM <DIR> ..

    01/02/2008 12:01 AM <DIR> Music

    0 File(s) 0 bytes

    Directory of C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Mod Tools\

    RezPack\input\Sound\Music

    01/02/2008 12:01 AM <DIR> .

    01/02/2008 12:01 AM <DIR> ..

    01/02/2008 12:03 AM 12,157,336 music end of battle.wav

    01/02/2008 12:03 AM 11,725,940 music intro.wav

    01/02/2008 12:03 AM 13,154,592 music splash.wav

    3 File(s) 37,037,868 bytes

    Total Files Listed:

    3 File(s) 37,037,868 bytes

    8 Dir(s) 5,547,237,376 bytes free

    C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Mod Tools\RezPack\input>

    </pre>

    0

    I say chaps, how does one remove that awful "rock" music

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Please read the mod tools readme.txt file.

    (It's in the mod tools folder.)

    It explains how to explode the resource files, modify them, then repack them.

    The files you are looking for are in the Version 100.brz file in the Data folder, in the sound/music subdirectory when exploded.

    I'll wager that if you replace the three .wav files with 'racket' of your own choice, but preserving the filenames, you could repack just the three files into a .brz file of your own called Version 999.brz, and Nirvana will have been reached.

    Note, you don't have to use music by Nirvana to reach Nirvana, mmkay?

    Good luck!

    0

    Here is how bad the movement code actually is, and it's not just "pathfinding"

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Originally posted by GreenAsJade:

    I've just never seen someone in a customer-facing role so relucant to say "thanks" before!

    He was speechless at the incredible ability to report a problem?

    Did you ever see any gratitude from Microsoft when you reported a problem? No, prolly not, since they don't even have a way for you to supply an email address when web-filing a report.

    However, I'm sure I speak on behalf of the world and his wife, when I say 'thank you' from the bottom of my heart for doing such a splendid job of discovering and documenting a problem.

    Words cannot express our collective gratitude and admiration of the monumental size of your abilities of reporting a problem, and not letting go, no matter who replies that 'we've heard it, found it, fixed, ta', or how many people pile on, agreeing with you.

    Your collective perseverance in reporting this problem so many times in one thread is commendable. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. Please may we have another? :rolleyes:

    0

    The Manual

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 1

    Posted

    Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

    We'll see what we can do! I've got a printout here and it looks great. However, it wasn't printed on the typical end user $35 inkjet printer and I didn't pay for it, so that's a bit different.

    Steve

    Yes, it looks great - but the legibility in greyscale is not-so-great - and my toner bill is 'great', too, btw.

    I didn't realise it would take weeks to remove the background graphic, and post a printable PDF on the Download Links page. Sorry to be such a bother, but this is very eco-unfriendly, bordering on a terrorist/hostage scenario.(/sarcasm)

    0

    huge number of WWII pics at newsgroup

    in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)

    Posted

    Well, I'll give it a shot:

    The easy part:

    Win98 SE: In Outlook Express, Tools, Accounts, News, Add.

    The other part:

    Add your news account details, the most significant bit being the News server account name. For me, it's 'news', since that's how @home have set it up. For you, it may be a phone call or e-mail to your ISP to find out what news service you have.

    Failing that, try this page:

    www.newsservers.net

    which yielded this nugget to me (US-based):

    add a news account for test.news.rcn.net checking the 'server-requires-an-account' box, and using 'guest' as the account name, and 'guest' as the password.

    There, hope it helps.

    [Edited to include some content, minor though it may be...]

    [ 11-13-2001: Message edited by: Letsbe Ave. ]</p>

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