CMplayer

Michael, of course it makes sense for them to have put the word 'green' in red color for the reason you state. It goes without saying. But despite that, some of us might just prefer it to be green anyway. Having the word 'green' written in its diametrically opposite color on the color wheel becomes like some sort of Magritte painting: a synaesthesic puzzle, a graphospectral conundrum, an orthographic oxymoron—all of which translates into a stress factor on the brain. Put too many of those together and the interface begins to give the impression of being 'jumbled'. So I think Pud made a very good choice, in fine tuning what is already an EXCELLENT and nice looking interface. [ November 23, 2003, 05:17 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

Maybe Madmatt ate him :confused:

Maybe a bugle would look nice. And when C2 is broken, the bugle would be broken (like snapped in two in the middle, pointing to 4 and 8 o' clock, if that makes sense). Forget the green and red colors altogether; they're overused and those particular shades together give the impression of a cheap Christmas card. A brass bugle would look nice against that wooden background. [ November 23, 2003, 05:30 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

I think the vehicle 'physics' are not especially loveable in CM. If you look at the way vehicles start, stop, turn and cross obstacles from an animation point of view, it's obvious they haven't done much a study of the way vehicles look while they're moving. All of these things look a bit wrong in CM. Sure, there are a few effects, like swerving when hit, which come off pretty well, but on the whole it's stiff. If you take a look at the advertising movie for battlefield command's upcoming game, you'll see what nicely modelled vehicle physics can look like with the pzIIs overrunning a French defensive line.. Not that I think this reflects negatively on CM, of course. I'd much rather have good modelling 'under the hood', than eye candy. Good animation is an art in itself. Now if Pixar studios could just detail a guy to BFC...

So then who should we try to get to fix it? The video card people or BFC?

I wouldn't have expected this silliness of you. The point of the grids is that what we get on the screen of our computers is visually much worse than what a mark I eyeball in the field really sees. Many normal visual cues are missing, such as shading from a light source. The grid is just to aid the eye in perceiving the contours in the same way we naturally would in real life. Anyone who has recorded or filmed knows the difference between how things looks when we are really there, and how different they can look on film or in another sort of reproduction, and this is one of those cases. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply thinking unclearly or is uninformed. To put it bluntly, those calling this request 'gamey' are flat out wrong. In any case, the request has been for an _optional_ grid. Ideally it should be toggable, so that you can only use it when you need it. No one is supposed to have it shoved down their throats if they don't want it. [ November 22, 2003, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

Give us a break. I suppose you never zoom around the battlefield from different views and heights, or rewind the movie to watch it from other points of view either. Those are just as much 'crutches'. The point of the grids is just to make it easier to _see_ the topography, in the way that a person on the scene naturally would, not to make it unnecessary to still read it. It has to do with interface quality, not gamey 'crutches'.

Changing the word 'green' to green type is very good.

Well it's easy enough to fix. Now my buttons say pause, when it's running, and play when it's paused. All that more advanced stuff with the >> blinking etc, I don't care about. You need to switch some bmps, and do a minor cut n paste onto bmp 2010. No big deal. I can send them to anyone who wants them.

I have to say that it seems a tad bit of an exaggeration for BFC to claim that they've implemented 'multi turreted vehicles' in their advertising blurbs. They haven't done that at all. On the other hand, this version of the Grant is good enough for playing with for the time being. As long as the next engine makes it possible to have a proper Grant, I don't mind so much.

About it being unwieldy: just use the upper left hand corner of the box as the 'tip' of the arrow. To get to the pointer with black box following variant: take a screenshot (command, shift, 3).

You're the one being ridiculous.

The idea would be for the new engine to have a grid that you can toggle on and off, I believe.

I agree strongly with both suggestions.

thanks [ November 21, 2003, 08:54 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

aha.... Can't help you there. Good luck.

I just switched it to exactly what you want. The relevant bmps are 2016 2017 2018 2019. Have a look.

If that's all you want, then it should be enough to switch the .bmp files, like someone said.

Yes, I understand your point, that if the button says 'pause' you naturally read it as: push this button to issue a pause command. Perhaps you could mod it, so that the words describe the state: "Paused" and "Playing". Then it would be very clear that it's a toggle switch.

It's hard to call that bad design. It's a conscious choice, and it works fine for me. It's certainly far from obvious that your preference ought to be the default. An ordinary VCR has two separate buttons, pause and play. CM only has one button which switches valence. It's a toggle. As a result it's more informational for it to tell you which is currently going. Also, on my VCR, if you have paused, you then hit pause again to restart. Which makes it match the CM interface. So while I can see why you'd prefer it to be the other way, which also makes sense, I can't go so far as to call it bad design. Anyhow, it should be easy enough for you to mod, if you give the problem a few minutes of your time.

Does it really bother you so much?

In the CMBB bug, fortifications went into the casualties tally, not into the captured tally. So I would guess that this is a different issue.

Were you hull down when it happened?

Power Mac G4, 933mhz NVDA GeForce4MX VRAM 64MB Runs very smoothly and nicely, even with maxed out trees and doodads.

Perhaps it's just a very high quality schreck. They grit their teeth and take the pain of the backblast, revelling in it.