Kwacker

Yes - I think you are right. The most exaggerated example seems to be the dirt road which looks like it has no pronounced edge close up but appears to have a distinct edge in the distance. I'll try some mods and see if they do a better job in this respect.

Anyone know if there is a fix yet for this graphics issue? I have an Nvidia GTX 560 Ti which gives the same problem on Windows 7 with the latest Nvidia drivers. Hoping someone can help... Simon.

Arrived today in San Diego, California.

The 3D glasses are supported by most of the video display chipsets (i.e. cards) apparently - if that is what you mean. Most games with 3D graphics (i.e. most these days) are therefore supported and work better or worse depending on exactly how they are implemented and the game play. I've run FPS and flight sim games successfully but it seems to work most impressively in CM.

Hi Olle, Yep the 2D text (except the command bar) and unit selection / movement with the mouse don't really work in 3D mode so plotting orders is best done in 2D - which is a simple on/off hotkey toggle. No reason I guess why this could not be simply fixed in CMII without impacting those playing in 2D. That would be really cool & truely groundbreaking as far as I know. If Steve and Charles want something to make CMII even more revolutionary - this is it! By the way Olle I must thank you for what is still one of my greatest turn-arounds in a PBEM. German armored attack into a small snowy village held by the Brits with 1 Sherman (bogged uselessly early), a bunch of AT guns and a company of Infantry. Things are getting deperate with a lot of stand-off HE coming in. As a final nail in the coffin 4 Panthers rumble forward through scrub down left wing (as expected) and hit a minefield - 3 immoblized in ~20 seconds and the brave Tommys snatch a draw from the jaws of imminent defeat. I may go back and watch that in 3D..... e-mail me if you want another PBEM sometime....

3D glasses. I've played on and off with them for over a year and they certainly add something to the CM experience. Reading the terrain becomes so much more instinctive and you really get to appreciate the effort that the Battlefront boys put into the vehicle and gun models. Anyhow I just broke them out again for CMBB for the 1st time in a city battle and the effect is superb in those close confines - the rubble, broken buildings and limited LOS are transformed. If you toggle back to 2D you start to wonder why you ever watch a movie in 2D. For those interested I have these, which were fairly inexpensive (it is all relative) and have proven robust. Runs fine on a GeForce 3 video card and Nvidia directly support the necessary video drivers. Recommended: 3D glasses

Thanks Gary. Your grass mod is just what I was looking for - I'm not sure if it is age or other activities that are degrading my vision. By the way a big thank you again to all those modders that make CMBB and CMBO even more enjoyable!

Thank you.

Plea for help!!!!!

The proving grounds seems dead and I can't see it anywhere else. Help appreciated. Any other good looking grass or tree base mods that help me differenciate scattered trees and grass when trees are off would also be helpful.

Brian, All I'm requesting is that the reinforcements get an initial "look-see" to determine what is around them before you have to plot your first move. No need for magic or changing the scenario designers intent by moving them - they are there because they were supposed to be. Simply give them a fair chance to fight by checking LOS around them so that you don't have to plot their first orders blind (unless an existing fiendly unit happens to be in the same place). I can't think of a situation where that would be unrealistic - except maybe when a garrison force wakes up suddenly from 8 hours of deep slumber with no sentries!

It's a game problem!!!!!! Are we in denial???? The LOS of reinforcements needs to be checked and enemy locations updated before plotting intitial moves. The tank platoon was 120m away in broad daylight in the open!!!! Yes scenario designers should avoid this situation but they are never going to 100% so the underlying problem - teleportation - should be mitigated as far as possible. Checking LOS would really help.

Surely the correct solution - to mitigate mistakes like this by scenario designers - would be to determine what enemy units are in LOS of any reinforcements and display them prior to plotting the reinforcements first moves. I never encountered this problem in CMBO (maybe I was lucky) but it may also be that the problem is aggravated by EFOW. I've no idea if this could be fixed in a patch or has to wait to CMII - have BTS commented on this?

I'm playing a virtually all armor PBEM as the reds and we are about 5 turns into it with lots of (nervous) manouvering. Last turn I received an extra T34 platoon quite forward on my left flank maybe 50m in from the map edge. The platoon is in a fairly open area and it is daytime with good visability. Ah-ha I think we'll do some sneaky manouvering and outflank the bad guys - should put the wind up'em. So I plot a 100m or so of movement to some decent firing locations on the chance some rear echelon targets may appear. I get about 5 seconds into the following movie when a platoon of Pz IIIs almost instantly appears at about 120m, 90 degrees to my direction of movement, nicely lined up for a turkey shoot. Result 4 dead T-34s and lots of chuckling members of the super-race. Now, maybe what happened was the German platoon was a reinforcement on the same turn, maybe not, either way surely my unbuttoned T-34 platoon should be aware of another platoon of tanks 120m away in broad daylight with no LOS obstruction? Seems to me the "reinforcement code" does not determine what the reinforcemnts can immediately see when they are teleported onto the map. That or the reinforcements are taken out into a field blindfolded, spun around 3 times and the blindfold removed. Anyone else think this might be a bug?

Well the vast majority of combatants did not write about their experience so I guess they must all be dead

Interesting comments - thanks Bullet head.

Hi Michael, Do you know for sure that the AI behaviour has been tweaked in this respect cf to CMBO? I'm wondering if the behaviour is just more obvious as infantry tends to get pinned / routed more (at least when I'm playing ) And no I don't want panicked troops rushing towards the enemy and I don't want 'em often running away from "safe" cover either. Guess I want it all - and one day we may get it thanks to the guys who made this game. By the way CM is not a real time game so frankly I'd rather sacrifice turn calculation time for good AI behaviour anyday - even if an average turn with a bunch of panicked units took several minutes to determine. I agree that coding AI is never easy but maybe this or similar is / could be the logic / procedure: To choose destination for units when under fire and panicked / routed: Ignore anywhere more than 200m away. Break potential area into a grid (grid resolution 2.5 x 2.5m??) and estimate starting "figure of merit" (FOM) for each destination on grid based on cover provided at that point e.g. woods = 25%, out of LOS of all enemies = 100%, road = 0% etc. This uses existing parameters / tools in the present code. Modify FOM as follows: 1) Determine path maximizing cover to each grid point using search routine (PCs are very good at these!). Multiply FOM by mean cover of path. e.g. all wooded path = x 25% 2) Multiple FOM of each destination point by 200m - distance from starting location / 200m or some similar function e.g. a point 10m away *190/200, a point 150m away *50/200 3) Multiply by some trigonometric function favouring movement along the direct path to friendly map edge over lateral directions over directions towards your enemy. Would simply require calculation of the angle between a line from present location to the destination and a line from present location to the friendly map-edge along a path normal to the map edge. Using a look-up table the angle could be converted to some value between 0 (straight to enemy map edge) and 1 (straight to friendly map edge). This way running towards the enemy is not ruled out - just disfavoured. 4) Pick the destination with the highest FOM after these calcs Naturally the above would require a lot of testing and tweaking to get right but my experience of similar problems is that the above simple rules or similar can give decent AI results. For example you might want to weight distance over direction to avoid the issue I originally whinged about - you get the idea. One other complication is assesing when the above chosen destination should be reassesed - to avoid brainless chicken syndrome. My guess is that it should only be re-evaluated when a new unit starts shooting at the fleeing unit - not when there is incoming from the present targeter as it appears at present. As a final thought the FOM of the present location will often win out - nothing wrong in that result I guess. Anyhow enough of my idle thoughts, but I sincerely hope this gets improved in CMII - I'm sure it will as it is one of the few major flaws in present human v human play.

Thanks for the off-map targeting info Bullethead. I'm fairly sure this is a change since CMBO so I guess I just have to relearn my SOPs. If it is a change I'm sure Steve and Charles have supporting evidence for this type of inaccuracy so who am I to argue. On the other point squirrel, or headless chicken, I think it is debateable. In the same QB (I was not having a good day ) I had a squad hiding behind a hedge rout and run laterally towards some tall pines - away from a small building that was considerably nearer - thus exposing themselves to the threat for much longer. They got shot-up again, then ran back to where they originally routed, got shot-up a third time and then ran directly away from the enemy, again in the open, by which time, fortunately for them, the enemy had found better targets to shoot at. Perhaps brainless chicken would be a better description as panicked troops seem to eye-ball a patch of cover at random, fairly independant of it's effectivenss, and leg it in that direction. In my opinion nearest cover would be best in more cases and this is what the AI should aim for. On the western front I'm sure this would have been the case - if all else fails the troops would have surrendered once cut-off or under very heavy fire in cover. On the eastern front maybe they would have been more inclined to get out of there - even if it mean't exposing themselves to more risk.

Just playing a quick battle, still trying to figure out the intracacies of CMBB after playing CMBO for ages. I'm in a dificult situation, the AI has been given a bunch of guns and the terrain is fairly open. I have a few half tracks but only 1 81mm spotter to really hit back at the guns - I can't get anyone else close enough. Unfortunately the spotter is out of line of sight but I figure what the hell the guns are fairly dispersed so any innaccuracy probably won't matter and it's probably better to live with the firing delay than try to get into visual range and get shot up by some roving armored cars. Anyhow, I duly wait 4 mins keeping my head down for the mortar rounds to come in and then I can't even see them landing! Turns out they are landing off-map and nearer to the spotter than the target. Now, maybe this is a realistic representation of german mortar skills in 1944 - maybe one of you uber-grogs could confirm this. I don't seem to recall German mortars in CMBO being similarly afflicted - or maybe they just had their glasses recalled and can't read their mortar charts! A second whinge. The same game I have a platoon of green recon infantry advancing to some tall pines to find cover and spy out the opposition. Unfortunately they run into the armored cars at ~400m so they hit the deck and begin sneaking. So far so good. All the squads get there but the HQ being a little behind the main body takes a casualty. Fair enough. Moments latter the HQ takes another hit and panics. Fair enough. However the HQ is now about 2m from the trees. What does it do? It sneaks 50m back into the open, the way it came, gets shot up some more and eliminated. Aaaargghhh!!! Now maybe this is also realistic - maybe guys really do commonly do the stupidest things when their pants turn brown. However, that is not the impression I get from the accounts I have read. My guess is that, when under fire in the relative open the greenest or most elite troops will attempt to find some cover with more or less success. Some may freeze and many may attempt to bury themselves in the ground but I really can't imagine very many would attempt to repeat the exercise that just cost them 50% casualties when there is cover within 2m and plenty of other supporting units (ie alternate targets) all around them. Strikes me that some tweaking of the AI is required here. I'm guessing, having dabbled a little with programming, that it would not be too hard to more heavily weight the response of panicked troops in this situation to find the nearest decent cover and stay there. For me (right or wrong) that would be a big improvement in the realism factor. All that said CMBB is still the best game I've played and CMBO has had me hooked since the day I got it, about 40,000% longer than any other game, so thanks Steve and Charles!

Deserves a bump to see if BFC will respond.

Bump..... Need to know what I am doing this weekend

Well said Steve. I totally sympathize - it sounds lame but people really should remember the heart and soul you guys obviously put into your work. I for one whole-heartedly appreciate it. However, don't take it personally - your earlier post in this thread indicates you know your hard core customer base really well They are gonna bitch but they are still gonna spend 95% of their waking hours thinking about CM - it's just the nature of the beast.

Uggghhhh????? Anyone have the number for the Samaritans? I think he needs help.....

Big improvement - I'll certainly use it. Michael - certainly worth hosting if you would be so kind. One suggestion - is it possible to do a similar mod of the covered arc lines or are these hardcoded? It is gonna get very cluttered when I set up numerous MG arcs to stop the red hordes!

That would be a good idea Michael, although on some small maps it's not always gonna be possible - I guess we will have to rely on scenario designers to "protect us". Ho hum still the greatest PC game ever!