Barleyman

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by The Commissar: Yes, Chechnia was a previously conquered nation. Doesn't justify them to steal oil and bomb buildings full of civilians. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There's some doubt about just who blew up those buildings that provoked the 2nd Chechenya invasion. It was very, very convenient timing for the powers-that-be. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Controlling large nations is getting easier, IMO. Decent communications, quick transport, its all making controlling your "kingdom" all the more easier. The USSR fell for many <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Unfortunately the insurrectionists have these advanced comms too. Witness the list of nations who want to band effective encryption.. Why do they absolutely want to reserve the right to spy on their own citizens? Even in totalitarian regimes like China, there's only a matter of time before effective ways to spoof counter-revolutionary comms becomes available over publicly available, monitored TCP/IP network. When the ringleaders no longer have to physically know their cells, it becomes that much harder to break them up. [ 06-04-2001: Message edited by: Barleyman ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tero: Quite true. But the Finnish equipment was also improved in the mean time so the match up was more equal in 1944 than it was in 1939. The initial 1939 assault had more chances in succeeding than the 1944 assault, relatively speaking. The disparity in arms and munitions was far greater in 1939 than it was in 1944.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> As an obscure tidbit, germans shipped large amount of shrecks and fausts to Finland in time for the summer -44 assault. This was done after the president gave his personal word he wouldn't negotiate peace with russians. So after the russian invasion failed, the president stepped down from office and the acting president took care of the peace negotiations. Also recently opened archives suggest it was meant all along to annex Finland in late 40s or early 50s. Hence the "military consultations" clause in the "friendship, cooperation and assistance"-treaty. Evidently the "They'd be more trouble than they're worth" opinion won. I also read from somewhere that Ribbentrop called Molotov, quite drunk, to apologize for breaking his word when the Barbarossa was on. I quess even diplomats are people somewhere inside.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Skipper: About the use of engines in winter, it always amused me that in Russian Far North (where I used to live) everybody would get up in the morning, pull a car battery out of closet, put a flame under engine, maybe use a lighter to unfreeze the lock on the door, and go to work.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Full marks for local exotique and everything, but I reckon russkies are not short of liquid antifreeze for the locks. Vodka's no good, you need moonshine It's actually very difficult to physically heat up the lock, it's got tons of metal conducting the heat away etc. Block heater's pretty neat as long as your local power company is operating 24/7 .. I'm afraid the part about taking car battery inside with you is not exaggerating. When I was a student I had a crappy old car and I had to carry the battery inside for an hour or so before there was any hope of getting the old clunker to play ball. During the week or two it was beyond -15C in Finland anyways. [ 05-02-2001: Message edited by: Barleyman ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Andrew Hedges: But the time concern is the big concern. I don't want to wait 2 years for CM2, and I don't think most people want to either.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Unfortunately that's what's it going to take. For the CM-with-rewritten-engine anyways. Apparently whatever is done with 1st gen engine is going to be named along "CM:Route 66" convention whereas when (if) BTS rewrites the engine it's going to be named in "CM2:Chrome Panzers" or something. I think I've seen BTS guys speculating that they might make another game with CM engine after B2B .. That's going to feel like same old thing unless the game style evolves.. CC2 was a great game, but CC3, CC4 and CC5 were just the same thing all over.. With same mickey-mousey AI!

As for geforce cards, you get nice 64MB card for $149 from videologic with KyroII chipset. Check out Tom's Guide. Real joke is, of course, that it's faster than Geforce 2 GTS without any gee-whizz TCL engine! Shows you the difference between brute-force big-buck approach and smart technology..

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tiger: Very likely sales from the upcoming CMBB at the end of this year and into the next will put BTS in a position to be more financially viable for their next thing they wish to do to do on their roadmap to success and being able to do whatever makes them happy.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Buy a villa from Rio and spend november-february there with the (young, nubile) maids feeding them grapes? Peeled, of course.. More $$ lets you hire more helping hands for gfx/coding/logistics/business sides.. A good logistics guy probably brings in as much revenue as the rest of the team together, but you need to have the end product to shift it.. And like Doom vs Doom II sales show, the real money lies in store shelves, not on-line sales.. At the very least CM should be sold via mail order ventures..

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: Bump maping, T&L, Dynamic Lighting Sources and pretty much every other neato wizzbang hardware based graphic effect and technique will certainly be considered for when we rewrite the CM Engine (CMII) but not before.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Now hold on.. So what we'll get for Xmas (maybe) is CM:BB and not CM2:BB? Technically new vehicles, new scenarios and ops (Kursk?!) but no new-new game/AI/gfx engines? Tweaked for sure, but more like 1.1, not 2.0? Erhm.. In that case, TCL might be possible for CMBB? After all, it's just a way of doing some math in HW instead of in SW, so you should be able to put that kind of applique code in without breaking too many things. Dynamic lighting would certainly look very dramatic during night fights, while bump mapping only shows in close-in-views (that you'll see in game rags )

Bump mapping doesn't give you rotating wheels, it gives you wheels that stick out without increasing the polygon count. Basically you have a "height" map for each texture, so if you want to make those camo branches stick out, you can. Or, you want battle-worn StuG, just make that 57mm shell impact mark crater inside the vehicle surface. If your card doesn't have bump mapping, no harm done, it's just rendered flat as it is now. Transform & lighting would help quite a bit seeing that there are a _lot_ of polys in a big scenario but they're pretty simple ones.. Seeing what a Radeon or Evil Kyro II costs these days, I daresay people with 8MB cards are a small minority that can be safely ignored

Nobody wants bump mapping? Sheesh.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JMcGuire: Heh... thinking about snow and ice, what if your big heavy tank could crack the ice and fall through... I know, probably not a likely "feature", but wouldn't it be cool... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I've seen some pics of Finnish T-72 sunk to mud to about halfway of the turret. Apparently it was late fall and the guys were driving over some frozen fields when the icy crust cracked and .. No, I don't think that the tank status was going to change from "bogged" by forwarding and reversing a few times

I wonder if BTS is going to use some of the more advanced toys available in DX7/DX8 and new gfx cards. Immediately useful sound at least bump mapping which would help making the vehicles that much more convincing without going haywire with the poly count. That sounds like "free" roadwheels to me Another very useful should be the TCL engine in new cards, why make the poor CPU set up all those polys while there's perfectly good HW in the GFX card designed to do exactly that. And it'd make it dead simple to add simple lighting too. Just my 2 cents, but I reckon that the bump mapping at least would be used to a great effect by the boys'n'girls in mod community.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ron: They did, he goes by the name of KwazyDog, you can see his work in the Maddog packs. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> True enough. War doesn't miss one modder, thought In any case, I reckon it might not be the worst use of their $ to buy/contract some "extras" to work on the textures. Would ensure that the last naff Bt-7a gets some proper textures in the release version.

Why not HIRE some of the better modders? Good GFX people are hard to come by, you know. And textures are what every reviewer sees first.. How about CM scripting language like in FPS games? Someone with no life could create a TC of british football rabble vs french police =)

I've played a few ops where it was all over for AI before battle count ever reached halfway point. For example, we fight and die here. Very, very tough battles with dug-in fanatical americans, but if you keep on pouring the HE, they get wiped out eventually. Am I supposed to massacre the reinforcements placed on map edge for the remainder of battles in worst gamey style or what? Problem is that there isn't (AFAIK) a way to check out the stats at that point so I'd know if I took acceptable losses or not..

Guys, With the kind of hours you've put into modding CM for the heck of it.. How about getting BTS to hire you to work with some Pz-III and T-34 textures for CM2?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tss: No, we just get those headaches sometimes.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Now that you mention it, my head's been hurting for two days.. And I hear the voices, too .. "Secure the flank! The flank, idiot!" :eek:

Since Finland is obviously the main market of BTS.. It's much more relevant that the major games magazine (Pelit) has heavily embraced CM. Ditto for Steel beasts and some other niche-ish games. So small wonder why there's disproportionate count of Finnish gamers of CM

One major advantage with starshells is that you can see them but they can't see you Well, you can always aim for the muzzle flashes I presume. Anyone shooting at night should be instantly spotted by anyone with a LOS.

There was something about the night battles that kept on nagging at me. I finally figured it out - I thought it was quite common to use starshells during night fights? It's quite too dark to see anything at night during fall/spring in a forest in Finland's latitude. Ok, unless it's a full moon on a clear sky.. Realistic spotting range with overcast skies would be more like 15 meters than 50. I reckon you'd be more likely to HEAR the guys before seeing them. Conversely, if you just stand still, you're practically invisible. So, shouldn't hq units have some starshells? I'm not familiar how they were assigned except that they were used at least defensively. Since CM2 will probably feature a few night battles..

After a while you just get too good for AI to handle so it doesn't provide much of a challenge.. I noticed that my gameplay improved enormously after just a handful of PBEM games. There's a big unpredictability factor with a human-equivalent AI.. Sometimes people do dumb things but at least they're rarely predictable. I just started "we fight and die here" op and I got half of the 4km map with the first battle.. Well, I just have to try'n'aggravate some more europeans for another rugged defense match [ 04-16-2001: Message edited by: Barleyman ]

I read somewhere that Treblinka death camp "served" mainly east-front POWs. Of course, much that's written about the holocaust should be taken with a grain of salt. I don't know if Germans slaughtered their slav prisoners wholesale but I wouldn't be surprised. Hard facts with references, anyone?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mattias: After all, if your men come under effective fire they will seek cover. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Not at once. That only happens AFTER their morale breaks. The first reaction should be to seek cover if under fire and said cover was readily available..

As if there weren't enough new ideas for CM2. Here's a simple sounding one - How about making squads look for cover automagically at the end of their move, if they can see an enemy? It's pretty far-fetched to give an order that squad I should go to that mound, squad II take cover behind that wall and squad C hit that ditch. Since the move "tweak" code is already there, the same "fuzzy" area could be used for last-second, sergeant-level decision-making. Just look for cover from the direction of the biggest visible threat (to that squad) within the area where the move could be adjusted to manually. Yeah, TacAI does something like that already, but I'd like to see stop-look for cover-engage instead of stop-engage-get killed.. By the way, I played SPWAW for the first time since I bought CM and it was so micromanagery! Thanks BTS!

Will we have a Kursk op in CM2? I think Zitadelle just cries for a decent 8-part op for 2 players! Needs spontaneously combustible panther A's, thought. Burns ridiculously easily-stat?

Boys, How about spending that energy constructively (CM2!) rather than engaging in indecisive firefight :confused: