Mad Mike

Hi Scheer, I just had a look in the manual, I think for QBs you can only purchase units or let them be purchased automatically by the computer . It doesn't say anything about troops already being there pre-set by the map/scenario designer. What happens if you open your battle "normally", via the "Battle" option (top-most option)? Cheers, Mad Mike

I think what people are asking for is an improved narrative of the campaign, including some explanations why ressources are constrained and what led to this particluar battle situation. This is certainly there, sometimes more so and sometimes less. Especially with shared artillery assets, it is often not there (and in real life, in most cases information would have to be available to the commander to make an informed decision - what is usually called military planning). I can provide one example from the "Road to Montebourg" campaign: *** Slight spoilers ahead *** Second battle (Ecoqueneauville), you are given access to a section of 105 howitzers and the battalion 81mm mortars. It doesn't say anything else then that their ammo is limited (welcome to the real world, I guess .. otherwise it's redundant information). Next and third battle (La Grand Hameau), a different company has access to the same section of 105s as in the second battle, and now the briefing informs you that the section may already have exhausted its ammo because it is a shared asset. Why would this information not be available at the start of battle 2? The two battles (and the following one, Le Hamelet) are meant to depict the assault on one objective on the Georgian ridge. By not clearly bringing this point across (for example, explaining in advance that assets will be shared), the designer is actually not using his creation to its full potential, i.e. providing a coherent narrative or explanation that will make people feel more involved or give them something to think about beyond the very close horizon of the current battle. Which is a shame sometimes, IMHO.

I don't know, shouldn't a "Quick Battle" always just be the Map, without the units, as they will be bought additionally. Otherwise, predefined units should only be in a "Battle" ?!

They should be fine to be played with v1.01. If you think logically about this, all the scenarios and campaigns, which came with the game when you bought it, were created using 1.00 (or most likely even beta builds before that). It would be a huge fiasco for the game if the created scenarios were overly version dependent - but sometimes this will happen anyway, as changes with the patches sometimes take away the premises (like specific unit behaviour, cover, concealment etc.) the scenario designer took as valid when he created the scenario. But technically, BFC can't really change too much in the way scenarios are created and stored (at least, for a family of games like CMSF and CMBN). They would risk having to redo all the scenarios and campaigns, which I think is a huge NOGO.

Hi mjkerner, It seems as if i was a little bit too slow . So does that mean it is working for you now? A directory (scenpics or campaignpics) should be created almost immediately after starting the program, so if that doesn't happen, something would be (very) wrong. No need to wait for minutes, it should happen instantly. My guess in your case would have been that maybe the Java Install wasn't set up correctly so that it wouldn't automatically execute jar files. Happy to hear that it is working now. But your problem showed me that I should really work on including some kind of interface or, at least, error log (even if that wouldn't have helped in your case, if the file never got executed). Cheers, Mad Mike

There is nothing as sophisticated as decryption going on here. All the information I'm extracting is in the files in binary format, so it's just a case of finding out which bytes are what and then "translating" them. Regarding the bitmaps or individual scenarios I extract from the files, those are parts of the parent files in their complete, stand-alone form. Which again means that you can extract them quite easily, if you know where they begin and where they end. In the scenario files, map and unit data itself seems to be encrypted, at least it is not straightforward at all to make sense of the data. I think this has been done, at least for one reason, to prevent cheating by altering scenario / save / pbem files (which are almost the same, regarding their internal structure). On the one hand, I think this is good because it does prevent cheating. On the other hand, it also prevents support for computer-aided transfer of real-world map data (from Google Earth, for example) into CMx2 map data, to give just one example.

Hello all, I've uploaded a new version of my tool, v0.2, to the repository (should appear sometime later) and to GreenasJade's mod warehouse (http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4492/details). In addition to the already available scenario listings, the tool will now also analyse campaigns, providing an overview of the scenarios contained within the campaign and the connection between them (decision parameters for battle selection, see trees in one of my posts above). Basically, the tool reads out the campaign script which has been used when the campaign was created. As special highlight for this release, the tool will also extract all individual scenarios from the campaign and will put them in a separate folder. These battles can then be played independently of the campaign or they could even be changed in the Scenario editor. I think this should be especially useful, as it has been requested numerous times before and up to now was only possible if the campaign creator published these scenarios independently. Keep in mind though that obviously, as casualties do not carry over, some of the later campaign scenarios will be too easy, because as the player you will have the full amount of troops which have been defined to be available in the scenario. Feedback can be left, as usual, in this thread. Cheers, Mad Mike

I have to agree with this. In a current PBEM, I had 3 full platoons of german pioneers to start with. I used two in an attack / assault on a small town, the first platoon almost got wiped out (4 men left), the second platoon also suffered around 50% - 60% casualties. I held back the third platoon to be used later to attack from a different direction. I checked their status before commencing the attack and they were all "Nervous", not "OK" as I would have expected. Also, as soon as they took even one casualty in the squad, they first became "Shaken" (cannot give any orders, moving out of fire by themselves, I think) and then, after recovering, "Rattled". This makes attacking now, with the global situation in mind, almost impossible, as the troops will turn and run away very easily.

Very nice work, thank you very much.

YD, thanks for backing me up. Maybe this could be looked into. I'm not sure how to reproduce these conditions. It happened after blasting through a wall into a buidling with this squad. Nothing too unusual, in my eyes.

It's weight should be around 12 to 13 kilogramms. It should be ready to use in about 5 seconds, depending on availability of a good firing position. Normally, there is also an assistant (for the belt-fed version), something which isn't shown in CMBN, as far as I'm aware.

OK, even in the next turn, the gunners did not switch back to their MG42s. They just stuck to their P38s. This just seems wrong. I couldn't keep track of this any further, as the squad died horribly at the hands of a mighty Sherman, the bane of my PBEM existence. Overall, I'm currently not satisfied with infantry behaviour, be it weapon selection, choosing when to open fire at armoured targets, stupidly staying exposed when reloading etc. It just doesn't feel like a lot of thought went into this (which I'm sure it did), and this is disappointing. When things are discussed here, it usually comes down to pure guesswork: The squad might have thought this, that & the other. They were scared, shocked, bored, thinking about their girlfriends at home, trying to work out a proof of Fermats last theorem in their heads .. everything, just not behaving like soldiers should. With abstracted 3 men squads, this was all fine, with 1:1 representation, I can't suspend my disbelief so easily. Btw, this is not meant as criticism of other posters (in this thread or elsewhere), just an expression of my frustration with the current status. I sincerely hope infantry behaviour can be improved in the future.

OK, some correction: The squad started the turn engaging an US squad 48 meters away, in a building. This US squad subsequently retreated out of the buidling, at which point the squad was left with two other opposing US squads, being 69 meters and 96 meters away, respectively. So the ranges I guessed in my earlier post are actually a little bit lower, but this does not (in my opinion) invalidate my point. Having some experience shooting the P38s successor, the P1, I wouldn't really use a pistol at ranges greater than 20 meters. And then only if I didn't have anything mor adequate, like a SMG. But for this case, I would still expect the two main infantry weapons of the squad to be employed. It would make their life so much easier . Don't know yet, but I will keep you posted.

Hi, I noticed some odd behaviour of my MG42 gunner specialists in a Pioneer squad in my current PBEM: For the whole turn, the squad was fighting against two to three US squads in buidlings between 75m to appr. 150 meters away. The gunners did not use their MG42s, instead they choose to use their P38s. This seems wrong to me, they should be using their MG42s instead, as this is a much more suitable weapon, especially at these ranges (hoping to hit anything with the P38 is quite optimistic, to say the least). Similar behaviour for a sharpshooter has been reported by RockinHarry in the following post / thread, but it somehow has not been picked up during the discussion: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1299992&postcount=111 Is this intented behaviour or could it be a problem with the weapon selection logic for specialists? Save game would be available. Cheers, Mad Mike

OK, situation update: I managed to analyse the campaigns as well. I even found the decision making parts, which helped me to manually create the following two flow charts for "Panzer Marsch" and "Courage and Fortitude" (I also had a look at TF Raff, but its structure is very simplistic): Panzer Marsch Campaign Flowchart: Courage and Fortitude Campaign Flowchart: As well as providing an overview of the campaign and the scenarios contained in it, it is also possible to extract the single scenarios, enabling them to be played independently from the campaign. I also did this manually with TF Raff (because it has only 3 battles in it ), but this could be automated as well. Only drawback would be that a maximum of units would be present in each scenario, as casualties are not carried over from the previous battles. I think I will do a rather quick update (1-2 weeks) to include the campaigns in a "no feedback"-version of the tool (the way it is now), before starting to add some small User Interface to it, which will allow for some choices and status displays. Any ideas, suggestions etc. are still welcome. Cheers, Mad Mike

Hi guys, thanks for the kind feedback so far, I'm glad that you find the tool useful. I'm even positively surprised to have learned that it works on the Mac as well without problems .. and this without testing it on MacOS . For the next version, I think I will take a look at campaigns. I had a first quick glance and I think it should be possible to provide the same thing for all the campaigns, showing all the individual battles which are contained in a campaign (with their parameters as they can be seen now for scenarios). I would be extremely pleased if I can find the decision making in the campaign file as i've always felt that I would like to know the campaign scenario tree with its decision points. BFC have provided these in the past (sometimes, for CMSF campaigns), but sometimes those seemed to be older versions, not really reflecting the campaign (and the decision which result in the current battle will lead to which next scenario) as contained in the .cam file. Anyway, not sure this is do-able, but I will have a look. Thanks and cheers, Mad Mike

Thanks for the feedback so far. I can recreate the superimposing quite easily, it seems to be down to the setting of "Zoom" and "Font Size" in the browsers "View" menu. It's difficult to address this directly, but I admit that my knowledge about HTML (how to make auto-adjustable tables for almost every combination of zoom / size settings) leaves much to be desired. I will try to work on this for the next version of the tool. pcelt, do you use Internet Explorer or Firefox? Regardless, you can try to adjust the zoom / size settings i mentioned above to see if it gives you any better result.

I also encountered this problem. You can go to the northern (N803) part if you ceasefire immediately after the scenario starts. Must be some error in the scoring / branching of the scenario which has been missed during testing.

Hi Georgie, done, the CMBN Scenario Organiser is now also available at GreenAsJade's Combat Mission Mods Warehouse.

Hi Ian, I think you might be right, I use Javas "System.getProperty("user.dir")" mechanism to obtain the current directory. This should automatically return the correct directory, even on a Mac. The program creates one directory to store the scenario pictures, but in theory, even this should work on a Mac. I'm still not sure, because I haven't tested it on a Mac and the devil might be in some minor detail.

OK, version 0.1 of the CMBN Scenario Organiser has been uploaded to the repository and should hopefully show up quite soon. A small README with instructions is included in the .rar-archive. Any feedback (suggestions, problems or even complaints :eek:) can be given in this thread and would be appreciated (well, maybe not the complaints ).

OK, trying to answer some questions: I think in its first version very soon, I will try to get it out (just have to do some checks) this weekend. This will be a very minimal version, which should be stable enough, but I haven't put any effort in softening the rough edges yet. At the moment, it only works for scenarios (btt files). Campaigns will have a different file structure, which I haven't looked at yet. Might be possible though. I will have a look at a later point. Hm, this is an interesting question. For some reason, I couldn't find the entry for the defined variable time in the file (amongst others like Wind Strength and Source or Intel Strength for example). It must be there. Otherwise, I can't understand how it is saved if you define it. It might be that the exact amount of extra time is only determined when the scenario is loaded from the file (this is my expectation). So the exact duration would never be defined in the file itself. Not yet, at the moment the tool will only analyse any btt-file it can find in the current working directory (the place the tool is started in). Selection of any other directory could be added quite easily by giving the tool some kind of minimal UI (at the moment it is "executeable only", meaning you start it, it produces output - or not - and finishes without any feedback except the actual produced listing). I will get around to this quite soon, I think. I'm quite sure it isn't. I'm not an expert for HTML and everything related (webdesign etc.), but my understanding is good enough to have created this simple proof of concept. Maybe we could eventually collaborate to get this included / working? I was also thinking about creating a more generic XML output, which could in turn be used by any "end user application" to create its own design to display the data. Just some general info: The tool is written in JAVA, so a working JVM is required (shouldn't be a big problem, as Java is quite widespread). I have developed this on Windows7, which means that I don't have a version for the Mac (and I don't intend to do one, as I don't have a Mac - my wife has one - but I'm quite sure that I can't requisition it from here ). For a Mac version, the whole file handling (directories etc.) would have to be adapted. Anyway, thanks for the replies and questions so far and as I've said, I will try to get a first version out this weekend.

Hello, I would like to introduce a small tool (work in progress) which I have created for CMBN. Its creation was inspired by the need for having some kind of listing or overview of scenarios, which is highlighted in this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=98648 The tool in its current form will create a listing (html-file) of all scenarios in one directory. The listing can then be sorted for all data which has been defined for these scenarios. For the purpose of gathering the data, the scenario files (.btt files) are analysed. So there is no need of any meta data accompanying the scenario for this tool to work. It will only require the scenatio file itself (which, of course, should have all the important parameters set). The following screenshot will give an idea: This is the listing generated from my current "scenarios" folder in the CMBN directory. I think this tool might be quite helpful, maybe especially to repository sites, because it could be adapted to automatically generate this output for all the accumulated scenarios on that site, to present them in a more sortable way (instead of just relying on a title and some user rating). Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

YD, I checked again and can see them, though not consistently (but you answered my question). Especially for the incident with the bazooka team which I posted in the screenshot thread, the team does not have any "AT Rifle Grenades" in its special equipment tab. Also, watching the whole turn, the available ammo (60mm HEAT in the AMMO section) jumps between some values (without any weapons being discharged or team members being wounded or killed). Quite strange indeed.

SlapHappy, gunnergoz .. thank you very much to both of you. Now, does anybody know if the ammo info (type & numbers available) for rifle grenades is actually shown in the UI?