Mike D

The above suggestions are good ones. If you tried installing the Gold Demo in the old Beta demo directory, that was probably a bad idea. Try reinstalling the whole thing into a clean directory. Also, to all of you out there that are having problems. In the past on other games when I've had problems similar to many of those being described here on the board the following has sometimes helped: 1) Redownload the demo (I know, argggggggghhhhhh!). Sometimes stuff somehow gets corrupted during a download. It might not be too often, but it does happen. I know this for a fact because I can remember at least one specfic case where I redownloaded and installed an application and most / all of the problems went away. 2) I know everyone loves having all kinds of other app's running, multitasking, etc. DON'T DO THIS. Turn all of that other "crap" off. You are taking up resources and memory having all of this garbage running. Try playing the game from a clean boot-up w/ everything else that you normally have running like Netscape/IE, etc., OFF! 3) Video cards can cause all kinds of problems. Make sure you have the latest drivers for your card and a "current" version of DirectX. I know you've already done this, but you'd be surprised how many people have never updated their drivers. Also, if you happen to notice problems w/ a growing number of newer applications, and you go to download new video drivers from your cards manufacturer and see that the "latest" one they have is 2-3 years old, it might be time to get a new video card. After a while they just stop supporting older cards and as a result the card starts to have more and more problems w/ newer applications. Diamond Viper II Ultra shouldn't be causing these kinds of problems though. If you have the clock speed turned way up (I think it's adjustable on the ultra) you might want to crank things back to the lower/default settings and see what happens. Also, I thought Nvidia had some default drivers on their website. You might want to try downloading these and using them instead of the Diamond drivers. I've had some problems using Diamonds drivers before w/ all the extra bells and whistles add on stuff they have. So going to the Nvidia drivers and/or reloading the Diamond one's without all the extra Diamond crap, might possibly help as well. 4) For those of you w/ vidoe card more than 2 years old. If you can, find someone that has a newer video card that you can borrow and try out. You might find that your video card is getting a little older and it's time to replace it and trying out a newer one is a good way to see if this is the case (again, I know a TNT2 card shouldn't be having these kinds of problems). WARNING: I HESITATE TELLING ANYONE TO TRY NUMBER 5, BUT IT HAS HELPED ME FIX CERTAIN THINGS IN THE PAST. 5) On one rare occasion in particular I had to take very drastic action to fix a problem. LET ME STATE FOR THE RECORD: DON'T DO THIS UNLESS ALL ELSE FAILS. I was having problems playing Close Combat III. Very, very, weird things started happening after I'd already been playing the game for a good couple of months (all sorts of lock ups and the like). After a week or two of not playing the game, I started to notice other strange happenings in other applications. I finally decided to reformat my entire hard drive and reinstall Windows. After doing this, all of the problems "magically" disappeared. If you are going to do this make sure you back up all of your important data to tape/disk somewhere as you will lose all of it when you reformat your hard drive. Alternatively, you can try to just reinstall window's, but I don't believe this is as "clean" of a fix as doing it the other way. Anyways, like I said, only do this if you are seeing other problems and/or are just plain totally desperate. And make absolutely certain you've exhausted all of your possible video card fixes, etc., too. Mikester out.

This game simply rocks. When I started playing Squad Leader over 20 years ago I never would have dreamed of having a game to play like this one! SIMPLY PUT: IT IS AWESOME Thanks a million to Charles, Steve, and the rest of the BTS team. You guys should be proud of what you've accomplished. I raise my beer to you and wish you all the best! I cannot wait to get my hands on the scenario editor for this baby. So many ideas, so little time. Mikester out.

Finally tore myself away from the game. In a word, my GeForce video card and 19" monitor look awesome. No video problems whatsoever. Have every detail option turned on right now in the valley scenario and it looks all so fantastic! No real glitches, slow framerates, or anything. Just smooth beautiful action. Mike D aka Mikester [This message has been edited by Mike D (edited 05-10-2000).]

Will be out of work here in less than an hour. Have GeForce card on computer at home. Plan is to head straight home w/ download of demo I have here at work on zip disk and load that sucker up and commence to playing. Will let you know how it works out. Mike D aka Mikester

Go read through the Demo ReadMe File that MadMatt posted hear earlier today. IIRC, the box you are talking about is the one that comes up and has something to do w/ your video card being set for the game. So if that's where things are going haywire, I'd guess it's a video related problem. Not sure what the fix is. Do you have DirectX6 or higher loaded? How bout latest video drivers for your card? Mike D aka Mikester

Thank you your Madness. Now I can screw off here at work for another 1/2 hour reading this. What is your phone number so that my boss can call you when I get caught??? Mike D aka Mikester

Now have 2 copies of demo on zip disk in my hot little hand. Can't wait to leave work. Will probably die of anticipation here in the mean time. May have the flu or other strange illness come tomorrow. Mike D aka Mikester

Thanks for the reply Boris. Mike D aka Mikester

Pretty, pretty, please? Madmatt? Someone else here that has downloaded the new demo. Could you guys please post a URL where we could download just the readme or other text info files and instructions for the demo? So those of us stuck here at work can at least find some way to screw off w/ CM related stuff instead of getting any real work done. Thanks a million. Mike D aka Mikester

See the First Impressions Thread. Mike D aka Mikester Stuck at work as well. And it really sucks.

AWESOME. Kudos to Steve, Charles, and the entire CM development team, including the BETA testers (you lucky Bastages). I'm officially going to have to leave work early. Now off to find an excuse to tell the boss why I won't be back after lunch. Mike D aka Mikester

I just got done downloading here at work. Took exactly 6 minutes. Need to get it on the ZIP disk now. Unfortunately, probably will have to sit here for eight hours until I can go home now. Can you say SucksVille? Maybe I'll sneak out early. So how many scenarios are there in the demo? Sounds like CE is back for comparison to the beta and a new operation? Valley of Trouble??? Anything else?

Dr Z Trying going to work for 40 hours a week (sometimes more), going to school to get a master's degree at night, and finding time to play CM. It is nearly impossible. I'm going to have to either drop out of school, or quit work. Hmmmm... Your right, school sucks. But in a lot of ways, work is even worse. Maybe I'll quit both and just become a total CM junky. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. Mike D aka Mikester

I'm getting ready to catch some zzzzz's. Might as well bag this for tonight anyway. Even if I had the thing now, I've got to get up in the morning and go to work. Plus, working at a large corporation has the benefit of extemely fast internet connection speeds. I already have my zip disk in hand. Plan is to be at work at 05:30 hours. Get in my 8 hours (less the 5-10 minutes it will take to download the Gold Demo). Outta there at 13:30 hours. 20 minutes jetting down the highway to home. Then straight to the computer where my butt will become permanently planted for hours in all liklihood. Reminds me, I need to grab something to eat on my way through the kitchen and 6 pack of beer from the fridge on the way to the computer. I'll probably not make it back downstairs after that. I wonder how many people are going to be calling into work sick in the next day or two??? Mike D aka Mikester

Zip drive is way better than either of the two ways you are thinking of trying to go. If you email to home from work, it is going to take just as long to download it off your email as it would to just download it from the site. 56k is 56k either way. That reminds me, gotta get in contact w/ my buddy from school that works here in our IT department. I don't have a ZIP drive that I can use here at work, but he does! Mike D aka Mikester

All the more reason to just release the Gold Demo now! Mike D aka Mikester

Appologies if this has been answered elsewhere. I searched and read through a number of threads and didn't see an answer to this specific question: Can tanks be used to remove / destroy barbed wire in order to allow infantry and wheeled vehicles to pass through the area without penalty? Thanks, Mike D aka Mikester

Your Madness, Just out of curiousity, the URL for the annex is: cmhq.tzo.com. I see what cmhq stands for, but what does the tzo part mean? Thanks, Mike D aka Mikester PS: Uniform picks and final graphics are looking good BTS.

I just got done reading through this entire post. It's an excellent read on how CM really works and should be read by everyone. However, it won't be. About mid-way through reading all this I came to the same conclusion that Scott Clinton and the other gentleman did above. Namely, that these kind of "inconsistancies" in the game are going to cause all sorts of folks to question whether CM is really realistic, accurate, etc. I can tell you for an absolute FACT that this is going to happen. I know that I and my one wargaming buddy went through all these same type of discussions regarding realism, etc., when we played the Close Combat series games. And we engaged in any number of near arguements over certain aspects of the game and whether they were "realistic", or not. And why? Because we didn't have a clear explanation like that which is found within this post to clear matters up. Therefore, I would ever so strongly urge BTS to write up a summary of this post and at the very least post it in the FAQ on this board. And the sooner the better. It would probably be an even better idea to have it printed in the games manual (maybe something like this already is in there?), or print it up on a sheet of 8-1/2 by 11 paper and slip it in the box before it gets shrink wrapped and shipped. If you leave people to draw there own conclusions as to how CM really works without any real framework on which to base their understanding of the game, and they then witness one of these situations as that which started this post, I CAN ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE YOU MANY OF THEM WILL BE CRYING THINGS LIKE: "CM IS NOT REALISTIC", "CM SUCKS, FPS's ARE WAY BETTER, "CM IS NO BETTER THAN 2D WARGAMES LIKE STEEL PANTHERS", ETC., ETC., ETC. As Ben Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Regards, Mike D aka Mikester

Thomm, Messy = Thawed chicken goes into engine inlet *** and *** passes through lots of fan blades turning at high speed *** and *** presto, pureed (like the setting on your blender) chicken comes flying out the engine exhaust at very high speed. I also got to hear lots of stories while working at Boeing that most people never hear/know about (we won't go into them here because some of you would probably never fly again ) However one of the more interesting ones was how on occasion down in South America there are small airports with unimproved (basically gravel) runways where 737's land. Some of these airports have herds of horses that roam freely about on the airport property since it is pretty much out in the country. This includes roaming freely on and around the runway itself. Of course it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what eventually ends up happening, right? Want to talk about messy. Just imagine an airplane running into a horse w/ engines at full throttle during takeoff and that baby getting sucked right into the engine. Needless to say, there isn't much of the engine left when this occurs. As for the horse, well let's just say you have a big "messy" on your hands there. Mike D aka Mikester [This message has been edited by Mike D (edited 04-28-2000).]

Thanks guys. I understand where you are coming from. Mike D aka Mikester

MadMatt, Thanks for the info. I could have swore I'd read something on it before too, but didn't have any luck finding it last night. That's one of the pains of trying to use the search engine. I did try a number of different terms and some of them came back w/ all kinds of different past postings. But few of the topic headings had anything to do w/ the subject at hand. What few did seem like possibilities turned up nothing when I actually read through them in detail. I must have tried decelerate vs. deceleration. When I do a search here now on decelerate it comes back w/ absolutely nothing found. When I use deceleration I find your posting, and another one a little later, etc. So which word is one to search on? decelerate deceleration decelerating . . . etc. It's a crap shoot as near as I can tell. Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. Guess I'll have to try thinking of every possible term that someone might possibly use to describe a certain subject next time, then go to the dictionary and find every possible varition of those word(s), and then try every one of them. Mike D aka Mikester

Schrullenhaft, Good suggestion. I need to go update my drivers anyways since I havn't done anything with them since I got the new system. Time to get ready for the Gold Demo and the actual CM release itself. Mike D aka Mikester

kmead et al, You bring up a good point and it's one of the primary reasons I'm asking this question in the first place. Namely, that the instantaneous stopping is not realistic and that it may very well affect game play in an unrealistic way. Think about it. Those Hellcats in LD can get up to a pretty good clip fairly quickly and dart to and fro like a bat out of hell. And when they want to dart behind some cover they can dive behind a building and then come to an instant stop in that cover. This makes these little buggers very difficult to deal with. If they had to properly decelerate and brake to come to a stop behind the building they would be exposed for a longer period of time as they would have to start slowing down before reaching the LOS shadow of the building and would therefore be exposed to enemy fire for a longer period of time. Time in which a German Stug or the Tiger could zero in on them as they are slowing down and pop them a good one before they disappear behind the building. As for the eye candy aspects of slowing down and watching the tanks nose dive down as it stops, etc., I could really care less. It's the potential, and in my view inevitable (though perhaps minor), effects on game play mentioned above that I'm concerned with. Thanks, Mike D aka Mikester

I realize everything comes to a screeching halt at the end of the 60 second turn. And that they have stopped as a result of the end of the turn and will continue at the start of the next if they havn't reached the end of there plotted movement. What I'm referring to is when a tank gets to the end of it's plotted move and comes to an abnormal screeching halt. And I'd think if they can model tanks on the move and getting hit and knocked out decelerating and coming to a stop then they could model normal movement coming to a stop the same way. Mike D aka Mikester