FinnN

Hidden from the modder without the extraction tools anyway... Have fun Finn

Lots of the uniforms have errors on, quite why they decided to add incorrect details when just leaving them off would have been fine I don't know. Take a look at the Russian site and you'll find pictures of the pre-BF version and some of them are basically fantasy. Of the ones that made it into the game I think the French infantryman uniform is the furthest off, I'm fairly sure it's a late Free French uniform (ie American) but with an Adrian helmet. I'm in the process of setting things up for easy modding for German infantry units (mostly because the Germans are the easiest to get detailed information on) but the same can be done for the rest, providing a model exists in the right shape. Have fun Finn

Think of 'stop' more of a 'cancel order' than a 'stop moving' command and you'll see the difference. The stop command's handy for canceling area fire commands and the like but not much else. Always use the hold position command if that's what you want your troops to do, otherwise they'll tend to head towards the action. As squads have soldiers with a mix of abilities (experience, rank, etc) they respond differently and that completely blows any unit cohesion out the window. After a while you get used to issuing hold orders as a reflex, and then it's not a problem - but it's a bit of unnecessary micromanagement I could do without. Have fun Finn

Basically it's composed of officers of higher rank than you get in the other types of teams. According to the documentation these exert a positive effect on those around them in the same 'arm' (so I guess infantry officers only help infantry soldiers, not tanks). I guess you could use them to help bolster areas where you felt your men are likely to come under pressure. You also get a sniper, which was the 'uber' unbalanced infantry unit pre-patch. Don't know if they've been affected, but previously I'd say it was verging on the cheaty to use them too much - and it certainly makes the staff unit a bargain if you want a sniper anyway. Finally there's a medic in there, these don't do anything that a normal soldier can't do (rightly IMHO) but it's also realistic to have them floating around the staff squad (again rightly IMHO). Have fun Finn

Pointing out a bug isn't complaining, it's being helpful so that errors can be identified and corrected. Prove me wrong if you think otherwise Have fun Finn

Of course it's a valid complaint, if you're halfway through a campaign then continuing unlocks the remaining battles. Of course you can replay the lot again, but if you don't want to... At a guess I suspect the campaign data structure has changed slightly. Previously there was no obvious way to add entirely new campaigns to the interface, whereas now we can. I think it's quite likely (I haven't checked) if you look at an old campaign save file and a new one you'll find an extra tag or attribute, copy it from old to new save game file and things may well work again. Have fun Finn

Oh, and I think there may be a bug in the names in any case as once I noticed some names from the American list appearing amongst the Germans (O'Braden if I remember correctly). Have fun Finn

Names are in the SFS files. As far as I can tell the game randomly picks one from the country list that's referenced in one of the units ini files when the unit is created during the mission. Interestingly you can also do this with faces, but there's only one big list implemented for those. If you were to add Spanish names to the German list, it'd affect all German units, so basically you'd have to create a new country and units to go with it. I've been working on a database (and some photoshop texture templates) that makes doing this fairly easy and I now have a working version, but I need to check it against the patch. I hope to have some screenshots of the new uniforms later this week, then I'm off to France for 2 weeks. When I get back I'll rework the database a bit and the exporter, then release them together with the source code and the photoshop templates. Have fun Finn

Well the extractor basically works, although it needs a tweak from Dr.Jones so that it also includes what's in patch1.SFS without renaming files back and forth. I haven't produced a new file list yet, but there seems to be another 20ish folders, 10 of which are new maps so there's not a major change to the basic structure. Have fun Finn

Well the extractor basically works, although it needs a tweak from Dr.Jones so that it also includes what's in patch1.SFS without renaming files back and forth. I haven't produced a new file list yet, but there seems to be another 20ish folders, 10 of which are new maps so there's not a major change to the basic structure. Have fun Finn

Great stuff, that fixed it for me! Have fun Finn

If it's significant I just searched my hard drives for elicen40.dll and it's not there. I'm off out now, but when I get back I'll check to see if it exists after installing the game but before applying the patch. Have fun Finn

Same problem here - neither exe will launch after putting the patch on. I uninstalled the game and completely deleted anythign remaining in the folder. I then reinstalled from the DVD launched it once (and it worked). Once the patch is on the two main game exe appear to do nothing. ToWsetup.exe gives me two errors: This application has failed to start because elicen40.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem (it didn't). and Dll library rts.dll cannot be loaded (it's in the game folder). If it's needed, where do I send the output from dxdiag? Have fun Finn

Yes, that's right - you'll need the extractor from Dr.Jones (assuming it works with the patched version). Put the extracted files in the correct relative location in the game folder and they take precedence over the version in the SFS file. Have fun Finn

It annoys me too, especially when they start going on about turning right when they appear to be going in a straight lines. recht, recht, gaghaghgh It's quite an easy one to fix, there's an ini file pointing to the various sound files in the SFS files. Assuming this hasn't changed in the patch it'd be easy enough to point them at a 'silence' sound file. Have fun Finn

Downloading now, but probably won't get a chance to play until tomorrow evening :-( What do people think so far? Have fun Finn

Try to knock a hole in the line of AT guns using artillery. If you manage that you can swamp each AT gun in turn by carefully using the terrain to shield your tanks from the rest of the enemy. This is one of the few missions where you have plenty of tanks and infantry are more than cannon fodder, sneak them forward into assault positions and it gets a lot easier to pull off flank attacks. Have fun Finn

Once you have the extractor, it's true that most modding is not much more than editing text files - which is pretty amazing really. A 3D exporter, or an SDK for creating completely new maps would be good though, but I doubt we'll see them from 1C (like you get from Microsoft for quite a few of their games) in a hurry. Have fun Finn

Once you have the extractor, it's true that most modding is not much more than editing text files - which is pretty amazing really. A 3D exporter, or an SDK for creating completely new maps would be good though, but I doubt we'll see them from 1C (like you get from Microsoft for quite a few of their games) in a hurry. Have fun Finn

I'm interested in this too - my Russian is limited to recognising some Cyrillic and getting translations from Google but I'm sure there's a lot of knowledge out there that's relatively untapped from our side. Have fun Finn

Whilst 1C is known in the West mostly for IL2 it's a big publisher in Russia. Like any big publisher it's distributed plenty of both good and bad games. Have fun Finn

Good to see stuff appearing - and I'm sure we'll see a lot more once the patch comes out! Have fun Finn

A really badly spelled message on wikipedia isn't exactly what I'd call reliable evidence. Maybe it's true, but I'd be looking for something to corroborate it... Have fun Finn

It's good to hear that the system is going to get a thorough overhaul. Will there be any iterim tweaks made to LOS/LOF for infantry in the patch, as currently it's a very weak area in the game even after you get used to how it works? Have fun Finn

I'm sure there's more information out there on this, but here's a quote from the wikipedia RAID entry: I have a RAID 0 array amongst my drives and I have to say that the above matches my experience comparing games on one drive to another, and I've read several articles that give more detail with the same conclusion. The only one where I personally have noticed a significant difference was in the MS Flight Sim games where the game is constantly accessing lots of small files. Any games where it's accessing big files I see no or limited boost to either loading times or performance. Have fun Finn Oh and I should add the fastest drives I have are in the RAID-0 array.