murpes

I do the same thing on my laptop, the color reduction does speed things up a good bit. You can also do some selective resolution reduction of some textures ... keep the ones you'll really notice at high res, and change some of the less obtrusive by 50%. For example, the horizon bitmap can be very low res - mine is even at 16 colors! Rooftops are another area I can reduce and not notice. It's all personal preference of course, so be sure to backup what you change.

This may be covered in the manual, but I'm at work so I can't reference it right now. Does CMBB truly model a "wheat field" or just a "field?" I'm talking about the large stretches of unfarmed land with tall grasses, fairly irregular but not natural - probably farmed at some point so there aren't any trees. I always kind of assumed a wheat field was somewhere in between the two and played it as such.

This is one of the reasons I'm disappointed there isn't a FPS counter, so we can give quantitative answers to questions like this.

Amen! I don't know why I want this so badly but I do.

These are all excellent suggestions. I have a MS Strategic Commander sitting on my desk, but I never bothered to re-install it after going to Win XP. I've thought about it, just so I can create a more comforatble environment for CMBX. Does anyone else use one? What sort of profile do you have set up?

Nonsense! I think this is exactly what the CM engine needs! I'd love to play the battle of Hoth using CM. I wish Lucas Arts would license the CM engine from BTS and make a game in the Star Wars universe. Actually, I'm kind of surprised that the engine hasn't been licensed yet - it seems fairly flexible and could be used either for another perdiod of time or for a detailed fantasy game.

eh. I ordered a single copy and am still waiting. But now you've given me hope - while the post office has called it a day, I keep looking out the window hoping to see a UPS van.

Good question, still waiting in Harrisburg PA after Wednesday's mail delivery.

I thought Sunday if I was lucky, Monday more than likely, and Tuesday at the latest. No such luck. Something is wrong with my order, I can sense it.

I'm in PA and I was hoping for an outside chance that I'd have it today. Where I'm at (Harrisburg) is a big highway hub and there are a lot of distribution points and warehouses here - sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised because of it.

We shall see - I still ordered CMBB and I'll still play it ... a lot, I'm sure! But I'm curious which game I'll be playing in a year from now. I have a *suspicion* it will be CMBO. For two reasons, after giving it about 3 seconds worth of thought: 1. I'm an ethnocentric American, and I kind of enjoy playing as a 'merkin. 2. CMBB seems to add more for the grogs, adding more and more to increase the realism factor. Which is cool, but I'm a PC Gamer first and a war gamer ... well, not at all. With the CMBB demo sometimes I felt like I was fighting ghosts and missed the all-seeing eye. Still, I'm not gonna sit here with a "harumph" and not play CMBB. I fully expect it to be excellent, but CMBO is a tought game to live up to.

No, pathetic is blindly accepting every damn charge that someone places in front of you. That's why we get nickled & dimed to death. $7 seems high to me, especially for an expensive game to begin with, not that it matters much because obviously I want the game and it's worth the money to me in the end. Heavy Mastering Netware book from Amazon.com - free s&h. Monsters Inc DVD from DVDexpress - $2.95 Unreal Tournament 2003 from EBworld, which includes a box and a jewel case - $5.99 Not too sure what a quabble is either, but it was more of a raised eyebrow than a bitch.

There was an op/ed piece about this very issue in one of the recent PC gaming mags - the loss of a "real" manual with the advent on the Wal-Mart dictated DVD boxes (bastards). The best solution I heard proposed was what you suggested, a certificate or and order form for a bound manual. Other than going back to the old style boxes, I think it's a good idea.

Cripes, is the manual hardcover this time?

I'd imagine that config would be fine - the resolution in cmbo doesn't necessairly change the size of the models, but the jaggy-ness of the polygons used to create them. I suspect you'll be very happy with the looks and performace at 1024. I've tried CMBO on a couple of laptops. On one the video card didn't support D3D so I had to run it at 640X480 software mode. It looked like crap no matter what I did with it. My other laptop (okay, my company work laptop. sshhh.) has an 8M ATI Rage Mobility chip. It's servicable - I can get decent perfomance and looks out of CMBO with careful mod selection. What I've found *really* helps is to reduce the color depth of the bmps to 256 colors. It really doesn't look that bad on a lcd display, and is a fair trade for the performance gain. If I had to play that way all the time I'd hate it, but for a quick PBEM over lunch it does the job.

Actually, what would be quite nice is if you had two download options - one big 60M file like you have now, and another one split into, say, 6 10M files or smaller. That way is a modem user had a crc error they wouldn't have to download the entire thing again.

I'd like that too ... as long as Harrison Ford isn't doing the Russian accents.

What is your desktop set to? I'd try different different desktop resolutions and see how CMBB reacts, deleting your preferences file each time. I wonder if the seperate 2D and 3D card is what's throwing things off ...

Then I probably shouldn't mention that I use the no-cd crack on my work laptop. Sometimes I just can't wait to get home to check out that pbem movie.

No mouse wheel support. It'd be a cool way to control the camera height or toggle through units. Is there a third-party utility that can program keystrokes to a mouse wheel?

Ummmmmm, you just threw a rock at the wasps nest. You have been waiting for a long time with a member number in the 9700's and then you knock down the two biggest improvements in the game??? If you havnt noticed, all the members with numbers below 1000 who have been waiting for a long time have been ranting and raving about how great the sound is and how much better the graphics look. I personally was amazed by the improvement in both areas. What is that saying? Ah, yes. Dont feed the trolls. Chad Harrison[/QB]</font>

It says in the readme that the sounds are down-sampled, to reduce download time if that's what you mean. I kind of noticed they lack a little "punch" but I fully expect that to return with the higher sampling rate.

Yes, it copies fine with a shareware product called simply Clone CD.

Unfortunatley, I associate that music with Ren & Stimpy. My fiancee said it reminded her of Fantasia. a) No, we're not uneducated pop-culture junkies, but we are a product of GenX with an unhealthy love of cartoons. No, she doesn't play CMBx, but she does play PC games which is kind of cool.

I can't say for Mastercard, but I make purchases with my Visa debit card as a credit card all the time.