Caesar

Posted by Fuerte This is not necessarily true, I have a program that is specifically designed to do exactly that. It uses an XML file to control where to click and what to do. As a result, the extra key clicks to do what you want to do plus a routine to swap the directories would be pretty trivial. I guess it depends on the design of the original program

I kind of makes the text 'Front upper hull penetrated - knocked out' somewhat superfluous doesn't it

Posted by Ryan Crierie AFAIK, if you do not move your mortars then they may make use of target reference points. If these are not used then they would need some sort of spotter i.e. the HQ. How else would they know even to fire, let alone where to aim?

Posted by Sgtgoody Yeah I suppose that could be it. Some of them were pretty close together. I can't really see why they needed to be moved though.

In a static operation I am currently playing some of my units were moved small distances between the games. These were all moved within zones and were not moved very far at all. In all cases (that I noticed) no more than 10 - 20 m, just far enough to move them out of foxholes and into the open (which is rather inconvenient to me of course). These troops were all in the contested zone where you can't move the troops without moving them to another zone so I can't just correct the situation. Is this intended behaviour and if so, what is the rationale behind it.

Originally posted by Fuerte You could try renaming the BMPs directory and spinning up a second copy of CMBB. I haven't tried this - you might need some of the BMPs, if so just put some very small 2 colour bmps (make them all black) into a dummy directory and use that (if you really miss-trust your opponents, you could run a CRC check to make sure it hasn't been changed). As for the exchange of passwords, just send an additional file that contains an encrypted version of the passwords.

Hey Steve, while you are around, when are we likely to hear what is intended for the next version? I am not asking for a detailed list of what is in, more a list of what is intended and likely.

A rough calculation in my head, the height of the arc of the shell from the KV2 would be a little over 11m compared with a little under 4m for the KV1. I am certainly no grog but I would have thought that 3 times the height of the arc (roughly speaking) would have made it significantly more difficult to hit a target a couple of metres high.

One of my favourite new commands. I use it as often as possible. I think the problems I hear people having with the scoot being too slow is caused by the slow rate of turn of the CMBB tanks - just make sure it is straight back (it cost me a couple of tanks learning that one.) To find the optimum distance to go forward I just use the LOS tool to the target and see where the line first goes black. This is where I go forward to (or sometimes slightly short of there) This appears to usually give me hull down as an additional benefit. With judicious use of the pause command and having a few tanks (as widely separated as possible) doing the shoot and scoot on the same turn you can force your target to spend all their time re-targeting and little time shooting back.

This really just highlights a limitation in the CMBX games. You don't have to consider the long term consequences. As a result you throw everything into the current battle without consideration of the fact that you would in reality require that HT the next day. It comes from a medieval punishment Hung, drawn and quartered. The victim was hung until nearly dead (taking care not to break their neck) then drawn by horses through the village (without the benefit of a cart) and was then placed on a table and had their limbs hacked off (quartered). Finally their head was chopped off. Kind of makes you appreciate the 'cruel and unusual punishment' (or similar) clause doesn't it.

This topic piqued my interest in the scenerio, so I gave it a try. I came away with a minor victory against the AI, though I did have the advantage of knowing the scenerio was tough and that there were tigers somewhere (I didn't read any of the spoilers). All I really did to take out his tanks was to use shoot and scoot in mass. My infantry advanced mainly down the centre and left and this caused his tanks to open up on them. Then I would shoot and scoot 6 - 8 tanks over the ridge targetted on the offending tank. I lost more tanks due to some stupidity than I did when I traded blows (4 of 9 losses in shoot and scoot exchanges) One question though, if I don't have LOS when setting the target, does it advantage me to set the target before doing the shoot and scoot or should I use cover arc or none at all. Which causes my tank to fire fastest? Intuitively it seemed most logical to target a known target but I seem to recall some topic where this was investigated and found not to necessarily be so. BTW Agua, I tried searching the scenerio forum and didn't find it.

I have been working on a program to allow me to play campaigns off and on for a while now. I have taken a bit of a different approach to what has been suggested here. I am most of the way through writing a map generator that allows me to create very large maps that mimic the format of the CMxx maps. The map sizes I envisage making would be up to around 50x50 km (I haven't actually limited the size, your computer's memory and speed will do that for you) I have also written a second program (actually its a COM object that will be loaded by the first program eventually) that will take sections of the map and 'remote control' CMxx to produce the map complete with units etc. Program wise, this is about 80% done but I still have to generate all the tables of units and controls. This is a very large job and I expect I will initially only produce the tables for time spans and nationalities that I am currently interested in. This COM object is pretty easy to use so anyone else is welcome to it when I have finished it. The third part of my 'little' project is to produce a controller that allows players to move and organise large forces around the oversized map. The computer then can handle determining when contact ocurs and automatically draw up a battle complete with the forces that are present. I want to include things like supplies, attrition of forces when moving distances, fatigue etc. This part of the project is still very much in it's infancy though I have at least worked out how to do some of the more complicated parts. The only part that the players will have to do is enter the CMxx AAR so that the computer can keep track of losses, fatigue etc. Hopefully this should allow 2 or more players to fight a campaign without any of the annoying management issues while creating a series of battles that have a larger meaning, that are not necessarily balanced and where the goals of each player may be completely different. [ November 11, 2002, 12:34 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]

Joques, you can alter the names of any unit in CMBO using a resource editor to change the main exe file. Just back it up first, load the file as a resource and search for the name you want changed. The only caveat is that you must rename it with a name exactly the same length (though spaces will do). I did this myself when all the original furore was going down and it is only a few minutes work. If you have any trouble, send me an email (I think my address is in my profile). Worse case, you can send me the executable (zip it, I'm on a 56k modem) and what you want changed and I will mod it for you. [EDIT] Doh! Bad assumption! Just looked at the CMBB exe. Charles has changed the way he stores the names of units from CMBO days. You no longer can just edit the resources. I will look at this further - it can't be that hard to modify. [ November 05, 2002, 06:47 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]

As the victim of this incessant barrage of smoke and HE, I too would like to know if this is intentional or a bug. It doesn't sound right. I could understand the delay being substantially shorter, but no delay at all seems a bit off (especially from the recipients point of view)

mchlstrt, The CMBB bitmaps that I have looked at (and that is only a few) are 24 bit. This means that they use 3 bytes of memory per pixel plus a block of header data of around 50 bytes per bitmap. Assuming the program is using the graphics as loaded and is not converting them in any way internally, you can substantially reduce the amount of memory used by the larger bmps by changing to 256 colours. These bitmaps will use one byte per pixel + 1024 bytes per bmp as a colour table + around 50 bytes per bmp of header data. 16 colour bitmaps use only 4 bits per pixel i.e. 2 pixels per byte + 48 bytes of colour table per bmp + the ~50 byte header. I hope this helps, though I am not sure that these sorts of changes are all the answers on the more powerful PCs. I suspect there are other factors we do not know about coming into play. I would have thought that if the graphics are being preloaded into the VRAM and then applied by the video card, then cards like the Ge Force 4 128MB that Vader's Jester has would have caused no problems at all.

Pascal DI FOLCO I wouldn't go reducing the number of colours of any bitmap under 1500 bytes, this will probably increase its size. 256 colour bitmaps have a 1024 byte colour table. I would suggest you sort by size and only select the bigger bitmaps.

If we can't have the camera angle changes remembered for all the different views for whatever reason, then could we have the camera angle changed by the mouse wheel. This would allow very rapid changes in angle to how you like.

I have a PIII 500MHz 384Mb GeForce 3 128Mb graphics card. No problems at all so far. All graphics display nicely and move fairly smoothly and the turn calculation doesn't seem to be much different from CMBO. I usually choose extreme everything. I haven't even looked at my graphics card settings - they are whatever the installer set them to. I have tried 1152x864 and 1024x786 resolutions and didn't notice any difference (I prefer the look of the 1024x768 so I've kept that) [ September 30, 2002, 01:35 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]

I tried a German pioneer battalion in a quick battle vs the AI. The flamethrowers were a substantial improvement. The map did have a lot of bush on it so they did get some advantages. The biggest problems were that they tired so easily (though they were in the weakened state so that would have contributed to it). The ability to run allows them to close and fire before being killed and I think I agree with redwolf that they are a bit harder to kill. Using more than one at a time makes suppressing them a bit more difficult. I rescued a couple of platoons that had run into trouble with the flamethrowers that had lagged behind. The russian ambush just dissolved when the 4 flamethrowers opened up on them. I lost just 2 of ~ 12 or so for the whole game - not too bad really.

That's my fault - Anton (Russian friend that did the translation) didn't know the english word for this and it was a bit of a guess. It is possible that the cannister references are incorrect though they seemed appropriate.

Search for foul-mouthed russians

I got these translations from a Russian co-worker. Some of them may be a little rough as Anton said not all the phrases translate terribly well. Interestingly though, he said that some of the phrases were not spoken by a native Russian speaker (marked 'not rus') 00080000.wav Gunner! At the enemy! Fire! 00080001.wav Gunner! Destroy the target! 00080100.wav Enemies canon ahead. Fire! 00080200.wav At the infantry! Canister! Load! Fire! 00080201.wav At the infantry! Canister! Load! Fire! 00080300.wav Enemies tank ahead. Fire! 00080301.wav Fire at the tank with tungsten! 00080500.wav Enemy! Fire! 00080501.wav Fire! 00080600.wav Destroy the canon! Fire! 00080700.wav Fire at infantry! 00080701.wav Enemies infantry. Fire! 00080800.wav ... at the enemies tank ... 00080801.wav ... at the enemies tank ... 00081000.wav yes sir! (not rus) 00081001.wav go, go, go, get them 00081100.wav they burn nicely, bastards 00081101.wav sir, they burn nicely, bastards, sir 00081200.wav ah ganzes, hi from .....(Note Anton said ganzes is roughly equiv to our saying jerries/krauts etc) 00081201.wav gunner, shoot again 00081300.wav load 00081301.wav load 00081400.wav stop shooting 00081401.wav stop shooting 00081402.wav stop shooting (not rus) 00081403.wav shoot only on my command 00081500.wav my clip is empty 00081501.wav where are the bullets, commander? (not rus) 00081600.wav grenade! 00081601.wav grenade! 00081700.wav get down 00081701.wav get down (not russian) 00081800.wav aaaah god, they hit me! 00081801.wav oh god, I'm wounded 00081802.wav help, help me! 00081803.wav help, help me! 00081804.wav I'm wounded 00081805.wav oh, they hit me! 00082000.wav there are too many of them! (not russian) 00082001.wav they are pushing, sir! (not russian) 00082002.wav oh ****, get down! 00082003.wav oh ****, get down, get down! 00082004.wav get down! 00082100.wav get outa here! 00082101.wav oh god, we are surrounded! 00082102.wav save yourselves! 00082103.wav get outa here! 00082200.wav dont be afraid, guys! 00082201.wav get up, 00082202.wav get up, **** you! 00082203.wav take a rifle and fight! 00082300.wav bastards! 00082301.wav enemy! 00082400.wav enemies infantry 00082401.wav enemies soldiers ahead 00082500.wav anti-tank gun ahead 00082501.wav enemies canon! 00082600.wav sir, we spotted enemies tank 00082601.wav enemies tank ahead! 00082900.wav hands up, bastards! 00082901.wav hands up! 00083000.wav germans, do not shoot (in bad german) 00083001.wav dont shoot, guys. we surrender 00083100.wav damn it, it's stuck 00083200.wav we fixed it, officer! 00083300.wav yes, sir! 00083301.wav dont shoot 00083302.wav dont shoot 00083303.wav nobody move! 00083304.wav watch your sides 00083500.wav run over these bastards 00083501.wav 00083600.wav All aboard, faster! 00083700.wav Jump down (up?), go, go 00083800.wav watch the flanks 00083801.wav watch the flanks 00083802.wav moving carefully guys, enemy ahead 00083900.wav go, go 00083901.wav go, go 00083902.wav Run, run. 00083903.wav Advance! 00084000.wav For the Motherland! Advance! 00084001.wav Die bastard! 00084100.wav Advance, go, go!!! 00084101.wav Go guys, go! Advance! 00084102.wav Advance! 00084200.wav everybody get back 00084201.wav retreat everybody 00084300.wav run! faster.. faster.. 00084301.wav faster.. faster.. 00084302.wav faster.. faster.. 00084400.wav hurraaayyyy 00084401.wav The victory is ours! Hurraaayyyy

What did the Soviets make those darned 45 shells out of - glass? At least half my hits end up being 'shell broke up' I set up what I deemed to be a beautiful ambush, evidently I was wrong. One gun managed to expend all his ammo before dying (two kills) and another couple got down to very little again before dying. I killed only 9 tanks. Very entertaining all the same. Trying again soon, must try to hit from more angles!

I work with three Russians, two of whom have done military service. I don't imagine they will have any problem translating for me (probably less than I will have posting the results) I will get them to translate on Monday and will post them here if no-one beats me to it. I'll also get them to tell me if they are realistic (from their point of view) sayings for use in the military. As to the Russian reluctance to use profanity, I suspect if you get a large group of young males and put them in a highly stressful environment, the language quality is likely to deteriorate somewhat.

I believe I have seen this happen myself. I had 3 guns in a group and had checked them all. I was sure that they were all abandoned or knocked out. A couple of turns later one of them started shooting again. I have watched very carefully for it since and have not seen it again. Maybe I was mistaken and miss-read it but I don't think so. Is there any word from BFC if this is possible. It does seem kind of reasonable that a crew in a foxhole beside a gun could return to the gun.