Caesar
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Posts posted by Caesar
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The WinFox Utility was only installed after the problems as this is the only way that I can get the resolutions changed now. I am not really sure where to go to from here. I suppose I can reinstall Windows, but that seems a bit over the top for a Graphics card problem.
What do you mean by the monitor definition. I have run it at 1200xXXXX (cn't remember exactly what that resolution is) in true colour and it handled that OK. I am using the default Win2K monitor drivers. I would try and get more specific drivers for the monitor but I don't know what brand it is. Believe it or not, I can't find it written anywhere on the monitor. It has a stylised red YP on it (or at least I think that is what it is) & 750NLG but I haven't found anything on the Web about it.
Can the monitor driver be affecting this?
[ May 29, 2002, 04:08 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]
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No I can't run either. I assume this is because the only to modes available are 800x600 & 640x480 and SC requires 1024x768. I can run WinFox (the utility that came with the card and set the resolution higher in that and after a reboot it will be at the higher resolution, but if I then go into the display->settings and click OK I revert back to the low res again until I set it again through WinFox. This seems strange to me. It is almost as though the drivers etc are all there but that Windows can't quite find them all and so the games are not able to use them.
I am not at home so I can't try the DirectX 3D tests until tonight (about 5 -6 hours from now, I am at GMT + 12.00)
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No. Neither will work as the Graphics card/settings/drivers/whatever are screwed up. The only resolutions available are 800 x 600 and 640 x 480. I have tried reinstalling the drivers, directx etc and nothing has worked. I can however, select a higher resolution by using a utility supplied with my video card which allows me to use my PC but not for games.Did you manage to get SC working? How about reinstalling CM? -
I have been playing CM for a few weeks before installing SC. Before buying the card I did a bit of lloking around for issues with CM and since installing the card and running CM on it, I have experienced no problems at all.
I then installed SC and ran it. It changed my refresh rate to 120 which my monitor couldn't handle and so I had a blank screen. I fixed this by starting in VGA mode and resetting the refresh rate to 85. I was then able to run CM. This bug was fixed in SC and they released a patch which I downloaded. Note, this was just a replacement exe. When I first ran it, it came up with an error saying that I didn't have the resolution 1024 x 768 x 16 available. Subsequent attempts to run it caused an exception. This is when I noticed that I only had the 800 x 600 x 16 or 640 x 480 x 16 modes available when I went into the display setup. I tried reinstalling the driver for the card and various other ideas. I then noticed I couldn't play CM either and since then have posted here.
The driver CD that came with the video card has the DirectX 8.1 drivers on it and I am running them. One thing I have not mentioned is that my PC is dual boot and if I boot into Win98 I can run CM there. The fixes I attempted last night did seem to screwed things up (it would run but the colours were weird), but I reinstalled DirectX 8.1 and that fixed things.
I have posted on the SC board but have not seen this problem there. The hardware knowledge there does not seem to be as high there, which is why I am posting here.
I am not at my home PC so I can't check the version of the drivers. From memory, my card is a WinFast GeForce 3 200TDH.
[ May 28, 2002, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: Caesar ]
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I have tried all of the above and some suggestions from the CM Tech Support. I still have the same problem. Any further ideas?
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The problem only occurred after I attempted to install SC. I am running Win2K and it is a recent installation (the same time that I got my GeForce 3 200Ti)
I have followed your instructions and I ended up in the same situation. I am a bit stumped as to what to do now. Any further ideas?
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It is disapointing that Nac4 chose to air some reasonably valid points within such an arrogant antagonistic diatribe. I agree that the limitations of CM result in excessively agressive commanders with little concern for casualties. I agree that force compositions can at times leave a lot to be desired from an accuracy point of view. I agree that some concern for logistics would add to the game. I agree that it would be great if BTS provided mechanisms for integrating with their product. The rest of his post is just a waste of keypresses.
I too would like to see a strategic layer to the game but I can fully understand BTS's decision not to attempt one. They have rather limited resources - just one developer. Successful companies maintain focus. The rather flippant way that Nac4 says that they should just work up to the strategic level naive to the point of stupidity. I want the strategic layer enough that I am in the middle of writing one that will work with CM. I have worked out a way to integrate with CM (with some limitations). I am making good progress and hopefully will get this finished at least to the point that it will serve my needs/wants. So far I have spent around 30 hours a week for the past two months. In spite of this, I exagerated when I said I am in the middle - I am nowhere near the middle yet and I am not trying to produce a commercially releasable product with all the required research, documentation etc. I am just trying to produce a fairly powerful tool that will manage and umpire campaigns and large operations for me, provide the logistics and battle variations etc that I want.
I am not sure there truly is a viable market for the strategic layer, at least not one where the battles are resolved via CM (games like AA are another story, but they do not provide the action that I like). Large scale operations/campaigns will take a lot of time and dedication on the part of the players and so the number of participants (and therefor customers) will be somewhat limited.
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I just tried to run Strategic Command and it failed to run saying it could not set my system to 1024 x 768 x 16.
Since this attempt I am no longer able to run CM either. I am runnning a GeForce 3 200Ti graphics card on Win2k using the default monitor drivers.
I tried to check the display settings and the only 2 modes it offered were 640 x 480 and 600 x 800. I loaded the WinFox utility that I had not previously needed and using that utility was able to set my resolution to practically anything I liked though if I looked under display settings 640 x 480 & 600 x 800 still showed as the only 2 valid modes. If after setting my resolution to a higher setting, I try to run CMBO it comes up with a warning that it cannot access my 3D card and the resolution is set back to 640 x 480.
I know that this probably does not really belong in this forum as the problem obviously was caused elsewhere but the hardware knowledge here seems very high and the primary problem I am having now is that I cannot run CMBO.
Has ayone got any ideas?
[ May 27, 2002, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]
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I have tried to run the patched version of SC.
It will not run and I get an exception log everytime I try.
I have a Pentium 111 500 with 330Mb RAM and a GeForce 3 200Ti Graphics card. The first time I tried to run this, it came up with a dialog box saying my system doesn't support 1024,768,16 and that it would now exit. Since then it has just added to the exception log.
If I right click on the desktop and select display settings, only two modes show and they are 800 x 600 and 600 x 800. This has only been this way since I tried running SC. I have loaded the WinFOx Utility that came with graphics card and I have been able to set the resolution to 1163x864 in 32bit true colour via this. However SC still will not run and now Combat Mission that previously would run fine will no longer run coming up with an error box saying it cannot access the 3d graphics (or something like that)
Any ideas how to get past this problem? This is the second time that my system has been affected trying ot run this. I am beginning to lose confidence in this product.
[ May 27, 2002, 09:44 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]
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GPIG - Being a bit of a pyromaniac I have used Waspes a fair bit. My tactic is to button them as soon as I approach enemy fire. Once buttoned you can still fire them and you rarely get them rendered useless by losing the gunner.
A veteren (or better)sniper is absolute death to unbuttoned Waspes. Easiest way to take one out (though you don't get many victory points for doing this)
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You've got that right, to quote the head programmer at my workGiving an assessment of the progress of software development may be misleading. The percentage of work to be done may not translate into a linear amount of time until the project is finished.
'The last 10% of the code takes 90% of the time'
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Thanks Priest, I'll give that a try first.
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I tried the Last known good configuration. This didn't work. I have since my last post, talked to some of our tech support at my work and the general consensus seems to be to uninstall the video card and then reinstall it.
Is your patch a full download or just a few files. I am on a 56k modem at home and 26megs takes ages.
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I didn't seem to get any reply to my previous post and as I mentioned it is rather urgent. My system no longer goes since attempting to run the demo.
I ran the demo and got the blank screen and music. I could not escape the program no matter what I did so I reset the PC. Since then it always comes up with a blank screen. I can boot to safe mode, but in safe mode I cannot reset the refresh rates or resolutions (I am presuming from previous posts that this is the problem)
I am running Win2K ~500MHz P3 with a GeForce 3 200Ti video card. As far as I am aware, I have the latest drivers for the card.
Can someone tell me how I am to get my system going again please - this is urgent.
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I have had a similar problem with the screen going black and just music. The problem is I cannot get out of this. Even after a reboot I get the windows 2000 start up screen and then black. Even the cursor does not show. I can start it in Safe mode but how do I reset my resolution and refresh rate from safe mode.
I have a Win2k pentium 3 ~500MHz, GeForce3 Ti 200 graphics card. Does anyone know where in the registry the refresh rate and resolution are set?
This is rather urgent as my PC is unusable now.
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Yes, I can remote control the scenerio generator and build a scenerio file. I am able to do almost anything you can do by hand but I cannot (yet) place flags or fix the positions of the forces. This probably doesn't matter too much except perhaps in the case of fortifications. If two battles are fought over the same area and a pillbox survives the first then it may have moved for the next. Oh well, such is life.So are you going to machine-generate *.cmb files?
Bamse, when are you going to be finished with the exams? I would like to exchange a few ideas and see how you handled some aspects. How does your map maker work and what format do you generate the maps in?
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The advantage of using conscripts is that they quite often will run away before taking too many casualties and so just burn up your opponent's ammo uselessly. If you have conscripts, you also have a significant numbers advantage. Basically, you can just wear him down by constantly falling back if on defence or if on attack, attacking, running away, then attacking again. Their cowardice can be their greatest advantage.
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Just a thought, will the rarity rules in CMBB render these types of rules largely redundant?
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I am head down and bum up working on one now.
I wanted to be able to remove the requirement for a referee and management of a campaign so anyone can play one of any size (within reason) against one or more people. My real aim is to produce battles with more realistic objectives, wildly varying force balances and a penalty for excessive loss of men. Supplies, reinforcements, Arty availablility to be handled. I am not intending doing an AI but I have designed it so that a 'player' is just a COM object that controls via some COM interfaces so anyone who feels capable (assuming I ever get this finished of course) will be able to write their own.
I have made reasonable progress so far. I can automatically generate battles from my program complete with force selection. I have the map largely done (from a programmatic point of view - you can have any map design) and I am a long way through the LOS/spotting issues. I use a super sized map based on CM design and a battle is just a small section of that map.
There was a Swedish guy who was doing one as well and I wouldn't mind getting hold of him to exchange some ideas.
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Are you guys complaining HQs are too strong? :confused: Can we swap. Mine die like fies. :mad: I go to great lengths to keep them alive. I always try to keep them behind the squads, give them the best cover etc. As soon as the other guy opens up bye bye HQ. If arty lands near - the HQ gets it. What the heck am I doing wrong?
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Ooops, yes I actually realised my mistake as soon as I posted but was too lazy to edit. The Sherman is 9 feet vs the Tiger's 9 foot 5.Actually, IIRC the Sherman was as high as or higher than the Tiger, the Tiger was most definitely wider than the Sherman.
Was this a German only practise or did other nations use this. Were they rotating the tank on the spot or were they just driving in an agle towards the target. Was this an advantage of their suspension (sorry for the 20 questions, just quite interested in this sort of stuff and you dno't often get info on it in books)Then again the German practise to turn the entire vehicle towards the target to speed up aimimg if preparing for a shot from the move is not modelled in.
This is simply a factor of the size difference and a slight difference in the muzzle velocity. Check out the tests done by Vanir Ausf BHowever, the higher ROF does not explain away why the Sherman seems to be getting the first shot hits down better.
250m
88: 75%
76: 77%
500m
88: 54%
76: 57%
1000m
88: 29%
76: 29%
I would think that in most cases, if you are being shot at you are going to fire back as fast and accurately as possible irrespective of the long term well being of your tank. I think your near term survival would take precedence.quote:
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IMO high ROF should not give you an advantage just because you can in theory bracket a target faster than your opponent. There were also disadvantages..
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This is right. A higher ROF results in a faster overheated gun, this reduces the muzzel velocity and has direct negative effect on the accuracy.
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This seems entirely reasonable surely. The sherman has a slightly higher rate of fire 6 or 7 dependent on the version compared with 5 or 6 depending on the version. The silhoulette of the tiger is much higher than the sherman 120 vs 104 so you would expect that the sherman would hit more often. The armour of the tiger is better so you would expect it to survive better. If I had been asked to guess the results then I think I would have come up with similar results (one tank relative to the other I mean) I would have thought that the turret speed should have given the shemans a slight advantage with getting the first shot off.Sherman achieved 82% hit rate against a stationary Tiger.
Tiger achieved 73% hit rate against a stationary Sherman.
Sherman achieved 30% more shots fired against Tiger.
First shot misses by each side were largely identical.
As I said originally, it is only in ambush situations where I think BTS's model falls down. Admittedly I didn't know I could use TRPs for on board guns (RTFM darnit!!! :mad: This could have helped me a lot in a recent game) However using TRPS means adding to the cost of the gun just so that it can be realistically accurate. A dug in hidden gun should have a much higher chance of hitting in it's first few shots than the tank that rolls on up and suddenly comes under fire. The response time of the ambushed tank should be affected by the crew quality (which as far as I know it is), the fact that it would have to load the gun with the correct ammo, rotate the turrent, the gunner would have to sight it. While the commander is likely to have seen the flash, how good would his estimation of range be from a single unexpected flash, how likely is the gunner to have even seen it? How long would it take for the commander to communicate to the gunner an accurate position and how long would it take the gunner to spot the camoflaged target and get on target. Too often I have fired at tanks with dug in guns and had no apparent accuracy advantage or a big enough delay before it gets to fire back. (Time to try out the TRPs I guess)
Never mind, CMBB is coming and one of the recent AARs about CMBB seems to indicate that AT guns may have a better time of it.
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IMO relative spotting (by which I mean that a unit can only see and therefor shoot at and react to what it has spotted NOT what other units have spotted) should fix most of the problems of units such as guns, and bazookas etc getting immediately wiped out by unrealistic amounts of firepower the second they show themselves. Couple this with a certain amount of fuzzy logic in the spotting based on experience, direction you are facing, cover arcs etc and I think this should increase the realism quite effectively.
The cherry picking of targets (by which I mean two or more units spot a number of targets but only one can Id them correctly yet all make use of this information for targetting) is another issue that needs to be dealt with. Someone earlier suggested simply making the IDing of enemy units less effective. I don't think that this really solves the problem. By doing this you unfairly penalise a unit that does spot them well enough to choose their targets. Consider the situation where you have some AT guns overlooking an area at some distance and a bunch of bazooka equipped troops waiting closely in ambush. Some enemy tanks arrive. The guns at a greater distance would not be able to ID them. The bazookas that are close up could tell you that one of the tank drivers has gold fillings. With the above suggested IDing solution, either the guns can cherry pick or the bazookas have to shoot the closest target. This is no better than what we have currently. One solution is for units that only have partial information, that the AI takes over the target selection i.e. You can only directly target units that the shooter has completly Identified or identified enough to determine the level of threat to the shooter. There might have to be some caveats to this though, an infantry unit probably shouldn't have to know the difference between the types of infantry (e.g. paras vs glider) to be able to specifically target them. This would also hopefully help deal with some of the unrealistic targetting of units that are not an immediate threat in preference to those shooting at them. I like that idea that someone earlier mentioned of increasing the consequences of doing this.
As I have suggested in an earlier post, I think using CnC based delays to augment the spotting mechanisms above i.e. if a unit in CnC accurately spots enemy units then another unit that also is in CnC would eventually be able to indirectly using area fire for units that cannot spot them at all, or direct fire for those units that can spot them but not ID them. As mentioned by someone above, Area fire from units that cannot spot the target and completely without LOS should be heavily penalised (blind fire I think he called it)
Introducing movement penalties for units moving out of CnC could also help to deal with the God view issue where I as a player suddenly move all my AT assets to deal with a problem that in reality I would have had no information on. I have suggested this before but this discussion has caused my ideas to develop a bit. Platoon HQs should have to remain within a certain command radius of their Comapny HQ (varying dependent on communication methods, experience etc). A unit should have a limit to how far a move plotted will place out of CnC. Once out of CnC a unit move limit should be decreased. This, coupled with the increased movement delays you get with units out of CnC would severely penalise players not respecting CnC. Another variation on this theme would be the increase in delay as the plotted move becomes larger. This would be to help simulate the fact that the larger the move the more likely that it is the result of an order coming from further up the command chain.
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Sir Uber General, I don't think that I agree with your statement that the TacAI sucks. It certainly isn't perfect but all things considered it does a very good job. I have been looking at doing AI in a project I am working on and it is unbelievably hard to achieve even very basic control that is effective. It does however have too many limitations to be left to its own devices for any length of time. All the suggestions that have been made where people have wanted to have the AI control out of CnC squads are I believe, fundamentally flawed by the sheer complexity of the AIs task and the limitations of computers. Chess is a relatively simple game compared with CM and computers still struggle to match top players. The complexity faced by the computer for CM is massively greater.
It is for this reason that I think that we will have to retain individual unit control with more limited vision (and intelligent FOW) and CnC based delays to prevent instant reactions. The TacAI could be improved with players able to give troops agression levels or the like (is this what people mean by SOPs).
AI force selection and bones
in Combat Mission Archive #4 (2002)
Posted
I do wonder if the rarity options that CMBB is going to have, will end the requirement for the rulesets. Who cares if you come across a cherry picker. They will be hampered by the excessive cost of their rare forces.
One can only hope I suppose.