Philippe

If you want to make a permanent horizon switch you can copy the mod directly to your bmp folder. You will also end up copying a bunch of things that don't belong in there, but at the end of the day they shouldn't interfere with how the program runs. In about a year you'll glance inside your bmp folder and wonder what those files that aren't bmp files are doing in there... You might want to take a look at David Inglett's CM Normandy mod. It's basically a parallel install of CMAK limited to Normandy material. If you have the space in your hard drive this is probably the way to go. He's also put together CMETO, which is the rest of CMBO redone as CMAK. One of the reasons I did the CMAK scenario sort was to have complete sets of scenarios that went with each. And the apartment situation is still a mess, albeit a different one. Hope to have it worked out next year.

Nothing could be easier. First, let's talk about what you're probably looking for. Go to cmmods.com. If you haven't joined, do so. One nice thing, though, is you can set it up to remember your password. The bad part of that is that if you're like me, you'll forget it from time to time and have to keep creating new identities. Once you have download privildeges at cmmods, go to the CMAK section. When you click on CMAK mods you'll see a short list of items. One of them is Search, which is a pretty good search engine. Another is Newest Mods, which will usually be your first stop. But the one you want is "By Designer", and the designer's name that you want to click on is Mikey D. When you click on his name you'll see a list. You're looking for sky and horizons, so that will usually show up in either 'Other' or 'Terrain'. In this case you want 'Other'. You'll see another list, and in the middle of the list youll see three items:Sky, Normandy, Clear, dawn/dusk, and cloudy. Go into your hard drive and under C:\Program Files make a folder called CMAK Mods. Then, go into your CMAK program, find the BMP folder (it's the big one with all the textures in it), copy it and paste it into your folder called C:\Program Files\Cmak mods. You might want to rename it something like BMP_Original. The reason you've just done this is that I guarantee you'll make mistakes. Having a permanent, accessible back-up of your bmp folder will save you a world of nuisance. Now, go back into that CMAK mods folder and make a second folder called SKY. Inside that folder make two more folders: name one of them BTS (or BFC if you prefer) and name the other one Mikey D. Now go back to CMMODS and download the three zip files by Mikey D with the words Normandy in them. Unzip them into the SKY/Mikey D folder. Now to make your life easier at this point I would make another folder with a throwaway title like TEMP or WIP or whatever you want. When you unzipped the three Mikey D folders from CMMODS it created three more folders (one for clear, one for dawn/dusk, and one for cloudy). Inside each of these folders are bmp files with numbers for names, and other files -- usually readme files and (since it's Mikey D) a very useful jpeg illustration that shows you exactly what you're getting. Put the bmp's from each of the folders into your TEMP (or WIP or whatever you called it) folder. You'll see a group of bmp's. Make a note of the bmp numbers using any method that works for you. Go into the folder that you made at the start of the process called BMP_original and make another copy of those files. Paste that copy into the BTS folder inside your SKY folder. What you've done is that you've avoided touching the BMP folder inside the CMAK program any more than necessary, and you've made an exact copy of the files that Mikey D's mod will replace. And the reason that you've done that is so that you can switch back and forth between the mod and the original at will. The last step is simple. Copy all the bmp's from the Mikey D Temp (or WIP or whatever) folder and copy them directly into the BMP folder in the CMAK program. Never copy anything into the BMP_Original folder that you set up inside your CMAK mods folder. If you follow this procedure you will always have absolute control over any mod that you install, and can reverse it instantly without damaging the integrity of your CMAK program's BMP folder. You will also start to go quietly mad, and once you've got the method under your belt you'll look around for a program like McMMM which does most of this for you mechanically. I would strongly recommend that you make your first few modding forays manually. One odd thing that a lot of people forget -- the program only shows the textures that were in the bmp folder when you launched it, so don't mess with the contents of the BMP folder while the program is running -- always exit CM before you do anything to it. I know you don't need anywhere this much detail, Sergio, but I thought that this would be a good time to spell everything out since we seem to be getting a few new recruits courtesy of the Anthology pack and CMSF. And if you think this was something, you should have been there when Gordon Molek tried to teach me how to use zip files (he has the patience of a saint, and I just couldn't get it).

I've just posted 1400 CMBB scenarios sorted chronologically over at CMMODS. This will allow you to see and install whatever scenarios have been written for any given three month period on the Eastern Front. I've included separate sections for the Winter War and the Spanish Civil War. Scenarios at the Proving Grounds that weren't in the Scenario Depot Salvage and haven't migrated to the Scenario Depot II are not included in the sort (because they aren't finished). The sort includes a smattering of French, Spanish, and Polish-language scenarios, many of which should be completely unfamiliar to the anglophone contingent of the CM community. The sort can be found in 18 zip files at http://www.cmmods.com/ in the CMBB section under Newest Mods. [ November 19, 2007, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

If memory serves you remove CMBB as well as CMBO by simply deleting.

Not that I'm aware of. Why don't you make your own? Seriously. There are only 199 scenarios and operations in the North Africa section of the sorted CMAK scenarios, so it won't take you that long to do a chronological sort. Afterwards you'll be able to post it at CMMODS and everyone will thank you. You might want to think about using a seasonal sort -- I'm doing something similar for CMBB, and three months seems to do a good job of capturing all the scenarios relating to a particular battle.

Just go to cmmods, find the sorted scenarios for CMAK, and download the North Africa section. Then all you have to do is glance at the titles and play them in any order you want.

No way am I going to click on that link. The spam program purporting to be known as Karen didn't even bother to fill out a proper profile. I sense the approaching presence of a maternal biological unit who should be greeted.

I'm nowhere near finished, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen anything in it about actions involving the Nisei American units (100th Bn and 442 RCT). Probably not central to the outcome of the campaign, but very poignant.

To get a handle on what's involved with mods you should probably try a few manual ones first. A couple of things to remember: be organized and be redundant! And never, ever, ever dump something directly into your bmp, scenario, or wav folders that you haven't thoroughly examined first. Set up a folder in Program files called something like CMBB Mods. If you have a big hard drive, it might not be a bad idea to copy your bmp, scenario, and wav folders and put them in the mod folder with a name like bmp_original. That way you'll always have a back-up ready at hand. And it's very useful to have the originals in a separate place when you end up heavily modded. To get a feel for how this works, pick something small and discreet, like a particular model of a tank. Then go set up a really small QB that only has that model of tank as one side, and save it. Find someone's mod of that tank. Make a folder with the name of that tank on it. Inside that folder make two more folders -- one entitled BTS, and one with the name of the mod maker. Download the mod and unzip it into the mod folder with the mod maker's name on it. Then take a careful look at the bmp's in the mod -- go into the bmp_original folder that you made a few steps back and copy the same bmp's that are in the mod into the BTS folder. So what you now have is a folder called Tank with two subfolders: Tank/BTS and Tank/Modder. These two folders have the same bmps in each of them, though the modder's folder also has a few text files, a few option bmp's, and a few pictures of his mod. You're now in a position to switch back and forth between between the modders textures and the original BTS textures pretty much at will. It's a fair amount of work, and mod managers will make your life much easier, but unless you get the basics down you may find that you have a thick residue of unidentifiable odds and ends in the bottom of your bmp folder, and some of your mods just don't look right (usually because of overlap that you can't sort out because you didn't read the modders readme file). Once you get comfortable swithcing back and forth manually, you should then let McMMM and CMMODS do the work for you. I also suspect that you could trick McMMM into doing everything that CMMOS can do, but it would involve a lot of manual effort. By the way, mods only effect your own game. The only thing that has an impact on anybody else is the scenario you're playing.

The crash was several years ago. A lot was lost but much (if not most) was replaced. And there's been a massive amount of really good vehicle work done since. Remember that a lot of mods straddle the CMAK and CMBB sites and can work in both games. There seems to be more terrain over on the CMAK side. Posting the same mod under both games uses a lot of space and is generally discouraged. Having said that, I've wasted a lot of time flipping back and forth trying to figure out if something works in both games or not.

Just to clarify, McMMM is very good for wholesale mod swaps. I don't think it is as good as cmmos for making changes to the options on a mod. An example of the difference if you push CMMOS to the limit would be Darknight's 21rst Army Group mod. It uses Andrew Fox uniforms as its base, but allows you to select any commonwealth unit in the European theater of operations and switch in its actual shoulder patches. I haven't counted but there must be well over a hundred different units in there. That's very different from having to decide to use the BTS texture or the ATF texture. The downside to CMMOS is that it only exists in fully developed form (98 percent) for CMBO. It covers about 40 percent of what is out there for CMBB, and has very little coverage of CMAK. The basic problem with CMMOS is that it requires editors to convert mods to CMMOS format by writing rules for the program to read. CMBO was completely covered, but at some point along the line editors began noticing that they spent all their time writing rules rather than making mods or (god forbid) playing the game. CMMOS is a wonderful program, but people don't write rulesets for it very often. I haven't seen the Anthology, but I'm assuming it uses the same material that was in the CMBB Special Edition. It is worth noting that the version of CMMOS found at CMHQ in the CMMOS section is a better and more recent one than the one on the SE disk. There are also many more CMMOS mods at the CMHQ site, which tends to have more recent versions of the ones on the disk. Having said all that, the best place for recent mods (anything more recent than three years ago) is CMMODS. It has a few CMMOS mods that don't show up at CMHQ (such as Darknight's 21rst Army Group CMBO mod and some wonderful CMBB Tigers by Gordon Molek, the programmer who wrote the CMMOS code), but almost everything is in normal format (which is just fine for McMMM, except that you miss the options unless you spend a lot of time making multiple versions of each mod). CMMODS also has a collection of about a thousand CMAK scenarios sorted by geographical area, and will soon have an equally large collection of CMBB scenarios sorted chronologically.

You might also want to swing by CMMODS and take a look at the collection of sorted scenarios for CMAK. There's a lot of Bulge, Market-Garden, and Normandy material there that can be used to flesh out a CMETO or CMAK-Normandy install. Ok, Ok, I forgot to read the thread before posting. This was already mentioned a few posts higher.

I'm not running on Vista, but apart from a few very minor color distortions the 8600 seems to work fine (knock wood). I'm really glad I successfully resisted having Vista installed on my machine, which seems to be a source of many problems for many people on many different types of games. Apparently everyone is supposed to rewrite their applications so that Microsoft can sell a new operating system that no one really needs.

I just tried to download DD's terrain from the Rodina section and encountered no difficulties.

Are you sure about that? I downloaded all of the CMBB CMMOS files from CMHQ a few weeks ago. It may just be a temporary hairball, but to be certain what you could do is drop a line to MadMatt and ask him if CMHQ still has download capability.

Nato icons are superior to 3D figures at conveying information. No argument there. I'd just rather see them on a flat 2D map than on an isometric map. I'm also not sure how many different types of units you really want to be able to represent on a game of this scale that has to use so few units because of the lack of stacking. If you were dealing with a 2D map and stacks of units in each hex, the more the merrier. But if you are dealing in an abstraction that only allows one type of unit in a huge area because the game scale has reduced the Alsace-Lorraine border to three hexes, I think you want to represent the differences between armies by adjustments to their combat values rather than with discreet, separate units. I don't recall that there were many army-sized artillery or anti-tank units deployed by the germans in WW II. You just don't have room for many types of units in the force-mix if you can only put one type in each hex. The Advanced Third Reich sprites are very nice, but still suffer from the Columbia Games wooden block effect that I mentioned earlier. I'm also not sure I agree with its choice of unit colors -- I much prefer uniform colors as the basis for that kind of thing, and apart from the Luftwaffe, German units wore feldgrau or pearl grey.

I think Nato icons work best in a two-dimensional environment. The 2-D icons here look a bit like Columbia Games wooden blocks, and somehow seem out of place. I keep wanting to tip them over to see if I can start a domino effect...

First off, I'm assuming you're talking about infantry. Secondly, it probably makes a difference whether you are on extreme fog of war or something else. But I haven't a clue what that difference is because I play on extreme. Also, bear in mind I don't know what I'm talking about. Someone who knows a bit more about this will probably be along in a bit to give a more authoritative answer, but here's how I do it: Depending on the terrain I'll take a few shots and then either sneak away or withdraw. Both methods have their drawbacks, and a lot depends when whether or not there's a reverse slope to get behind (in which case I'll probably sneak so as to make a smaller profile on the horizon), a lot of tree cover around, or whether I just have to make sure that unit gets out of Dodge. Withdrawing gets the unit out quickly, but leaves it exposed when doing so (because it's running) and a bit rattled after the experience. It's very useful at the start of a firefight, though, because it causes the unit to break off rather than stand there and trade shots. But if you use it when too much lead is flying around you may have a shot up or broken unit on your hands if you try to withdraw too late. Withdrawal seems to be something you have to do almost at the moment of contact if you don't want to suffer deleterious effects. And remember to set up a protected line of retreat before you start anything - running in the open in plain sight of enemy machine guns is a good way to buy the farm. Scattered trees and brush don't make for good cover -- what you need is thick woods to cover your run and a reverse slope to hide behind. Failing that crawl back out of sight. I haven't tested it lately but I think you need about ten to twenty meters of woods and maybe as much as forty of scattered trees to vanish. You can figure it out by playing around with the line of sight tool -- when it blocks your sight to the target, it probably blocks his sight to you. And don't make the mistake of positioning your unit just inside the edge of scattered trees or woods because you think you're under cover -- you're not.

The Germans have just pulled back from Salerno, and from what I've seen so far this book is even better than an Army at Dawn.

The image quality of the original is better than in the jpeg. I'm going to sit on the German flags for a week before I decide whether or not to make another attempt. But they're a brighter shade of red than the original and it's impossible to confuse a control flag with an hq flag. Not happy with how the 2 D versions turned out so I'll be taking another look. I've redone the Persian flag and am working on the Hungarian flag. I'm thinking of leaving the Finnish flag as is, but may change my mind when the game shows up (I'm working off the demo). Are there any flags that need work on that I may have overlooked? I'm especially interested in situations where there's a civil/national flag and a war flag.

How exactly does one go about making wavy flags? There are several flags in the standard WWII group that I would like to tinker with, and to do it properly I need to make flags from scratch. I'm not happy with the shade of red in the German flag. I would also like to see the German military flag used with the units and the poltical flag used with the cities. The Finnish flag for cities should be the civil flag and not the military flag. The Hungarian flag is missing the coat of arms emblem in the middle. Several of the Middle Eastern flags don't look right to me, and should be checked at FOTW. To do all that properly, I'd like to know how to make wavy flags from scratch.

Good work, as always.

Why don't you try googling imageshack or something similar, then follow the link and the instructions? You upload an image to your account with them (imageshack is free), then follow the instructions -- there are different codes used for posting to different places. You just copy the line of code for forums, then paste into a message here. Like swallowing, it is much harder to describe than to do. The link to Imageshack is http://imageshack.us/

November 1: 2059 posts. That's five posts since October 28. If I were connected to the project in some official capacity, I'd be so embarassed that people were watching things like this that I'd come out and actually say something. But I'm not, so I won't. The Traffic Analysis of Embarassment will continue.

We all seem to be saying the same thing...