Philippe

Unbogging isn't uncommon. I thought I was responding to a post that seemed to be saying that the poster had never seen a unit unbog. My comments about coming out of immobilization are several posts further up (I've never seen it happen within a scenario, but I've seen immobilized units from one battle in an operation show up as mobile in the next battle). Sorry for the confusion.

It's not uncommon. When a unit bogs, cancel its movement order, and give it an order to make a small, slow move 180 degrees in the opposite direction. It is possible that the opposite direction part is just another urban legend, but the slow move part is critical. And I've unbogged lots of units this way.

Nice postcards, John! And very timely, too, since I'm working on an art project involving postcards. I hope I can unscramble the original link to the [untranslated] version of that site. I was a bit confused by the range of architecture, until I noticed that only four of those cards are from the town in Normandy. I'm slow, but I get there eventually.

I've seen units immobilized in one battle of an operation become mobile again in the next. But never in the same battle.

October 28 -- 2054 posts. That means seven posts since since October 25. While not a flurry of activity, that is not exactly moribund. Given the number of participants, livelier than the open parts of the forum. Discussion about the project continues behind closed doors. May not be a sign of life, but it looks a bit like a twitch.

Airplane? Either you're confused or I'm confused or both. Probably both. I thought airstrikes were something you assigned through the editor or purchased in Quick Battles. I don't think they're intrinsic to the map. But what would I know...

If you go through the Sorted Scenarios that were posted at the CMAK section of CMMODS recently you will find a large number of Small Battles. Their names usually start with SB. There are a lot of them in the 1940 section, but they show up in other parts of the sort as well.

I think in all fairness the problem isn't really a BTS problem as much as a problem with an outside contractor. The irate customer base, of course, doesn't make this distinction. On a more cheerful note, the CMC Beta forum message count stood at 2047 on October 25. Let's see how much that number changes next time someone posts there. Gotta love traffic analysis.

If you bought a game in the US in 2005 it was probably either the Battlefront or the US CDV version (which is what I got in 2005 when I bought mine). The Euro version is something else, if for no other reason than that it has weird concessions to European political correctness laws. The US versions are more authentic -- they call a spade a spade, and not a wafflegrenadier. There is an unofficial patch, however, for removing the ahistorical elements that were imposed on the European version for political and legal reasons. I'm pretty sure you can get it at Mark Gallear's site. If I had the Euro version I would try to trade it in for the American version, though that would probably have to be done through CDV. Failing that, just go online and buy the US CDV Special Edition which has extra scenarios and lots of mods. I'm still surprised that they were selling 1.0 in Finnland in 2005. But not shocked.

I finally found a more or less working version of TCMHQ, but the links to the downloads don't seem to work. A shame, there was some really nice stuff in there. I think Warfare HQ was where Scipio's material was housed. It had some very nice sound material. But I think they stopped hosting mods (other than scenarios) about two migrations back. Best bet would be to contact Scipio directly. I think I saw him on the boards somewhere a couple of weeks ago.

There used to be sound mods at Tom's CMHQ. That site has migrated a few times, and I think it might currently be housed at the Wargamer.

I'm not sure I remember which one had the click at this point (or even which game -- it was either CMBO or CMBB). But what sticks in my mind is that, apart from the click, it had far and away the best sounds. Really heartbreaking. If you ever use it you'll notice immediately, which is another reason why you should always, always, always back up your originals. The click wasn't coming from a single sound. It was coming from a variety of sounds, and I think it was even in the firing sounds (though not that noticeable). But where it really stood out and drove me up the wall was with the movement sounds. And that means you hear it a lot. I ran it through a sound editor that translates sound into a graphic display, just to see if I was imagining it, and sure enough there was this large spike at the end of each clip. I think the problem had to do with how the modder extracted and processed his sounds, and I suspect that it actually effected all the sounds in his mod. I'm afraid I can't be more detailed because it was stored in a very organized way on my old computer which experienced computer death over a year ago. So that and all the half-finished graphics mods I was making are permanently gone. I'm not a sound modder (apart from putting together a few selections of opening music), but I'm pretty sure it would be possible to get the sound off that video. There are people floating around here who really understand the mechanics, so you'd have to consult one of them. Having said that, the problem will be getting the quality and the timber to the same level as that in the game. There was once a project at Punta de Lanza and one of the other Spanish-speaking game sites to produce a Spanish version of the German voices in CMBB. After a couple of iterations they produced an absolutely brilliant mod with fantastic voice acting (much better and more convincing that the original), but the quality of the sound recording was very bad and filled with static. Still, it works really well with East Front scenarios about the Blue Division. [ October 25, 2007, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I don't know if NightCrawler finished his sound mod for CMAK. I suspect not, because it would be posted at CMMODS if it were. But if it's just a question of finding another machine gun sound, you could always go to the old CMHQ site, download his original sound mod for CMBO, identify the MG42 sounds (there's probably more than one), renumber, back up your originals, and copy and paste into the sound folder. I used to do something like this with the jeep sound because it was disproportionately loud. The problem that you'll find, though, is that it is hard to just switch one sound. You really need to be able to hear what the range of sounds sounds like relative to each other. But the MG42 is such a distinctive sound that you might be able to get away with it. It's been a while since I looked at sound mods, but I remember feeling crushed when, after spending two weeks finding the perfect set of sounds, I noticed after I installed them that they tended to have an audible click when they finished playing. I ran a few of them through a sound editor, and discovered that the click was easily discernible. In other words, the mod hadn't been finished, and the person who released it needed to clip the last half second off of about three hundred wav files. I could never use that mod, because all I could hear was the click, and would then get overwhelmed by the mental calculation of how much time it would take me to fix it.

You might want to send an e-mail to support@battlefront.com explaining your problem and listing the sites you downloaded the patch from. They're usually very responsive when something like this is called to their attention. They probably don't have direct control over how CDV posts patches, but they can probably suggest something. I have the American version so it's not an issue, but are you sure the version you bought isn't already patched to 1.03?

Is it actually a command, or just something that appears under the area fire message when you target at 30 meters or less? I didn't know there was any choice involved (not that I can think of any reason why you would use area fire at close range other than for hunting voles).

The mod looks great. The camo pattern looks ugly as sin. But totally convincing and absolutely fascinating. The visual confusion it creates reminds me of what happens when you look at ships painted in razzle-dazzle camouflage. And that's probably why they made it that way -- though one of the side benefits of razzle-dazle is that it makes it much harder to figure out the other ship's heading from looking at it, which greatly increases the chances that your torpedo will miss.

If you add a sidewalk and shrink rather than crop the cobblestones, that might reduce them to the right scale.

Why don't you go to cmmods and download the Scenario Depot Salvage collection from the CMBB section, designer name padivine. Under the letter V you'll find the Vuolsami Campaign, which in spite of having the word campaign in it is actually a series of stand-alone scenarios that can be played in historical sequence. Or not, as you prefer. Winter War, Finns, snow, you can't go wrong, especially if you download Gurra's Derevnya mod from Zimorodok's CMBB website.

Was the first incident the one in which a German commander hijacked a flak battery by drawing his pistol and threatening to shoot if they didn't open fire on the British tanks instead of scanning the sky for air targets?

I've just posted eleven zip files to CMMODS with all of the scenarios I've been trying to work into my reinstall of CMAK. This is a preliminary sort as of October 13, 2007. There are some files missing (like a version of "A Polish Battlefield" that can actually be read by my computer), and there are about a score of duplicates. I've divided everything into 17 categories. There could and should be more, but I can't really afford to put any more time into this. So if someone wants to take what I've posted and improve it, I'll be the first to stand up and cheer. The 17 categories that I've used are mod-environment oriented. They are (in no particular order) the 1940 scenarios (minus Sealion), the Battle of the Bulge scenarios, the East Africa scenarios, scenarios that take place in France and Germany after August 1944, scenarios that take place in Greece, scenarios that take place in Italy and Southern France (similar terrain, flora, and architecture), the Market-Garden related scenarios, the Normandy scenarios, the North Africa scenarios, Norwegian scenarios, Arab Israeli War, Korea, Pacific Theater, Sealion, Spanish Civil War, Vietnam, and Everything Else. This is by no means a finished product, but since no two people handle their mods or their scenarios in quite the same way, I don't intend to be the one to finish it. Several of the categories can be further subdivided, duplicate scenarios need to be weeded out, and I didn't make a major push to collect specialty scenarios, since I'm hoping that afficionados of Sealion or the Pacific theater will post updates with more complete sets of scenarios to those subjects. The reason that I'm posting this sort of 1055 CMAK scenarios and operations is that I was making the sort for myself because the old sorting tools from the original Scenario Depot were never replaced. Plus I like to compare related scenarios to each other before I decide which one I want to play. [by the way, these are all supposed to be finished scenarios -- material from The Proving Grounds isn't included]. If you don't like the way I've sorted things, it should be fairly easy to break my categories down a bit further and recombine things to your taste. Take Anvil-Dragoon out of the Italy folder, take the Britany campaign out of the Normandy folder, whatever rocks your boat. This is meant to be a tool that you can build on. And yes, you can put the Normandy scenarios folder in CM Normandy, and any combination of folders you want in CMETO.

If what you had in mind was a learning exercise, you might find it useful to play head-to-head against yourself with extreme fog of war.

There's a serious disconnect here. If you're aware of the resources that are available, there are easily a thousand CMx1 scenarios out there. I find it a bit unlikely that you've managed to play ten thousand plus games of CMx1 in such a short period of time, especially since a fair number of those thousand or so scenarios are operations. A goodly number of the scenarios were preserved at cmmods as part of three series of files called Scenario Depot Salvage. You might want to take a look. I don't ever expect to play through all the CMx1 scenarios even once. There is no reason (apart from checking out texture mods) to ever have to fire up a QB if you don't want to (and if you like QB's for some reason, there are some pretty extensive collections of maps out there as well).

[Post garbled by gremlins -- see below] [ October 11, 2007, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I will be playing CMx1 for a very long time. I look forward to a WW II CMx2, and agree that even once it's released it will take years for it to develop the maturity and depth of subject matter of CMx1. I had hoped that the CMx1 series would develop into something a bit more like Steel Panthers or the old SPI tank warfare series. My dream would have been to see the development of modern warfare traced from the Spanish Civil War, through the early battles in France, to the last Soviet tank attacks in Manchuria in '45. I know there are mods out there that cover some of this, but knowing that the unit models are really something else is profoundly disturbing to me. What's under the hood needs to match the appearance -- so I keep hoping that Battlefront will eventually feel financially secure enough to relent and re-issue CMBO to CMAK standards (I miss Volksturm and Koenigtigers), and then follow it up with a release of Combat Mission Fall of France. But I know the difference between fantasy and reality.

Uncle Tgt, I need to send you an e-mail but don't have your address. Could you drop a line to padivine at juno dot com so I can reply? Thanks.