Philippe

I don't understand your post. You go to the cmmods website. You log in. You click on CMBB. You probably click on something like Newest Mods and keep scrolling down until you see the Scenario Salvage files. You click on ONE of them (and only one). You download it into a safe place. Now you have a zip file sitting in a safe place. You unzip the zip file to that same safe place. Now you have a safe place with a zip file and a bunch of scenarios sitting in it. Rename one of the scenarios at random to AAAA. This can be done by right-clicking on it with your mouse and doing some typing. Copy the renamed file, and paste it to your CMBB/Scenarios folder. This is the folder that has all the scenarios in it that you've played too many times. Exit everything. Launch CMBB. DO NOT click on the Scenario Editor. Click on START GAME. This will bring you to the scenario menu. The first scenario that you see after any of your saved games will be one called AAAA. It will be a different color from your saved games. If you don't see it, one reason might be that you had CMBB running while you were doing all of the copying and pasting. Another might be that you made a back-up copy of the game you didn't tell me about and were copying to the back-up's scenario folder instead of the main one, or something like that. And yet another might be that you've angered the Cybergods and that they're in the process of taking their revenge. If you have a sister and she's still a virgin, I would recommend throwing her down a deep well accompanied by garlands of flowers and baskets of fruit. That might appease them (though it will probably annoy your parents). If that solution is too Mesoamerican for you, take a deep breath, brew some tea, and try again very slowly and deliberately. And pay very close attention to what you're doing (as opposed to what you think you're doing). I once got sent to the Middle East to stand over a telex operator in a bank in Sharjah until he figured out how to dial in to our remote satellite link. He just couldn't do it. I happened to remember that in the old days telex operators were trained to automatically hit the bell (looks like a little mushroom when it printed out, but was actually the return key) at the end of each line. The computer-link was reading the mushroom as a character. I explained this to him but the behavior was so ingrained he didn't realize he was doing it. Finally I physically prevented him from hitting the bell at the end of each line by grabbing his wrist, and the connection went through. I suspect something like that is going on here -- you're going to have to figure out what it is and restrain yourself. What I find odd, though, is that you go looking in the Scenario Editor. Not an obvious choice, and depending on how much memory you have available (do you have a tonne of stuff running in the background?) I've noticed that the scenario folder is often blank for a while when you first try to look into it.

It's been so long I can't remember if there was ever a problem, but what you do in a case like the hat change not working is to take a look at the rule textfile line that changes the hat. Sometimes a space creeps into the text and that throws things off. Then compare that to the exact name of the bmp file extension that it is invoking. Be aware that extra spaces can slip in to those file extensions that are hard to find because they are virtually invisible. If the line of text is there, and the bmp file with the right extension is there, when you invoke the advanced rule (aka hit the advanced rule icon and apply) the only thing that will change is the bmp file with extension. So hit the advanced rule and see if anything changed in the bmp folder. If it didn't, something's wrong. By the way, CMMOS works better if there isn't a lot of stuff running in the background eating up memory. And don't hit the buttons too quickly.

And as everyone knows, Russian witches live in huts built on hen's feet. Great for mobility. Just ask Baba Yaga.

Perhaps, but do they do it well? The key question is how much shelf space can they control. I suspect someone with an established brand will have more clout with store managers.

Dey has been posting some very interesting mods of Italian vehicles and guns over at CMMODS. They aren't yellow. They're green. I'm not sure what the correct response to this should be. If he's right (and I think he is), I'm simply stunned that an error of that magnitude could have persisted for so long. I came across a couple of interesting Italian vehicle sites when I started the preliminary work for my Italian Units Portrait mod (ETA late 2006). Sadly, because I was looking for heads, uniforms, and faces I didn't bookmark them. But I seem to recall seeing some pretty unusual camo patterns. If you're going to die because you're using lesser equipment, do it in style. A quick Google search seemed to turn up modelling discussions of people stating, without giving sources, that the CSIR used green rather than desert yellow. On reflection, we're probably more familiar with images of Italian vehicles that turn up in the desert, hence the greater likelihood of seeing or remembering them in yellow. Does anyone have any solid information on this? I don't have time to research it at the moment, but there was an awful lot of grigioverde in the Italian language discussions on the web. A quick comment about making the color of Italian guns blend with Romanians: probably not necessary. If I'm going to play a scenario, I'll put scenario-specific mods in place for each side anyway -- so Italian guns should be as Italian-looking as possible. I really wish the CSIR had gotten a bit more thorough treatment in CMBB. I would have loved to see Bersaglieri with black plumes, and Alpini with feathers stuck to the sides of their helmets.

The CMMOS material for CMBB is located at CMHQ in the cmmos section. It can also be found on the CMBB Special Edition mod disk. It should be noted however, that while the CMMOS file lists for CMBO are pretty extensive and accurate, that is not always the case with CMBB. If a mod was converted to CMMOS, the file list has to be accurate to make the bmp replacement. If a mod hasn't been converted to CMMOS, as often as not the list of bmp numbers is just an approximate guess for where to start looking. That's why you'll come across files from time to time that list the same number four or five times -- a clear tip-off that the file shouldn't be taken as gospel.

Re-installing the German vehicle ruleset can't hurt. Could you take it from the top and tell me exactly what you have installed where? I don't have a clear idea about how you have set up CMMOS or even if you have ever used CMMOS for CMBO successfully before. I suspect that you have, but I just don't know. And I'm assuming that you have the bmp installed, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the options. Do the reinstall, just do it CMBO-style and don't go anywhere near that configuration button. And please give me a pornographically explicit description of how you go about it. You're making some assumption in your installation methods that is peculiar and that is throwing the system off. Because it is peculiar to you I can't guess what it is unless you tell me. With a little patience we can get to the bottom of this. By the way, where, exactly, do you have the programs installed? Any funny paths or weird partitions to your hard drive? And have you had any problems with CMBO CMMOS other than with the Tucker Stug?

When you download the rulesets for the german vehicles from CMHQ they should self install. Just don't let them go off to some weird place, and don't mix them with cmbb files. The first thing you do after installing the ruleset that you download from CMHQ is go to the control panel and look at the icons. Forget about the configure button -- it wasn't part of the older CMBO CMMOS, and the mod you are talking about is one of the older ones. Towards the bottom of the vehicle page you'll see a horizontal row of icons for stugs. The second one should be the one in question. If you don't see an icon, you didn't do the first step correctly or you allowed it to install to the wrong place. DON'T USE CMBB SHORTCUTS. If absolutely necessary you'll have to do it totally manually, which is not a bad thing because it teaches you how things work. All the German vehicle rules for non-winter vehicles are in one ruleset. That ruleset should include (from memory): two icons (one installed, one not installed), a description file, and a rule file. The description and rule textfiles will all have the same number on them. The Ruleset you are concerned about is the CMBO Ruleset 004 that goes in the CMBO Ruleset folder. The Rule that you are concerned with is Rule004-361 that reads something like this: #! Version 01.00 #! Name John Tucker's mono/tri-color StuG III/IV & StuH 42 #! Files Vehicle_StuG.txt,Tracks_and_Treads.txt #! Icon JT_StuG_options.bmp #! Key 0000 #! Options 7 ## Tracks #$ Original Track 4020_orgt_jt.bmp 4020.bmp 4021_orgt_jt.bmp 4021.bmp 3270_m_orgt_jt.bmp 3270_m_jt.bmp 3276_m_orgt_jt.bmp 3276_m_jt.bmp 4600_m_orgt_jt.bmp 4600_m_jt.bmp 3270_t_orgt_jt.bmp 3270_t_jt.bmp 3276_t_orgt_jt.bmp 3276_t_jt.bmp 4600_t_orgt_jt.bmp 4600_t_jt.bmp #$ German Brown 4020_gbt_jt.bmp 4020.bmp 4021_gbt_jt.bmp 4021.bmp 3270_m_gbt_jt.bmp 3270_m_jt.bmp 3276_m_gbt_jt.bmp 3276_m_jt.bmp 4600_m_gbt_jt.bmp 4600_m_jt.bmp 3270_t_gbt_jt.bmp 3270_t_jt.bmp 3276_t_gbt_jt.bmp 3276_t_jt.bmp 4600_t_gbt_jt.bmp 4600_t_jt.bmp ## Body Style #@ Mono with Flag _m_f_jt _m_jt #@ Mono Plain _m_nf_jt _m_jt #@ Tri-color _t_jt ## MG Options #$ Original MG 3256_smg_org.bmp 3256.bmp #$ Juju's MG 3256_smg_ju.bmp 3256.bmp #$ New MG 3256_smg_jt.bmp 3256.bmp [Note: if the textfile doesn't read that way it may mean that I rewrote my own version of it to make it work and forgot that I did it]. There is a Description file with the same number. The icons in question are JT_StuG_options and JT_StuG_options_disabled. Contrary to what I may have said earlier, you shouldn't have to worry about info and credits files, because they go with the ruleset rather than the rule. So if you downloaded the ruleset (did I mention that you should download the rulesets from the top of the relevenat cmhq cmmos page?) from CMHQ you will be able to make the mod work. Just don't go anywhere near that configure button or I'll have to hurt you. I don't know why you can see all those things when you play around in there, and I don't want to know. I can guess, though, and it will make our lives difficult if you try and mess with it. I have a strong suspicion that you've somehow managed to dump CMBO files in the CMBB folder, or that you've confused the program somehow and got it looking for CMBO files in the CMBB folder, where it won't find them. I don't remember exactly what the special edition gives you in the way of CMBO CMMOS, but my recollection is that the CMBB special edition doesn't give you anything at all beyond the space in which to dump the folders. If you've never gotten a CMBO cmmos file to work before (I don't think you said anything about that) what you really need to do is to download and install the core cmmos 4.03 from the website, then download and install the four ruleset packages (Allied, German, Terrain, Miscellaneous). This won't hurt your CMBB cmmos. By the way, I think a lot of the cmmos cmbb material on the website is more recent than the cmbb special edition, so if you have broadband you'd do well to download it anyway, but install it case by case. But I didn't work on the cmbb side of the project, so I don't know what I'm talking about. [ September 17, 2005, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Did you download the ruleset file, or just the mod? Those old mod files weren't supposed to have anything except the altered bmp's in them. The textfiles with rules and info, along with the icon bmp, should be in the Ruleset download at the top of the page in the relevant section at CMHQ. Having said that, I'm doing this from memory and the grey matter ain't what it used to be.

Now I'm really confused. I don't think the configure function works with CMBO CMMOS 4.03. Configure is something that you do with CMBB CMMOS. Or in CMMOS 4.05. This could be the problem. Are you quite sure you aren't mixing programs ? I think the John Tucker stug mods are fairly old and venerable, that's why they use the second icon on the control panel in the CMBO stug section. I'm not in playing mode right now (won't be for another month or so) so I can't really run any tests, but I just hit the apply button and according to my cmmos log things seem to be working (a few missing files here and there, but no error messages). CMMOS 4.03 for CMBO at CMHQ was thoroughly tested. CMMOS 4.03 for CMBO at CMHQ is not the same thing as CMMOS 4.05 for CMBO at CMMODS. Don't assume that you can mix them unless you're prepared to wade in and rewrite some of the textfiles.

A few days ago I went on a interview with a Swiss bank and found myself trying to remember how to do a Gnome of Zurich imitation. Then I thought of you. And promptly shelved the idea. You know what, Seanachai? You're a failure. A complete and utter failure. How can you possibly claim to be abusing someone when you've left them laughing so hard they'll have to visit the cleaners? Discipline and focus, that's what you need, Seanachai, discipline and focus. And Teutonic Method. It takes true application to make someone's cheeks burn, their eyes water, and the pit of their stomach fall out. I've drained swill from too many open water conduits in the third world to be effected by a little mild teasing. And yes, at my last real job we used to compare pictures of our parasites at the lunch tables in the corporate cafeteria.

Just so that we understand what is going on here, could you describe exactly what it is you are doing? Are you saying that when you try to download the files nothing happens, or are you saying that when you succeed in downloading them there is nothing in there to open? If you haven't used CMMODS before, be advised that it is a tad on the slow side. I've also found that sometimes when you click on something it stalls and nothing really happens. When you see that happening (or rather, not happening), try clicking on the target again to clear the attempted function, and then start over again. Pay very close attention to the little function bar crawling across the bottom of your screen -- if it isn't really moving you need to make a second attempt.

Interesting. I would have thought that it would have rusted away by now. The story of that ship is a small epic in and of itself, but we'd have to convince Steve to do a naval sim on German surface raiders in WW I.

Don't say that too loudly around Steve. I think that's what they said about CM in the first place. I'm not kidding, by the way. I love bush wars too. And I left out two really obvious ones: 1) The Boer War, where they really were using modern methods. The speech files would be fabulous, and the music unforgettable. 2) Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck's successful defense of German East Africa in WW I. For those who don't know him, he was a great romantic figure, a much more successful precursor of Rommel, and one of the few undefeated German generals of WW I. He became involved with Isak Dinesen (author of "Out of Africa") on the boat to Dar-es-Salaam when she was on her way to Mombasa to marry a rich Swedish baron, and they remained lifelong friends. He probably epitomized what was best in Imperial Germany, and, unlike Rommel, would have nothing to do with the Nazi's later on. His black askaris ran circles around the British, the South Africans, and the Portuguese. He was always the German aristocrat to the core so never exactly went native, but had a profound understanding of human nature and accepted people as they were when he found them. Very different from the cultural attitudes of the British, South Africans, and Portuguese, whose relations with their colonials were often quite ugly. Von Lettow-Vorbeck's troops loved him -- especially when he would capture a British depot and make his askaris drink anything they couldn't carry. He conducted his campaign from the back of a bicycle, and after he died in the early sixties the German government decided to settle up back-pay for the askaris. They sent a banker from Hamburg down to Tanzania who handed prospective candidates a broom -- if they remembered the German manual of arms, they got paid.

I can't remember if the spotted cap works for me, but I'm pretty sure it does. The trick is to remember that you have to apply the cap, and then apply the corresponding rule for the uniform, in that order. All the cap rule does is to change the content of the bmp file with its extension, it doesn't change anything in-game unless you apply the new bmp file. All the advanced rules work that way. Very easy to forget.

Are we talking about CMBO CMMOS or CMBB CMMOS ? If we're talking about CMBO CMMOS my next question would be did you download the CMMOS_German_RuleSets_v1.03 which can be found at the top of German RuleSets and Mods page in the CMMOS section of CMHQ. CMBO CMMOS and CMBB CMMOs work differently, even if they're the same version. In CMBO the rulesets have to be installed separately.

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but there seem to be two different threads running on this topic. I have always believed that there is no Royal Road in mathematics, and that there probably shouldn't be one in CM either. I do agree, however, with all due respect, that there are aspects of the UI which could be improved upon. Franko's Rules are brilliant, but to my mind impractical, simply because the interface is too awkward to use with them. Level 1 view is not the same as the selected unit's eyeball view, and without that you can't really act in the spirit of simulated cyber-verisimilitude. And I defy anyone to get a dozen vehicles moving in column down a road in less than half an hour without going several viewing levels higher than Franko's Rules allow. We need more viewing levels, including a top-down one that is very close to the top of the selected unit's head since you can never be sure that you can see what is directly in front of his feet. I know that you can get close to this by going into six and using the magnification buttons, but it's a pain. And we need a more efficient way to jump from organization to organization -- scrolling through the plus sign in large scenarios is not only un-Franko, it's a royal pain as well. But how else are you going to figure out what you really have in your TO&E if the scenario designer didn't tell you (besides jumping to view level nine and sorting)? When I first started to play CMBO I found all those armor slope and penetration numbers a bit overwhelming. Then it occurred to me that apart from forum grogs, most people over the age of fifteen don't carry that kind of thing around in their heads. A WW II grunt would see a Tiger and think big mean tank -- and if he was driving a Sherman and discovered he was about to go head to head at close range he'd probably have the good sense to get out of Dodge. So one of the reasons I'm such a bad player is that I decided not to look at the numbers very much and to try to learn the difference between a Stuart and a Jagdtiger by feel -- and it feels great when it stops. So perhaps we should consider inventing a newbie/ironman mode option for when you hit enter -- instead of seeing all those numbers which you wouldn't know about anyway, you'd just see articulate descriptions of the opposing vehicle like "MM" or "W", which could stand for things like "Mean Mutha'" and "Wimp", if that were appropriate vocabulary usage for the period. Having said that, one argument in favor of too much statistical information (the status quo) is that by overwhelming the viewer with details you discourage them from looking at anything at all. So showing more is, in a way, very much like showing less. It takes a special sort of man to really want to see his 250 pound girlfriend naked. Many in this forum, however, would probably feel a certain sympathy for Botero. As an aside, my girlfriend has been trying to convince me that doing a photo-essay on the stretchmarks that I see whenever I ride the subway through the Bronx may be bad for my health. At the end of the day I think the answer to making CM more newbie-friendly without ruining it for the rest of us (or driving the designers crazy) is to come up with a series of incredibly short and unsatisfying tutorials that explain how to perform simple game functions. Like illustrating the difference between the different movement commands, or showing how to do indirect spotting for a mortar. Nobody (apart from gnomes) likes to read anymore, and what these one- or two- turn scenarios could be is essentially a set of cyber-illustrations to the game manual. Just don't ask me to write any because they would have to be pretty boring. Not to mention lacking in cellulite.

1) Chaco War (Bolivia and Paraguay, early tanks in near-desert conditions). 2) The Rape of Nanking: Japan's invasion of China in the 1930's (including Zhukov in Mongolia). 3) Singapore: Japan's blitzkrieg in the jungle in WWII (perhaps to include a module on Chandra Bose, the INA, and Burma). 4) All Quiet on the Western Front: WWI with modules on Bloody Wipers, Verdun, and the Somme. 5) The Russian Civil War (battles at the gates of Warsaw, revolt in Finland, expatriate Czechs fighting their way across Siberia, the Tsar's gold, Americans invading Archangel...and lots of armored trains). 6) The Spanish Civil War. Dress rehearsal for you know what. My all-time personal favorites are the Sepoy Mutiny and the Taiping rebellion (especially Chinese Gordon and the Ever Victorious Army), but I just can't believe that the game engine is going to handle maneuvers with formed troops properly. And that, sadly, rules out the Guano wars and the Spanish-American war. The war of the Harmonious Fists (aka Boxer Rebellion) would be a lot of fun but far too one-sided. Port Arthur and the Russo-Japanese war would be interesting, but a bit of a let-down without the naval war. I seriously considered proposing Mussolini's war in Abyssinia, but hand-to-hand combat is not one of CM's strongpoints. But it sure would be fun to see spears pitted against tanks and have the spears win -- until they get hit with poison gas. And given how unimaginitive the industry seems to be when it comes to subject matter, you can bet that if one of these oddball titles shows any success there would be a rash of inept imitations. Just imagine an FPS about Zhukov at Khalkin Gol, or an RTS about Chandra Bose (would probably sell a couple of million copies in India)...

I think one solution might be to create a dozen or so really small training scenarios which focus on one or two different game activities at most. They wouldn't really be scenarios in the sense that there wouldn't be a game to play. You just get to see a moving three-D illustration of something that is described in the game manual. Not having seen CMx2 I can't comment on what that would consist of exactly, but using the CMx1 model one might teach you how to get indirect fire out of an on-map mortar. These would be tutorials rather than training scenarios, and wouldn't teach you tactics as much as basic game functions: limbering/unlimbering, mounting and dismounting from moving vehicles, etc. The idea would be to create a set of three- or four- turn illustrations of the basic game functions. For example, a scenario with a platoon, an open field that you have to cross, and something at the other end that is shooting at you. One platoon crosses in walk, one in advance, and one at a run and you get to observe the difference. There could be a variant on the scenario with the ground covered in snow. It would probably be very boring to write, and would take scenario design time away from something more interesting. But it might help a bit with the learning curve. I think the scenario subjects could probably be culled from the current lists of useful posts about gameplay. Taken to the n-nth degree you could probably convert the entire game manual into a string of these scenarios. Nobody seems to want to read these days, and this might not be a bad way to teach the game. But who would want to write these things? [ September 16, 2005, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

The graphics aren't so bad once the game is fully modded. To learn how to improve things you could do worse than to pay a visit to CMHQ and CMMODS. But be advised, modding is a serious addiction...

Curious. Are you quite sure that you have the latest CMHQ version of 4.03 ? I only ask because that is what I have, and that mod is working for me. It's been a while, but the old cmbo cmmos mods come in two parts. The bmp files with altered extensions are what gets listed as the mod, but you won't be able to get the mod to work unless you have the ruleset from Gordon's last release (at the top of each page). Note that in later versions of cmmos the textfiles are included with the mod -- but up until 4.03 they weren't. It is possible the CMHQ version is defective and that mine works in spite of it for several reasons (my version tends to be more complete than other people's because I was one of the ruleset writers, or I just automatically fixed something that wasn't working without thinking about it). But Gordon was incredibly careful about what he posted on that site, and I would be seriously surprised if he put a mod up there that didn't work. One of the testers or one of the users would have picked up on it and said something. So I think something may be missing from the equation. I'm sure the necessary text files are in the 4.03 support package at the top of the page.

I thought that much of the Argonne forest in WW I ended up as a few tree stumps here and there and no leaves. Of course, that was not the result of a five minute artillery barrage...

Not sure what we're arguing about, so we won't. The discussion is not about what you or I actually know, it is about designers, audience, and educational skills in the '40's. You may understand everything you read, but I don't, and I was trained to reconstruct incoherent fragmentary texts in dead languages. That and US $2.00 will get you a ride on the New York subways. Most Americans that I know have great difficulty reading maps. So handing one to a typical soldier in an American unit would have produced rather comical results. Granted you have to make allowances for the differences in the educational systems then and now -- I've seen what they studied in secondary school back then, and the drop-off seems to have taken place in the late fifties or early sixties. Australian schools are on the British model -- I don't know what happens when you hand a map to Tommy Atkins after he's got a few A levels under his belt. The results couldn't have been as dismal, but I doubt that they would have been stellar. I've seen some pretty disoriented British tourists in my time (but their being on holiday probably had something to do with it). As for my navigational skills...let's leave the ad hominem out of this. I spent fifteen years of my life in a former professional incarnation trying to simulate bronze age navigation without map or compass. I'm not as good as those Polynesians in your neck of the woods who can navigate the Pacific by feeling shifts in the currents with their balls, but I certainly don't need anything as high tech and modern as a compass. The smell of the wind (industrial pollution) and the taste of the current (don't try it -- it's usually some form of petroleum by-product mixed with waste) and how the mist gathers on the horizon is enough. If I feel like cheating I check the sky (though it's usually overcast). And I only got dysentary once, but still love the smell of Mediterranean sea port in the morning -- it smells like diesel fuel and raw sewage. I can't speak to not being able to ask the French locals for directions because I'm a frog. I did manage to get lost in a souk in Oman for about five minutes once, but re-oriented myself pretty darn quick after I stopped my boss from taking a leak on the back wall of a ruined mosque.

Just to clarify one of my comments from this morning, the genre I was referring to was a scenario designer's briefing, not the real thing. The real thing would not be hampered by misguided attempts at writing fiction (there are some real doozies out there). If you stumbled on one of those, I don't care who you are, if you don't know the code that wargamers tend to confuse with reality, there's no way you won't get befuddled. Apart from that, former contact with reality won't help a bit when confronted by bad fiction. In fact, it probably puts you at a disadvantage... I suspect that briefings are a lot more lavishly appointed today than they were two generations ago. The Soviets were probably very abstemious about giving out their maps, and even more restrictive about who got to see them. And I'll bet nobody on either side ever got to hold a magic marker. So it may be a mistake to assume that the briefings of yesteryear were like the briefings of today. One of the implications of all of this is that it is amazing that anybody managed to write coherent accounts of what happened. I have a funny feeling that in WW II most people were lost most of the time. Especially after the retreating army pulled out the road direction signs. I don't know what that town over there is, sarge, and I can't ask the locals cause they're all speaking French...

You're going to do the Ballet Troc ? This is getting too surreal...