Philippe

To do a screenshot you go to imageshack and open an account. Then you upload a jpeg to imageshack from your computer -- their instructions are very clear. Once you've gotten uploaded to imageshack, if you look at the codes associated with each image there you'll notice that there's one specifically designed for linking to forums. It just happens to be the first one that they list, and it has the word "forum" next to it. Copy the code, and paste it into the text of the message here exactly where you want the image to appear. And it's much easier to do than to describe. If you mean how to take a screenshot, simply hit your "printscreen" button, which is usually located towards the top and to the right of the main keyboard. [Mine is located directly above the "insert" button, which is part of a group of buttons above the directional arrows]. Once you've hit print screen, close CMBB and open Paint (which you can find by going into Programs after clicking on the Start button in the lower left of your screen). Open Paint, click on Edit, and then hit paste from the drop down menu. You'll get queried as to whether you want to expand your image, so say yes. Make sure the image takes ( = make sure the dotted line around it goes away), then save the image as a jpeg ( = File then Save As). Somewhere along the way you'll probably want to crop the image down to make it smaller. I'm hoping that whatever part of the above you don't need will be useful for someone else. Now that you're armed with knowledge, please oblige by showing us some screenshots.

Too many nations? I'm still pining for Czechs, Slovaks, and Bulgarians (and Serbs and Croats, if they don't belong in CMAK instead).

But do we have any idea what flag, if any, was actually used by the East Front Polish troops in WW II ? My current inclination is to go with a simple bicolor as the Victory Flag. We still have to nail down the eagle for the hidden unit marker. I've shown two shields on the flags I won't use, one with an eagle that probably dates from the 'fifties, the other with the same eagle that you showed a few posts above. Another candidate is the Bronkowski (?) eagle that you also posted. Since I can't read the source material, could you explain the differences between them? The first (metal pin) eagle is a strong contender in theory, provided that a) it works visually when turned into a marker and is appropriate for communist sanctioned troops. What exactly were the circumstances and time frame of its use? Your third eagle looks archaic enough to date from WWII -- could you give us its history prior to 1989? I'm only really interested in it if it can be traced to the war or the immediate post-war period. I can't read anything written about it, but it looks right for 1944-45 stylistically. The crownless eagle in my other shield flag (based on the FOTW site) may be from a style change ca. 1956 and thus too late to be appropriate. I have to double check this, but I think the eagle got scrawnier in the fifties -- if so I can't use it. I've already made some preliminary markers that need to be refined through testing, but that will need more work. Please provide a little more historical feedback so I can reject one of them definitively. I like using the red background, but since several of the other CMBB hidden unit markers are derived from physical objects (especially if you're using the ones posted on Mark Gallear's site, or my versions of them), I may take a shot at the metal eagle.

Actually, it does matter. If you play with really good camo, realistic sizing, and the bases off, you may have trouble finding things...

Blowing bridges in CM isn't gamey. What is gamey is that you often can't blow a bridge when you're supposed to be able to in real life (especially in CMBO). Napoleon resorted to gamey tactics and blew a bridge over the Elster in 1813. Ever since tactical discussions of the event have revolved around question of when, and not whether, the bridge should have been blown. You often see comments to the effect that it is irresponsible for an engineer not to blow a defended bridge, unless he's got an overwhelmingly important reason for letting it stand (e.g. Marshall Poniatowski needs to retreat across it to get out of Leipzig alive). So unless there's an explicit prohibition against destruction by the scenario designer, it's probably ludicrous to call such an elementary tactic gamey. I make this post with great trepidation, because I'm currently the attacker in a bridge crossing scenario, and am hoping this doesn't give my opponent any ideas. He seems to have left the bridges intact to encourage me to run into his minefields. I'd try the fords, but it's so damp I'd probably lose a couple of tanks to the mud.

I'm still uneasy about these, partly because I have a nagging suspicion that the appropriate flag should probably be a simple red and white bi-color. But here are two crownless shield flags. One of the eagles is probably too post-war to use. When I'm convinced that this isn't going off on an ahistorical tangent, I'll produce the other pieces.

On a related note, it really bothers me that the partisans in the Ghetto Uprising scenario speak russian. In a perfect world they would be speaking polish or yiddish, or perhaps a mixture of the two. The simplest solution would be to relabel a set of polish .wav files and substitute them for the russian ones whenever you're about to play that scenario. The problem is, I haven't checked to see if there is an exact correspondance between the russian and polish language files. That kind of switch wouldn't work in CMBO without sitting down and figuring out what each file was supposed to be talking about (the issue came up in the battle of Glieres scenario where both sides are supposed to be speaking french). I suspect that there may be a tighter correspondance in CMBB. So if there is an identical number of russian and polish language files (which there probably isn't) does anyone (like Madmatt, if you're reading this) know if you can just bait and switch, or do you have to actually figure out what you're doing?

My memory is playing tricks on me. I apparently made two different Polish unachieved victory objective flags, one for the Little Semiotics mod, and one for the Warsaw Ghetto. The Little Semiotics mod (the usual case) is the 'correct' communist eagle that I suspect of being post-war. The Warsaw Ghetto flag uses the crowned eagle. The Warsaw Ghetto mod also has the tiny unit flag without the eagle. Checking through my notes I think I did that out of whimsy, on the grounds that some of the fighters were communists. On reflection, I think I probably agree that it is over-interpretation. However, it works perfectly well as the normal Polish side indicator, so it should be pulled out and relabeled accordingly. Of the three images that Sturmovik posted, the top one may be correct, but it looks like a metal pin. I suspect that the differences in treatment of the tail feathers has to do with the dimensional requirements of the object itself. On a flag the image governs, so the tail feathers can be a bit more baroque. I realize that I was never too happy with the overall shape of the eagle on my Polish unachieved objective flags, and that's one of the reasons that I didn't produce a full set of symbols. Next week if I get a chance I'll make a full Polish set (Unachieved Victory Flag update for Little Semiotics, new regular Polish Victory Flag, the small unit national identity marker from the Warsaw Ghetto relabeled, and a new hidden unit marker. Not sure when they'll get posted with CMMODS down, but everything will be sorted out in a week or so. In the meantime you should send Andrew Fox an e-mail to get him to weigh in on the uniforms.

In my Little Semiotics mod (which I posted on CMMODS a while back) I included an unachieved victory location marker that uses an uncrowned eagle. I drove myself nuts trying to figure out exactly which uncrowned eagle to use, but finally decided that I had picked the right one, or one that was very close. And if you looked at my Warsaw Ghetto pack you'll notice that the small unit flag that appears onscreen is a Polish flag rather than a Russian partisan flag. At the time I made that mod I decided that the Zionist organizations involved in the fighting would probably have been more comfortable with a crownless eagle, so I made the appropriate adjustments to the mod. I suspect that what they were actually using for a Polish flag was a simple red and white bicolor, which was flown alongside various Zionist organization flags (one of which eventually became the flag of the State of Israel). My mod files (which I haven't posted anywhere) include several crownless polish symbols, including a Hidden Unit Marker and a rippled crownless Polish flag. I'd be more than happy to contribute them to your Polish scenario pack. But I have a few reservations about the symbols. I agree that the crown is wrong, and that's why I don't use it. One could make a slight argument that my version of bmp 426 could have a crown, but there's a stonger case to be made for no eagle at all, or a crownless eagle. [bmp 426 is the tiny polish unit flag that appears on the scenario interface in the place of the russian partisan symbol]. But I still have some residual doubts about exactly which eagle got used by Soviet-aligned Poles. Most of the ones you see are post-war, and the representation of an eagle on a medal is going to be a bit different from what happens on a flag. To put that in plain English, I suspect that the eagle that I use on the unachieved victory location marker may be a post-war eagle. What's at issue here is the shape of the top of the eagle's head (I would have normally said crown of the head, but in this context that would be confusing), the shape of the tail feathers, and the negative space formed by the gap next to the spot where the wings join the body. If you don't know the unachieved victory location flag I'm talking about, I think I posted it (or a flat version of it) when I was working on the Little Semiotics mod. You can probably find the thread if you do a text search for Little Semiotics (the thread had a different name). Your uniform issues need to be discussed with Andrew T. Fox, who may have addressed the problem already.

Not good enough. I suspect the world-view from the Antipodes is somewhat reversed. Rose-tinted glasses at a minimum to call.

CMMODS is down, and oddly enough, rather than a cause for alarm, it is probably a cause for celebration.

Is that the one where the CD is tinted in tricolor camo or the one in ahistorical dunkelgrau? I think Franklin Mint is planning a brass-tinted version with a photograph of Patton's pearl-handled pistol for its US release. But I have always been partial to the Estonian edition myself, probably because I'm a sucker for lurid poster art (Tom Hanks and Maximillian Schell in profile on the CD-cover).

Not sure I understand your predicament, but your best bet is to contact Battlefront and explain your situation very clearly and in great detail. Their contact co-ordinates can be found at the top of one of the main pages. Generally they are very good about replacing broken discs as long as you bought them directly from them and not from CDV. You will probably have to supply some proof of the original purchase, or the melted cd and charred manual to give as exchange for a new one. But they are genuinely nice guys and will do anything reasonable to help. Please note, however, that as you certainly know if you were a previous owner, that CMBO is a completely different product from CMBB, which is a different product from CMAK. So I don't think it is realistic to ask them to give away a free copy of CMBO just because you have ordered the games on other subjects. CMBO is a unique product with its own special longevity, and will have value as a collector's item, especially if it is in the form of a CD purchased directly from BTS.

I'm not a computer equipment grog, but my own experience has been that in fact the latest drivers for your equipment and the latest version of Direct X are not always a good thing when dealing with CMBO. I can't quote chapter and verse on this, but I know that there are many newer drivers for my aging NVidia card, but that none of them work quite as well as the one I am using. The best people to ask about this kind of thing would be Schrullenhaft or Madmatt (because they are intimately aware of what really works with CMBO). After Bill Gates & Co. bullied me into getting Direct X 9 I started having all sorts of problems with CMBO. It was even not working for a while. Eventually I got everything sorted out, but I can tell you from painful experience that many of the newest drivers are aimed at the newer games and can cause conflicts that interfere with the older ones, and some of these conflicts are maddeningly difficult to identify and resolve. And they differ from machine to machine, driver to driver, game to game. So my advice is to avoid blanket general advice. Tell Madmatt and Schrully what you've got and what game you're having problems with, and they should be able to set you straight. And yes, you need to do that in the Technical Forum.

Did the Ambush camo pattern get used on the Eastern Front?

Can't be December. There weren't any Space Lobsters in the Ardennes.

TLA ?

The Ultra leak theory is interesting, and quite credible, given the extent of pre-war Soviet intelligence penetration into the UK. I can understand why the Soviets wouldn't want to attribute their intelligence coups to spying on the British, even late in the Cold War after some of their more notorious moles had moved to Moscow. But did Ultra actually handle the specific bits of intelligence alluded to ? My hazy recollection is that Ultra could provide phenomenal levels of information on some subjects, but turn up a total blank on others that should have produced reams of material. Depth, breadth, and insight usually comes from one or more human spies.

When I think of the edge problem debate, I dream of large maps with the AI controling an on-map force to the left and the right of you. So you can edge-hug all you want, but you'll have gone far out of your way to get to that edge, and will be tripping over units from your own side that you don't control the whole time. Or you can move along the inner flanks of the units to the left and right of you and get shot at (and shoot back at) AI opponents. Every scenario would have to be three times as wide as it is now. Doesn't sound very practical, but co-operative play with the AI against another AI/human team is a nice dream.

I would love to see an expansion. But I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. They'd have to figure out how to clone Charles' brain, and keeping his jar filled is hard enough as it is -- a double size jar that could also accomodate the clone as well would probably require more blue liquid than is available on the market. Making the poor overworked programmer jump back and forth between the two engines would probably slow things down and encourage mistakes and ill-humor.

Is it my imagination, or do those tanks have health bars ?

Oddly enough I have a printed manual (and the downloaded PDF index that doesn't go with it), but no PDF manual. Now as it happens I'm so old-fashioned that I prefer paper anyway, so I only care in an academic sense. But are you quite sure that everybody is supposed to have a PDF manual? I may have to take a second look at the other disk to see if I overlooked something.

What are you going to do about the .wav files?

I've never been a big fan of the Patriot Act, but in situations like this I just love it.

You did before you edited your message. But not to worry. It can be retrieved from your computer.