Philippe

Work continues on Version 3 of the German Unit Portraits mod. It is now up to somewhere around version 2.90, and if it ever manages to get past 3.0 I'll publish it. The first rough draft of the mod is now finished. All of the original BTS images have been completely replaced with new ones. Now I have to make sure that the sequence of images makes sense, and that I'm using the best images for each position that I have access to. That last point is a big caveat, since I don't have a scanner (let alone a high resolution one), and I don't have any of the Osprey WWII books. The Osprey images that you see below were culled off the web, mostly as screenshots of Amazon.com. What is really frustrating is that there are clearly many, many pages of illustrations that would solve my image problems (I'd kill for a good Heer junior officer in a schirmmutze measuring 100+ pixels from crown to collar-bone -- I may have to demote a general). So if anyone has any high resolution bmp's that they feel might be worth considering for inclusion, please get in touch with me. A word on how to read this thing. It's actually an editing tool for the next stage of the project. There are three periods of uniforms: all uniforms from one period are stacked vertically above each other. The horizontal rows are Infantry, Mechanized Infantry, Mountain troops, Panzertruppen, SS Infantry (anyone know exactly what this represents, and how it differs from the next category?), SS Mechanized Infantry, SS Mountain, SS Panzertruppen, Luftwaffe Field Divisions (with Hermann Goering mech infantry as period 3 -- oddly enough it works), Luftwaffe Fallschirmjaegers, Luftwaffe Panzertruppen (anyone know what these guys should look like if they're not part of one of the HG units in period 2?), and finally, Volksturm (and yes, one of them really is wearing a Homburg). Within each group the order is crew, infantry squad, platoon commander, company commander, battalion commander. For tankers the second image is the unit commander. Just setting the images up like this made me reallize that there are a few things that will have to be changed. Hopefully I'll find the time and the resources to be able to do it. So keep those cards and letters coming. [And am I the only person bothered by the fact that the Italians in CMBB don't have faces?] [ February 07, 2005, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

You might start by downloading the CMAK demo. Next, you might check to see if there are any CMAK interface mods ... that will give you the list of interface bmp's you'll need to cull out of the demo. Look at the interface mods for CMBB. Find the corresponding bmp's in the CMAK demo and renumber. Both sets of mods would be at CMMODS. The demo can be found in the downloads section of this site. Happy modding.

My workaround is control-alt-delete and then hit cancel. I need it for both CMBO and CMBB. For some reason if I alt-tab out of CMBO, when I come back in I have no introductory music. I also have terrible mouse flicker in both games as long as the cursor is resting outside the playing area. If I rest it inside the playing area, however, it flickers once and dissappears, which I rather like. A bit of a ghost image when I first move it again, though. This problem started after I upgraded from DirectX 8 to DirectX 9, and I've never been able to resolve it. I'm assuming that DirectX 9 created some kind of minor conflict between my sound and my mouse. I keep hoping that a newer DirectX release will eliminate it, but I suspect that will never happen.

Have you tried taking screenshots and pasting them together in Paint? Crude, but effective.

Umm...I think everyone here read that elsewhere. This thread is for getting a sense of the numbers on both sides of the issue, not for debating it. There are two other threads for that. I suggest we both delete our posts after a decent interval.

I have loaded up 'historical' scenarios in CMBO that were made with approximations of OOB's that might have been used in the real battle, but that used fantasy maps that couldn't possibly represent real terrain that existed anywhere, let alone on the continent of Europe. The result is that I shut down the computer immediately and spend a few minutes shaking with rage. Taking a walk helps. It's nice that there are a couple of thousand scenarios out there to choose from. But there's a lot of dreck to wade through as well. Still, some people like playing with wombats on paintball maps, so why should we deprive them of their fun? And the designer can always claim that his unrealistic foray into map-editing was an intentional exercise in producing a training scenario. Having said that, we should probably cut the designers some slack. One of the reasons I don't design scenarios is that I don't have adequate research tools. I suspect if most designers felt as I do, very, very few scenarios would ever get done. So let's welcome every approach to scenario design as long as it inspires careful and talented designers to get it right from time to time. You can't always tell that something is good unless you have something mediocre with which to compare it.

Not sure I can help with this, but I'll take a partial stab at it. What kind of system do you have, where exactly are you putting the downloaded file, and where are you trying to install it to? And just so I'm sure we're on the same page, what is the name of the file you're trying to work with (I know that sounds a bit like asking the color of Robert E. Lee's white horse, but bear with me). I'm not familiar with that particular error message -- something strange is going on, either your system is unusual, you have too many programs running in the background (have you turned everything off including firewalls ?), or you're trying to run it from or to an unexpected place.

[Text removed because sometimes silence is golden].

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but does that mean there are sound mods on the CMBB SE CD?

The frames that the bmp skins are stretched over are hard-coded. There's no need for homburgs in CMAK, but you really do need them in CMBB, as you will find out if I ever finish version 3.0 of my German Unit Portrait mod. The main Volksturm infantry unit is wearing one.

At the risk of getting myself branded as the Heresiarch of Halfsquad Herders, is it possible that, slightly gamey though it may be, the practise of splitting squads on a large scale has produced an unintended increase in realism? What I'm getting from all this is that if you split into lots of half-squads, sometimes you won't have an advantage but sometimes you will, depending on circumstances. The circumstances that give that advantage most often sound very much like the circumstances that would give the advantage in real life. So it may not have been intended, but I'm starting to wonder if squad-splitting isn't unintentionally ungamey. It may not be how the Designer (Demiurge ?) intended it to be, but isn't the effect (and the superficial tactical appearance) just a tad closer to the real thing? (And yes, I know, this really is starting to sound like a 4th century theological debate). Credo quia absurdum.

No objection. Don't use them much myself, but I suspect that they may be more realistic than the designer intended them to be. So I don't have a problem with getting attacked by half-squad hordes, especially in the wrong situation.

Have you tried discussing this with Madmatt? Telling him, for example, the name and address of the store and the serial number of the CD might help things along somewhat. You can contact him by looking in the upper left hand corner of the menu screen.

Because I am uncomfortable with the concept of command delays, I would prefer that what a unit out of command sees not get relayed back to the player until after it returns to command. In the interim, I would like to see it controlled by the AI, with the proviso that the AI somehow try to follow the spirit of the original orders, unless it encounters overwhelming force, in which case it the orders get trashed. If the recon unit gets killed, the information that it gained will never be revealed to the player. Scouting out of command in effect will generate a kind of spotting delay. I also think that the absolute number of new commands (apart from minor comand changes) should be severely limited. In addition, the ability to give these limited number of commands should depend, to some extent, on whether an HQ is in command from further up the chain. This is hardly original, but I think that the concept of a cumulative and increasing number of available commands flowing down the chain of command is a good one. Among other things it will make it very difficult to give new orders to a company in the middle of a maneuver if the company commander and his radio have been loaded into a jeep to do deep recon. Apart from points lost, losing a radio should be a very frustrating and immediately cumbersome proposition. Finally, I think that electrodes should be attached to a sensitive part of the player's anatomy, with a strong electric shock delivered every time a non-combat asset gets eliminated. While some may grow to enjoy this, the rest of us will tend to avoid taking these kind of losses after a few jolts.

The Sangreal is not surrounded by gridded grass.

There are some mods that when you look at them you can tell that the different surface panels were drawn. On your mods when you look at them you can tell that the different panels were soddered and riveted together. And I love the weathering around the edges. Why is it that I thought you didn't like the ambush camo pattern?

On reflection 2:1 representation may not be adequate. I suspect that the proper ratio should be something more like 5:1 to accomodate ego, super-ego, id, and the occasional stray analyst or therapist that may enter into the picture. And we shouldn't overlook personal trainers.

I think the 'old grumbler' terminology has been around for a long time, and the modeling usage is probably parallel and independant from boardgame or CM-speak. I used to (and still do) pay regular visits to web-grognards long before I had ever heard of combat mission, and remember someone from Talonsoft using it in a telephone conversation in the 90's (when he was trying to explain to me why he thought that adapting the earlier incarnation of John Tiller's system to the battle of Leipzig was impossible). As for the image of the T-34...I scrounge for images anywhere I can find them, so why not? As I think you yourself have pointed out, digital space is a wonderfully flexible modeling platform, so sooner or later cross-fertilization is going to occur.

There's something very funny about debating the language of 'otherness' and xenophobia in an international forum. Perhaps we can all agree that ethnic insults are ok as long as both parties understand that an insult is intended. They're ok, that is, because they're supposed to be the preamble to a good, clean fight. [Yes, I really did live above a bar once, and at 3 AM the conversation on the street generally involved a discussion of people's mothers]. If, on the other hand, someone insults someone else unknowingly because of poor manners, insensitivity, or lack of empathy, that is unacceptable. Willful ignorance is an unforgivable sin. Unless you can make everyone laugh about it when you do it. It's hard to take that kind of thing seriously when you're laughing at it.

Why is that a problem? A split squad occupies a much larger area than an unsplit squad, so putting enough lead out there to make everybody duck is going to require a greater expenditure of ammunition. If your target is spread over a wider area of forest, you're going to have to shoot at more trees to be sure that you're shooting at the right ones. Dispersing a target makes it harder to hit. Since that is true in real life, why is modeling real life in the game such a bad thing? If you don't like the dispersion effect of split squads, you're going to really hate 1:1 representation.

And wasn't there at least one incident where an American submarine commander machine-gunned survivors of a Japanese ship he had just sunk? He never got hauled in as a war criminal because he was a "hero" and lionized by the press -- and went on to testify on behalf of the defense at a U-boot commander's Nuremburg trial. Of course, this doesn't compare to hauling survivors on deck, using them for sword practise, and then tossing the survivors back over the side when an enemy ship showed up.

Hmmm... I don't usually have pottymouth outbursts, but just this once I can't help myself: Fshlgeg brrrtz, viu viu going. As for ethnic slurs, they tend to reflect more on the user than on the group described. Most of the ones I've noticed in the wbs list were pretty lame and merely in varying degrees of bad taste. The truly offensive ones were, fortunately, omitted. The words from Sergei's list, however, were, with one exception, a bit stronger. I must say, though, that however I might feel about the vocabulary described, it's kind of sad to see the death of language progress to the point that people can't tell the difference between, rude, crude, and mortally offensive. I think that native English speakers probably have an unfair advantage in this discussion, because what we're talking about is which words can almost be used in polite society. [ January 31, 2005, 03:34 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

And maybe if you're really lucky you'll download something with an historically correct german air recognition panel on it. Given the choice between explaining naked women or swastikas on my computer to a senior manager, I think I'd rather get caught with naked women. It would be a lot easier to understand.

I've often wondered how many coherent and comprehenisble tactical orders you can issue in the space of a minute. And I still remember the day in a Thucidydes course when the professor explained that a Greek General's most important asset was a really powerful set of lungs. I suspect that the diameter of a sphere of command should have more to do with a commander's pipes and less to do with his talent.

The problem with the AI is that it is pretty good on defense, but not too good at launching co-ordinated attacks. Every now and then it surprises you, but you'll find after a while that you need a human opponent if you want to play defense. I don't know how it works against the AI, but you might also take a look at Blood and Bocage. What I like about it is that it presents both sides with a range of tactical options: there are several very different ways for each side to achieve its objectives, which means quite a few different ways the scenario can play out. I can't remember if it's on the CD, but if not you can find it at the Scenario Depot.