Philippe

Hush! I'm playing the Canadians in that one just now, and I don't want my opponent to realize I'm dead meat.

The problem with the mods that you mention, of course, is that they haven't been set up for CMMOS. But I'm assuming that what you are really asking me is how to convert a non-CMMOS mod to CMMOS. The first thing you have to be aware of is that sound mods are tricky. Gordon only included the sound capability as an afterthought after I bugged him for a couple of months because I wanted to change the intro music, and do exactly what you're proposing to do. The danger is that you'll go crazy setting the thing up, and the program won't recognize the change because it involves sound. When that kind of thing would happen Gordon would then tweak the program, and like magic it would work. I only mention this because it is a potential issue that doesn't exist when you're swapping bmp's. The first thing that you do when making a cmmos conversion is to plan the whole thing out: what's it going to look like when you're done. In this case you're going to have a bunch of rules for swapping explosion sounds, so you need to create a rule set called "Things that go bang" or something to that effect. Give it a very high and innocuous number, I would suggest 980. So to be mind-numbingly explicit, make a folder called RuleSet980. Capitalize the S and don't use spaces. Now go into CMMOS, pick a small Ruleset that you know works, open it up, and look at what's inside. You'll see some icons, some description files, an info file, a credits file, and some rules. Open a new Word file and name it Credits980. Write the names of the mods that you intend to use. Not a necessary step, but nice if it ever gets published, and it can help you keep track of what you're doing. Next, open a new text file and name it Info980. Then, go into any other Ruleset that you know works, open its info file, and copy the content. Paste this content into the textfile named Info980. It will have three lines: change the second one to read #! RuleSet Name Things that go Bang. Don't worry about the other two lines for the moment. If later on you have problems, you can try playing around with the version numbers in the info files. You now have a RuleSet with two files in it. Start simply and only write the rules for one sound change. Medium explosions, for example. You have to make icons for the original, for mdmp, and for father-of-none or whatever it is that you're planning on using. This is your first time out. Don't go crazy making icons. Cheat. Grab some icons from one of the other rulesets. Make sure you also grab the disabled versions of the icons as well. So if you grab four icons, you've really got eight. Rename them. As an example, one of your icon pairs might be named MDMP and MDMP_disabled. Use as few letters as possible in the names of the icons -- you'll thank yourself later on and these names won't appear anywhere. There are two kinds of rules in a ruleset: regular and advanced. I don't think that advanced rules work with sound mods, so you can forget about them for the moment. We're just going to worry about regular rules. Pick a Ruleset that you know works. Come to think of it, pick the "Hills are Alive" ruleset because we know it works with sound mods. That should probably be the source of your info file, by the way. Grab a rule and a description file from Ruleset 550. Don't grab a rule numbered 000 to use as a model, because they sometimes invoke a special feature in the program that you don't want to use. Put the rule and the description file in Ruleset980 and rename them. For the sake of argument let's say they're called Description980-201 and Rule980-201. Be careful: that's a hyphen and not an underscore between the 0 and the 2, and there are no spaces anywhere. Spaces are your worst enemy, because the program reads them as an entry and they're effectively invisible. Change the text of the description file to whatever you want it to say. You'll be staring at this text every time you hit the icon, so it should say something intelligible and useful. Now change the text of Rule980-201. The first line is the version #. Leave it alone for now. The second line is the mod name. Change it, but don't use periods or hit enter at the end of the line. And keep it short. Something like MDMP medium explosion should do. The third line is critical. It tells the program what files to look for. You have to change it without introducing any stray strokes or spaces that the program will try to read. You have to change #! Files Sounds_Opening_video_music.txt to read #! Files Sounds_Medium_explosions.txt. You get this last bit of information by looking in the FileLists folder. There's a potential problem here, in that if you can't find a sound file listing in the file list, you may not be able to add one and get the program to read it. I don't know because I haven't experimented with it lately. You can usually get the program to read new file list text files for bmp's, but that's because wav files work differently than bmp's in the program. So there still is some ability to roll your own. The problem is that Gordon has retired and isn't around to make the program accept new changes. The next line should read #! Icon blank.bmp, but instead of "blank" use whatever name you used for the corresponding undisabled icon. Once again, spaces are your worst enemy because the program will try to read them as intentional entries. The next line will read something like #! Key 00005010_line.wav. The number section should be the first number from the series of medium explosions (00000209), and I would suggest using the mdmp extension for the mdmp material to be consistant, so the line will now read #! Key 00000209_mdmp.wav. This line is a major source of things not getting read by the program, and is what makes the icon switch from disabled to enabled. If the program finds a file with exactly that name, you're in business. There's a workaround in the event that the name just won't take, but you don't need that now and it may not work in sound mods. The next line will read #! Options 1. No need to change it. This is where the fun begins. For sound mods the next part is very simple, but on bmp mods you can get very creative. Fortunately we're keeping it simple and boring. The next line will read #@ MDMP Medium Explosions (or something like that). It's just the name of the mod. The line after that will read _mdmp. This is where you tell the CMMOS program what extension to look for. With this information the program will look for the file numbers listed in the textfile mentioned in an earlier line, and convert any file with those file numbers and the extension you just mentioned into the operative file. Now that you have the rule for the ruleset, don't forget to modify the target wave file by adding the cmmos extension. This can be done manually one file at a time or with whole groups of files using the Gordon's bmp munge (something he whipped up after I complained about how tedious it was to put extensions on all those grass files). Directions for using the munge can be found in one of the CMMOS readme files. Truth in advertising. It's been so long since I've converted a sound mod that I can't remember whether you can get the program to switch a series of sounds (e.g. all of the medium explosions listed in the sound file), or whether you have to do them one at a time. Given the nature of sound files I would think that one at a time is preferable. I spent two weeks comparing sounds category by category until I made my final selection, which, I will admit, I didn't put into CMMOS. I ended up using whole sound groups from different mods so that you could distinguish the sound of a heavy from a medium tank, for example. The only sound that I did a one-ff switch on was the light vehicle jeep sound. I hate that sound in CMBO, it's much too loud. I ended up taking one that I found in a CMBB or CMAK sound mod (can't remember which), though if I had been smart (and less lazy), I would have just thrown the MDMP/BTS original into a sound editor and cranked down the volume. If you decide after seeing this that you don't want to make a sound conversion, don't despair. Sound is tricky, and everything that I've described for the sound mod will work for bmp's. Actually, it will work better -- because I'm still making CMBO Rulesets, I'm just not publishing them (and that's why I'm stuck using 4.03) By the way, MikeT's 4.05 works a bit more like CMBB CMMOS, though the rulesets were not as extensively tested as 4.03. [ December 30, 2004, 11:13 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

CMBO CMMOS is older than CMBB CMMOS, so the mod configuration panel that you posted doesn't get used in CMMOS 4.03. And yes, it is one of the nicer features of the later version of CMMOS. So the bad news with 4.03 is you'll have to do the installation process (relatively) manually. To figure out what is going on you have to rely entirely on the icons -- are they there, and if they are there, are they greyed out or not. It has been so long since I installed CMBO CMMOS that I must admit I can't remember if the rules and rulesets are bundled together, but I think they may have been. So it's not as bad as it sounds. Gordon liked to put self-extractors into everything, so just remember to download the rulesets from the top of each section (ignore me if I'm having a memory lapse) and install them before you start copying and pasting in the bmp's. The music files are in MP3 form to save space and will have to be converted, but I seem to recall writing a detailed set of instructions for how to do that in the readme files when I was younger and more intelligent. It's not hard to do at all, and some of that music no longer exists on the web.

Many thanks. The Index is in the Downloads section at the bottom of the part devoted to CMBB. Now I just need to find my ruler so I can figure out how big the US CDV manual pages are, and remember how to print the Index so that it fits in the back. In a former life I had a professor who maintained that the usefulness of a book depended on the quality of the index. Had to take him seriously because he was my thesis advisor, so for many years whenever I read a new book I started with the index, then the footnotes, then looked at the text. My favorite index was in the back of Fraenkel's Horace, which had an entry that read "Wolves, postman eaten by". Particularly striking because there are no postmen in Horace, though very useful if you're interested in Dante (I'm not making this up). I'm always a bit dissapointed by prosaic indices. Not sure that it makes sense lavishing attention on the index of a computer game manual given the number of people who will use it, but it is nice to have. Thanks for posting it.

There were 52 scenarios and operations. There must be a list somewhere, but I'm not sure where. At the Scenario Depot (which has something like 1700 CMBO scenarios) the ones from the original disk are marked with an icon. Some of the original scenarios were brilliant and classics, some weren't. A lot of design work went into evolving the beast in different directions, and it still goes on. Due to a fortunate accident Der Kessel will still be up for another year, so you might want to take a look. The presentation is really nice, and the design-work is first rate. Visit The Scenario Depot, learn to use the search engine and read the reviews, but take them with a grain of salt. One useful feature is that it lists the scenarios written by a particular designer under their name. Soon you'll find yourself deciding that you're going to play all the Canadian Normandy Scenarios in chronological order...

You should probably post this in the technical forum.

What does the Hide Vehicle Command do in CMBB ? What effect does it have in the set-up, and what effect does it have when put on the end of a move order? And what exactly does it represent? (And why doesn't my CMBB manual have an index). Hide orders for infantry and anti-tank guns are pretty obvious. You hit the dirt, you move and hit the dirt, or you hold your breath and keep your head down. What is the equivalent for a vehicle? Go into EMCON by turning your engine off so he doesn't hear the noise and smell the fumes?

Should I understand that the explosion question is resolved then? If it is, we can move on to CMMOS in CMBO vs. CMBB. The only CMBO mods that you are likely to download that can be made to work in CMMOS come from two places in theory, but only one in practise. The best place to start is at CMHQ in the CMMOS section. Only mods from the CMBO CMMOS section will work in CMBO CMMOS. CMBB CMMOS mods won't work (unless you coerce them), and Third-Party Mods (to use CMHQ-speak) will never work unless you coerce them and do unmentionable things to them that I don't want to discuss in public (described in intimate detail in the GEM Software Productions/CMMOS readme files). For a mod to work in CMBO CMMOS the following conditions must be met: 1) The mod is a CMBO CMMOS mod (amazing how often people refuse to notice this). 2) CMMOS 4.03 is installed correctly (note: 4.03 comes from the CMMOS section of CMHQ, 4.05 comes from the CMBO section of CMMODS. They aren't the same, but can be made to work together if you're patient and know how your way around CMMOS). 3) A Ruleset covering the rule that makes your mod work exists in CMMOS. (You want to do a german tank, so the easiest way to know if the ruleset exists is to fire up CMMOS and look and see if there is a tab called "German Vehicles and Guns"). 4) A Rule covering the mod that you want to install exists in CMMOS. (The tell-tale sign of this is the presence or absence of an icon, lit up or greyed out, with a picture of the tank that you want to install). 5) The CMMOS mod that you want to install is housed happily in the CMBO bmp folder (not the CMMOS CMBO folder). The tell-tale sign of the absence or presence of a mod is that the icon that operates it is greyed out, which means the CMMOS program can't find it for one reason or another. The fun begins when you start trying to figure out why the program can't find it. The mods from CMBO work on a slightly different but simpler principle than the mods from CMBB. Essentially what you do with the CMMOS CMBO mods is that you put the bmp's with extensions unzipped directly into the CMBO/bmp folder along with all the other bmp's that the game uses. You have to make sure that you have CMMOS installed, that you have the CMBO rulesets in place (they're all at CMHQ in the CMBO CMMOS section), that the rule that covers your mod is working (if you can't see the icon, look under the hood in the CMMOS CMBO file). Everything is covered in the readme file, and you only have to read about a third of it to figure out what to do. But you have to read it. I go on about this at length because I find your comment that you could make mods work with CMBB CMMOS but not CMBO CMMOS rather puzzling. And also because the pool of CMMOS knowledge out there is getting rather thin these days, so this is probably worth repeating from time to time. Pick a mod that you would like to have work in CMBO CMMOS that you can't get to work, and I'd be more than happy to walk you through it. Once you learn how to get one to work, you can make any of them work, and others will learn from your experience.

I wouldn't take declarations of compliancy too seriously. It's a misnomer, because there is really no such thing as a CMMOS compliant mod. CMMOS gets rewritten to accomodate a mod. If someone didn't sit down and make the appropriate adjustments to CMMOS, nothing will ever happen. Mods are frequently mislabeled as CMMOS compliant when they don't work in CMMOS. My favorite was when one modder decided he could make his mod CMMOS compliant by putting funny extensions on the end of the bmp numbers. Back to your problem. Download the mod. Unzip it into a nice, safe neutral place. Take a look at the bmp's. Do they have funny numbers that look like 12345_sdwtr or are they just 12345. If the latter, no worries, it's not a CMMOS mod. If the former, start looking for rules and rulesets, and don't let the CMMOS-speak confuse you. A CMMOS mod will have, among other things, a zip file with textfiles embedded in it. If you don't see those rules (the textfiles) when you look inside the zip (which you can do withouth opening it, if you know how), it's not a CMMOS mod. Let's assume that it is a CMMOS mod. You have two choices. You can download and install CMMOS 4.05, which you can get from CMMODS. You'll need this because CMMOS 4.03 which you can get from CMHQ only works with CMBO and CMBB. The best person to help you with that is MikeT, because I'm stuck on a customized version of 4.03 and can only guess at what goes on in 4.05. This is probably the best way to go. The alternative, if you can't cope with CMMOS, is to strip the bmp's out of the CMMOS mod and remove the CMMOS extensions. Be aware that CMMOS is designed to accomodate multiple options, so when you remove the extensions you may find that you have five files with identical numbers that will overwrite each other. They can't co-exist in the same folder that way, so you'll have to isolate them in different folders. When you have your naked CMMOS bmp's sorted out and separate from each other, you can then either add them to the game manually (copy and paste to the bmp folder the old-fashioned way, backing up your originals first) or zip them into separate zips and use McMMM to install them. Here again I'm not the best person to comment on this because I'm still an McMMM virgin, but it is probably the way to go. (I don't have CMAK and probably won't get it until I'm done working on CMBB -- but when I do I'll probably go the McMMM route, unless the elves do a magic CMMOS conversion number on CMAK. But last I heard the elves were on long-term holiday in Port-of-Spain).

You got the graphic in the first picture after you installed Juju, or the second picture ? Also, "loaded CMod" ? What is that? I don't really understand why Juju's small arms mod would effect an unrelated set of bmp's. Mod switching programs, on the other hand (I'm assuming that is what you're talking about when you say CMod, no?) can do all kinds of weird things. Especially if the person writing the instructions was tired and made a slip of the pen, and didn't have a deep back-up team to catch mistakes (now you know where pink spots come from). If the graphic looks right, look in the bmp folder and confirm that it's there (it will be). Then do whatever you did to make the graphics not look right, look in the bmp folder...and I'm guessing that the bmp's might still be there, but renumbered (again...what is CMod? That could be the key...if you mean CMMOS I can help you get to the bottom of this, even though I don't use 4.05. If you mean McMMM I don't know enough about how it works). A file will show up as a white square if the program thinks it isn't there for some reason. So please elaborate on the loaded CMod part, because that may be the culprit, and not poor Juju's wonderful mod.

I think the key phrase to remember is that what you see on the screen is not what is happening. It's an illustration of what happened during the turn. CM is really a paper board game in disguise, overlaid with a nifty graphics engine that shows you what those little cardboard counters really did during the last combined movement and combat phases. Don't take what you see during the movie too literally. Just another reason to use Michael Dorosh's ASL mod -- it puts you in the right frame of mind.

Just to clarify, what I'm seeing doesn't look like a problem caused by the presence of another mod. It looks like the absence of the necessary bmp files to begin with. Do a clean install. No mods. Look in your bmp folder. Do you see the explosion bmp's? If you don't, we're getting very warm. If those bmp's aren't on the cd, I don't see how they could possibly get into your bmp folder. Unless you have one of the older cd's that left out the explosions (assuming that was the case) and the patch re-inserted them (there were a dozen or so patches on CMBO). When you fire up the game with bat guano explosions (which could make an interesting unshuffled deck of playing cards mod) what version number appears on the menu screen in the lower right hand corner? [i think that's where it appears].

Don't jump to conclusions. With no mods, do you have files 1720-1729 in your bmp folder ? If you don't, the problem is your cd. What version of the game do you have, and when did you get it? And if it is an old one, is it patched?

The bmp's for explosions are 1720-1729 inclusive. You might want to change the properties before you try using the files in your bmp folder. However, what you are describing is a bit unusual. I think I tested all the major explosion mods for CMBO when I was making my own, and I don't ever recall seeing anything like what you've described. The only thing that I ever saw that was a bit untoward was on my own (unreleased) Roy Lichtenstein explosion mod, where the BLAMM! text tended to flip upside down at random because of the way the program works. Actually, the only time I ever saw anything like what you're describing was on a weapons mod, and I'm still not sure what caused it (it was one weapon used by Fallschirmjaegers in Juju's modslut mod, and I suspect the problem had nothing to do with the mod). Could you be a little more precise? What mod were you using that caused the problem? If you added a mod, doesn't it make sense to simply copy the bmp's from the disk that are the same ones that you copied? You may have something a bit more involved going on than a faulty mod, but without more details I can't comment. How many of the frames look like bat guano? All of them? Some of them? How did you install the mod -- did you resize any of the bmp's first, by any chance? What exactly did you do, and where exactly did you put it ? Are you running on an old and slow system that is short of memory or hard drive space, perhaps? Is your CMBO the pristine and pure BTS version, or one of those corrupt CDV ones? And when you say "as soon as I start running mods in CMBO" do you mean "as soon as I try to use an explosion mod" or "as soon as I install Fernando's halftracks my explosions turn into bat guano"? When was the last time you defragmented your hard drive? The solution to your problem may be as simple as freeing up a little disk space (hard drives seem to run better when they're half empty), turning off useless programs that run in the background and gobble up memory (can be done by going into task manager and turning off everything that can be turned off except Explorer), deleting your current install of CMBO (after you make a copy of the wav and bmp folders if you have mods, delete them as well if you don't), and making a new, clean install of CMBO with nothing running in the background (especially firewalls and anti-virus, which you won't need running during an install of a clean commercial product). But before I start throwing out suggestions like that it would really help to know a few basics about what your doing. And now I'll go look and see if there's an animation toggle switch that you may have hit accidently. Please come back on this, because I still haven't figured out what causes one of my weapons to be off, and I'd really like to get a handle on this. I think bmp's with the wrong pixel proportions are what cause the bat guano effect, but I'm not quite sure.

First time I read this I thought he said since last Christmas, which made me really want to find out what he was drinking...

I'm not quite sure I understand your question correctly, but I'm easily befuddled. I'm a computer primitive and know less than nothing about the web, but I think you have to get your image out into cyberspace first before you can link to it. I leave it to the more technologically aware to comment on whether it's possible to leave your computer on all the time as an extension of the web -- though why anyone would want to do that is beyond me. Though I suppose if you can link thousands of personal computers on the web to create extra computing power, anything is possible. The solution to your problem might come from visiting an image-hosting site. I use Image Shack, a free site that you can find on google. I've shown it to non-computer-oriented artists who understood it even faster than I did, so I can attest that it's easy to use. And it's free. There may be other sites like that, but I haven't used them.

I never do one-off e-mails, but I have uploaded it to CMMODS. Both screens are in the same file.

So far my two favorite splash screens for CMBB are Red Victory and the Tarkus tank. The red flag flying over the black and white ruins of the Reichstag is classier than anything I will ever come up with. And the color photograph of that german tank is an eloquent symbol for campaigning on the Eastern Front. But I really miss Tank Girl from CMBO. [That's not really true -- I see her every time I fire up Combat Mission, because I haven't really started playing CMBB yet]. I don't intend to sit down and make a complete interface because I have too many other things on my plate right now. But at least I can make a splash screen that should go nicely with the two propaganda poster intro screens I posted a while back. And if someone wants to adapt these to a new or existing interface, please go right ahead. So without further ado, coming to a People's Collective near you, the Red Twins: This splash screen was inspired by several 18th century Rococo murals. I actually considered including a couple of putti with appropriate hats and armbands, but it was too over-the-top, even for me. If you're ever in New York, take a look at the 18th century Venetian bedroom at the Met and you'll understand where this is coming from. For those with good taste (if you can call appreciating pretentious panorama painting good taste) or the faint of heart, I've whipped up a version without nipples. These are big files, but if there's any interest I'll start the uploads.

You might want to copy Madmatt on the e-mail. He's very good at getting results on that kind of thing. I seem to recall that exchanging old for new cd's is standard procedure (it better be, mine is going to wear out some day). Next time you crack one, though, do it in the middle of the summer when the post-office isn't jammed up.

The Italian invasion of Ethiopia would make an interesting subject, and the modding that would have to go with it would be fascinating. There would probably have to be a bit of an overhaul to part of the combat engine to model the ugly things that would happen when Ethiopian troops finally got to close quarters with Europeans. On a less medieval note, Graziani conducted some very interesting mobile operations, in spite of the bad press that he got later on for being defeated by Wavell in the Western Desert. I think a follow-up game showing the pre-WWII evolution of mobile warfare would be a very interesting idea. It could include bits and pieces of the Chaco War (Bolivia vs. Paraguay, a bit like WW I on the Eastern Front with modern weapons), Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, a few hypothetical Czechoslovakian scenarios, Poland, the Winter War, and the Fall of France. And it would be a even more satisfying if it included some of the tank battles between the Russians and the Japanese in Mongolia. SPI did a board game on this a long time ago, and I think seeing the evolutionary process in action is what got me hooked armored tactical warfare.

...and set up a branch office in Cyprus.

Unlikely. How you fight tends to be heavily informed by your culture and your society's agendas, and very high on the Aztec agenda was taking prisoners alive to be used for human sacrifice. That's why they were always at a disadvantage in combat with Europeans who seemed to give personal survival by killing as many of the enemy as possible a very high priority. And don't forget that the Spaniards were backed up by thousands of the Aztecs' enraged former subjects who were sick and tired of feeding the Mexican human sacrifice machine. One of the interesting things about reading Bernal Diaz is that the sheer horror that he felt when walking into Aztec temples gets transmitted across the centuries -- a bit like rolling into Auschwitz in '45.

If you use mods and don't already have CMBB mods downloaded, calculate how much time it would take to download the CD full of mods the special edition gives you, especially if you have a dial-up. It's worth buying for that reason alone even if you already have CMBB. Scenarios take almost no time to download, and it is not a bad idea to look at them first. So though there is a time saving there, it is not really a useful one. The special edition comes with CMMOS 4.03, many CMMOS mods, and many non-CMMOS mods. Many of the non-CMMOS mods can be found on CMHQ, and to get the full final CMMOS 4.03 configuration you'll still need to download about a third of the material from CMHQ, including several rulesets. There are a couple of minor errors in the special edition's cmmos mods, the main one shows up on Gautrek's Dirty Russian Truck, but it's easy to fix. I'm not sure that MikeT's latest iteration of CMMOS will have any effect on CMBB or vice versa. I suspect that if you want to use 4.05 you simply copy and paste in the CMBB material from 4.03. I don't think there was any ruleset or rule writing for CMBB (as opposed to CMBO). I can't speak with certainty on that last point, however, since I use a customized version of 4.03.

It's surprising what you can do with those 20x20 tiles. If you have a big open space that is 800x800 meters, you can articulate it with one tile wide strips of scattered trees, or brush, or woods, or hedges, and break that space up into its historic triangles, lozenges, whatever. Doesn't do much to the game play, but you can make a blank map look much more real. And you can also relieve the map designer of staring at a kilometer square blank space and doing something creative (and perhaps unfortunate) to that space, because he knows that in reality it was broken up into smaller bits. As I understand it, in Normandy if you were a farmer and had three sons, you left each of them a third of your field, they did the same with their sons, and everybody planted hedges and trees along the rim of their property. Several centuries of that kind of subdivision resulted in some pretty unblank spaces. There's a teltale charm to the irrationality of the way that they divided up their fields that most map designers wouldn't be able to reproduce without a guide, and the photographs might provide that. As for the Remagen Bridge problem, I think what is needed is several sets of duplicate unused bmp's (or their equivalent) so that you can construct more scenario-specific buildings. In the case of Remagen bridge you would need a little programming to get the frames into the shapes of the anchoring piers. Actually the game needs more bridges period. Arnhem scenarios don't have the right kind of suspension bridges either. [ December 18, 2004, 01:46 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Just to clarify, I was referring to downloading from CMHQ (which apparently has problems with firewalls) as opposed to CMMODS (which probably doesn't).