Philippe

Try going into it through My Computer and click directly on whatever drive you have the CD in. I don't think CMMOS uses Explorer to get at the CD when it replaces files. When you've got the wav files, look about a dozen threads below this one in the CMBB forum for a description of what to do with it (except mentally substitute .wav and wav folder for bmp and bmp folder).

Out of curiosity, is there a technical reason why you can't simply copy those waves from the cd, change their properties, and paste them into your wav folder ? [ October 27, 2004, 04:14 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Not just the steel mills of Pittsburgh, though. Think of the 100 Years War being won in a thousand little skirmishes that Froissart barely has time to mention. I doubt that there were ten big battles in the entire war, and the Valois lost most of them (I didn't say France because I'm not sure it existed). I'm tempted to point to Pericles' strategy for winning the Peloponesian War, but it was blatantly economic. And it would have worked if he hadn't died of the plague. The conquest of Anatolia from the Byzantines is usually attributed to two battles: Mantzikert and Myriokephalon. But if you look closely at what happened after each battle you don't see Byzantine authority collapsing -- and in the case of Myriokephalon they actually regained a bit of ground. The model is almost that the Greeks would lose a battle and then a few years later their authority would crumble. Some say that the state of one's military is a reflection of what is going on in the larger society. I'm not sure that I buy into that, but in the examples I just mentioned I have to wonder if lost battles weren't symptoms of defeat rather than causes.

All I'm saying is that battles are a subset of military events and that military events are a subset of wars. Battles are not necessarily the most important component of their subset in spite of getting the most attention.

Thanks, Michael. Did you use a different flag for partisans ?

Greek Proverb: The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one. One good one.

How are you defining "military historical event?" </font>

The nice thing about Classical Antiquity is that it's very old and doesn't change much (or very often). And when it does change, it's usually a disaster, like that time about a hundred years ago when some archeologist actually had the temerity to find a play by Menander in a mummy casing. Careers and reputations were ruined, and he was told not to do it again. He didn't. I only mention this because the notion that something involving Classical Antiquity could be outdated is a little ironic given that the material itself is outdated. What changes is our perception of the past. This perception always changes over time, and, give or take a little insight, one set of fashions for interpretation is probably not much better or worse than another. Part of the appeal of Classical Antiquity is that it is a notorious mirror -- Greeks and Romans always look just like us no matter who we are, but for some weird reason the descriptions of them are different depending on the viewer. I know that my Greeks and Romans are truer to life than Gibbons' 'outdated' vision...but I wonder what Gibbon would have said. (Decline and Fall has great footnotes, by the way). The quincunx is the formation that the handbooks tell us the Romans used before the Marian reform. That doesn't mean, of course, that the handbooks are correct. Personally I don't find the notion very convincing either, but without examining the relevant texts anything I say would be pure speculation. Over the years I've found that the handbooks are frequently wrong, especially when it comes to military matters. By characterising him as a genius who can't be ignored I'm signalling that I'm something of a Delbruck fan myself and that anything I say to support him should be taken with a big grain of salt as well. The problem with Delbruck was that he was an enthusiast, and like most enthusiasts would get carried away and lose his sense of proportion. Superior discipline and methodology along with this vaunted sense of proportion is supposedly what distinguishes the amateur from the serious scholar. Delbruck was also prone to doing things that no serious classical scholar would be caught dead doing, like organizing students into improvised phalanxes and marching them back and forth on the Gymnasium playing field to see if their formations fell apart. The serious scholar would point out that only the ancient texts exist (plus the CIL and the odd archeological site), and that anything you do on the playing field is pseudo-science because it sheds light on how you spend your leisure time and little else. In other words he was too focused on what went on in his reconstructions and not focused enough on the texts. I still remember the look of icy horror that crossed my advisor's face when I suggested that it might be interesting to set up a model of Greek city-state politics based on game theory - after that he stopped asking to see my translations of Thucydides. The minute you start moving away from the texts (and moving around on the vacant lot behind the Gymnasium) the serious scholar will get a queasy feeling in his stomach and start muttering about the Ernle Bradford school of literary criticism ("Odysseus went to all of these places because I can sail my yacht there") while remembering that Polybius is the greatest historian who ever lived because he tells us so, over and over and over (a bit like Liddell Hart and the superiority of the indirect approach, which he sees lurking under every bed). Personally I don't think there's much wrong with Delbruck's general ideas. And I always like to check what Delbruck had to say about a particular ancient battle if I happen to be studying it. Ancient battles are finicky things, however, and each one has its own weird historiography and textual quirks. I don't really want to know how often Delbruck gets it wrong, but my sense is that he gets it right about half the time, and that's really pretty good. If you want a wonderful example of how easy it is to mess up with this kind of thing, read Peter Green's first reconstruction of the battle of Granicus in his history of Alexander the Great. It's deliciously wrongheaded and probably the worst reconstruction of an ancient battle ever written - so bad that to his credit Green actually recanted in the second edition. And yet Green is one of the best and most serious scholars of his generation (and for once I actually mean that in a nice way). So the bottom line with Delbruck is that you have to take him case by case. Sometimes he's right on the money and nobody else is seeing it, and sometimes he's merely interesting. And notice that in this entire discussion we've fallen into the trap of assuming that battles were the important determinants of military historical events. Sometimes they were, but often they weren't, but either way they make much better reading than what was really going on half the time.

I seem to be coming up with two different russian words for mine. One of them (the one I used last time) is obviously a foreign loan-word. The one that came up when I tried to find a translation for "Beware! Mines!" may be the thing that goes boom, or it may be an industrial hole in the ground. I need help from a russian speaker to tell which is which. I also need help with the verb. I'm getting "Warn yourselves!" Предупредите and "Be careful!" Остерегайтесь! for "Beware!". Remembering that if you translate "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" into Russian and then translate it back again you usually get "Vodka strong, meat rotten", I have decided to go with the latter until someone gives me guidance. The sign itself is still in the preliminary stages, but now looks something like this: I'm thinking of distinguishing between anti-personnel and anti-tank mines by the presence or absence of exclamation points. And weren't there some letters that were only used or omitted during the Stalinist era ? Looking forward to the next set of slavophone comments...

That sounds more like a housekeeping arrangement. Were the contubernia used as tactical units either on march or in actual battle? </font>

Actually that green flag is really part of a grammatical case mod... Russian is not one of my languages, and I posted the flag and the sign for exactly this reason. "Beware! Mines!" sounds right, and is similar to what you would use in French. I'll take a stab at it, but will probably get the verb and noun endings wrong. Please post again after I make another set, or better yet, send me an e-mail with the correct text. For the flag I'm going to try for something like "goal" or "designated target", whichever I can find, fits, and looks better. I'm worried about using two words, though, because I'll probably mess up agreement of case, gender, and number. So I'm planning on relying on the kindness (and assistance) of Slavophone strangers.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a real objective flag. There are plenty of real flag sets because the victory locations use real flags (check Marc Gallear's site and CMMODS), but unachieved victory locations are a different story altogether. I grappled with this problem in CMBO when I did the Semiotics mod, and because the mod was CMMOS-based I was able to use the unit emblems of every unit in the NW ETO as objective flags. There were a few cases where the unit emblems were unknown (mostly german infantry divisions) so I composed some generic markers. The closest ones in that set to "real" that I managed to come up with were a black, white, and red triangular pennant for the Germans and a pack of cigarettes for the French. There are far too many divisions in play on the eastern front to even think about attempting that, so it is better to come up with either one, two, or half a dozen flags. The one thing these flags have to have in common is that they must bear absolutely no resemblance to a victory flag that might be in use by either side. So red as a background color can't be used (which, sadly, eliminates the wonderful but apocryphal Red Army flag with the yellow star in the middle). The two base colors that I'm playing around with are grey and green. The grey flag with "objektiv" written on it comes in varying shades from light grey to a brownish feldgrau. The text can be in varying shades of red. There is a variant of the "obyektivno" flag that is also red text on grey. And there is also a version of the "objektiv" flag with red text on a green field. The simplest solution, of course, would be to simply write it in English, but I have trouble justifying that since there are no anglophones involved on either side in CMBB. The basic design question is what color and what shape work best for unachieved objectives. I'm partial to triangular penants myself, but on the eastern front I tend to want to stick to rectangles. The traditional base color for these things are a steely light grey, but I find that it tends to vanish into the snow. That's why I'm currently interested in the green flags -- they stand out from the background and can't be confused with a victory flag.

Andrew Fox, Marcus Hofbauer, and Gordon Molek have exhausted the German minefield markers. The point of making a Russian language version is that you switch markers (and objective flags) depending on which side you're about to play. And yes, I'll probably tackle the other languages as well, some of which I can even read... The sky mod is Undaunted's brilliant masterpiece. And if someone knows his e-mail address I would really appreciate it because I'm working on some seamless horizons for CMBO that need his skies, and I'm in need of a technical discussion about clouds.

Three of my CMBB projects that are still in the early stages: minefield markers, objective markers, and trenches. I plan on redoing all three of them completely, probably several times. I'd appreciate comments on the trenches (isn't a slit trench that's just a hole in the ground as I have portrayed it likely to collapse ?), the objective marker ( color and text -- there's a companion flag in light grey with "Objektiv" in red fraktur that I didn't show), and the minefield marker ( skull and crossbones isn't east european enough, and the text may not be idiomatic).

I've done that. I need to make sure I've downloaded all of them (not hard, there aren't that many) because I was thinking of writing a ruleset eventually (but don't quote me). I've just started looking at CMBB and am a bit overwhelmed by how much there is to be done. Not quite sure where to start. I also suspect that a lot of things were permanently lost in the crash.

Very nice work, as always. And thanks so much for including both sets of armbands. When I think of the Volksturm and the last days of the war I am reminded of various photographs I've seen where the Volksturm are essentially wearing civilian clothes (non-matching jacket and tattered slacks that you would wear to clean out the garage on a cold day) with maybe one item of military wear in addition to the armband, if even that. So I guess what really floats my boat is the idea of decidedly unmilitary-looking Volksturm garbed in early Goodwill industries rejects, with an ammunition belt, an armband, and a Homburg (which can't be modded). And it would be even better if you could put each soldier in the squad in a different colored threadbare jacket. The problem here, of course, is similar to what happens when trying to mod the Maquis in CMBO.

If I understand the question correctly, just copy bmp's 11001 and 11002 from your CD. You'll probably have to change the properties to use them (done by right-clikcking on the copy of the file and left-clicking on the last item on the menu) though I can't remember why (having a couple of read-only files in the bmp folder might cause some confusion). Having a back-up copy of the original bmp folder in reserve somewhere is very useful, though it takes up a lot of room. What you might want to do is to copy your existing folder and paste it somewhere safe (i.e. not in a cmbb directory), perform a re-install, put (or copy) the new original bmp folder somewhere safe (but not in the same place as the first or it will copy over it), then reinsert your current bmp folder which you had already moved back into the newly missing blank spot. And if you understood any of that, please explain it to me because I don't... There are a dozen ways to go about it, any of them should work. I find it useful to make folders of the originals when I replace them with a mod, which is why CMMOS is so useful (provided it is set up to restore the missing textures). I plan to start trying out the interface mods (and make a few of my own) as soon as I figure out what needs to be backed up.

To what extent can uniforms be ported from CMBO to CMBB ? I haven't looked into this yet, but it seems like the CMBB uniform is set up a little differently from the CMAK uniform, and resembles the CMBO uniform except that the piece for the main torse is narrower. Would it be possible to change the proportions of that one piece (stretch the length to double size in relation to the width), or would the arms and legs not fit on the resulting uniform ? The mchlstrt Volksturm uniforms were really great (very unmilitary looking) and it would be a shame not to be able to re-use them in CMBB. Also, what is the linguistic relationship between strumpf and strumpet ? I wasn't aware that Witman ever photographed a Maus.

Just to be a little clearer, the four bmp's that I mentioned are a pair of VL flags of identical sizes (before modding, that is), and a pair of unit id flags. I suppose one could always substitute something garish for one of them, open up a lot of scenarios, and see if one flag shows up at the expense of the other. My original hunch was that one was supposed to be a partisan flag, but I'm probably wrong. I haven't poked around in the editor yet to see what choices are available. That might give a clue.

Why are there two slots using the same russian flag (425/426 and 445/446) ? Is one for the standard Soviet Flag, and the other for something more specialized? Does the extra slot get used, and/or is there a way for a scenario designer to use it?

The only reason I still remember this is because when you're learning Greek, one of the examples that they used to give for the dative of possession is a quote from an old folksong that went "pou moi ta kala selina" which means where is my lovely celery (lit. where to me the beautiful celeries). The verb to be is omitted, and selina, in this instance, is neuter plural. Normally you would use the nominative singular and refer to it as "to selinon" or just "selinon", the "to" being the neuter nominative singular of the definite article that you tack onto things to make it clear what case they are in. Celery was important stuff to the ancient Greeks, and they used celery leaves to crown victors at the Isthmian and Nemean games. There was also an important city in Sicily named after it -- the city of Selinus (gr. Selinous, -ountos) used the celery stalk as its national symbol and put it on its coins (much as Cyrene used a contraceptive plant that was also the source of its wealth and its hedonistic reputation). Here is an example of a coin from Selinus: When you use the roman alphabet the word looks a bit like "selene", the word for moon, but the resemblance is superficial and doesn't really work in Greek. My modern greek is pretty shaky. There are actually two forms of it, the real language (demotiki) and the made-up language (katharevousa). They write the newspapers in katharevousa and it has a lot of ancient words, so I can sometimes eke out the sense of it. But what you really need is a modern speaker, of which there is no shortage.

Sorry, Michael, that was aimed at the construction, not at you. The form has insinuated itself into the language and is probably a legitimate usage at this point, so you're completely blameless. Because of my past I have to take a dim view of treating Greek words as if they were Latin. Please forgive the unintended insult. Whenever I have to talk about Greek and Latin grammar I start behaving...oddly.

Latin has nothing to do with it. The word is english, it just happens to have roots from another language. Even so, it's a weird one. Webster's lists the plurals as necopolises, necropoles, necropoleis, or necropoli. The first one on the list is the most common and, for english, the most correct. I'm really not sure what the justification for the second and the fourth is supposed to be. Necropoles is the plural of the French necropole, and necropoli is just plain illiterate. The pedantic form is necropoleis, of which I do not approve. However, for the curious, the nominative feminine plural of the Greek noun polis, poleos (3rd declension) is poleis. The -a ending mentioned in another post is only appropriate for a nominative or accusative neuter plural. That ending does work, however, for neuter plurals in both Greek and Latin because they are surprisingly close in form and structure. Please don't make me do this again. It gives me headaches and nightmares.

This falls under the rubric of interface requests. I would really like to have something akin to a reverse spotting button. What I would like to do is to highlight an enemy unit, and see all of the line of sight lines that can be drawn to it. I think it makes sense that if I can see an enemy on the map, even with limited intelligence I should know why I can see him. I was playing a game the other day with what felt like a hundred small units, when suddenly, on the other end of the map, an enemy tank appeared. I wasn't ready to shoot at it, but I really wanted to know who had spotted it. I ended up drawing lines of sight from all of my units one at a time, and still didn't find it. Drove me nuts (which is pretty easy to do these days).

There are precedents for this kind of thing. Marcel Duchamp's wife glued his pieces in place after he spent their wedding night hunched over his chessboard instead of her. The product of the event can be seen on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. And my ex-wife used to encourage the cats to eat my wargame pieces.