Philippe

Best place to start is CMHQ, Madmatt's combat mission site. Read the articles, check out the pictures, and take a look at CMMOS. The address is combatmission.com. They're a little out of date, but Madmatt's articles on modding are great for orientation. [if you want to get involved in downloading CMMOS you might want to take a look at something called Field and Stream, along with Leaves of Grass, Shrubbery, Wet and Wild, and Winter Wonderland]. When you're ready to really lose your mind, you can graduate to Combat Mission Mod Database. Cmmods.com is a no-frills site that is not quite as easy to use as CMHQ, but is comprehensive and is where everything new gets posted these days. You have to register to use the site, and the password system is annoying, but it is one of the two most important Combat Mission sites other than this one. (The other site is Scenario Depot, an encyclopedic collection of scenarios and operations, but no mods). There used to be a wonderful catalog site with pictures and locations of all the different mods, but it seems to be suffering the inevitable fate of third-party websites.

Moon Yakitori ?

A maintain relative position command. A what? A command that tells a unit to move so that it will always be a certain distance from another unit. The simple version would be to have it follow the path of that unit (e.g. column of vehilcles) at varying speeds. A more complex version would be to have it maintain lateral relative spacing, but not follow the path of the target unit. This last would be useful for moving formations of infantry units: you could set everyone in a platoon to maintain relative position to a target unit, and then move the target unit (probably the hq), not necessarily in a straight line. Lateral relative position is probably harder to program than the column movement version. I'd be deleriously happy if I didn't have to micromanage the movement of vehicle columns.

If I had whipped up a home-made armored car in my garage the one thing I would really want to know is whether or not the thing would actually stop bullets. And there would only be one way to find out. Could that account for the extra bullet holes ?

Do any of our resident grogs have any information on the footprint size of a ten or twelve man squad in WWII ? How much space would a squad deployed to fight occupy, as opposed to a squad deployed to move when not under fire? Another thing that would have to be taken into account is the spatial implications of splitting squads. But I still look at those three-man squads and have troulbe not imagining them standing shoulder to shoulder, which went out of fashion early in WWI. If you're modelling napoleonic tactics you can get quite a few men into a small space, two-, three-, and four-rank lines notwithstanding. If my suspicions are correct, and the troops in the larger squads are too crowded together, that would also imply that incoming fire on soft targets is too lethal, if only in the sense that there's too much in the target area to hit. Spread them out a bit more and maybe the pace of infantry combat will slow a bit as well.

Ten man squads represented by ten figures and not three. One of the reasons that I got into this in the first place is that I wanted to get a better sense of what this kind of combat looked like. Because I've done a bit of miniatures gaming I'm mentally flexible enough to understand that when you see three figures you should imagine twelve. But computers are a lot more powerful now, and this simplification may not be necessary. I'm also not convinced that the large squads as they currently exist take up the right amount of room. There's no way ten or twelve men will fit on that little square, even if you shrink them down to realistic mode. They've got to be spilling over the edges. Or not. Showing one figure per man would solve it. Or make it annoying enough for someone to find a solution for it (e.g. take two aspirin and call in the morning). And if you show one figure per man, it would be really nice if one of them could have a different set of uniform bmp's from the rest. This would make Darknight extremely happy, because he would finally be able to have sergeants commanding privates, and represent it correctly. Of course, if you wanted to go really wild you would make that ten sets of bmp's per unit so that partisans and maquis could have a different outfit on each man in the squad. Civilians don't wear uniforms, except when they're re-enactors or making a fashion statement. As it stands this kind of unit always has to be wearing a uniform. And it would be heaven if you could have a variety of headgear for partisans and maquisards. Berets, old French Military helmets, forage caps, Holmbergs...maybe even that pointy sock that Seanachai likes to wear.

Continuing with my wish list, I want more redundancy. Especially in the bmp's for buildings. It has always bothered me that when you drive into a CM village that is big enough to have three or four churches that all of them are the same. If there were two or three different sets of church bmp's that could be used concurrently, that would make town architecture a little more realistic. And the redundancy should probably be extended to some of the other large buildings as well. I've never seen a town with more than one Rathaus. But if you were to mod one of the large buildings into a Rathaus and then make a large town in your editor, chances are you would have a town with two or three of them. If there were several sets of redundant building types that a scenario designer could designate, you could have a town with a main cathedral, a rathhaus, several ordinary churches, and a few large buildings. And nothing that shouldn't be repeated visually would be repeated. This would also make it easier to set up scenarios with specialty buildings or distinctive landmarks, like the Casino at Ouistreham, the Reichstag, the Red October Factory. [ September 09, 2004, 01:37 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I wonder if creating extra slots for a score of additional sounds (or some equivalent system that fits in with the overall architecture of the game) will really use up that many resources. It will certainly enhance the flavor of the game a little bit, which is always a good thing. I'm not saying that this should be a priority, since I wouldn't presume to tell the designers what their priorities should be, or how they should go about implementing them.

Yes, BFC has a top-flight sound specialist and he did a cracking good job on CMAK. What I'm talking about here is making his personal fantasies come true. I want Madmatt to finally get what he really wants. [Please disregard split infinitive] At the risk of being blasphemous, if you think about it firearms are a bit like musical instruments. Each has its own pitch and timbre. I think it was easy for the uninitiated such as myself to distinguish between the sounds of the different small arms in CC. I don't know if they were true sounds or not [ = historically accurate] , but for the sake of this discussion I don't care. The fact that I, a mere stringed instrument musician, could hear the difference on the first go round tells me that the real sounds, whatever they were, must have been distinguishable. But then again, I've been to a lot of Voodoo ceremonies where there is a lot of very good and intricate drumming. As for the artillery (which I tend to think of as big percussion instruments like kettledrums) I suspect that you can tell the difference between a German and a British explosion of the same calibre. I don't know about WWII, but I seem to recall from the limited reading that I've done on WWI that people could eventually tell who and exactly what was shooting just by the sound of that whizz-bang. And if you've been bombarded enough I think you can probably also tell when its going to hit your dug-out.

Architecture inside of buildings. I want rooms, walls, staircases. And closets. And cellars. And windows. If anyone has ever played the old SPI game Sniper (the game made infamous because of a rule about an erect man exposing himself in front of an aperture), they'll recall that part of the fun of city fighting is the need to clear out enemy-occupied buildings room by room. And on a simpler note, I want a toggle switch to make occupied buildings non-transparent so that I can take more convincing looking screenshots of games in progress. This last point shouldn't be too hard to accomodate.

More weapons sounds. And a redundant sound tree to hang them on. One of the things that I really miss in CM is the ability to tell who is shooting what at whom simply by listening. While it would be nice to model a specific sound for every weapon in the CM arsenal, all that is really necessary is to have a separate sound for each Axis or Allied weapon type. I really get the impression that you didn't need to have perfect pitch to tell the difference between German and Allied weapons when they fired. And I keep remembering anecdotal comments to the effect that the problem with using enemy weapons in combat is that it would draw friendly fire. BFC wouldn't even have to make the full panoply of sounds: it just needs to program the engine to use a different sound file for German, US, English, Russian, small arms fire (or explosions, or whatever). In other words, the out of the box version of CMX2 might have five differently numbered sound files for something that used the identical sound, but the modded version (or later patches) would make it possible to distinguish between the different sounds.

Thanks for the cogent and detailed reply, YankeeDog. It occurs to me that the program could keep a yes/no awareness checklist for every sentient object listing all the things that it might be able to see (bad news for huge scenarios). For example, my Fallschirmjaeger squad would have a potential awareness list that includes the entire oob for both sides as well as all the buildings, bunkers, bridges, and anything that starts with the letter b. If my Fallschirmjaeger can see something but isn't aware of it, the AI could be blocked from reacting to it. Or at the very least prevented from shooting at it. Good news for bumblebees on bridges. The awareness list has another use. If my Fallschirmjaeger can't see something, but my sniper can, my Fallschirmjaeger can only react to it if it passes the awareness check. This could probably be done by some kind of arbitrary rule stating that awareness communicates up and down the chain of command only if the next step in the link is x [= a very small number] meters away and both are in command relative to each other [computer does another numbers crunch...]. So in the case of the sniper, he may see the bumblebee on the bridge and be aware of it, but he is unlikely to communicate that to the next unit up the chain of command unless they both use walkiie-talkies. Since his CO will probably fail the bumblebee awareness test (unless he happens to be standing very close to both the Fallschirmjaeger and the sniper), the Fallschirmjaeger will fail it as well. Depending on how intrusive the programming would have to be the Fallschirmjaeger would then be blocked from shooting at the bumblebee (except through area fire) or having its AI react to it (harder). To make this work, you would also have to hijack an optional feature from Jagged Alliance whereby you only see what the unit you have selected sees (or is aware of). This would have the accidental effect of making officers more important by adding an extra layer to the FOW, because if you click on nothing you will see nothing, and to get any sense of what was going on on the battlefield you would have to start clicking on the different unit commanders. And yes, you will probably start losing your units in a big battle when they get separated from their HQ's. What I'm describing will trigger a lot of behind the scenes numbers crunching, but I think modern computers could probably handle it, and it has the side benefit of making it much more important to keep everyone in command control.

Does the CM spotting routine automatically spot something that is within its line of sight? Just because I can see something doesn't mean that I will notice it. I may have a perfectly clear line of sight to that artillery spotter in the open on that ridgetop two miles away to the north, but I may be paying closer attention to the North African swallow 200 yards away to the east. I just looked at the two pages mentioned in the index of the CMBO manual that talk about spotting, and neither one seems to deal with this aspect. In case I wasn't clear, the probability that I will notice the North African swallow is 100% because it is very close and carrying a coconut. The probability that I will notice the artillery spotter, even though he is in the clear, is more like 50%, unless I happen to be looking for him. Even if he's in the open, unless that ridgetop is completely bare he won't catch my attention. He could get temporarily ignored because, even though he's against the skyline, he's squatting in a twenty yard wide clearing between clumps of trees and maybe the odd church steeple. It probably doesn't happen so much in CMBB and CMAK because of the covered arcs, but I'm constantly amazed when one of my gunners decides to start shooting at something on the other side of the map that I hadn't even realized was there. Then again, I'm a rather daft puppet-master. [And yes, the real title to this thread should have been Prolegomena for a Final Solution to Borg-spottting].

Don't get me wrong: I think it's very good that you brought this up. You never know, taking a closer look at it might turn up some other ramification that really needs squelching. And if I were a programmer, I would probably be unwilling to knowingly settle for anything less than perfection if I could expend a reasonable amount of effort to fix something. That's interesting about the roofs. I suppose if I can toggle bases on and off to find my troops I can toggle roofs on and off for a second to see which buildings are heavy without destroying the illusion of immersion.

I'm not sure I understand why a clean install would be useful in a case like this. I thought that mods were just alternate bmp files, and I didn't know that they had any effect on the programming. What's at issue here is how and where the bmps get displayed, and I would have thought that that is the province of programming. I'm also not sure why one would play with the roofs turned off. Apparently not many other people are either, or this bug would have been picked up sooner. I suppose it should be looked at, but I wonder if we really want BFC spending the programming time to do it. Wouldn't the time be better spent on adding in another vehicle or two ?

Without going into the specifics of the case (and I'm not sure the nameless French source actually said that he saw a statement that GI's raped thousands of French women) please bear in mind that there are a lot of tongues firmly planted in cheeks here. Ugly things happen in war, and a lot of them never make the history books. I'm reminded of an incident that is supposed to have taken place in WWI when American soldiers got their first taste of French civilian life when they would go on furlough from their training camps in western France. Having lead sheltered American lives the doughboys frequently misinterpreted Frenchwomen's protests, to the extent that the number of rapes by Americans in French towns and villages near the U.S. camps grew to epidemic proportions (a bit like Okinawa?). The French government became naturally concerned for the continued well-being of its citizens near the camps, and found what it thought was a logical solution, given the nature of the problem. When a high-ranking American delegation (that included Pershing and the Secretary of War) came to inspect the progress of the AEF's training, Clemenceau joined them and informed them that several hundred filles de joie, moved by intense patriotism and a desire further the war effort, had volunteered to work in dedicated state-run establishements that would be set up just outside the camps. With their repressed passions relieved gratis, the doughboys would be less likely to assault anything that they saw walking in petticoats. Pershing and the Secretary of War were horrified and rejected the proposal out of hand. As the Secretary of War climbed the gangplank to return to America, Pershing is said to have called out "For god's sake don't tell Wilson, or he'll stop the war!"

I don't know how the version of cmmos that you can find on cmmods is set up, but in the original 4.03 over at cmhq there are buttons in Winter Wonderland (the snow terrain) and Field and Stream (everything else) for saving several personal favorite set-ups. When I wrote the program instructions I realized that after a while people tend to forget exactly what went into their favorite set-up, so they needed to be able to save and then restore it, without knowing exactly what "it" is.

I'm only speculating, but I've noticed that publishers/distributors as opposed to developers like to run things through what they euphemistically refer to as quality control. This was particularly noticeable with Paradox and Strategy First patches. The developer would finish the patch, and often post it on their own website, but the patch wouldn't appear on the distributor's website until after a delay. Often there were security differences between the two versions that had to be ironed out. I think what was happening was that the publisher might have an anti-cracking code that corporate policy required them to use that might or might not work with the game patch. And then there was always the issue of the useless logo video of the publisher interfering with the launching of the game : that sometimes can get snarled or unsnarled in a patch. So you bypass the potential for these headaches altogether if you simply buy from the source and don't go through a middleman. A well-known publisher/distributor who shall remain nameless (but who is completely unconnected with BFC products) appears to be experiencing difficulties to the degree that many of their developers are bailing. Since that particular publisher seems to have a lot of titles that need a lot of patching, I wonder if the developers (who in some cases are rumored not to have been paid by the publisher) will take the trouble to make their patches compatible with unrelated videos and non-native anti-cracking codes. Its only fair to add that I'm not part of the industry and am merely speculating. My views do not reflect the views of BFC, nor am I casting any doubts about the quality and longevity of CDV, who I'm sure are a bunch of fine and reliable folks (otherwise BFC wouldn't have started doing business with them in the first place).

Also, I was under the impression that the European version of the product was slightly different in content. So if you want an historically authentic version, you buy direct from BFC. If you want Waffle Grenadiers and bowdlerized text that can't be made perfectly authentic by switching a few bmp's, you go with CDV. If the BFC version has less programming clutter, accepts patches more readily, gets patched more quickly, is more likely to get supported long-term, is historically more authentic, and is more likely to keep the wonderful product flow going, I think it's certainly worth paying more for. Its better to buy a Hermes tie in a Hermes boutique than from a street vendor. The boutique has more long term commitment to the product, and may just be selling a higher quality version. Export models are often slightly inferior to domestic versions, if nothing else because they weigh less to reduce customs duties (probably truer for woolens than computer cd's).

And I'm sure this mod will look fantastic with the Liberation of Toulon series. Is that a mediterranean pine that I see in those pictures?

I hope you're not implying that kiwis is a body part.

When we see a beautiful image, there's a song in our hearts...

There's a very famous WWI photograph of a german machine gun position during the battle of the Masurian lakes that shows exactly that. They cut a horizontal slit in the wall just where it meets the ground so the machine gun could swivel. I seem to recall that there was a surprising amount of lumber in the photograph -- part of it may have been to keep the house (which they had effectively undermined) from collapsing.

Anyone who remembers Avalon Hill's 1914 knows the importance of eisenbahnbautruppen. Even if operating on the same gauge, as you push into an enemy country the railroad infrastructure gets torn up, especially at switches and over- and under-passes. So you need these troops to put the track back in order so that your rolling stock has something to move on. Railroads are probably the most efficient way ever invented for moving supplies, followed by canals.

There are some interesting conceptual pieces over at http://combatmission.com/ that are very useful in the beginning. I would suggest going over there and reading a few of the extended articles. Also, look for something called expired quick tactics -- a series of very insightful tips. You are about to be assimilated...