Philippe

I know nothing about the DFDR mod and have no way of knowing how it interacts with CMMOS. So I'm not even going to attempt to support it. Your best bet is to go into the technical forum and describe what you've done and what your installation configuration is a bit more clearly. There are people there who should be able to set you straight. You might also want to approach one of the designers of the mod. If one of them happens to be a CMMOS user, they might be able to set you straight. I don't really understand what you're describing. It's not clear where things are currently installed, or even what is and what is not currently installed. I don't really know anything about computers, and I certainly don't know anything about the inner workings of CMMOS since I'm not Gordon and I'm not a programmer. However, CMMOS is probably taking a look at your file register when it wants to find CMBO. It is possible (but only Gordon knows this kind of thing) that if CMMOS is looking at your second install of CMBO (and not finding any CMMOS mods for the obvious reason), then maybe what you should do is un-install everything, save your CMMOS-bmp version of the CMBO bmp folder, re-install the DFDR-dedicated version of CMBO, then re-install your regular version of CMBO with the CMMOS-adjusted bmp folder, and see if that works. Apart from that, I don't see why you need two versions of CMBO on your computer: that's certainly what's causing the problem. Why don't you just set up a holding folder with the bmp's for DFDR and run a single version of CMBO. And finally, the disclaimer. If you take any of the above seriously, and are foolish enough to give credence to any of my suggestions, then you have only yourself to blame. [ February 19, 2003, 01:58 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Ok, I've done some more research on this. Understand that I was the terrain editor, not the vehicle editor, and that a lot of these issues were addressed before I came on board. So I'm sometimes mistaken in my pronouncements, especially when they have to do with very early CMMOS history, or things that have happened in the last five months. I'm also not particularly computer literate. It seems that some of the very first batch files that gave rise to CMMOS still only exist in batch file form. A patched and updated version of CMMOS can read them, but the files themselves have to be extracted from a non-cmmos location. So, the file that you need can be found at: ftp://ftp.combatmission.com/vehicles/allied/bergman/bergman_all_US_FF_m4_HR.zip What you do with it after you download it is a little tricky, and probably open to speculation. But I'll give it a shot. Please understand that what follows is no more than an educated guess. Download it to a separate folder and check the contents. And whatever you do, save the zipfile, because you may need it if this doesn't work. Put the bmp files in the bmp folder, just like a CMMOS file (these are archaic CMMOS files after all). Hang on to the other stuff but don't install it just yet (you may not need it at all). I'm guessing, but the other stuff is probably a series of batch files, batch file applications, readme files, and a few pairs of jpeg illustrations. This doesn't belong in your bmp folder. Now I don't mean to scare you, but there are two possible scenarios here, and I don't know which one applies. Let's assume for starters that you have the latest version CMMOS correctly installed, and that nothing is running from any weird or unusual places. CMMOS 4.03 should be able to read those files and use them correctly. The scary part is that I don't know if you'll need to run the batch file patch that Gordon used to post. I don't know if he took it down because nobody (including myself) ever seemed to know what it was for and was confusing people, or because its functionality was included in 4.03 (very likely, knowing Gordon), or if it just slipped off the website, or if I was simply too dense to find it when I looked for it (not unusual). The bottom line is that I'm hoping you won't need it. If it turns out that you do, all is not lost, but lets not cross that bridge until we come to it, because it can get very messy. So to summarize, download the file from the address I gave you, isolate the bmp files with cmmos extensions and put them in your CMBO bmp folder, try applying one of them in CMMOS, look at your log to see what really happened, then look in-game to see if it worked. Good luck.

On the CMHQ CMMOS page, any download that mentions Marco Bergman's Shermans will be part of the summer version. In addition you'll need the alternate track mods (I think there are two of them). To get the winter versions I think you'll have to do something similar, but this time you'll be looking for GEM files. In all we're talking about six or seven files. Just download the hi resolution files: you can probably ignore the low resolution versions, unless your system is straining. I'm not a tank grog by any stretch of the imagination, but I seem to recall that certain tanks do not show up in certain units. I just applied the Guards division icon and checked the CMMOS log, and the Firefly section got applied (it seems to have its own rule, and you can tell if it is working by looking to see what it says about bmp's in the 3290-98 area). I didn't do the same for any of the other divisions, so I don't know (and don't remember), for example, if the Firefly shows up in the Taurus division. If it doesn't (and if your CMMOS is properly installed), let me assure you that this was intentional and not an oversight. CMMOS wasn't supposed to support ahistorical configurations (even though quite a few crept in anyway).

I really don't understand this thread. Batch files were a short-lived antecedant of CMMOS. Any bmp's associated with those batch files were, with a few exceptions, supplanted by several later versions of the same models. Gordon and Marco went to a lot of trouble creating a division of labor, and a systematic updating, of whatever went in to those files. On top of that, many of the files are inter-related and re-used in varying parts of the Allied Vehicle rulesets, so that if you start attempting home-made fixes (for something that as far as I am aware was never broken), you'll actually undermine some of the functionality of the rulesets, particularly in the advanced rules. As far as I recall the tank that you're discussing got redone several times by Marco and was included in the ruleset as the CMMOS standard. For a long time, before we decided it would be nice to try to preserve some of the individualist mods, a lot of effort by a lot of people went into creating and maintaining a standard CMMOS look. We addressed and successfully resolved some of the things you're discussing over two years ago. As far as I can recall, there were one or two minor gaps in the vehicle line-up, but after Marco's last update I'm pretty sure this wasn't one of them. The CMMOS bmp files were never really intended to be used selectively, so that if you want all the vehicles, or want to be sure that you aren't missing any functionality, you should just download the whole thing. I'm not sure where you're even finding those old batch file mods, but if you're using them you probably aren't working with the most up to date versions. The newest versions of Gordon's and Marco's material are in the CMMOS sections.

Take another look at that list, and remember that what you call a Sherman is usually designated as an M4 series tank. Unless you have a really small hard drive, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to cherry-pick that file list. Just have done with it and download the whole thing.

What mods are you looking at ? US Shermans aren't called US Shermans.

Ok...Now just remember, if you had downloaded everything from the Allied Vehicle Mod section of CMMOS you wouldn't have very many gaps in that log you posted. I just took a quick look at CMHQ [Editor's Note: what did or did not go up on the board was never in my part of the division of labor], and the CMMOS section has a lot Sherman files, some listed as Shermans, some listed as M4's in various states of decolletage. So if I were you I would redownload everything from there that is listed as hi resolution, install it, hit those CMMOS icons again, and then re-read your log and see if it doesn't look any different. On quick (and by no means exhaustive) inspection I'm seeing nine files in there that you should download and install, maybe more. People yell at me for wasting space on my computer with my mods, but the way I've always handled situations like this is to download the zips into holding folders that I keep for about six months. That way if something like this happens I can do a careful reconciliation of what I have and have not downloaded. Then, on top of that, everything that I install goes into a separate holding file first so that I can see what it looks like, and make sure I don't get a crud build-up of useless files in the bottom of my bmp folder. It also leaves me with a record of what I've got on my system, and makes it a lot easier to mod things on the few occasions when I've been bitten by that bug. This whole approach is much too anal for most people, but it sounds like a lot of your problem may be that you're losing track of what you are and are not putting into your bmp folder. The answer is organization (and yes, I was trained by Germans). Another tip. Some of those Sherman files date from the earliest stages of CMMOS, and some even pre-date CMMOS. I never had much use for it, but there's a conversion patch (hi res and low res versions) in the beginning of the CMMOS section. You might want to give it a try. [ February 15, 2003, 08:32 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I haven't deconstructed that entire file, but if I'm seeing what I think I'm seeing, the program believes, for whatever reason, that only a few scattered parts of the US Shermans have been installed. According to that log most of the Shermans simply aren't there, and what is there is fragmentary. Not sure what causes this, but the suggestion that was made earlier to re-install the US Sherman bmp's, is now in order. I'm going to guess that one of a couple of things may be going on. Either the bmp's aren't simply there, or something was corrupted. You could take a look (very carefully -- don't make any stray marks with your mouse) in your bmp folder to see if there are any bmp's in the 3330-36, 3006-19,3810-13, and 4550-59 group with CMMOS extensions. If they are in there, then look very closely at those extensions: sometimes a space gets inserted in the extension and the program will read the space as a character (i.e. no match). When you installed the bmp's, could you have copied non-cmmos versions of the Shermans in by mistake ? I think there are a couple of Sherman packs floating around that aren't from the CMMOS page (e.g. the main CMHQ tank section), and with so many files to install it's easy to install the wrong one if you haven't worked out a system. Another possibility is that something has become corrupted (though I doubt it). If you want to go this route, you could do a fresh download of the CMMOS program and re-install it (the program, not the mods). Or try re-installing the section that deals with Allied tanks. If it were me, however, I would check to see if the Sherman bmp's had made it into my bmp folder in CMMOS format, and then identify one or two that the log was telling me weren't installed, and see if I could find them in the bmp folder. My suspicion is that they simply aren't in the folder, for whatever reason. Which means that that suggestion that was made two posts back to re-install the Sherman bmp's was spot on.

There's a lot you should do before you go crazy over this. Take a long, careful look at your CMMOS log and see what it said when you actually tried to push those buttons. One thing to remember is that CMMOS is very sensitive to the order in which you do things: applying an advanced rule doesn't usually do anything until you apply the general rule. The log is great for catching things like that. There's a pretty good discussion of all of this in Gordon's help file. You might want to take another look. [ February 14, 2003, 06:56 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Don't mean to rain on your parade, but CMMOS is the province of the CMMOS Cabal and the relevant editor rather than the mod artists. CMMOS development is currently in temporary stasis because pressing personal problems are preventing several of us from investing any more time into it. Having said that, the hiatus is not permanent, and really relates more to updates to the system rather than the rulesets. In any case, in a few months things should be back to normal. There is an established set of procedures that includes testing by experienced members of the CMMOS group. In addition, you should be aware of the distinction between official and unofficial rulesets. You can do anything you like as long as you use one of the unofficial ruleset numbers, preferably one that is not already in use. An unofficial ruleset that covers the Kubelwagen already exists, by the way. Apart from that, you should be aware that rulesets (and in some cases) individual rules within rulesets are considered to be owned by their authors. Changing the file number on a bmp, by the way, is only the tiniest step in writing a CMMOS rule. I can't discourage you strongly enough from putting a variant of an official CMMOS rule on a website. Tens of thousands of hours have been poured into producing a consistant and organized product, and the prospect of someone who is not familiar with the workings of the program or the workgroup posting variants is extremely disheartening. The CMMOS bmp files that work with the ruleset were posted in the past and many people have downloaded them. They are also posted in both their versions on the CMMOS work site. These versions, by the way, work with the current ruleset. At some point in the near future we will work out an orderly way of reposting them for mass consumption. To be frank, right now we have more serious issues to contend with than the reposting of one particular set of files for one particular vehicle. And yes, I wrote the official Kubel rule twice and did both conversions.

Too little time, not enough coffee, please ignore. [ January 27, 2003, 07:49 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

They have already been converted twice (once for each set of upholstery). If something has a CMMOS icon, it already exists in CMMOS format. Somewhere on CMHQ there should be a CMMOS version for grey, dunkelgelb, and tricolor. Not sure what color upholstery got used on the second release. Tom's site doesn't usually have mods in CMMOS format. If memory serves the files dropped out of one of the newer versions of CMMOS, and then had to be restored several months later. [ January 27, 2003, 07:50 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

The problem is that you're in too much of a hurry and are making assumptions about what you should or shouldn't be doing with CMMOS. These assumptions are obviously wrong. Asking me to reread your thread misses the point entirely: the information that you allude to was always incomplete, to fill in the gaps I have to make assumptions about what you did, and I make different assumptions about installing CMMOS mods than you do. Whatever it is that I (and most other users) do with CMMOS manages to get the mods installed, and whatever it is you're doing clearly doesn't work. If I knew what you were actually doing, as opposed to what you think you're doing, I could tell you what not to do. I can't figure out what you're doing wrong unless you tell me, and I shouldn't have to guess. Don't say you installed CMMOS, tell me that you downloaded and ran the program, that you installed it to a certain path, and that you put a check mark in the corresponding rule set, etc. And tell me what your control screen looks like. Are your icons lit up, or do you have any icons at all ? Tell me exactly which mods you downloaded and where you got them from, and mention a file number on one of them. I just want a soup-to-nuts example of what you did with one mod and its corresponding rule and ruleset. There are two styles of CMMOS mods: old-style CMBO mods and new-style CMBB mods. Old-style doesn't work if you don't unzip it. From your comments about text files (there's really not supposed to be anything in a CMMOS bmp file) you could be mixing the two. But I can't tell, and it's not fair to make me guess. What did your log say ? You never mentioned that, and its crucial. And is your CMBO in the same drive as CMMOS ? You're quick to say that you installed the mods, but where did you install them to, and what do you mean by mod, in this context ? You're supposed to be putting renamed bmp files in the CMBO bmp folder, and you make no mention of that. Again, if you quoted a single bmp file number it would immediately eliminate several large categories of possible errors. And because you never mentioned what folder you put those bmp files into, I have no way of knowing if it is even possible for the mod to work.

What exactly did you do in each of those steps ? Are you installing to an unusual drive, or to a folder called games, or something like that ? And could you give a really specific example, with one mod, one ruleset, and its file numbers (just one will be sufficient) ? The fact that you're striking out so many times suggests that you must be doing something very idiosyncratic when you're installing. I'd be really curious to know what the error log says. No two people ever really do these things exactly the same way, so you may be doing some little thing that no one anticipated. If necessary we can always drag Gordon out of semi-retirement (for that matter, this seems to be dragging me out of semi-retirement).

Are you sure you really mean CMMOS ? From the comments that you've made so far I can't say that I understand what you're talking about. Describe what you think you're doing a little more clearly and in greater detail, and someone may be able to set you straight. I have over a gigabyte of mods in my CMBO, and it takes me approximately 1 1/2 seconds to switch from one to another using CMMOS. It would probably help if you tried downloading CMMOS mods from the CMMOS pages, rather than downloading unconverted mods and wondering why they don't work. [ January 21, 2003, 12:01 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Any chance you could give us a hint as to what it is before we download it ? [ December 24, 2002, 11:47 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

If I remember correctly, you don't really need to know anything that specific. All you have to do is to copy-paste a little pink section from something that you know is invisible. The upper right- or left-hand corner of a tree tile should do the trick. You don't even need a fancy program, you can do it in Paint. Then just dump the paintcan tool on the section that isn't the proper shade of pink, and you're there. My favorite Paint trick is to use a violently inappropriate color for the areas that will eventually become transparent pink. It's then easy to identify potential pink spots, and you just keep dumping the paintcan on the soon to be invisible area. In other words, turn everything that should be pink a violent scarlet red. Copy-paste a small patch of "invisible" pink from somewhere that you know it works (e.g. corner of a tree), then keep using the paintcan until all the reds are gone. This gets around the problem that "invisible" and "visible" pink are sometimes very hard to tell apart.

As you know the First Edition of Semiotics was finished in September. It works (in spite of a few minor glitches), but was never released because of massive size. Gordon then worked some magic, waved his programmer's wand, and managed to shrink the whole thing down to viable size. Unfortunately, the shrinking magic disrupted some of the important features in the rest of the mod. So I then had to go through several hundred rules, figure out what had been left out and what needed to be re-written in to work in the new format. I had just started work on what would have become version II when real life intervened in a financially violent and ugly way. I recently felt confident enough that I had the wolves at bay to start working on it again (resulting in comical e-mails to Gordon whenever my hand would slip and create an almost invisible glitch in a file that I had spent a week figuring out how to write earlier in the fall). I had just shaken enough of the cobwebs out of my memory to start breaking the different problems into small, evening-sized chunks when I received another visit from the wolves. This particular visit is unusually serious, but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I have been extremely unhappy about the fact that Semiotics hasn't been published, especially since we both put so much work into it. In the next ten days or so I'll know how strong my wolf-repellant really is, and if I'm not about to founder I'll probably start working on it, to stay sane, if nothing else. [besides, my girlfriend is going to be locked up in an Art residency in Southern France until the end of May, so I'll need an outlet for my frustrations]. So the bad news is that the Second Edition of Semiotics won't be coming out in the next month, as I had hoped. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that it will come out well before D-Day. [For those that aren't aware, Semiotics changes the unachieved objective markers into (primarily) divisional flags, puts a complete set of divisional shoulder patches on the American units, allows some of the German winter uniforms to exist in CMMOS format, creates several new modified French uniforms (including civilian clothes for the maquis), triples or quadruples the number of unit portaits in play (Faces of Fear can't really be used without Semiotics), and showcases Darknight's brilliant Commonwealth uniform mod of Andrew Fox's uniforms, with shoulder patches, collar tabs, lanyards and the like down to (usually) the battalion level].

If a CMMOS icon is disabled, that usually means that the program can't read a particular bmp file. So the first thing to do in a case like this is to make sure that you have bmp files that look exactly like this: 441_pd_og (for the American flag) and 442_pd_uj (for UK flag). Those bmp files get picked up by the rule line that reads (in 510-013 and 510-213 respectively): #! Key 441_pd_og.bmp and #! Key 442_pd_uj.bmp The most common cause for an icon showing up as disabled is that an extra space somehow manages to creep into either an instruction line or a bmp file name. The first thing to check is to make sure (very carefully) that this hasn't happened. The culprit is usually in the bmp file name, so play with that first. The reason I'm going on at length about this rather than just sending you the rules (and yes, my flags aren't disabled in my version of Vexillography)is that I'm pretty sure my version of the two rules will look like your version, and that probably won't solve your problem. Take a close look at your bmp files first. And if your version of these rules in the Vexillography ruleset doesn't look like mine, and you didn't accidently add or delete a space somewhere with your mouse when examining them (I do this all the time, as Gordon can attest), then this needs to be brought to Gordon's attention. If something has become corrupted (which I doubt), it isn't a problem because it can still be restored from my original text files.

From what I understand, the "incompleteness" of Magua's roads is simply a popular misconception. Unless Magua comes out and says otherwise (by making a newer version) what you see is the completed mod. According to my very imperfect recollection of his notes, he mentioned that he was not satisfied with his trees. I don't think he ever said anything about his dirt roads. If you look at the mod carefully, you'll realize that one problem with modding all parts of the road is that the road begins to look too rutted. Yes, it is supposed to look rutted after a fashion, but what you're actually looking at, on this scale, is two single lane dirt roads and a median strip. This is very different from the two tire ruts that would be produced by out-of-scale vehicles. By not carrying the rutting into all the tiles it is easier to maintain the illusion of the proper scale.

The answer, of course, is prunes. Apart from that, if you think the download on a 56k modem is slow, you should see what the upload is like...

If there was light snow on the ground but you don't want to freeze the water, just renumber some light snow as grass. We can throw it in CMMOS so that you can get in and out of it easily. Two questions: I was looking at a Bruneval scenario last week. Is this a later edition of the same one ? Should I download again ? Also, what happens when you use Clubfoot's beach scenery with this ? Or is it necessary ? The 1st Airborne is one of the units in the Semiotics mod that is currently undergoing testing. So you'll be able to dress Frost's men in the appropriate garb.

The key components of the Andrew Fox Allied uniforms are currently undergoing testing and revision deep in the CMMOS laboratory where work continues on the Semiotics mod. In other words, it's finished and I've packed it off to the testing crew. We're currently looking into ways to reduce its size. By the way, it includes my shoulder patches for every US unit in the NWE Theater, and Darknight's mind-boggling sleave/collar/shoulder boards for just about every battalion in the Commonwealth Army. There are several scenario-enhancing adjustments to the uniforms. French Colonial troops don't look American any more, the maquis are wearing civilian clothes, there's a 1940 French Army surplus helmet, the 1er DFL (french anglophiles) wear Commonwealth uniforms, Royal Engineers attached to the Ox and Bucks stagger out of their gliders in the same uniform as the Ox and Bucks, Lord Lovat's Commandos look like commandos, and their uniform doesn't interfere with the uniform on the paratroopers defending Pegasus Bridge, all the Commandos at the Raid on St. Nazaire are wearing the same uniform. And that's all I can remember off the top of my head. The mod does not include a full set of German winter uniforms, but there are two Fallschirmjaegers to choose from [if I had known, I would have tossed more in as a safety precaution]. Summer Uniforms are already covered in brilliant detail by Keith's German Uniform mod, and hopefully all the other Andrew Fox material will get covered by his forthcoming uniform editions. But in the meantime, you can extract full sets of summer and winter uniforms for all the allies, if you look in the right places. And I'm not giving an ETA on this until I hear back from Gordon. It will be after the demo but before CMBB.

Just to clarify, the original discussion of railroad tracks was always in the context of Western Europe. It's very strange to see a single track line in a heavily industrialized environment, even if you're in the middle of farmland. The only time you get a single track is on a siding, usually to service some business near the main line. I don't know about single tracks in Russia, but my understanding was that the Germans simply couldn't convert the lines to their guage fast enough. There are hybrid solutions involving carriages with two sets of wheels, but I thought those things only worked over short stretches and were apparently not that satisfactory given how much needed to be moved.

I did some repair work once on a road mod for my own private use. What I found was that it was fairly hard to get all the pieces aligned if the road was running in a diagonal direction. The author of the road I was repairing had clearly given up and not bothered. Yes, the CMBO method is annoying, and yes, it takes a certain amount of extra work, but after spending one rainly Sunday afternoon fighting with it, I was able to make all the pieces fit together. The trick is to take notes, not to expect to get it on the first three tries, and be very careful about what goes where. After doing the roads I was so inspired I took a crack at double-track railroads: that is more difficult by a quantum leap. At the time I didn't have the tools or the technique, but next time I have a rainy sunday and nothing better to do...