Philippe

Get yourself some broadband and a download manager with a leach program (e.g. DAP, recommended by the Bald One himself, and its free). Spend a weekend downloading all of CMMOS and the next week unzipping and installing it. After which you will have the ability to switch in an out of most of the newest and best textures available.

Sitzkrieg is currently working on the Allied Uniform Rulesets. This should be ready for the next CMMOS release. Darknight is working on a monumental Commonwealth shoulder patch mod, which should also be ready for the next CMMOS release. I recently finished work on a US shoulder patch mod (works with Andrew Fox uniforms). It's in testing now, and it will be ready for the next CMMOS release. I'm also working on an unachieved objective marker mod that substitutes unit emblems for the unachieved objective marker ( i.e. if you're part of the 101rst Airborne, you send your troops to wherever you see a 101rst Airborne flag). The German and American sections are complete, and I'm currently working on a second version of the French. Over the course of the next week I expect to be finishing up the Brits, Canadians, Poles, and Belgians (yes, there is one Belgian scenario out there). One of the features of this mod, besides obsessive attention to unit symbology, is that when you activate a unit's flag, you also apply the corresponding shoulder patch to the Andrew Fox uniform mod.

CMMOS was invented because you shouldn't have to choose. And as it turns out, few mods are best for all situations. When it comes to terrain, mods that look spectacular in wet, soggy, autumn weather look downright awful in the summer. Besides, you shouldn't trust the aesthetic judgement of strangers, since you never really know what their criteria are. Some people think the best terrain mods are gridded day-glo with orange highlights... So what to do ? Go to CMHQ and download the entire CMMOS section. It's not too painful if you have broadband and a download manager with a leach program like DAP (there are others). After a short weekend of downloading, and a week of unzipping to safe folders and copying to the CMBO/BMP folder, you should be the proud owner of a fully modded CMBO, and can switch between the different mods at will without having to take anyone else's word for which mod is best in a given situation.

I'm pretty sure Sitzkrieg answered this question in the other forum. If not, give a shout and we'll go over it in here. And if any new questions crop up, or if there is something that doesn't work or that you don't understand, yell or send us an e-mail. For the record, what you needed to know was discussed at great length in the readme files of CMMOS, Field and Stream, Winter Wonderland, and Sound of Music. It really is a good idea to read those boring readme files from time to time. Yes, we need to produce a guide for how to use CMMOS. But the fact of the matter is that there is so much work that always needs to be done in CMMOS, it becomes a question of setting priorities. Would I rather write a how-to guide, or finish my flag mod ? Would I rather write a guide, or set up skies and battlefield sounds in CMMOS ? And if I wrote a CMMOS guide, would anyone even bother to read it, or would it become just another readme file that no one pays attention to...?

If you were using CMMOS you would know that there are in fact two superb CMMOS mods of the assault boat, one for the Americans and one for the Commonwealth, both located in their respective vehicle sections. There was also, once, a CMMOS scenario-specific RuleSet, that included two D-day mods by Clubfoot. You can probably find it buried away in the old Combat Missions section of CMHQ (I know that sounds silly now, but that is what Manx's wonderful old website was called). The D-Day scenarios were Pointe du Hoc and Victor South. I'm thinking of re-issuing a modified form of the RuleSet that would include the Hastings Howards material. I've actually written it up, and have also written up the rule for the beach ambient noises (waves and sea-gulls). It will probably make it into the CMMOS release after the one that's coming up. So keep an eye out for something called "A Day at the Beach".

For whatever its worth, if you go to the CMMOS section of CMHQ and download and install all the Winter Wonderland material, I think you'll have all the snow types that are currently available (except for one roof tile that you'll have to get separately over at Warfare HQ). Winter Wonderland will allow you to play the first two or three days of the Ardennes Offensive with Tom's Bulge Mod, and then switch to a heavier snow type like ASM when the snow starts getting really deep after the third or fourth day of the battle.

I would come to any preview in Manhattan or the outer Boroughs that is within reasonable walking distance of public transportation (New Yorkers tend not to have cars). Given the space problems that plague most people in Manhattan, may I suggest Staten Island near the Ferry (assuming anyone lives there), the northern Bronx, or something a couple of miles into Brooklyn like Park Slope? Note that this is the exact geographical opposite of what I would be suggesting if it were merely a question of organizing a gathering in a public place.

And speaking of shoulder patches... The Intstitute of Heraldry, Quartermasters Corps, Fort Belvoir has been exceedingly helpful in providing information and counseling (don't ask) for an upcoming CMMOS mod of divisional flags and, as it happens, shoulder patches. At the moment almost all of the flags have been done several times, and my German and American unit flags, along with my Andrew Fox-compatible American shoulder patches, are in the middle of a test run. We're still having a few problems with the German unit emblems, but the end is in sight. Canadian flags have been finalized, British flags are almost there, Darknight is going crazy making the Commonwealth patches, and Sitzkreig is sweating over the Uniform sets. The flag and patch mod, along with US and Commonwealth Uniform editions, should be ready in time for the next CMMOS release.

Soon. The US shoulder patches are being tested even as we speak, or something like that... [ July 18, 2002, 10:01 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Just a reminder for those who have forgotten, but CMMOS has the same file-switching capability for sound that it does for graphics. The reason I put the Sound of Music mod together in the first place was to graphically illustrate this point, and maybe encourage someone to start writing CMMOS sound RuleSets. I knew so little about sound when I started that project that the first thing I did was to accidently create a wave file of Hamstertruppen singing Panzerlied... So if you want to make a set of ... uh, ... original sounds, but don't want to be locked into them forever, make a CMMOS ruleset and you will be able to switch back and forth between them at the push of a button. And yes, there will be a CMMOS for CMBB (one of the many reasons why I am collecting Russian music).

I've been toying with the idea of putting together/revivng a CMMOS section devoted to beach terrain and beach sounds. [Ok, I actually have a rough draft of it in my hard drive, but haven't decide to what extent to reorganize it.] This would allow you to switch in and out of Clubfoot's beach terrain for Hastings Howards, Victor Beach, Pointe du Hoc, and any other similarly coded scenario's. While I was fiddling around with text files, I suddenly remembered that there used to be a sound mod of sea gulls and splashing waves. The problem I had always had with it was that it only worked intermittently. So using the sound switching capability of CMMOS (that sound modders really should take more advantage of) I whipped together a brute force version that replaces all eight land sounds with the sea sound. In other words, no matter what weather effect kicks in, you'll hear seagulls and water, untill you invoke the opposite mod, that restores crickets and allegedly north american robins. After listening to the mod for a bit I had two observations. First, there was an omnipresent high pitched background hiss, and second, the mod simply wasn't noisy enough for D-Day. On D-day you would expect a lot of background artillery noise from other areas, and there was nothing like that...just a nice quiet day at the beach. Now at another time and under different circumstances I probably would have risen to the challenge, killed the hiss, and pasted in a lot of artillery. I have the sound editors that can do this, and I think I even remember how to use them. But the fact is that I'm up past my eyeballs in a couple of large mods that are struggling towards next month's CMMOS release, and I simply don't have time to take on any more projects right now. And there are lots of really talented sound modders out there. So,... Would any of you care to make replacements for wave files 5000 through 5007 inclusive, featuring lots of water and seagull sounds, no hiss, and a really big artillery barrage going off in the background ? You wouldn't really have to make eight files, one would do, we'd just renumber it so that it would always get played when the mod was invoked. The mod would then get featured in a CMMOS ruleset entitled "A day at the Beach". And maybe it would encourage someone to want to learn how to write CMMOS rulesets for some of the nifty explosion and weapons sounds out there...

I'll ask about pictures when I see him next week, but based on comments that he had made about a friend of his in a photo recon unit, I doubt that he has any. One thing that I forgot to mention in my post is that one of his other vivid recollections was crossing Remagen bridge. It was done one vehicle at a time, and at full speed, because they were under fire from 88's. A side effect of his leave in Paris was that when the war ended he apparently didn't have enough points to be sent home and demobilized. So he got to be part of the occupation force in Berlin. He said it was basically the Wild West, and everybody had guns. The city was a field of rubble, with lines of people moving and stacking broken bricks. But at night you would go out on patrol, and for a long time you would see nothing. But then, in the distance, you would see a light, and in the basement of a bombed-out shelter you would find people throwing a party in full evening dress, as if nothing had ever happened outside. He doesn't remember exactly when he went home, but doesn't think he spent the winter: one of his last recollections was lending his German girlfriend his jacket because it was getting chilly at night. He wasn't a war profiteer, but he knew a lot of people who went home owning blocks of houses.

Gordon is out travelling, but I'll take a swing at this until Keith notices it and weighs in. I have a fully up-to-date version of CMMOS on my computer (though I doubt it would make much difference). I went into US and Free French Vehicles, and I used each of the buttons on the top row in turn. That is a slow process, involving making sure you are not in CM, clicking on the icon, selecting a track option, clicking on the apply button, exiting CMMOS, firing up CM, and going into whatever scenario you are using as a test site. And repeating, over, and over. All of my sherman textures changed when I used that procedure. There is, by the way, no separate sherman button on my version of CMMOS. You change the shermans by globally changing all the US and Free French vehicles. The most common reason for a texture not getting applied by CMMOS is that CM was running and never exited before the texture was applied. The second most common reason for something not working is that you clicked on the icon but not the apply button. I do this last one all the time. Another reason why something might not work is that the rules got wiped out by the conversion to CMMOS 3.02, and that when you installed the ruleset groups you didn't put a checkmark next to some category or other because you thought you already had it. This is unlikely to be the case, because you probably wouldn't have icons for that category. Whenever something goes wrong, or seems to go wrong, the best bet is to go into GEM Software Productions/CMMOS and look at the CMMOS log. If you scroll down to the end, where you did whatever it was that you did that doesn't seem to be working, the log will tell you something that usually jogs your memory as to why it wasn't working. Anyway, hope this helps. It if it doesn't, give another shout.

Tonight I had dinner with a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge. I'd known him for some time but hadn't realized until tonight quite how old he actually is. So our weekly reading of Le Mariage de Figaro got temporarily shelved while I grilled him on what he remembered. Ralph had trained in Texas for a tank destroyer unit, and had learned how to use the cypher machine. The unit got broken up while he was still in training, and Ralph was assigned to the infantry, ending up in the 78th infantry division. At the last minute word went out that anybody who knew how to use the cypher machine was to report to headquarters, so Ralph suddenly found himself attached to regimental headquarters as a messenger, complete with jeep and driver. Ralph remembers arriving in Liverpool around Thanksgiving, and then shipping over to Le Havre and across France and Belgium. [Note: the entered combat table in Closing with the Enemy shows Ralph's division first entering combat on December 13]. Ralph loved the trip across Belgium: people were falling all over themselves to give things to the Americans. When they finally arrived in Belgium and found the local bar, they quickly discovered that the French Francs they had been issued were the wrong currency. But no worries, people bought them drinks anyway. One of the interesting things that Ralph mentioned was that it seemed that most people that they ran into, especially the Belgian Resistance fighters, were extremely red. At the time the Allies were trying to disarm them: when asked in the bar after a few drinks what they would do, most seemed to say that they would hand in a few weapons, but keep a couple of extras, just in case. Ralph's unit was in Montgomery's command area when the Bulge hit. Ralph has vivid memories of the panic that the infiltration rumors caused: it was a problem for him because he really wasn't into sports. Ralph can also still sing the song that his driver sang over and over, like a mantra. I'm ashamed to say I didn't catch the name of it, but I'll ask him next week and try to include it in a future edition of the Sound of Music mod. Ralph can't forget the division shoulder patch, because it was connected with the division commander's nickname ("Sparky Parker" from the lightning bolt on the patch). He also remembers the uniform being called khaki (I think everything was called khaki back then) but when pressed he also remembers it as being a kind of olive drab green (his words). He has no recollection of being issued winter coats (of any color) after arrival, and is pretty sure the unit came over already equipped with all of its winter equipment. And bedsheet camouflage drew a complete blank. But what Ralph really remembers is being incredibly cold. Ralph is from the Northeast US, but he wore four pairs of socks and underwear and still couldn't stay warm. At several points he asked me if I knew if there were any records of how cold it was (I read somewhere that 44/45 was the coldest winter in forty or fifty years). While Ralph certainly spent a lot of time riding around on back roads in a jeep, he probably spent the rest of his time in officer's country. So if he says it was cold, it was cold. And finally I asked him about the snow. Was it Alaska, or was it a light dusting. He doesn't ever remember anything like a blizzard coming down, but it just seemed to snow constantly. He never remembers a time when there was a light snow dusting, what he remembers is that there was always a lot of snow. It sounds to me like it looked like Alaska. And Ralph's memories of that winter aren't corrupted by interminable January whiteness, because apparently he got to go on leave to Paris for the first time in his life in January (and his buddies provided him with lots of chocolate before he left). And even there it was cold. There was a shortage of heating oil, but women would go to the Opera with serious decolletage, and then have to walk briskly back and forth during the intermission to stay warm... Anyway, I didn't used to pay much attention to this kind of thing back in the old days, but these guys are starting to die off, and if it doesn't get written down it will be lost. [ July 16, 2002, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

At the risk of showing my age, back in the early seventies there was a company called Simulations Publications (SPI) which published Strategy and Tactics Magazine (aka S&T). It was run by some relative unknowns like Redmond Simonsen, Jim Dunnigan, Frank Chadwick, Richard Berg, and a host of others (I think Eric Young may have been one of their playtesters). Many later developments in the hobby (board wargames) in the eighties and nineties first blossomed in this conceptual hotbed of game designers on Park Avenue South. For example, the standard numbering system found on most hexagonal boardgames was an SPI invention. In what was probably a reaction to the over-simplifications of Avalon Hill's wonderful Panzerblitz (which had lots of horses), SPI developed a series of tactical wargames (platoons and a few squads) that covered much of WWII and even modern combat. It may sound ridiculous now, but at the time the idea of having AT fire get less effective as range increased was a mind-expanding innovation: we'd all been using pretty much the same Avalon Hill CRT for the last 15 years, so this kind of flexibility was Haight-Ashbury coming to wargames. Somewhere in the development process it was decided that what eventually became known as the IGO-HUGO system was unrealistic and for the birds. Because the tactical games covered a relatively small number of units (rarely more than a battalion, and most units were platoons) it was decided to develop something that was known as the SIMOVE system (possibly trademarked). SPI printed booklets of SIMOVE turn sheets that could work with any of their games. They expanded this to many different types of games besides WWII, and standardized the way they numbered their counters in as many games as possible so that SIMOVE would have a universal application. Sniper and Patrol both used SIMOVE, and I seem to recall that there were even a couple of sci-fi space games in the mid-seventies that used them (and if anybody can tell me where I can get my hands on a copy of the rules for the Wreck of the Pandora...). The origianl system was widely distributed, there are still a few traces of it in Hobby Stores, and it entered everyone's subconcsious, way back when, at what was probably a primal level. So as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, and don't be too hasty about assuming that something is the first development of something. Having said that, I can still remember setting up a line of Finnish anti-tank and machine guns with inter-locking fields of fire, and wiping out a large column of Russian trucks, artillery, and motorized infantry during the Winter War.

And what I would really like to see is a command which tells all of your trucks to stay in the right lane, move down that road in an orderly formation, and to maintain a one vehicle length distance for every 16km/h of speed, unless the driver is from California.

If you can wallow in non-Uebergroginess, so can I. I've found that that old chestnut, Steel Panthers, is a goldmine of information about really basic bits of minutiae that I just don't seem to have room in my head for. I'm sure it isn't perfectly accurate, but it beats spending several hundred dollars on reference books. Steel Panthers World at War is a very large free download that you can get from the Matrix games website. It's very hard to want to play something like this when you've played Combat Mission. But the Orders of Battle and the Encylopaedia of vehicles are really nice to have handy. At some point I plan to figure out how to separate them from the game and save myself some disk space.

One very useful thing that this new release will do is to correct a glitch that crept in unnoticed a few months back. All the grass in Field and Stream is keyed to include the middle ground between the playing area and the horizon, even when the original author didn't think to include it. Somewhere along the way a text file dropped out of the File Lists, without which the instruction to include this feature became meaningless. So thanks to some helpful feedback we got along the way (see, we really are paying attention when you make comments to us, even when we don't agree...) we re-inserted the missing file. Bottom line is that if you play with Nicholas Bell muddy brown terrain, and then switch to Magua, the middle ground will now switch to green instead of staying brown.

Is that why I keep finding MP3's of Russian music in my hard drive ?

And we're far from done.

You probably have the European version with the bowdlerized names for the German troops.

Not where you think. The ones in that folder are usually full of weird glitches that get corrected off the web or at the last minute.

There's a note at the bottom of page 7 of the manual that I had to memorize when I was working on the sound of music mod. "...if you hold down the Shift key while CM starts up you can toggle the movie on/off permanently." It's not the kind of thing you do very often, so you're unlikely to remember it. When the movie is toggled off, when you launch the program you'll get a black screen for a few seconds, and then the first menu screen will come up. If you download "Hills are Alive", when you first launch the program you'll start with a black screen but music will play, because I edited out the delay at the start of all the pieces.

But one thing is certain. There will be over forty files to download on this one, so for a minor release it is getting pretty hefty

I don't recall off the top of my head exactly how that particular mod is supposed to work, but if it is numbered 00005010 then it is a music file that plays when you launch the game with the intro video turned off. [My music mod works the same way] I'm sorry I can't be more definitive about that particular piece of music, but because it is modern and not period I didn't pay much attention to it and did not include it in my music mod. If your system can handle CMMOS you might want to take a look at some of the music that plays in the "Hills are Alive" CMMOS section. And part of the fun is that the icons that get used for the mod come from period posters as well (all except two, actually). You will, however, have to get your hands on a converter to turn the MP3's into .wav files, but those converters really do belong in any modern computer user's hard drive and they are very easy to find and use [just do a search with your favorite search engine for MP3 converter and get one that is free].