Philippe

Go back to CMHQ and download CMMOS. You'll find all the treebases you need there. Actually, you'll find all of them there (except one for Ed Kinney's latest tree set, but that will change in about a week). You didn't mention whether you wanted scattered trees or woods tree bases. The Old Dog scattered tree base (in Field and Stream) is completely transparent, if memory serves. As for having touble seeing your troops in trees, you're supposed to have trouble seeing them. That's why they're hiding in there in the first place.

Hiya Philippe, Glenn Miller (Dawn Patrol, maybe)for an Allied mood. Marlene Dietrich for a German mood. BTW, I was under the impression you couldn't disable the startup video. How do you do that?</font>

Ok, I'm going to take a slightly different approach with this one. Now I'm not promising to include anything, but I would really like to know what music from the period people would most like to hear in a music mod. By music mod I mean music that starts when you start the game (provided you have the intro video turned off). I'm trying to take a Ken Burns approach to this, so I'm not considering Led Zeppelin, Metallica, or things of that ilk. It has to be from the mid-forties or earlier. So if there are any Nelson Eddie and Jeannette McDonald fans out there, this is your moment to shine...

Part of the problem that I'm having in trying to figure out what's wrong is that the information that you're giving is a bit on the vague side. The vast majority of the people who own CM bought it over the net, and consequently have a very different version of the beast. When you say "I followed the instructions" we have no idea what that means in practise, because we have not and probably never will see those instructions which may or may not be different from the ones that we used. Before I take you down the path of texture switching tests, please stop and think for a moment. I'll assume that you've done everything correctly, even though I haven't a clue as to either what you're doing or what your instructions tell you to do. Are you by any chance installing snow textures and winter camouflage textures, looking at a scenario that takes place in June and wondering why there is no snow on the ground ? Don't laugh, I've done it more than once, and I'm supposed to know a lot about terrain. If that was the problem, start up a Quick Battle, set it for 300 points, small map, and none of the other settings matter except month and weather. Pick January and Snow. You may see some differences. If that wasn't your problem, and I suspect it wasn't, please describe the directory path, folder by folder, of your CMBO BMP folder, and confirm that a) you are trying to use CMMOS, and that you have a GEM Software Productions/CMMOS directory. And if you aren't dealing with CMMOS files I need to know that too. Please be patient, we'll try to get this sorted out.

Let me preface any remarks I make that I have never seen the Retail CD version and have no idea what is on the second disk. So take everything that I say with a big grain of salt. Now that that's done, I'll do some creative guessing. The images that get changed in CM are bmp files with file numbers (e.g. 12345). If you stick a used number on just about any bmp file and copy that file to the CMBO BMP folder, the corresponding image will change. If it doesn't, that probably means one of two things: either a) you're doing something wrong; or the bmp file that you're copying isn't configured in the style of 12345. Assuming that you are copying unzipped, unfoldered bmp's into the CMBO folder (the program won't read into more than one folder), do the bmp files that you're copying have numbers that sort of look like 12345_ext by any chance ? Those funny extensions are the hallmark of CMMOS files, and there's a separate little drill to make CMMOS work. [Aside to the powers that be: It would really make our lives easier when we try to help people with their installation problems if BTS could publish a list of what is in the second CD, and in what form]. I'm going to do more guessing. Did you try to install CMMOS mods before installing CMMOS ? A natural thing to want to do, but ultimately frustrating. Briefly, you find the CMMOS program on the second CD [probably looks like a little red cube], get it into your hard drive, and click on it. Warning: don't put it inside your CMBO program or it will make a mess. This would be as good a time as any other to create a C:\Program Files\CMBO Back-up directory. If the retail CD has what I think it has on it, a self-install program will start up and suddenly you'll have a directory named GEM Software Productions. Inside that you'll find another called CMMOS. CMMOS allows you to switch back and forth between different mods at the click of a button. Like Gaul, a CMMOS mod has three parts: a bunch of bmp files with funny extensions (ok, they're not that funny, just weird), a numbered RuleSet (e.g. RuleSet001, RuleSet002, etc.), and, once in a blue moon, a File List addition. The bmp files with the extensions should be copied into the CMBO BMP folder. Once again, just copy the files, no zips, folders, notes, or anything else. The RuleSets have a lot of text files and a few bmp icons inside. Don't even go there. Just copy the entire RuleSet folder to the GEM Software Productions / CMMOS directory. You'll end up with a bunch of numbered RuleSets inside. In the rare situation where you're just adding a Rule to an existing RuleSet, you'll need to copy some or all of a numbered Rule, a numbered Description File, a very small bmp file with (usually) a word-based name, and, possibly, a numbered Advanced Rule to the GEM Software Productions CMMOS RuleSet with the corresponding number. But with any luck you'll never have to know that these files even exist. [if I knew what was in the CD I wouldn't have had to bother with this part.] Finally, if you're very unlucky you may have to copy some File List additions to the GEM Software Productions CMMOS File List folder. These are text files that tell the program what to look for, but I really doubt that the mods on the retail CD would need this kind of treatment. Notice in all of this that the only thing that goes into the CMBO directory are the raw bmp files. Everything else that gets used (some things are stored for later reading, edification, and hard drive bloat) goes into one of the GEM Software Productions CMMOS directory folders. Anyway, I've just made a big guess as to the cause of your trouble, and I hope this was of some help. And please don't tell me you use a Mac, because that will require a completely different kind of answer.

I seem to be in the late stages of producing a music mod of period music from the '40's. I have completed the first draft, have aged the product a bit, and now it seems to me that a few things are missing. I can't seem to find a long choral version of Die Wacht am Rein. Not very lively, I'll admit, but pregnant with meaning. I have one stanza with lyrics, and several versions of several stanza's without lyrics. Any help on this would be appreciated. The other thing that I'm missing is a choral version of "Poland is not dead as long as we're still alive". I have the theme music, so to speak, but would like a version with the lyrics, just to be consistant. Ideally I'd like a version played in what was probably the original mazurka style as opposed to the lugubrious national anthem style. The history of this particular piece of music is rather interesting, as it was written in Italy as the Polish Legion marched off to fight in Napoleon's wars, and mentions him by name. I'm also open to additional suggestions for American music. What I'm currently using is a secret, but very folkloric and distinctive in a 1940's kind of way. When I listen to modern French military marches it becomes quite clear to me why the French Army didn't do too well in the 20th Century. I have one very nice song that will bring tears to the eyes (if you speak French), but would consider alternatives. I don't use any of the music swapping services, so finding a song usually involves a laborious search on several search engines, with mixed results.

A plan that will never be realized.</font>

A CMMOS mod usually has one or more of the following: A) bmp files with funny extensions on the file numbers (e.g. 12345_GEM) RuleSets. These are collectioms of text files with a few icon bmp's. The tip-off is that they usually come in a folder with a name like RuleSet001. Leave the contents of the folder IN THE FOLDER. C) File List Additioms. This is somewhat rarer. These need to be placed (without any container) in the File List folder. What to do with this stuff: 1) Bmp files go in the CMBO BMP folder. Do not put any folders in the CMBO BMP folder, but do put the contents of folders if the contents happen to consist of bmp's with extensions as described in A) above. 2) RuleSet folders go into theGEM Software/ CMMOS folder, folder and all. Do not take the contents of a RuleSet folder out of its folder. You'll end up with a dozen or so numbered RuleSet folders in your CMMOS folder. 3) From time to time you will have to copy a file list addition to the CMMOS File List folder. Never copy a folder to this folder, just the contents of folders. If you look inside the CMMOS file list folder you'll find a bunch of text files that tell the program (and you, if you read them) what each bmp is, bmp by bmp. It's not a bad idea before you start something like this to spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the structure of the two directories/folders you'll be looking at, namely, the CMBO folder and the CMMOS folder. They do different things, but the way they are organized is quite straightforward. Eventually you'll want to install a sound mod, at which point you'll need to know where to find the WAV folder (in CMBO). Once you see how things are organized you'll realize how simple it all really is.

MadMatt's Guide is very good to start with, but much of what you install will get overlaid by more recent mods. There was an awful lot of mod activity last year, all of it done after the guide was written. There was an evolutionary process as well, with many of the current mods being much more sophisticated in appearance. The most significant mod event of last year was CMMOS. Almost all of the CMMOS information that you will need can be found on CMHQ. There's a separate section for it in third party mods, there are a lot of important CMMOS mods in Manx's transported Combatmissions site on CMHQ, but some of the most important parts of CMMOS can be found be looking carefully at that initial menu of recent mods on the right hand side of the page that is one of the first things you'll see when you get to the site. At this point there are probably a lot of forms of mods that only exist in CMMOS versions. To give you a flavor, you can switch between different paint, detail, and camo styles on all of the Shermans at the push of a button. You can make almost all of your German vehicles show up as Mono-dunkelgelb, bicolor, tricolor, tricolor ambush, hasty camo, all at the push of a button. And then you can push another button and apply unit markings, Wehrmacht or SS license plates, and a plethora of other choices. Just looking in folders to and blowing up the individual bmp's would take hours. You can make all of these decisions and change your mind several times in a matter of minutes. The list of what's available can be a little intimidating, but basically, when you're dealing with CMMOS, you want all of it. Broadband helps, but is not necessary. There are a few categories that you won't see when you go looking in CMHQ, but many of the major ones that appear to be missing are in the pipeline and nearing completion. As we speak a spectacular second edition of the German uniform set is being tested, winter terrain types are all being tested, the different paved and dirt roads are being tested, assault boats are being tested, and there is even a music mod because the latest version of CMMOS (3.02) which will be released shortly even includes sound switching capability. The ability to jump back and forth between these choices with ease makes it possible to tailor the look of the battlefield and what's on it on a unit-by-unit basis (you can switch the shoulder patches on Canadian and British troops, and, soon, on the Americans as well), season by season, and vary it by time of day and weather condition. Without CMMOS this level of tailoring every time you start Combat Mission is unthinkable. The only real problem with CMMOS at this point is that it doesn't work on the Mac. Several people are working on this, but Mac capability may be a long time coming. In the meantime, for those of us lucky enough to have gone with the less elegant computing solution, with CMMOS you have the capability to easily switch back and forth between a mind-boggling array of choices, and, as long as you make the intitial investment of time by downloading all the CMMOS mods, do it effortlessly and quickly.

You've have just gained true insight into the inner zen of CMMOS. Manually changing the variations, even when using batch files, rapidly becomes impractical when you have to remember what you did with hundreds of different textures. My current guestimate is that 75% of what needs to be modded is now available on CMMOS, and the plan is to push it to 100%. If you aren't a Mac user go out and download as much CMMOS as you can stand. It will take you a week or so unless you have a DSL-surrogate, but it's worth it. Many of the CMMOS mods have gone through several versions, so start with the oldest first just to make sure.

If you have broadband or are willing to invest a little time you can seriously transform the appearance of just about everything in Combat Mission. The place to do your initial research is at combatmission.com. Remember that it was written long before the UK retail version existed. While there you should look for Manx's Combat missions section, the CMMOS section with all of its mods, and Field and Stream. These can be found by a combination of looking through the menu on the far left-hand side of the page and reading through the brief synopsis of what's available on the right-hand side of the page. In particular, buried away in there somewhere is MadMatt's guide to mods. It's a bit out of date now as it was written before CMMOS, but it does give a really good explanation of what you want to do to the basic BTS product to improve it. I haven't seen the contents of the retail version, but I suspect that many of the things mentioned in it can be found on the CD, which will save you the trouble of downloading. When you start getting into CMMOS, download the latest version, even if you already have it on your CD. And what you need to keep an eye out for is CMMOS 3.02 which hasn't been released yet, but which has some important new features and capabilities. And will have the mods to go with them.

is there winter wheat? i think tom did one using the brush tiles because there were no wheat tiles in winter.</font>

CMMOS is designed for handling 1000 RuleSets. Each RuleSet can handle 1000 Rules. Each Rule is capable of up to about a dozen or so combinations. On top of that there are Advanced Rules which allow up to about another dozen combinations of all the the previous rules within a RuleSet. I'm not a mathematician, but on one RuleSet alone we're talking significantly more than 10,000 possible combinations, without even trying very hard. Moreover, by having something in CMMOS format it becomes immediately comparable with all other textures in its class. The issue was never the capability or lack of capability of your installer. I think what Gordon is taking exception to is your remark that CMMOS can't handle the complexity of a few dozen uniform and equipment combinations.

Not having seen the Bonus CD I can't comment on whether the CMMOS instructions are missing or not. In the standard versions of CMMOS, when you download it it creates a GEM Software Productions folder, a CMMOS folder is inside of that, and there are some pretty detailed instructions inside. If the Bonus CD doesn't have this, I would recommend going over to combatmission.com and downloading the latest version of CMMOS. While you're there, spend a little time looking around. Read MadMatt's Guide to modding, and spend some time browsing through the heavily illustrated 3rd Party Mod section. There's a section in there that includes several different explosion and smoke mods. You should also poke around in the Combatmissions section which can be found by scanning down the menu on the left side of the page. This is what is left of what used to be a wonderful mod site. Last time I looked, if you click on the entries you'll see the presentation and notes on the individual mods. There are several very important mod sites, and I think they were already mentioned. But after you have immersed yourself in CMHQ you should visit Mod&Modders, Tom's CMHQ, Der Kessel, Last Defense, and Warfarehq. There are many other excellent sites besides these (I'm rather partial to Appui-feu, myself) and I don't mean to slight any of them, but I'm undercaffeinated, memory is failing, and I'm only describing the first steps. I'll leave the joy of discovery to you, but strongly recommend getting to know the links section at CMHQ, which Manx has been updating recently.

Out of curiosity, what happens on the CDV version when you hit the left shift key as you are starting the game ? Do you jump to the interface screen and (here's the part I'm really interested in) does the game start playing wave file 00005010 ?

What you should do is send an e-mail to gordonemolek@earthlink.net. You need to give him an exact description of what you mean by "don't appear to work". Are the winter textures covered by the winter allied ruleset installed ? There aren't, by any chance, some folders that have crept into your CMBO BMP folder unawares (it happens) ? What happens when you press one of the icons ? What happens when you press the apply button ? If you haven't gotten any telltale error messages from either of these actions, go to the GEM Software productions folder, go into the CMMOS folder, and make a copy of the log and send it to Gordon with your question. It is also sometimes possible to diagnose and/or solve a CMMOS problem simply by reading the part of that log that pertains to the buttons you were trying to click. If you aren't sure what that is, try clicking all the texture buttons you're having problems with, then go look at the log. The activity that shows up at the end is the program reacting to the buttons you did or did not push. That information can often be illuminating.

By convert I assume you mean you installed something without looking to see what it was. As a general rule with mods I always install everything to an empty folder (and try to save a copy, and yes my hard drive is bloated). That way I'm sure to know what a mod looks like and won't run the risk of dumping folders in my bmp folder (the program doesn't look inside of folders). The simplest way to deal with this is by using CMMOS. Do you have major space constraints or are you a Mac user ? If not just download and install the latest CMMOS from the CMHQ (I think it has 3.01) and then get the Field and Stream RuleSets and the textures for at least trees and treebases, and you can switch back to Magua or DD's trees and any one of a plethora of treebases and rough terrain. And keep switching in and out until you find something that you like. Then, if you find the "Save Personal Set" icon in the first Field and Stream tab (it's in the bottom row) you can save your favorite natural terrain (doesn't work for buildings) and not worry about the permanent side effects of future experiments, or the fact that six months from now you'll have no idea what went into that terrain that you really liked...

Just when I was getting ready to throw in the towel... I loaded Lilli Marleen into my wav folder. It had exactly the right properties. Then I held down the left shift key and launched CMBO. There was no video intro movie, but Lilli played right through the selection screens. I tried some of the other files to see if I had any latitude as to the properties. Apparently I don't, though I accidently created a great Hamstertruppen Musik mod. So now that I see a way to make this work without inflicting massive bloat on people's hard drives and without running Gordon ragged, I'm back to my quest for editing equipment. How do I make my Hamstertruppen Musik sound the way it's supposed to ? I need to change many of the properties. Can some of this be handled by the Creative Labs software that came with my SoundBlaster ? And can you recommend any good sound file editors ? [ March 13, 2002, 04:28 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I replaced the video intro music with one of my many versions of Lilli Marleen. It had exactly the right properties, and to my delight, no video intro, but Lilli Marleen kept playing through the different selection screens. Emboldened by my success, I tried Panzerlied, which almost had the right properties. Actually, it had exactly the right properties because when I held down the left shift key and launched CMBO, I discovered that I had perfect theme music for Hamstertruppen: Panzerlied sung in the style of Alvin and the Chipmunks. So if there are any die-hard rodent lovers out there, just drop me a line.

Inspired by all of this I went back and took another look. For some reason, in my version of Windows 2000 if I poke around inside the properties page, I eventually come up with a Summary tab, and that lists things like average data rate (whatever that is), sampling rate, bits, and channels, as well as a format description that looked important and that I didn't understand at all. So, further inspired, I took a look at my small collection of potential intro video music substitutes. Oddly enough, my Lilli Marleen was in exactly the right format, and my Panzerlied was almost in the right format (one channel mono instead of two channel stereo). So I plugged in Lilli Marleen, and of course, nothing happened. It's begining to sink in that the wav files for the video intro are only there as back-ups in case you don't have Quicktime installed, or something like that. Now my questions from my previous post still stand, because I'm concerned about getting the non-music sound files to work correctly. But now I have a new concern, and that is how to edit/replace the music in video itself, assuming I can find a way to swap video's. There's so much on his programming plate that I doubt that I'll be able to convince Gordon to progam CMMOS to swap video files. Especially when most people are looking for workarounds to turn the thing off anyway. Moreover, that video file is over 40 Mb, so we're starting to talk bloat... [ March 13, 2002, 03:55 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Thanks. I run on Windows 2000 and now feel less concerned that I'm having trouble finding out this kind of information. Two more questions while I've got your attention. Can you recommend an editor for sound (preferably freeware)? And how would I go about changing the wav files that I want to use as substitutes for 00005010 into the format that the CMBO program will read ?

Thanks, Ed. Now my next question is, I have some wave files that are in Wave format. How can I tell what kind of characteristics a sound file has, how many bits, what sample rate, and how many channels assuming they are even in stereo ? [This is the part of my sound cards that I've always studiously ignored ]. I had to get a simple converter just to make these (originally) MP3 files into Wave files. I've noticed there are editors. Any recommendations on what, if anything, I can use if I don't want to make a life's career out of this ? If I start poking around in the notes to my sound card (I think I saw something that looks like a mixer) will I be able to make the necessary changes ?

Thank you for that. Now my next question is, I have some wave files that are in Wave format. How can I tell how many bits, what sample rate, and how many channels assuming they are even in stereo ? [This is the part of my sound cards that I've always studiously ignored ]. I had to get a simple converter just to make these (originally) MP3 files into Wave files. I've noticed there are editors. Any recommendations on what, if anything, I can use if I don't want to make a life's carreer out of this ?

Is it possible to replace the video intoduction music wave file with a different wave file that will actually get played ? The CMBO program doesn't seem to care if wave file 00005010 is in the wave folder or not. I've tried substituting different files for the original but the BTS theme seems to get played regardless. Do files that take the place of the original 00005010 have to have any particular characteristics (length, size, frequency, breakfast) for the program to recognize them, or is the sound already embedded in the video ? I've already asked this question on the regular board and I apologise for asking it again here. The question came up because CMMOS 3.02 has sound-file switching capability, and the video intro seemed the easiest thing to test first (I now realize that it is probably the hardest).

Does anyone know if it is possible to replace the video intoduction music wave file with a different wave file that will actually get played ? The CMBO program doesn't seem to care if wave file 00005010 is in the wave folder or not. I've tried substituting different files for the original but the BTS theme seems to get played regardless. Do files that take the place of the original 00005010 have to have any particular characteristics (length, size, frequency ?) for the program to recognize them, or is the sound already embedded in the video ?