Philippe
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Posts posted by Philippe
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My barbed wire mod works in all three games without renumbering. There are a couple of other things like that that probably include TRP points, Exit markers, Flags, hidden unit markers, and (possibly) minefield markers. CMBO tends to be much lower resolution than the other two, though oddly enough sometimes lower resolution looks better.
Just because you can do something, however, doesn't mean you'd want to. CMBB and CMAK use slightly different color palettes from each other, and are very different even from the advanced fully modded versions of CMBO.
Many (but not all) German vehicles can be interchanged between CMBB and CMAK. You can figure out which ones work and which ones don't by reading the notes on the mod. And a lot of terrain can be used in CMAK and CMBB, though there are a few places where that can get you into trouble. You have to read the notes and make sure you understand what is being substituted for what.
Things that work in CMBB (like minefield and hidden unit markers) that also work in CMAK tend to look very good, because the color schemes are similar. Things that are native to CMBO often look a little out of place in the later games.
And once again, just make sure you read the notes on the mod so you know what you're doing.
I really wish more of CMBO was portable, because I'd look into porting all those English vehicles that never got modded in CMAK. As it is they will have to be modded from scratch.
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Send an e-mail (perhaps with a copy of a jpeg showing the problem) to support@battlefront.com. That should get you a quicker response.
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The main place to go for the bulk of the old scenarios is cmmods.com. There are two collections of zip files, an older one called Scenario Salvage or Scenario Depot Salvage (look in each game under desinger names Birdgunner or padivine), and a newer one called Sorted Scenarios (designer name philippe_in_exile).
The main place to go for newer individual scenarios is The Scenario Depot II. In an ideal world it would have included the 3000 + scenarios for the three games mentioned in the preceding paragraph, but at the moment it doesn't. Hopefully someday that will change, because if cmmods ever crashes again all those scenarios will probably get lost forever.
The other place to go for newer scenarios, if you don't mind playing scenarios that may not be finished, is the Depot's sister site The Proving Grounds.
After that there are a host of smaller specialty sites, the most important of which are George McEwan's (even though his material ends up at the Depot), and (in it's current incarnation) Andreas' I Still Wish It Were Der Kessel. The specialty sites are necessary because some scenarios have related mods, maps, or background information that will get lost in a mere listing of scenarios, if it can even be included at all.
But having said that, the community is becoming too fragmented and cliquish, and is now vulnerable to a massive data loss if anything ever happens to those zip files at cmmods. And as it is, most people don't even realize that they exist (mostly because a raw data dump is a very poor substitute for a relational database of scenario files).
The CM games are getting older, so extinction is inevitable. But people seem to be drifting back to them (when their newer computer systems even allow them to install and play them), and it would be a shame if all that material winked out because we were too busy with our private clubs to tend the collective garden.
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In an inspired moment BTS realized that they could actually use authentic SS uniforms without having to show the sieg rune on the collar tabs. How? By simply using the Totenkopf division's uniforms. So be aware, the standard SS uniforms that come with the unmodded version of the game are correct for the unit you're interested in (and correct for nobody else).
I think I've seen a few mods that include their vehicle markings, but if not, it wouldn't require very sophisticated graphics skills to make your own.
And yes, the CM series was designed to have graphics that are very easy to mod. You're just altering bitmaps, and you don't even need Photoshop -- you can do it in Paint. By the way, you should pay a visit to CMHQ at combatmission.com -- this was the original unofficial CM site run by members of the BTS team when not wearing their official hats. It still exists and much of the material there is very good. Well worth a visit.
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I vaguely remember that Schrullenhaft talked someone through a problem like this about a year ago. I'm not sure what causes it or what the solution is, but if you get in touch with him (and/or post this to the tech forum), you'll probably get an answer.
At one point a few years ago certain small arms in my CMBO were showing up as large white rectangles. Your problem is slight different, but probably related. I managed to make it go away, but I can't remember what I did.
I'm assuming you're tried a reinstall just in case something got corrupted?
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The scenario was made by a sloppy illiterate twerp who was clueless as to the significance of what he had written. He thought he was writing jugend, if he even knew the difference. I purged that scenario in disgust in the Sorted Scenarios, and my normal editorial style is to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and try to include as much as possible. Our author didn't sign his name to things, but I got to recognize his style -- lots of capital letters and exclamation points, lots of ueber-Tanks and crack SS infantry, no pretense at historical research, no pre-arranged setup, and a bad case of Nazi romanticizing. It was so bad I thought at first it might be a parody, but he was clearly too self-involved to understand that kind of concept.
Somewhere in there was the beginings of either a Monty Python skit or an episode of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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Don't know about the Quick Guide, but one thing I would recommend is that you buy the CMAK companion.
A bit expensive for what it is, and I hate the typeface, but it's a really nice selection of excerpts geared to scenarios that you will play in the game. And what happens is that you'll end up going to Amazon and buying the source material for the book. So all in all I recommend it highly as a study guide.
As an aside, it lead me to read Alan Moorehead' war writing for the first time, which was a real treat because I love his books on the White Nile and the Blue Nile.
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The contents of the sorted scenarios is slightly different from the salvage, by the way. Has some of the more recent material, and doesn't include inert files (and a few juvenile howlers like one about fanatical Hitlerjuden defending Berlin). And it's a lot easier to come to grips with, provided that you know what three-month period of the war you're interested in.
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Good to hear that. Now get out there and download some mods.
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The date on mine is 10/29/2000.
Better that he search it out at cmmods. That way he'll be self-sufficient, and know where to find scenarios when he wants them. He might even download the whole series...
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Try sending it to Matt@Battlefront. They've been a little crazy about getting a monster patch out for TOW.
Kellysheroes: I'm really impressed with how helpful that was. May you be so fortunate next time you have a problem.
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You might want to post in the tech forum about this. Better yet, send support@battlefront.com an e-mail.
There may be things that you can do to CMBB that will sort it out but not mess up the other two games, so you may want to avoid system as opposed to game specific changes. I am not a techie, however, so take anything I say cum grano salis.
But I can't help but wonder what would happen if you kept changing your CMBB resolutions around -- as in delete that little preferences file that gets created the first time you fire the game up, and then experiment with different settings. I've also seen references to different font bitmaps that might correct some of the problems people have, but am not sure what would work in your case. But I have a feeling that if you play around with these two avenues and get a little direction from matt or schrully, you should be able to sort out cmbb. Unless one of them comes from a radically different source than the other (e.g. Battlefront on one and Euro CDV on the other), I can't think of any reason offhand why cmak and cmbb would behave differently: they're almost the same game.
I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here in that I've never had problems that couldn't be resolved with a little fiddling. And I'd be surprised if your cmbb and cmak setting really were the same and they came from the same source.
Isn't ancient software exciting?
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If I had a Vista operating system and problems installing/running the CMx1 games, I would start by posting an exact descripition of my system, video card, and drivers and an exact description of the problem I was having to the CMx1 tech forum. And the only answer I would take really, really seriously would come from Schrullenhaft (or another member of BTS management). I would also send an e-mail with similar content to support@battlefront.com. That would probably produce a set of suggestions for the steps I would need to take to fix my problem, even if I wasn't very sophisticated about what to do about things in the first place.
They're really very helpful about suggesting ways to fix this kind of thing. But they will be the first to tell you that way, way, way back when they created the CMx1 engine, there was no way they were going to be able to predict what the fashionable crop of machines, machine parts, and drivers would be eight years later. In the computer hardware and software world that time-frame is an eternity.
I've managed to avoid much heartache by not using Vista, but I'm starting to get the impression that the CMx1 games actually do work on Vista if you have the right combination of drivers and video cards. Again, the hardware and driver changes that occurred since the games were released may be too extreme -- when you're doing a fresh release you harmonzie with as much as possible. But the crew at BTS have probably been bombarded with problem combinations by this point, and if nothing else may be learning the answers by osmosis, even if they didn't originally intend to learn them.
But they can't tell you anything useful if you don't ask them directly, or post your operating system complaints in the wrong place. This particular forum, for example, is probably the worst place to grouse about problems you're having because I seriously doubt that they spend any more time in here than they do in the Peng Challenge Thread. Watching two or three of us practise our traffic analysis skills is not the most effective use of their time (and it's not how I want them to spend their time).
I haven't a clue what they will do about the CMx1 series, but my instinct is that if they ever do anything ever again, it will be for sentimental reasons rather than financial ones.
[ January 30, 2008, 10:52 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]
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I would have assumed that if someone named a hill Hill 195.3, it meant that they didn't want it to be confused with another 195 meter hill in the vicinity. Another possibility is that it's the surveyor's fault (he took the trouble of recording the extra third of a meter, so it stuck).
I'm still wondering why people insist on thinking that the W. Nile is the West Nile. When I studied African geography there was a White Nile and a Blue Nile, and they met at Khartoum.
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You might want to take a look at this link for starters:
http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=012212#000000
The Scenario Depot ceased to exist two years ago. An emergency salvage operation was mounted to try to preserve the bulk of its content, approximately 4000 scenarios and operations for the three games. If you do a search at cmmods.com under each game you'll find the zip files of the salvaged scenarios in alphabetical order (designer name Birdgunner for cmbo and cmak, padivine for cmbb).
The salvage operation was rather crude and the collection of files was a bit raw, but it was an emergency and the alternative was watching four thousand files slide into oblivion while people postured over what to do about it. Some of the files are inert, and some of the files are missing. Plans were put into motion to recreate the depot, and after a lot of discussion the Proving Grounds cloned itself and declared its second self to be the Scenario Depot II.
Unfortunately no concerted attempt was made at collecting and reposting the old material, so the vast majority of the thousand-odd scenarios at Scenario Depot II post-date the death of Scenario Depot I. Which means that the salvage zip files at commds, which were really intended to preserve the raw material while people argued about how to revive the old Depot, and then get superceded when the new Depot got set up, have become the depository of record for the old Depot by default.
The material in the Salvaged Scenarios at cmmods is not easy to use in the sense that it is merely a data dump from one person's scenario folder, supplemented by a few contributions from the rest of the community. The Sorted Scenarios (mentioned in the link above) were an attempt to at least make the raw material useable. Scenarios are now sorted by time period for cmbb and by geographical area for cmak. CMBO hasn't been done because of exhaustion and time constraints.
And if the people who have complained the loudest had had their way, most of those four thousand scenarios would be lost by now. We're still missing mods from the great crash at cmmods a few years back, which tells me that the scenarios at cmmods need to be kept in a second location (like the Scenario Depot II, where they should all have ended up in the first place).
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It can be found in the Scenario Depot Salvage zip files in the cmbb section of cmmods, which are in more or less alphabetical order. It can also be found in the Sorted Scenarios in the cmbb section of cmmods (though you need to know when it took place during the war in order to be able to find it).
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I really don't like jumping on the bandwagon of calling something gamey all that quickly. Especially because people tend to call things gamey more because they don't like them rather than from any deepseated historical conviction.
But I'm having a great deal of difficulty imagining what sort of real-world behavior this is supposed to reflect. I really wish someone who knows more about this than I do would enlighten us on the underlying reality that is supposedly being modeled here. What's being described doesn't really feel right.
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I think you're missing my point.
You're supposed to use the default setup. And if you do, AI-controlled units in the neutral zone should be limited to what would have been there if you were playing that side. If you choose not to use the default setup you're intentionally telling the AI to roll its own version of the scenario, and all bets are off.
Different units in the neutral zone are small beer compared to what else might happen with free setup. It's not an AI cheat, it's there to keep an overplayed scenario from getting too stale. It's a way of scrambling up your AI opponent's setup so you'll still be surprised if you've played that particular scenario too many times. And it's probably there because the designers didn't anticipate over a thousand different scenarios getting written for each of the three games.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, and mention the name of the scenario you were talking about in the first place.
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Not sure I follow you.
By definition, 'free to set up' has to produce very different results from 'stick to scenario default'. Many scenario designers will mention that their work should be played on default, not free settings.
Are you saying that 'stick to default' setups produce variant results? I think the reason that the free set-ups scramble things around the way they do is so that you can replay a scenario without being sure you'll always know where everything is. It's not an issue with QB's because you don't or (can't)usually replay them.
I was under the impression that if you played human setup vs. scenario default you would get a level playing field (as far as setup goes), or at least what the designer intended (which may not be the same thing). But it would be very similar to a human vs. human setup (apart from different deployment decisions and philosophies).
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Can you be a little more explicit about the name of the scenario where this happened to you?
And are you quite sure that when the AI opponent sets up in different locations in the neutral zone the game was actually set to 'stick to scenario default'? When the FOW is set to extreme you can't always be sure you're really seeing what you think you're seeing.
I've often wondered what happens when you play a scenario against an AI's forces that are set up in organizational groupings rather than in combat deployment. Some scenarios should only be played against a live opponent.
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The one I was looking at in the Salvage was a scenario (cmb file).
I really miss my old hard drive, because I'm pretty sure I had things that weren't in the Salvage. It's kind of scary how quickly things are starting to vanish.
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Not having text that can be read is something that crops up from time to time in very specific instances. It is also something that can usually be fixed. Send a description of your system and your problem to support@battlefront.com and they'll probably come back to you with the solution (which is usually something simple like updating your video card drivers). Be sure that you tell them exactly what your very modern hardware is, and what drivers you are using.
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If you go to Cmmods and look for something called Scenario Salvage under designer name Birdgunner in the cmbo section, you should find Task Force Butler in the zip that covers the letter T.
I think the first word is Task rather than TF. Some files in the Salvage are inert, and I haven't checked to see if that was one of them or not.
I didn't realize that that scenario was originally posted at the old Scenario Depot, and the original site (whatever it was) may still exist.
Update: I checked and it's not inert. The Salvage material for the letter T is split across two zip folders, make sure you look in the right one.
[ January 23, 2008, 01:19 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]
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You can improve the out-of-the-box visuals by visiting a community mod site that has an extensive collection of vehicle, uniform, and terrain graphics.
There are also well over a thousand scenarios and operations at the community scenario sites. You can play a new scenario every day for the next three or four years after you've gone through everything on the disk.
If you can get your hands on the SE edition it's worth the trouble. It has extra scenarios, graphics mods, and a mod installer included on a separate disk. (Yoou don't really need a mod installer for mods, but it's nice to have).
The CC series has slicker graphics, but you're always operating in a two-dimensional view of the battlefield. CM tends to get played in different isometric views -- once you get used to seeing a full 3-D environment it's really hard to settle for anything less.
Mod question
in Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin
Posted
FWIW I was just looking at a Panzer IV G early mod by Mikey D that works in CMAK and CMBB and it comes in Totenkopf markings.
The divisional markings for german tanks are really easy to remove or to add.