jiggles

Yep. I think that's my point. It's either a bug or a cheat, either way as a "feature" of the demo it's tantamount to a speling misteak in the advert. Anyway, I got past the first wave (using tactics which then failed the next three times I tried them, so I'm presuming I was lucky), and in the second wave I got attacked by tanks I'd destroyed in the first wave (I think).

This scenario is pretty silly and does little except to highlight the short-comings of the engine IMO. I mean for sure if you put your AT guns out in the open in CM they'd get toasted. But in CM you'd also have the option to: - tell them to hold fire, which they'd do (in ToW "hold fire" seems to have the sole purpose of wearing out my mouse button; as far as I can tell there's no in-game consequence). - tell them to hide, which would lower their visibility. Not here, it seems. Prance about in big pink neon outfits with "ooo... shoot me" written on the back seems to be the default. In CM you can also judge the visibility of the guns when you place them. Not in ToW, there's very little useful information presented by the engine about that. It's not obvious what this mission is supposed to be teaching the player (even presuming the target audience is a total n00b who hasn't played CM or any other decent wargame). Is it "site your guns in the open they get toasted, hide them in cover and you've got a chance"? Because that's not the message I'm getting from it.

I think the camera system is great ... though maybe it needs some fiddling. I've remapped the camera left/right/forward/back to the standard WASD keys used in FPSs. By default they're mapped to the arrow keys which seems like a strange choice to me. They can be used in combination with the free look (middle mouse button) to move around really smoothly and quickly (yes Virginia, using both hands!). It's awesome ... head and shoulders above the CM series. Then there's the other camera modes (centre on cursor, for example) which look very powerful too, but I haven't had time to play with them properly.

Cool. Well I guess you'll not be pre-ordering from BF in future then, will you? Honestly people we go through this every time there's a launch here. And every time people act surprised. What gives?

Not bad for an RTS . A bit jerky, was that just the FRAPSing? Ah well I've got machine enough to play it nice and smooth no matter what it needs! Some of the voice acting could wasn't so great. "Hurrah! Follow me men! Last one to the tuck shop gets a wedgy!".

I like it. It makes the place look a lot less Janet and John. Plus, it's cheaper, presumably some sort of cost-cutting exercise by BFC

The picture on my TFT is far superior to that on my CRT. As discussed above, you have to make sure you're talking about a decent LCD, and that's it's being driven at it's native resolution. If those two are true, a CRT can't touch an LCD.

Not a bad idea. If BFC could allow the option of skipping every other orders phase, you would have 120 second turns. </font>

Wasn't there a similar question asked recently on this? Something to do with installing patches in the wrong order? Try a search for "unhandled exception", it might throw up an answer. Strangely enough I've been getting unhandled exceptions from CMBB quite a bit recently. It's not the patch order thing, as I've only patched up to 1.02. It does seem to correlate with a recent wave of "hot" weather over here in Blighty. I think it must be overheating in my box.

You guys must have big pockets over there in Canada. That's not exactly small change, is it?

I had problems getting through this morning (about 10.30AM BST), just got the spinning spinner thing in Mozilla. "But it's alright now", to quote Clint Eastwood.

Calling down 3 x 132mm rocket barrages in the first move of an attack on a small map. Whoops. "Woohoo, hey lads, look at our artillery go! Lads? Lads, where are you going?"

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, the old saying goes.

Can you run any other DX5 games successfully? I can't. There are some DX7 games which don't run under anything later than Windows 98. Whose fault is that then? You may or may not be aware that all shades of s**t are hitting the fan over recent driver releases by both NVIDIA and ATi. Essentially both companies are messing about with their driver codebase to improve their benchmark scores with the latest GPUs and the latest releases of DirectX. The fact that older games get screwed over in the meantime is irrelevant to these companies. CMBB works with driver version A, doesn't work with driver version B, works with driver version C, doesn't work with driver version D, ..., where's the variable there?

Can you run any other DX5 games successfully? I can't. There are some DX7 games which don't run under anything later than Windows 98. Whose fault is that then? You may or may not be aware that all shades of s**t are hitting the fan over recent driver releases by both NVIDIA and ATi. Essentially both companies are messing about with their driver codebase to improve their benchmark scores with the latest GPUs and the latest releases of DirectX. The fact that older games get screwed over in the meantime is irrelevant to these companies. CMBB works with driver version A, doesn't work with driver version B, works with driver version C, doesn't work with driver version D, ..., where's the variable there?

I thought the terrain was OK in our last match Lou, there's nothing wrong with open terrain as such. My only complaint was the placement of the flags, and that's an issue which is really starting to p*** me off about game-engine generated maps in general. I don't suppose there were many situations in WW2 where a commanding officer would say "Sergeant, I want you to run all you men up to the top of that hill, then an extra 200m over the top and sit on the opposite slope in full view of the enemy machine guns. That wheatfield on the far slope is *vital* to our military objectives!".

Well, speaking as someone who's played through one of these, I think those who were asking for tweaks to the map parameters ... well may the shells of a thousand 88 millimetres infest your armpits

Well, the first losers round game has now finished, with Lou handing my butt to me. Actually the game was very close. After about 25 moves of my heroic arty spotters keeping him at bay by virtue their first-rate ammo management, he started making his move, and in style too! It helped me that his Tiger developed *cough* mechanical trouble *cough* (gotta love the 6 pdr). The last few moves were a nail-biting race to get my tanks LOS on his half-tracks dominating the flags, but the bell rang a few moves too early for me. Well played Lou! Look forward to the AAR!

I think you need to update your graphics drivers. You can get new ones from the NVIDIA web-site. It's best to stick with an older version rather than the somewhat problematic new sets. Version 30.82 seems to be the peoples favourite.

Try the utility FRAPS, that will show you the frame rate.

I was singing "Oh my darling Valentine" all yesterday. The missus thought I was singing to her Ahhh, poor dear.

*Bump* My game with Lou has just entered injury time. I'm desperately hoping for a small number of extra turns (pref. none!), as my guys are currently defending some very exposed flags against some very angry half-tracks! Going to be a close one...!!!

Rumour has it (out there in Netland) that NVIDIA will be releasing 50.xx series drivers soon (as in this week). Anyone want to start a sweepstake on whether they'll work with CMxx?

I'm going to have to play that movie turn again ... I thought it was your guys who started first :confused: </font>

Oooo... that's gotta hurt