JVril

Just my two cents: I'm sure I'm not the only one who immensely enjoys playing related consecutive battles against AI as a sort of a campaign (The Vuosalmi Campaign and Stalingrad Pack are very nice.) Now, I'd just like to encourage you guys to make more of these. I believe Kursk (Citadel) is in the works, but there's a wealth of interesting episodes on the Eastern front...a pretty please..even a couple of scenarios would do the trick. Something which was totally great with CMBO was the Otto Skorzeny CMMOS pack w/ totally imaginative mission plots along w/ the accompanying textures for subterfuge "allied" tanks & uniforms... [ February 16, 2003, 07:08 AM: Message edited by: JVril ]

Thank you sir, that's something to try. I'll try converting a drive to FAT.

...and yes, if anyone's interested: The resulting corrupted CME and CMF files seem to be BLANK, there is nothing whatsoever on them if opened w/ a text editor - although the file size is still about the same as original. Am I really the only one left out of the Eastern Front action through this pain-in-the-ass thrice-cursed bug?

Uh, I was moaning about this here earlier, too, but... The thing is that CMBB crashes painfully often in the larger scenarios (W2K, 1,5G, Radeon 64). This is not too bad, since it really doesn't take that long to reboot and load the saved game. The problem just is that the saved games, including the autosave, connected to the scenario that crashed are corrupted (it's always "German vs. German, 0 turns, tiny"). A good tip by Madmatt was to turn off the W2K indexing of the folder - the next time the game crashed I was able to load an intact save game and continue from there. Unfortunately, this is not the rule. I basically gave this fine game up after trying to play the Stalingrad pack, playing five successive scenarios with careful tactical planning building up to a climax - only to have the game crash and leave me with a corrupted save game. Does this happen to anyone else? Could some kind of a solution be worked out in a future patch? Should I go back to Win98? Should I get a life?

Sorry, I really don't know whether this applies to XP: (Right click for properties, choose "advanced", make sure theres nothing checked.)

Wonder if you have Win2K? I had an answer to a similar(ish) problem from MadMatt that helped quite a lot: turn off the indexing and/or compression in the CMBB folder. (Right click for properties --> advanced) Whenever the game crashed, it used to make all of the saved games in connection with the battle/op at hand unplayable, but by turning off the indexing, all the saved games work after a crash, just the autosave will corrupted. Saving often in larger maps is thus quite recommendable...

Forcing on antialiasing was the best thing I ever did with the game - really - thank you so much for the tip! It's a whole different battlefield... What comes to anisotrophic filtering, correct me if I'm wrong, but at least in my Geforce 256 anisoptrophic filtering (damn that one is hard to spell!) is a feature listed under OpenGL, and I understand that the game uses Direct3D?

For anybody interested in the Waffen Grendadiere , Christopher Ailsby's "Hell on the Eastern Front" should be a captivating read to start with, excellent photography too....

It sure looks fine and dandy, but I'm just afraid that it's going to be another one in the vein of "war strategy games" like Sudden Strike - the only thing separating it from Warcraft, Command & Conquer other brain rotters is that the Germans don't mine gold.

I played it as German, too, and found it very good - try adding the AI w/ +25 or +50 troops and the scenario turns into a disturbingly delicious slaughterhouse. From what I've seen so far, I think this scenario explores the possibilities of indoor battles w/ the current engine to the max and is quite interesting in that sense also; although I'm not sure whether the two stories represent much of a change in exposure/targetting. But it WAS fun shooting down the walls to expose the inhabitants to some tank fire, and on the other hand, to stalk the circling KV's with flamethrowers and explosives from inside the building...

Thanks for the fast reply! Yeah, I did check the folder properties, and the indexing WAS on. Turned it off, let's see... (Come to think of it, back then I waged the war w/ CMBB on Win98, so I guess it makes sense that this problem did arose w/ the W2K OS.)

Thanks for your interest. Had this problem numerous times in the larger ops, but now managed to invoke it in a single battle, too. Every time the game crashes, both the autosave and the manually saved game (in this instance, it was saved some 5 turns before the crash) both became unplayable - this is how they look in the menu (cut out the extra space inbetween): Trying to load those of course crashes the game. Other saved games work fine, just the ones that are connected to the mission that was at hand while the game crashed are corrupted. Which, of course would be most appreciated to continue playing the cliffhanger situation! Oh yeah, Win 2K, 256MB,AMD Athlon XP 1600+, and the CDV version. The crash initially probably is due to memory shortage (severe symptoms which should advise the player to exit the game include getting the "regular" mouse cursor appear in the game.) But I really don't know what's up with the saved games, because this really is a systematic error. (Dunno yet what happens if I saved multiple saves with different file names.) [ November 03, 2002, 10:58 AM: Message edited by: JVril ]

There seems to be a bug that corrupts all the save games, including autosaves, when the game crashes. Like, double your displeasure, double your, eh, fun. (The saved game battle icon also changes to "Germans vs. Germans" and the battle size to "tiny". Both in ops and battles.) Maybe this could also be taken care of in the patch? Methinks it's bit of a critical nuisance. [ October 31, 2002, 03:07 PM: Message edited by: JVril ]

"Lemmings" is exactly what I thought also!

My apologies, dear gentlemen. Some of you might consider my arguing the point a bit further also a spoiler. So I'll Post a Spoiler Warning! I'll Post a Spoiler Warning! SPOILER : : : : : : : : : : OK, I got over the disappointment of the last battle. As I play the scenarios in chronological order, enter "Popguns and Elefants". Briefing did't recommend any sides. Well, as the title suggests, playing as the Germans, I have three 37mm Paks and some battered grenadiers against KV's, T34's and a horde of infantry. What would initially seem to turn up to be a red fist in the face of the Teutonic New World Order was not exactly to be. The steel monsters rolled midway into the open field - and stayed there. What did the infantry do? For the duration of the 30-turn scenario, they were all frolic and skied back and forth in the field, some crawled in the snow and the others threw snowballs at each other. If the AI logic hasn't been changed from CMBO; I really don't know what it is? - The AI simply is not interested in capturing the flags anymore? -The Russian troops are so green that they panic even seeing their own guns and throw themselves into a manic fit and start crawling back and forth? -The AI is so considerate that it does anything it can to avoid unnecessary casualties (like the US general at Anzio...) -There's something wrong with the scenario design? -In CMBB, you should never try DEFENDING against the (Russian) AI? -In CMBB, some scenarios are just unplayable against AI but not all are mentioned? I mean, what could I do to entice the Red Army to come to me? Pretty please, Ivan? Come over here camerade, we have bread for you? What did I ever do to them? I admit that I shelled a few mortar rounds there, but that really didn't hurt that bad, did it? I wonder had they come if I had started shooting my "popguns" at the "elephants" at the range of 600 meters? After all, the Heer-doorknocker might have woken the guys asleep inside. Dunno what you think, but me is very sad and this never happened with CMBO and can you maybe consider this in a future patch too, please?

Thanks, all valid points, Dirtweasel and Manchildstein. There was no exiting in the scenario, just the 5 or so flags scattered around the city. One thing that could explain it came to my mind: I fired 4 of my 20 artillery barrages blindly into the woods; there MIGHT have been some sort of a Soviet vehicle that got hit and blocked the road? Dunno if the Russians have any wheels in that one. As for playing hotseat with myself(!), uh, I'm not that schizo...just yet! Guess I should try to get into PBEM more; always been to impatient with this game in question. But isn't being a misanthrope what war gaming is all about?

All just out of human curiosity, completely acknowledging that the AI scenario was meant to be played as the Russians, I do wonder how the AI works - is there some specific mechanics and priorities that can be attributed for a scenario -because unless not, the thing described above seems just plain weird. Unless the 1500 remaining Russkis were all kitchen staff. As for spoilers, the real spoiler is to try and play this as the Germans. Yeah, I know, "recommended to play as..."...but one could imagine it could at least be played, sort of. In CMBO I enjoyed many battles that I played against these recommendations...and if I remember correctly, some with CMBB, too. Maybe the AI now just has too much on his mind?

I KNOW it sez "recommended as Red Army against AI" AND I guess I am a a zealot 'cos I only play the Germans...but after the following I just got to wonder. Scenario: "White wave", Moscow counteroffensive 1941. The remaining 180 men of a battered German battalion prepare to take on the feared White Coats of Siberia and make a stand in ****inkovo. Turn 2. Very heavy Russian artillery preparation starts. Men cry in mortal fear, buildings catch fire and explode and my two infantry guns are abandonded as the crews flee screaming into the winter night, stumbling on the mutilated corpses of the casualties of this merciless punishment. Turn 10. All grows silent. The walking wounded crawl out of the ruins and prepare to die where they stand; this is it - they will come now! The two MG's stationed in log cabins near the edge of the forest start sweating as they hear Russian voices in the darkness. (Gee, I think, the AI really is not stupid; this is how it should be!) Turn 10-25. Vasili comes gently strolling out of the forest. As he nears the cabin, Obg. Posner opens fire - and manages to jam the MG34 in his excitement -"Gott in Himmel, now I am done for!" But luckily Vasili just curses and crawls back just outside of the firing arc. Now, Vasili sits down and probably starts brewing a nice samovar of tea. Ilja joins in after a couple of turns and together they sit like rabbits in the snow chew the latest fat. Vladimir shows up, but he has to leave back to the woods shortly. Obg. Posner wonders what the hell is going on. By turn 20, a commissar apparently appears out of the frosty woods and together with Vasili and Ilja they decide they should maybe wage a little war or something. All three yell "Uraa" and step a couple of steps forward, only to be mown down by Obg.Posner's MG bursts. Zum Teufel, the MG jams again, but fortunately his pal from the next cabin joins in the serenade with his LMG. The commissar is left dead on the field as Vasili and Ilja decide they should maybe still wait a while and have a nice cuppa. Turn 31 (out of of 35+) some tactical genius from the Russian HQ arrives from the woods, and after having a cup of tea with the boys he decides they should maybe do some sort of a flanking maneuver to take the village. They walk some 20 meters to the left of the cabin and start to march on. It seems that also Vladimir has joined them again. Well, Posner is woken up from his sleep and does his morbid duty. OK, the battle ends, total victory, yawn. But what do you know! There were almost 1500 gung ho communists still in the woods. I wonder what they were doing? Obg. Posner was of course awarded a Ritterkreuz with swords and diamonds and oakleaves for keeping a Battalion of Russkis at bay with his (not-so-trusty) MG-42. Like, uh...I sure don't know all of the finesses of the AI system that has undoubtedly been painstakingly worked on, but as a layman, it just seems that even making the AI rush straight and mindlessly to the flags would create more interesting battles...

I actually started making those (just to get my feet wet), but got a bit confused...there are several different SS divisions modeled in the US version, right? Now, I have the European censorized CDV version, so I have a bit of a trouble figuring this out. (Thanks to Schörner for the patch, again.) Apparently the double Sieg runes Pud did (9050-60; 9065-71; 9076-79) went to replace the "Totenkopf" collar emblem in the UNcensorized US version? (of course I'd never seen that.) So, while modding the Pud bmp's with the "Langemarck" and "Wiking emblems", I only succeeded in replacing the Totenkopf units. Has anybody done research on the bmp-numbers of the other SS-units...or something remotely connected? Uh, while I'm at it, I really wouldn't mind if some courteous owner of the uncensorized version approached me privately with all the bmp's connected to those hushed, thrice-cursed runes...or publicly for that matter...the Pud runes were the first unit uniform mod I've yet seen along this line; In Europe, we're still missing the correct visor hats, caps, helmets et al. Of course we could just create our own line of WG regalia... (Couldn't resist: the threefoot is one of the few pieces of iconography in Runenmeister Guido von List's influential "Geheimnis der Runen" that was NOT implemented as unit insignia !

Operation Russian counterattack, July 41. All looks fine, no problems. Until the night comes. Is it really supposed to be, like, TOTALLY black?! I couldn't make out absolutely ANYTHING apart from the deployment borders. :eek: Mind you, nothing to do with gamma or anything. Or my eyesight. I bet the fight would have been interesting. Anybody know what a night fight's supposed to look like in CMBB? I think I should have the latest drivers for my Radeon 8500. (AMD Athlon XP 1600, Win 2K)