mattpeckham

I'm running a MBP M1 Pro 2021. Are you running Mac OS Monterey? There's a Mac OS level option if you right-click the executable and select "Get Info" to "Scale to fit below built-in camera." But I'm running the native Mac OS version of CMBfN. Is there a way to set it at the CrossOver app level? And just curious why you'd run the Windows version on an M1 Mac... Is the performance not superior running the Mac OS native version?

No worries. I had the serial number entry flashing/jumping issue you mention Dave, but in-game, all seems well. I also have some artifacting on objects when shaders are enabled in scenarios, but disabling shaders seems to make it go away.

It's a good question and I had the same thought, but I just got the Mac and hadn't installed AV software yet, so nothing like that. I am running AdGuard for Safari (nearest software neighbor) but I tried disabling it to no avail. I'm not running anything unusual, just a file sync tool for a cloud storage service (Sync) and 1Password. I tried disabling those as well, but no effect. Here's the Apple thread that led me to Safe Mode. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5166967 It's from 2013 though, so a fluke that it applied here.

I appear to have solved the problem. I was scanning for others having the issue more generally (with other apps) and found an Apple support thread (on an unrelated app - it wasn't CM-related) advising that the person restart Mac OS in Safe Mode, then try the installer. I did so, and it sailed right through. When I restarted (again) to back out of Safe Mode, the CM folder was present, and the game appears to be running fine (well, more than fine - whatever sorcery they worked in the 4.0 update seems to have dramatically improved scrolling around the battlefield, tiny maps to large ones!). Still not sure why the installer was locking in normal mode, but perfectly happy that all seems well at this point!

Interesting, I wasn't aware of those visual issues. I took a look, however, and unfortunately there's nothing related to CM in in the Applications folder. I did have the demo installed beforehand, so had seen the star/roundel icon. I removed that before installing the "CMBN Mac v403 Installer.pkg" file after purchasing it. I just noticed something when "Force Quitting" the installer again just now. The icon for the installer is the same as the icon for the iOS App Installer when I run a Spotlight search for "installer" (see the topmost whiteish icons in the two screens below). Maybe that's not relevant? But could it be that the wrong "installer" is bring triggered for some reason?

Hi all, I'm trying to install CMBN on a new Mac M1 Pro running Monterey, and managed to get past the Gatekeeper issue, but now the installer is stuck on "Preparing for installation..." (see below). I've let it sit for hours, and nothing. When I check the Force Quit option (cmd-opt-esc) the Installer is listed but no indication it's hung. Any ideas? Thanks in advance! Matt

Any word on whether the GG version will make it out yet today?

Oh yeah, I should add that I think the visuals in the Decisive Battles games get me vastly more excited than anything I've *ever* sampled in an FPS. Clean, functional visuals can in the right context be infinitely more satisfying than whether or not your engine has "breakable foliage" or whatever. It's the tragedy of a mostly superficial media that equates visual satisfaction with whatever the heck's meant by "immersive 3D graphics." Whatever happened to clean lines and "context-appropriate"?

Yeah, but put another way, it's a legitimate reaction from someone with visions of Crysis and BioShock dancing in his head. Non-wargamers like Ocampo provide more of a mainstream perspective that'll hopefully filter out the kids that would just hit the forums and gripe needlessly anyway. I trust most BF forum-goers aren't part of that mainstream audience. That said, I'm not expecting unbelievable environmentals, but I am pretty hot for the vehicle and weapons fidelity. And I'd never play (or review) a CM game on the merits of its visuals unless they were prohibitively bad. If the visuals don't hamper the gameplay, and someone's still hacked off about 'em, they're not playing the game for the reasons it was made in the first place, plain and simple.

Ah, thanks guys, that helps. I was beginning to wonder...

2 x 45mm AT (1937) guns firing roughly 445m distance, penetration for UBR-243 = 38mm, UBR-243P = 63mm, four-manned, 73-skill gunners...versus 1 x Pz III head-on, 50/30 hull/turret. And I'm getting creamed every time I run the load point (in the defense tutorial) without question. Dual AT carnage, no matter how many shots I get off. Difficulty's obviously easy per the tutorial lock. Any thoughts? I've even tried holding my single AT Degtyarev gunner back for the tank rush, caught one of the Pz IIIs unwisely pivoting, and with clear ~100m LOS, failed to so much as nick the sides with a dozen shots. I'd drop and move on, but I'm neurotically completist.

I'm thinking about something that's been a pipe-dream of my own (and others, with whom I used to debate in friendly fashion on the old CDMAG forums) since before CMBO hit, sort of an "open-source military simulation database" linked to a scalable interface, shelled out and premised on an equally scalable continuous time system. Note that scalable is the key term to making any of this work. I trust grogs to know at which scale they wish to play, not a developer with an eye toward arbitrary gamey strictures, and who have to invent AI workarounds, emasculations, weapons "balancing" vs. realism, etc. in order to compensate for their systemic abstractions. Note also that I'm not saying such a system would necessarily define "fun" in the same way most of us mean it when we use the word "game." This type of system would have play strata, allowing in practical application a gamer like you or me to zoom down to squad level to take command of a group of 8 to 12, right back up to grand-strategic level, with the computer AI scaling dynamically and accordingly at whichever scale. At the squad level, grand-strategic AI calculations would be abstracted to contend with integer crunching limitations, and vice versa scaled out. The key to making such a system work is open source, with groups of historians and military tacticians working at it in modular fashion, with everyone accepting that the basic premise is squad-level fidelity and extrapolation back up the chain from there. The key to keeping it as flexible as possible would be to untether engagement dynamics, physics and ballistics and such, from the visible engine itself, and make them as scientifically accurate as possible, something the military has already accomplished - there is a theoretical mathematical ceiling on combat fidelity, after all. Graft any 3D engine you like onto this core system - think about it like a car engine whose performance characteristics change relatively little from year to year, but whose vehicular exteriors change dramatically. Like I said, it's a pipe dream. I've been playing with UGO/IGO/WEGO games since the 1980s. With all respect to Chess and its ongoing reflections in contemporary military (abstractions) simulations, I'd like to see some work done on really *really* simulating the dynamics of warfare, in whatever era. Yelling across the battlefield at a suppressed squad of Fallschirmjager "hey, it's your turn now!" just doesn't do what it used to for me, personally.

My assumption - and I didn't get a chance to finish this thought at work because too much was going on - is that when you scale modern combat operations down appropriately to company (or smaller) size strike force material, the missions will end up balancing nicely. Just look at Iraq today and all the American casualties, despite our obviously superior technology and combined weapons capabilities. Those casualties are fractional compared to opposition losses, but if you pick and piece the battles apart, they're occurring in specific situations where parameters are - for various circumstantial reasons - temporarily equalized. Scale it up too high in modern combat and it's boring, IMO, but with attention to scale and mission parameters, it could be successful, at least with the core WEGO base (notice I'm not saying core CM base). My skepticism has more to do with whether the CM WEGO engine is really appropriate for modern combat at all (or ever could be). I have more of a philosophical issue with WEGO these days. It's a great retro nostalgia crowd-pleaser, but it's not at all necessarily the best way to implement even the most scientifically accurate simulation possible with current processing power. Someone else is going to wake up and realize this sooner or later, and we're going to climb out of this stubborn groggy morass and into better, freer, and far more realistic game design.

Webs, nice! Just nabbed your table and will save for future use. Let's cross our fingers and hope that CMBB has the better sort options OOTB.

Darnit, this should have made it in, given all the requests for it. Heck, even the venerable X-Wing had full archival playback! Yes, I know it's a codebase thing, but how sweet it could have been...