Eden Smallwood

Not for me they weren't. It was a challenge to target with the mortars, but that was fun too. [Edit- improvements to buildings are NA] I've never had so many Routed enemies piled on top of each other in one place at game's end. Eden [ November 02, 2002, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ]

Is it modelled that tanks, (or any vehicle, I suppose), make less noise, and are therefore less detected, when moving on grass as opposed to road? Similarly, are they less detected, (assuming out of LOS, duh), when Moving as opposed to Fast? Eden

Sytass, I think you would get alot of mileage out of variations on that first, (second?) screen, the pastel map background with the red/yellow blend Gothic font and icons. The map is beautiful all by itself (!) and that red/yellow blend you chose is an absolutely perfect counterpoint to it, imho. Anyhow, I've looked for your screen and can't find it- it's not at Tom's, it's not at Kump's...? Do I need a different version for 800x600, btw? Eden

If BTS says it doesn't cheat, then it doesn't, AFAIC. Above and beyond given the befefit of the doubt to someone I don't know, say "Charles", the issue of whether the program cheats is in a very different context here- this is CMBB. This is not Civilization III, where I have no doubt that the program cheats- there is not even a "no bias" setting there. The desire of all is to have this game be completely historically accurate, as far as it can be done. So if the AI did cheat, it would no longer be an accurate representation of what that battle should have been like. It just doesn't "fit" the whole idea in this game. The AI could certainly be better, but to have it resort to cheating is clearly going down a road which leads to historically inaccurate behaviour. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, As Far As I'm Concernedum. Eden

Exact ditto. But I can't make a sad face, since it's always been excruciating just to get those guys in range in the first place! Eden

Yes it's been said before, but as a noobie who is therefore somewhat objective, (having no clue which camp is right!), I haven't yet felt that what I'm calling Winterhawks Conjecture was really put to rest. L4Pilot has some fresh views and good points, I think. Especially the Withdrawal order- if it's true that CMBB's Withdraw means "Drop your gun, poop your pants and run" then it would be nice to have the other, more orderly kind. One of Engel's points might be summed up by saying, "Why is it all or nothing?". Seems reasonable, right? So how's this: If the unit is panicked, let me give him an order anyway. There is a *chance* that the unit will succeed in following it. The more panicked, the lesser the chance. The more butt-saving, the better the chance. Eden

It's not my post, my site, or my link, Mr Weiss. Now get some SLEEP or we're going to activate the CMBB-Quits-Functioning-After-Midnight-Local-Time-As-A-Service-To-The-Very-Young-And-The-Very-Old feature in your copy. Eden

Y'all who get "page not found" remove the last period after "yadda.html" ( D'oh! ) Mark Gallear- I mean the ones which are similar to a small photograph, a painting, a rendering, do not work as well as the truly "iconic" ones. The "SS" looks better than the *skull*, etcetera. To me. They're just too dang small for those *picture* types to work. They're too small for anything but simple black and white or three or four color *design* type of icons. Know what I mean? Eden

How is this different than what The Scenario Depot offers now? Designers can host their own scenarios on their own sites, if they wish, or send them to me to host. How can The Scenario Depot be better organized? You can sort alphbetically, by Newest, or perform a search on just about any field in the Synopsis. I'd appreciate a better idea of what you mean by Yuk.</font>

Well I'll try to remember that for scenarios by that wwb_99 guy, but I won't assume that for anyone else. I played a scenario which I couldn't possibly in my wildest dreams imagine winning; it makes Jaegermeister look like a cakewalk. Directive #3 I could at least *imagine* winning... somehow. But I see reviews of that scenario posted later, like "Hey- cool scenario dude. Nice little fight. Sweet aftertaste, with a fruity bouquet and good balance." What am I going to say then?!? Ha! Eden

I have contributed a +2 "downloads" which are in fact completely bogus. I liked the look of scenario "X", and clicked on the download. It went to Tom's HQ, the front page, asking me whether I preferred English or did I want to try my chances with German for once. I said "Aw, heck- where is it now? I know he's got them categorized by year... what year was it...?" ( Then, for some reason, the same exact thing happened again. ) It was late, I said to heck with it and went and got another one. Bad. Don't like. How does that reflect on my ability as a commander?? It doesn't- it's just *there*. Maybe they get toasted, maybe they don't. Even worse is when reinf pop up already under fire, *sitting* on a road! Aargh! In a similar vein, for me, my forces should not be in contact on the first turn- the presumption is that the meeting begins... well, before contact, right?!? Now to all those designers who are thinking, "My scenario doesn't do that", I would like to say, "Have you tried your scenario with the AI *free to place units*? (ahaaaaa!)" One more thing which I felt didn't really reflect on my abilities in a scenario- that enemy *plane*. I was playing a scenario, I have no anti air ability, my tanks are kicking butt... then all of a sudden some plane comes by and takes out a tank. Well... ok- I know it's supposed to be historically accurate and all that. But look- the net effect of that plane was just like rolling the dice- maybe you lose a tank, maybe you don't. I dunno, but it just seemed kind of... arbitrary. Well I do have an idea, and it would be extremely easy, or else the programmers have arranged themselves in a completely terrible way, which I can't believe given their accomplishments. Ciao, Eden

Pshaw. I guess I can't say we're all adults here (someone claimed to be 17 the other day), but how's this- we're not dense. Sure, we can see understand that vested interest situation there... so what? So if a designer wants to review another designer's scenario, he could just begin the review with, "the following review is by a fellow designer". Good enough! If its so difficult to get reviews from Joe citizen then why be so strict with the whole thing? The numbers ratings are kind of silly anyhow, it's what the person says that is of value, imho. I could have reviewed a scenario the other day which I would have given a 10 briefing, but was otherwise unplayable. So it has an overall rating of... 10?!? Ridiculous, right? Eden

Yes it is, yes it is... But you realize, of course, that the relevant point which that fact doesn't change is that you had to tell me that personally! It might not be the best site to advance your collective agenda, therefore. Yes, me too. Well it's reviewed now, but don't worry, your hint is not lost and I've long ago promised my superego to go out there and review all the non-CD ones for which I don't have a completely dismal experience. I've posted sorta kinda one so far- Red Parachutes. Halfway through I realized that the "Replayability" totally depends in that scenario, on whether the scouts that come will come from the same exact place each time... If they do, it's only truly great once; if they can come from completely different points on the map, then it's a truly replayable one. I haven't found a way to edit that review, it raises the question of what happens if I review it again- will it wipe out the first one, (good), or add a second one? Either way, I guess it means I should hold off on a review until I have complete facts, which would usually mean playing it twice, which means more delay and forget, which means... Anyhow, Eden

No actual ideas, as such, but imho the insignia type of icons work better than the little picture types. Eden

LOL!! Thanks for stopping by; CMBB of course- the Wargame o' Champions! Well, you're "too late", I've already reinstalled, but I'll tell you a few things, because it really looks to me like a bug which could and should be addressed- let me explain and that statement will be specifically clear. Too late to try QBs- it was any saved game, any op, any scenario. But there's more information than just that. The telling sequence was this: 1) First, load "large" operation saved game; die. It went through "Loading Graphics..." for quite a long time, maybe it even finished that part and was ready to go on to the next, then it died. With just that first crash, the supposition that it was a high memory requirement related programmatic bug is very natural. Right? So obviously that's where I gave CMBB 140M rather than 100M and try again. 2) Try again with more memory, but crash again. But NOTEZ BIEN- it crashed in "Loading" again, but THIS time EVEN EARLIER. 3) Do Frantic things like try another op, another game, a fresh scenario I've played a thousand times, toss out prefs file, restart... Still crashes *early* in "Loading", and sometimes even the splash screen fails to draw. Now- my point: What this very clearly implies is that there was a STATIC CONDITION BETWEEN PROGRAM LAUNCHES WHICH IS NON-RECOVERABLE. It doesn't prove that, but it's a pretty strong implication. At a minimum, there is a programmatic bug in what appears to be a high memory requirement situation. Possibly that bug caused the application to modify it's own code, but that's a real stretch. No, as I say, it seems hard not to believe that somehow in the coding there is use made of a static written file on the drive during the loading process (?) which is non-recoverable, id est, if it gets corrupted during this execution, it will crash you from now on. Well, that's my hypo, anyhow. And if it works fine after reinstalling, (which it does!), then that implication gets REALLY strong. Too late, sorry. Absolutely not. Nothing's changed on this iBook for months. OS 9.0 , nothing fancy installed, no strange INITs, no yadda yadda. 160M of RAM, 161 with Virtual Memory, no RAM disk, Disk Cache is the default 5120, which it *strongly* advises you not to change unless you know what the heck you're doing. Wha ? Are you thinking Windoze? Well thanks for taking an interest anyhow. I will certainly answer any questions I can, but for this time, this forum was *crawling* this morning, (just me?), like it was under a denial of service attack, so I felt like I had to reinstall. Eden

Previously working fine. The other day I loaded a "Large" Operation, I looked at it, said "Oh Sh*t!", and just saved the game and quit. Today I went to load that game, and the program "crashed" in loading graphics. An unusual crash, more like a call to ExitToShell()- no muss, no fuss, just all of a sudden the program is gone. I thought- OK, that Op is just too big. I increased the memory from 100M to 140M; same. Long story of hypotheses blown away short, I threw out the prefs file, restarted, (something I hadn't done in six months)... It's not that file, it's not just Ops, it's anything- even tiny scenarios- anything. Very strange. Very...disconcerting. I'm sure someone will tell me to reinstall, and I suppose I will. But there should be something else I can throw out rather than go through the whole six hours of installing...? Also disappointing are the other posts I found when I searched, none of which have a response from tech support. Bummer. Eden [ November 11, 2002, 11:42 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ]

I'm with Stellar- it's always a great surprise, and when I say "Dang! I didn't get a single Jeep!", why, I kinda feel like I'm facing something a real commander does, ya know? Also, I *swear* I've never had a boring QB with all Random, (except I pick my force). Anyhow- for those in the other camp- OddJob, you may want to search for posts by "Bullethead". He just the other day posted a nifty long thing with a bitesize discussion on each setting. It was an "internal" post though- not sure you can search that way, but maybe someone here remembers where that was? Another post that should be linked to in the faq... Eden

By *provoking* a response. Sorry, I just had to add that last one percent! Eden

Done- I'm #66 Didn't pull it up though... Here: http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0,11114,522049,00.html Eden

SP@ILER, OF THE "YOU COULD TRY WHAT I DID, AT LEAST IT WORKED FOR ME-TYPE" • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • It's true- those two tanks... (You know what- I guess I should be saving my endgame files. Haven't been doing that, but it must have been a Major at least- attacker didn't manage squat) ...those two tanks behind the buildings are pretty sweet right where they are. I took another two, (the only ones?), and moved one way up the right, the other way up the left. Of course! The one on the right comes in sneaking "through" the woods, sorta, and pow! he'll catch someone by surprise easy. The one on the left- there's a little hill there where you can get a good hull down and I'm pretty sure I took out a couple with that tank. Also on the left is a river(?) or something, which allows a tank team to get all the way up to the front, and hey... mine got smashed, I think, but it's still worth the effort. Hth, Eden

Good- I feel like an idiot here often enough! Did you look at the review? "Learning Curve: About 1 Hour" And I've been at this for *weeks*!!!! That does it- I QUIT!! Eden

What?? I posted a response to a *different* thread! Sorry. Eden [ October 29, 2002, 03:48 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ]

Bravo! Hear, hear, and all that. I've said it before- what a silly waste for a designer to go to all that trouble and then detract from it's enjoyability by not telling us what the intention is. Someone the other day posted saying that those entries at SD are mostly bogus, and that he would try to fix them at some point. Hopefully he will come back and tell us if and when that happens, but for now I guess we can't trust those recommendations. Sorry, but I can't remember the thread name or anything... Eden

Whiner, not whinner. A whinner- one who whinnies, like a horse. Separate cemetery (sigh) desperate For Christ's sake! Eden

HI!!!!!!!! My name is Eden Smallwood, and I am a GOD of Cemetery Hill!!! That's right, I got a ***DRAW****! Whew! Smokin'!! I managed to get all my vehicles to that point just inside the roadblock on the right, and they're ready to wreck havoc. But that took a mighty long time, and at turn 20, why... Game Over, Dude. If there were a small flag on each side, we could get a few Sudden Death turns, but there's just that big one... Dang! Eden