Sanok

Does anyone have a quality sound mod for the US M1 Garand and carbine, instead of the silly clunking sound that's in the game now? Thanks.

When bringing up a CM game, is the computer cooling fan supposed to kick on? Whenever I play BO, BB, or AK, the fan kicks on, often changing speeds while playing. When I minimize or close out the game, the fan goes off, but kicks back on as soon as I bring up a game. I did a test, where I brought up BO, then minimized right away, then brought it back up, then exited the game. Every time the game came on the screen, the fan kicked on, but shut off when I minimized. When I exited, the fan went super loud for a second, then stopped. It startled me, it so loud. It never did that before. I'm concerned this may damage the fan, which could then damage the computer. My previous computer, an eMachines with XP, died because the power supply overheated. The fan did the same thing with that computer. I have a Compaq now, with Vista. When I played five or six years ago on an eMachines with ME, the fan never did that. Is something bad happening here?

Jason, it just comes down to me not being able to get my overwatch set up properly, as well as being able to properly assess a good attack route on the map. I'm playing a QB now where I've done some things from your articles, and am doing better. I just need to be more patient, and keep practicing. Thanks.

No. I suppose I should try that. CMBO and CMAK both install and load with no problems. Not recently, but at the time this happened, the surface was fine. A good cleaning wouldn't hurt. I never considered that. I'm wondering if he would do it. When the outage happened, the disk was in the tray, the game was loaded, and I may even have been doing a CMBB turn, if I remember correctly.

This is the problem I continually have. I can scout and advance, but once I get to the place where I know I've got to force my way into where the defender is, my problems begin. I've come to the conclusion, it's because I don't have enough overwatch in place. It just seems like it takes too long to get it where it needs to be. I also tend to be extremely overcautious with my tanks. Same as above. Your article was quite good, and some of it I already knew. The main theme I saw being emphasized, was overwatch. I simply need to get it in place sooner. I still don't see how all of what you wrote can be fit into the turn limits of a quick battle or scenario. Perhaps I'm just too cautious and too deliberate.

Last summer, a power outage in my neighborhood that lasted one second (the power went off, but came right back on), seems to have damaged my CMBB disk. The disk was in the CD tray when the outage occurred. Since then, I can't get CMBB to load. I got the bright idea of deleting it from the hard drive, so I could reinstall, but that didn't work. I put the disk into the tray, but nothing happens. CMBO and CMAK are fine. Short of purchasing a new game, is there anything I can do? [ December 10, 2007, 10:02 PM: Message edited by: Sanok ]

This sounds easy reading it in a post, but how does one actually do it in a CM battle? The terrain affects the ability to set up overwatch. Mortars and MGs move slowly. When faced with a turn limit, how do I accomplish this? Needless to say, I'm not very good as the attacker, and I'd *really* like to learn to become better at it.

Believe it. BFC's stance from Day One of release was "Don't let the door hit you on your posterior on the way out." They wrote the game they want, which is fine. They don't much care if you (or I) want it or not. -dale [/QB]</font>

Isn't the whole point, designing the games the paying customers want to play? I wonder how well CMSF would be doing, if it was the very first CM game, without the loyal customers buying it, simply because of BFC's reputation with CMx1.

You mean Combat wasn't the best? :eek:

I have Vista and experienced a driver display error. This is something known and common to many PC games and not just CM. A Windows update came that eventually fixed the problem, though it crops up every so often. The user interface would scramble and the game would freeze, with the screen sometimes going black. You would need to hit ALT+ESC, then wait a few minutes for the drivers to reset. With Vista, I can play BO and AK, but have a lot of problems playing BB.

Personally, I think the reason BB sold less than BO and AK sold less than BB, was the drastic change in the infantry modeling. Yes, BB and AK is more realistic, but a lot of players don't know how to use realistic tactics. Even a lot of players that have done CMx1 for years, can have difficulty playing well. People liked the BO uber infantry. I have regular opponents that hate BB and AK, just because they can't enjoy the game with the more realistic infantry modeling. It appealed to the more hardcore wargamer, but not to the rest. I believe it's really as simple as that. If you go by what BTS is trying to tell us, the CMx1 game concept HAD to be abandodned, reinvented and made RT if there was ever a successor to the CMx1 series. The evidence from "ecomonic realities" of the CMx1 series seems to support and vindicate their case for doing so. This statement for me is both counterintuitive and extremely vulnerable to mis-interpretation and faulty analysis. I think there is perhaps a more sinister resaon why this may be the economic/market reality BFC state. As a matter of fact if you look at these figures purely through "rose coloured glasses" and apply basic marketing/economic principles/reasoning, you could quite well conclude/reason the following: 1)The market obviously liked and bought CMBO the most thus it became the most commercially successful CMx1 game produced. 2) Sales dropped significantly with each successive CMx1 release indicating that at least owners of the original game had lost interest in the CMx1 series or were put off or not impressed enough by any of the attempts at introducing numerous new engine enhancments and feature additions made to the game each time and so consequently purchased the game in fewer numbers. POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS: 1) Market was saturated and satisfied with the intital CMx1 release of CMBO. Subsequent releases of CMBB and CMAK did not justify to either prospective new customers or owners of previous titles that they were worth buying or of any better value than CMBO. 2) BTS/BFC strayed from a winning formula. With each successive CMx1 release, BTS/BFC made changes to the game which made the product of less value and worth to their existing customers/prospective customers. They in effect killed their market by reducing the quality of the game with each succesive release of CMx1 making it less attractive for customers to buy than each preceeding release. NOTE: Unlike the Total War Series or even the Madden football series, BTS/BFC do not know how to repackage the basic same game concept and make it more commerically succesful or at least commercially sustainable than previous releases. I guess they are not good at knowing what their market really want or knowing what a good thing is. Can you see what I mean? Something isn't making sense here. This economic/market reasoning/rationale is totally justified if you look at it at face value. However, I do not for one minute believe that the gaming market is/was more interested in early CMx1 offerings (CMBO #1) than the later CMx1 offerings (CMBB, CMAK). There is something else going on here. The thing I believe that might be the most important issue being overlooked here and resulting in a convincing case against CMx1 being "commercially viable" is ....software piracy! Being such a small independant game development company, I have always been concerend about their vulnerablility to the software piracy of their games. I believe with CMBO, they did the right thing. The game was exclusively available directly from BTS only. There was almost an unwritten undertanding between their loyal (niche!) customers and BTS that they would NEVER undermine the value of the game (and the economic rewards entitled to BTS) by either freely distributing the game to friends, let alone encouraging it's pirated distribution by whatever channels were available at the time. It certainly helped at the time that internet data transfer/volume costs and speeds were unlike how they are now, making downlaoding of even several hundred megabytes a chore, unlike how it is today in this broadband world when several gigabytes can be easily and effortlessly copied in a few minuutes. But this relationship they had with their market was not one that they could count on indefinitely to keep them safe from the ecconimic pitfalls of software piracy on a small software company if they ever hoped of expanding their market and reaching out beyond the small niche one they had captured to a much bigger and diverese market. I can't recall exactly when, but BFC eventually made the brave decision to also start distributing, marketing and selling CMx1 the way the "big boys" of the industry do: through third party retail outlets. When they started doing this, they kind of lost control of their product and it's market value, though it certainly exposed CMx1 to a whole sector of the market that would probably have never heard of the game, let alone ever know or care about what BTS stood for (yes they did once have a mission statement) or how protective their traditional niche market was of the game. By this stage CMBO and the CMx1 concept had started to attract suprisingly fantastic accolades from both gamerd and the media. The latest CMx1 was certainly a game to check out!! But it was a double edged sword. The exposure had both the potential to make people take notice of the product and be interested in the game concept, while at the same time making the game appear to the general public as "just another PC game" that is probably worth a look but why spend the money they ask for it (after all, it looks kind of unproffessional and graphics are tacky looking, compared to other stuff on the shelf (from much BIGGER gaming companies)) when you can download it at home in 1/2 hr off Bittorent. And I believe herein lies the demise of the CMx1 as seen by BFC as a commercially viable concept. CMBO/CMBB/CMAK almost became the IDEAL type of game to pirate. Relatively small file size for a game. Virtually no anti-piracy protection. Unlike many other games, a pirated version of the game was fully functional for multiplayer gameplay (unlike say most server based games that require registered unique "product keys" for online game play). Considering the game graphically looks tacky/unpolished/dated etc. unlike the "mass produced" junk on offer from the larger gaming developers, one might even feel justified not paying the unusually high $ for it and instead put it on the "find pirate version" list. But probably most importaat of all. IT WAS A FREAKN AWESOME GAME TO PLAY!!!!!! So what I am suggesting is that perhaps BTS/BFC almost have themselves to blame for not "protecting their investment" and allowing CMx1 to become "just another game to pirate" whose market value subsequently saw it relegated to "baragain bin" status. This is a crazy/extreme/melodramaitc analogy but I can't help but see it this way: It is almost like they had this promising young little girl, who had so much potential, who was safe, loved and respected by everyone at home and the small local neighbourhood who knew her. They spent years instilling good wholesome values into her. Everyone believed she had something good to offer the world, they just had to see it. She was a little pimply and geeky in places but so are many awkward youngsters, especially those from a small town, and everyone was very protective of her. Still, everyone knew she would only become more beautiful with age, just give her the chance. So the day came to let her go off to the "big bad world" of the big city to fend for herslef and find her fortune, competing with all the other pretty girls from all over the country, hoping she will find and earn the respect, trust and value she had back home. But they did so without arming her with the knowledge or taking the proper precautions to protect her from and prevent her from being eaten up and taken advantage and used by the more unscruplulous elements that lurk in waiting in the hussle and bustle of the big smoke. There are lots of trips and traps in the cut throat world out there. People want to get something for nothing, and if you let them, they will. It was a mistake they would soon regret. Several years later, and it's a sorry sight. That same fantastic, beautiful girl, that had (has) so much more to offer, now finds herself exploited on the street corner, selling herself for a few dollars, in the company of what you could only describe as human tragics and misfits. She looks uptown at where so many other girls, superficially beautiful, with little substance and without a fraction of what she could offer, go about their busy day dressed in the latest designer gear, gainfully employed by cut-throat organisations that really just want something good to look at and play with (after all, that is what they have all come to expect). Her hope of ever emulating and reganing the respect and value she once had back home in this new world has been forever lost. Everyone knows she sells herself cheap (you can even get her for free is you know who to ask). She is just another one of those stupid small town girls that niavely thoguht she was "special" and though she was "going to make it" in the big smoke, but she trusted the wrong people who told her how much she was worth, and now peddles the street for a few dollars. Now she is just another one of those tragic downtown whores trying to make a living. Such a waste. The tragedy is this: How could they (BFC) have let this happen? </font>

BB and AK play on Vista, but there's a problem with the Vista display drivers. After a few minutes, the game screen goes black for a few seconds, then the user interface becomes distorted. Also, any words on the game screen become blank, white boxes. To fix this, you must minimize the game and wait for the drivers to reset. You can go back to the game, but it will happen again. This is a known problem that happens with other games, as well. Now, on the other side, I did get an update that seems to have fixed this problem, as it has happened only one time since I installed the update. Vista has also reduced the speed of my cable internet connection. If my old XP computer wouldn't have died horribly, I'd have never gone to Vista.

I just got a new computer that has Windows Vista Home Version. I can get BB and AK to play on it, but each time I insert a disk and start up the game, I've got to reset the screen resolution and hotkey parameters. This is the least of my problems. Vista won't let me place pbem files in the proper pbem folders. It says I need permission from the administrator to do this, which I assume is me, because it asks me if I want to place the game files in a folder named after me. How do I correct this?

Will BO,BB, and AK work with Windows Vista?