teotwawki1

Schrullenhaft, I'm using the same nVidia drivers that worked before...they are the 61.76...sorry for that confusion. Everything is default, nForce mb with lastest nForce drivers, haven't checked the BIOS, but I haven't changed anything since I first set this computer up. Video drivers are all default settings, haven't even opened it up except to change the refresh rate. No overclocking of anything, neither the CPU nor the 5700. I've just popped UT on here...will give it a quick stroll and see how it works. EDIT: ok, Black Hawk Down and UT run fine, no issues at all. I put West Front on here, forgetting that it won't run in XP....but that obnoxious Smackplay movie that crashed every other computer I've ever owned, played w/o a hitch. [ February 02, 2005, 06:51 AM: Message edited by: teotwawki1 ]

re the other 3d games, can't tell you right now...ostensibly, this is a "work" computer, but I'll have to through something else on here just to see if it works. Remember, with the old HD, it ran 3Dmark 2001 flawlessly...but I don't have that here in the offie either. It will take me 'til tomorrow to get some other 3d stuff on here to test.

Well, we're back to square 1. I got the new HD installed, with a full install of XP Pro in a record 18 minutes. Office 2000 in under 2 minutes. That's the good news...the bad news is, after a clean install of the nforce drivers, and the .71 , we're back the game locking up (screen freeze). This time, it was only about 5 seconds into the actual 3d part of the game. This is frustrating...I guess I can either choose a Radeon card, where I have no fog, but the game at least plays, or stick w/ Nvidia, and not be able to play the game...hmm..great choice. Or there's always option 3...mag dump!! A betaC into this puppy would relieve a lot of tension right about now lol. I guess I will try some even older drivers, and see if I can't find something that will work. In the meantime, there's alwasy ASL lol.

You're most probably right...this computer only has 256 megs of RAM, and the free disk space is right at 1mb. My own experience with XP is that when you get down around a meg of HD space left, performance can go south. Now, I have 3 computers at home that have 256mbs of ram, and they CMxx fine...none of the issues that I have here..I hardly ever hear the drive being accessed. The difference is they're all running relatively new drives, and there's lots of free space on the disks. I decided just to pop the 80gb drive in this machine...I'm sure it'll solve the issues I'm having with it.

The Russians were so good because they all rolled snake eyes on their spotting rolls...then they...er, pardon me...wrong game lol. Yes, some of the things that happen in the spotting arena are pretty silly. Hopefully that can be addressed in CM2.

I'm confused...you canna ken, or dinna ken the url system? either way, here's a truly pointless little thing you might find amusing...for folks who dinna ken only. http://www.lespagesauxfolles.ca/Book4/04LPAF82.htm

I went back to 61.76. I have only dabbled w/ CMBB for the last couple of days, but it's run ok the time or two I've tried it. For whatever reason, just about every program I'm in will access the bejeesus out of the HD...you can hear it churning away, and while panning around the map in CMBx, it'll pause momentarily about every 5 seconds while it does its thing. It's really quite annoying.

When I mentioned the age of the hard drive, I was thinking in terms of the seek time, spindle speed, buffer size and areal density, ALL of which effect performance, and all of which are pretty slow for this thing...it's a Caviar 8400, and we got it when 8400s were considered BIG. All of the defrags in the world aren't gonna turn a 10 year old hard drive into a modern 10,000rpm wunderdrive.

For me, it was a screen lockup/freeze thing...rolling back the drivers seemed to have solved the problem...I got all the way through a scenario with nothing bad happening. part of the problem is the age of this hard drive...when I upgraded the computer here at work, I just kept the old drive. It's down to a gig of free space, and it's slower than molasses in January lol. I just bought a spiffy new 80gb 7200rpm drive for one of my systems at home; I'll replace this one here in the office after I get the new one installed at home...I've got a 40gb coming out of the machine I'm putting the new one in, so I'll just use that here. That should solve some of the performance issues as well.

I'll try the older drivers...no other 3d games on this computer (work lol)...so I can't really try anything else. 3Dmark 2001 ran w/o a hitch, though, if that means anything.

Well, it figures...finally got the video card after waiting 2 weeks. It's a chaintech honest to god 5700, NOT an LE/SE/ or whatever the hell the other ones are. It installed fine...I tried to use detonator destroyer, but it still doesn't support XP...so I just went ahead an uninstalled the old nVidia drivers, installed the card, and then installed the 66.93 Detonators. Upon booting up CMBB, and admiring the FOG that I can now see, the damn game locked up about 30 seconds into me scrolling around the map. I tried it again, with 3 ready made scenarios, and one I did myself...locked up every time. Is there a better version of detonator drivers for CMBB. (I haven't tried this with CMBO yet, so I don't know if that's got the same problem. I don't know why it wouldn't, though...same graphics engine, right?).

Here, I posted this in another thread, but it might prove useful to you: Small arms, at range (no close combat): -900 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 30 seconds or less. -350 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less. -250 total “firepower” points of direct fire will pin a fresh squad solid in 1 turn or less. -900 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less. -450 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will pin a fresh squad solid in 2 turns or less. High Explosives: -50mm mortars will pin in 1 turn, will break/rout in 2 full turns (about 30 shots). -81-82mm mortar will pin with 1-3 direct hits, pin solid with 3-6 direct hits, and rout anywhere from 3-12 direct hits -blast value = 4, like the 20mmL55 gun, will pin in 20 seconds, rout in 1 turn (if HE fire is close enough to be accurate) -blast value = 45-50 will pin with 1-3 direct hits, rout in 2-6 direct hits -blast value= 50 + will pin and/or rout in 1-2 direct hits Other: -canister within 60 meters will rout in one shot -flame will rout with one direct hit -demo will break or rout with one direct hit -grenade bundle will pin or break with one direct hit What I can't seem to find is the table I've seen that has the blast damage for a bunch of different guns, all neatly collated so you could see and compare them.

cannon-fodder, don't forget that CM games play great over a lan...so if you have more than one computer and a 2 copies of the game, you can do that to. Sometimes it's great fun to have your opponent in the same room so you can belittle him in person lol.

There are TONS of mods for all the CM games. Most of the mod "packs" tend to be for CMBO, though. There are the SPR and SPI (Saving Pvt. Ryans and Ivan lol), and converted Ardennes packs for CMAK...probably some others as well. I haven't messed with any of them other than the Ardennes one. Believe it or not, there's even a mod to convert maps to look like Squad Leader maps, if you've ever played the seminal Avalon Hill board game. You will notice some folks have a certain idea of what the game "should" look like...and the whole idea of changing the look of the game will boil down to personal preference...what I like may make you nauseous hehe. I've been on a quest to make CMAK look more Western Europe myself; about the best I've been able to do so far is make it look a lot like CMBB hehe. Still, that's close enough for the atmosphere of Western Europe, I guess. Mods can be a chore to d/l and look at, but many of them have at least a preview pic to give you some idea of what they'll look like. Off the top of my head, to do what you want, you'll need the Ardennes pack, (which includes snow and non snow terrain),the ETO Fall and Summer trees,the CMBO grass mod, and some Normandy buildings. Use McMMM as your mod manager, as many of the CMAK mods are not CMMOS compliant. You can very easily install and uninstall mods this way. The grass makes a BIG difference...it's much darker and changes the look of the maps drastically. There are some wheat/other terrain mods that will help, but you just need to check the preview pix on those and see what you like. I also recommend the tracer mod..it allows you to choose different color tracers for each nationality. Very cool to me, I'm sure it's blasphemy to others lol. There's also a sound mod for CMAK that works great. If you look at the skickied "essential posts" thingy, there are some good tactics articles...I've looked at several of them recently, and I don't recall too many broken links. Also, poke around in the other CM forums (CMBO, CMBB), and check out the "tips and tricks" forum...lots of strategy in there. For your advances over open terrain, the more big HE (150mm or bigger) you can dump on your opponent, the better. Of course, you have to know where he's at, or make a pretty good guess. A minute or two of some big sh** dropped on the heads of the enemy, with smoke, can work wonders. [ January 21, 2005, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: teotwawki1 ]

Although I've yet to install/play them, there are indeed mods for CMAK to simulate WWII Pacific theater, Korean War, and Vietnam era battles.

Thanks for the replies...it makes sense, I guess...as I normally design my own battles whereby the attacker gets a whole lot more points than the defender for play balance.

What can I say...I've been playing CMBO since a month or two of it's release...I like the look of it...so get out the hammer, nails and cross already hehe. To me, CMBB and CMAK look soul-less out of the box...maybe sterile is a better word. Even with mods, they just don't seem to have the same "life" that CMBO does for me. Either way, I've had a slew of different terrain mods installed for CMBO, and I've just grown accustomed to them. It's personal preference, what can I say...some people actually think Renee Russo is an attractive woman, for example. *grin*

Nikalai, QB is Quick Battle, ME is Meeting Engagement.

Andrew, can't wait 'til they're up. Thanks for your hard work on all the mods you've done...they enhance the CM experience for sure!

I loved Ambush...I think I had all the different variants of it at one time. Like an idiot, I got rid of all my board games stuff about 6 or 7 years ago...before Ebay was such a force, and before I realized I'd want to play some of them again. In a small battle like you guys are describing, at one range will the snipers quit shooting their rifles? I saw on another thread it was 100 yards...so I'm assuming in order for these guys to engage each other, they have to be more than 100 yards apart?

ooops...double post. [ January 18, 2005, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: teotwawki1 ]

"Best" will certainly be in the eye of the beholder. I'd suggest you head over to cmmods.com, register, head into the CMBB mod section, then just sort by "terrain", and look for grids. Almost all of them have a preview picture to scope out. FWIW, I'm using the Captian Wacky one.

Speaking of fusils, perhaps the worlds most famous fusil is the Fusil Automatique Leger, or FAL. At one time or another, over 90 countries fielded the FAL,including many NATO countries. It has been called the Free World's Right Arm. It's a must have for enthusiasts of the dreaded EBR. We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

Mine came yesterday, so hopefully everyone else who's waiting will have theirs shortly as well.

Found it...it was in one of the posts on the "essential posts" list. Thanks to Walpurgis Nacht: Small arms, at range (no close combat): -900 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 30 seconds or less. -350 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less. -250 total “firepower” points of direct fire will pin a fresh squad solid in 1 turn or less. -900 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less. -450 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will pin a fresh squad solid in 2 turns or less. High Explosives: -50mm mortars will pin in 1 turn, will break/rout in 2 full turns (about 30 shots). -81-82mm mortar will pin with 1-3 direct hits, pin solid with 3-6 direct hits, and rout anywhere from 3-12 direct hits -blast value = 4, like the 20mmL55 gun, will pin in 20 seconds, rout in 1 turn (if HE fire is close enough to be accurate) -blast value = 45-50 will pin with 1-3 direct hits, rout in 2-6 direct hits -blast value= 50 + will pin and/or rout in 1-2 direct hits Other: -canister within 60 meters will rout in one shot -flame will rout with one direct hit -demo will break or rout with one direct hit -grenade bundle will pin or break with one direct hit