Erik Springelkamp

A configuration database. Your Mac has something similar, but it is a mess of 1000's of separate config files :-)

You wrongly assume that there is a relation between price and value :-)

The content of swear words is culturally determined, and generally related to the great taboo. They can have a relation to religion, but illnesses are also common - especially here in the Netherlands: kanker-typhys-tering-zooi, excrements: German Scheisse, English Sht, sexual, here we use 'Kut' a lot. But it seems important for their effectiveness that they are somehow shocking. As a non-religious person I generally don't use swear words that relate to religion. But if I do, you can be d***^b^b^b pretty sure that something really unpleasant happened to me. And that is generally the message swearing expresses. I didn't allow my children to use heavy swear words at home when they would be used for just appearing tough, but when there would be a real reason to use them, I didn't bother.

They didn't 'cut' that feature, because CMx2 is a new game that inherited nothing from CMx1. They didn't 'implement' that feature, because there were so many more important features to implement.

With these Combat Mission registry entries, you could never measure the difference in any kind of performance test, even if there were 100 times as many of these.

I only believe you if you tell me that while hitting a piece of furniture hard with your bare toe.

I did a search through the registry of my windows machine, and the only registry entries Combat Mission (also old versions) makes are an entry for the un-installer, an application-path, probably used by the patches, and of course the entries for the start-menu. And of course there are all those references from other programs, like Adobe acrobat, who remembers I read the manual, the explorer that remembered I browsed the game data, zip-programs that remembered I unzipped a mod, etc, etc. In a modern windows system the basic registry entries of Combat Mission are completely negligible. It is fortunately not written in Visual Basic with 100's of COM components that have to register themselves and that could lead to fcked up systems.

Why not? The demo doesn't pollute your windows, as far as I know, it only takes a bit of disk space. Its effect on your operating system is minimal, as is proven by the fact that you can just copy the directory and then the game works from the new directory. It is a very clean installation, and the demo's don't install any drm devices.

That is what a market is. An unstable market offers great opportunities for profit, so it is in the interest of traders to operate in an unstable market. Buyers and sellers of the end-product on the other hand would be better off with a stable 'market', but then it wouldn't be a 'free' market any more. Long term sustainable growth depends on planning, but unfortunately we are too stupid to do it well. Always some unforeseen circumstances that spoil you carefully planned scheme. Or else corrupt people playing the system. And there are always people who will work their way towards the place where they can game the system. That is what power is all about.

Sorry about that. I couldn't resist my evil self.

It is of course mostly a function of band-with. VNC used to send full bitmaps of the screen, but maybe they have improved a bit. But until they implement a fully OpenGl compatible virtual screen device, I don't see any chance for a decent performance. But of course these iPads could be a driving factor for developing such a device. Then it would still not be an iPad application, but your iPad would be a terminal for your real game computer.

I am pretty sure it cannot be done. Otherwise only one player - the one launching the battle - would need the full game, and his opponent could always just use the demo. That is why I still have the CMA and CMSF demo installed, to play with possible recruits.

VNC and a fast update of the screen don't go together.

Demo scenarios and game scenarios are not compatible.

But all those things are necessary consequences of a free market. The faulty presumption of economic theory is that people react rationally in their own interest. However, in reality people are highly emotional in a market situation, and that emotion is the most important short term driving factor for the market. It is a biological imprint of the working of our mind. One can also show the same behaviour in related animals. Profit and loss, long term and short term, they are all judged in a non-rational, non-linear way by our brains.

They have planned to release the PC and Mac version at the same time. However, last minute problems have delayed the Mac version by 6 weeks.

No, it doesn't work. You will have to use the demo too, if he is playing the demo.

With a few very large players there is no free market. And a real free market tends to create that situation of a few very large players, who will then own and distort the market. Free market theory is fundamentally flawed, and can only function with a lot of patches^b^b^b regulations.

Are you serious?

The question is not, bailing out nations, but bailing out banks. For a nation it can be profitable to do a debt reconstruction with partial write-off of the debt, see a lot of South American nations. But in the EU, all the major banks of the 'rich' countries have bought loads of debt of the 'poor' countries - because of the high interest. If that debt would be a - partial - write-off, it would be those banks who got into serious trouble. So once again, banks are taking the profit, but expect the tax-payers to pay the losses. And governments support that once again.

The vulnerability display is a coarse approximation. Real damage is calculated with much more variables. But there are halftracks with armour and without armour. A 'halftrack/light vehicle' will reference unarmoured halftracks, I suppose.

Kill the operator. Block LOS from operator to device. Use artillery on the device.

My experience with newbies is that they often forget to de-select before selecting the next unit, which can give comical results if they try to give a bunch of units movement commands, and it results in the first unit running back and forth.

Yes, I have two, both grown up now, and I do have grand-children. But there is all that noise of shots and explosions, and people screaming when hit. Well, just look at the enthusiasm for the Naval guns. There are pixeltruppen in that area, and then they are dead. Anyway, the OP wasn't talking about children accidentally being around, he wanted to play the game with is child (grandchild?). I just can't see how a scream of agony can be more innocent than the F-word (which children use amongst themselves plenty, they just tend to be embarrassed when it is used by grown-ups when it is made a tabu :-)

I really don't get it. Blowing people to pieces is fine, but foul language....