Sneaksie

Room to room - yes, floor to floor - no (most houses will have only ground floor because of addon setting). Interface for changing positions is in the works now and most likely it will be done like present infantry management in trenches (automatic if you leave them be, but you can micromanage everything and send soldiers where you want to).

http://ww2.games.1c.ru/?action=screenshot New building models are being developed, so house itself is 'blank' and untextured on these screenshots. As you can see, building roof is removed when camera is near and you can observe troops inside. Infantrymen enter houses by ordinary 'Move' command, automatically occupy positions behind windows, etc. They can also assault a house occupied by the enemy.

For example, nearby tree blocks part of the hill for your gun and it can't see anything behind it. But if your other units see infantry on that part of the hill you can order your gun to shoot through the tree at the infantry - it can't see them, but it will shoot with reduced accuracy. Thus your gun has LOF (tree can't stop gun projectiles), but no LOS, it's like it shoots at general direction of the enemy. Unit ignore only trees or bushes at that distance, other obstacles are not ignored. In general - yes, you can. In addition, there are distances at which unit is always 'spotted' because of sound, for infantry it's 3m. Thus a soldier will know that there is enemy soldier behind a stone fence if distance between them is less than 3m and will lob a grenade there. All these parameters are in visibility.ini too. In addon sound will be handled in a more complex manner though. Right now grass doesn't affect visibility, but in addon it will provide concealment (it's planned).

LOF indicator is the mouse cursor, when it is lit (red), unit has LOF to that point, and can't fire when it's black (it has middle positions too). It's possible to have LOF but no LOS (blind ground attack is possible with reduced accuracy). Green (for now) part of the LOS line actually shows the area where unit sees through trees and bushes. This small zone differs for unit types (only 5m for tanks, 10m for guns and infantry). It allows to hide behind trees and bushes (you will see through it while enemy will detect your gun (for example) through this bush only at very close distance if it doesn't shoot). The system is kinda complex, because your hidden gun becomes visible after shot for some time (because of sound, smoke, etc.). It all depends on obstacles too, enemy unit will see your gun after shot only if there are not too many obstacles between it and enemy unit. In short, in this case enemy unit--------------------bush-bush-gun fires enemy will see the gun, while in another case enemy unit-----------bush----------bush-gun fires enemy won't see it. Naturally, big bushes are much better for hiding than trees because it's difficult to hide a 3m wide gun behind 50cm wide tree trunk:) Also, there are many parameters (for example, 'revealing' of the firing unit heavily depends on weapon type - pistol, rifle, gun, etc.) and they are defined in visibility.ini (which means they are moddable).

There are several 'work in progress' screenshots showing new 'fire' command line with LOS/LOF indication: http://ww2.games.1c.ru/?action=screenshot&groupid=52 [ October 11, 2007, 07:37 AM: Message edited by: Sneaksie ]

I play TOW with 1GB ram, runs fine.

Good work! You should make the texture with vehicle numbers more fuzzy and dirty though (it's too bright and clear compared to main texture right now).

Yes, if other components of your system meet the requirements:)

In one of the patches for current version, maybe even in upcoming one (in case of lucky turn of events).

LOS will be shown by color-coded 'fire' line like in CC series.

Yes, in fact area fire usually is the most effective way to deal with enemy guns from large distances. Basically you try to see where gun smoke appears when it shoots and order your tanks /guns to fire at that spot or slightly further. If you've played CC, you probably know this tactic very well;)

Darwin00uk, we (DMG and me) don't know anything about refund because we are developers from 1C.

Fixed in the upcoming patch:)

In addon you'll be able to do that

Possible in editor and multiplayer. After release of new multiplayer patch any engagements will be possible in MP with up to 8 players, for example 2 human US and 2 AI France against 1 German AI, 1 human USSR and 2 human UK. Fratricide (choosing the same country by opposing players) is also possible.

AFAIK english version now only available from Battlefront as digital download or by mail.

Quick mission generator is planned to be released in next patch after MP one. There is no night battles (theoretically you can make them in editor, but they will look unrealistic).

Pathfinding =============================== Drawing a line showing path chosen by unit is a interesting idea, but problem is that path calculated at first after issuing order is very crude and approximated, thus it will not help you (it will show very ineffective way to the target, which then will be improved dynamically). Keeping fallen trees on battlefield =============================== We do want to implement that, but it will be planned if certain decisions concerning entire tree system will be made (it depends on many factors). More news on this issue may be available on next week. Beta version of the MP patch is ready, but it will be play-tested and most probably further improved in ~2 weeks time while BFC will decide what will be included in it (as soon as BFC says 'OK' it will be released). It's not neccessary bad, because we'll try to include some new fixes and features into it. As soon i'll have new infromation, i'll tell you. Addon at first was scheduled to be ready before the end of the year, but the decision was made to fully support and improve current version of the game. Because of that (making this patch and most probably another ones after it) addon release, i'm afraid, will be delayed by 1-2 months.

New terrains such as Africa and Pacific may be implemented if a new (post-addon) istallment of TOW will be about battles in these regions:) There is zero information about it now.

New aircraft with different loadouts including bombs and rockets are planned for addon.

SS_KONIG, thank you very much for finding the solution for a number of TOW users which have ATI Mobility Radeon laptops. I've made a new topic describing your solution and pinned it. I'm from 1C, not BFC, but it's a pity i didn't know such toll exists and couldn't help you. http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=66;t=000324

Because ATI no longer provide driver support for their Mobility Radeon chipsets, users of such notebooks must rely on their laptop vendors for updated drivers, which usually don't provide drivers good enough for a number of graphic-intensive games. TOW uses OpenGL graphics which are usually poorly supported on such laptops with default drivers and the game may not function at all. Luckily, a third-party tool was found by our forum member SS_KONIG, which fixes exactly this kind of problems with ATI Mobility Radeon chipsets in a number of games and can be found here: http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/ In short, it modifies new Catalyst drivers from ATI to make them installable on your laptop with ATI Mobility Radeon. There is a step-by-step installation guide provided.

The solution for now is to change 'ShaderQuality=3' string in ww.ini in game folder to 'ShaderQuality=2', but this may result in other minor graphical artifacts. You must remove 'read-only' attribute from ww.ini file to change it.

Wait, guys, i didn't say that BFC is 'holding' the patch. What i meant is that BFC will decide when it will be available, probably based on result of it's testing, that's why i can't answer your question about patch release date.

Gcoat It's not really a decision, simply TOW was developed for WinXP as many other games. Currently game usually works in Vista (if there are suitable drivers installed), but mission editor doesn't work due to incompatibility in it's libraries. Of course it may be made compatible by rewriting them, but this will require up to month time which currently we don't have:) We plan to improve vehicle pathfinding behavior in addon, but, as you can see, each way has it's problems. Currently, if we set their behavior to drive around trees as armored cars do, they will start to turn and expose their weaker sides to the enemy, which i'm sure everybody will not be happy with:) It's a pity, because non-aggressive movement mode took much time to develop (driving along roads priority, avoiding obstacles, etc.) and currently is not being used.