Streety

P.S. - Am I allowed to suggest to Win8 owners, if they can't get CMBB working, that they have a look at "Panzer Command: Ostfront"? Looks like a similar game to CMBB but uses a different graphics engine and only recently released. Maybe such competition might jog Battlefront to look at CM1 on Win8 after resolving any CM2 issues... P.P.S. - Jeeze, my new Compaq XP machine comes with a 2-year warranty! (I didn't know they did that). And just bought a refurbished 1600x1200 (non-widescreen) samsung. Back to the war, see ya guys......

Hiya Erwin - no, if you see the link in my previous post, Windows 8 doesn't have the XP emulator that Windows 7 does (gee, thanks Microsoft, another great step forward!). But that same link says you can load XP in a Virtual Machine on Windows 8 (but presumably they mean you have to buy an XP disk/licence to do so - not sure). Either way, it seems the Virtual Machine has only limited 3D support and would be an imperfect cure. Erwin - Are you saying you played the games successfully on Windows 8 from a flash drive? Yes, my shop-bought (well, Amazon) copy of "Combat Mission: Anthology" had the great advantage of not requiring the disks to be in the drive. Just found a new, cheap XP machine for sale (an ex-display, box-less model that still comes with a full 12-month "as new" warranty). Ker-ching! reel that baby in! There's also a few brand-spanking-new XP machines available (at least in the UK) in the form of twin-loads (XP and win7) and optional loads (you can choose XP if you want to) but they'll almost certainly have Direct-X 10 and newer graphics architecture that means no fog table emulation (aka "pixellated fog" I think) that CM1 fog requires. But at least all your old games will run, and maybe you can find a way to add an older graphics card - dunno.

Firstly, strictly speaking you can still buy a very few new Windows XP machines, yes NEW (not refurbished or second-hand), so you didn't "have" to buy Windows 8. Or else do as decimated550 says and just get an old second-hand XP machine that's dedicated to old games and do all your other on-line stuff on a new rig... ...But back to your problem. I've yet to read that the game won't run on windows 8 and will be sad to learn if it doesn't. Did you ever try it first without the 1.04 patch?? 1.04 was a specific Vista fix that might or might not also help with win7 or 8 if the game doesn't run properly on v1.03. Otherwise, it could be any of a number of issues - Tech Support might need more info, like what machine you have, its main specs, and graphics card. And sometimes other programs or settings can create conflicts that can require a lot of detective work. By "slide show" I take it you mean very slow or jumpy fps?? You could try turning down or otherwise tweaking some of your graphics card's properties. But I'd assume a new machine in 2013 should easily have the ommph to play CMBB, even if all the graphics settings are set to quality rather than speed (unless you are trying to play it on an under-powered portable). So have you tried these Administrator, Compatibility and/or Virtual mode solutions? http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-run-old-games-software-in-windows-8/ Might be worth a try. Hope that helps. Would be interested to know if you get it working ok on Win8.

Ok, I tried looking up exactly when the signal/flare hatch/port was introduced on the T-34, but without luck. However, I did get closer to an answer about flag signalling and the port in question. There are early-war main hatch photos such as this museum one: http://www.army.lv/photos/18331.jpg And this historical in-wartime one: http://www.e-reading-lib.com/illustrations/100/100678-_234.jpg And in the corner of each you can see a small hatch within the main hatch, which is probably the thing we're looking for. But the problem with such pictures is they don't tell us whether these things were original 1940, or introduced in 1941/42 and possibly retro-fitted to earlier versions. However, could the whole purpose of these hatches have been misconstrued? For some sources refer to these early-war features variously as "signal hatches", "signal ports", "flare ports", "signal/flare ports" or "signal/flare hatches", but never actually as "signal flag hatches". And so could people have mistakenly believed that by "signal" it meant that the platoon or company commander would stick his flags up through?? Whereas it may have just been for poking a signal flare through. And here you can see early-war Soviet tankers using flags (albeit not on T-34): http://www.rkka.ru/uniform/files/btv5.htm As you can see, in the main photo the commander has two flags. I've read that they used a combination of two or three simple plain-colour flags, like blue, yellow, and red, to convey a simple range of commands (like: follow me, left, right, forward, fall back, etc). And in a side photo you can see the commander sat on a tank signalling with such a flag. On a T-34, it's possible trying to imagine a commander using one flag through the small signal port, but not really good for giving directions with combinations of two flags - as it'd be very difficult to keep the two flags separated for clarity, without being able to hold them apart with both arms (or being able to wave them so that he could be sure his comrades could see them clearly, if no breeze, or no breeze in the right direction, made them clear). But it's probably all a very moot point because, as per my previous post, in combat such flares and flags were apparently rarely used, and no wonder: the small height of a small flag shoved through this hole could be very easily missed unless the commander unbuttoned and frantically waved his arms about too, and flags and flares quickly gave away the position of the command tank. Which explains the German accounts about early-war T-34s not using any various formations or tactics but just playing follow-the-leader or making massed rushes. So perhaps the best CMBB modelling of this early-T34 battlefield reality would be as it already stands in the game, i.e. to effectively have no in-communication status when buttoned down.

Apologies for the typo in para 1: "singal" should read "single", but I was unable to use the edit function.

I've read and learnt different to Kettler about the T34 signalling, in that the initial 1940 T34s (and possibly some or all those built in 1941?) did NOT have a dedicated signal/flare port but just had a singal heavy main hatch. http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=38 And that this meant signalling with flags in battle were indeed deadly for the commander, as he'd have to pop up (or rather, sit on the turret roof) and wave his arms and signal flags about. And so rather than do this under fire, they tended to play a simple follow-the-leader, like ducklings, without any formations or fancy tactics (according to german tankers who faced them). And so the game's in-communication hatch-open modelling is not as bad as you think. The signal/flare port might have appeared as early as late 1941 but I'm guessing it didn't appear until the 1942-built models. And even then, apparently only a few had them: http://www.wwiivehicles.com/ussr/tanks-medium/t-34-76-1942.asp Which you can see on the diagram here, as indicated feature number 8: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a-QlhQlYZXQC&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=t34+signal/flare+hatch&source=bl&ots=wNqeEmFbeR&sig=IZCxRUzRHq3z8K3I2WjIzufj7MA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eNcIUrm1OKf17AaA1oG4Aw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=t34%20signal%2Fflare%20hatch&f=false Maybe the idea for a signal/flare port came after feed-back from those 1941 battles, or maybe in response to the loss of radio production whilst factories moved east. Or maybe in response to feed-back that the initial radios (that only the command tanks had anyway) were pretty useless. Or maybe all these reasons. But by 1943-onwards, I'd read that most T34s had radios anyway, and better ones at that, and that many of the 1942-added ports (signal/flare, pistol ports etc) were done away with for simplicity, so maybe the signal/flare hatch was maybe only a rare creature tried in anger in mid-late 1942? Can't imagine flags poking out the hole would be all that visible/practical anyway, in the smoke and heat of battle, and flares would maybe give away position... Maybe I should repost this in CMBB section??

Blimey you might be older than me - I thought it was just that you didn't use moisturiser... Oh I don't do many smiley icony things either. But I'm always smiling on the inside. Right, where's me zimmer-frame, I'm off up the common with "betty" (my faithful pitchfork) to keep an evening watch-out for German paratroopers...

@redwolf Yes I, know. It seems you didn't see the lack of seriousness in my last message. @ altipueri Much Agreed. And at least I "know" XP, and so my nursed, cursed, aged and freezy, increasingly blue-screen-loving e-machines rig groans onward, each day could be it's last...

Other solutions to the stretched screen is to wear very strong reading glasses (back-to-front if necessary) or simply turn the screen at an angle to your line of view. And for fog you can either squint or drink too much (bad for your health of course) or tape a piece of tracing paper over the screen (two pieces for thick fog) leaving a gap at the bottom for the in-game interface of course. Or stick with my solution in the absence of Battlefront's no longer supporting CM1 (though they still sell it): I keep my cranky 4:3 WindowsXP rig going, purely for CM1! And you can keep plugging away at them Redwolf, but I'm still waiting for them to fix that other highly annoying error that goes all the way back to CMBO (and still hadn't been addressed by CMAK 1.03) - the random map roads problem (you know, where the game often fails to generate the correct country road bend where it meets a city street). With such basic failures one can only dream about a widescreen or revised fog (so try my cures!).

Now, now young scamp - don't start getting cheeky about not getting a simple answer when you were being too simple to look up the many CM1 threads that have already addressed your query. But perhaps it wasn't clear to you that I wasn't merely answering just you but offering general advice (that might be somewhere, but I hadn't spotted, in those threads) for anyone coming afterwards (who like you already have Win7 or some other new OS) to the effect that if one is unsure then one can test the situation very simply with the Line of Sight tool. And as for night fighting - well, for old gamers like me we tend to appear better-looking the darker it gets, and a gentleman wouldn't draw attention to it! Right, I'm off for a spot of tiffin and me afternoon nap - don't wake me unless the Zulus break through the outer fence - and even if they do, bloody-damn-well make sure you bring me an iced Pimms with my sword!

Hi Altipueri! Now come on old boy: load a game, select a flat open battlefield terrain with fog weather. AND SELECT NIGHT - because the effect is more pronounced at night and so much easier to detect. Select a unit and use line-of-sight to see how far it can see. At night it'd probably see no more than 50-55yds (fog) or about 25-30yds (thick fog), whereas on the same battlefield map-type on a clear night it'd be much further, probably 175-200yds. If line-of-sight is affected like this, the game is factoring in the fog effect whether or not your operating-system or graphics card (or game option selections) is displaying it. Smoke checking requires a tad more effort (and not all buildings, tanks or terrain catch fire or billow smoke and so not seeing it doesn't mean smoke isn't displaying properly) - but start a game (a nice clear day) and deploy smoke from a mortar (or better still from an off-map artillery observer), then 40 to 60 seconds after firing underway, use line-of-sight to try to see through the targeted area. You get the idea - you can check things with your line-of-sight tool because if line-of-sight is affected then the game is factoring in the effects of fog and smoke.

You're most welcome. Actually, I took a tile and started to de-grid it to see how much time it would all take: forget it, it'd take an age to do it nicely. A better idea may be to go back to the stock tiles and mimic the desaturations and rebalancing I employed (not easy, because I kept no record of all the numbers and passes made). Even then, there'd be no prior ungridded version of my light snow, so that'd have to be manually de-gridded (but the light snow grids are the least visible anyway). But, if I do get around to compiling my CMBO version later this year, I'll revisit the tiles - just ain't making promises. To anyone else reading this and potentially put off from trying the conversion, I just want to re-iterate that the 10m grids I use are more subtle than found in many mods: just visible enough to be useful when you pull back to view from tactical mid-ranges, but often hardly noticeable in close-up ground level viewing and when pulling right back to view the whole battlefield - at least that was my intention... Have a good summer guys and gals (if you're in the northern hemisphere), - I'm off to the beer garden....

You're welcome guys. Just popped back again to add to my previous advice: that if anyone did try to remove grid-lines as per my previous message, they'd also have to go back over some of the stretched parts, by copying and pasting unstrecthed portions onto at least some of the stretched areas in order to break up the pattern of the stretch marks, otherwise the stretches will sometimes show up when you view the ground from certain angles/distances. I'll be back if I get my CMBO conversion mod properly together (if anyone still plays it...), but right now I'm just happily deep into a huge solo play campaign and not modding. Adios Amigos

My apologies Fenris, but I got fed up bothering with the Forum (or rather, some of those within it) some time ago and so I missed your message. Your question has been asked before but possibly not in public - and I'm afraid the answer is no. I only ever play and work with the Caffino CMAK grid mods. The grids are very subtle, not like some ugly bold lines you'll see in some other mods. However, if you really want to get rid of them, you could do what I'd have to do: which is open each tile in MSPaint, select the rows and columns of squares in between each grid line, and drag them a couple of pixels wider to cover the grid lines. A laborious task I can't be arsed with. Never say never, of course, but I've no plans to be actively back on the Forum, and no plans to return to CMAK (I'm currently back into CMBO!), but if anyone has any question (or want to alert me to related Forum issue) they can email me directly using the address I give in all my mods readme files - I might reply to friendly or meaningful messages. In closing, I'd just like to say that I appreciate you have a choice of weapons to be slaughtered with by the enemy, and wish to thank you on behalf of my few remaining brain cells for choosing to flee with Streety's mods. Have a nice day and enjoy your war!

Oh, ASL Veteran etc, I'm not seriously expecting another CM1 patch! Just making an ironic statement. But it wasn't unrealistic to have expected Battlefront to have further fixed the AI and the random map roads problem back years ago before they stopped supporting CM1. As to Doug Williams and Zatoichi etc, if you act like a rude attack hound or a troll, or otherwise act uncivilly, expect to be called on it. I didn't lower the tone, but merely pointed out that others have. And if you're deeply frustrated that someone has posted yet again on a subject that has been previously discussed and fully countered in another thread, then just direct them to that thread instead of being uncivil or rude, or else just ignore thread, as I shall now do. And a small shame on Battlefront administration for not insisting on keeping some of you guys better mannered.

Well, I do have some sympathy with Beelzeboss and others in other CMBN threads who dare to criticise CMBN, for some of the CMBN crowd can (at times) have a rude, intollerant, pack-mentality response to ANY criticism (criticisms which can be sometimes found elsewhere if they read reviews of CM games on other sites). But, Beelzeboss, in response to your earlier post: yes you have the right to criticise, but Battlefront don't have to give you an account to say so on their Forum which (I assume) they pay to maintain and administrate. CMBN attack-pack droids/trolls should accept that there are several precedents for other games which offer free upgrade-patches - i.e. which don't just fix errors (because the game came out too early) but add new features - others have listed some, and Matrix Games' Panzer Corps v1.11 comes to mind as another example (which came out in the past year ahead of Afrika Corps). However, the Panzer Corps series charge for their Grand Campaign add-ons, which no doubt many would see as unfair. For Battlefront, like Matrix and every private company, are playing "supply and demand" to make a profit. Games companies manage (massage?) their fan base in different ways to achieve those ends, and adjust their pricing/patching policy and priorities accordingly. Like they say, "if you don't like it, don't buy it", which is why I won't buy CMBN. But the CMBN-pack ought to at least appreciate that these pricing amounts are not insignificant to some people, that some other posters may be just kids and/or who don't fully understand everything, or have not followed every elongated thread that discussed all this before, and thus your responses can seem a bit troll-like. So if you can't constructively criticise, or politely explain or point to a previous thread etc, please don't just post a nasty remark to someone who may be, for all you know, a 10yr old. And one has to feel a bit sorry for someone who bought CMBN more recently, only to find that many potential opponents are already switching up to 2.0. And I'm still waiting for remaining CM1 AI bug fixes. I wonder how the pro-CMBN attack-trolls will feel when they're left waiting as long as that? Happy New Year.

In George Forty's "The first victory: General O'Connor's desert triumph Dec 1940-Feb 1941" he tells of one part of the first British counter-attack against the stalled initial Italian invasion of Egypt. Whereby they found some Italian troops had "formed square" (in true Napoleonic style) rather than give up the few miles they had managed to advance towards Cairo. The Italians concerned even had a small artillery piece or anti-tank gun at each corner. Upon seeing this tried and tested defensive tactic (a veritable leaf out of the British military history manual, no less!), the cunning British, rather than charge headlong into the fray (and no doubt remembering Waterloo etc) stood some way off and shot it to bits - with tanks. As a result, I don't think the square was used again upon a major open battlefield. Shame - but maybe we could have the formation added to CM 3.0?

You're welcome! I've not long started going back through and updating my CMBO set. If I like where I get to I may offer up a super-mod replacement bitmap folder, much like I did with my "Western Front" offering for CMAK, only smaller (as CMBO has far fewer bitmaps). In the meantime, to answer your question: in addition to what I said in my first post, the easiest thing to do at GaJ's CMMODS site is to select CMBO mods by "downloads" to see which have proved the most popular. If you don't use the CMMOS mod manager (I don't) you may want to note that many mods come in both CMMOS and normal versions (for example, mfred has repackaged some CMMOS mods into normal mods). Any armour/vehicles by Gordon Molek or Marco Bergman, and any uniforms by Andrew Fox, will probably be worth having, as are my CMBO mods! And Philo46 has uploaded some improved sounds and skies etc from CMBB and CMAK for use in CMBO. Tarkus, Deanco and Pakfan all do good interfaces. Trees, hedge, walls and grass you can just use any CMAK or CMBB mod (though you may need to renumber the bitmaps) - anything nabbed and renumbered from those games is going to be an improvement on CMBO and some modders have already done some of that for you in some of their offerings. I'll let you know how far I get in revamping my CMBO set. I'm currently trying to see how much of my CMAK Western Front conversion can be imported to CMBO.

There are two WW2 veterans (one commando, one sailor) who still appear at my local pub a couple of afternoons a week. They don't talk about the war - apart from once when the ex-commando got chatting about D-Day (cutting comms and then a lookout half a mile from Pegasus Bridge) and then told me about his first kill (of a German sentry in Norway) when aged 19 and on his first raid. He said the nightmares affected him for decades. He was in tears by the time he finished, and since that chat 2yrs ago he won't talk about any of it any more. My granddad would never (ever) talk about the war - he lost too many close family and friends at the front or in the blitz, according to my mum. But just a counter-note to some of the themes earlier in this thread: 1) Monty was not too hesitant in Normandy - his plan was to take Paris by D+90, and he managed it a few days early. Caen on D+1 was an over-optimistic idea pushed by overall air and sea plans (Monty was the overall land-forces commander) and the initial Caen attack was poorly executed by junior commanders. And Eisenhower took direct command from Monty just as the outskirts of Paris was reached, and took all of Monty's glory. Monty's Normandy campaign was not without mistakes but today he is only mentioned with regard to not taking Caen on day one whilst Eisenhower took all the credit for Monty's overall success. 2) Not that I doubt those returning GI's worked extremely hard and were all great guys, but the US economy in the 1950s-60s benefitted mainly from the way the US government had managed the war, being the only major power to make a profit during the war and the way they forced the British Empire over a barrel to give up all of its cash and gold reserves (1939-1942) to pay for all that "aid" (as US histories put it). Then from 1942-1945 the US forced Britian to permanently give up most of it's Empire's trade protections in return for Lend-Lease. Thus after the war, most returning British servicemen worked hard, but the British government was bankrupt, and times remained hard. Rationing in Britain didn't end until 1954. And Austerity lasted even longer. And recovery from the Blitz was slow - when I was kid in the late 1960s, there was still one local bomb site (it got redeveloped in the 1970s). And after the war (1946), while the US reaped all those profits from the cash and taking most of Britain's trade away, Britain had to go cap-in-hand to the US for a loan just to stop those poor British soldiers returning to their factories from revolting - a loan which Britain finally paid off (many times over, due to the fixed format and all the interest) in 2006. I could go on about late-war and post-war US policy in Sicily, eastern Europe, China, south Asia, and Central and South America, to either protect that American profit margin or later to preserve US hegemony. But the point is this: by all means remember and honour the fallen, but don't append any benefits or "big up" the US war generation with benefits that actually came via their government's machiavellianism and your own rose-tinted lenses.

I've found them and uploaded to GaJ's CMMODS website. Enjoy.

Kettler! Who the hell is sad enough to post on the forum today? Christmas Day! Oh, wait a minute, never mind....

I didn't see any Mad Dog mod packs in the CMBO section of http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods I do have them on disk somewhere (if you can't find on-line elsewhere I'll go searching for my disk), but frankly they were published in 2000 and things (even for CMBO) carried on improving for a good few years after that, and some of the CMBB and CMAK mods for trees, buildings, some of the terrain, and also some of the armour (if they use the same 3D model) can be made work for CMBO too (with some renumbering). I don't think the CMBB and CMAK uniform torso bitmaps would work well for CMBO because after CMBO I think they improved the torso 3D model a little - but the CMBO uniform mods are good anyway. Some other mods (such as my Universal Carrier) are already converted from CMBB and CMAK to specifically work on CMBO. With some effort you can get CMBO looking almost as good as a well-modded CMAK (minus the terrain elements, and undamaged buildings changing to damaged during the game, of course). However, there is one great buildings mod set (by panzertruppen) that comes looking part-damaged, to account for this - currently its only at the http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods site in CMMOS form, so if you don't use that mod manager you have to rename the bitmaps you want by removing any additional lettering to just leave the bitmap number (eg. change "308_pzt" to "308"). If you also search my CMAK mods, you'll see both my "Humber" and "Winter Tree-Tops" mods are compatible for CMBO also.

So the panther mod showed the second time but not the first? Thats odd. You could try re-installing McMMM in case of a glitch. Or (please forgive me if you know this already) but could it be that the first time around you simply got mistaken between the two Panthers - there's a Panther G and a Panther G-late, and they use different bitmap numbers. But yes, what I and several CM1 gamers do is rather than load mods via a manager is simply create a few complete BMP sets, so you might have a BMP-original, BMP-bulge, BMP-canadians and so on, then just rename the one you want to use that day to BMP.

People would probably want much more specific info about your problem before they could help you. And frankly, whilst McMMM is good, with some nice features, it is a bit more complicated than some mod managers. But have you followed this "how to" page? http://www.gregories.net/McMMM/McMMM.htm Or try using CMMOS (another bespoke CM mod manager), or JSGME (a very simple, general mod manager that can be used for most games). Though, frankly, I just manually swap my bitmaps, but then I'm a bit old-fashioned.

Oh, when I said "virtual drivers" I meant "virtual drives", I think - been a while since I set up my brother's Dell. Oh, and I when I said try installing your original ATI graphics driver, I meant the original one published for your graphics card - which may be older than the original one that came with your machine when you bought it. Not that it's likely but it might, just as a long-shot, bring back dithering if your card had dithering but a later universal graphics driver update disabled it (please note I've not tried this myself, I'm just musing on things I might try). And, as stated in my previous message, doing so might cause other compatibility problems so I wouldn't do it unless you were desperate.