Drawde79

PC Gamer (UK) seem to generally be harsh on "ambitious but flawed/buggy" games, a category which TOW mostly fits into (pre-patch anyway) so I wouldn't expect a high score from them. Like you say, they mainly seem to be interested in titles with "mass appeal" to the average gamer, rather than niche games. 60% does seem a bit harsh though even for PCG - I'd have expected 70% or so. Most game reviewers (both print and online) also generally have a policy of ignoring patches and reviewing the game "out of the box" (in any case, the TOW patch, whatever fixes and improvements it will include, is not out yet) which is also bad news for games like TOW. (To be honest, as so many games nowadays - Silent Hunter 4, for example - are being released in an unpolished, buggy state and never being patched properly, this is probably a sensible policy)

I had the same experience as R33GZ in the French Dunkirk mission. I called in the fighters as soon as I heard and saw the Bf110s approaching, the 110s made a single strafing run (immobilising a H-35 tank, but not doing any more damage - I'm surprised they didn't target my artillery instead, the manual indicates that planes give tanks a very low targeting priority compared to artillery) then the Morane 406 fighters turned up and downed both Bf110s in quick succession (I wish it was as easy to shoot them down in the Il-2 flight sim series...). I'm also surprised at the lack of Stukas. It's also odd that attack aircraft always make strafing attacks, never using bombs or rockets. (edit) Do any of the German missions allow you to select anti-aircraft vehicles? There are 3 German SP AA vehicles (two halftracks and a Flakpanzer 38(t) ) in ToW's unit selection. [ June 10, 2007, 03:02 AM: Message edited by: Drawde79 ]

One more minor point I forgot to mention in my original post - the 25mm gun on the Panhard 178 armoured car should be a single-shot (manually loaded) weapon, not automatic like the German 20mm KwK 38 (this explains why the Panhard runs out of ammo so quickly!). I think it was basically the same weapon as the French 25mm AT gun. The accuracy, as well as rate of fire, of the weapon should probably also be tweaked to bring it in line with similar single-shot weapons (37mm etc.).

A few other things I've noticed with French vehicles/equipment in TOW (most of these are simple data issues and would be easy to change): - AFAIK, Renault FT-17s never had both a 37mm gun and a co-axial machinegun; they were equipped with either a 37mm or a MG. - The FT-17 in the game also seems to have rather thick armour, particularly on the turret. - The 37mm SA-18 gun (on the FT-17,R-35 and H-35 tanks, and the P16 armoured car) had significantly less armour piercing ability than it has in TOW. According to CMBB and CMAK, AP rounds from this gun have a maximum penetration of about 18-20mm (at 100m/0 degrees). - The Char B1 bis had a hull-mounted MG, as well as a co-axial turret MG, though I think it was fixed (not aimable). - IMHO, the Hotchkiss H-35 tank ought to be replaced or supplemented by the Hotchkiss H-39, which had a longer-barreled, more powerful 37mm gun (SA-38), and was in service in fairly significant numbers by 1940. (There was a similar Renault tank, the R-39 and R-40, though I'm not sure this was as common). This would require a new model, though (the H-39 had a number of modifications to the engine, vision blocks, etc. as well as a new gun) so probably isn't likely in a patch. I'm really not sure why the developers decided to model both the R-35 and H-35 (virtually identical in terms of stats/performance) rather than modelling one of them as the later version with the long-barreled 37mm. (Maybe the lack of these tanks is the reason the 37mm SA-18 in the game is overpowered?) I'd definitely also like to see the 25mm and/or 47mm AT guns - possibly also the Hotchkiss 13mm or 25mm AA guns - but I suspect that French (and Polish) equipment is fairly low on the developer's priorities of things to add/fix.

Actually it seems like currently the missions have less variety, vehicle-wise at least, as you're usually facing swarms of the same tanks, more often than not the heaviest type available to the enemy (I've got as far as the third Russian mission and the attacking tanks seem to be composed more of PzIVCs than anything else - surely Pz.IIIs, 35t and 38ts would be more common in 1941?) I'm working on some modifications to the stock TOW campaign missions, to add more variety and historical accuracy to the unit selection (infantry as well as tanks) on both sides, but won't start any serious work on this until the patch is out (which will probably make changes to the mission files). So far I've modified the first Polish mission, replacing some of the PzIIs and one or two PzIVs with Pz1s, Pz35(t)s and armoured cars, and giving the defending infantry a couple of LMGs. To Pandur: according to the developers, the unit stats shown in the encyclopedia are not those used in the game (it'd be helpful if the patch updated them so that they matched!). Not sure about the stats shown for units during missions - I'd assume that these are the actual numbers used by the game engine though.

IMHO something really needs to be sorted out with the .SFS issue. Basically a forum member (Dr. Jones I think) has created a .SFS unpacker/extractor tool for TOW, but the developers aren't keen on this being publically released. I'm pretty certain that the reason for this is that the Il-2 flight sim series uses the exact same .SFS format, and IC don't want this to be moddable because of the likelihood of hacking/cheating in multiplayer. However, TOW looks to have a huge amount of potential for modding, as well as a very open data structure, and MP cheating isn't so much of an issue due to the fairly limited MP aspect of the game (in any case, you can see the stats of your opponent's units, so it'd be fairly obvious if they're cheating by giving their tanks metre-thick armour) and there are a lot of people (definitely including me) interested in modding it. I can't imagine BFC or 1C having a problem with mods for TOW, the problem is how can this be done without also opening the "can of worms" of Il-2 moddability? Personally I think it'd be a good idea to wait for the patch/addon before doing any serious modding (graphics/sounds would probably be OK). I suspect the patch will modify and update a lot of the data for units, missions etc. and any mods created beforehand will have to be redone to be compatible with the current version.

Sorry to bump an old post, but I'm also experiencing the same screen flicker problem. It seems to be related to water rendering, as it only occurs when areas of water (rivers, lakes) are on screen. (Changing the water quality setting has no effect) It also only occurs during missions, not the menu screen or encyclopedia. I already have video hardware acceleration set to full, and have set the game resolution and refresh rate to the same as my Windows desktop (1024x768, 70hz) - also have tried turning on vsynch, disabling dual core and reducing graphics detail in the TOW options, etc. - none have any effect. The only fix I've found for this problem is to run the game in windowed mode (edit ww.ini and change fullscreen=true to =false). This seems to slightly reduce performance, and the blue bar at the top is slightly annoying, but at least the flicker is gone.

Final update: I tried the boot.ini fix in the "Wrong version editor error" sticky thread, and it worked - at least, I've got as far as the eLicense screen and have now licenced my copy successfully. Hopefully I shouldn't have any further issues... I'm running WinXP Pro (with SP2 I think). I haven't tried the demo as I only have a 56k dialup connection, it's too large for me to download (same reason I opted for the mail delivery rather than download version of TOW)

I have now installed the latest ATI drivers as well as the AMD CPU optimiser; TOW still won't start. Also tried shutting down all other Windows programs (using the "EndItAll" utility) - still the same problem. I have set all the graphics options to minimum in the configuration utility, also disabled EAX, just to be on the safe side, though I don't think this is a hardware issue. Also I have tried installing the DVD patch, but this causes further problems - it gives a "missing elicen40.dll" error message when I attempt to launch the configuration utility, it also results in the "wrong game version" error when starting the mission editor (not that the editor worked in the first place). Hence I've now reinstalled the game without the patch.

I've posted in the tech support forum, still no replies though, have checked all the other threads in the forum but haven't found a fix yet.

Basically, when clicking on the TOW shortcut or .exe, the game does not launch; an hourglass appears briefly, and then there is a Windows error sound and the hourglass turns back to a normal mouse pointer. TOW.exe continues running in the background (visible in the Task Manager Processes screen) and continues making the error sound every 30 seconds or so. (This isn't a CTD or lockup - the game never leaves the desktop in the first place, and Windows continues running as normal) The same happens when attempting to launch the mission editor. I've tried changing the Windows DEP settings (disabling it for all the TOW executables) but this has no effect (even after restarting my PC - several times). I have an AMD Athlon 64 with an ATI Radeon X550 graphics card. I do not have the latest ATI drivers, or the AMD CPU utilities (I'm downloading them now!) but I'm guessing that this is an eLicence problem, not a hardware or graphics compatibility issue (as I think you have to launch eLicense before launching the game itself) Anyone else having this problem?

TOW finally arrived (Berkshire, UK) in the mail today (ordinary letter post, not special delivery). It was in a plain jiffy bag (padded envelope) with a Royal Mail postage sticker (no indication of airmail shipping). The game is in a DVD case, more or less like any game you'd buy in the shops, and contains a fairly thick (by current standards!) manual. The license key is printed on a sticker on the back of the case. Haven't got it to work so far, the game won't launch (nothing happens when clicking on the shortcut other than a Windows error sound - it doesn't even launch eLicense) but at least I've got the DVD...

Seems like something has gone wrong with the shipping/distribution somewhere, if people in Ireland also haven't got it - i.e it can't just be a customs issue (unless the customs problems were for the US to Ireland shipment). IIRC the European copies were supposed to have started shipping from Ireland about two weeks ago.

What I meant was that if the filename and location is correct, you may be able to get modified files to override those in the .SFS archives. This worked in Il-2, so maybe it will do in TOW? An example: if the skin texture file (stored in the .SFS file) for the Tiger tank was "textures\vehicles\tiger1.tga", if you put a modified "tiger1.tga" file in the appropriate folders below the TOW root folder, it would override the original texture. (Hope this makes sense) In the case of vehicle skins and other graphics, the originals would have to be extracted first, but this wouldn't be necessary for sounds, assuming you knew the format and frequency/quality used by the game. I think my mission generator for S:HOWW2 was used as the basis for the Faces of War dynamic campaign generator - not sure, though. What was Faces of War like compared to S:HOWW2? (never played it) "Soldiers" was a fun game and in some ways the most realistic (at the time) in terms of vehicle damage and weapon modelling, physics, etc - shame the missions were so small and limited. If a map/mission editor had been released for that game I might have stuck with it. I also tried modding Blitzkrieg 2 but gave up due to the difficulty of modifying the campaign missions. I'm thinking of creating a mission/campaign mod for TOW, with more historically accurate vehicle types for the date and theatre represented in each mission, also soldier weapon loadout changes such as SMGs/rifles for officers (I'll wait for the patch first though - assuming it isn't released before I get the game in the mail; it's possible that this will make some changes to the missions). Not planning on doing any vehicle skins though, even if it is made possible, as there are many people here far more talented than me at this (and the default skins in TOW look pretty good anyway) [ May 28, 2007, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: Drawde79 ]

To Dr. Jones: Do you know if it's possible to add sounds/vehicle skins (or other textures/graphics) which replace the existing ones? I know with the Il-2 series you could do this, at least with graphics (not just aircraft skins) if you knew the name and directory the files were supposed to be in. This is how the "Il-2MAT" mod worked which changed insignia, serial codes, unit badges etc. on aircraft.

Seems like there must be a hold-up in the system somewhere with the copies shipped to Ireland. I still haven't received mine (UK) and it seems like nobody in the EU has so far (other than Greece - and it sounds like Nonickch's copy wasn't sent via Ireland as it had a customs declaration on it). Although, I seem to remember Moon posted recently that his copy had arrived in Germany? Has anyone who received the game (outside the EU) actually had to pay customs fees/taxes on their copy? Wouldn't think so with a value of $5 marked. (This is probably OK from a legal point of view, as you're really paying for the game license - $5 is just the nominal value of the DVD and manual)

I certainly hope things like this will be fixed in a patch, even if not the first patch! These issues sound at least as bad as the LOS/LOF and pathfinding issues in terms of "gaminess" and immersion-breaking. For a game intended to be a realistic portrayal of WW2 combat, things like omniscient tank crew, unrealistically fast rotation times for tank turrets and AT guns, and heavy cannons picking off individual troops with sniper-like accuracy (whether with AP or HE) sounds rather worrying. Still, I don't have the game yet, and wouldn't be surprised if I don't receive it for another week or so (waiting for the boxed version in the UK) - so I'll definitely reserve judgment until I actually get the chance to play it.

Looks like EU buyers will be the last to get the game, due to the two-stage shipping via Ireland. Probably worth the extra wait to avoid extra customs/tax fees - though it sounds like other overseas buyers haven't had this problem due to the $5 value on the package.

I'm familiar with the Maus and E-100, but I never knew the "Ratte" was designed to carry a Scharnhorst/Gneisenau turret... that really is a "land battleship"!

Anyone in Great Britain (or elsewhere in the EU) got the game in the mail yet? Also a question for anyone who's already received the game (anywhere in the world) - did you actually get a confirmation e-mail when it had been shipped?

I think the reason this is usually the case for games (game is flawed/buggy and needs patching, sells poorly due to this, hence developers and/or publishers don't consider it worth patching) is due to the retail model used to sell most games, which depends heavily on initial sales (within the first month or so) when the game is on store shelves. Since TOW is available for sale indefinitely from BFC's online store, sales could pick up if the game is improved significantly by patches and add-ons, even months after the initial release - hence it makes more sense from a purely financial point of view for the developers to actually improve, fix and add to the game rather than just dropping it (as has been the case with all too many other PC games).

Whilst I don't have the game yet, and won't until the European copies start shipping, what initially interested me (ever since the days when it was published by Codemasters under the name "Battlefield Command") was the sheer scope of the game, covering more or less everything in mainland Europe (other than Italy) from 1939 to 1945, with most vehicle, gun and troop types represented (I've always wanted a game that let you play the Polish and French campaigns from the Allied side!) - combined with the detailed 3D graphics and the level of realism and historical accuracy. It's certainly not CM, but it's still several orders of magnitude more realistic, detailed and accurate than the other WW2 real-time games out there, other than the CC series and the even more buggy, clunky and unpolished Squad Assault (a game I tried very hard to like, but failed). Since I haven't actually played TOW yet, I'll reserve judgment about what I like about it till then! - but though the LOS and AI problems reported by other players sound like very serious problems, it looks like the game is worth persevering with all the same; other than CM there's simply no other 3D WW2 wargame which has as much detail and scope as TOW. And, unlike many games, it sounds like the developers are making a real effort to improve and add to the game via patches.

IIRC (from looking at the mission .xml files in the Russian ToW patch, months ago) soldier equipment loadouts are defined in the mission files, so could be modded fairly easily by editing the .xml files for the campaign missions. Hence if the officer armament isn't changed in the patch it will be fairly easy to fix with a mod (not sure about MP missions though)

I thought the game engine did take armour slopes/angles into account when calculating shot penetration? I'm sure I remember reading this in previews and/or and developer posts in the past. Maybe the armour slope values just aren't shown in the encyclopedia?

Seems like this will be very straightforward to do via editing the missions, either with the editor or just opening the .XML files in Notepad or similar. I might try this myself when I get the game (bought the disc version rather than D/L version so I might have to wait a while), if nobody else has already done so. I'd certainly much rather play battles with a more historically accurate selection of vehicles, rather than everything ending up as T-34s or 76mm Shermans vs. "big cats". Though I'll definitely play through the missions unmodified first, to see for myself what they're like.