Mr. Yubby

Thanks Mord, I feel like such a dolt, not sure where I missed the new activation key, but your advice fixed things, I got into CMSF2 and all modules are active. A big thanks!

I'm having some upgrade licensing woes. I owned the original CMSF and all modules and have valid keys for all, since I did a complete reinstallation of CMSF1 last summer without incident. I downloaded the CMSF Big Bundle installer, and when I installed the game and fired it up, the usual Activation screen appeared, I entered my license key for CMSF1, which it accepted. I then tried to start the game and got the Activate New Products web applet. So I figured, what the hell and entered the license key for the Marines module, which was accepted. I did the same for the British and NATO modules and the license keys for each were accepted. What I noticed that was odd was on the Activate New Products Web GUI, it shows all the expansion modules as v1. For example, the Marines module displays as "Marines Module (old v1)" and when I try to start the game, the Activate New Products" window partially displays and the app hangs. What am I doing wrong?h Also, FWIW, I still have CMSF1 installed, is that the cause of my problems?

Here are specs of what will be my "last" gaming system, built just over a year ago. I was looking for an air-cooled solution that would play my Battlefront games at native 1080p with all graphic details turned on and DirectX 11 games on Windows with minimal lag. This machine succeeds on both counts, and the air-cooling works much better than I expected. The Corsair case is the way to go for air-cooling, looks pretty cool as well. G.SKILL TridentZ Series 32GB DDR4 (PC4 25600) ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 8GB ROG STRIX Intel Core i7-7700K Noctua D-Type Premium CPU Cooler, NF-A15 PWM ASUS Maximus IX Apex Motherboard (the fan controls on this MB are really good) Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SATA III Internal SSD WD Black 2TB Performance Desktop HDD - 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case Noctua SSO2 Bearing Fan Retail Cooling NF-A14 iPPC-3000 PWM Noctua 140mm Premium Quiet Quality Fan (NF-A14 PWM) The Noctua NF-A14 PPC fans are industrial fans (3000rpm) that can get loud when the system is under load, but can be throttled with the MB fan controls so they're barely audible when the system is playing music, running videos, etc. I use those for intake, the other Noctua fans are very quiet, use them for exhausts and CPU cooler. The Core i7-7700 runs natively at 4.2Ghz, no need to overclock, so it runs relatively cool, even when gaming.

I know this topic has been trodden heavily, but I've been playing Battlefront games for 20 years and here are my observations regarding getting the most bang for your buck, hardware-wise: Remember that Combat Mission (even iteration 4) is a single-threaded executable, so no matter how many CPU cores you have, the CM exe will only attach to a single core, and it's core 0 so it's competing with the operating system. (thank God the Windows 10 core is multi-threaded) With this in mind, front-side BUS and CPU clock speed is a significant factor in overall system performance. You'd be better off with a 4-core, 4Ghz CPU than an 8-core, 2.7Ghz processor. Another major consideration is your choice of graphics card. OpenGL ain't the most efficient graphics engine, so a fast GPU will definitely affect the speed of graphics rendering and corresponding lag in the game. If you play a variety of games (like most of us) then it's a tough choice. You can build a custom system that will run Combat Mission at the highest resolution and most detailed models/textures without any lag. However, this system may not play multi-core DirectX games quite as efficiently. Like everything else, getting a "rockin" Combat Mission system may involve some tradeoffs. '

I concur, a CM v4 game depicting the Arab-Israeli wars would have good sales potential. Air combat was an essential part of that conflict, and I'm not sure how well that could be modeled in the CM engine. Conversely, there could be some massive tank battles in that title, which is a good fit for the CM engine. Of all the Combat Mission games I've owned (all the titles on the new engine except CMBI), I enjoyed Strike Force the most. I spent a lot of time with it (and still do for that matter). It still has great potential as sort of a middle-east sandbox. A remake of CMSF and all the expansions on the CM v4 engine would get my vote.

Really nice work Kieme, adds a lot to the immersion factor. Thanks a lot!

Guys, I should have said my video card is a Geforce GTX680, not 650. It's still very capable for vintage 2010 hardware. Thanks for the feedback, Kip. I had assumed the performance penalty would be similar to what you describe. I tried SweetFX with the GTR2 racing sim and got similar results, it was great for screenshots, but not much fun to play, reduced the framerate from 80+ fps to about 24 fps. Mark G.

Blimey, the latest post looks a lot like Sean Connery :-) Mark G.

Kip, In your testing of this shader mod, how much degradation of frame rate did you experience? Have you tried SweetFX with CMBS with HDR enabled? I have an older GeForce 650GTX card, though in CMBS with all details set to high, I can still get 60+ FPS. I'm afraid that this mod will turn my CMBS experience into a slide show. Thanks in advance.

Thanks akd for the clear explanation, that is also my understanding of how the hierarchy works.

I've been playing CM2x games since Shock Force version 1.0. The game engine has come a long way and the quality of the maps and 3D models in CMBS is up to BFC's usual high standard. IMHO, this title is the pinnacle of the series, I've been experimenting with WeGo vs real-time, and though I like both, I've settled into real-time as my preferred mode, it just seems more immersive (and pretty darned hard to keep up with). To my surprise, I've been holding my own in the scenarios, have been playing mostly as the U.S./Ukranian forces. If one is patient and uses good tactics, you can survive, though the U.S. is noticeably short in effective anti-air defenses. My vehicles have been getting creamed by Russian air-to-ground support aircraft and trying to hide your vehicles in the trees is not a valid tactic, at least that's been my experience so far. Keeping vehicles moving seems to get the best results. It's a stark contrast to CMSF, where Blue casualties were fairly low, in CMBS, casualties can be horrific, as I expected. To the folks who are new to BFC games or did not play CMSF, check out the Strategy and Tactics section of the CMSF forum, there's some great hints regarding survivability on the modern battlefield. Great job Battlefront, I've been waiting for another modern title for a while, this one meets my expectations. I hope there will be modules for UK and German forces. Also, FWIW, I spent a little time last night tweaking my video card drivers, the textures in the game on my system just did not come up to the quality of the screen shots. I resolved that issue with the following tweaks: Create a profile in Nvidia control panel for the CMBS executable Anisotropic filtering set to 8x Antialiasing let the app decide (turned on in game video settings) Negative LOD bias set to allow Texture Filtering set to Very High Quality Texture filtering - trilinear optimization set to On Triple Buffering set to On (this may improve choppiness for OpenGL) Vertical Sync set to On On my system, this significantly improved the texture quality, especially the vehicle textures.

After reading some of the comments in the CMBN forum, I revisited CMSF a few months ago and had forgotten how much fun it is. The pace of modern combat in the CMSF series is wickedly fast compared to CMBN. If you play in real-time mode, large scenarios in the CMSF series are extremely difficult to manage without cheating with the pause key because things happen so fast. I'm excited that Black Sea has finally been announced, with more capable opponents and the new features, gameplay should be very interesting. My preorder's in, hopefully BFC will be sending me a Christmas present.

Done, sent Paypal donation. Thanks for maintaining your site, it's a great portal for CM mods.

For what it's worth, I've been playing CMRT for a week now, and the incidence of main gun damage on Tiger and Panther tanks seems to have decreased from CMBN v2.01. From the hit messages in the GUI I've noticed a couple of Panthers that took at least 2 mantlet hits from a T34-85 and the main gun survived (in one case the gunner was taken out, but I'm pretty sure I saw an "armor spalling" message on a deflection hit which may explain that). In both cases there were two deflection hit decals on the mantlet. I've played a bunch of quick battles and several of the standalone CMRT scenarios and in all I did not see an unusual incidence of main gun damage. I'm hoping this behavior is mitigated when CMBN is ported to the CM v3.x engine.

Not necessarily, as I mentioned, 1600 x 1200 can have issues with wide-screen monitors, even when aspect ratio is set correctly in the video driver control panel. At least that has been my experience. My previous monitor was a high-resolution CRT and it ran CMSF @ 1600x1200 resolution, including briefings, with no distortion. There's quite a few variables involved, so your mileage may vary. :-)

As far as the UI issue with 1600 x 1200 desktop resolution goes, your monitor and display adapter must support the 4:3 aspect ratio used with 1600 x 1200 resolution, or distortion will occur. If the aspect ratio is adjustable with your video card, set it to 1600 x 1200, 4:3 aspect ratio and this should improve the UI issues you're seeing. I have a wide-screen Viewsonic monitor which supports 1920 x 1080 (1080p) and the GUI displays properly on my setup, using "desktop" resolution in the CM video setup screen. On the other hand 1600 x 1200 looks horrible on my display, even with 4:3 aspect ratio. I was an early adopter of CMSF and I remember the initial learning curve/aggravations with the CMSF UI (some of which were fixed in patches). Now that I've had time to fully assimilate the CMx2 UI, the fundamental design seems logical IMHO. please don't change it. Besides, the various UI modes are explained in good detail in the manual. With such complex game, one should expect complexity in the menu system. If you have a programmable keyboard, you can create keyboard macros for functions in the game that require multiple mouse clicks, which can streamline game play.

With the improvement in the shaders with the MG module, smoke and dust effects look great, really adds to the immersion. The smoke effect from brewed up vehicles is a different animation, more of a "legacy" smoke effect. Even when wind is causing smoke/dust from artillery strikes to drift at near ground level, which IMHO is more realistic, smoke from burning vehicles in almost all cases rises in a narrow vertical column. In a windy situation, seems that all smoke should drift at a fairly low altitude. The current state of the game engine seems to support that effect pretty well. What would look really cool would be something like the CMBN loading screen image that shows 2 Sherman tanks in the foreground with the battlefield in the background (really nice photo BTW). The smoke from what was probably a brewed up tank is drifting across the battlefield relatively close to the ground (probably due to wind). Maybe we'll get improved burning vehicle animations in CMx3. BTW, many thanks to Battlefront for the Market Garden module, I've been having a LOT of fun with it. Regards, Mark G.

If you're playing with combined arms forces, be sure to keep your tanks moving (i.e., shoot-and-scoot). Depending upon the scenario, a static tank will quickly become a casualty. If you haven't read it already, look at the "shoot and scoot" sticky thread in this forum. Good information, nicely presented. When starting a new scenario, pause the game and take a thorough look at the battlefield to determine which locations on the battlefield provide the best opportunities for hull-down positions for your tanks, and good cover for infantry, and also where the enemy is likely to set up ambushes. Depending upon how well you "read" the battlefield terrain, you can definitely increase your troops' odds of survival. This aspect seems to be modelled pretty well in the CMSF series. Also be sure to patch your game to version 1.32, there were some significant AI improvements in versions 1.31 and 1.32. And I know it's gamey, but Javelin ATMs make pretty awesome house-destruction devices. Oh and BTW, the destructiveness of Javelins was toned down quite a bit in the later CMSF releases ( I don't remember exactly which version). Oh well, can't have everything. A couple of other minor things. When playing the Blue forces in any urban scenario, kill any moving taxi's as soon as possible as they WILL be loaded with an IED. If there are friendly taxis at all in the scenario, they are static, mainly for scenery. I know this has been discussed a lot in the CMSF forums, but the game mode affects tactics in more subtle ways. The nice thing about the WEGO mode is that you can carefully plan your movement and tactics, then roll the dice and watch your plan execute. It's nice that you can replay each 60 second action sequence, but it can seem overly pedantic if you're like me and spend too much time planning. The real-time mode was a pretty daring idea by BFC, it offended many of the legacy Combat Mission fans. I kind of like real-time, to me it's much more immersive, though the combat in CMSF moves so fast, you really have to focus to be able to properly manage your forces, it makes me tired.

This is not a file sharing site. Put the string "SweetFX" in Google and search. The download site will probably be at the top of the results list, at least it was for me.

SweetFX is not compatible with the CM2 engine, as it uses OpenGL for 3-D rendering, instead of DirectX. It can make a noticeable visual improvement for Direct X 9 games. I also play with racing simulators and I tried it with my beloved GTR2 and it did improve the visuals, though it also caused a significant hit on the frame rate.

I was on LinkedIn the other night and noticed that MadMatt has a profile there. If you have a LinkedIn account, you can probably contact him if you want/need to chat. Cheers!

Just finished a quick battle with the patched vehicles and left Aris vehicle mods installed, and another with them removed. The mods are still compatible for the most part, but the patched BFC textures show much more detail, particularly on the German vehicles. The King Tiger textures are a huge improvement, I'm sure Aris will re-mod all the patched vehicles in due time.

Mord, In regards to the Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium, I recently built a new PC and installed the SB X-Fi Titanium THX/SB1270 card and it's worked pretty much flawlessly for me with all my Battlefront games. This card is pretty cool, it has on-board 32-bit DSP with THX audio support built into hardware. What this means in practical terms is that some CPU overhead and interrupt processing from game audio is offloaded and processed on the sound card. High level of CPU interrupt processing, such as some of the urban scenarios in CMSF, can cause stuttering with on-board audio, I can testify to that. Since I've been using the X-Fi Titanium card, I've experienced no noise, crackling, or distorted audio with any of the BF games. I have several of the CMSF sound mods installed, and the game audio sounds pretty fabulous through my home hi-fi system, especially the subwoofer (LFE) channel, which is also something this SB card does well. Please note that to get the LFE channel to work properly on my system, I had to use a fibre connection (TOSlink) into my receiver. The first time I heard the "large" IEF explosion audio track in CMSF through a sub-woofer was a shock, it really got all the neighborhood dogs going. Fortunately the SB card has a TOSlink fibre connector, and if you have an AV receiver or speaker system with TOSlink connectors, getting true 5-channel through this card is easy, and it sounds great through a good audio system. Another nice thing about this card is that the onboard processor has a 102db signal-to-noise ratio, which rivals most home theater receivers. With my setup there's practically no background noise and the audio, especially high bitrate MP3 and FLAC audio tracks, sounds great through my receiver. To me, the biggest downside of the SB card is the price. I had a hard time justifying spending $189 for a PC audio card and that was a discounted price on Amazon. Another potential issue is this card will only work with Windows 7 or above. So if you have a Windows XP Machine, don't waste your time with this card. I built my computer 6 months ago, so you'll probably find one now for significantly less that what I paid. I remember reading somewhere that the X-Fi Titanium series is being discontinued by Creative, so you may have trouble finding one once all the retail channels are sold out. Also, it you're a Linux fan, this card works perfectly with Fedora Core 16.

Based at least upon my experience, here's some of the situations where Javelin operators will not fire. * anti-tank operator is injured * squad is suppressed by enemy fire * proposed target is either inside minimum or beyond maximum range * the squad may have LOS, but the anti-tank operator does not (you can split the anti-tank troops from the squad to confirm this). I've also encountered a couple of situations where they simply refused to fire on a non-hard (i.e., infantry) target. Perhaps they are obeying rules of engagement on that one ;-)

For the record, I apologize to Mr. Gates. The stability issues were caused by an intermittently failing DIMM. Since I replaced that the system has been very stable and very fast.