DaveyJJ
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Posts posted by DaveyJJ
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I've just finished reading Mark Zuehlke's brilliant On To Victory that covers the Canadian campaign from late March through May 1945 liberating Holland.
Blown bridges were commonplace during those battles ... as the Germans retreated northward and westward they frequently blew up bridges across rivers and canals to slow the rapid advance of Canadian armour. Zuehlke records in the book many first-hand accounts (at least half-dozen instances) just in those few months alone of company sized units arriving within a few hundred metres of a bridge only to see it blow up in their face. That completely aside from the large large number of destroyed crossings. (He has a number of great images showing Canadian infantry fording rubble filled rivers and canals in the midst of firefights.)
There was one instance of a Canadian engineering unit arriving at a huge train bridge spanning a canal that had been raised and the lowering gears all buggered up by retreating Germans ... the Canucks simply placed charges really carefully and in a million-to-one controlled explosion (according to the unit's HQ diarist) blew the gearing apart so that the bridge fell with a giant roar and crash into the lowered position, allowing tank units and Wasps across.
That said, this low country action stressed canal and river crossings, and the need for control of roadways to advance forces over oft-times flooded terrain. I'm not suggesting BF implement it, but in that campaign it was the rule rather than the exception.
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Can Battlefront include a clause in their NDAs that it is prohibited by betatesters to tease the customers? :mad:
They absolutely should, yes.
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That French site that JonS posted is really good. Zoome din the maps are 1:8000 scale and after opening the aerial photos in Photoshop, it turned out that the scale meant that 1" on screen (72px) was equivalent to approx. 63 yards. Very nice detail. My Putot-en-bessin scenario (when the Commomwealth exp hits) will be all the much better.
Oddly enough, the lands inland from the beaches for 5-10 kilometres in the 1945/7 and 1950 images have a lot of open fields and very few places to hide. I grabbed one from the Fontaine-Henry area and was shocked at the remarkable lack of small closed fields. The roughly bounded fields rarely were smaller than 50-100yds across.
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..."donder/bliksem" ... one another.
I thought you were referring to two of Santa's reindeers getting up to "manly-type" games. Phew.
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Is this a joke? Everyone seems to be playing this game, except me!! arggghh
I've been playing the gold master OSX version for weeks now ... it was actually done long before the PC version but Steve told me to act impatient and whiny and keep complaining that the OSX version is "delayed" per usual ... so yes, we're all playing but you.
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By my birthday (Dec 25) I suspect ... at least the PC version
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That "Steve" is a lawyer and not the real "Steve". Mr. Spkr is a slight, minor functionary of the Peng thread. Think, older, retarded, pirate instead of cool, handsome computer programmer.
Crap, posted to fast in my excitement to notice. Mr. Spkr is now on my "must have an accident" list ... :cool:
Yeah the Title post had me freaking out.... cant pre-order till next Friday... Pay day... LOL anyways... I got all my Normandy maps out... watched D-day with John Wayne.. and a bunch of other Major stars... A Bridge too Far, and Battle of Britian.... This weekend I will probably watch Iron Cross, Battle of the Bulge, and the Sink the Bismarck... Or I may Marathon my die deutschen Panzer Colection.Are we there yet!
I've pulled out my Blu-Ray version of Band of Brothers to keep me busy until the OSX version hits ... "in the next weeks".
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words have been cut for obvious reasons
Understood. Just love the look of the old line drawn tactical maps.
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Love the briefing maps.
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So, it's essentially still a preorder? Still no option to buy the Mac version? Can we safely assume that there are still plans to reserve X number of steel boxes and manuals for Mac users?
Yes and yes. Moon has specifically said that there have been steel box versions with manuals set aside for OSX players, when it becomes available for pre-order.
Once they get the DRM, e-commerce and digital distribution code all done and working on the OSX build, the OSX pre-order will see the light of day. Any day now (or so I keep getting told). :cool:
You can BUY it now . . . playing, on the other hand, will have to wait for the release date later this month.Steve
whimper.
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Uh, don't meant to sound rude here, but what more do you want? You know there's going to be a Mac version coming out "not too long after the PC version."
Search this page for the word "Mac" and I think it's the first one that comes up . . .
I wasn't being rude, just: a) impatient (10 years is a long wait) and,
pointing out that "in the next weeks" is normally considered less than a month + 2 days."Mac users! The game will be available for both the PC platform as well as Mac OS X. Today, we are launching pre-orders for the PC version only! If you are interested in purchasing the Mac OS X version, please wait until we open pre-orders separately for it in the next weeks. The Mac OS X version is currently scheduled to be released not too long after the PC version."
As a programmer myself I understand the delay (ecommerce and distribution, DRM, both of which could have been completely eliminated for OSX users if BF had chosen to distribute via the App Store which they did not) but that doesn't make me any less impatient after a decade.
Perhaps BF might change their home page to read something less specific re: time ... "If you are interested in purchasing the Mac OS X version, please wait until we open pre-orders separately for it soon" ??
I agree that my post came off a bit odd ... Maybe I should have put a different emoticon to express my feelings better in my post ...
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... and still no sign of the OSX version. :mad:
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If it's real, that's quite nice. Thumbs up from this old designer. My high school French rescues me once again!
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As one of the very early players of CMBO I remember the slogan "if we drop any platform, it will not be the Mac". It has seemed pretty hollow for the last decade but maybe we will finally get our reward for waiting. I just hope it does not turn out to be watered-down version of the Windows game, and always a couple of builds behind.
It's not. Steve has said he's been using the OSX build for (now) three months and everything's in parity with the Windows version. Apparently even the gameplay has little discernible difference in terms of graphics/framerate according to OSX-based testers.
That said, they are working on getting both the DRM (such as it is) and digital distribution/ecommerce code all rolled into the OSX code (the later being done out of house) and hence the (slight yet annoying) delay in the announcement of OSX pre-orders.
This is dragging on rather longer than I'd like and it's making me even more impatient, but I'm sure it's nothing compared to what Phil et al are going through on a daily basis. Just hope the roadblocks aren't that insurmountable.
As I understand it.
I should ask Phil Culliton if I can just have access to the Xcode project and I'll do build for myself, but I rather doubt that the BF guys would go for that sort of thing.
P.S. This also makes me wonder why they simply don't sell the OSX version on the App Store. They wouldn't even need to put in DRM code or worry about distribution problems; simply grab a yearly dev licence from Apple do the build, and post it. Apple takes care of all that (for their 30% fee) and while 30% seems much, how much is this delay and external coding costing I wonder? Again, simply my impatient $0.02.
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I'm kindly awaiting my PM from Ali-Baba who is generously going to buy us all copies ... isn't that right?
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Oh for Bastet's sake ... let the guys get the darn copy protection/e-licencing thingy coded for OSX and get it out the door, then start complaining. Some of us aren't yet even in a position to complain and you guys are taking all our thunder. :eek:
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In game? Ah, don't know. Commonwealth Forces I guess in the first expansion. Map editor for me (does that count?)
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I'm with MikeyD ... As a geography major, I'm going to be designing all of my quasi-historic scenarios using accurate maps of the terrain and geography as it existed. If your forces have to cover open ground to an objective, you'll just have to find a way to get the job done. Use tactics and solve the problem according to the terrain and good luck men.
Often in orders map graphics I've depicted roads & walls as not quite being square with eachother. Yes, they are square in the game but when the player's immersed in battle that line of hedges opposite him could just as easily be running at 80 degrees as 90. The 'geometric' form is forgotten.The difference between 'reality-centric' scenario maps and 'gameplay-centric' maps can be a bit of a shock to a player.
Maps built to fit a particular battle (most of them) often find the designer, quite unconsiously, placing that convenient clump of trees over there or that handy ditch out of LOF over here. After getting accustomed to those scenarios a 'reality-based map' can leave a player at a loss. "100m of open field to cross against MG fire? what in hell am I supposed to do with that?" The answer should be "I've given you all the tools that they had at their disposal. So go to it!" How a tactical problem gets solved is hardly the scenario designer's concern. His job is just to present the problem. Some people really really dislike those sorts of scenarios.
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Pre-ordered yesterday.
The price is more than I'd normally pay for any game, and I usually don't care much about "collector's editions" and such.
This is different, and the return to WWII is justification for a celebratory splurge. I'm as giddy as I was in the early days of the CM series. Cheers to Battlefront!
(guys, don't be blowing all that pre-order cash on booze and hookers 'til after CM:BN ships AND THE OSX VERSION IS READY TO GO, please and thanks)
Fixed that for ya!
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Working. Playing Valor & Victory and/or CrossFire (WW2 minis in 10mm). Coding a couple of games for the iPad. Some art. Playing with my kids. Playing with the Mrs. Reading a bunch of books including Mark Zeuhlke's brilliant and highly recommended WW2 history On To Victory. Getting the yard ready for spring. Refreshing the CM:BN forums every 15 minutes for the past 3-1/2 weeks watching for the OSX pre-orders to go live. Reminding myself how devastatingly handsome I remain at 48 years of age. The usual.
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Jon... This is sweet! I hadn't looked around enough to find this. Many thanks!!! :cool:
Agreed, thanks so much for that link, Jon. I already had a good tactical unit map for the Canadian June7/8 battle around Putot-en-bessin, but the 47 image helps a lot too (for the Commomwealth module later). The link is great and thanks for the detailed instructions (my high school French was too long ago).
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May desire win!
Hear, hear! I'll raise a toast to that sentiment!
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i shall be ringing in sick
Now that's a plan! Good thinking, sir! A "work from home" day is exactly what the doctor ordered, ahem.
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Ah, word to the wise. You might want to settle into a comfy chair and READ THE MANUAL! (I almost said 'RTFM' but that would've been impolite. ) I imagine a lot of newbie cussing-and-swearing as people try to get an individual vehicle to appear for purchase in the editor. This title is not going to look like CMx1 and its not going to resemble CMSF either. There are going to be some things you're just going to have to learn.
I'm in my late 40s now and always have to read manuals. Otherwise, I'm like my dad on the phone wondering how I managed to duplicate my home folder in OSX then trash one and put the other in the Applications folder. Still trying to figure out how he did that.
pointing out that "in the next weeks" is normally considered less than a month + 2 days.
How do I blow bridges up ? (staf&testers Q)
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
I agree completely. Just pointing out that bridge demolition, right up to the time an attacking force was present, was fairly common in some campaigns.