moeburn
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Posts posted by moeburn
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So THATS why the game's framerate makes my computer look like it's 20 years old. Because all the power that could have gone into graphics is going into calculating things that have a 99.99% chance of never happening.
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You guys should be ashamed. You toss out a mobilized half hearted "game" with shiny graphics that is pretty much guaranteed to sell on name recognition alone, and then simply abandon it. What a waste. In a year full of fantastic ports and AAA titles being released on mobile to great acclaim, I can't believe this embarrassment hasn't been pulled and this forum flushed to remove all trace that it ever existed.
Might be time to rethink that position on mobile gaming perhaps? Or will the next CM game be a freemium match 3 to better fit with Battlefront's idea of what people are still playing on tablets these days?
Would you pay $55 for Combat Mission on a tablet? Because most people wouldn't. But that's pretty much the only way for Battlefront to survive. They tossed this cheap game out there on the whim that it might bring some extra players to purchase the real game. It isn't meant to be, or priced as, a long-term fully-supported masterpiece of a game.
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Hi. Yah, contacted already, that was the hope. But like I say, BF suggested installing the BF 1.21 patch and try my key on that but were not sure if it would work? Struck me as odd. As the Paradox patch updates the game to a BF retail version, is it possible for the BF 1.21 to do the same?
What's TPB?
The BF patches will not work. Trust me, I tried, they install just fine but you won't be able to run the EXE because it will be looking for a license validator that you don't have installed (the paradox 1.21 patch installs it). Even if you use the old EXE with the new .brz patch files, the in-game labels will still get farked up, and you'll have things like a tank labelled as a jeep and such.
I can't figure out how to PM on these forums, so just email me at moeburn[at]gmail[dot]com .
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Not so lucky here. Lost my 1.21 exe file when the HDD and the back-up drive it was backing up to were power-surged (despite having a surge protector). It's been suggested that I DL and try the regular BF 1.21 patch with my Paradox retail key to see if that works but not sure how it can given that the Paradox specific 1.21 converts the game altogether, or buy it again. Guess I'll fork out the $1 again as I'm a bit reluctant to do all the installs to 1.21 only to find the BF version doesn't work and / or doesn't convert the game to BF retail. Either pay again or just scrap it altogether given my dislike of the desert and non-con environment of CMSF.
The $1 charge is no big deal I suppose, just begrudge paying it again in all honesty, esp given the age of the game now, would have thought this patch would be FOC now TBH.
Because I too lost my copy on a dying HDD, I decided to burn the patch (and all other patches) to a DVD, which is sitting nicely along with the Shock Force DVD in my drawer. I contacted Battlefront and explained my situation, and after a few days they gave me an extra week to download the patch from their servers. So I'd try that first. If not, there might be a copy of the patch up on TPB by the end of today after all this
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Is there any way to sort the scenarios and campaigns by the size of the battle/number of units, like you can in-game? Because I simply do not yet have the patience for big battles, anything greater than a single company is just too much micro-management for me.
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I had a problem with elicense and zonealarm. Did you try turning off your firewall and antivirus?
I don't use a firewall, and my antivirus real-time scan is always disabled for performance reasons. I thought it might be my Peerblock app, but I turned that off and still no luck.
I noticed the uninstall procedure for CMSF does not remove elicense, is there a way I can try removing that and reinstalling it? I also noticed that when I uninstalled CMSF, e-license gave me the opportunity to "unlicense", but when I tried, it said my license was not found on the Battlefront server. I didn't think that would be the issue at hand, because the game won't even start on an unpatched 1.00 Paradox version, which doesn't use e-license.
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Do you have ZoneAlarm?
nope. also tried uninstall/reinstall without patch, can't play game at all anymore.
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Well now I can't get CMSF to run at all. It worked fine when I was only running v1.20, but as soon as I upgrade to v1.21, I get the "exe has stopped working" message during startup, no splash screen or anything. I have tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling. I can only assume this has something to do with the licensing.
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You know, I was looking at the size of the v1.21 patch, and I realised, why don't they just make it an incremental patch from 1.20? Then the file size would only be a few megabytes, and they could stop charging for it...
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Just got my 7 day download extension from Battlefront and I would like to publicly thank them for the courtesy! It is a great feeling when a game developer actually goes out of their way to generously help enough to make sure that one individual player can still play
This time, I'm going to back it up to 3 different USB sticks and burn it to two CDs. I'd like to know the odds of them ALL failing!
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Because CMBN is far more hi fi than WE. Way more going on under the hood. WE isn't exactly aiming for realism now is it and will have mechanics going on far more basic than CM does. Simple as that really.
jesus man I think you missed the whole discussion...
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Good to know. But I just looked and Photoshop costs $600. Is there something... cheaper that will work as well? I know nothing about this stuff.
Paint.net, if you're on Windows. Or uTorrent, it has a habit of bringing the price of expensive commercial software down a little
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I would personally have preferred the lines to be persistent at a closer distance. It would be perfect if the distance at which the lines disappear were reduced by about half. Unfortunately I haven't seen Niessuh around for a long time and I haven't a clue how to do it myself.
Is that even possible? I thought these were just bitmap mods. I assumed they achieved the distance effect by modding the low-res distant versions of the textures with grids on, and the hi-res close up textures with the grids off, leaving the distance to decide between the two up to the game engine.
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Gridded terrain mods do help. I use Niessuh's, but there are several good ones out there.
Even so, I spend a lot of time moving the camera around the map at view level 2 (which is about eye level for a standing soldier). That seems to be the only way to see those subtle dips and rises.
That looks awesome! Is there one for CMSF, as I haven't yet bought CMBN?
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Don't know if this has been mentioned already or if you have tried this; As the engine stands now, your best bet would be to DL one of the grid mods. That should help some.
CMX1 had more BMPs/shades per grass type, they went darker to lighter, so as you moved up in height the area became lighter and lighter, making it easier to see elevations. I think that's where people who have played both games have a problem. In CMX2 each grass type only has one shade and it stays consistent at all heights. So it blends better. The old CMX1 maps could look like patch work quilts...not very aesthetically pleasing visually but easier to read.
Sorry if any of this has already been mentioned, I haven't read everything in the thread.
Mord.
Yeah, I did mention this, except I dont think it was ugly. If anything, varying elevations in real life often correspond to vastly different ecosystems, so the marsh-grass-dirt-rock-snow range of elevation-based land types looks great to me.
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Hello Jon et al.
You are not misreading what I wrote. At the same time I am not asking for Levels as in ASL.
So a request from me then for you Jon, Mikey, and mj. Can you give me some guidance on how you go about reading the lay of the land. I go down as far as level 2 mostly and up to higher levels to get a picture of the road network and bocage, etc. Even if I find some hiding spots it's going to be hard to remember them all. And it's hard to remember where all the holes are in the bocage. I try and focus on the major terrain features. However, I find it hard to start any battle. I am overwhelmed I guess with: 1) all the micromanagement I will have to do to try and compete; and 2) the difficulty in seeing a 3D world through a screen.
So in this smallish scenario I now have around 50 units to manage. The system is amazing in terms of graphics, detail, etc. But I hope you can understand where I am coming from. I want so much to enjoy the system. And the announcements really makes one excited. But I am intimidated when I open most scenarios.
Any help appreciated.
Gerry
The way you describe it makes it sound fun! Having to manage all the little holes in the bocage that each tank can be shot through... that's just an extra challenge that makes it all the more rewarding when it leads to success. It also helps differentiate between the newbie players and the cautious experienced players.
But I too do not like large scenarios with too many units for this exact reason. I only play scenarios that show up with a "1 man" or "2 man" symbol for unit size.
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I hope I'm misreading this.
Are you really saying you want to get rid of micro terrain? I think the would be a horrible, horrible step backwards. One of my little joys is accidentally finding that perfect spot where a change of elevation by 1m makes infantry almost invulnerable. I would hate to see them go away. And I think those micro terrain features should be hard to find, so that better/more-diligent players getter a payoff for their efforts, and the rest of us get an unexpected bonus from time to time.
Yeah, actually that's what WEE did. Instead of smooth hills, they have levels. Usually no more than 3. This makes seeing hills way easier, because their is a clearly defined slope that goes around the entire thing that is always the exact same grade and length on every side of the hill. It also makes it look like you're pushing toys around on a table cloth, as previously said.
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I really hope we can invest some time in the near future to dramatically improve the look of the area surrounding the battlefield. Our technique is nice and low impact on initial programming and framerate/resources, but it's definitely not ideal visually.
Steve
The way WEE does it is by having the map itself extend beyond the limits of the camera. Or rather, the camera doesn't extend beyond the limits of the map. They actually restrict the facing of the camera so you cannot look at the horizon.
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We actually looked into this for Upgrade 2.0. Unfortunately all of the straight forward concepts are horrid from a game resource needs standpoint. Meaning people would not want to use the feature because it would kill framerate or crash their wee little puter. Obviously it's not worth putting time into something like that!
The primary problem is having this feature capable of being toggled on/off. That requires either banking stuff in VRAM or doing things on the fly. So far we haven't come up with any brilliant technical way to make either work. Not yet anyway!
Steve
You see I wouldn't know these things without your replies, thanks once again for the info!
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Might be nice to generate a game map and then have a period military map automatically generated of that area, that the player could refer to for orientation.
Or maybe the grid reference lines previously mentioned, with the grid color also changing with elevation, only instead of being toggleable on the live battlefield, the player must click 'briefing' to see a photo of it from a single angle.
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I often take small plane rides (my father is an enthusiastic private pilot), and I do work in a skyscraper. Elevation changes are sometimes easier to see from a higher elevation, but not always. Depends a lot on the angle, quality of light, and viewing angle. For example, at high noon on a hazy day, elevation changes, especially more subtle ones, become much harder to discern. The ground looks like a flat painting.
True, which is why most of my custom scenarios take place during the morning and evening.
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Really, sometimes I wonder how often people go out and stand in an open field these days. When you're on the ground (especially on your belly on the ground) its really not that easy to look toward the horizon and discern every fold and undulation in front of you. Tricks of the light, cloud cover, your own near-sightedness plays a roll. I've been out in the Arizona desert where you couldn't discern a 9 foot deep wash 40 yards in front of you on flat open terrain. Not knowing exactly if that shallow dip up ahead is deep enough to conceal you sounds like 'FOW' to me.
Right, but again I wasn't complaining about the difficulty with the camera zoomed in on the soldier's point of view. In fact, that's the only way in the game that I can tell the differences in elevation. Its impossible when the camera is further up in the air, looking over the entire battlefield. Unless you have a silhouette of the ground against the sky, it's just too hard to see that hill.
I don't often take plane rides, nor do I work in a skyscraper, but if my memory serves me right, it is easier to tell hills and valleys from a higher viewpoint, like you said.
Part of the problem is that at the moment, I believe shadows aren't cast by terrain, it's just shaded.
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Still no response... anyone have a copy of that download available? I believe the $1 is because you're paying for the license code, not the patch itself... I already have the license, I just need the file.
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Well i wasn't really complaining about the color pallette in its realism, more its diversity. I just find it too hard to tell a valley from a hill.
Playing the 3rd mission in the demo, can't get the stinger team to fire?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
I assumed because the humvee that the stinger team was in was a flatbed, that it meant they could fire from the flatbed as long as the vehicle was stopped. But I had my stinger team right next to some bradleys and they all got obliterated by russian helicopter support ATGMs, and the stinger team never fired. At least I don't think it ever fired, it's hard to tell in this game because there are no alerts or event text logs (you can lose half your units without ever noticing because there are no sound alerts or flashing icons when they're off screen). But I checked their ammo before and after, and it never changed from 7 stinger missiles remaining.
Do they have to dismount to fire?