ZPB II

Commando. Oh man, this blast from the past makes me dizzy to even think about. I used to read them as a kid. It was called "Korkeajännitys" translating as High Voltage or High Tension here. In retrospect, I guess by the mid-90s they had ran pretty thin on war story material to publish since the plots were, I guess the correct term to use here, outlier. There is a Finnish website devoted to the art of speaking proper Commando German. http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=fi&sl=fi&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fkoti.mbnet.fi%2Fgabbahey%2FAargh!%2Fsis.htm I liked the bit explaining Argh-words in detail. Saku is roughly equivalent to Kraut.

In CMA especially, I've suffered some horrible friendly fire casualties from my own air assets, so it's already possible. I expect WW2 CAS to be even more inaccurate.

This is from the "Features" page. "Detailed simulation of Normandy's infamous hedgerows ("bocage"), including the explicit simulation of breaching with Rhino tank attachments and engineers" Since terrain deformation is in CMx2, I would expect with 99% certainty that bocage is no exception. I'd love some pretty pictures too, but BFC and the beta boys are probably rather busy. I hope their real-life commitments won't suffer too much from the crunch.

I browsed the PC forums for a bit and in a sense, it felt a bit like stepping into a time warp or sumfink. Everything was compared to CMx1 and even then it seemed a bit so-so, really outdated. The CMx2 engine appears to do most things vastly better and has been out since 2007. Granted, there's been no WW2 CMx2 game yet, but I assume (having read about the features and watched the videos about PC:O) that CMBN will blow that dinosaur out of the water. Couldn't find a demo to confirm my suspicions.

Just to clarify things even more, Steve confirmed that sound contacts are making a comeback in CMBN a short while back.

M7 Priest.

I don't know what BFC has done but everything looks so lush and vivid in these latest screenies...Not much left of the "pool table" look in some early shots. I don't think I've ever been this hyped about a game before...Come to think of it, I find this peculiar...It seems the real world is taking the back seat and everything is moving towards CMBN, what is this primal reaction...

Man, I guess spilling beer on my joystick really was an omen to not buy this game. I feel really bad for Oleg, Ubisoft seems to muck up things on a regular basis. EDIT: Just read that Oleg is leaving the business, no doubt due to this fiasco.

I got so excited I forgot to put on any pants.

I feckin' hate Omaha Beach. Numerous interpretations of that place taint WW2 shooters across the spectrum. I can understand the interest in a psychological sense, but it's never any fun. It's just 30 minutes you spend stretching your balls into funny shapes while waiting for the next map. I'm just glad BFC isn't wasting any time on that crap that has me traumatized. I'm fairly certain this omission means this forum will be a slightly better place in the end.

One thing I really like about this relative spotting jigamazag, apart from the obvious lack of Borg spotting is how chaotic the feedback from your units gets. The overlapping contact reports mean you pretty much never have a clear picture of how many enemies are where. Keeps you on your toes nicely.

I read about the demo in Pelit-magazine back in 1999 or 2000, whenever it was that it came out. Downloaded it and was instantly hooked. I was 13 back then but I like to think I had developed a good taste early on. I think I started haunting the forums around the time CMBB came out. This might be the very best forum I've been on based on the quality of posters. My moment of glory here was "inventing" the Space Lobsters of Doom meme. There was a thread pondering the future direction of CM games, and wanting to sound outlandish, I voiced my view of what CMx2 should be like. Steve commented on this in his reply and the whole thing started snowballing.

I thought I read one of the testers saying that as a result of this battle, there were AI tweaks made that resulted in PzIVs aiming at and hitting the turret more often.

Damn....I guess one can still hope it isn't in some earlier build (unlikely) or that the AI didn't react in this case (more likely.) I guess I never noticed them missing due to the very open terrain as I never fancied urban fights. Would be really nice to have in the more confined terrain of CMBN, although I remember reading that infantry next to hedgerows can peek through it, so it's not disastrous. I have to say this aura of mystery surrounding the topic is interesting...Steve's post didn't help my broken F5 key at all.

You gentlemen who brought up snow, I hate you. It's been quite a spectacular and long winter here, with several weeks of continuous -30C or below temperatures and record breaking amounts of snow (there's literally a feckin' mountain of it outside my door. Should it topple over my house would implode.) It's spring and that crap should be melting away. But oh no, more just keeps coming from the sky. It's been an effing apocalyptic ice age for over 5 months now!!! Then I log in on my favourite forum on the whole Internetz and what do I see, some buggers clamoring over snow like it's the next best thing! :mad: :mad: :mad:

I mean in a situation where it appears that none of the men under my command should be able to directly observe the location. Like I said I play RT so I don't go down to ground level and check out whether no single soldier sees it, just that it immediately appears like that. This has given me an impression that sound contacts would be modeled, but if not, I'd love to see (hear) them in CMBN!

Well, that is strange. I always thought of the "?"s that appear, say, on a street that I don't have LOS on as a sound contact. There's probably some really narrow keyhole somewhere that I missed. Do dust clouds or somesuch give a contact?

I can't say for sure, but I could almost swear there is something akin to a sound contact in CMx2. I get "?"s popping up on the other side of a building, for example, and I can't figure who could have LOS there. Or more like, I haven't noticed an occasion where a moving vehicle would have surprised me in a fashion where I go "WTF? How was there not a "?" marker there?" (I play Real-time though, so that screws my perception a bit) I would love to know since I've never read anything definitive on this subject.

Hit decals would be a really nice touch, but when talking about the visual side of things I think my biggest wish is a new running animation. I find all the other animations really great, but the running one looks unnatural to me. Bit of a shame since it's the most common animation for my pixeltruppen to be doing. The second one being the death animation, which I was pleased to read have been made more diverse.

Great pictures, must have taken a tremendous amount of time and dedication. Good stuff. Sometimes, the fact that I understand the "humor" (in a very liberal sense of the word) on this forum and find it amusing makes me worry about the sanity of my future wife. Whoever that might be. How do you guys cope with this issue?

I'm curious, does this number refer to write-offs, or knocked out tanks? Since the Allies were most of the time advancing, wrecks that didn't burn were on their territory after the battle and thus repaired often. I remember reading about Shermans that had been knocked out 3 times but didn't burn, so they were brought back to action.

Sergei, you better put Emrys' response into your signature.

In light of this recent information I have to move this scenario up a few notches on the crazy scale. All I know is that the Parola armoured museum in Finland wasn't guarded well at all since nobody would want to steal rust. Many moons ago I while sneaking abooot the premises with my father and it was really close that we didn't get driven over by the lead T-72 gunning it in the forest. My father was feeling nostalgic and wanted to see some damn rock that he had fond memories of. Speaking of crazy and stupid stuff, I uhh....hhmm....someone who wasn't me had a friend of his "borrow", on separate occasions, a military Land Rover and an ambulance. The story has it that they offroaded these vehicles in a small village somewhere, powersliding on parking lots and an empty playground and some jogging trails while wailing on the sirens. All this while the passengers were hanging out of the windows drinking beer. Those young and very stupid hooligans, uhh, whoever they might be... It was fun though. I still remember some of the confused faces on people. I have no idea how nobody ever got caught. When I was in the army we used to drag race CV90s. There was one collision, several damaged barrels, prisms and one blown engine. I admit that everything aforementioned is ****ing stupid so no need to mention that.

Sergei, if that is indeed the only way to settle this debate, I am up to the task. Not even close to the craziest of dares. I wonder if I would make it to the headlines if caught?

What? No, damn, that's bad. I had no idea...He was a great contributor, RIP.