A Canadian Cat

There are a group of forum members that beta test the games and content and some of them also create the scenarios. @JonS is one that does both. He also gives great feedback to the rest of us.

I think you are asking to annotate the map and have those marks show up in the 3D world some how. Yeah that would be awesome.

I'll let BFC and Slytherine figure out the optimal marketing decisions. Well that's a bit graphic or silly I'm not sure which:-). Sorry that BFC have not moved fast enough to satisfy you /s Indeed. My favourite marketing expert had some insight on prices that he shared with my one day over lunch. He said, if you price your product so that no one decides not to by or complain about the price - its too low. His heuristic is that you maximize your revenue if you price your product high enough so that some people just walk away. The theory is that the rest of the people do see the value at the price will more than make up for those that walk away. The thing that happens is those that walk away never accept that. Just watch what the reaction to my saying that will be I think the evidence that a came company, BFC, are still alive and well speaks to the fact that they might just understand how to set their prices, despite what all the game playing complaining experts have to say . Having said that I so expect there will be a few changes since Slytherine is now participating in the discussion. I have no idea if they will be big changes or even any changes in price. We'll just have to wait and see.

Nice. Mystery solved. And that actually makes sense with what you were seeing. The colour table is likely that red line and the image is therefore party offset because it is treating the colour table as image data (which it is not hence the red line) and therefore pushing the real image data over a little causing the goofy shifted part of the image. That's my guess anyway. BMP is a format with tons of variations and choices and improvements that were added over time. CM was written at the bare metal (as we programmers would say) with one and only one format of BMP supported. It just reads the file you hand it as if it were in that specific format. The advantage of this is there is no code to figure out what kind of file it's reading. They don't need it because the graphic authors know what the correct format is. That falls over when you let the public play with customizing images. Sorry you spent so much time on fighting with this. I know how annoying it is when you just want to do a simple fun thing and you end up spending hours figuring out why that fun thing doesn't work. Sigh.

Well things don't always work first try for us Windows users either. For my icon mod I used a simple icon editing tool but it just could not save to the right format (32bit because transparency - IIRC) so I had to ditch it and switch to another one that could set the right flags when saving. Sigh. My first attempt at a scenario icon was with Photoshop and whatever it chooses by default was not correct for CM either. I switched to Paint.Net and it just does what I need for scenario images. I am sure you can find the right tool with the right settings so that it works for you. Fingers crossed. Bummer I was hoping.

Some super duper irony here because BFC have essentially stuck with a format that worked good enough and never changed it and now since they did not keep up with the latest puff of wind you (we) have trouble picking the right flags and bits to get the image to work for us. With that joke aside I'll try to actually add something worth checking: Could it be an image size issue 171x170 is not rejected but also not handled correctly?

Could @OldSarge's trick with .txt files also work with .bmp files? By that I mean export an existing scenario's .bmp file and open that in your editor, paste over the actual picture and save the .bmp file. Depending on the editor that might preserve whatever setting is causing you grief that the game is not telling you about and give you a .bmp file with an updated image that will work. if that's not possible go easy on my I'm at work and don't have access to the game at the moment.

Yes +100 I only play WEGO and use these buttons nearly every time play. Oh and it's 9 times to go from no pause to "paused".

I think that was what I was thinking of. If that still isn't working then I'm not sure.

Oh yeah CM uses a specific BMP encoding. I do not remember the specifics of the top of my head but your editing software needs to make a tweak to those settings on save for CMFI to be happy. Viewers and editors can handle a wide range of encoding.

?? Am I missing something? I don't think it works that way. Unless I am miss-under standing what you are saying. Consider setting up a defensive side and I want both human and computers to play that side: I paint a nice big setup zone for the player to use. I deploy the defensive troops in a way that makes sense. I have only one AI plan and no setup orders. When the player plays that side they see my chosen deployment and they can tweak it as they like inside the nice big setup zone. When the player faces the AI the AI controlled units start out where I set them up during deployment because there is no setup orders for the AI plan. No randomness involved.

Oops I forgot about that. The AI face is a recent add and lets you at least have some additional control over AI unit placement in the plan painted zones.

This is for the player to setup their forces. The designer has to use the unit deployment to place the scenario units in the setup zones so the player can move them where they want or the designer can place some or all of the units outside the setup zone in which case the player cannot move them. Note: units always get a deployment location this default location is terrible and will not be restricted to the painted deployment zones- make sure you place all units yourself as the designer. I recommend you pick a decent first draft of an attack formation or defensive setup. Alternatively you could organize them so platoons, companies and battalions are positioned in an organized way. This allows AI plan specific placement of various groups. If you do not provide a setup area for a group in an AI plan they will start where they are set in the unit deployment. Note: the final setup for AI units into their setup zones is not done right away when you are running in scenario design mode. At first all units are placed in the locations they had during deployment and when the clock actually starts the snap to the locations that match the chosen AI plan's setup zones. This is for the scenario designer to setup default locations for units. They can use that position for all their AI plans or they can create plan specific setup areas. The deploy action allows you to very specifically setup units and give them face orders. The painted AI plan setup areas allow the AI to pick a place within the painted area.

Crimea? Really? Not Russia? Yeah, good point. Considering the insurgency in the Dombas was kicked off and nearly entirely manufactured by Putin it would be hard to say that any insurgency in Ukraine after removing the Russian occupiers would be truly organic.

LOL a fake plebiscite would be most galling. Many in the west are pretty upset about the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the following faked plebiscite results. So, it is pretty rich listening to you imply the results of that faked plebiscite mean that Ukraine taking Crimea back would via a "war to compel" the inhabitants under the Ukrainian government. If there wasn't so many people dying I would find it funny. Again seriously. I am fully aware there have been issues of governance in parts of Ukraine but come on you cannot seriously think that people following this thread believe that the plebiscite you refer to is legitimate. We don't know how the people living in Crimea would like to be governed. I would be fine with them getting to decide but before a fair plebiscite can be conducted you have to get the occupiers out of there and then you have to decide if the imported people should really get a say or sent home - tricky question. Not to mention the people displaced by the occupying Russians need to have the choice to return. Only then could you have a free vote. Honestly I'm not sure how that should look and I would leave that up to the Ukrainians and the citizens living in Crimea to decide. None of that can happen while its under Russian occupation.

Yep. It always answers with confidence - even when it's making stuff up. Which is really really bad IMHO. Mind you we all know at least one friend in RL that does the same

Correct it cannot. A map or scenario created in a newer version nearly always does not open in the older one. There have been a few patches from time to time that don't bump that internal scenario revision but 4.04 is not one of those. Cool - that will work just fine, but you already knew that.

That is not a common experience. There can be issues with really big battles. Typically you would see out of memory errors in that case. I have no idea if you can be hitting something like that for that campaign. It might be worth opening a support request if no one else has comments on that particular campaign: Battlefront Help desk

@IanL as the person who is seeing the battles from the other side......Is this how it has played out with what you see on your end? Or are you seeing casualties that maybe Andrew isn't? Pretty much. I was not paying strict attention to which turn was which score but on turn 3 that I caused a couple of soldier casualties he set a striker on fire I cannot imagine how that gave me points but I am not really sure if we can tell when the turn we watched maps to the score. There was a turn where I had a guy get wounded and no other shots were fired. I honestly don't know if that was turn 1 but it was early and so it could have been.

Priests and ministers come to mind. And they cannot even be jailed.

Electric shock delivered via their chair?

I just saw your other post about not being able to create a support ticket. Well that sucks. I'll ping John directly and point him here...

This is a user to user help forum so you cannot be sure that @BFCElvis will see your post. I recommend opening a ticket with support - then you know he will see it: Battlefront Help desk

Yeah oddly enough regular PBEM++ seem to work differently than tournaments. For tournaments the turns disappear from my list once I play them. For a regular PBEM++ match they remain but the Fight button (or is it continue I don't remember) is greyed out.

Yes, for sure the SF2 game is winding down. The Snow for the Hungry PBEM file is available in our Dropbox folder. You can pick it up and drop it in CMRT's incoming folder and away we go - again.