A Canadian Cat

Excellent thanks for sharing! Just so I am clear are you saying the 10 rounds are never fired? So once the mortars are done firing and they say empty there are still 10 rounds left? Some how I have not had 81mm mortars when playing the Americas so I have not seen this.

Someone pointed me to some source code a while back. I am not sure if it was for PBEMH or if it was for something similar. Anyway it used VB to do its magic. I looked at the code for the button pushing and password entering and you are correct it will not work for CMBN. The older CM games used standard windows controls / dialog boxes to open the game file and there is lots of examples on how to manipulate a standard windows file dialog. However the new CM uses its own custom screen with a page scrolling area for game names. To a helper app it would look like a bunch of pixels - if you could even get at those. So finding the game name and scrolling the list on screen while theoretically possible would be way to much work than I am willing to under take.

Since I have not heard anything on this topic here is my proposal. This is what I would consider to be a bare bones simple as possible set of command line options that would allow many third party helper apps (PBEM helper apps, find scenarios and campaign apps) to offer a much richer experience to your customers. In fact calling it a set of options would be a gorse exaggeration. There would be one and only one command line option passed - the file name. No paths, no drives just the file name. Based on the extension the program will determine where to look for the named file (all under the "Game Files" folder tree). I know this does not allow controlling of game settings, resolution and all the other things you could think of. Nor does it do anything for map / scenario editing but that's the point. I am suggesting a starting point - minimum, simple. The kind of thing that could be implemented in a patch even;) Here is what the hypothetical command line help would look like: CM Normandy [filename] [filename] the name of the single file CM Normandy will open The [filename] must be the name of a file plus its extension found under the game's "Game Files" directory. The game will look in its "Game Files" directory tree according the following rules:*.cam Will load a new campaign using the specified .cam file from the "Game Files/Campaigns" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Campaign" command from the main menu and then selecting the campaign. *.btt Will load a new battle using the specified scenario file from the "Game Files/Scenarios" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Battle" command from the main menu and then selecting the scenario. *.bts Will load a previously saved game from the "Game Files/Saved Games" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Saved Game" command from the main menu and then selecting the named saved game. *.ema Will load a PBEM game from the "Game Files/Incoming Email" folder. This is equivalent to starting the game and picking the "Saved Game" command from the main menu and selecting the PBEM game from the named game list.

Looking at the Shock Force tutorials is a good place to learn how to use the new CM2x commands. For WWII tactics here is a link to a collection of posts based on the old games. If, while you are reading, you focus on the tactics used and not on the game commands there is lots of good information there: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=96905

An excellent point - I keep forgetting about that. I see that others have similar experience too.

No way. I like the fact that the icon colour coding are kept simple. The only highlighting I want is the way it is now: showing who on our side can see an enemy unit and showing the rest of the teams in the platoon. More clutter will not help.

I'm just not feeling this pain. Yes, the colours could be considered ugly but its only during setup so it just does not matter - to me. It has not caused me any problem with actually setting up troops. What issues are you guys seeing during setup? To me it seems like it should be pretty much the bottom of the feature back log.

As someone pointed out earlier the generic game looks really really good. I only consider a few mods really important and a few are just fun. Here is the prioritized list of that I am using. Must haves: CMBN Icons_billy_sp WW2 tactical symbols used by the German and US forces - the German symbols took some getting used to but the US ones are very similar to what NATO uses now so that felt very natural. Overall I really like what it adds to the game. Niessuh_icon_contact_Balkenkreuz Updates the unknown contact symbol to use the star for the US and the cross for Germany z_Juju's TweakedUI I realy like the chagnes he made (except for the black command buttons - see CMBN_Wolfe_Coloured_Command_Buttons below). Juju him self said he liked Wolfe's colour tweaks to his tweak so the above link to 1.01 verison may already have them. CMBN_Wolfe_Colored_Command_Buttons_1-3 Put some colour back into the command buttons - taken out by Juju's TweakedUI. As I said the newest version of Juju's UI might already have coloured buttons so this might no longer be needed. Just for fun: Ramblers_Weapons_v1 Nicer looking weapons for when you take screen shots Veins_tracers_C I just like them Vin's animated text CMBN v1.21 I like the idea of making the text easer to follow but this version actually makes it harder to read (IMHO) but I keep it because it has the teams hightlighted well. I plan to try the 2.0 version and if it works well it will bubble up to the must have section. I also really like the look of Juju's walls and bridges and I want to try them out. There are also a variety of very nice dirty vehicle mods that I would like to try out too. But alas I am too busy playing the game to try them all out. Guess I am lazy too.

I probably should not be telling anyone this but doing this with snipers is one of my favorite things to do. German snipers teams start with only 60 rounds for the long gun. US sniper sniper teams have 123 to share between them. But by tossing the battalion HQ team out of their jeep for a few moments during setup means you can mount each of your sniper teams in turn ad give them another 100 rounds. Load the HQ team back in and everything is as it was. I have done this with 100 extra rounds per team and not noticed any degradation of performance but I am not claiming to have done exhaustive tests and I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point adding more amo to the team would have some detrimental effects. But again I have not tired it.

Just for clarification: do you mean if you see the wrong setup zone in the map preview quit the game and reload the turn file. Repeat until the setup zone is as expected?

If you can no longer look then sadly anyone trying to help would only be guessing. No saved game kicking around some where you could post and let people play with? I know sort of a rhetorical question given your previous statement but a suggestion for future posts would be - if you are having trouble with something in a game keep a saved game around to share with people on the forum.

Well that is very inconvenient. What version of the game are you running? Is it the original 1.00 or the patch 1.01. I believe there were some fixes regarding spotting rounds in the patch. Those situations involved FO's not being able to see the spotting rounds land because they had no LOS to the area they hit. So, this situation is not quite the same but similar.

Hummm there must be something going on. What kind of artillery is it? On page 103 of the manual under section "Matchup" what kind of a match icon do you see for them?

I see you have answers to everything. When I read that first question I interpreted it differently. So, I will add that bazooka teams will not fire when they are inside buildings. I am not 100% sure but I will bet they will not fire when inside trucks or half tracks either. That little tid bit is important to know up front.

Many of us are using Dropbox and other online file sharing solutions to share Play By EMail files when playing head to head. They will work as well for your cooperative play against the AI. Check out this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=97839

Newer versions of WinZip support .rar files (not sure when support was added). On my Win 7 and Vista boxes WinZip is associated with .rar files and opens them just fine without changing the file extension. In mjkerner's case he must have a version of WinZip that handles .rar files but does not have WinZip associated with .rar files. Koodos to WinZip for actually looking at the file contents rather than just the extension to figure out how to unpack it. This post is not meant to challenge mjkerner's "all powerful" status. I am much to small a fry to be challenging anyone who is "all powerful"

Yes absolutely, I do this often in the early stages. In a meeting engagement that is now winding down the first 15 minutes I used a lot of "move the whole platoon at once" orders. I started by getting them setup in the setup zone in a good fan pattern and then selecting them all and quicking them into the forest. After a few minutes of quick moves I switched to hunting. Then when I got close to the objective and was in the range of possible enemy encounter (if he had mechanized infantry with HTs then his guys could be close) I switched to assault commands. This was a large force on a large map. Different situations call for different levels of caution. Double clicking on a section will select the whole platoon too. As someone mentioned you can <shift>click on units to add or remove them from the group that is selected. I also use "show paths" (<alt>P) so I can see the movement orders I have already given. It is handy for coordinating where large groups are going when you want to carefully place each unit. No way man we all have to deal with this. The first turns of a medium or large battle always take me a long time to get things setup.

I would only add to this that just before you strike with your tanks try to get the target tank to button up. Use that infantry that you used to find the tank in the first place to scare the tank commander into closing up. That way the target tank has less ability to spot and is distracted by another target - your infantry that shot at him. 30s latter your tanks come over the ridge, behind the trees or whatever with your tank commanders open and spotting. That will help with the odds of who see's who first and who get first shot.

You might be interested in some mad scientist experiments going on over here http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99092. Mad Mike seems to indicate that he can extract the scenarios from a compiled campaign. If / when he pulls it off it might be useful for campaign tweaking purposes.

I do not thing this has changed in the last few weeks. I have experienced the suddenly not able to download problem before. In my case it was my browser forgot my login credentials and or the server was reset. You already have an account - it is your store account from when you bought the game.

While we were all waiting for CMBN I was introduced to CMBB and CMAK. I was unable to get FRAPs to take a screen shot or a movie either. I my case I was getting strange colours (like the old days of 16 colour only games). I contacted support and they told me to update my video drivers (which were out of date). So I did. Then my screen caps and video were all black - arrggg. Some time passed and I decided to ping FRAPs support again but before I did I noticed they had a new version. Knowing the first thing support would ask me to do I installed the new one first. It worked!! So they are fixing stuff all the time and I found support to be fairly responsive. I really like having it work now. Worth taking time to update your video drivers and get the latest FRAPs and then ping support with examples if things are still not working.

All you need to run is the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) which you can find at the link below. But before you download anything try it fist. Most computers now a days come with Java already installed. Download his .zip file, unzip it so the CMBN_Scen_Organiser_v0.1.jar is in your scenario directory and just double click on it. If after a few moments you get a Scenarios.html file then you do not need to install anything. If you have to install a JRE then download it from here and install it. Then the above procedure should work.

Excellent idea! But I went and wrote an app so I'm good now:-) I can set a threshold (default to 24hours) and the tool can tell me which turns I am overdue on playing and which ones I am really late with. Which helps me play the oldest turns first. Plus, I am working on a notes field so I can keep track of what pw I am using for which game and make notes for use in AARs as I play. So, I am getting a bit more value than just whose turn it is.

Very cool - I really like it. on my non wide screen there are issues with the formatting of the table but that's just HTML tweaking. I would really like to see an optional xml output so people can add useful properties them selves. I for one would like a scenario list with links to the URI of the source of the scenario. That way people can dl there own copy. I have been studiously collecting scenarios and URI links as I go. With some luck (as in I get time) I'll work up some additional feedback and send it to you. Ian

After using dropbox for many games the one problem I was having was figuring out whose turn it is to play (I have to look at turn files in the Output and Input directories). So, I wrote a program to do that for me "Whose Turn Is It?". Whose Turn Is It does not manage turn files but just tells you, for each game you are playing if you are waiting for turns to be sent back or if you owe turns to your opponent. I was ready to let everyone play with it but I sent it to two friends first and it turns out that while they are using dropbox they are *not* using Sync Toy (or any other tool) to automatically copy files. They are still manually copying files. The feedback I got was there is no point in using "Whose Turn Is It?" without doing file management. So, I guess I have work to do still. I will start a new thread once I get there.