A Canadian Cat

Is that by design? Is there some kind of feedback - other than disappearing bridges :confused:

If that does not work you can get a free DropBox account and create a public folder which can then be used to create a url to your file. You should create a .zip file for your deliverable for something like this. If that will not work for you I would be willing to host a moderately sized file on my domain lesliesoftware.com. Ian

I'm curious by 'blackspot' are you referring to the dark colour the map editor uses to show a tile you have set the height for? If so why every other square? Cool, can you share how you made a culvert? Please, Ian

Excellent tip. My test map was looking a bit ragged with all my mismatched polygons...

OK I am a happy camper now. I watched this video: http://earth.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=22365&topic=23729 The take away was that I was not making my polygons correctly. I was not drawing them while the dialog was open so I was getting a infinitely small polygon - which was not very helpful. If I draw my polygon while the dialog is up things look good and I can add multiple layers and I get the expected behaviour. My fundamental miss use of the tool caused me all these problems. Now I just need to learn how to edit the points of an existing polygon. Off to watch more Google Earth tutorials... Thank for your help. Ian

Sounds good. That was what I thought I did. So, I tried it again here at work (shhh don't tell anyone) but I did not get a satisfactory result. The altitude value does not stick. I set the drop down to Absolute (I had to do that first because the edit box was not editable until I did that) then I tried 110 and 110m in the edit box and both times it ignored me. When I press the OK button I do not get a red polygon any where I can see but it does show up in my Places list. When I select it I see a bubble pointing to off map (which no matter what zoom level I set I can never actually find). When I edit the polygon, everything looks OK except the altitude value I set has been replaced with the default "various altitudes (min=-2147483648m, max=-2147483648m)". I must be missing something obvious. The screen shot you added looks just like I am hopping to get. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Here is what the polygon properties dialog looks like when I open it up again. I entered 110m for the Altitude: Ian

I took a shot at doing that yesterday and came up short - and confused:confused:. How do you create polygons at specific elevations the create this contour map? I had to move on to accomplish the task I had at the time so I could not experiment longer than a half our or so. Did you learn how from a tutorial? From the GE help system? Divine inspiration? Ian

Sounds very interesting. I look forward to hearing more. I have a question about the making of the maps in CM. I was helping my son with a geography project over the weekend, that involved topo maps, so it kind of got me thinking of getting into map making once CMBN arrives. One of the things we were doing was overlaying an ecozone map with the topo index map so we could find out which 1:50000 topo maps we wanted to get. My question is once you have your CM map grid created can you overlay an air photo or topo map over it in the editor? It strikes me that it would be handy to have a semi transparent overlay of the thing you are working on (buildings, or roads or contours) on top of the CM map editor so you can place things on the map that match the overlay. Ian

Well in the CM1x engine you would be correct. The more tired your troops are the easier it is for the opposition to pin them, cause panic etc. They will also move slower in a sense; tired or exhausted troops will only walk even though you gave them a run order. I am not sure about shooting accuracy though - hard to tell that in the game. I strongly suspect the CM2x engine will behave similarly. I usually try to let my guys at least get to OK or Ready before getting into contact. If they get tired getting into position or sneaking around under fire it is a good idea to give them some down time before pressing a final assault. Otherwise bad things will happen. Down time does not have to be away from the front. Covering an area from a position of cover for a turn or two is enough to let them rest. Ian

Interesting can you tell us what page in the manual? The teaser format is kind of hard to browse and find things easily. A while back I was talking to my father about infantry using smoke grenades for a smoke screen. He said even in the 60s and 70s when he was a front line infantry officer they did not have the capability to create their own smoke screens from the soldiers themselves. They had to call it in from mortars or artillery to do it. They carried a small number of coloured smoke grenades for signaling but that was about it. Ian

CMBB and CMAK. I have four PBEM scenarios on the go with two others plus one hot seat game going with my 14 year old son.

Count me in that statistic too. I discovered CMBB and CMAK only a month or so ago. When a couple of my friends were excited to find out about CMBN. I said what is Combat Mission? We have been playing CMBB and CMAK for the past month. I am loving it. I would buy CMBN even if it looked as good as those earlier versions as long as it played as well. The additional soldier level detail and the even better graphics are a real plus. I am looking forward to the new game for sure. But unlike many people here I still have that "its new and cool" feeling about the old games. About the only thing I'll be missing when the new games comes out are the Canadians and soldiers riding on tanks. I'm sure I'll be just as happy with CM BN and its expansion modules as they appear. Ian (a happy Canuck customer)

First of all excellent video - I really enjoyed watching it. I have a question - what software did you use to capture the video? I am trying to capture CMBB and CMAK videos right now and so far have had no luck. It could be that because these are older games there are issues. But I would like to try out the sw that you are using just be be sure. Thanks, Ian

There has been discussion here about grenades killing tanks. I was just watching the video and noticed the narrator saying that the tank is killed by grenades thrown by the squad hiding behind the trees. But if you look at the video 27:56 you can see a back flash and a projectile in the air then its strikes the tank and explodes. So we are *not* talking about potato mashers here. Those guys must have had a Panzerfaust. Is that the tank kill you guys have been debating?

An excellent argument indeed. I would counter that you have cast these two assumptions made by anti-DRM people in a light that offers your argument an opportunity come out on top. I certainly do not feel I have a divine right to anything. When I become a paying customer for a product what I do expect is the ability to use the product I paid for without undo hassle (in other words I want the product and its licensing scheme to work). When I am deciding to enter into an agreement to purchase I take the likely hood of support hassle into account before I buy. One of those factors is the history of their chosen licensing scheme. Once I do make the decision I expect the other party to resolve problems that may arise in their product. This does not seem unreasonable. If a company fails to live up to that, as you say, they will not be successful. I believe that some people have expressed concern about how a particular licensing scheme will effect them. I think in a free market potential customers should be able to express their concerns. Providers can decide if they want to address those concerns or not. With regard to argument two; while at the point of having a discussion about licensing schemes etc. you are correct. However once someone has bought the software the copyright holder has in fact expressed the desire to do business with them. So if a customer runs into problems there should be some attempt to assist them. You are correct if a company decides that 'n' activations is all you get and they are clear on this then someone that will have a technical problem with that will have to make the decision to buy or not. But again in a free market potential customers should be able to say "I don't like this aspect of your product would you please change it or make some declaration that given my personal circumstance you will make some kind of allowance". While some would lobby for no blocking licensing scheme in CMBN - count me as one of them. I will settle for a reasonable level of confidence that the scheme will work most of the time and that support will be offered to help me out of a jam. I personally do not expect to have issues with the 4 activations decision but as you can see others are concerned. Perhaps it will not be a real issue perhaps it will. I just hope that Battlefront can do its best to offer us assurances that they will help out legitimate paying customers. I would like them to succeed in the free market. Ian

Oh, major mind failure there (on my part) - thanks.

Please clarify - HT?

Excellent that will make me a happy platoon commander. Ian

I was recently playing CMAK (Blessings scenario) and the platoon of re-enforcements arrived on the map and was immediately engaged and pinned down by a German force. The two sides had a very long fire fight with a river between them so neither side could press to finish the fight just blast away and hope to wear the other down. My platoon was made up of a green squad, a regular squad and a veteran squad. As you might expect over time the green squad fired a lot less than the other two. The Veteran squad was running low on amo while the green squad had plenty left over. Is there any way in CM2x to redistribute ammunition around a platoon? I realize there is buddy aid but I'm talking about redistributing amo between live active soldiers. As there platoon commander I was ready to kick those green guys out of the army for not firing at the enemy as I asked :-) So I know I would have had no hesitation of getting them to each hand over a magazine to members of the other squad. I am just wondering if there is a way to do this under the new system. In one off the AAR reports there was an account of a sniper running out of amo and moving off the line to the rear, replenishing and returning to keep firing. Just curious, Ian

A friend of mine at work was all excited one day that there as a new CM game coming out. I said what's Combat Mission. After he told me I said I would buy AK and BB that night if he wanted to play. I cannot believe I missed out on this when it came out. I am having soooo much fun just playing the old games. RoW sounds very cool. I like the sounds of it. While I am happy to play a balanced QB I really enjoy the hard ones: Playing the Candian's in CMAK's Blessings or the Americans in CMAK's The Dead Solute the Gods. Right now I am seeing how well I can manage as the German's in CMBB's White Wave. Nothing beats the challenge of making do with a sub par position. Any other recommendations for uneven match-ups in AK or BB? You all have 10 years of playing these on me. I can play a PBEM turn pretty much every morning and can handle three or four simultaneous scenarios. I would soooo like to get in on this. Thanks, Ian

Sure - but green ones:-)

Can you guys enlighten me? What is RoW?

Is it possible for an admin to manually truncate the original post so this thread does not start off with incorrectly formatted links? I have fixed them in a follow on post. Ian

Yes, I know that's how I found out about the older games. Do you think the advice from the CMBO, CMBB and CMAK games will apply to the new game? Ian

Sorry everyone but my origonal post contained lots of errors creating the links in forum speak. Corrected below: