Broadsword56

+1 Yes, please!

Yes, I'd enjoy the authenticity improvements to the German voices, and for American voices I'd enjoy some regional accents and some good period WWII slangy GI talk that is really from the period. Also, more tension and stress in the voices and not quite so relaxed or jokey. -- but it needs to be done VERY carefully because it would be so easy to take it a bit too far and have it come off like a Sgt. Rock comic book. Sometimes bland = good because it sort of fades into the background. But a cool bit of soldier chatter can quickly become annoying on the fourth or 400th hearing...

How do you make a squad lob grenades over a hedgerow? Especially if they can't see an area target over the hedgerow, since they're back from it?

The only graphic bug I've seen in the demo is that US tank commanders in the Shermans, when the tank is unbuttoned, sometimes appear half-displaced laterally from their hatch -- so it looks like half their body is protruding from the outside of the turret (not too comfortable for them, I'm sure!). But this effect disappears when I change the camera angle or distance a bit -- so it's an intermittent thing.

Nah, those are in the CandyLand mod -- candy cane forests, cotton candy hedgerows, gumdrop minefields, gingerbread villages, peanut brittle cobblestones, chocolate lakes...

I thought BF said in an earlier post/thread that in user-built maps, at least, you can place a multistory building and then "destroy" 1 or more of the upper levels to leave some of it still standing. That's at least a good start for making BUA maps -- although the effect will be quickly lost if one HE hit takes all the rest of the building down.

I've read that US battalions in Normandy generally estimated 4 wounded for every KIA -- that's the ballpark rule-of-thumb they developed for intelligence purposes, when they advanced and looked at the German corpses immediately after a scrap, and tried to estimate enemy losses vs. their own.

I'm running the demo and at the closest groundlevel view, I'm seeing a constant flickering over surface of the soldier models (only the troops, not vehicles or terrain or objects). It's as if they are slightly radiocative or have electricity running through them. Maybe it's something funny with the shadows effects? I'm playing with my graphics options to see if turning them down or turning off antialiasing might affect this -- but is anyone else experiencing this?

A new download site is up (Filefactory) and it's working for me so far (shows 570mb file, and will take 3+ hours to DL). Time to retire to my foxhole, catch a bit of shuteye, and wake up to Normandy in the morning (fingers crossed)!

So if the download on the US site begins, but the file progress window says the file is 364MB, should I abort?

That's why I think trying to get as fine as 1m elevation changes from Google Earth are probably not a good idea. I'm going to stick with the 5m countours (and maybe even those are too imprecise) and then use common sense when I can see the 3D preview in CMBN to make sure water doesn't "flow uphill," etc. (This is also the reason why it's ususally a good idea to make terrain contours first, then water, then the road net, then the hedgerows and basic terrain types and finally place the objects like trees and buildings. If you don't take time to get the basics right initially, a lot of the later detail work will be wasted).

Yes, but admit it: You will keep refreshing anyway because -- like all the rest of us -- you're addicted to the anticipation for this game, and the group experience of sharing the excitement only fuels the fire...

The "too much information" issue arises all the time in wargame design. But I find the best games find a way to counterbalance it. So, for example, as a player you may know too much, but in various ways the game prevents you from acting on that information too quickly or unrealistically. I think in CMBN (or I hope, at least) that the more sophisticated "soft factors" (fitness, motivation, fatigue, experience, etc) and the vastly improved spotting system will prevent the player from pushing his pixeltroopen around at will.

Franko's Iron Man rules really appeal to me. Never tried them. But how about some stories from people who actually tried to play this way consistently? How did it work in practice? Was it more fun/immersive? Did it make for a much more challenging fight against single-player AI?

"Clay Pigeons of St. Lo," by Glover Johns, reads as vividly as a novel and puts you right in his boots as you follow him in the day to day life of a battalion commander in the 29th ID (that's what he was). The kinds of decisions and problems he describes are just about exactly the ones we face commanding our companies and platoons in CM.

From what I've been reading, that very closely describes what the Normandy hedgerow battles felt like to the troops (and even leaders up to battalion level) at the time! But I still don't think I could play this way 100% with CMBN. It would require a level of "unit AI" that would let me stay in a small-unit's POV while the other units took care of themselves. Since I have to be the "brains" of every unit and give the orders, I can't really see any alternative to frequently zooming out and looking at the big picture. This is why the replay function is so key to the CMBN experience. I usually try to pick a particular unit as my "rooting interest" at any given time and follow its story at ground level.

OMG, me too! About two summers ago, I made an El Guettar map/scenario for TOW2 Africa and lost myself in the details of that battle and terrain, etc. Now I hardly think about it, but at the time that project was almost as much fun and absorbing as playing the actual game.

Maybe strange to some people, but not to me. Naturally you want to do it right -- this is hallowed ground, after all. I've often felt while making battle maps for wargames a certain -- responsibility I guess I'd say -- to do a good job to honor of all the soldiers who spilled their blood in those little French fields (and all the pixeltruppen soon to follow in their footsteps).

What's a "black spot" elevation?

Wow, mj, you really are dedicated! And I see you've got contours every meter -- I've only been doing them every 5 meters. Maybe I should reconsider...although as I read the manual, the elevation tools will automatically fill in the intervening slope between two specific contours. I wonder what the difference would be in final appearance?

With that raised road, we could make a map for the famous La Fiere Causeway battle fought by the 101st Airborne just after D-Day. And it should come in handy when it's time to make maps for Operation Market Garden!

Can you explain what vertical scale is? I don't quite understand it. What effect does it have on the map and what limits does it put on the map designer?

It's been a while since I used Paintshop Pro, but doesn't it show a little data readout somewhere at the bottom of the screen that changes wherever you put your cursor, to show the x/y coordinates of the pixel? Have you checked your view options to see if something needs to be enabled? Just FYI, I now use Gimp, which is also a free program and (IMHO) superior for mapping than Paintshop Pro. On the cartography enthusiast sites I've visited like The Cartographer's Guild, most seem to be using either Photoshop or Gimp.

Hey guys - this is a mapmaking thread. I don't know where this Typhoon-Tiger discussion popped in from, but please take it elsewhere or make a new thread for it. The information on this thread is really important for mappers, and we're really struggling to keep all the relevant information and links together so we don't have it spread all over the forum.

I don't know, but that's more precision than I'm going to worry about. If I can just get the basic "lay of the land" that allows the same historical tactical situation that existed on that terrain, then I won't worry about a few meters' difference here or there.