ClarkWGriswold
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Posts posted by ClarkWGriswold
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It shouldn't be necessary to click on a unit and examine 12 pt text to determine what unit type they are. This was a non-issue in CMx1 because the units carried weapons representative of what they were and you could make the units large enough to tell at a glance without ever having to select them, even from very far away.You need to click on a unit to give it orders, so you will know what kind of unit it is before you send it anywhere.Also, while it's true that you have to click on a unit to give it an order, it's possible (and much quicker and easier) to plot movement orders for multiple units at once by selecting them with shift+click and plotting everyone's moves (or fire arcs) at once. If you use this method, you do not see that a unit is Engineers, Ammo Bearers, etc. Anti-tank teams have special icons, FOs have special icons, HQs have special icons, etc. Can't you just click on the unit if you need to tell what it is? Why bother with different icons for these units? Because it's very helpful to be able to tell who is where without having to click each and every unit or memorize everyone's location.
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I really wish we could customize the Incoming/Outgoing folders in CMBN. It would be great to just point these at folders on Dropbox, then all of the extra steps would be unnecessary.
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I noticed that
a 150mm shell hits the trees where the Americans are at, and two or three trees suddenly disappear. Was this a graphics glitch or were the trees actually blown up by the explosion? I don't seem to recall ever seeing a tree completely disappear like that, even after battleship sized artillery shelling. -
Ammo bearers is another one that I've made that mistake with. Because there's fewer of them, I often catch myself and realize the mistake before I make it. But it sure would be nice if they had their own icon as well (or at least a "special unit" icon to cover all non-riflemen).
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I'm hoping there's something simple that I'm just overlooking, but I can't see to easily tell, at a glance, engineers from generic rifle squads in-game. They look the same from high camera vantage points, they use the same unit icon, etc. The only real way to tell seems to be by clicking on their icon and reading their unit title. That's not really feasible when you've got dozens and dozens of squads on-screen. Several times I've sent them in to battle, not realizing I'm sacrificing my only asset that can blow holes in bocage and wire, until it's too late. Is there a quick way to differentiate the engineers from other units? Is there perhaps a way to assign them their own icon?
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That would be my preference too. Smoking, dead vehicles always block LOS. I'd like to see it changed so that all dead vehicles block LOS. This would have some unintended consequences (such as a vehicle higher up on a hill behind a dead vehicle not having line of sight), but it would be better than shooting through dead AFVs, in my opinion.I'd say it is generally more realistic to have destroyed vehicles block both LOS and LOF. -
Dropbox is definitely the way to go. Much faster and simpler than email, and you don't have to worry about clogging you in/outbox. Also, if you have the tray icon (or taskbar icon on Mac) running, you get instant notification when a new file is available. Very nice.
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I run with shadows on but, personally, I think that if you're up at camera level 3-4 they look quite bad. Down low, when you're in close to the units, the shadows add a lot. But from up high they just look awful and make the game look worse, IMO.
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VERY nice! I really like the yellow and red backgrounds for Rattled/Shaken. It stands out more and makes it easier to see at a glance. I'll be downloading this one for sure.
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Destroyed tanks should be an obstacle. I think it's the case in CMSF. I have seen destroyed vehicles taking hits and protecting vehicules behind.
And that's exactly why dead vehicles DON'T offer cover in CMBN. The AI is not smart enough to know that what it's shooting at is behind an obstacle. So, you have the AI pumping round after round into a dead tank, trying desperately to kill the live one sitting behind.
It would be great if this behaved like it does in real life, but it's apparently very difficult to fix the AI to handle this sort of circumstance. So, the best solution was to have dead vehicles "transparent" to tank/gun fire.
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I actually had the same issue with the camera not going far enough back when I tried the CMSF demo (gearing up for the release of CMBN). One of the demo missions starts the Americans in one corner of the map and they have to assault a town with a walled courtyard in the center. If you raise the camera up very far, you can't see your own units without panning quite a bit downward. So you either see your units OR you see the distant parts of the map, but not both. I've noticed it in CMBN as well, but not as much yet (but I've only played three scenarios so far).
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I would really love to see this sort of feature. It would be very cool to just sit back and watch the two forces duke it out without any intervention. Like a new war movie each time. I could also see this being helpful for newbies, to watch how the AI tackles an attack and then try to emulate it themselves.
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Please understand that at the end of the day the early X1600 was a limited and problem-plagued piece of hardware, and it *will*, in its 128MB configuration, have serious trouble with CM. We are doing everything we can to address any driver issues, however, and I hope to have this game at least playable for you by the time the first patch rolls out.
Understood, Phil. I really appreciate the effort. I was doing a little reading last night about the X1600 problem and it makes me want to smash someone at Apple and/or ATI over the skull with a large piece of aluminum and glass! Hopefully the patch will address my problem. If not, I guess I just won't be able to play until I get a new machine. I've been itching for a new iMac or Mac Pro anyway, so maybe this is a good excuse...
I'm sure you can't give a firm date, but when discussing a timeline for the first patch are we talking about days, weeks, or months?
Thanks again for your efforts.
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I hate to bump this again, but wanted to make sure the info is current. I downloaded my full copy of CMBN last night (along with the hotfix). It probably goes without saying that it, like the demo, doesn't work. Installed the game, installed the hotfix, and I still get the same behavior as the demo, where hitting the OK button hard locks my machine. I want to play so very badly, but the game just refuses to work. <cries_softly>
If there's any other info or logs I can supply to help investigate the issue, I'd be more than happy to oblige.
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I've mapped the "NOT USED" slot to "X" in the CMSF demo and it works just fine for cancelling target. Two of my buddies have the same setup and it works fine for them too. Not sure why it's not working for the OP, but it does work (at least under CMSF. I haven't gotten CMBN demo working well enough to test it). Maybe try mapping a different key and see what happens?
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AFAIK, "Cancel Target" isn't even listed in the hotkeys.txt. It's shows as "NOT USED". Make sure you've mapped the correct place in the hotkeys file.
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An entirely non-techie suggestion. Can you go into your graphics card setup and start turning off features one-by-one to see if the demo starts up? I'm on a bootcamped imac (ATI card) and the machine really really really doesn't like it if I try turning Adaptive Anti-aliasing on. Don't ask me why. Everybody's machine seems to have a different personality.
I can try that to see if it fixes the game when running under Boot Camp, but I'd really prefer to get the Mac native version running. I'm not sure how I would change those sorts of graphical settings on the Mac, or if it's even possible. As far as I'm aware, AA/AF are game specific and can't be set through the OS, can they? I set the CMBN in-game graphical options to as simple as they can get*, but it still locks the machine when the 3D engine tries to load.
*Sound On
1024x768
Vsync On (recommended for Mac)
3d Models: Fastest
3D Textures: Fastest
AA/AF: Off
High priority: Off
Language: English
ATI left-click: Off (I've tried this both off and on)
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You must have been responding during my edit, Phil. Tried with a fresh download and installed the game directly to the root of the OSX drive (rather than putting it in my Apps folder, then moving it later). Same behavior as before. Also, I tried the defaults of Realtime play and Beginner difficulty, rather than Veteran/WeGo as I was trying before. Didn't change the behavior. It still locks the machine.
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Not a problem at all. I understand you've got a lot on your plate.Thank you for providing information. I'm sorry you haven't heard back from me. I have had my hands full, and for your issue I have not needed additional information. I always do my best to respond to people when I ask them for information, so I apologize.
I don't mind if it's a bit slow, or if it plays at low detail. I've got a much slower old Windows laptop that it plays well enough on. If it can play at least that well on my MBP, I'll be happy (at least until I can afford to upgrade).It's good that you've tried several things. Yes, chances are good that the game will work with your machine eventually although, as we've noted, you are under-spec'd.When you're running under the old admin account, are you running CMBN from the Applications folder of a different user?I didn't think about that. I went ahead and moved the entire demo directory to the root of the OSX drive and tried again - same behavior. I get the buy now/play now window, click "play now", and the screen goes black. I went back to my regular user account and tried the game again (from the new location) and it can get to the menu fine, as before.
Soooooo... no idea why I'm seeing two totally different behaviors using two different users on the same machine. And I'm really at a loss as to why the clean, unused admin account behaves worse than my 4-years-of-cruft regular account. I'm going to re-download the entire demo from a different mirror and see if anything changes. I'll update this thread again with my findings, but probably not until late tonight.
edit: I'm on a faster link than I'm used to, so the demo downloaded quickly and I gave it a shot. Same behavior as before. I can get all the way through the briefing but when I click OK the machine hangs (but sounds continue to play). I should also mention that before I was trying turn based and Veteran difficulty. This time I left everything at the default. Same exact behavior as before, so it's definitely not a corrupted download or anything.
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Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention. I did get the game working on this machine using Boot Camp and the Windows version. There are weird graphical issues and flickering (I'm guessing that's due to only having 128MB VRAM), but it seems to work fine. I can issue commands, troops move, camera works, etc.
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Just wanted to give an update on my original issue that started this thread, since I never heard back from Phil. I've tried several things to get this working on my Mac, none of which have worked. I tried changing the resolution from "desktop" (1440x900) to the lowest available (1024x768). I tried changing Vsync on/off. Both of those gave the same behavior as before, with the game hard locking my machine when pressing "Go".
I then tried logging in under a different user. This is an admin account that I don't think I've ever used since I installed the OS almost 4 years ago, so it's *clean*. Under this account the behavior is even worse! I double-click the icon to start the demo and the screen simply goes black. I don't get *anything*. Not even the menu screen. I can Cmd+tab back to the desktop, so the machine isn't locked up, but the demo doesn't work at all. The only way to get the program to stop is to kill it using Activity Monitor. Trying to simply close it doesn't work.
Is there any chance at all that this game is ever going to work on my machine? I'd hate to have a $60 doorstop sitting on my shelf until I fork over $2K for a new Mac.
I've also noticed one other "bug". The alternate hotkeys.txt file on the Mac is not only completely different than the alternate keys under Windows, but it is incomplete. About half of the functions (including most of the basic movement commands) simply aren't mapped at all.
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Either the engine is too hard to adjust' date=' or they just don't think enough people are using direct hotkeys to justify the time to change it.[/quote']I doubt it's the latter. I've showed the CMSF demo to two people and the first thing they both complained about was the control system (relative keys and odd camera controls). It's also the thing I found the most bothersome, as well. Once I figured out how easy it is to change the hotkeys.txt file, my friends were practically begging me for my hotkeys file.
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I was unable to get the demo to run on my Mac (PM'd Phil), so I figured I'd load it up on a spare Windows laptop that I had sitting in the closet. I'm seeing some weird stuff.
1) I'm playing the first mission (Busting the Bocage) and the rain is doing weird stuff. As I've been playing the rain has steadily slowed down. A few minutes ago it was actually raining UP! And now the rain has stopped completely. It's just frozen there, in mid-air. I'm playing turn-based and have been playing for about 3 hours (doing a turn, then stopping to take care of some errands, then doing a turn, etc). Very weird.
2) The "Nearby trunks only" setting for trees is basically useless (at least on my machine) unless you're right down at rooftop or eye level. Any further from the ground than that and all of the trees are drawn. And even if you ARE that low, the trees only disappear for about 50m or so. Not really helpful. Isn't there some way to turn the trees off (globally), but leave the trunks on? If not, how far is the range of "trees off" supposed to be? I can't see what's going on with the trees on, but can't see where the trees are supposed to be with them off. A middle ground of only stumps would really be nice.
3) Is there any way to see if a tank is buttoned other than visually? I'm not seeing any kind of indicator anywhere on the interface. Zooming in on each and every one isn't really practical, especially on a slower system. Also, there is an Open Up command, but no Button command. How do you manually make a crew button up?
4) It would be nice if you could still see the details of an abandoned vehicle after the crew has dismounted. I had two tanks that got hit by Panzerfausts, but were still operable. As soon as the crew exits you can't see the state of the vehicle or what is damaged (even the state it was in when they bailed). That would be nice info to have for the times when you want to re-crew a vehicle.
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If it still says Alt+Tab in the Mac version, that's a bug. A minor (text) one, but definitely misleading and something I can't believe slipped through since half of the dev team is using the Mac version.I forgot it's Cmd-Tab for swap applications in OS X. I was fooled by on screen prompt in CMBN to use Alt-Tab. I r tard.
Is there an easy way to distinguish engineers from rifle squads?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
If you have a dozen squads that you want to move up to a fence, it saves a ton of time. Even if you have to re-plot a couple of moves, it's far faster than doing each one separately.