ClarkWGriswold

I hope that at least a few of the missions have a requirement that the attacker not destroy certain buildings. In CMx1 anything smaller than a village was begging to be turned to rubble because, other than a bit of time and some ammo usage, there was no downside to leveling everything. In the real world it's quite possible that the German commander would want most or all of the buildings left standing following the attack, for their own use later. Most quick battles (and even scenarios) in CMx1 felt as though the war ended when the battle was over. Hopefully the more flexible objectives of CMx2 can make for more realistic scenarios that take into account the bigger picture.

I thought this had already been settled? http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=94641

I'd also like to hear the voices be a bit less "uptight" and use more of the natural, slang-filled speech that you generally hear on the battlefield. Instead of "The enemy is flanking us, sir" I'd much rather hear "Kraut bastards are trying to outflank us"! The more gritty, less formal speech just increases immersion for me. I'm not sure how final the audio in the videos is, or how far BFC want to push the envelope as far as cursing and jargon. At the very least, I'm sure there will be sound mods coming out of the woodwork following release.

Tyrspawn - You mention that you wish you had bought anti-personnel mines to prevent the Germans from coming up the center area, as they are nearing the bridge. But that entire area is well outside of the blue setup zone at the beginning of the game. Are you saying that defenders can setup mines (and possibly other fortifications) outside of the setup zone, or were you just wishing you had some on your side of the river, between the bridge and the town?

I want this game so bad I can taste it. But not even CMBN is worth going back to Windows over.

It's great to hear that the "little" stuff is more effective now. In CMx1 I generally don't even bother with anything less than 80mm, since it takes nearly a direct hit to cause any casualties (though you can sometimes at least pin infantry). I get the feeling that indirect fire is going to be a lot more key to winning in CMBN than it is in CMBO/CMBB.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't take it personally. I really enjoy the video you've already posted (watched for a third time today and have sent it to many friends) and am looking forward to the next installment. It was just a bit of good natured ribbing since you mentioned earlier that you don't do WeGo. Things like the mystery tank demolition are the reasons I love WeGo so much. You get to go back and relive those "holy cow!" moments over and over again, sometimes needing half a dozen viewings before you even realize what the heck happened. In fact, just yesterday a coworker of mine was playing CMBB and had a T-34 taken out by a direct hit from a 50mm mortar. It took six replays before we figured out what happened. Nobody in our circle of CMBB players had ever seen such a thing in person, so it got replayed many, many times. If he had been playing a non-WeGo game we never would have been able to see it. So, that's why I made my (totally in jest) comment, and why many of us are such WeGo die-hards.

If only it had been played in WeGo so tyrspawn could go back and get a good view of it.

During the second game tyrspawn mentions (at 1:00:00) that the two squads in the center are "about to retreat and are wavering". How do you know? It's hard to tell from jthe video, but I didn't see any telltale signs in the UI and couldn't see any obvious casualties. (I've only played the CMSF demo once, so I'm a noob to this UI).

We nit pick because we care. It's the people who don't care enough to bother that you have to worry about, because they're the ones who will have moved on to the next Call of Duty game in two months time. The nitpickers are the guys who stick around and, generally, contribute to the community.

Just to be clear, I don't want to use a single button mouse. But I'm wondering if BFC has made the UI to work with two button mice or if it's designed around a single button and the Command key. I would much prefer an interface that uses both buttons and is as similar to the Windows version as possible. But I wanted to ask if that was the case or not.

Intel iMacs from a few years ago came with single button "puck" mice. New models come with "supermice" that actually don't have any buttons at all, but function like a two button mouse with a scroll wheel. Any Mac can use a two button USB mouse (or even more than two buttons), and I'm hoping BFC is making use of that, but it's also possible they're building to the lowest common denominator.

I'll probably regret bringing this up, but it popped into my head and thought it was worth throwing out there. Re: the "Cadillac tanks". Since CMBN calculates hits using the angle of the armor at time of impact, I wonder if a tank rocking back on its suspension will actually affect penetration values? I doubt it would be a significant effect either way, but I could definitely see the extra few degrees of angle making a slight difference in effective armor thickness and deflection (possibly making upper hull and turret hits less effective and lower hull hits more effective, if the round happens to hit while the tank is rocking back on its suspension). Not trying to open a can of worms here. It's just something I was pondering.

CMSF and, by extension, CMBN make heavy use of the right mouse button for camera control. Even though two button mice work fine on Macs, and even though they are standard fare on new Macs, I'm concerned about how the camera controls will work on the Mac version of CMBN. Can someone tell me if the keyboard and mouse controls are the same as the Windows version of the game or if things have been changed to be accessible for older single button mouse machines?

Personally, I thought the mortars looked very impressive in the video, even from the high vantage point. I couldn't get enough of seeing the shells fall and hearing the "thump!" as they impacted. And watching buildings fall and stone walls crumble was very dramatic. It puts a whole new dimension on artillery compared to CMx1.

No WeGo!? Blasphemy!!! In all seriousness, WeGo is what attracted me to CMx1 in the first place. No more taking turns and no more realtime clickfest.

I used to use 3D shutter glasses quite a lot a few years ago. They basically worked with pretty much any 3D game, but things that were a mix of 2D and 3D could cause some weird stuff (Operation Flashpoint looked great, but you had to close one eye for the target reticule to be centered on your target). Racing sims and flight sims are SO much more immersive in 3D. I never had good results with LCD type screens (CRTs work great). I also only got them to work well with an nVidia video card. nVidia's drivers support 3D natively, you just have to make sure to install the 3D driver extension that's the *same version* as the driver you're running (ie: You can't run display driver version 42.8 and 3D driver version 43.1 or it won't work). Now, it's been several years and I never tried it with any of the CM games, but if you had things setup correctly I believe it should work without problems. If you have an old CRT laying around, give that a shot. And make sure that your nVidia driver revisions match. Once you get that working, then you can see if it will work with your TFT display.

Isn't it also possible to be so busy playing and enjoying the game that you don't notice small things that other people scrutinizing the video might? Sorta like the German helmet shape only being changed two weeks ago. Just sayin'.

I certainly wouldn't call it a "significant issue" or a "massive problem", but I noticed it as well and would agree that it looks overdone. As realistic as everything else seems and as immersive as the rest of the experience is, the rocking vehicles take away from it a bit. Just my $0.02.

I'm rewatching the video for the second time, having already watched the whole thing straight through once. I've already sent the link to half a dozen people, hoping to suck them in to CM as much as I have been. My only real complaints about what I see are: 1) Vehicles driving through each other. I was really hoping that would be addressed by now. 2) The birds from CMx1 who persistently stick around, singing their calls, even when mortars are leveling the entire countryside. I renamed the background sound in my CMx1 games, and it looks like I'll be doing the same to this one. Other than these two small gripes, the game looks amazing. I'm still playing CMBB right now and the graphical and technological leap that this new game represents has my mouth watering.

Can someone please clear up two questions raised in the AAR: Can grenades be thrown from building windows? What's going on with grenades taking out tanks? Is a "run up and drop one down the hatch from 5 meters away" extrapolation?

Wow. The American TD at 1:32 was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm surprised any of the crew got out alive!

The video is really amazing. All of the little details are great! I really got a kick out of seeing the mortar teams sending rounds towards the commune in the second scenario. And the tank commander standing there, shooting his .45 in the first scenario was awesome. It's such a huge leap in immersion compared to CMx1. edit: Since you asked for requests... I'd really love to see more of the little details. Guys bailing out of KO'd tanks and armored cars, buildings collapsing from mortar fire, open topped AFVs having their guns loaded and fired, etc. edit2: And how about a Sherman breaching a hedgerow, followed by a squad of infantry?

Keep in mind that any aerial photos you can get your hands on can easily be put into Google Earth as a layer, and they'll lay directly on the surface, following the current contours of the Earth. So, it wouldn't be too hard to overlay a picture from the late 40's and then use the method in the OP to determine height characteristics.

So, it's essentially still a preorder? Still no option to buy the Mac version? Can we safely assume that there are still plans to reserve X number of steel boxes and manuals for Mac users?