IICptMillerII

You can try setting the 'Tree Quality' to 'Low" under the Advanced settings in options. I use this setting and don't notice much of a quality decrease, but it can help with FPS on maps that have a lot of forest on them. I know exactly the area you're talking about. I've had the same thing happen to me, and a friend of mine just had it happen to him tonight. The armored cars cannot go through the hedge, so they opt to go all the way around it using the main road. The same main road that is being covered by that Pak40. Its a tricky spot, but at least your M8 survived the encounter, and now you know where the enemy AT gun is. Good hunting!

I would love to see some new animations. Animation is one of the areas that I think CM falls a little short on. A little more variety would go a long way to making things from the eye level more appealing, in my opinion. However as some have pointed out, I would much rather see new features/equipment/modules be released. If that means we have to continue on with the animations we have now, I can live with them. If an animations pack would not deter those other things than I'm all for it. And for me price would not be an issue. I would gladly pay $10, $20, or even $30 for a pack of all new animations.

Yes. Everything is fully updated, but it just doesn't want to work with any of the CM games besides CMSF. If I alt+tab and then activate the recording it works, but it does not work while in game. It used to work in game. Not sure what changed. I've tried playing around with various settings but nothing seems to work.

I actually have an issue with GeForce and CM. Basically it works with CMSF, but not with any of the other CM games. I've tried running them in admin mode but can't seem to get it to work. Anyone have any ideas?

This project sounds awesome! Almost like a community made battle pack. Very much looking forwards to its completion. I also like the attention to historical accuracy. I agree that not every scenario needs to be extremely challenging for the sake of challenging. In fact, many times I prefer a battle to be as historically accurate/realistic as possible, because I like seeing it all play out more than I like playing someones cleverly designed puzzle. Even if one side has the clear advantage. Keep up the good work!

I think the issue of modelling the effects of muzzle blast is a non-issue. The primary effects were dust being kicked up, which is modelled. Remember that a lot of friendly fire is not modeled in CM, and I chalk this up as being another example of that. As to the video, I really liked it. Saw it some weeks ago and found it very informative. Yeah, Lindy tends to talk a lot, but I honestly enjoy it. He covers topics very thoroughly which I appreciate. If I wanted a 20 second run down I could just wiki it after all.

I'm currently rereading A Time For Trumpets as well, and the scenario involving the Panther tanks is exactly what came to mind to me as well. (Fantastic book by the way) As far as burning vehicles and illumination, its a relatively minor thing. Besides, I could easily see the shadows and stark contrast caused by burning vehicles to only add to the spotting confusion instead of enhancing it at all.

Is this actually the case? Just a few days ago I saw someone saying that the light cast from a destroyed vehicle is purely cosmetic and does not improve the spotting ability of soldiers at all. I was under the impression that the fire from a destroyed vehicle would increase spotting ability, but now I'm not so sure. Any input?

The map looks great, excellent work! I've found that having a suitable map to play out these battles is the hardest part of the operational to CM system. You either have to take an existing QB/community made map and roll with it/adapt it, or you have to create a whole new map from scratch. The latter option is very time consuming, especially considering in a larger operation there could be many dozens of battles to fight. The first option can work for a bit, but I've started to run out of QB maps for my Sicily campaign, and a lot of the QB maps do not accurately represent the specific terrain I'm fighting over currently. My dream is to have some kind of program that can quickly build a map for you based on certain factors the user defines. What would be even better is to have some kind of plug-in for google earth that would allow you to designate a patch of ground, and the program would translate the google earth data into a CM map. I don't know of any way to achieve this, and kinda doubt it is even achievable at all, but hey I can dream. Back on topic, can't wait to see the first turns start rolling in! Looks like a promising engagement. 29 Let's Go!

I would highly recommend getting v4. If this minor apparent bug is the only thing holding you back, I can assure you that you will not regret purchasing v4. I've been playing v4 across all CM titles that have it now since it came out, and I've only experienced the bug twice in all that time. Its very minor. Plus as discussed by others you can have a fresh install of the game running v4 and retain an old copy still on v3 if you feel the need to go back to it. Win-win essentially.

I've actually never gotten my artificial brightness button to work. All of the other hotkeys I have function properly, but when I try Alt+B at night, nothing happens. One of the reasons I tend to avoid night battles, even though the default brightness is usually fine for playing them.

This looks very interesting! Excited to see how this plays out, and how it compares to the CMPzC system I currently use to simulate the operational layer. I was wondering, was the map made by hand, or is it a QB/modified QB map? Does it accurately reflect the actual terrain of the place in France or is it more generic?

Just want to quickly point out that the campaign takes place during the darkest time of year. The sun comes up late and sets early. I do not know exactly when sunrise is, but I do know that by 7:30am it is still quite dark out. That coupled with the mist explains most of this. As for bumping into enemy units, there are a surprising number of personal combat accounts of things like this happening. One example off the top of my head is that during D-Day (early morning hours) a patrol of American paratroopers passed a patrol of Germans going the opposite direction down a waist level stone wall. The troopers passed within inches of the German patrol and no one noticed the other was on the other side. So these things do happen.

This is the point that I and that Ron excellently explained further. You would have to drastically reduce/remove all the micromanagement in order to make the game more appealing to a wider audience. Essentially, in order to make CM more marketable to a larger gaming audience, it would have to water itself down to a point where it would lose the essence of what it actually is. It would cease to be a simulator, and it would become a "throw cool toys at each other and see the explosions" (a la MoW) Just to clarify, I do not have anything against the MoW series, or the CoH series, or most other RTS games out there. Playing them is much like watching a movie about WWII. Very fun to watch and play, but of little if any historical value. CM is more like cracking open a good history book or combat memoir. The two types of games are attempting to do inherently different things, and thats fine. Just so long as CM stays the course its on (being a simulator)

These are very fair points. I should have clarified that what I said about the Graviteam games were my opinion,and my opinion only. I do not despise the game. I've tried to play it a few times, and while I did like some things about it (namely some of the particle physics like mud on tracks and bits of armor flying off tanks when hit, not to mention vehicle damage models) the game as a whole never really grew on me. I embellished my general disinterest with the game frankly because many people who tend to make it their life goal here on the BFC forums to bash CM tend to hold the Graviteam games up as some gold standard. "If Graviteam can do it, CM needs to!" or "Graviteam does all of these things, CM doesn't, so CM is bad." Its usually something along those lines anyways. Anyways my intention mainly was to provide a stark contrast and emphasize that a lot of those things I listed come down to individual subjectivity. I concede that I was excessive. Two quick points: First I just want to clarify that I do have criticisms of the game, as well as more than a few wishlist items. (Co-op PLEASE!) Second, I'm all for constructive criticisms and the like, and I think you're right that a kind of groupthink "all criticism is bad!" mentality here is not helpful to anyone. I just think that there are better things to complain about than a supposed drastic lack of graphical fidelity, and I think that making it ones personal mission to come onto the forums purely to bash anything new introduced to the CM family of games is ludicrous and should be called out for what it is.

I misunderstood your point then, my bad. My only question to you would be, what defines what current graphics should be? Is there an industry standard across all genres? Just some? Which genre does CM fit into? I personally consider it a simulator so I do not expect it to have the cutting edge in lighting and AA and whatnot. However if you consider it to be in the genre of RTS, more similar to Company of Heroes, then you have a very valid point. For example, there are many top down, map oriented games (John Tiller's newer titles and CMANO as you mentioned (fantastic by the way) to name a few) that completely lack anything that could be considered modern graphics, but this does not diminish them at all because no one really expects top of the line graphics from them.Not arguing, just trying to further make my point that I think a lot of what we expect of the game comes from how we categorize it and how it categorizes itself. Fair enough. We have differing opinions, and thats fine. On this we can completely agree. I'm sure that we could agree on many areas where we personally think the game could do better. I'll again mention that I think the animations need some work. (In fact, the animations are so bad in CMSF I find it hard to go back to. Still love CMSF, especially with all of the units and scenarios it has, but its so archaic compared to what we have now that it takes me out of the experience some. Hoping for an upgraded CMSF or a CMSF2 in the near future!) I can understand being frustrated as well. You've clearly been around for a good while, and if you have been pointing out the same things over and over and they are never addressed, that is very frustrating. My point was that there are better ways to continue to address these things, and that you don't have to make the few flaws with you have the centerpoint of your experience. Or at the very least the centerpoint of everything you post. If you disagree, then that's fine. You have your way and I have mine.

Have any of your posts in this thread been deleted? Received and strongly worded letters from moderators for speaking your mind? No? Then your opinions ARE being tolerated. Seriously, this whole idea that if someone disagrees with me then I'm being unjustly criticized and ridiculed and attacked and I need my safe space! Its ludicrous. You are presenting your abrasive opinions, and people are criticizing them. Grow up. Nowhere in here do you present any hard facts to back your claims. How many titles has Arma sold? Int he past year? Same for DCS. How do these numbers compare proportionally to larger and smaller "niche" game developers. Where are the hard numbers on that? Until you can provide concrete marketing information and statistics to back any of this up, all your doing is giving your opinion on your perception of reality. Your perception of reality IS NOT reality. Further, the examples you listed are all examples of what BFC is likely trying to avoid. All those games started out niche with small communities. They then got popular (Arma 2 became a top seller with the release of the DayZ (non-stand alone version) mod as an example) which drew in tons of new players. But heres the thing, those new players wanted nothing to do with the realism aspects of Arma, they just wanted to kill zombies in a large multiplayer sandbox. War Thunder, yeesh not even sure this is worth getting into. All I will say is that the more simulator based side of the game has a tiny player population compared to the arcade side. Why? Because your average person does not want to study and learn about the sim and warfare in general, they just want to press the play button and have some mindless entertainment for a few hours, and they view things like realism and proper tactical know-how as 'unbalanced' and 'not fun' and all number of other things. The last thing I want is to have a bunch of MoW players join CM, only to come on the forums and rant and rave at how their precious uber tiger was killed by a sherman, or how its dumb that infantry don't shoot back when suppressed, etc. Niche games are flourishing because they are drastically toned down to appeal to a larger player base. Graphics first: Graphics are subjective. You say (correct me if I am wrong) that CMFB has bad graphics. I say CMFB has good graphics. They surpass my standards for a simulator. Do I think they could be better? Sure, but what in the world couldn't be improved in some way? If I may be honest, I would much rather see new/better animations than new textures. I find the animations to be the bare minimum. So there, a criticism of the game from me. I also acknowledge that the developers do not have the time to whip up a whole host of new animations, and that there are many here who thing that the animations are fine. The point here is that these things are subjective. You can state that something is wrong with the game if it is a hard fact. An M5 Stuart tank penetrating the front armor of a Tiger II at 1000 meters is a glitch. It shouldn't happen and there are multidudes of resources that prove that this cannot happen in real life, thus should not occur in the game. Good/bad graphics are NOT hard facts, they are subjective. As for your comments about other supposedly "niche" games, refer to what I said above.

The back and forth between you two is hilarious. Much more entertaining that a regular DAR. Looking forward more to the banter than the AARs. Should be good!

You have spent this entire thread criticizing the game, and the moment someone starts to turn the criticism on you, you claim you're being unjustly discredited? So you can bash the game, but no one dare hit back. Bit hypocritical, no? According to who, the game developers or you? Assuming you know what is best for BFC is ludicrous, and why you are being "shot down" or whatever. The fact is, you don't know what is best for someone else's company. Claiming you do discredits everything you say. Again you are claiming you know what is best for a company you are not apart of based solely on your perception of other companies producing similar products. And the entire argument that "muh graphics is what we need for more peoples" is stupid. I wish there was gore in CM. There is no gore in CM. That does not make CM a terrible, behind the times game. Its just a feature that is not in the game that I personally wish was. I play Steel Beasts. The graphics in that simulator aren't the best either, and there are more than a few people who have performance issues. But that's besides the point of the simulator. I also fly Falcon BMS. You think CM graphics are bad? Check out screenshots of BMS. Its a modded game that was first released in 1998. Yet I still fly it and enjoy it even though its very dated. Why? Because I care way more about what it does than how it looks. Besides, CM looks fine. Plenty good for a simulator. And they literally just updated the graphics with the latest upgrade with the new tracers, which I think are great. They also added better infantry TacAI and other improvements. Would you rather them have just applied some stupid ENB to the game to make it look shiny instead of improving the engine? As I said, I care way more about what it does than how it looks. And this is the crux of the matter. You're mad that BFC isn't making THEIR game the way you want it to be, so you're throwing tantrums on their forums. BFC owes you nothing. Not a thing. Just because you bought their game does not mean you get to dictate how they run their business, or how the game is changed. If you don't like the product, you do not have to buy it. You have no right to the product. So yes, you can continue to have your tantrum, you can post your rants, and you can continue to justify them with your various absurdities, but that's all you can do. P.S Graviteam Tactics is lame. The graphics are worse than CM, the effects are silly, the animations are god-awful, the controls are terrible, the UI is alien sandscript, and the wars/battles they cover are extremely obscure and boring, except for the Eastern Front titles.

You can literally (literally) apply this statement to anything in the world. "I just have a hard time not getting bummed thinking how much more awesome it could be if we had the current [city of Chicago] but with [everyone living peacefully] without all the current issues and limitations, especially [one of the highest murder rates in the country]" "I just have a hard time not getting bummed thinking how much more awesome it could be if we had the current mechanics but with a [better space program] without all the current issues and limitations, especially performance, [thrust to weight ratio] and [budgetary restrictions] [We could be on Mars right now!]" "I just have a hard time not getting bummed thinking how much more awesome it could be if we had the current [food production] but with [no starving people] without all the current issues and limitations, especially [all the starving people]" "I just have a hard time not getting bummed thinking how much more awesome it could be if we had the current [world order] but with [no war] without all the current issues and limitations, especially [countries fighting over land and people dying]" Ad infinitum. Pointing out and providing evidence to testers of bugs and glitches is well and good. It helps to improve the game and catch things that may have slipped through the net. Nothing is perfect. Seriously. There will always be more things to improve, tweak, alter and fix. Constantly pointing out that the game is not perfect is useless. Its the same thing as coming onto this forum and constantly telling everyone that the Allies won, or the sky is blue, over and over. We get it.

It is. The mantra in the Army about tracers is that "they work both ways." Their purpose is to allow the shooter to see where his rounds are going. The enemy can use them to see where they are coming from. Being zeroed in on by the enemy following your tracers is very real. However units such as snipers and the like, as well as most regular riflemen do not fire tracer rounds due to this reason and others. So you may have a point that it is easier for the human player to zero in on where enemy fire is coming from by following the tracer, but I do not think the game engine models the soldiers spotting the tracers. I believe it is a combination of other factors, such as sound and muzzle blast. Basically, the tracers are necessary to allow the player to see who is shooting and at what. Without them it would be rather difficult to follow firefights. I would chalk it up as being a very minor necessary evil. Besides, I don't mind the tracer fire, and I really like all of the new effects. In the modern titles especially firefights look much cooler and more modern, with the green and red tracers flying everywhere.

Another fantastic campaign @dragonwynn! I'm currently on the 3rd mission but I haven't started it yet. The first and second missions were very good. The first was a huge intense battle that became a real nail biter towards the end, and the second was a very nice company(ish) sized action meeting engagement that I found to be a lot of fun. Looking forward to completing this mini campaign. Real great stuff! One thing I particularly like is the forces for both sides feel realistic. For example, in the first mission the Finns have some artillery, but it is very hard to bring to bear due to the terrain. The Soviets bring along their standards, lots of infantry and armor, artillery support and even some air support. I don't like scenarios that purposely handicap the player by giving him tiny amounts of forces/fire support for the battle at hand. While playing these scenarios I never felt like I was being short handed by the designer, that I had all of the assets on hand that would be both plausible and capable of completing the mission. The rest comes down to me and how I command the battle. One thing I thought I would point out; the Soviet artillery in the first mission (the initial barrage) goes for a very long time. So long in fact that it ended up doing more damage to the Soviets than it did to my Finns. Not sure if this was a hiccup or not, but I thought I would point it out to you and let you know in case it does need tweaking. Either way it was a very minor thing. Thanks again for a great (mini) campaign and to @kohlenklau for helping to put this whole Finn mod together!

I have noticed this bug as well, in both Black Sea and Final Blitzkrieg. It seems to happen pretty rarely, but when it does happen it can be a pain. I can document it with pictures/video/save file the next time I see it happen if more evidence is needed. Seems to be a minor bug. Overall 4.0 is amazing.

Everything is working for me! Just wanted to say a big thank you to the BFC team for your dedication to helping the community and fixing this bug, especially considering its Christmas Eve! The new features are fantastic and I can't wait to experience them for years to come! Thanks again!

I've tried upgrading CMRT and CMBS, so they're down for the count until the issue is resolved. I feel your pain, though I reserved the others so I can still play them.