Kevin2k

Yes. Ploughed fields are the worst moire offenders. My memory is coming back and I think I gave these particular tiles the extra treatment: Decrease the contrast between raised and lowered areas of the ploughed field. Make it a more uniform earth color tile. Cobble stone roads were also more prone to unpleasant rendering. A tile with a uniform color cannot have any moire or annoying pixelation. So it is about finding a comprimise between desired texture detail and an always safe but flat uniform color. OpenGL/Direct3D may have rendering options with similar goals, I don't know the particulars, but at least in Combat Mission games it was not to my liking at all. Hence my adjustments.

I made it a habit to downscale the terrain tiles for all Combat Mission games 50%. This makes them less sharp, more blurry, which is AFAIK the most practical way to remove moire. It should not be a big mod. like 85 MB for Final Blitzkrieg. Or is there some other method?

That is because the v2.0.0 patch does not delete "data\red thunder v201.brz". Meaning you are running a v2.0.0 game executable with a v2.0.1 strings file in "data\red thunder v201.brz". Then you get the usual mismatching strings. You need to remove "red thunder v201.brz" manually. Patches can not backdate properly in case a .brz file needs to be removed, since patches doe not remove .brz files. (I just tested this myself to be sure) @BFC Elvis, I read in several places that you suggest that older patches can backdate to an earlier version. But I am afraid that is not generally true. For that to work patches need to delete .brz files "from the future", which of course they don't.

The above Marine AAV force selection problem seems to still occur in v2.02.Which is what I expected, but one can hope... I noticed another small glitch in Black Sea this time, but I will just put it here with the other posts I made: "Open (1792x816) 244" map being a forest instead, see the 2-part screenshot below:

Good to know, I will try to notice it next time. >Just wondering what CM short coming you are referring too? Did I mention any such? My messages in this topic were about reflecting on how typically every wargame gets mods with user-gathered replacement weapon sounds. And that I usually think these mods are less realistic, just more catchy.

Just to add to this older topic. I see Osprey Publishing has four of their Campaign books focussed on the Italian Battlegrounds: Campaign 251 - Sicily 1943, The debut of Allied joint operations (Zaloga) Campaign 257 - Salerno 1943, The Allies invade Southern Italy (Konstam) Campaign 155 - Anzio 1944, The beleaguered beachhead (Zaloga) Campaign 134 - Cassino 1944, Breaking the Gustav line (Ford)

When I wrote Hollywood I was actually remembering these sound mods in the past for Call of Duty 1 or Ghost Recon 1. Where it seems everyone had their idea on how an M-16 or AK-74 etc. should sound like, and it spawned lots of sound mods of dubious origin. It seemed to me that the only way to do it proper, is to use the sounds from the party that has the biggest budget, as to shoot the actual guns and record them consistently in a suitable environment. Then keep the sounds like that without making them more catchy through editing. What you replied is a good point though. In ArmA 2 the Sound travel delay and other effects are present and it sure is a nice touch. The sound travel delay is most obvious there when using the stationary howitzers.

Are the sounds not realistic enough or not Hollywood enough?

This evening I wanted to do a quick battle with the US Marines. Force selection set to "mix", automatic. 3 out of 4 times the computer automatic force selection decided to spend most of its points on Assault Amphibious Vehicles (AAV). So I looked at these and was thinking: These AAVs have Javelins in their stores, so that gives me a chance against the usual Syrian tank rush (mix force automatic). But pretty much every AAV comes without infantry team, just a small crew. So I was even micromanaging to the point of bailing them out and trying to turn them into a Javelin team. Well... it turned bad pretty quickly. As it is, I suspect the automatic Marines Mix force is glitched and better avoided for the player or AI force.

Don't want to go back to CMBN v3.xx really. In the v4.01 game the Quick Battle Automatic force selection for "Combat Force = Mix" is way better. In the v3 games this mix force was usually either all infantry OR all armor, but in v4 it usually is both infantry AND armor.

I read the suggestion that the AI is considering terrain elevation for cover, even if it requires temporary exposure. that is not necessarily the case for armor. I remember this one example in CMSF2: A CV90 under my control was positioned halfway on a hillside, the hillside was facing the enemy. There was no safe hillside on that particular hill, because it was on the edge of the map. Now the CV90 spotted a stationary enemy IFV. The CV90's automatic AI response was to back away, up the hill. This exposed him way more and was not a smart move. I tried to override the move and force him in the direction of the enemy but down the hill: The CV90 refused. The only thing that worked was to take the green reverse order and point it downhill/towards enemy. So the CV90 was then turning around on an exposed position and going to safety in reverse. I made a quick sketch.

Main point of an updated install is that all the .brz files of the base game and updates are in the Data subfolder. The .brz files have a version number in their filename. The game should give an error message in the main menu when a .brz file is missing (but I suspect this error-checking is not 100%). Example: If you see "Data\Normandy v312.brz" then you can be sure that the patch data of the CM Normandy v3.12 patch is in place. Besides that there should be the latest executable, which identifies itself by the version number shown in the main menu.

Have a little trouble understanding your whole AI description. The bit quoted here is pretty clear though, and matches what I see playing my favorite QB map (Small Village 496 X 496 from Final Blitzkrieg). The AI is sometimes strong on the left flank, and other times it concentrates on the right flank. At first I tried to anticipate and expected the AI to repeat itself on the next try, but that did not work out of course :) I am a fan of unscripted events in games, so well done Battlefront.

These new QB maps are very welcome. Thanks! I did notice a small imperfection: 24 QB maps are included in the 4.01 patch without a 2019 prefix, and these seem to be duplicates of some of the 60 QB maps with the 2019 prefix.

Are you saying there is already an option in the scenario editor for a pre-battle user's force selection, instead of a pre-selected force? I would not know.

Ah, with that HQ button things start to make sense. Thanks for explaining that. It seems that in Quick Battles - after action map review this button is never visible for large ENEMY HQ teams. Clicking on the area where the button is supposed to be has no effect. The HQ button does show up when the HQ team is on the player's side, and works fine there.

I checked it again in an after battle review situation: Mouse-clicking once on the HQ selects just the HQ, and not the other teams under their leadership. Mouse-double-clicking on the HQ selects the HQ and the other teams under their leadership. BUT at that point the green markers of just the HQ unit become noticably larger in size and a bit brighter. So my screenshot still shows something which is not in line with that. Also I am pretty sure I wasn't double-clicking there.

It should not be that strange. Like a Red side (AI) has occupied an area and has put up a defence for different possible Blue attacks. Now the Blue side can still decide on what forces to use for an attack or use a preset force selected by the designer. Of course one can pick a force manually and that will influence the challenge of the task, but that is what games/simulations are about anyways. Timed blue reinforcements will complicate this so maybe it is better to skip that for such a scenario. Technically this works out the same as the way you suggested, but I figure my variant is just a tad easier to implement in the current game structure.

Yes that crossed my mind before. So I actually tried that yesterday with another Quick Battle after action. But it seemed to me that it just selected HQ at that time... Will check again...

To put that the other way around, one could add a "Pick your own force for a preset amount of points" to the normal single battles. Though at this point I cannot say what complications may arise because of this.

I am not sure wheter this is a bug or my lack of understanding: But yesterday I was inspecting the battlefield after the battle was won, and I looked at this enemy HQ unit. How does the info panel below match up with the troops that I see in 3D? The two unharmed soldiers in the info panel match up with the two guys on the right. But these four guys on the left are not the three casualties from the info panel? Yet they are seemingly grouped with this HQ team.

Good find! Assuming these are actually yours.

You can follow forum member "Battlefront" to get an email notification as soon as he posts something new. AFAIK he is the only one to announce updates or releases. This planned patch is rather troublesome it seems. Though I figure; Shock Force 2 seems to play very well, so the good AI code is right there since november last year, ready to go into the other games, whatever that may take...

I would be surprised if the DRM of the full versions worked with Wine. But any further discussion of that is probably against the forum rules.

Indeed, One can do that very well with just a single account. A guy named Other Mord has shown us how.