WimO

Have you ever had the problem of a map that you want to use for a Quick Battle not showing up when setting up the scenario? This easily resolved issue relates to another, have you ever wanted to play with a small OOB on a large or huge map and found it impossible? The problem and the solution reside in the selection of scenario size. When you choose a size setting for a scenario, e.g. 'small', the QB creation program provides a small number of points to create your OOB and it selects a map from the list of maps that the map designers have labelled 'small'. The solution with making a favourite lare or huge map appear in all sizes of scenarios is to make copies of the map file and label them individually 'small', 'medium', 'large' and/or 'huge'. This will make that map appear in each of the size selected scenarios. For example, you would now be able to use a huge map with a small OOB.

I did not know about the AI reinforcement trick. As a scenario designer myself, that is very helpful to know.

It means that your opponent was annihilated or completely demoralized and left the field to you. All of the objectives are yours by default.

As the foregoing is a recent discovery, I don't know if the A/Tk gun will jump out or not, but it will fire from inside. A bunker will stick out by half. I also observed that in a scenario created by someone other than me, that they managed to use the same trick to place foxholes smack in the middle of bocage. Mind you, the foxholes then stick out on both sides.

Yes, it is possible - you can position functioning guns, trenches, foxholes, mines, vehicles, wire, bunkers, etc., 'inside buildings. But this can only be done by the creator of the scenario at the time of its creation and only on the ground floor. How? 1. Before placing any other features on the map (which might confuse the next steps) place a contrasting terrain tile (e.g. sand in a field of grass) at the location where you later want to place the building. 2. Select and deploy the unit or item that you wish to place inside the building on top of the 'sand' terrain tile. Give it the desired facing now. 3. Place the building on top of it and 'voila!', mission accomplished.

In support of benpark's comment re contour lines, I have made a number of large to huge master maps. In all of these I have used mostly continuous contour lines without noting any impact on processing. These same maps are chock full of forests or bocage and orchards as well as flavour objects. While loading times may be a bit slow in some cases, game play is just fine.

From time to time when I am playing on a previously unplayed map I run into spikes or pits (inverse spikes), including on at least one of BF's Battle Pack maps. While in the rare case this may have been intentional it is more likely an error of contouring. This may occur in two ways. The first is the 'accidental' click that goes unnoticed. But more often it occurs when the author placing contour 'points' too far apart. The game engine then sometimes does not smoothly blend the hoped-for contour. TIP: I find it is best to trace continuous contour lines. This however, also produces an unwanted effect from time to time. When such are too close together you get a stair stepping effect instead of a blend. In this instance it is time to break up the continuous line until the desired effect is achieved.

Understood and see the point.

That's very very disappointing. My father-in-law who was in the Canadian Black Watch road into action on Shermans in the Netherlands, and got thrown off when his ride (third in the column) got hit and spun around by a German 88. Another tank in the same column immediately replied and "must of hit some ammunition" because there was a huge explosion and the 88 ceased to be.

Ah! Yes, I forgot about that. Thank you for the reminder. Great.

I understand that BF requires a 'one-time' activation for each installation, but as far as I know (and I could be wrong) there is no on-going activation. By that I mean that if BF ever goes down or disappears, then my 'once-activated' BF games are still playable as long as my computer does not die. Steam is different. If it goes down, then I cannot access any of my Steam based games. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Although I have a few Steam games, I hate being Steam "dependent". I have very strong feelings about wanting any of my games to be totally free standing on my own computer and not dependent on an outside agency to be able to play them on an on-going basis.

As both a map and scenario creator I was struggling with the question, "Should I jump into this discussion or not?" My ego said, 'Go ahead'. I would like to begin with stating my observation that players all have different 'tastes' for the type of game they want or are willing to play. That is okay. We are all different. By 'type' here I mean whether a game is balanced or imbalanced which is the question under discussion here. Some prefer well-balanced games, I assume it suits their sense of competitive 'fairness'? Others are happy to play historical scenarios (which are often imbalanced), and still others are happy to be surprised. I am speaking as one who has been gaming in the realm of miniatures, board wargames and computer wargames, starting at age nine (that make for 62 years of gaming so far) and in the process have written rules, created games, and run convention events. As a CM scenario creator of over 30 scenarios, and presently working on my series '82nd Airborne in Normandy', I prefer to attempt, to the extent that it is possible with the information available and the program's mechanics, historical scenarios. Although frequently imbalanced, I view the 'experience' as a discovery and reliving of the events, perhaps a role-playing experience. Through the scenario I try to 'tell a story'. Whether the gamer allows themself to be immersed into the story by reading the included notes varies from gamer to gamer. I suspect many skip the notes and jump into the game. So what about balance in my particular scenarios? Two things mitigate against it, the first being the historical situation and the second is the speed with which I am outputting the scenarios (racing against my mortality clock) combined with lack of play-testers does not provide much opportunity for vetting. Well what about it? Do you want to play an historical event or do you want it distorted so much for the sake of balance that the historical challenge vanishes?. That's almost like asking to you want a game or an historical event, or a blend? That said, there are nevertheless things I do to try to move an imbalanced situation towards balance with the minimum of OOB disturbance. This might be accomplished through manipulation of the time variable as well as off-map artillery support. Well that's the creator's side but there is something I hope for from players as a substitute to grumbling. Please, if you have issues with any scenario of anyone's creation, load the thing into the EDITOR and make any changes you wish. Be adventurous, be creative. So easy! Not enough tanks? Add some. Too much time? Cut it down. Disagree with the unit morale? Change it. The CM series is so very accessible to fiddling. I myself have opened up some of the existing scenarios and made changes. By the way, map creation can take months of full-time work. And I mean 16 hour days, seven day weeks. Good thing I like it and have an obsessive personality. Scenarios also take many hours and play-testing, if testers are available, can take weeks more.

Proost.

Thank you Falaise. The unequal stretching was also a problem when reskinning my [holland] mod-tagged building skins for Nederland in brickwork. I quit working on those for a while but will get back to it again summer of 2022, after I finish my 82nd Airborne in Normandy scenarios. Again, thank you. I know that a lot of patience and perseverance is required to reskin that large church in brick and to make the windows line up properly on opposite walls. Ugh.

I owe someone a HUGE THANK YOU but cannot remember who or which post. What's this all about? About a year ago I bought a new Alienware gaming laptop with some pretty decent specs. But when trying to play my favourite game, CMBN, the text was virtually unreadable and the graphics stuttered and rendered very slowly and incompletely. I had no idea what was happening and frustrated removed the game from my rig. Went back to playing it on my desktop which it did quite nicely with two NVideal GeForce 1080 cards in SLI. Then a few days back I stumbled on a post in this forum that advised players to make sure that the game was being directed to the VIDEO CARD and not the integrated video whatever. I though, "Huh??" Opened up my NVidea program and sure enough, there was a selection for letting the program decide automatically which to use or whether to force it to always use the video card. I selected video card and, nervous with anticipation, reinstalled CMBN and gave it a try. And what do you know? HooooRaaaah! It plays great. So now I am very very happy. And thank you, thank you, thank you to whomever posted that bit of advice. Wim (a.k.a. WimO, a.k.a. Kandu at FGM)

Wow! Totally looking forward to getting my hands on the red brick church skins. I had started doing the same for my Otterlo map and future scenario but got frustrated by the unequal 'stretching' of the various components over the 3D skeleton.

At the bottom right of the GUI you can bring up a series of buttons like Surrender, Cease Fire, Menu. If you select Menu it will bring up a bunch of options such as Show all movement paths (ALT-P), trees off/on, sounds off/on, and more.

ALT - P

Hi Kohlenklau: As you are aware, I have been doing a series, 82nd Airborne in Normandy, which concentrates on the area around La Fiere and west of that position. Would you be interested in expanding that work east of la Fiere to the combats north of , south of, and 'at' St. Mere Eglise? Just an idea.

A big "THANK YOU" to One Ping Only for discovering my incorrect use of the Exit Terrain Objective in my scenario "507th Boots on the Ground". This morning I reviewed all the scenarios I have ever created since the start of CMBN, (37 counting variants) and found that way back I used to do it correctly, but that more recently six of my 82nd Airborne in Normandy scenarios make incorrect use of the Exit objective. These will be corrected and re-posted today.

I previously believed that there was a bug in how CMBN calculated VP for enemy units destroyed but the error was entirely mine - I left an Exit terrain objective in the scenario under discussion that should have been removed.

Yup. I just spotted it too. Forgot to delete that. Thank's for the interest. Will post the corrected scenario tomorrow. That means I have to fix a number of other scenarios as well including Shanley on Hill 30.

Understood, but there is not Exit location in the scenario under examination. That said, I will double check after dinner to see if an exit location was inadvertently mis-clicked unto the map. Thanks for the alert.

In CMBN points to be awarded to the Axis side for DESTROYING designated Allied units are instead awarded to the Axis side for the American units SURVIVING!!! This bug showed up while playing my scenario "507th Boots on the Ground". The scenario scoring is designed as follows: Parameters Allied & Axis: Irrelevant to this issue Unit Objectives Allied: None Unit Objectives Axis: Destroy: Lt.Col. Timmes 50, Col. Millet 50, Millet's Platoon 100, Levy's Platoon 100, Timmes' Troopers 100. Terrain Objectives: Irrelevant to this issue At the end of the game: Lt. Col. Timmes, Levy's Platoon and Timme's Troopers were still on the field, intact but the Axis side received full points as if they had been destroyed. Millet was KIA, but instead of receiving 50 points, the Axis side received '0' for this. Similarly, the Axis received 67 points for the surviving fraction of Millet's platoon instead of scoring for those eliminated. The net result was a score of 317 Axis victory points instead of the 83 points that is should have received for destroying Allied units and that resulted in an Allied Tactical Victory instead of a Major. That is NOT GOOD.