WimO

To all: All the scenarios will eventually reappear. At present I have been working full-time to fix Manoir Leroux, Angriffe der Grenadiere, No Better Place to Die, Saul's Run and Le Motey. Just to give an example of the work involved to get it right, I have already put in 30 hours over two days to improved the pathing and timing of the German attack in Angriff, and it is not yet finished. Expect to finish that tomorrow. And that is without Allied opposition. Next will be testing how badly it gets disrupted once the American troops are in play and what adjustments might be possible to make it better. Anyway, once the five above scenarios are working properly, and the text files are more correct, they will be linked together into a shorter campaign. Then the testing starts again to see if the settings of Refit, Repair, Resupply and Rest are appropriate. Each single playthrough will take a full day just to correct a single setting and then it goes again, over and over until its right. Once the short five scenario campaign is working properly, I'll get back to the more comprehensive version.

Hello Laurent 22: In the scenario "Shaul's Run" the attached company of American armor is on load from 90th Inf. Div. and is under orders to NOT cross the causeway. It is permitted only to act as fire support. I believe the orders indicated this. Perhaps not clear enough?

I discovered what I consider to be a very helpful, great even, way to test A.I. plan pathing and timing. I took one of my earlier scenarios and deleted all of the player units. In this case the American paratroopers and left just the German A.I. I then played, or rather ran, the scenario through its full time and observed the A.I.'s behaviour. It revealed areas that could be improved. Tomorrow I will do it again but will record some notes along the way.

Here I am temporarily resurfacing to give an update about the status of WimO's 82nd Airborne Campaign debugging.\ After PEB14's helpful feedback I had another look at the scenarios commented on and had an eye-opening shock. In come cases AI timings had gone off the rails due to having reduced scenario time lines without adjusting AI. In others I forgot to give AI orders. Some scenarios suffered from reloading the core units file during develpment for one side and then forgetting that it also reloaded for he other side. Overall there were a lot of screw-ups. I think the project was overwhelming for my declining faculties. So, here's the situation today. I withdrew into my computer man-cave and set about full-time debugging. I decided to create a smaller 5 scenario version of the campaign as a starting point. At this point the following five scenarios have been reworked, debugged, repeatedly tested and confirmed to work satisfactorily when free-standing. To me 'satisfactorily' means that you can win or lose (usually the former). Manoir Leroux, Angriff der Grenadiere, No Better Place to Die, Saul's Run and Le Motey. Today I will compile them into a campaign and begin the multitude of play tests required to determine what I feel are the most appropriate settings for Refit, Repair, Resupply and Rest between scenarios. That will take some time. So now ... I'm going to disappear again for a while.

My apologies. Others and myself have discovered a number of significant errors in some of the scenarios in my 82nd Airborne campaign. I regret the oversights. I have removed my files from the d/l station. They will be re-uploaded after I go through them with a fine tooth comb. Thank you to those who spotted the problems. Signing off.

EUREKA! I am jumping for joy. This morning I invented a solution for the Cease Fire humbug. What is the Cease Fire humbug? A scenario designer creates a scenario that must be played to the full time limit of the scenario to experience the whole story. The story being, all of the AI activity that is going on unseen by the player. However, the story gets interrupted by a player, satisfied with what he has accomplished in the scenario, aborting the story by giving the Command to Cease Fire. Game over. Player satisfied but story interrupted. I have found a solution that will allow a scenario to play normally with normal results if the player plays it to the end but will result in a TOTAL DEFEAT if the player selects Ceasefire any time before the last minute in the scenario. Play tested and works perfectly. Ta - Daaaaa! Now I just need to do a little rework on all of my scenarios for the campaign. Should I keep this a secret? (chuckle, chuckle, tee hee.) I feel like Asterix and the Secret Potion. Was that the time Getafix had amnesia? Imagine the following situation: A player has captured all necessary occupy objectives to win the game, no enemies visible anymore, and there are five minutes left to play. He hits Cease FIre and the report comes up with TOTAL DEFEAT! I imagine the response would be a completely confounded "What the ...?" And maybe a little hostility towards the game designer? I guess I had better include a warning with each scenario to avoid this possibility.

HITTING CEASEFIRE: In the present version, if you hit ceasefire in Boots on the Ground you can indeed win and circumvent the action at the end of the game. That is an issue that has been corrected in version 2 to be posted later. In most of the other scenarios, if you choose ceasefire too early, you will lose. I am glad to see this discussion. It makes me consider visually hiding all objectives from the player, i.e. no ALT-J and only providing verbal objective instructions - as in real life. Got to think some more about this. In version 2 of Boots on the Ground, you will end the game in the range of minor loss, draw and minor victory. Both in the present version and in version 2 the German AI has three plans which vary in aggression. There were timing problems in v1 with the AI not completing its moves to combat that have been fixed in v2 resulting in a more aggressive and 'patrolling' AI. To me, as a miniatures wargamer, hitting the Ceasefire button when things are going your way, is like quitting playing a game across the table before time is up. An unrelated example: A friend of mine and I are co-operatively playing the campaign For King and Country. We are half way through the final scenario and are sitting on a minor Allied victory. We could quit now and win the campaign but with an hour of game time left, we don't know if the AI has anymore attack plans or not. So we are going to play it out. Why miss the rest of the story? Maybe I just need to add an introductory note: If you want to role play the full experience of these historical events, do not ever select the Cease Fire command. If you do, you will miss out on some of the excitement, suspense, and yes - occasional boredom. In the final analysis, it's all about what YOU, the player want when you are playing the game. A quick exit once you sit on the perceived objectives or a story? It's not for me to say. I serve the snack tray. You choose your treats.

Thanks to PEB14 who has been giving me a lot of feedback on my Mission Boston - Objective La Fiere campaign. There were some wrinkles in the first scenario to iron out. No problems - just wrinkes. The scenario was playing okay but players were discombobulated by the final result of a Total or Major Victory. That wrinkle has been smoothed out now to a more historical 'feeling' lesser level. Although surviving the scenario could be regarded as a T.V., it was too easy to achieve this by just bypassing historical mission objectives. The wrinkle made no difference to the progress of the campaign. However, I anticipate releasing version 2 this summer once feedback on the other scenarios has come in. At this time I am preparing for this weekend's HOT LEAD miniature wargaming convention. So far I've pre-registered for Circus Maximus on Friday and The Black Flight on Saturday. Yee-hah!

That is correct. Mods always go into data/z/ regardless of computer type. Most mods have not been mod-tagged. You must not install non-tagged mods with the same name and number. If you do, the game will use only the last one in the list. You may install mods with the same name and number IF they have unique mod-tags attached, e.g. [holland]. I personally sort my mods into folders within z. For example: data/z/terrain or data/z/vehicles I find that makes managing easier. There is a second way to intall mods using JSGME. I won't go into detail here. In my setup I have the z directory filled with many non-mod-tagged graphics plus many more that are mod-tagged, plus I also use JSGME to swap modes for certain scenarios and campaigns. Plus I added mod-tags to every scenario in my collection. Runs real smooooth.

As I play tested my 82nd Airborne campaign scenarios the following was observed repeatedly: Units are unable to enter destroyed, i.e. leveled buildings. Surviving units already in destroyed buildings are unable to exit. The latter can be a serious nuisance when an enemy sniper or similar is a survivor in a building near the player's operational zone.

A. I don't have CMCW to begin with. B. Too much work for my old brain.

I have no such skill.

OMG! Yes! I would also love to see this usable by CMBN. I would probably come out of map-making retirement. Late war battles in the Netherlands anyone?

As per Wart's comment, best to send AAR's to me and not spoil other's play ... or ... publish the AAR at a separate location clearly marked as SPOILER ALERT. And yes I did notice your "spoiler" comment. Thank you for sharing that you felt a degree of lack of purpose for falling back to Les Landes with Millet. It has alerted me to the fact that I need to redefine/describe the Amfreville "assembly" points. I hope that the Designers Notes clarified the issue. I will not reveal them here.

To Kohlenklau: One of my 'back to' activities is ping pong. We have a regulation table and spacious setup in our "basement". My wife is Chinese and the competition is fierce. I rarely win. To Warts 'n' all: Unfortunately every map is going to have the typos because they are a function of errors in the Master Map. Over the past hour, I have corrected all the label erros in all the maps but that's no help to those already playing. I won't recompile until I hear if there are more erros. I considered translating all the texts in the campaign to French as well since for our French-Canadian, Belgian and French players and also considered Dutch and German but then I thought .. too bxxxdy much time. Come summertime, I think I'll work on some furniture renovations. I picked up some old solid-wood display cases, storage cupboards and oak desk that the university was throwing out (into the dumpster - crazy!). I rebuilt and refinished one of the storage units into a bookcase about 5 years ago. Now I want to refinish two of the glass shelved and glass fronted display cases to hang in my hobby room and display my 'toy soldiers'. That should keep me busy and away from the computer for a bit.

That is what the core units file gave me as the first two elements on the battalion list. I assume that Timmes managed to collect at least some of the men from his 'stick', i.e., the headquarters team. The floating 'G' that you mentioned was actually the number 6. On my original master map I have landmarked many elevation points and erased them for the campaign. This one got overlooked. It is 6 meters above sea level.

Levy appears regardless of the direction that Lt. Col. Timmes takes. Thank you for picking up the typos in the landmarks. I had forgotten about the landmarks for months. Will correct these and add the suggested additonal labels after I collect together all forthcoming reports about issues encountered. The lack of tactical map in the first scenario is intended. You have landed severely scatterd, in the water, in the dark and are temporarily lost. As the player you already have far more information about the map than did Lt. Col. Timmes and Col. Millet. I purposely do not always disclose whether objectives are touch or occupy. This is to force the player to make tough decisions similar to the acting C.O. on the ground.

Thank you for the 'slack' Warts & All. Yes, I tend to make typos quite frequently and also miss too many despite proof reading.

Another minor update to the campaign's .pdf file this morning. Corrected the time error for Night Crossing from 1000 hours to 2300 hours and added a few lines to identify 'variant' scenarios.

Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement. And to JIM ... Hartelijk bedankt and merci beaucoup.

Good for the early detection. Wishing you a best possible outcome.

Burned out and tired of playing a game that I love for the game mechanics and ability to create, but am starting to dislike strongly due to outdated graphics and humbugs. I've grown tired of my favourite game. When I look at the other WWII games coming out these days, it leaves me drooling with envy with respect to their visuals but disappointed that they don't play like CM. Might go back to flying Wings over Flanders Fields Between Heaven and Hell which is a great example of what can be done by modders layering a new game over an old engine.

At this time, a new, corrected and more comprehensive pdf has been posted with the campaign file.

Whoops, forgot to delete the line about the branches. The 11 scenarios listed are the core of the game, the trunk of the tree so to speak If the player has certain adverse outcomes early in the game then two historical events might be bypassed due to German successes early on. I decided not to show the branches to keep the two bypassed events a secret. The additional three scenarios reflect second attempts to capture a position by both the Americans and Germans. Guess I'll have to rewrite and repost the pdf. Thank you for catching that.

Hi folks. I played through the whole campaign and found that it runs okay with the right amount of tension and risk. It is winnable and losable and also provides opportunities to alter history. It will not be to everyone's liking because some scenarios are more about contact avoidance, some require a lot of traffic management and nearly all require patience to endure the calm before the storm. I decided to post it right away and not delay any longer so that I can retire from CM and move on to other things.