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Does 2.0 Engine apply to CM: Battle for Normandy?


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I bought the three CM products when they were released but couldn't do anything with them because I had a crappy PC that chocked on the games.

I just got a new PC and installed all the products, in order...

CM: Normandy

CM: Commonwealth

CM: Fortress Italy

Italy came with a "Game Engine Manual Version 2.0." Does the manual also apply to the original Normandy game? Did the Commonwealth install update the game engine for Normandy?

Really looking forward to finally playing these. Once the "invisible soldiers" issue in Normandy is resolved I can dive into that, but for now it's off to The Boot.

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An update is coming soon to bring CMBN to 2.0.

There are very few differences between the CMBN and CMFI engines to worry about, however. The main ones are these (all added in CMFI):

Moveable Waypoints

Target Armor Arc Command

Expanded Floating Icon Categories

"Fog of War" Floating Icons

2D Editor Map Overlay

Auto-Assemble Road/Wall/Hedge Tool

Camera Jump to Groups

Target Briefly Command

New Rendering Shaders

Bump and Normal Mapping

Improved Framerates

Pausable Realtime TCP/IP Mode

The rest of the changes are all under the hood.

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Does anyone know whether the upgrade will include an improved user interface that would expand the width of the screen? I've read some speculation about this being implimented in the future but would like to know whether it will be introduced with the upgrade?

The UI changes very little in v2. You get fewer, slightly larger "special equipment" icons that show how many of a given asset you have, rather than each zook bomb/demo charge etc. taking up one whole icon slot. That's about it. The panel stays the same width, in the middle of your screen. To be honest, there wouldn't be any point making it any wider. It wouldn't show any more information, and just scaling everything sideways wouldn't improve legibility.

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The UI changes very little in v2. You get fewer, slightly larger "special equipment" icons that show how many of a given asset you have, rather than each zook bomb/demo charge etc. taking up one whole icon slot. That's about it. The panel stays the same width, in the middle of your screen. To be honest, there wouldn't be any point making it any wider. It wouldn't show any more information, and just scaling everything sideways wouldn't improve legibility.

The issue that I struggle with here is that with a 1920 by 1080 screen the user interface is very tiny, it doesn't scale well with widescreen monitors. The load screen also is very tiny. I do know that this is on Battlefront's to do list, and for my aching eyes I really hope that this change makes it in.

It is on our ToDo List. Back when we made the original game engine in 2005-2007 this sort of thing rarely came up because few people had cards and/or computers capable of running fast enough at very high resolution. That's obviously changed.

It will take quite a bit of work, but we want to "decouple" the 2D UI at the bottom from the screen resolution. This will allow us to keep a standard display size no matter what the screen resolution is.

Steve

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The issue that I struggle with here is that with a 1920 by 1080 screen the user interface is very tiny, it doesn't scale well with widescreen monitors. The load screen also is very tiny. I do know that this is on Battlefront's to do list, and for my aching eyes I really hope that this change makes it in.

You might try reducing the game's rez to something smaller. I'm using 1600X900 on a 22" screen and having no problem reading the type at all.

Michael

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You might try reducing the game's rez to something smaller. I'm using 1600X900 on a 22" screen and having no problem reading the type at all.

Michael

I understand what you are saying but my PC is used for other applications that are best at the 1920 by 1080 standard. 1600x900 would work in certain cases but it is not a 1 size fits all solution.

Thank you for the suggestion.

People who have played the game for a while have learned to adjust. To people who come to the game new the interface speaks of an unpolished product. It's interesting to watch in the Armchair General series how he needs to zoom the entire screen to show the interface.

This improvement, independent of any other change would be worth me spending money again to buy the game.

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I understand what you are saying but my PC is used for other applications that are best at the 1920 by 1080 standard. 1600x900 would work in certain cases but it is not a 1 size fits all solution.

I believe you can set CMx2 games to run at a different resolution from your desktop, meaning that your other applications would be unaffected.

The manual might spell it out. In any case, there's a file called "display size.txt" in the Battlefront directory in Documents. Try using that to set a non-default resolution.

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I believe you can set CMx2 games to run at a different resolution from your desktop, meaning that your other applications would be unaffected.

The manual might spell it out. In any case, there's a file called "display size.txt" in the Battlefront directory in Documents. Try using that to set a non-default resolution.

The native resolution for a Full HD monitor is full HD .....

The ui scaling is bad, changing the resolution is not really a solution, ... in 2012.

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You might try reducing the game's rez to something smaller. I'm using 1600X900 on a 22" screen and having no problem reading the type at all.

Michael

I followed the directions you gave right from page 10 under OPTIONS. I really hoped that you could prove me wrong about the real issue that I see with the command interface size. There doesn't appear to be any improvement with text size at all using the 1600by900 size. Do you seriously see a text size difference on your monitor? I will attach exactly what I see. Do you see a difference here? My 49 year old eyes quite honestly has a lot of trouble reading the text with the loading screen and the command interface. If it wasn't for the maps themselves I wouldn't be playing Fortress Italy. When I bought Combat Mission Battle for Normandy I put it on the shelf because reading the text was such a labor.

1920by1080.jpg

This is the 1920 by 1080 size screen.

1600by900.jpg

Here is the 1600by900 size screen.

I tried other sizes as well by changing the screen of the desktop. There may be a little stretching with 1680 by 1050 but it really isn't an improvement.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt; perhaps my display doesn't scale up the command interface like your computer's does because I am going through a laptop.

I can show you examples of much better command interface implimentation in other games than shown here. Battlefront has already said that they would like to get to this issue. I just would like to campaign that it be released with the upgrade.

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...perhaps my display doesn't scale up the command interface like your computer's does because I am going through a laptop.

It's hard for me to make a comparison because your screen image is only about 11" wide as it shows on my screen. When I play the game, it is twice that. What size is your screen? If you are on a laptop, it won't be as big as mine and that is the source of your problem. But for the record, it isn't obvious to me that BFC can't use the full width of the screen regardless of its size and thus be also able to use a larger typeface that would be more readable on smaller screens.

Michael

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