Yippeeeeeeeee

[A Canadian Cat]

Can you explain why you are pretty much the only person who CAN'T draw a path to the other side of a bridge? Or do you think all the other CM players either aren't using bridges or don't care to complain about not being able to move over them?

I did. I've never seen that problem before and it certainly doesn't happen to me. Apparently it doesn't happen to anybody else as well. The fact that this might be a problem only with you hasn't occurred to you yet, has it? Well, I guess better late than never...

With respect. The issues with bridges are come up before - lots. I thought you guys knew about that navigation problem.

Here are two such threads but I know I have read more (they also bring up other issues with vehicles driving etc not related to way points):

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=104297&highlight=bridge

Fair warning this one is a bit pissy - not as bad as this thread because they are real issues with actual examples but still - pissy.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=108187&highlight=bridge

Based on what I see there is obviously a bug. But that doesn't mean it's Combat Mission's bug. It could be in your card/driver combination because OpenGL mouse clicks require heavy interaction with cards/drivers. In fact, we had a major problem with ATI cards when we released CMSF. They had a serious bug (actually 4) in their drivers and they took about a year to finally fix it. Until then we had to code a special, not very good, work around for people with those ATI cards. You have an ATI card, yes? If so then maybe they broke something that.

Now that is very interesting. I had no idea that mouse hit detection would be tied into video card drivers. I guess that makes sense. Very interesting.

So then the problem could be that I have a driver that works - also running AMD card and @togi does not.

@togi I have to say that I watched your video and I am going to have to go back to the game and try again. My issues - when I had them would not have allowed me to put those way points on the close side of the bridge let along the far side. Things were so screwed up for me could not place or manage units with int 75m of a bridge. So in this recent game I have been able to move around on the near side of the bridge and I am sooo happy to have it fixed. But I have not tried to cross it yet. I will try again tomorrow.

In the mean time you can work around this by moving your camera angle to point nearly directly down and get up high over the bridge. Now you can do what you need to do with units on and around the bridge. I have been playing like that for months and months while I waited for the fix.

[A Canadian Cat]

Person A behaves like a royal arse. Deliberately abusive, disrespectful of others, not the least bit interested in rational discourse, and very often (almost always, in fact) factually incorrect.

Person B challenges Person A on tone and substance.

Person C comes out of nowhere to say "typical. Try to criticize Battlefront or CM and you get slammed for telling the truth or having an opinion".

Hangs head in shame for being person B

Yeah I know it repeats. It is the repeating person A that drives me nuts.

Must ... try ... to ... resist ... next ... time.

[Oddball_E8]

Hangs head in shame for being person B

Yeah I know it repeats. It is the repeating person A that drives me nuts. Must ... try ... to ... resist ... next ... time.

Don't worry, it could be worse.

I've been hanging on the SW:TOR forums alot these last years (yes, i love star wars, so sue me) and there was one person there that started thread after thread after thread with deliberately abusive and aggressive topics disguised as a "here is my view, lets discuss this" post.

And then whenever someone answered she would either answer that "well thats just your opinion" and insult the person, or if they even slightly sounded aggressive in their response she would say something along the lines of "why are you harassing me? you are breaking rule xxxx in the TOS and im reporting you"

To make things worse, she almost always ended each post with:

"Thank you, have a good day! :)"

Drove me nuts! (and i wasnt alone).

In comparison to those forums this place is pretty decent

[Gumboots]

Steve

I have ATI card, I think that I'm not alone with this problem

but it seems that you have an approach that I have to solve this problem with myself.

I can't see a disclamer in store page about ATI cards may create some problems while buying these games.

So it is not fair to leave alone your customers because of the cases they were not warned

Regards

togi, I also have an ATI card (6850) and have just replicated your problem on Avanti, and hopefully have a solution for you.

If you go to 'Options' you will see at the bottom a setting called

'ATI left-click compatibility'

I have this set to 'off' and I could plot a course across the bridge. When I switched that to 'on' your problem occurred.

[Childress]

I have been playing since first game out - from CMBO, I'm sure that I'm better than you all the way in this game, but the paths near the bridges are always problematic , I'm sure on that.

See as below in the video from the scenario - called Avanti - from CMFI v1.10

I'm trying to click the other side of the bridges , sometime failed , sometimes creating path under the bridge. it's free to try and you can see that, Mr. Scientist

http://youtu.be/7lv4CcgfQv8

regards

Togi, I haven't read through the entire thread but in case no one mentioned it, here's the solution to your problem. You inadvertently enabled 'ATI left-click compatibility' in the Options screen. Disable it.

Edit: Ninja'ed by Underfire.

[A Canadian Cat]

If you go to 'Options' you will see at the bottom a setting called 'ATI left-click compatibility'

I have this set to 'off' and I could plot a course across the bridge. When I switched that to 'on' your problem occurred.

You inadvertently enabled 'ATI left-click compatibility' in the Options screen. Disable it.

Well that method solution is way better than mine. Hell I have been frustrated with this for months. Flipping the camera up and looking down on bridges is such a habit I problem will not stop right away:).

Any idea what that option actually does? What I mean is am I loosing something else by flipping it off? Or should we ATI guys just turn it off.

[waclaw]

Due to language barriers you are misunderstanding him.

He is not saying that YOU came out of nowhere.

He is saying that when someone makes a post that is whiny or aggressive there is always someone that "pops up from nowhere" to defend the person, despite the first person being obviously overreacting and not listening to reason.

YOU would be the first person in this case. The one overreacting.

Togi is the one "popping up out of nowhere" to defend you despite you overreacting in a very clear and obvious way.

Beelzeboss know him from Polish forum (so I'm for it "new"), and as "togi" simply presents his critical comments to the game, and the rest want to destroy us;)

[togi]

Togi, I haven't read through the entire thread but in case no one mentioned it, here's the solution to your problem. You inadvertently enabled 'ATI left-click compatibility' in the Options screen. Disable it.

Edit: Ninja'ed by Underfire.

Thank you very much mate

Now I can click on the bridge and near of it

Regards

[togi]

togi, I also have an ATI card (6850) and have just replicated your problem on Avanti, and hopefully have a solution for you.

If you go to 'Options' you will see at the bottom a setting called

'ATI left-click compatibility'

I have this set to 'off' and I could plot a course across the bridge. When I switched that to 'on' your problem occurred.

ok thanks for the help

it works

regards

[Sgt Joch]

Well that method solution is way better than mine. Hell I have been frustrated with this for months. Flipping the camera up and looking down on bridges is such a habit I problem will not stop right away:).

Any idea what that option actually does? What I mean is am I loosing something else by flipping it off? Or should we ATI guys just turn it off.

I have pretty much always used ATI cards, presently a 6950. As I recall, the left-click option was a workaround for a problem with CMSF and ATI drivers at that time. I have not had to use it for a long time and mine is set to off.

[Michael Emrys]

Flipping the camera up and looking down on bridges is such a habit I problem will not stop right away:).

I usually use a directly (or close to it) overhead view when setting movement paths anyway. Otherwise, my waypoints end up where I didn't mean for them to go. So I go to view #3 and hit the down arrow and I am there.

Michael

[Amizaur]

I'm saving my money for something that has T-34s and IS-2s

[YankeeDog]

Ya; the ATI Left-click compatibility option in the game setting was originally added as a fix for a problem with ATI drivers that cropped up way back in CMSF days; I had the problem back then and this the addition of this option in the game fixed it for me.

But I don't think you need it at all with newer ATI drivers and cards; my current (newer) computer also has an ATI card and I play with this option off without issues. Togi's experience seems to suggests that having this option on may actually do harm when playing on more current ATI cards... this game option may actually be obsolete at this point.

[ASL Veteran]

Beelzeboss know him from Polish forum (so I'm for it "new"), and as "togi" simply presents his critical comments to the game, and the rest want to destroy us;)

I think you are a reasonable person Waclaw. You did give BFC eleven days to rush out a patch that tells pixeltruppen who are rendering buddy aid to prioritize the acquisition of SMGs. I think eleven days is more than enough time to respond to your request, fix up a patch, and have that distributed to everyone.

Do'h, I confused Waclaw with Superwoz ..... it turns out Emrys was correct once again because I feel a choking feeling coming over me.

[ASL Veteran]

Thank you very much mate

Now I can click on the bridge and near of it

Regards

Thank you for coming back and letting us know that the problem has been resolved. Hopefully we can get a Yippeeeeeee out of you now since you will now have full use and access to all the new big bridges in the MG module .

[sburke]

I, for one, have made countless suggestions for improvements to the game, told BFC about problems I was experiencing and gave my opinions about how thins work and what I would like. I have even expressed my disappointment with regressions when they happen. No one has ever flamed me for it.

Man I am so sorry Ian, I meant to flame you but got side tracked. I really didn't mean to make you feel left out. Please forgive me and I promise to flame you at the next opportunity.

[ASL Veteran]

Man I am so sorry Ian, I meant to flame you but got side tracked. I really didn't mean to make you feel left out. Please forgive me and I promise to flame you at the next opportunity.

Yes, I'll be sure and add Ian to my flame list as well ... I have it right here ... let me see .... yes, Ian is the screen name. Added.

[Michael Emrys]

I think you are a reasonable person Waclaw. You did give BFC eleven days to rush out a patch that tells pixeltruppen who are rendering buddy aid to prioritize the acquisition of SMGs. I think eleven days is more than enough time to respond to your request, fix up a patch, and have that distributed to everyone.

You need to be careful there, Vet. You put your tongue any further into your cheek and you're liable to choke.

Michael

[waclaw]

I think you are a reasonable person Waclaw. You did give BFC eleven days to rush out a patch that tells pixeltruppen who are rendering buddy aid to prioritize the acquisition of SMGs. I think eleven days is more than enough time to respond to your request, fix up a patch, and have that distributed to everyone.

The game was released two years ago, it's probably enough time?

ps. Nobody said it would be a bad module - of course, the game is still changed / improved, but it does not go that way what I would expect - and not just my observations, just read the text below the video

[Battlefront.com]

Well, I was correct. It's an ATI driver issue. Sorta Which is why we haven't seen it much (I missed those earlier threads) and our testers weren't able to replicate it when the issue was brought up.

This ATI mouse option was left in CM for a long time because it took a long time for ATI to fix the problem. IIRC it was almost a year after we got in the hack to get around their bugs (4 of them to be exact). Seems that now this feature should be removed. I've made a note of that.

Back to Ian's surprise at video drivers having something to do with mouse clicks. Computers inherently only know 2D. 3D cards, and their drivers, support APIs (OpenGL and DirectX being the two big ones) which interface between the game, video card, and the OS (which interfaces with the hardware). In the case of ATI, they screwed up implementation of some specific OpenGL API calls that CM absolutely must have in order to function correctly. The result was the ATI driver passing bad coordinate information back to CM. Since CM must rely upon this information to know where the user is clicking, the game was incorrectly registering clicks. The reason it took ATI so long to fix it is very few game developers use these particular API calls because they are either using DirectX or not using the 2D/3D hybrid mode that CM requires. If Quake or Battlefield had this problem it would have been fixed the next day.

Here's my standard advice when someone experiences a problem with ANY piece of software. This is good advice and I use it myself in my daily activities. The primary point is to see if others are having the same problem before assuming there's a widespread problem. If the feature is very common and the number of people experiencing problems is very low... then it's pretty clear that it is either a "user error" or something specific to other hardware and/or software. With this information you then try to narrow down the problem even further. If you can't find a solution then you go to tech support and see if they can help.

What you don't do is assume that the developer is aware of this problem, it's a problem that affects everybody, and yet the developer doesn't care to fix it. Especially when the developer has a VERY long and VERY solid history of being extremely attentive to customer problems. Even ones that affect only a percentage of customers. Like the massive investment in time and energy we went through to work around the ATI bugs. It wasn't our fault ATI messed up, but we took responsibility and did our best to fix it as quickly as we could.

Which is why I don't accept childish behavior as an acceptable way to handle things.

That said, I'm glad that Togi's user specific problem is fixed. I can only hope that his attitude problem can also be fixed just as easily.

Steve

[MikeyD]

Sigh. SMGs are considered INFERIOR weapons to big bullet rifles. They don't have the range, accuracy or penetration power. They fire a short pistol cartridge. Asking German soldiers to throw down their Mausers for MP40s is like asking U.S. soldiers to throw down their M1 Garands for M1 Carbines.

[Battlefront.com]

The game was released two years ago, it's probably enough time?

ps. Nobody said it would be a bad module - of course, the game is still changed / improved, but it does not go that way what I would expect - and not just my observations, just read the text below the video

If we were required by law to live up to unreasonable customer expectations, as expressed on the Internet, we'd not be making games any more. Even though this isn't a law, some days we really wonder what's the point. Then we remember that even the people that bitch and complain still buy, and oddly enough enjoy, our products. So we have to take negative feedback with a healthy amount of cynicism.

(as an aside, if I had a dime for every customer who thinks their pet peeve is the most important thing in the whole wide world... I'd not be making games any more because I'd have made enough money from those dimes to retire)

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Sigh. SMGs are considered INFERIOR weapons to big bullet rifles. They don't have the range, accuracy or penetration power. They fire a short pistol cartridge. Asking German soldiers to throw down their Mausers for MP40s is like asking U.S. soldiers to throw down their M1 Garands for M1 Carbines.

Bah... why quibble with looking at things from a realism standpoint. SMGs are so cool that everybody should want one. Except for modern militaries, who are obviously wrong for wanting rifles instead of SMGs.

Steve

[A Canadian Cat]

Back to Ian's surprise at video drivers having something to do with mouse clicks. Computers inherently only know 2D. 3D cards, and their drivers, support APIs (OpenGL and DirectX being the two big ones) which interface between the game, video card, and the OS (which interfaces with the hardware). In the case of ATI, they screwed up implementation of some specific OpenGL API calls that CM absolutely must have in order to function correctly.

Makes perfect sense as soon as you said it :-) And indeed if a big name popular game used that API... Sucks when a vendor does not live up to an API. Makes me think I should lean towards Nvida for my next card.

What you don't do is assume that the developer is aware of this problem, it's a problem that affects everybody,

Indeed. Thing is that is exactly what I thought. This issue with plotting way points has come up multiple times. When it comes up someone chimes in with the "point the camera down over the bridge" workaround and that is the end of it. My bad for not sticking to a thread and making sure we figured out who had and who did not have the problem. It just seemed like even though it was not everyone there were lots of people experiencing it. It is one of those times when having a formal way of tracking issues would help. I know, I know the down sides are bigger than one or two lost issues.

Ian

[Broadsword56]

If we were required by law to live up to unreasonable customer expectations, as expressed on the Internet, we'd not be making games any more. Even though this isn't a law, some days we really wonder what's the point. Then we remember that even the people that bitch and complain still buy, and oddly enough enjoy, our products. So we have to take negative feedback with a healthy amount of cynicism.

(as an aside, if I had a dime for every customer who thinks their pet peeve is the most important thing in the whole wide world... I'd not be making games any more because I'd have made enough money from those dimes to retire)

Steve

That seemingly odd customer behavior is apparently something that happens to a lot of businesses. The NY Times recently quoted some new psychological research and said:

"It turns out that competitors are not necessarily the ones giving one miserable star to products they did not buy or experiences they did not have. Customers do it — in fact, devoted customers...

"The cranky customers are acting, the study concludes, as 'self-appointed brand managers.' To put it another way, they are venting. The review forum gives them a simple and direct means of doing so: I hated this product, so listen to me...

"As [the researcher] put it in an interview: 'Your best friends are your worst critics.' The study mentions in passing that Harley-Davidson’s customers were upset when the company introduced a perfume. They took it personally. The same phenomenon seems to be operating here and, perhaps, all over the Web, distorting the review process in a way never imagined."

Link to the story: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/why-web-reviewers-make-up-bad-things/?smid=pl-share