Main menu and ingame problems

[Markus86]

Hi,

the demo convinced me a few days ago, to buy the game (CMSF and all addons). On the whole I'm happy with it. But now I encountered some problems.

After starting the game, no saved games are displayed. There's just a black list. No visible entry, I could choose. I found a walk-around, by changing the language back to english, exiting the game, starting it again, checking if the saved games are available and if yes, I can change the language again. But this is time consuming and annoying. Is there a better solution available?

And ingame (german campaign) I was confronted with the problem, that my infantry has no antitank weapons at all. But I'm supposed to keep my tanks and apcs hidden. But the only way to have a stand against the enemy, is to use these. But now I loose the mission all the time. I watched the video of the walkthrough guide and the player there has air support available. I don't. Just the 2 mortars. And he also has infantry with antitank weapons.

That's really strange ...

Any help or ideas for my problems?

[ZPB II]

Just some thoughts, but try setting your CMSF.exe to always Run as administrator if that would help.

Also the lack of German Panzerfausts is a bug that was introduced in the latest NATO patch. It is getting fixed in the next patch AFAIK.

[Schrullenhaft]

As already mentioned, the panzerfausts are missing due to the last 1.31 patch. They were removed from the squads, but not restored to their vehicles (to be acquired). This should be fixed when the 1.32 patch is released (which may be awhile, unfortunately).

Regarding your missing Saved Games, if you run CMSF under Windows Vista and Windows 7 without "Run as administrator", then you files get saved to the 'VirtualStore' directory, a security feature of Windows UAC (User Account Control). You should probably find your files in the following directory (which will require you to set the Windows Explorer file manager to show hidden directories):

'\User\{your account name}\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Game Files\Saved Games'

I'm not sure why they may not show up due to different language settings. There are different directories for the various translations of the scenarios and campaigns, but the saved games should all end up in the same folder, regardless of language.

Under Windows Vista and Windows 7 it is best to run the game by right-clicking and selecting "Run as administrator" from the popup menu. This gives the program the rights to write in the '\Program Files' or '\Program Files (x86)' directory, which is normally prevented by the Windows security feature of UAC (User Account Control). This is probably most important to do this for the licensing process, but at any other time (especially with PBEM files, to make them easier to find) it may be a good idea.

You can modify the launching shortcut so that you don't have to right-click each time to launch the game. Right-click on the shortcut and select "Properties". Go to the 'Compatibility' tab and at the bottom of this tab is a section labeled "Privilege Level". Checkmark the box next to the text that says "Run this program as an administrator". Click 'Apply' and then 'OK'.

[Markus86]

Hi Zebulon Pleasure Beast II and Schrullenhaft,

I'm running the game with XP as OS. I don't know if XP offers the "run as admin..." dialog. I'll check it out tonight.

I'll try to find this folder, to see what's stored in it.

But this Panzerfaust bug is really annoying. Does it make sense at all, to play the german campaign? Are other nato campaigns also affected?

No chance for a fast, small fix?

[Schrullenhaft]

XP offers something similar to the 'Run as administrator', but it isn't really necessary for that OS since it doesn't use UAC (User Account Control), which is what redirects some of the writes from the expected folder in the '\Program Files' directory to a hidden folder.

Unfortunately there is NO chance of a quick fix for this issue, since patches require a bit of testing to make sure that they don't mess something else up (though there's always still the chance for that). It also takes awhile to compile a new patch too. And other things may get fixed too. I expect it will probably be at least a month or more before the 1.32 patch is released. I'm not aware of other campaigns being affected by this since the issue is with the panzerfaust's allocation to Marder's being absent.

Running a test of this, I set the language to 'Deutsch' and played a Quick Battle and performed two saves. While still loaded with Deutsch as the language, I can see the games in the 'Saved Games' selection. However if I change the language back to English, then the saved games disappear.

Apparently the saved games for Deutsch are stored at:

'\Program Files\Battlefront\Combat Mission Shock Force\Speildateien\Gespeicherte Spiele'

Both of the saves were located there, but would not appear when English is the selected language (or another other language other than Deutsch). Changing the language did require restarting CMSF in order to see the saved games (as appropriate for each language).