Combat Mission engine 4 patches released

[Pete Dero]

This is just completely nuts.

That's a mission from the Battle of the Bulge game CM Final Blitzkrieg  .

[A Canadian Cat]

I don't know why people insist on making this hard. Go to your order history and find the most recent entry where you bought CMRT or an upgrade to CMRT and download the latest full installer.
Run the installer.

You are done - all installed and patched fully. Even the latest v4 engine patches have made it into the full installers and certainly the old v3 engine all in one installers are fully patched.

[RyanE]

I come back to this again.  For people whose major social engagement is BFC forums, it seems easy.  Its not.   Its not well documented.  It changes.  There are exceptions to the all-in-one installers.  The downloads get screwed up.  The DRM app doesn't get installed on the desktop and you have to go searching for it.  And so on.

BFC generally helps sort it out, but for someone who last installed 1.X  or 2.X, the process has changed several times.  In fact, it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't look up old orders easily.  If you haven't visited the website since then, its tough to figure out.

If you don't like watching people struggle through the process, skip these threads.  But the CM install process is not straight forward unless you have been following along for 10 years.  Just look at the number of issues that show up on these and other forums around updates.  The process has a reputation, and deservedly so, when compared to games like Graviteam and others on Steam.

[Redwolf]

I don't know why people insist on making this hard. Go to your order history and find the most recent entry where you bought CMRT or an upgrade to CMRT and download the latest full installer.
Run the installer.

You are done - all installed and patched fully. Even the latest v4 engine patches have made it into the full installers and certainly the old v3 engine all in one installers are fully patched.

That doesn't insert the commonwealth and market garden modules at the right time. Are they modules? Or extension packs? I'm so confused. And do I need to update them separately?

In any case, BFC still insists that there is a limited number of those downloads. I can see the count in my "past orders" where the links are.

So although it is nice that the files you can download are being updated to be more inclusive wrt recent patches there are several problems:
- they didn't tell me that these files are being updated, until yesterday I thought I would always get the same file I originally purchased and have to use the freely downloadable patches (why bother with both, then?)
- limiting the number of downloads doesn't mix with updated downloads. What's the plan here?

[Redwolf]

  The process has a reputation, and deservedly so, when compared to games like Graviteam and others on Steam.

You will be hard pressed to find any game outside wargames that still makes it hard to install the thing and update it to the latest version. That is business suicide for any other kind of game.

[Redwolf]

Now, let's talk about those "zip" files that they now use to distribute the latest patches and complete installers.  They have the following properties:

1) they are not normal zipfiles. While Win10 unpacks them fine when double-clicking on them the commandline utilities I have do not. This isn't quite good either. Traditionally people had to unzip downloaded *.zip files to then find a single *.exe as an installer in there. This doesn't work here

2) if you do double-click on them in win10 then you get presented with a dialog box with the following options:
- Unpack
- Run

Of course any normal person used to normal software installations clicks on "run". Because that's how you do installs, right? Not so in BFC's case. It fails, thankfully with an error message. The error message says
"Insert disk 1"

WTF?

I mean is anybody even testing this from the perspective of a normal user at all?

So, anyway "Run" doesn't work, so you choose "Unpack".

That's nice, but it then doesn't directly install. It just opens a file manager window on your wasted disk space for the unpacked version. You have to know that you know need to click on the executable in there.

I would normally say that this isn't the software stone age. But offhand I cannot remember any other company in the actual software stone age doing this.

"Wasted disk space" is for real. You will need disk space in the amount of the patch or installer size, as a temporary space. That is unnecessary and I think we all have been in a situation where we wanted to download a 2 GB installer expanding into 4 GB of software and we just didn't have another 2 GB to needlessly copy the thing around.

I also wonder where BFC dug up this crap. I have never seen this as a distribution mechanism for any other software. But then, most other software now has installers that know how to patch themselves.

[Redwolf]

Oh it gets better.

I had a working 2.12 install with both Commonwealth and CMMG.

I unpack and install CMBN Windows 3.12 Full Installer.zip

British and CMMG are gone from the splash screen.

Clicking on menu->battles I can see all the british and cmmg battles, with the red text that I need those modules, or packs, or whatever they are.

This is the third day I am messing around with this. I just want to blow up a couple of StuGs.

[Pete Dero]

In your main game directory you should find shortcuts with names like 'activate modules and 'activate new products'.

Run these to activate your game and all the modules you have a serial key for.

[ArizonaTank]

  The process has a reputation, and deservedly so, when compared to games like Graviteam and others on Steam.

You will be hard pressed to find any game outside wargames that still makes it hard to install the thing and update it to the latest version. That is business suicide for any other kind of game.

"Torturing" your customers has never been a good business strategy.

[Redwolf]

In your main game directory you should find shortcuts with names like 'activate modules and 'activate new products'.

Run these to activate your game and all the modules you have a serial key for.

They all go to activate the base CMBN game. Even the link named CMMG.

[Redwolf]

Can't get past this step.

For British and CMMG I have the bundle, and the newest download from yesterday is "CMBN Windows Commonwealth Market Bundle.zip"

That thing installs 2.12, and everything is allright in there. CMMG and British are both active.

My 3.x update is "CMBN Windows 3.12 Full Installer.zip" which, as I can see, contains CMMG and Commonwealth on its inside. Still, installing this sucker leads to a CMBN 3.12 which has Commonwealth and CMMG disabled.

In the 2.12 I tried playing a British battle, it works. All activation seems to have been done properly. But the 3.12 complete install disables British and CMMG.

[Pete Dero]

My 3.x update is "CMBN Windows 3.12 Full Installer.zip" which, as I can see, contains CMMG and Commonwealth on its inside. Still, installing this sucker leads to a CMBN 3.12 which has Commonwealth and CMMG disabled.

The mistake here is that "3.12 full installer" isn't an update but the full game as the name suggests.  No need to install a previous version (the 2.12 one you installed is most likely wiped out by the new install).

So after that you need to activate everything (base + modules).  They are installed with the full installer but aren't active yet.

[Redwolf]

My 3.x update is "CMBN Windows 3.12 Full Installer.zip" which, as I can see, contains CMMG and Commonwealth on its inside. Still, installing this sucker leads to a CMBN 3.12 which has Commonwealth and CMMG disabled.

The mistake here is that "3.12 full installer" isn't an update but the full game as the name suggests.  No need to install a previous version (the 2.12 one you installed is most likely wiped out by the new install).

So after that you need to activate everything (base + modules).  They are installed with the full installer but aren't active yet.

There are no script to activate anything in the resulting directory.

As I mentioned, there is a "activate CMMG" icon floating around my desktop, but using it tries to activate CMBN, not CMMG.

[ArizonaTank]

I don't know why people insist on making this hard. Go to your order history and find the most recent entry where you bought CMRT or an upgrade to CMRT and download the latest full installer.
Run the installer.

You are done - all installed and patched fully. Even the latest v4 engine patches have made it into the full installers and certainly the old v3 engine all in one installers are fully patched.

Sorry, bristling a little bit when you say  : "I don't know why people insist on making this hard" 

I suppose I am just unlucky...but I have had CMx2 updates break my activations. The previous CMFI patch broke my Gustav Line activation.

Spent days going back and forth with support. The support guy was very good by the way....given the situation he is in. But after days of emails, and nothing working, I just gave up.  Then when I bought a new desktop....I got to relive the activation nastiness when I installed on the new rig.  I can feel my blood pressure rising, just thinking about the support hassles that Battlefront has put me through.

Also had some similar problem with Market Garden, that eventually fixed itself.

There are so many great games out there that are hassle-free...   

Like it or not, Steam is where the bar is at for how to support software updates and DLC.

I have reached the point in life where it is easier for me to buy a game than find time to play it.  So spending any more than a few minutes on patching and upgrades is time wasted in my book. 

So I wait on the sidelines, hoping that someday Battlefront will come to their senses.   

[Pete Dero]

There are no script to activate anything in the resulting directory.

As I mentioned, there is a "activate CMMG" icon floating around my desktop, but using it tries to activate CMBN, not CMMG.

I have a shortcut named 'activate modules' in my main directory pointing to this : C:\Software\Combat Mission Battle for Normandy\CM Normandy.exe" -showui

If I remember correctly you need to activate CMBN v3 before you can activate other modules.