this sounds like something that might interest those of you, who are always waiting for multicore support. The truth is, I am not a programmer and don’t understand the significance of all this stuff, but on paper, it looks interesting.
A Russian LJ user “wot_player_228″ posted something that he found in the test 9.0 client files. He was comparing the engine_config.xml (from the res folder) of 8.11 with the 9.0 version and found there is a difference. There is an additional parameter added, “enableBalaceCPU”, which seems to be responsible for the management of loads between cores.
During my time wasting time on the internet I ran across this gem. Below is a seminar given to MIT by Col. Robert Doughty, former head of the Dept. of History of the US Military Academy, on the “Myth” of Blitzkrieg. I found it rather interesting and felt compelled to share this with you all.
The 1940 German campaign against France and the concept of blitzkrieg have exerted a powerful influence over modern perceptions of warfare. The 1940 campaign is frequently cited in discussions of strategy and operations and in publications about the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA). Proponents of the RMA have argued that blitzkrieg was the product of technological and conceptual advances during the interwar period. They have also claimed that the 1940 campaign demonstrates how such advances can quickly change the conduct of warfare.
a player by the name of Dexter5021 made screenies of the historical configurations of vehicles. This post is based on them.
German
Panzer IV Ausf.H
- generally elite (2nd suspension and turret)
- L/48 gun in Kursk, L/43 in Balaton and Ardennes for some reason
- 440hp engine in Kursk and Balaton, 330hp in Ardennes
- 50/3/34 ammo setup for both guns
another interesting article by Yuri Pasholok came up – this time, about the Soviet M18 Hellcat. According to him, the vehicle, standing in the Kubinka museum, is one of the oldest vehicles of this type in existence.
Technically, it’s not even an M18 Hellcat. It was built by the Buick company in 1943 (its M1A1 gun, serial number 1272 was made by another plant, GM-Oldsmobile. This type vehicle was designated as M18 Hellcat in March 1944, so the vehicle in Kubinka is actually its earlier incarnation, the T70 Gun Motor Carriage and that’s how it is called in the Soviet documents. This is how this T70 GMC (serial number 40108549) looked in 1945:
it’s not apparently widely known (I actualyl thought it was) but everytime a model gets a HD overhaul (in this first test, the Tiger, the T-54 and the Sherman), the collision model (armor schematic) gets an overhaul as well. The point is to add many more armor zones in order for the armor to be more realistic. Check this out.
This is the old T-54 model (from Tank Inspector)
This is what we have now. 120mm frontal plate, the entire front turret is 200mm thick, the yellow zone above the mantlet is 86mm thick, the roof is 48mm thick, the turret sides are 160mm thick in the front (the red parts next to the frontal plate) and so is the commander’s copula. The sides behind them (the orange part) are 108mm thick.
so, I have this huge folder, containing material for Hall of Shame. Normally, when someone sends me a picture, I simply save it there, but every now and then something so vile comes along that it needs to be displayed as soon as possible.
Meet Czech clan “No Respect” (_LOL_). Yesterday, they were playing clanwars against Polish clan The Herd and… well, you be the judge. Despite his “Polish-sounding nickname” (explanation: that’s generic Polish term for “opponent”), the nazi is Czech as well.
I think all the offenders from the screenies should be permabanned and the entire clan banned from clanwars forever (KakaCZ is the clan deputy commander for heavens sake…)
The Polish text is googletranslated obviously. The Czech text means: “Hey you jewish swine, climb out of your hole, fucker” and “I will send you a nice German shell”
after very positive first impressions from last night, I decided to take a closer look at historical battles and share my impressions from them. First, overall, despite parts of it not being translated yet, the interface is very simple and streamlined. It’s very easy to orientate within it, you just take the vehicle, select historical ammo loadout below and go. The only problem I see in this is that it’s not that easy to find out, how exactly does the historical configuration of the vehicle look.
You have to:
- minimize the historical battle window
- run your mouse over the “historical loadout” icon (more like label) next to the service
- historical setup will appear, but only in names, not a “schematic” of stock/nonstock – for example, it will tell you that the engine you will be using is HL120TRM, but it won’t tell you that it’s the stock engine or top engine, you either have to know that or check the “research” window of the vehicle
- in historical battle mode, research window still shows the original random battle configuration, so if you for example want to take the Panzer IV Ausf.H in historical battles, you will be using the L/48 gun, but if you run with derp in randoms, you will see in research window that derp is still installed, this is a bit counterintuitive
Other than this, it’s fine, so let’s see our first historical battle. It’s also worth noting that since everyone “wants the Tiger”, Tiger (and generally other “big cats”) waiting times are VERY long, for testing purposes, it’s better to roll around with StuG or Panzer IV.
Battle of Kursk
The description is not translated yet, so I will do that for you, it says: “The Kursk battle is one of the key battles of WW2, the result of which was the German army suffering major defeat at the hands of the Soviet armies.”
Apparently, the maps/icons/historicalBattles folder of the 9.0 test client contains some additional historical battles icons
Apart from Prokhorovka (Kursk), Ardennes battle (announced earlier) and Lake Balaton (also in the test), we can see more icons there:
- Briansk (probably referring to the city of Bryansk in western Russia, occupied by Germans from 1941 to September 1943), we can expect more Kursk-style battles I guess.
- Tobruk, most likely referring to the Siege of Tobruk in 1941, most likely involving Germany and Britain
- Taifun, probably referring to Operation Taifun, or – as Russians call it – the Vyazma operation, taking part in September to October 1941, resulting in German victory
what follows is the account of model changes I’ve been able to discover in patch 9.0. Unusually, we’ll start with the Americans. You see, American vehicles recieved somethig graphic overhaul. This was not supposed to happen until later actually, as it is generally connected with the coming of the US light tank tier 8. Let’s have a look at it. Oh yea, and nevermind the different color, that’s due to the new shader system being used – just ignore that and focus on the shapes.
Also note that unlike usually, in order to save traffic, the images are hosted at imgur and in order to make one larger, you have to rightclick it and select “view image”.
Chaffee – stock turret visual model change (the lighter one is the new one obviously)
now we will have a look at the vehicle changes in 9.0. First things first:
Panzer IV got split into three tanks: Tier 3 Panzer IV Ausf.A, Tier 4 Panzer IV Ausf.D and Tier 5 Panzer IV Ausf.H
StuG III got split into Stug III Ausf.B and StuG III Ausf.G
