Last night players on HSlan were treated a hilarious bug. It was early in PdH: the US held the Ammo bunker and managed to grey out the Observation bunker flag. However, at the same time, the few US campers on FlaK battery flag neutralized it as well. Germans soon retook the Observation bunker, but something mysterious happened.

The green circles disappeared.

After a few seconds, the US capped the FlaK battery flag, with the Germans still in possession of Observation bunker. Among the general confusion, a few enterprising US players then went on to start capturing the rest of the flags, starting from the Farm and advancing up the map. The entire round was reduced to a chaotic running back and forth between flags. At one point, the flags were completely reversed - with the Germans holding only the Observation & Ammo bunkers. Destroyed bunker was changing hands almost constantly - only the Observation bunker and Farm were held firmly in German and US hands, respectively.

Then, the map was changed to Siege of Tobruk. Surprisingly, the green circles and red crosses were absent here as well. After a couple of minutes, the Germans were in control of Tobruk Outskirts and started charging the Aussies from the back.

Sadly, the fun-spoiling server administration ended this streak of epic lulz by restarting the server.

Not being in the server staff, I can't tell the specifics, ie. how long the server had been running without a restart and such, if they affect this phenomenon. Just thought to mention this.

***** THERE WILL BE  A Ramelle Neuville remake in FH2. *****

Now that the genie is out of the bottle, the cat is out of the bag, someone let the dogs out, and I'm using cliched metaphors, it's time to suggest other fictional maps, based on films or other sources.

633 Squadron

Maximum map size, air-only (excluding AAA), objective mode. For those who haven't seen the film, the British have to fly along a fjord to bomb a German rocket fuel plant at the end. The only way to destroy the plant is to skip some bombs at a precise location under a cliff which will then collapse on top of the plant. The catch is that the fjord is filled to the brim with FlaK and defended by German fighters. Have a British airbase at SW corner to represent their airbase, separated from "Norway" by an OOB zone. The British get Mosquitoes (with bombs only, no rockets), or can spawn as Bofors gunners to defend their base against spawnraping Germans. The Germans get a few FW190's or Bf109's, but mostly spawn as AA gunners.

Where Eagles Dare

Infantry-only map (well, maybe a couple of 251's and trucks could be included), standard conquest, only loosely based on the book and the film. Loosely, because instead of a handful of SOE commandos the British have a full-strength attack force. The aim is to capture "Schloß Adler" on top of a mountain, defended by a mixed force of Gebirgsjäger and Waffen SS. The British begin bleeding, their initial spawn is in the woods outside the nearby town of Werfen. There are three routes into the castle: ride the cable car up from the town (into the teeth of the waiting Germans), climb the cliffs (using grappling hook kits), or snatch the helicopter (Fa 223 or Fl 282) from the Oberhausen Airfield. (Regular, but heavily defended road could be considered, if this proves to be too hard.) Capturing the town or the airfield allows spawning there, but only the capture of the castle flags stops bleeding (and starts it for the other side).

The reason for this might be just the fact that Totalize is the largest Normandy map, but on my system, it's a constant slideshow. Areas where this problem is especially pronounced are the Factory and the FlaK battery; airplanes circling overhead make this even worse.

I know that I have a low-end system (AMD3000+ 32-bit single-core, 2GB, GF7600) but it just feels weird that in every other Normandy map and on all African maps I have decent framerates. I'm running 1024*768, 100% view distance, no AA, most of the settings on Low (lighting, shadows, effects) or Medium (terrain), except textures which are on High.

Any ideas? I have understood that setting terrain to Low will remove grass etc. and I wouldn't like to do that... maybe set Textures to Medium/Low? Or turn off shading etc. altogether?