Rake
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Posts posted by Rake
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15 hours ago, Bil Hardenberger said:
What can I say? I never play with these icons and I’ll never do it again.
I'm with ya, Bil. Whenever I watch a youtube video where the stock icons are used, I have little idea what units I'm seeing. I use a combination of yours and ones I've done myself.
I just found this aar... Thanks for doing this and all you do for the hobby. I didn't play CMSF1 much. At the time, I didn't care much for modern equipment (I really didn't know much about it to tell the truth); it was WW II all the time. I only bought the base game, and that only much later on after most of the bugs had been worked out. I bought Black Sea on a whim and since then have played mostly cold war and later in all the games I play
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On 7/26/2018 at 1:51 PM, IanL said:
I recommend everyone just add him to your ignore list. Then you don't have to see this silliness
Done... before I even got to your post. Trolls like this are a major reason why I rarely post on any forum. The anonymity of the keyboard gives far too many a presumed right to be
asshatsobnoxious. I'm far from thin-skinned, but I doubt he's spoken with too many people in that vein -
DF... This is excellent!!! Many thanks!
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I've been reading, again, Blumenson's Breakout and Pursuit. Along with this, I've been doing some other research and located a trove of aar's in the Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library.
What I'm having difficulty (sp: l a z i n e s s,
) with is converting map coordinates in the aar's into lats & longs so I can find a "real" location. I've found a site explaining the "British Modified System", but that system uses coordinates such as "vZ3383", meaning (as best as I can tell) Map Section vZ, 33 kM East/83 kM North. The US aar's use coordinates similar to, say, "565-068". Does anyone here have a link that will point me in the right direction. I'm a land surveyor IRL, so I do understand coordinates, projections and the sort.
Thanks in advance, Rake
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Thanks. I think I will throw in a ticket.
This happens... and it has since the release of CMBN (and probably CMSF; I didn't play that enough to notice). You have to back off of the "boundary", either by rotating or moving forward just enough to allow the camera to scroll left or right. It is annoying as hell, but IIWII!
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Yeah you have to save in a certain bit rate for some reason.
8 bits per channel for the RGB channels, and 8 for the alpha channel... I kept making the same mistake as the OP until I remembered I was dealing with four channels, not three
Oh, one more thing... Every time I make a selection, I've learned to save it as a separate channel (I'm assuming you're using Photoshop). That way, if I screw something up, which I'm often prone to do
, at least I don't have to recreate the selection; just load a "new" selection. -
And a couple of the Germans from, well... CMBN, CMFI & CMRT...
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Well I kind of agreed about the circle needing to be replaced with the square shape for the NATO icons... my WW2 period icons will always have the allies with circle shaped icons.. seems to fit the period. If you make your own version, share a few screenshots.
I do understand that the modern version would be the rectangular, but after starting a set, it just didn't look right to me. I'm working on it slowly; as I play a new scenario and encounter new types of units, I'll pop open Photoshop and create a few new ones. My ADD won't let me game long sessions, just as I can't play in PS until I finish a whole series
One thing that I am doing, and have done with the WW II sets is to make the "Icon ** 2" version the opposite and/or much lighter color of the "Icon ** 1" symbol, e.g., the "Icon Soviet * 2" is red on a yellow background... The brighter color helps to pick out teams that have been hit, but more importantly, it has several times saved me from the silly mistake of double-clicking to select a unit and then giving orders to an entire company
An example from RT...
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Bil great job, I just fired these up to test them out and I like what I have seen so far. If I did have to nitpick about something it would be that the US symbols are shown in circles vs the traditional rectangles.
Bil... sorry to throw my hiccup into this (ya just can't please everybody
), but I always loved the circle version for the blue army. I understand that some may prefer the square or rectangular versions; these seem to fit more with the NATO symbols. After playing with my own modded versions of your period based icons for so long, I've found I'm just going to have to create my own set for CMBS... Now trying to fit the wheeled AT symbol into the 128 square pixel area (circle or diamond) is gonna be tough, but I'll figure out something, even if it's using old WW II style symbols
Thanks for all you do for the series... from your AAR's to you Battle Drill blog (an extra thank you for the link to the Obscure Battles page). I read it all, post little, but always grateful.
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Okay, as a bit of a "mea culpa" for my outburst the other night (even at my age, enough vodka can get me, ummmhh... "riled up"
), I have a planning map to share of the second KG Engel scenario. Basically, it's a copy of the mission map with contour lines drawn in. I do this for a number of the larger scenarios I play...
If you're able to get into the second scenario with all your tanks and the AT gun showing up
I can drop it into a dropbox account... that is IF I can figure out how to do so... Send a PM... or, if you're lazy, just right click and "save image as" -
A small suggestion. Real world (or CM world) isn't photographer's studio lighting. You might want to experiment with cranking the saturation down, playing with brightness/contrast. Ugh, that's the bane of my existence, forever chasing down artwork in the game than either needs to be brightened up or desaturated. From building facades to crops to street signs. See attached.
Yikes!!! The first picture (studio lighting) looked awful close to the color of the Class 3 safety gear OSHA requires for construction workers... minus the reflective striping of course
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Well,. I just tried to send a file to Ken, but with this new F^*(*$##%$^& board, an old F%&*% like
me can't figure out how to attch a F^(*^ing file :mad:
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Ken... PM will be sent...
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I tried playing this scenario as a "stand alone"; i.e., exploded the campaign and opened it as a scenario. This time, the Pz IV's and the Panther were there, but the AT gun was nowhere to be found. The crew and ammo bearers were sitting inside the hano yet the gun was nowhere to be found. I opened the editor, and the gun was right there where it should be... trailing the 'track, but once again, after loading the scenario, the gun is missing.
The scenario looks interesting, as does the campaign. At this point, it looks like my options are to play the campaign with a couple of Lynx, which likely allows a slim chance of winning, or playing the remainder of the campaign as individual scenarios and defeating the entire purpose of the campaign system.
I suppose the good news is that I'm too old to be mad about stuff I can't change... just gotta change the game I'm playing for a bit.
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Same problem here, my panzer IV's and Panther were missing in the second mission even though they survived the first mission. The pak40 was present in my game, did not have any problems with it
i have the same problem. all my tanks survived the first mission but in the second one i only have my 2x panzer II. does it help to play the first mission again or is there any other solution?
Same issue here with the disappearing Pz IV's & V. I've even gone back and replayed the last turn of the the first scenario a couple of times to see if that would magically allow the tanks to appear.
The first time I tried to play this campaign after upgrading, the AT gun wasn't there. I waited a few months before trying the campaign again and the gun showed up.
I've got saves if anyone is interested. I started this campaign because I've gotten tired of the monster games in CMRT and the fact that I never got through the second Engel scenario due to the issue where MG's would not set up with LOS through bocage... the size of these campaign scenarios make this an interesting campaign for me; I'd love to be able to get beyond the second one
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- 1 to turning off the red crosses. I like knowing when someone gets hit Early on in the vid, I watched a T34 w/ riders get get ko'd... I had to go back and watch it a second time because I missed the red crosses; I watched the tank explode and thought no one suffered collateral effects. Everyone has an opinion and is most certainly entitled to theirs'. CM, as realistic as it is, nor any other video game, certainly isn't not going to fool anyone into thinking it's a movie.
Nice job, Macisle!
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And the FO doesn't need to see the gun to call arty on its location. If the FO couldn't even draw a valid "support call" LOS to the place you wanted to bombard, then there was definitely some, probably postural, distinction between the elements involved, and something like a low wall, or crops.
One thing I just recently noticed is that a spotter can place an arty call to places that won't show up in LOS. The downside seems to be that the accuracy suffers. I'm in the middle of a game against the AI where I've tried this extensively, but artillery landing where I've asked for it has been dicey at best
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Although I think there is still a problem - is it not the case that truppen won't sit in a 2m deep ditch lock ditch (because they can't see out of it) and so cluster around the edge? You need to limit a ditch to 1m deep which doesn't give so much protection.
kensal... My guess is that it's called "ditch lock" is because it was primarily designed to create ditches. A one meter deep ditch is a pretty deep ditch; at two meters, there aren't many humans that could stand in the bottom and still see out. Anything deeper than one meter is a gully or wash
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NOOOooooo!!! More WWII
:D:p^^^THIS^^^!!! At least back to France and Barbarossa. Something less than the uber-tanks has always been much more fun for me. Modern day, robot-controlled warfare just doesn't hold my interest :confused:
Maybe I'll try CMBS and change my mind, but SF isn't on any of my computers any more. I bought it solely to learn the CMx2 system and haven't played more than a half-dozen scenarios. I've always enjoyed JT's Panzer Campaigns as an operational game, yet his modern warfare series (Fulda Gap and NGP) is sitting underplayed on my hard drive. When I need a break from CMBN, FI or RT, I always head back to Smolensk '41 or Kharkov '42.
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I played through The Passage and my experience was exactly the opposite. I raced the IV's into covered and partial hull down positions and picked off the T-34/85's as they popped onto view.
As stated elsewhere in thread, I kept the Pz IV's at range, where I felt their optics would be better than the Russians'. It usually took 3-4 penetrations to knock out the Soviet tanks, but they rarely seemed to have any idea where the shots were coming from. When they did return fire, trees saved several of my tanks from taking hits. IIRC, I lost two tanks and knocked out all but one T34/85.
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It is a bit annoying to have to reset the hoykeys each time an upgrade/patch is applied, but Ive done it so many time for different games/patches/upgrades that it doesn't take much time for me to do it in game. Does that mean I don't wish it were different? NO, of course not
What really does annoy me is loading up a game and hitting the "Q" key to plot a "Quick" move and find that my screen starts rotating I understand that. I still don't see the advantage of removing the mod folder before patching.If everything is fine after the upgrade you are fine. If it is not, you can remove the mod folder to investigate. But when you have moved them away before and your mod folders contains incompatible mods, you will also encounter them after putting them back, so that involves extra moving around.
Anyway, I only have a few simple floating icon mods in my folder, and they have never caused me problems. I can however imagine that with a ton of mods, including GUI and other tricky ones, one should be more prepared.
I'm not sure everything you say is so... I do have a ton of mods and have started removing my Z folder and saved games before I apply a patch or upgrade. I had some issues early on when I didn't remove them; it's been so long now that I can't remember what they were. I just remember doing a complete re-install of CMBN to get things straightened out.
The older I get, "a long time ago" for my memory was quite different than what it is now. When I was much younger, a long time ago was a year or more... now it's 30 minutes ago
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The updated patch - 1.02 - is up now.
Phil... I am so very grateful to BFC for getting this out so quickly. TBH, when I found the remnants of the building bug after 1.01, I thought it was just something I was going to have to learn to play around...
I've loaded up the 1.02 patch and NO building entry problems that I had on the "Blunting the Spear" map have cropped up...
THIS is why I keep buying BFC games. I'm a designer in a whole different world of engineering, but I don't stop until the problems get fixed. Sometimes, these fixes take longer than others, but you guys don't give up either... Hats off!!!
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I'm not totally surprised that another case of building entry problems was found. The inherent issue is a compiler bug that, for whatever reason, doesn't manifest itself in any sort of generalized way. Phil had to do a lot of generalized "defensive code" to catch the various symptoms because fixing the problem wasn't an option. It's why it took so long to isolate and then solve.
Steve
Steve/Phil and playtesters... I'm not a coder in any sense of the word; the only program I've ever written was something like a ten-step "macro" for my HP-10C calculator before I took my Land Surveying exam.
From what little I do understand, I'm sure this thing has been a nightmare. As I've said previously, I'll try to figure out exactly what building(s) and/or combo of them is causing problems. I will do what I can, time available, to see what's going on with my rig... I know this might not be the same with the next player's computer.
In any event, it's a whole lot better than it was before. And, I thank all of you involved with this issue for that! :cool:
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I just edited the Beutezug map to remove all soviet forces... no problems entering any of the buildings on this map. I guess I'll have to edit the Blunting the Spear map to try and pin down exactly what buildings troops will not enter
) with is converting map coordinates in the aar's into lats & longs so I can find a "real" location. I've found a site explaining the "British Modified System", but that system uses coordinates such as "vZ3383", meaning (as best as I can tell) Map Section vZ, 33 kM East/83 kM North. The US aar's use coordinates similar to, say, "565-068". Does anyone here have a link that will point me in the right direction. I'm a land surveyor IRL, so I do understand coordinates, projections and the sort.
:D:p
CMSF 2 BETA AAR #2 – Syrian Probe (Quick Battle)
in Combat Mission Shock Force 2
Posted
Custom icons don't give any more info than the stock ones - they just replace files that are already in-game. Like Bil say, they're easier to read quickly. If I have a choice, I use NATO-type icons in all my wargaming. If I don't, I make my own or use someone else's.
I've been playing this series since way back at the very beginning of CM1. I've always played a highly modded game and never had an issue with mods. As Vin said above my post, the game just doesn't look right without mods. I install mods immediately once I install a game.