carcer

I heard early D-Day battles!

Update 7: still hard at work with making the mission. Next 3 things up to bat are finishing the wire defenses, adjusting trenches, and adding in the rest of the US forces. I'll release the test models of the landing craft and logs soon.

Landing Craft flavor object. Still can't get the textures it comes with to work so if anyone wants a crack at it let me know while I go back to mission making for a bit.

Update 6: The General forum might be a better place for this thread or the scenario and mod tips? Anyway thanks Sgt Squarehead for the link and with the help of Aquila I was able to get a beach log obstacle going. Still can't get the textures it came with to work so more testing is needed...one things for sure is that it's a pain in the butt. I'm hoping to get a landing craft in and redo some tellermine poles that I've made before. The other above image is testing the 1st 20 min of the scenario I'm working on. Getting closer and so far pretty fun.

Update 4: slowly working on the omaha west map. So far just need to add the US side and reinforcement times for a beta kind of version. I might have to make an acquisition of some flavor assets like the wooden pulls and some landing craft if I could ever figure out blender. Above you can also see some terrain modding for shock force 2.

Update 3: Well not very sure about the realistic colors anymore...loaded up some old textures from a while ago and it looks better. Might play with it some more later. I did manage to make an easy reshade that's pretty basic and working on the Omaha West mission. To produce it faster I'm mostly doing a direct conversion of the board game map and set-up. Not completely historical or topographical but the main ideas are there and I should have a beta mission in about a week.

Update 2: Just noticed that I posted in the main CMBN forum instead of modding, oh well maybe someone will move it. The above images are examples of modded clear daylight colors and modded overcast colors. Still a lot more to do and adjust but I should clarify that by real life I mean images based off of google street view. When I have time I can make a read me tutorial. What I've found that has been working well is using a cropped image from google (either from direct sunlight or overcast days) to apply as a layer with a hard light overlay on top of the de-saturated graphic that is being re-colored. After adjusting the lightness of the de-saturated graphic you can get a close match to the same color saturation and tones as in the real life cropped photo. What's kind of cool is that there's street drive views for the Ukraine, Israel, Italy, and Sicily. Unfortunately no winter though.

Update 1: Now that the patch is out for the combat mission games I'm interested in trying to finish my mod Rally the Regiments again. What I had imagined was to have realistic colors, some advanced squad leader scenarios booted over, a re-shade preset, and small 1200x1800m maps for competitive play. My first goal is to get the realistic colors nailed down and the ASL/critical hit scenarios for Omaha Beach made. I've ordered the board games Omaha west and East so I can begin work once it arrives. The above image you can see the comparison of real world colors compared to stock colors. In my next post I will outline how others can create their own unique field designs using google map street view images to overlay in-game colors and how to make seamless textures.

Wow so far I'm really impressed. Thanks BFC. Loaded up my Omaha project I was working on a long time ago and hey no more fleeing Germans from a random tank round.

Update: not working a 60+ hour job anymore so yay back to combat mission. Currently setting forth to finish the Omaha map so it's more functional while working on a map for La Fiere Causeway and a sidi bouzid battle test for CMFI. The best part is that the newer version of re-shade doesn't interfere with the game like it was before on me so I'm integrating that back in along with more terrain graphics across all families.

yup in my post for rally the regiments mod is the latest update and does need the market garden dlc. The two maps I'm currently trying to wrap up for that mod is the omaha mission and one for la fiere causeway however to spell.

Figured this might be helpful for anyone messing around with the test scenario. SITUATION Commander, there's little choice but to make a frontal assault across the beach flat. The capture of Les Moulins and the D-3 draw is vital for getting motorized traffic and supplies off the beach. Move as quickly as you can to find a weak point and crack the German defenses. You can leave pockets of enemy resistance for follow on troops to mop up later. Air support will be unavailable while in an interdiction role to prevent or delay enemy reinforcement. MISSION Mission type: Amphibious Assault The 1st Infantry division and 29th Infantry division are tasked with securing an accessible exit off of the Omaha Beach landing zone no later than 0735 in order for follow on forces to advance inland. FRIENDLY FORCES 1st Infantry Division Assault Company Company HQ x2 boat sections support boat platoon 29th Infantry Division Assault Company Company HQ x2 boat sections Divisional Support Battalion HQ DD tank platoon (x3 m4a1 sherman) Engineer combat platoon (sqd with attached m4 sherman) Ranger company (plt) Corps Support Naval gunfire support (destroyer with forward observer) Anti-Aircraft artillery platoon (sect) ENEMY FORCES Defending the beach is known to be a static coastal division made up of elements from the German 716th infantry. This division consists of lower quality soldiers with little to no mobility. None the less defenses on the coastline are fully capable. Expect concrete emplacements with anti-tank guns and a strong defensive network of trench lines behind barbed wire obstacles. PLAN 1st wave: scheduled to land at 0630 with armor support to immediately suppress enemy fortifications and clear obstacles. 2nd wave: scheduled to land at 0640 with infantry assault teams to facilitate the capture of a beach exit. 3rd wave: scheduled to land at 0655 with HQ attachments and the remainder of support elements for command and control. NOTES June 6 1944 0630 overcast 1200x1800 meters 1 hour and 5 minutes DESIGNER NOTES Amphibious Assault: 1st wave consists of 50% of the force pool set to variable and sporadic arrival times representing landing craft searching for gaps in beach obstacles and a place to land. Follow on waves are in mass but set to a variable arrival time based on ratio. Casualties are irrelevant in this mission type.

Negative on that one Erwin. The textures are meant as an optional graphics replacement for any scenario. Someday I'll include scenario specific textures via mod tag. Honestly don't know how to mod tag yet but guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there .

This is a release for a work in progress mod I'm calling Rally the Regiments or R&R for short. So far multiple terrains and foliage have been redone, new tracers, unit bases, and a test scenario for an Omaha Beach map. The goal of the mod is to make 1200x1800 maps and missions inspired by a WW2 miniatures game that are balanced for single and multiplayer competitive play. The link can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/iiyb8gr2b8ypo5b/CMBN_R%26R_Mod.rar The Omaha Scenario is a semi-historical condensed version showing the 1st infantry and 29th division storming the beach at the Les Moulins draw. Still a lot of work to do on it but it is playable on the US side set to turn-based. The US forces only enter as reinforcements, so the first 5 minutes of game-play are null. Screenshots: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7uIaidCdDXRFBLz32 https://photos.app.goo.gl/um9mvLpszn0n7xjG2 https://photos.app.goo.gl/4OY3HIXzoyzmFeBr2 https://photos.app.goo.gl/jqaeCp9rocMbFiFk1

Thanks for the reply herrtom. Yea I wasn't sure if you were playing the game that way or just going back to watch. When I get a chance I'm curious if an open gl shader like the one made by BarbaricCo could get close to the color tones and such as your presets. Howler, been a while since I've been playing CM so I'm out of the loop on presets these days. I'll just be trying different stuff out like the one your describing. sounds like a cool set-up to play with. I'd like to try JohnO's as well that screen shot is really vivid is a good way.

It's cool to see this forum open about reshade. I had a question if anyone might have some answers on using reshade. I'm having an issue with movement and target orders being off by 15m+ so I was curious if there was a way for reshade to not do that?

@rocketman Thanks for the terrain advice. That's actually really helpful especially as I started on a 1200x1800 dog green map that is too cliffy for game-play. For the new mission style I'm working on the Germans get 1 trp to use wisely to go with flames of war rules. In that game each artillery support unit comes with a spotter and if the unit is considered dug in they get a trp. Hopefully this will be pretty fun for multiplayer because as the Germans you'll have a lot of freedom on where to deploy your forces, but not so much stuff it would be daunting or take forever. If this turns out well I'll make a document on how to convert flames of war into CM for others to use if interested. Only down side is that I can't post their point system, so the mission designer would have to sign up for scribd or buy directly from that retailer to get the TOE's. Fixed: I figured out what the rocket artillery issue was. I was trying to use the nebelwerfer41 with 280mm rockets but according to the manual they only have a range of 2200m. With an 1800m map length; it seems the off map rockets are out of range halfway into the map. I guess I'll just switch it over to the 320mm rockets or stay with the neb41 but have it 150mm.

Update: I've found a much better way to make missions and force compositions as I re-approach this project. The table top game flames of war seems to work really well for CM conversion, especially for missions set up with multiplayer competition in mind. Their scale seems to be 1cm=1m proportion to give 1200x1800 meter CM maps with a common point system of 1500 for force compositions. This translates to a manageable map with well balanced combat forces. Currently I've gone back to working on a 1200x1800 Les Moulins map with historical'ish force picks. So far the battle is a lot of fun and works way better than my past attempts in terms of balance, play-ability, and hardware ability. Need Help: The one hitch I've run into so far is that the German forces have a 28cm rocket artillery unit set at 50% (for 3 guns total) with an observer team. I haven't been able to get the AI team to use this support at all despite the game showing it's available. Pre-bombardment is out of the question as well since the US forces do not begin arriving until 5min in (integrated a cool randomness concept for 1st wave and follow on forces). It also seems the observer team can call in the rockets on their own position and on German teams around them but not anything farther than 50m or on a TRP. Any ideas?

I had kind of backed off on using a reshade because I found that it's great for screenshots but for whatever reason throws off target and placement orders. I found a way to make shaders that you would just put in the Z folder; taking the place of movie mode but the file seems to be direct openGL script lines that I don't know how to code at this time. It would be cool to learn someday when I have time. I think the script lines are called GLSL if anyone knows stuff about that. For now I was going to see about finishing up on a texture pack for all titles as I mess with this mission making experiment.

The hillside and forest aren't hard to find. The grassy field I would guess the two light objects silhouetted in the yellow grass just to the left of the tree in the foreground, but then there's a 90 degree angle black spot to the right of the foreground tree in the tree line. Doesn't help the resolution has a couple black dots in front of the foreground tree in the grass. The picture with the rocks I had to look up. I'd chalk that one up with no freaking way cause of the resolution. Shooting wise for a sniper though all those positions in the pictures would be absolutely terrible. The SS camo is pretty good. I think what throws it off if you were spotting non-moving potential targets in the same environment is that the tone of the camo seems to match the tree bark more but the curves of a human body stand out among all the thin tree branches.

Kind of a fun game. Sniper training helps though.

Once I have my desktop again I'll see about converting all the flames of war normandy companies into combat mission to get a feel for how the point system compares in quick battles. The idea then would be to have standard map sizes of a historic area in quick battles and both players would pick forces limited off of an xml sheet or something. Not sure what the standard map sizes would be yet. I figured I'd try this going back to my omaha west thing (made more computer friendly), la fiere causeway area, and a 3rd people's choice pick. Any takers for what the 3rd one would be?

Correction, apart from the cavalry*, is that the flames of war companies seem to correspond to regiments. A mock combat mission task force representing the 29th division would then be x3 of the assault/infantry companies in different variations of points.

lol yes, possibly recon to get a step ahead of those Germans and their occult expeditions.

An idea for Force compositions: Flames of war just came out with an easy to use battlegroup builder called forces of war with companies representing force pools of a whole division. https://forces.flamesofwar.com/FOWPDFSelector.aspx. Unfortunately costs money to use the point system but the decks are available for preview. I see this set-up as something that could help make semi-historical engagements for single player and multiplayer in the direction of steel division; with divisional decks thrown at each other on historical maps. I suppose it would really just be a more restricted form of quick battles but could assist in picking attachments and ratios in the TOE’s. It might be possible to have the flames of war companies stand in for a battalion sized force or something allowing representation of a full division. Throw in a historicalish 1-2k map with different reinforcement times and could be fun. Here is an example of the US 29th division (depending on point system, only 3-4 support units would be attached). 29th infantry division assault company Combat platoons X6 boat sections Weapons platoons Machine gun platoon Mortar platoon Ammo and pioneer platoon X2 AT gun platoons Regimental support Recon platoon Cannon platoon Support platoons DD tank platoon Towed tank destroyer platoon Calvary platoon Combat engineer platoon Ranger company Support platoons Field artillery battery Corps armored artillery battery Naval or chemical mortar support Corps anti-aircraft platoon