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CM West at CMMODs complete?


Fenris

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Hi all,

Discovered CMWest yesterday. Download all the parts from the mod warehouse but found a few units were still in DAK colours when I fired up a couple of scenrioes.

The numbering on the files is a little cryptic, mainly because I don't know how many files there are supposed to be. I did find an old post where MarkErza mentions it's ~141Mb and the total download from cmmods is around 110Mb.

Anyone able to clue me in or upload the missing parts please?

Many thanks

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Guys, yes Ezra's mod was a good effort but is now quite incomplete, missing some terrain tiles and seemingly a great many other bits - though I don't know how comprehensive it ever was to begin with. Also, in terms of approach, it seems to try to convert the desert theatre into Europe/Britain, when converting the "combined theatre" would make more sense. I've used various bits of Ezra's and others' mods, much added to and further modded, to make my own full conversion of CMAK to a Sealion/ETO game, utilising the combined theatre region. However, its huge, half a bmp folder, all in 8-bit colour (not most people's favourite) and all desaturated for a more natural look (so you'd have to completely replace all your folder with my versions, because other mods for the pre-July43 or post-July43 stuff won't match with what I've done). Uploading it to GaJ's site would take ages and be in a hundred parts. And I've been testing and tweaking it for half a year or more now. And it includes retweaked verisons of a great many other modders' work but of which I never kept an exact record and they would expect to be credited and may not agree to my wholesale re-use of their work. And it uses my mods (as "streety" on GaJ's site) including many I've not yet published. But also, I've doubted many people would be interested enough and it still isn't "perfect". So I've not uploaded it and merely kept playing and tweaking it as my little pet....

If you want to do your own version, copy your entire CMAK folder and call it CMWEST or something similar, and in it do the following:

1) replace the Italian buildings with as many English, ETO and northern European ones as possible.

2) replace all the pre July 1943 desert stuff with CMAK Italy or CMBB versions of the same or similar armour and uniforms (no need to change the British paras or Americans).

3) replace the dirt terrain terrain tiles with the later of the two Italy grasses (no need to change the other terrain pieces, though you might want to change the interface terrain images).

4) create a new shortcut to the game's exe file and paste it to your desktop, where you can rename it "CM West" or similar.

5) play the game using the "all combined" theatre for pre-july43 situations.

Apart from the sheer scale of changes and that you might have to seriously retweak or re-mod some models, and that you'll be limited to armour types that appeared in North Africa, the only issues with all this are:

1) that you won't get snow on the ground (though you could visually replace the renumbered grass terrain with renumbered light snow for just those months and you can at least tell the weather to make snow fall out of the sky).

2) Italian helmets pre-July43 stay modelled as pith-helmets, but you'll probably not want the Italians for a Sealion campaign anyway.

3) you'll get a bit too much dust. The way I accept this is to imagine that this sort of equates to the problem of exhaust smoke chucked up and hanging around more like smog used to in British/ETO climates (at least before we used clean coal in the 1970s). But change these bitmaps from a red dust to one that's more grey.

4) From July 43 you can switch to using the Italy theatre for your ETO games (as this will give you better dust modelling and snow). However, if you switch over to using the Italy theatre before Feb44 (i.e. between July43-Feb44, or between July43 and before your snow that winter), you'll find the terrain colours too red etc as the game models southern Italy in this period. So best stick with the Combined theatre until your first snows of the 43/44 winter. Thereafter use Italy.

I keep thinking about uploading my efforts, and maybe will one day, but is there really much call for it? especially now that almost everyone is pre-occupied with CM:BN??

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No absolute need to copy the game, and indeed I started out by just having two BMP folders. But then you have to keep renaming your different BMP folders, unless you plan to do it all with CMMOS or something. And making a fresh copy of the game means you'll also have two different sets of saved games, scenarios etc which makes things simpler. I suppose you might mod different sounds too (which I do, a few, for my "CMWest/Sealion" game). Yes, I suppose you could just create extra copies of all those folders and keep renaming all of them for each time you play your different games. But what a pain, and if you go to that extent you may as well just make another game folder because you aren't saving much space anyway. So on balance its much better to create another game folder.

And its not a simple matter of just filling your new BMP folder with all the ETO mods because you can't rely on them for any pre-July43 battles because they mostly alter the Italy theatre and not the period before - and it is the earlier period (1940-may43) as much as later which we are talking about in this thread.

Oh forgot to mention about also changing the skies in my previous list.

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Hi again Erwin - No, I didn't do them. I think a lot are mikeyD, but many others too. My skies are a mix of stock CMBB and other modders' CMAK ETO skies, with a few of my own, but all retweaked to be desaturated (less colour).

Yes, the CM1 mods keep on rolling on. I've added a few of my own, mainly filling a few gaps.

Oh, and I forgot to add to my earlier advice/experiences that for the British-Commonwealth you can use their 100000s series European armour models to replace their respective 10000s series Africa ones. For example, the African British Early Sherman 2 is numbered 16680-16699 and the European one is numbered 116680-116699. So you can simply renumber the European ones to help build your CMWest/Sealion collection. By the way, once you've done that, there's no need to also keep the higher numbered version because, say when playing after June43, if the higher numbered version isn't there the game automatically opts for the lower numbered one - at least in the times I've tried it (but you'll still need to keep the higher-numbered's snow version).

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By the way, though I've been playing and modding CM1 for ages, I'm a solo-gamer (forever toying with a new solo-campaign rules book that'd be simpler to run than ROQC), and in the midst of a huge campaign to recapture central England from that cunning fox Rommel! (he gets everywhere). And so I'm an extremely rare visitor and poster to forums, and very out of touch with the community. Are there many CMWest/Sealion (i.e. pre-July43 Europe) gamers out there??

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I have been trying to locate what mods there are for early war. But, now with so many CM version games available, it's tough to focus on more than one or two. I play CM1 tournies at BOB H2H and they are terrific. But, CM2, I only enjoy vs the AI. CM2 AI is good and the large scenarios I like are too complex to play vs a human... too slow.

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Yeah, I guess I'll get CM:BN sometime now that they finally saw the sense to include the British and Commonwealth forces! I'm especially happy to hear you say that the CM2 AI is good. But I will probably wait for the price to drop, especially because I'd need to buy both the original CM:BN game AND the Commonwealth add-on in order to play the Brits.

Meanwhile, yes, it seems the mods for converting CMAK into an early-war Europe game are all over the shop, partly because of many terms (Sealion, CMWest, ETO etc), partly because nothing truly comprehensive ever came out, and what there is doesn't always match up well. I've spent the past 15 months slowly building my own as described earlier, a mix of mods and renumbered/retweaked stock. And it seems that's what you are expected to do. A major task! I've pondered the idea of suggesting to GaJ the notion of a separate folder, or a mega-mod (or at least removing all the really crap mods to save follow-on downloaders wasting time). But I've gotten into modding Sealion/pre-July43 NW Europe on CM1 very late and now imagine it to be of increasingly minor interest. Most of my fellow modders have moved to CM2 and the few active in CM1 are good but, like you say, with so many versions and mods of CM1, those few modders are very spread out. Maybe I'll upload a test mod sometime and see how many want it....

Cheers, David.

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Well, I could try and accumulate all the early war CM1 mods I have and see if we can exchange large files of them via drop box or somesuch. Between the two of us we probably have got all of them (or close to it).

If you are really into waiting, BF will probably have a bundle price when Market Garden comes out. They seem to be making an effort to come up with at least one module per year, maybe sooner. But, the CM2 AI is really quite good compared to CM1. I much prefer campaigns as I enjoy the force and ammo preservarton aspects vs the "there is no tomorrow, so everyone can die and you can have no ammo left but if you win, that's all that counts" philosophy of individual scenarios. And you can't really play CM2 campaigns vs a human - it would take a lifetime, and just about all campaigns are designed for play vs the AI anyway.

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Hi Erwin, That new AI really does sound the business - you've sold it to me on that. The CM1 AI is a bit silly sometimes. So yes, I'll be onto CM2 as soon as the next price-drop comes.

As to mods viable for a CMAK early-war Europe, I personally don't need any more hunting around for old mods - thanks - I've long ago exhausted all of it, modded everything that was missing, and am just tweaking things. I was merely thinking aloud about bothering with the hassle to repackage up what I've done (and get fellow modders' permissions etc, because I've long ago lost track of which stuff came from which mod and whether I remodded it or used it as-is, etc). All merely in order to save other gamers coming to the idea later from going through the pains I had to. And I'm not sure my desaturated, 8-bit colour would be to everyone's tastes anyway, and it still needs more tweaking.

But at least they can read this thread for ideas about "how to". Maybe I'll upload some more stuff soon and see how popular it is. My English church had 60+ downloads but that can be used for more than just an early-war CMAK europe conversion. I'm guessing current interest in such a conversion is really only in single figures....

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Cheers Mate! Yes, as we've been having this discussion, the more it's made me think about it all again and that I should just get around to repackaging it all anyway. I'll get around to finishing tweaks asap, then put up a new thread with the mega-mod's name, ask for permissions where needed etc. Then perhaps upload a test set for feedback. Currently its huge, even though I've stuck to smaller 8-bit files, just the early war portion would still be about 500MB, but I could try to slim it down to a basic test set without all the optionals (300MB maybe). I better go away and try to figure out at least which were the main CMAK and CMBB modders I re-hashed a lot of.....

Adios.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yes jocvtrhythgd, if you read all the foregoing thread you'll find MarkEzra already posted a reply. To save you rereading it all: CMWest was good, but I don't think it was ever a full set of BMPs (and certainly wasn't by the time I downloaded it all from CMMODS). I've built my own, incorporating CMWest with a whole bunch of my mods and other folks' mods and renumbered bitmaps from CMBB etc etc (which I think is what anyone else interested in this period has to do, but is actually a lot of work if you read the thread). I'm not yet 100% happy with mine, but was thinking of uploading it when I've finished, but may need other modders' blessings (mainly Ezra and MikeyD) for re-including their works wholesale incorporated into mine (which is desaturated and so you couldn't simply mix & match with theirs).

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Many, many thanks Mark,

I appreciate my fellow modders respect each other, credit each other and would be happy to be included. But because there'd be a lot of yours, MikeyD, Gurra, Inglett and Andrew Fox stuff I was concerned about getting blessings from these five.

I'm just about done on all the German-grau stuff (of which a lot is MikeyD CMBB, but others too). The uniforms are done (essentially all Andrew Fox or David Inglett and renumbered from CMBB for the Germans and CMAK Italy for the Brit-Comms). Then your stuff mixed with some of my unpublished mods for the Allies armour (along with the odd Inglett, Aris and a sprinkling of others). The UI is essentially a tweaked version of Gurra's Westfront (though if I don't get his blessing I could use mine - or the stock). For buildings and terrain I've a mix of many people's work and my own. I'm 75-80% done/happy.

Thanks again.

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And MikeyD responds:

Mark!

Somebody's asking for permission to mod/use? Sure, of course. Usually I place a universal 'permission do do anything' line at the bottom of the mod Readme file. If you'll pass this on to whoever is asking, thanks.

Mike (MikeyD)

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Thanks Mark - and thanks MikeyD,

I was maybe just being a little overly concerned because of the sheer number of other people's mods I'd be regurgitating with (in the case of MikeyD's tanks for example) only minor colour/saturation tweaks. I did note all of Fox's mods come with a bar to further modding/use without permission (even though CMMODS website rules tell modders not to use CMMODS if that's the case). I tried making contact with Fox once before (on a separate issue to publish a minor correction to one of his mods) but he never replied. I could publish anyway, but would much rather have blessings all round. I'll try to fully credit everyone.

Spent last night refinishing the last grau tank - the captured Valentine - did a grey version but with mud and the paint going flaky to show the "original" green (partly lifted from your CMwest one), and added an air recognition flag. From here on I'm just checking things for obvious errors....

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Argh! I was almost done with the german-grau set, but checking their appearance at night revealed many look all purpley-green splodges. The problem doesn't just affect my 8-bit desaturated modding but many others' standard 24-bit mods too. I can reduce the effect a little by totally desaturating the grey, but then reincorporating that back into all the bitmaps (874 grau) to still show tyres, mud and other colouration, will take ages. I did just rediscover some Molek stuff that look better at night and I could feed them in, but that too is going to take time and is only a partial cure. Part of the problem is I went for mainly clean models and yet it seems these are more affected than dirty ones (mud-splattered, dusty etc). So almost back to square one because I don't want to release a set that looks ok in the day and crappy at night!

The terrain, buildings and allies don't look to bad, but I'd hate to put a set out that was incomplete. So a "full set" could be a little way off....

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