RockinHarry Scenario Thread

[mjkerner]

Lol, I did  a video of that play test? I hope it doesn’t suck! 

[RockinHarry]

11 hours ago, mjkerner said:

Lol, I did  a video of that play test? I hope it doesn’t suck! 

... I know this wasn´t made for the purpose, but it´s good enough without showing too many spoilers.

[RockinHarry]

After long time I just made a full playthrough in 4.02 again. Previously I stopped at the instance when I figured the mortar penetrating pillbox bug is still there. Neglected it this time and kept going. Well... beeing creator of the mission I was a bit surprised the AIP gave me a serious beating and in the end just could pull out a "Draw" (with horrendous losses).  I actually know the "winning strategy" in this mission pretty well (for obvious reason), so something had changed in 4.02 I think. I had more friendly surrenders (11 in the end, beeing among the highest I had in any game yet) and the TacAI also seems acting more dynamic and clever as before. Another playtest might reveal more I hope.

At last the deciding factor was one US 75mm Sherman that moved to a position on the edge of a ditch near the crest of a shallow hill. That sitting on the edge of a ditch put the front of that Sherman somewhat upward and sloping its frontal armor to T-34 like and according thickness. End result was it just got immobilized and bounced every other shots from my battery of Stug IIIG. It´s end tally was 3 Stugs and a Flakwagon scrapped (the only armor on german side). Also infantry worth more than a full platoon strength (35-40 ptroopers) went to its account.   If things weren´t bad enough, it also dominated no mans land, so I could neither bring reinforcements forward nor move any infantry already trapped in it´s LOF. The AIP took opportunity to hammer these immobile forces with mortars and Arty, settling the case when beeing 3/4 through the mission. First time I got to cease fire for beeing in a hopeless situation as human player. 

[RockinHarry]

I´ve now replaced my pillbox wannabe modular buildings with a flat roof version, taken and modded from CMSF2 ones. Not just looks way better but also offer more protection than the previous buildings that I got to "damage" to achieve the pillbox like looks. After testing got completed I´ll release it as final version then. High time for some new missions (without pillboxes).

[RockinHarry]

bits of playing around with damaged wall alpha textures for independent buildings. Always disliked the completely flat appearance for destroyed buildings, as well as the wooden planking in damaged walls. Here´s some WIP. (also testing google photo storage).

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by RockinHarry

[A Canadian Cat]

2 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

bits of playing around with damaged wall alpha textures for independent buildings. Always disliked the completely flat appearance for destroyed buildings, as well as the wooden planking in damaged walls. Here´s some WIP. (also testing google photo storage).

That looks pretty cool. Are these textures for the destroyed buildings? What I am asking is can people start with a building and have it become destroyed over the battle and look like this?

[RockinHarry]

On 9/9/2019 at 2:12 PM, RockinHarry said:

I´ve now replaced my pillbox wannabe modular buildings with a flat roof version, taken and modded from CMSF2 ones. Not just looks way better but also offer more protection than the previous buildings that I got to "damage" to achieve the pillbox like looks. After testing got completed I´ll release it as final version then. High time for some new missions (without pillboxes).

Didn´t work out. The flat roofs make my pillbox-building substitutes even more vulnerable from mortar and Arty. Since I just have CMSF2 demo, I can´t test if it´s this way in that game as well. The flat roofs were taken from it.

1 hour ago, IanL said:

That looks pretty cool. Are these textures for the destroyed buildings? What I am asking is can people start with a building and have it become destroyed over the battle and look like this?

Yes, independent buildings still work the same as before. Light damage, medium damage and then completely destroyed. Can walk in and out as usual with known limitations (upper story destroyed = story below inaccessible) and benefits (better cover in rubbled buildings and additional openings with medium damage). Still a WIP and the files I´m working on is:

(medium damage = walls blown out)
building-damage-b.bmp
building-damage-b-alpha.bmp

(flat rubble = building completely collapsed)
building-damage-stub.bmp
building-damage-stub-outer.bmp

Left the "building-damage-a" files (light damage) alone for now, but might adapt them a little at later time. So far the originals look ok to me.

Overally not a simple task as same textures are used for all size - all height - all type independent buildings, making textures look somewhat stretched and distorted on certain ones. But still find these look better than CMBN originals. Also flat rubbled buildings now have some higher standing walls left. In pic above it´s the ones used for destroyed upper stories (no roof) as well. They´re created by SHIFT-ALT + Click in 3D editor.

[Falaise]

superb
I'm in a hurry to have the mod

great job

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Nice ruins! 

[JM Stuff]

22 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

bits of playing around with damaged wall alpha textures for independent buildings. Always disliked the completely flat appearance for destroyed buildings, as well as the wooden planking in damaged walls. Here´s some WIP. (also testing google photo storage).

 

Look very nice and real...more of this !

[RockinHarry]

Wished BFC would add more dedicated damage wall texture variations. The one fits all method has some limitations and that´s likely the reason the ones we have make some walls look so low and otherwise not that good looking on certain buildings (wooden planking on stone buildings). CMSF and CMBS (demo) look somewhat better though. Raising the walls by extending or enlarging the textures alpha area has some trade offs as well. There´s some artifacts caused from one the alpha textures actually used for "cutting" through the buildings geometry. So while my WIP textures look better on most indep buildings, on others they don´t, or have ugly artifacts. Yet in more devastated areas like shown above it´s less of concern i think.

Bits of working on details and some more adaptions now. Should have something for public testing soon.

[JM Stuff]

Details makes always the difference...not only buildings are nice but also ground and rubbles.

[RockinHarry]

7 hours ago, 3j2m7 said:

Details makes always the difference...not only buildings are nice but also ground and rubbles.

yes and would be nice if BFC can make the game engine auto create stuff like that during mission play.  Rubble piles on the streets (texture + ditch lock) and couple of flavor objects, though rather sparingly. For larger craters I usually put an appropiate ground texture beneath in editor etc. Think the game engine is beeing capable of all that, doing all the other mesh and object alteration stuff already. More individual damage outlooks to both independent and modular buildings would be nice as well. Hm... just got an idea....

[RockinHarry]

Too bad. The damaged wall textures seem hard coded. No mdr file hacking and different texture file associations possible. There´s just a "building-damage-b" entry in there and changing has no effect. There´s even none at all in the barns type (building200 mdr series). Though learned a few more things that should help improve bits of my mod.

[Glubokii Boy]

That pic looks really nice ! Blown out windows and all 

It was hinted that one of the main features of the next CMRT module would be improvements to damaged buildings IIRC.

Hopefully this will actually be the case and that it will be an improvement that can be added to all the titles...

Improvements in this area are much needed.

 

 

[RockinHarry]

3 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

That pic looks really nice ! Blown out windows and all 

It was hinted that one of the main features of the next CMRT module would be improvements to damaged buildings IIRC.

Hopefully this will actually be the case and that it will be an improvement that can be added to all the titles...

Improvements in this area are much needed.

 

 

if true that would be great news indeed.  Sounds like a generic improvement then, likely available for all other games by normal patch update as well. Til then much can be improved by modding and bits of creative map making.  Umlaut´s factory/Stalingrad mod for modular buildings already gives plenty of great stuff to work with and the damage wall mod for independent ones should contribute I think. Hopefully some the skilled Blender guys give the WW2 titles some more attention later. I still can´t unfortunately. 

[MOS:96B2P]

On 9/27/2019 at 9:50 PM, RockinHarry said:

learned a few more things that should help improve bits of my mod.

+1.  This looks pretty cool.  Looking forward to the mod.