Bullethead

Thanks for getting it back up. I was worried . Only problem is, you lost basically all mods submitted in the month of November. You have the new stuff from today and the old stuff up to 1 Nov, but nothing in between [ November 13, 2002, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: Bullethead ]

Many units, especially things that don't get used that much relatively speaking, don't have their own 3D model but use one from another unit, even a different nationality.

HeadHunter said: :eek: Only 35?!?!?!? You're a punk I myself rode with the Bold Buccleuch and there are guys in here who marched with Sargon

The AI does area fire, you just ofen don't notice it. As to blowing away buildings to clear the LOS, this isn't really a valid tactic in CMBB from what I've seen. First, you get a huge cloud of billowing dust that hangs there for a couple turns and pretty much blocks the LOS for an area all around the building. Then you've got the rubble sticking up and that can also block the LOS at times. So say you've got a squad behind the building. The tank blows the building away and the resulting dust still hides the squad. The squad takes advantage to move into the rubble and hide. By the time the dust settles, the tank won't see it, and the squad's got better cover than if it was in an intact building.

It's not a time-out problem. I have several times gotten demos of 200+ megs and I get 20+ meg patches and such all the time (if I leave it running all night). The only place I have a problem is the CM Mod Database, and the only files there I have trouble with are those of about 4megs or larger.

I'm guessing there are some folks out there curious as to what a 1943 Russian tank brigade had in it. I've got a great book on this subject, "Red Army Handbook" by Steven J. Zaloga and Lelend S. Ness, but some folks have been having trouble finding it. So, I decided it would be cool to make CMBB "scenarios" showing with all the units in a tank brigade, independent AT regiment, or whatever, and post them up somewhere. Then folks w/out a good source could see what the TO&E tables translate into in game terms. Before I get into this, however, I'd like to know if there's a demand . Is there?

Thanks for the sentiments. It really does mean a lot.

Well, I've tried about 5 times each and still can't successfully download AndrewTF's SS winter uniform set, nor RKSoldat's yellow camo Opel. Either the operations aborts at about 80% or it goes to completion but there's nothing in the multi-meg archive to unzip. I've only had this trouble so far with these 2 files. I'm not alone in this but there are many others who get these files no problem. So what's the deal? The only theory I've come up with is that the size of these files (3.9 to 4.4 megs) is too big when I try to get them from this site with a 28.8k connection. I have no trouble at all with the smaller files, even up to 2.5megs or so. But there seems to be a critical size limit beyond which I can't succeed in downloading from the CM Mod Database. I have no idea why this would be the case, but that's the only thing that's consistent here. So in the future, I ask modders to try, if at all possible, to limit their mod packages to something between 2 and 3 megs. Getting up around 4 megs seems too much for those of us still cursed with dial-up connections, at least at the CM Mod Database.

Strategy is the big picture stuff, dealing with ultimate victory in the whole war or at least an important theater of it, and planning the general course to get there. This is a matter for heads of state and their advisors, and theater commanders and their advisors. Tactics is the manuevering and shooting of small units and individuals, where the aim is victory in a particular firefight. It's the business of privates, NCOs, and officers up to about the rank of colonel. Somewhere in between is the operational level. It's the business of managing divisions, corps, and even armies along important axes to meet the conditions necessary to achieve the strategic goals. For example, advancing across the space between 2 major rivers, when there are 5 or 6 such rivers between you and the enemy capital. So strategy is the master plan for winning the war, operations is the step-by-step method of achieving strategic goals, and tactics is the step-by-step method of achieving operational goals. Strategy builds units and sends them to a given front. Operations masses the units along the chosen axis to achieve superiority and plans the offensive. Tactics uses the units to win the series of firefights necessary to move along the chosen axis.

Some really sick bastard could make a bunch of mods to replicate the look of a miniatures game. Here are some suggestions: 1. Make the LOS and and LOF lines much wider, color them yellow, and mark them in black with inches. 2. Mod all troops so they're only 1 color base uniform color from head to toe, but have this only in the low spots and make the high spots shine like bare metal. Mod all vehicles on similar lines to troops, but maybe add a few globby camo dots here and there. 4. Mod all vegitation to look like hunks of green-painted moss, pipecleaners painted brown, etc. 5. Mod all ground textures to look like foam rubber with paint applied. 6. Mod all building textures to look like a mix of model railroad buildings and blocks of wood painted brown with irregular black windows here and there. 7. Change all shooting sounds to recordings of some drunk making child-like gunfire noises, followed by rattling dice. 8. Change the reload sound of ordnance to a beer top being popped. 9. Change all the voices to some drunk saying what the unit is doing. Things like "one inch, two inches, three inches...", "damn, failed another morale check", "hah, got you!", etc. 10. Change the end-of-game bugle riff to some drunk saying, "Damn, is it 4:30am already?!?!?"

Wretch said: Oh come now, don't call CM an RTS. It's not realtime, at least not completely, and it has absolutely no strategic aspects at all. It's completely tactical in scope With that out of the way, welcome aboard!

I wrote the below in an email to a modder who asked for some feedback on dirt application. These are just my own observations from having to clean a lot of dirty vehicles, military and fire, so your mileage may vary. But I figure it wouldn't hurt to toss this out for discussion so as to arrive at some concensus of how and where dust and mud accumulate on vehicles. Such a concensus would go hand-in-hand with the "Pig Pen" standardized palette. Then we'd have standard dirt colors applied in a realistic manner. The only remaining question then would be how much to apply to a given unit, and that's a matter of taste and artistic license . I think the most important thing about adding dirt is to keep in mind how it gets applied in real life. Dust settles, mud splatters. This difference results in the stuff accumulating in different places on the vehicle and also varying in thickness. So first you have to decide whether your tank is going to represent one in a dusty area, a muddy area, or a dusty area subject to scattered showers that leave a few puddles here and there but most of the ground returns to dust very quickly. Thus, for somebody to be able to give you meaningful feedback, you have to let him know what sort of look you're trying to achieve. Dust settles thickest on horizontal surfaces but still clings a bit to vertical surfaces. It also builds up to its thickest depth in nooks and corners where the wind can't blow it away. So it builds up along welds (kinda highlighting them), at joints between horizonal and vertical parts, around rivets, etc. High humidity or a rain a few days previously makes dust sticky so it clings more to vertical surfaces and builds up thicker everywhere. Usually a layer of dust is translucent to a varying degree except in the corners where it becomes opaque. The thing about dust is that it can go any distance from the source and doesn't follow a straight line to get there, so can reach every part of the vehicle. Specific areas for dust accumulation: The top surfaces usually have the most due to being horizontal and because military vehicles move in units and eat each others' dust. The top is also the wettest if there's been dew the night before, which makes dust stick. Also, the rear hull areas attract a lot of dust due to the wind eddying around the rear of the vehicle, both the rear deck and rear vertical plates. This is helped by there usually wet spots on the rear from oil and fuel leaks, plus dew sloshing off the top and over the back when the vehicle 1st moves that day, all of which function as dust magnets. The tops of the fenders at both ends of a tank also get thick dust because the moving tracks kinda shovel it up there. The rest of the fenders along the whole length get a lot, but not quite as much, from the eddying over the top of the tracks. The running gear area under the fenders usually doesn't have as much dust on it because it's vertical, but constant exposure to the worse dust source does make some stick. Especially in areas where there is grease oozing out of bearings, plus in all the corners of the road wheels and any hull side rivets. So like a T34's solid road wheels would have dust build-up along the inner rim edges and around the central boss. The spoked M43 roadwheels would have dust along the edges of all the flanges as well. Mud pretty much needs a straight line of sight from where it was on the ground to some part of a tank. Because it's sticky, it doesn't really matter if the surface is horizontal or vertical, and it tends to build up in 3D lumps instead of a layer of uniform thickness. However, the wetter the mud is, the more it smears and drips once it hits the tank. Plus muddy water splashed up will leave thin coats of mud and help smear mud already in place. These processes try to spread and even the mud out over a wide area instead of it being big discrete lumps, although the resulting layer will still have a 3D bumpy surface. Specific areas of mud accumulation: The whole running gear area gets plastered, especially the underside of the fenders and the lower hull side. On the roadwheels, the mud gets thickest around the rim and fades toward the center due to the centrifuge effect, but a few clods will remain in the middle due to the low rotational speed there (same goes for the hubs of wheeled vehicles). Mud also builds up on top of the ends of the fenders from being slung there by the tracks, with a scattering of smaller blobs spread out over nearby areas of hull top and sides. This all would be for driving over mud only a few inches deep. If the mud was deep enough to threaten bogging, everything below the fenders would be solid mud with no paint showing, with big clods of mud stuck everwhere else, even on top, due to spinning the tracks/wheels and throwing up rooster tails of mud. In either case, mud presents a problem when it comes to wheels, because they don't turn in CM, only the outer surfaces move (tread or track). In real life, some of the holes in wheels like those on the T34 M43 would be blocked up by mud partially or completely. But because they don't turn when the vehicle moves in the game, it might look funny to draw that. OTOH, it looks funny NOT having that, so I guess there's no perfect approach. If the area is mostly dusty but gets scattered showers, you'd have some mud and some dust. The ratio would depend on how recently it rained. If it rained recently, the mud wouldn't be thick so would spread everywhere around the running gear and rear hull areas in a thin, more or less even coat, and there wouldn't be very much dust because the rain would have washed it off. OTOH, if the rain was several days before, you'd have mostly a dusty tank although with less dust overall than if it hadn't rained in a while, because the dust would have less tendency to rise. The mud on such a tank would be from hitting the occasional remaining puddle so you'd have recognizable individual splat and spray patterns instead of solid coats, mostly concentrated on the lower hull sides.

gautrek said: This is why it's somewhat difficult for us no-talent modsluts to give feedback beyond "hey that's cool!". We don't want to discourage the modders or seem ungrateful for what we realize is a lot of hard work done completely voluntarily, using programs that we're too cheap to buy . That's my impression also. It's like vehicles on the Eastern Front got dirtier than on the Western. Maybe because there wasn't near as dense a road net? I don't know, but they do look much dirtier on average in the photos. Yeah, that's a great idea. I even like the colors chosen. My only suggestion is that most modders should use more of the mud, whatever colors get standardized. You mean the BA-6's radiator door hanging askew on a bent hinge? I LOVE that! That sort of wear-and-tear damage happens all the time, you picked a likely spot for it to happen, and you did a great job making it look real. I hope you continue with stuff like that. Like toolboxes with broken latches so they're held shut with rope, empty racks for shovels that got forgotten at the last position, cracked windshields, broken headlights, bent brushguards, etc.

Eden Smallwood said: I've never thought in terms of how the various mods play together. I get nearly every mod that comes along because I'm a modslut, and when I have a choice I use the ones I like the best for their own sakes. So like for the Germans, I end up with some vehicles in ambush, some in mono, some in tricolor. I don't care as long as each individual mod looks "cool" as I define it. Besides, I think a mixture is realistic. It was so in my own unit in the Gulf War, with some vehicles being solid tan and others with the Euro brown spots still showing. Also, look at pics of any US WW2 airplane outfit. Some planes are OD, some are silver, and the national and unit insignia are different versions.

Abbott said: Hehehe, that was bound to happen someday We never get a wrecked car for extrication practice. First, the really wrecked cars already have been cut up at the wreck scene, while the ones with minor damage get fixed. Second, the practice car needs to be in pretty good shape so it can be towed to the firestation and back without leaving fluids and wreckage all over the road. And most intact junked cars are filled with the usual amount and types of personal effects--maybe they got repossessed? So the bottom line is, most cars we cut up in practice look quite drivable and the contents make them look like they still belong to somebody. Sometimes the junkyard guy marks them so the towtruck guy knows which ones to bring us, but if as often happens these guys are one in the same, there's no marking. None of the firemen have seen any of them before and the number of cars available for any exercise is always unknown until the time arrives. So if some civilian parks his car next to the hulks and walks off, there's no surprise at all if the firemen cut it up [ November 10, 2002, 05:27 PM: Message edited by: Bullethead ]