Peterk
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Posts posted by Peterk
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Oh and if anyone knows where I can find the missing slice of that map - the one with the 'l' in 'Wolga', please also get in touch with me!
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Just a little teaser to show where this beast is after a week.
It will be an open-ended design allowing plug-in campaigns (you have to know how to program Java though). Scope will be similar to what Battlefront did with operations but on a bigger scale and more strategic level involvement (ie. you decide when and where units get deployed and when to fight). CMBB battles get generated automatically by the engine for each sector where there is contact (so quickly and in a random order that the player won't really know what he's facing until he takes the field of battle). The red-line on the left hand side of the map is the front line for the start of this scenario - it gets updated sector by sector and will show surrounded pockets. Basic unit of measurement is the individual squad and tank. Battles will generally involve a battalion on each side but the maps are small enough (1 square km) to make play in CM quick.
Still desperately looking for map-making help so this will see the light of day quicker - so any Stalingrad afficionados with a little time on their hands, please contact me.
[ January 24, 2004, 09:19 PM: Message edited by: Peterk ]
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But, how would you override TOAW's battle result with teh one from CM?
Great game by the way. I just bought it myself 2 weeks ago.
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In short CM pilots do not attend mission briefings, don't listen to their radios have no idea what in hell is going on on the battlefield. They head out because they heard a rumor of an attack and bomb/strafe the crap out of the first thing they see (usually your guys in the the open) totally ignoring the trenches, pillboxes and other obvious (and usually highly visible from the air) targets of your assault. Sorry, it's _not_ all that realistic.
Don't take it too seriously or you will lose your mind. I threw a tantrum six months ago and zapped CMBB off my drive in fury (...it's recently back now though).
My advice, assume that the air missions took place before your boys go over the top if possible, don't use planes in scenarios (or if you do just use one to avoid total heartache). CM is a great infantry and tank game - leave it there.
And, yes it was bad in CMBB too.
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No, mapping mission is more like:
I have an actual physical map (as a jpeg or bitmap) and I'd like to turn it into a CM map. Helps you do the editing more quickly.
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You might want to try using Mapping Mission to help make the map. It has the advantage of storing the map off by itself in another format and you only generate the CM map from that master copy. Should take care of the .cm* file woes where you lose your work.
It's really intended for dealing with extra-large maps (bigger than CM can deal with) - I'm using it to map most of Stalingrad, but after spending a week with the program I think I would probably use it for all maps since it gives you cut/paste ability and its way easier to do elevations.
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Just wondering if any of the grogs could confirm something. In the initial attacks on central Stalingrad in September '42, it appears that the Russians had no tanks defending there at all. Is this correct - I've looked at maps showing the disposition of the forces and have read Enemy At The Gates and Beevor several times and can not recall any mention of an armored presence around the downtown area - but there were around the Mamayev Kurgan and the factory district.
Would love to know if my understanding is correct.
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Sorry Sgt A. I just spent a half hour trying to find it again and I can't. It's a contemporary street map in Russian but it's pretty good for the rough layout of the streets and major terrain features.
If you want I can e-mail it over to you?
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Alright! Forget all those problems....
Spent a few hours programming and now have a way for my external program to grab a scenario and modify the OOB and setup zones on the fly so quickly the user practically doesn't see a thing.
Stalingrad campaign engine here we come!
Only thing I can't do now that I would like is carry battle damage over from one battle to the next, but that's pretty minor and I think I can live without it.
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Just finished the playing the first test battle in my little Stalingrad campaign idea and it could sort of work.
MappingMission is an absolute godsend and I'll be using it to do all the maps.
A few questions:
The only way this can possibly work is if the player is willing to go into the scenario editor to modify a map (the setup zones) and the OOB for that map before each battle. The campaign app I might write will tell the player what he has to do, but I really have my doubts that anyone will want to play this way because its too much work.
Are there any tools bouncing around similar to Mapping Mission that can modify the scenario parameters other than the map???
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Thanks Joachim,
I did Stalingrad-damaging on a 1km x 1km map by hand last night and it was a little heartbreaking seeing my beautiful city get turned to rubble.
I tried something similar with about 20 artillery spotters and about a dozen planes and was very disappointed at the level of damage - wasn't truly Stalingradesque. I'll try it again with more planes and more targets.
By the way if anyone is interested at all I have a basic scenario ready which represnts pretty well the type of battle my system will churn out. It's the attack on the train station area during the first day of the German drive into the city. About a battallion on each side. I'll put it up on my website later tonight if anyone wants to give it a try (in a very unpolished state).
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Hi Sven,
Thanks for those links. Actually I found a better one for CM map-making but those are nice for the troop dispositions.
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Hi Nils,
I definitely won't be imposing any mods (it's a shame about that...can you believe there's no grain silo tile in CMBB!) and to be honest my interface won't be as nice as yours, but I will be able to support different types of campaigns.
For example, the first one which I will do is simply the first 3 days of the attack on the residential area of Stalingrad (it could take up to 64 CMBB battles on 28 maps to finish!)...but just by changing a few little rules around I can turn it into the later fighting which was much more static and difficult and then even later the encirclement and destruction of 6th army. The system should even work well for 2 human players against one another, but that will come later.
Sounds almost like an operation, but it should be much more manageable for the player because I'm breaking it all up into smaller chunks. And I'll have better control over special-events. If you've seen the Operational Art Of War event engine, I'll be doing something close to that.
The thing that you're doing that I don't even want to touch is letting the player move his pieces in the strategic map in a complex way - I'll be handling that more abstractly. I won't really be making scenarios either...they will be quick battles (but some will be very hard, a player should not usually expect to sweep a map in one battle - he will often be happy just to move forward 10% of the map and take 1 flag!), with the same map possibly being used many, many times.
Having lots of fun, but it will probably take 2-3 months to finish (by myself). Don't know if I have that kind of stamina.
p.
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Hey! Thanks. Fooling around with it right now! Might help out quite a bit.
p.
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Thank you eichenbaum my friend,
It was actually when I saw the screenshot at your site when it all clicked for me and I decided to do it. The Java program I don't think will be too difficult but the maps of the city will take forever and some of them will be very boring. Oh well, I have 1.5 out of 28 done already.
I don't know if you are planning on doing this....but I'm going to try making the Java program configurable so that it can be used for more campaigns and not just Stalingrad.
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Thanks For the reply Paco. I found a bunch of others as well so I think I'm on my way.
If any of the old map-makers from the Bitong rules read this...if I remember corectly, people were working on Stalingrad maps for a mission pack but it looks like it never got released. If you still have some of your work lying around and want them to maybe find a good home in a good cause, please get in touch with me.
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Ok, snafu #1. I'm was building clean maps with no battle damage whatsoever hoping that I'd be able to set the damage level when loading the map into the quick battle but it ignores the setting when importing a map.
I've got to simulate the Luftwaffe bombing before the ground troops went in. Does anyone know an easy way to do this?
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It's damn cold up in Montreal these days and I don't plan on leaving the house until Monday and I thought it was about time I tried my hand at designing at some scenarios. I had this idea at work today and thought I'd bounce it off the designers here.
Everyone keeps bitching about the lack of a long campaign in CM, so inspired by a bunch of people (Operation Storfang which I am waiting impatiently for, the Biltong rules, Steel Panthers Mega Campaigns) I've been thinking about doing something like this....
I've chopped a map of central Stalingrad up into a grid of 28 squares 1km by 1km which I plan to convert into CM.
I'm going to write a simple campaign engine in Java that will show thumbnails of these 28 sectors. The German player enters at the beginning of the campaign and can allocate his starting forces in sectors outside the city. I'll track control of each sector (from 10% to 100%) as well as readiness, supplies and intel of enemy controlled sectors.
Every day, the player can plan his activities and can assign dig-in, attack, assault, probe orders to the troops in each sector. The campaign engine does the same for the Russians and then in wego fashion generates paramaters for all the battles that result.
I'm going to have 8 variants for each sector map where the deployment zones are accordingly moved forward or backwards depending on how much of the sector is controlled by the player. There will be 100pt flags at 100m intervals placed on each map distributed evenly from left to right. At the end of each battle I ask the player to type in the flag points and the extent of the farthest flag he captured. This lets me determine how succesful he was at controlling the map and decide whether it was thin push on a flank or in the center or an advance on the whole front.
The player will be asked to save the map (overwriting the original) after each battle so battle damage will get carried forwards.
Since I'm by no means an expert at scenario design I thought I'd ask - could such a scheme work? The pitfall that bugs me most concerns getting the troops themselves onto the map. The German's are OK, because the engine will tell the player what to buy and how to configure them - but for the Russians it looks like I'll have to do it so that things like bunkers and entrenchments won't carry forward; and the German player will also know how many points and what type of units the Russian gets which is a bit of a shame. I would have liked that to be a surprise at least for the first battle in a sector.
If there are any bored good samaritan mapmakers sitting around who might liike to help this get going more quickly let me know and I'll send jpegs for the map slices I'll be putting together.
If anyone has any comments, or sees any pitfalls I'd love to hear them.
[ January 16, 2004, 10:54 PM: Message edited by: Peterk ]
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I've taken a quick look at what mssr. Eichenbaum is doing with Operation Storfang and have been very inspired to do something similar for Stalingrad. I'm thinking along the lines of a fairly open ended campaign where the player allocates forces on a big strategic map and then each day decides the actions for each sector and the campaign engine will generate an appropriate scenario to play out. It will be slow, but if it gels together the way I think it will, it should be very immersive.
It looks like the largest hurdle to get over would be simply to get the maps together. I haven't pounded out the details yet but I'm wondering about the feasibility of putting together a library of maps for the entire city of Stalingrad as well as the approaches to the city.
I know that similar work has been done way back when for Biltong's campaign. Does anyone know of some resources I could use as a starting point?
[ January 16, 2004, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Peterk ]
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Nice to hear some of the ideas here - what people have done and what they are thinking of doing.
I was thinking about being able to link together a series of small operations based on the Stalingrad battles covering the various phases of the fight for the city. There would be a branching tree a la Panzer General - so yes, you could actually take control of the whole city as the germans.
But I'd want the results of one op. to affect the start forces, date, weather and situation description of the next one without the user having to go in and tweak the battle file manually (basically just fine-tuning the operation at run time just before it's presented to the user).
Just wondering what technique you're using to do this?This can sort of be done now to generate the battles by remote controlling the editor. I have been working on such a tool on and off for a while and it can be done. -
Actually I've been thinking about trying to put together a sort of SP Mega Campaign together for CMBB and I'm always stumped at the same point....and it's the same thing that lends too much inertia to computerizing a Meta Campaign as well IMHO.The only thing stopping this from existing right now is that people are talking about it, not doing it. Unfortunately, like so much in life, the ones doing the talking are not the ones in a position to do the doing...The problem is that there's no way to make CM communicate with a 3rd party product at the start of the game when the CM battle must be set up and at the end of the game when the results have to be fetched.
So my option is to make an application where the user has to do a lot of data entry work by hand to make the campaign layer move, and a lot of manual entry to set up the CM battle....It might still be worthwhile, but I have a feeling people will be so turned off by this, they won't bother using it. And the idea ends there.
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I think that operation is more of a proof of concept than anything else.
I heard of a couple of players completing it and saying it was a blast but I don't think most of us on here can complete it (although I'm tempted to try it again on my new rig).
An alternative would be to go to Boots And Tracks
http://3dwargamer.net/bootsandtracks/ and get something called the Stalingrad Pack. There's some good smaller Stalingrad scenarios and operations in there.
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Hey, just wanted to say this is a pretty fun ruleset and wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying it. I never would have thought using the scenario editor to do this would be so easy.
It got me back into CMBB after not playing it for almost a year (I'm the original programmer of the Biltaid tool and I overdosed on CM a while back and had to step away).
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The problem in CM is that the pilots don't know who is attacking and who is defending and will attack whoever it sees regardless of the situation.
Set up an assault where your guys have to traverse some open areas to get to a mostly entrenched enemy - you can even shield your guys from the trenches with some forest so they can approach rather closely.
Now give yourself 8 Stukas.
SOunds good no? Stukas should attack any pillboxes and strafe the trenches and by the time your soldiers arrive at the area the enemy dhouls be softened up.
What happens though, is that some of the Stukas will persistently on consistently strafe your guys on the march and ignore the obvious targets. You will barely be able to move 50 feet. Pilots need to be more aware of the situation in the game, as they would be in real life. Occasionnal mistakes are fine but the current system is too unrealistic to use more than 1 plane for support.
Any free Divison level games out there?
in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps
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Yes, but then you lose all of TOAW's realistic rules for movement and other stuff, so you might as well just be using cardboard on a paper-map with your own system.
This request is coming up so often, it's just begging for such a program written specifically with CM in mind.
BTW, I am working on something sort of similar but I don't think it'll ever be as flexible as TOAW in terms of ease of setting up a simple scenario.