Old Dog

Oh, I still peek in on occasion (OMG, those desert shots look good), but more "foot-wise" folks than me by far already have Oddball all lined out in this case. - Old Dog

Vedder, you need to try a game on the Town3 map, it's on the coast, and the setup zones for both sides have LOTS of assault boat possibilities. - Old Dog

Lane, the QB settings for the type of terrain are ignored when you load a QB map like those in my mapset. Have you tried toggling the trees off or down (shift+t) to see if that speeds up the game? The maps are 800 x 1500 or so the ME maps, and even smaller for the ATK maps, not much different in size than the size the computer generates. - Old Dog

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. Jonp, I have talked to COG about using the map database for my mapsets, but I believe that database takes .cme files only presently. Not sure I want to upload (72) individual .cme files - Old Dog

Just uploaded at CM Mod Database is version 2.0 of my QB Mapset. The number of maps has been increased from (54) to (72), including another fishing town, a large urban area with a park, a coastal town, and more. Two new map categories have been added, and some revisions to the original maps in the set have been made as well. See the included README file for more details. The mapset was made from (24) hand-made "master" maps with logical topography and objective areas. Each master was then trimmed to create a Russian attack map, a German attack map, and a meeting engagement map with the same objective area. A few screenshots of new maps: A lovely coastal town: A factory complex on the steppe: A northern town in a valley: Each map is tagged for German attack, Soviet attack or meeting engagement as appropriate. Maps are suited for 800 to 1600+ point QB's either against the AI or a human opponent. Hope you enjoy them. - Old Dog

As promised, I have posted a compilation of the 8 Part Forum series "CMMOS Conversion Step-by-Step" on the CM Mod Database. The series explains how to convert a CMBB mod to CMMOS compatibility, using Panzermartin's T-34/76 Model 1943(Late) with hasty whitewash as an example. The ZIP archive contains both a plain text version and an rtf version of the compilation. - Old Dog

As promised, I have posted a compilation of the 8 Part Forum series "CMMOS Conversion Step-by-Step" on the CM Mod Database. The series explains how to convert a CMBB mod to CMMOS compatibility, using Panzermartin's T-34/76 Model 1943(Late) with hasty whitewash as an example. The ZIP archive contains both a plain text version and an rtf version of the compilation. - Old Dog

(Following is Part 8 of CMMOS conversion instructions for Panzermartin's T-34/76 hasty whitewash tank. To join in please see the previous Parts linked here: ) CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 1 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 2 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 3 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 4 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 5 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 6 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 7 We're all done with our CMMOS conversion of Panzermartin's T-34/76 hasty whitwash. If you've hung in there and followed along, it's time for the payoff. Time to package and install your new CMMOS mod. CMMOS uses a two part packaging system, with a Rule ZIP inside the main mod ZIP, so the first thing we need to do is to make this internal Rule ZIP. The files that go in the Rule ZIP are: Rule101-381.txt Description101-381.txt PzmT34m43.bmp PzmT34m43_disabled.bmp Simply use your ZIP utility to ZIP these files up, and name the resulting ZIP archive file "Rule101-381.zip". That's the same name as the Rule File itself, only the file extension is different. Now that that's done, ZIP up these files: Rule101-381.zip (the ZIP archive we just made) Info.txt Description.txt T34M43LATE.jpg T34M43LATE_tn.jpg (if you have it, if not just leave it out) 58920_rww.bmp 58921_rww.bmp 58922_rww.bmp 58922_rww_plain.bmp 58923_rww.bmp 58924_rww.bmp 58924_rww.bmp ...and so on for the rest of the Panzermartin's mod BMP files Be careful that you don't accidentally ZIP Rule101-381.txt and the other files in the internal Rule ZIP into this mod ZIP. Since you already have them in your internal ZIP, you don't want to include them again. Name the CMMOS mod package in some descriptive way - I named mine "PzmartinT34-76_HastyWW_CMMOS.zip" - and you're are done! Time to test out your work. Open CMMOS and go to the "Options" window. Make sure you have the Soviet Whitewash (Zimniy Kamuflyazh) Ruleset installed, since that's the Ruleset we wrote the mod for. Now go to the "Mods" tab, click "Add", and browse your Workspace folder for the mod package ZIP file you created and install! Now, admire your work. As a side note, Gordon included a "Revert to Summer BMP files" icon in the Zimniy Kamuflyazh tab. (In this case it's actually an icon that deletes any special Soviet vehicle Winter BMP files in your CMBB/BMP folder.) This "Revert" works with your new Panzermartin T-34 mod, if for some reason you decide you want to use the Soviet armor in the snow without whitewash. Also note that if you intend to use Gordon's Whitewash for the rest of the Soviet vehicles, install that more general mod first then install your Panzermartin T-34/76 or any other single vehicle Soviet winter mods you might have. As requested, I'll compile this tutorial and post it on the CM Mod Database shortly. - Old Dog [ December 08, 2002, 08:30 AM: Message edited by: Old Dog ]

(Following is Part 7 of CMMOS conversion instructions for Panzermartin's T-34/76 hasty whitewash tank. To join in please see the previous Parts linked here:) CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 1 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 2 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 3 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 4 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 5 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 6 Now that we're all done with our Rule file, we're nearly ready to bundle our CMMOS mod up for installation, but first we need to do a couple more things. You know that little blurb of text that shows at the top of the window that opens when you click a CMMOS icon? Well, that text has to be written and put somewhere in our mod. The Rule Description File is that place. A few comments about what the mod depicts, any special instructions for using it, perhaps historical references (if any), and maybe a mention of the options available, are all topics that could logically be in this file. Since we have a hastily whitewashed T-34/76 with an option to show Guards Armor markings, we'll simply mention that. Open a fresh copy of Notepad, and type: Panzermartin's T-34/76 Model 1943 (late) with hastily applied Winter whitewash. Unit is available either with or without Guards Armor marking on the turret side. Note that the format of this file is free-form. "Empty" lines to separate blocks of text are supported, so that several topics can be mentioned. CMMOS will automatically add a scroll bar if needed for those long-winded comments. We need to save our Rule Description File. The format CMMOS wants for this file name is "Description\\RuleNumber\\.txt", so save your file as "Description101-381.txt" in your Workspace folder with your other CMMOS mod work. Only one more thing to do now before we package the mod up, and that is make the icon that is clicked on from the main (tab) view of CMMOS to bring up the window used to apply your mod. Generally CMMOS mods are packaged with (2) versions of the icon, one depicting the mod, and another "disabled" icon depicting the mod in B&W with a red slashed circle over it. You can make these icons yourself if you'd like and you have a paint program that can do the necessary picture trimming and resizing. If so, simply shoot a nice level 2 or 3 screen shot looking down at the mod, trim it square and close, and resize it to 64 x 64 pixels. Save this in (64K) BMP format as "PzmT34m43.bmp" in your Workspace folder. Next, use your picture program to remove the color from the picture (you won't see much difference in the snow), and paint a dark red slashed circle over the picture using your paint program's circle and line tools. Save this version as "PzmT34m43_disabled.bmp", also in your Workspace folder. Since some of you following this series of threads don't have a fancy paint program, I've included a couple of icons that I made up along with the bonus turret side BMP. If you decide to go that route, just dump the contents of the ZIP file into your Workspace folder and you're all set! Your workspace folder now has a complete, but unpackaged, CMMOS mod. In our final Part, we'll package our brand new CMMOS mod up and give it a try. - Old Dog

(Following is Part 6 of CMMOS conversion instructions for Panzermartin's T-34/76 hasty whitewash tank. To join in please see the previous Parts linked here:) CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 1 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 2 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 3 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 4 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 5 At this point, we are partly done with our Rule file (which we saved last time as "Rule101-381.txt"). Reopen your file. You should have this in Notepad: #! Version 1.0 #! Name Panzermartin T-34/76 Model 1943 (late) Hasty Whitewash #! Files Winter_vehicle_T-34_M43_Cupola.txt #! Icon PzmT34m43.bmp #! Key 58920_rww.bmp It's now time to bring up a little bonus for followers of these Step-by-Step threads. In my correspondence with Panzermartin about using his mod, he and I agreed that if would nicely demonstrate the power of CMMOS if his mod had an alternative BMP that CMMOS could be told to swap out. Since the mod on the CM Database doesn't have any alternative BMPs, Panzermartin kindly provided me with an alternate turret side BMP that doesn't have the Guards Armor marking, to allow swapping the marking in and out. So that you will have this available to you if you are following along, tonight I have uploaded this BMP at the CM Mod Database. The file is filed under my name (Old Dog) as: "Turret BMP for Pzm T34 CMMOS" (file name: "PanzermartinTurretCMMOS.zip"). You will need to download this BMP in order to use the Rule file we are creating. (Also included in the ZIP archive with the turret side BMP are (2) icon BMP files that we'll need later on - more about that later.) The reason I mention the alternative BMP now is that our next line tells CMMOS how many options we have. (Technical note: The actual count of "options" in a CMMOS mod does not always equal the number entered on the line, instead the number is the number of "option commands" in the rule, which can sometimes be a greater number than the number of options. In our case however, the number of options is equal to the number of "option commands".) We enter the number of options like this: #! Options 2 OK, we're done with providing data to CMMOS, it's time to give CMMOS a "command". What we want to tell CMMOS to do is a "simple copy", which is what Gordon calls the command that copies each of our suffixed BMP files, strips the suffix off each, and copies the resulting "plain" BMP into the CMBB /BMP directory. The command to do this is " #@ ". Since we are going to have (2) options, we'll also tell CMMOS how to label the radio button (the little circle that you can click on to select which option you want ). We'll make our first option applying the mod as originally done by Panzermartin , and we'll label the radio button that CMMOS will make "Guards Armor marking on turret side". So, we enter this for our next line: #@ Guards Armor marking on turret side Now, having given CMMOS a command, we need to tell it what suffix to apply the command to. We want CMMOS to do our "simple copy" to all the BMPs with the "_rww" suffix, correct? So on the next line, that's what we tell it: _rww Note that this line does not have a symbol set in front of it, it's just the suffix. You can think of it as data for the command in the line directly above or even part of the command on the line above. Let's step back now and run through what we are telling CMMOS to do with our rule so far. First we tell it that we need for it to only consider BMP files in our FileList (line 3, remember?). Then we are telling it to make a radio button and label it "Guards Armor marking on turret side". Finally we are telling it that if we select that radio button (and click "Apply") it should extract from our mod ZIP and copy all the BMP files which are suffixed "_rww", strip the suffix, and copy the resulting plain BMP into the CM /BMP directory. Whew! Sounds like a lot of work. Nice to have CMMOS doing it all for us. We're not quite done with our rule yet. We still have to add a line to do our bonus alternate BMP. We'll need another radio button, which we'll label "No Guards Armor marking", and we'll need to again use the "simple copy" command. Our line is thus: #@ No Guards Armor marking Next, as we did for our first option, we tell CMMOS what BMPs to apply the command to. In this case, we have (2) differently suffixed BMP files to consider. You may have already noticed our new bonus BMP (the one you downloaded from CM Mod Database) has a different suffix that I've already put on it for you - _rww_plain. We list it first, as follows: _rww_plain On the next line, we list the other suffix, as follows: _rww Now notice that the most restrictive suffix, the one that only appears on one BMP, is listed first. CMMOS needs them listed in this order, otherwise it won't ever get to the BMP for the unmarked turret ( _rww_plain). Why? Well, once CMMOS finds a BMP which satisfies our rule, it stops looking for that BMP. If we put the "_rww" first, then CMMOS would be "satisfied" that it had a turret side BMP (since there is one marked "_rww"), and would quit looking before it ever got to our "_rww_plain" line. With the plain turret BMP listed first, CMMOS finds it and processes it, then continues searching, moving on and looking through the "_rww" BMPs in our mod for everything else. There! We're done with our Rule file. The Rule file is the most complicated part of converting a mod to CMMOS. If you've made it this far, you'll be pleased to know that it's all downhill from here. . Your finished Rule file should look like this: #! Version 1.0 #! Name Panzermartin T-34/76 Model 1943 (late) Hasty Whitewash #! Files Winter_vehicle_T-34_M43_Cupola.txt #! Icon PzmT34m43.bmp #! Key 58920_rww.bmp #! Options 2 #@ Guards Armor marking on turret side _rww #@ No Guards Armor marking _rww_plain _rww Now save it over your older copy as "Rule101-381.txt" in your Workspace folder and have a beer - you've earned it! Next episode, we'll knock out the Rule Description file and look at icons. We're almost done. - Old Dog

(Following is Part 5 of CMMOS conversion instructions for Panzermartin's T-34/76 hasty whitewash tank. To join in please see the previous Parts linked here:) CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 1 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 2 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 3 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 4 Now that we've got a Rule number from Gordon, we're ready to write our Rule file. A Rule file is the set of instructions that CMMOS follows when we click on "Apply" in a CMMOS mod icon. It tells CMMOS what sort of file renaming and recopying to do, and what files to do it to. Again we will use Windows Notepad to write the file, so open up Notepad and let's begin. As with our info.txt file, the format of this file matters to CMMOS - we have to be sure we get all the details of syntax right and put everything in the right order, or CMMOS won't process the Rule when we click "Apply". Within a Rule, data is communicated to CMMOS by prefixing the data with this symbol set:" #! ". "#!" tells CMMOS to read the data on that line and proceed to the next line. So the first few lines of our rule will give CMMOS the data that it needs. First, we tell CMMOS the version number of the rule. We'll say "1.0" for this. Here's what's entered on the line: #! Version 1.0 Now, notice something here - unlike data provided in our info.txt file, we DO put a space in after the "#!" symbol set, and spaces are OK in the data. All the data that we give CMMOS in our Rule will follow this same convention. For our next line, we tell CMMOS what to display when we move the cursor over our mod icon. We want the pop-up hint box to say "Panzermartin T-34/76 Model 1943 (late) Hasty Whitewash", so the line looks like (note the space after the symbol set) this: #! Name Panzermartin T-34/76 Model 1943 (late) Hasty Whitewash Next, we tell CMMOS what "FileList" to use. Now, FileLists are a very special thing in CMMOS. They are literally lists of each and every BMP file for every vehicle (so far - adding other types of BMPs is an ongoing project for Gordon) in CMBB. They reside in one of the CMMOS folders as a series of text files, one file for each vehicle or group of vehicles. CMMOS uses the FileList information to determine what files to check for possible BMP number matches when unpacking and applying our mod. We need to specify the FileList in the same syntax that Gordon used when he created the file for our T-34/76, so off we go using Windows Explorer to look up the exact name for the file. The FileList folder is one of the folders down inside /GEM Software Productions/CM Mod Option Selector/CMBB. We look in the /FileLists folder and find a text file named "Winter_vehicle_T-34_M43_Cupola.txt" (The late '43 model T-34/76 had a cupola, while the earlier version didn't). That's our boy! We can confirm that we have the right FileList by opening the text file. Sure enough, there are many of the very same BMP numbers that are in our Workspace folder. Now that we have the exact name for the FileList file, we can make our entry in our Rule. We enter it thus: #! Files Winter_vehicle_T-34_M43_Cupola.txt Our next line tells CMMOS what the name of the icon BMP file is. We haven't made the icon yet (more about icons later), but we can decide now what file name we'll use. CMMOS requires that icons be .bmp files, so that needs to be our file type extension. We'll call our as yet unmade icon file "PzmT34m43.bmp", making the entry: #! Icon PzmT34m43.bmp The "Key" file is next. This is a unique BMP file that is part of the mod. CMMOS uses Key files to determine whether a mod is available for application or not. Generally, the first unique BMP is used. In our case that is the hull side BMP - 58920_rww.bmp, and thus we enter: #! Key 58920_rww.bmp We're not quite done with our Rule file, but this Part is getting long, so we'll stop for now and save our work. We need to talk about the name we use when we save. This is where the Rule number we got from Gordon comes in, we need to use it as our file name so that CMMOS will know where to put the icon associated with the Rule. Our Rule number is Rule101-381, remember? We therefore save our Rule file as "Rule101-381.txt". So, save your work in Notepad as Rule101-381.txt, and check back tomorrow for more to come. - Old Dog [ December 04, 2002, 08:12 PM: Message edited by: Old Dog ]

Try Urban2, Hoopenfaust. Urban is a bit of a stretch, it's a small town, but they do have paved streets and a plaza - Old Dog

And for goodness sake don't forget the great collection of CMMOS mods for CMBB at CM HQ. - Old Dog

Well, the CM Map Database only accepts single maps as CME files, not collections. I contacted COG at the Database and we agreed that uploading all (54) maps separately was *NOT* a good idea Hopefully, COG will change the database to accept map collections in the future. - Old Dog

(Following is Part 4 of CMMOS conversion instructions for Panzermartin's T-34/76 hasty whitewash tank. To join in please see the previous Parts linked below) CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 1 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 2 CMMOS Step-by-Step Part 3 Now that we have the mod BMP files suffixed and the Info.txt file created and saved, we're ready to do the Description.txt file. Compared to the Info.txt file, this one's a breeze. We can put anything into the Description.txt file that we want, all that CMMOS cares about is that we put SOMETHING there. The information we put in the file will show up in the large box in the lower left corner of the Mod Add/Remove screen of the CMMOS Configure Window. Gordon likes to call it the "Owner's Manual" for the mod. So, open a fresh blank Windows Notepad, and let's make our Owner's Manual. Here's what we'll type into Notepad: Hasty whitewashed T-34/76 Model 1943 (late). NOTE: Use CM Mod Option Selector (CMMOS) to install this mod. This mod is released for free unrestricted use to the Combat Mission community. Feel free to do anything you like to it, so long as modified versions are labeled as such, and credit is given both to Panzermartin and any prior author (In this case, BFC). This mod may be freely posted for downloading, but not charged for. CMMOS conversion by \insert YOUR name here, you clever bastard, you!\ There. That's it, Description.txt file done. Save the file into your Workspace folder as "Description.txt". As with the disclaimer in the Info.txt file, I've used a more or less "boilerplate" copy of Gordon's standard wording for the Description.txt file. If you're so inclined, re-word it as you see fit. Next in line for our conversion is the Rule file. Now, rules in CMMOS are the heart of the BMP swapping system. They tell CMMOS what BMP files to re-name and install in your CMBB /BMP folder. Each Rule in CMMOS is assigned a number, simply to prevent "published" CMMOS mods from being given the same rule number by two different mod authors or mod converters and colliding. The keeper of these numbers, the Arch-Scribe of CMMOS, is none other than (bet you guessed!) Gordon Molek himself. Since this tutorial is rather "public", I've e-mailed Gordon and gotten a rule number for our Panzermartin T-34/76 conversion. We all get to use this number, it's reserved just for us for this on-forum tutorial. Our number from Gordon is Rule101-381. For the curious, the "101" part of the number will tell CMMOS that this mod is going into Rule-set or tab number 101. That's the tab for whitewashed Winter Soviet AFVs (Zimniy Kamuflyazh). The "-381" is the number that Gordon has assigned us for this specific mod. Now that we have our Rule number, we're all set to write our rule file. We'll start that in the next episode - stay tuned. - Old Dog