PIATpunk

Mixing CM with historical photos
 

 

No, I have been waiting patiently for the patch all along. Have no interest in CMSF2.

create a profile for the game exe using the nvidia control panel - and then turn off FXAA within that profile.

Simple post, to hopefully keep your spirits up going into the Christmas season and dealing with all the post-launch issues
Thank you
Have a good day

These Tactical Problems designed by Todd Justice ( @ScoutPL ) and myself are designed to give small scale (Platoon to Company (+)) and short (around 30 minute) games for two players to test and explore tactical solutions to unique situations.   
They are Head to Head only in order to provide the toughest challenge.  Each side in these scenarios is designed to provide a challenge, though some sides may be tougher than others, refer to the scenario complexity ratings for the difficulty rating for each side. 
 Post your solutions in the comments section for each scenario, or on the Battlefront forum.  We might in the future add AI to each side of these scenarios based on the best submitted solutions for each side.
Links below:
PBEM Tactical Problems Introduction PBEM Tactical Problem 01 - A Rifle Behind Every Tree PBEM Tactical Problem 02 - Strongpoint! (Coming Soon) PBEM Tactical Problem 03 - The Last Hundred Yards (Coming Soon) It had always been my intent to provide Tactical Problems like these on my blog to allow you to learn and  test tactical situations.  Please leave your feedback below.  I would suggest that if you have an AAR or a solution to one of these scenarios that you start a new thread and post a link to it in this thread to keep spoilers to a minimum.
Bil

I figured it was about time I created a scenario for this title and I am now in the closing stages of finishing off a scenario titled Assault on Port Cros. The scenario, while based on historical events, is not what I would term as an accurate representation of them so this is more of an attempt to offer something new and maybe different for CMBN.
The basics:
Play Mode:  Allied vs Axis AI only.
Battle Type: Allied attack.
Battle Size: Large (I know this is subjective so to qualify this it is an Allied company plus force against an approximate Axis battalion element).
Battle Length: 3hrs 30 minutes (although this may change based on final testing).
Map Size:  2368x1264m
Requirements: Market Garden and Vehicle Pack modules.
The basics of the history are that the First Special Service Force assaulted German coastal defences, including Port Cros, on a small island group covering the approaches to the Port of Toulon to set the conditions for the main Operation Dragoon landings in the south of France in August 1944.
The following image forms part of one of the briefing graphics for the scenario:
 

i think big part of uss are waiting moustly 4.0 engine patch. because that is take too long to get out of pipe line.

Hi All,
 
I have been working on a three-part H2H scenario dealing with the battle for Rimini Airfield.  This was a part of British 8th Army’s Operation Olive assault up the Adriatic coast. It took place in mid-September 1944. The 1st Canadian Division, which included the Greek 3rd Mountain Brigade (their first and last major engagement), New Zealand 19th Armor and 22nd Motor Battalion. In front of them were a combination of the German 1st Fallschirmjager Regiment, 162nd Turkestani Battalion and various support units.
By the 15th of September the 1st Canadian had moved up the coast were just south of the airfield. They needed to take the airfield before moving onto the town itself.
Lieutenant-General Sir Oliver Leese, commander of the 8th Army had this to say about the battle; "The battle of Rimini was one of the hardest battles of Eighth Army. The fighting was comparable to El Alamein, Mareth and the Gustav Line (Monte-Cassino)."
The morning of this battle the Canadian Saskatoon Light Infantry had probed north up the coast road and been stopped by fierce resistance. And this is where the battle begins. 
I broke the battle into three parts:
1. Santa Maria, which was the assault on the small village and church complex called Casalecchio, west of the airfield. 
2. Miramar, the assault up the coast road 
3. Rimini Airfield, the final attack on the airfield. 
Using the same map, I isolated the fighting areas for Santa Maria and Miramar. Then used the entire map for the Airfield.

Overall map

Saskatoon waiting for help.

PzIV on overwatch

Knocked out Panther Turret Bunker
Special thanks to BobWillett and Rocketman for all their help, input and play testing.  I hope to have it at the Scenario Depot in the next few days.
 
LiveNoMore

i dont know, excellent point! i agree with alot of the points you make.

For nigh on ten years now my biggest projects have always been my portrait mods. I have invested weeks and months on end, that have added up to hundreds and hundreds of hours of time and frustration creating them. I have made easily over ten thousand portraits, through trial and error, redesign, and updates. It's been a true struggle at times, and I am never happy with the outcome, though I'll say I am, once a project is complete. But I am always fighting the design decisions I started with way back in SF1 and it's hamstrung me artistically. After the FB portraits I decided I wanted to redo all the portraits for all the titles (the BN mod is long over do for an update) . So, after a long hiatus, I set about trying to get to someplace that would finally make me happy. I decided to start with RT to get ahead of the module release, and after a week or so of fiddling, resizing, making test bmps, and checking in game, this is what I came up with.

For about two seconds I thought they looked good. But once again I was confronted by the poor design decisions I adopted all those years ago. You see, I have been in a constant fight with what I term the "bobble head effect", which causes the portrait heads to appear bulbous and fat-headed. It occurs because I opted to show each portrait with a split face on the bmp. It has been my bane since my BN mod and it frustrates me to no end. And considering how I built each face from screenshots, pieces of faces from all sorts of pictures, and the fact I only worked on the left side of the face, well it doesn't leave me room for presenting them in any other way. And On top of all that, I have always felt there was inconsistency in the quality of the faces, and that they appeared too cartoony.  So with that said, I am putting these portrait mods to rest. I have taken them as far as they will go and they have reached a dead end. They had a good run but there really isn't anything more I can do to improve them.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Now, check out what I have been doing for the last two weeks and tell me I didn't make the right decision...



Now for some comparisons of the old style and the new.


 
Now the portraits in the context of their own mod. It'll give you an idea of the overall design.


 
And within the context of the game UI.


 
Some of the portraits are tentative/place holders until I find something that really blows me away. Or will be replaced later. The Heer Armor and Armor Infantry come to mind as far as that goes. Luckily I haven't made anything yet with them, just tests.
Now, unfortunately I will probably have to share a lot of the portraits (mostly Germans) across games, however backgrounds and the like will be changed for each setting.  And I will of course do all the battalions and regiments etc. Whether or not I will be able to keep the quality across titles remains to be seen but I will do my best. It is going to be a colossal amount of work, already has been. For the Germans alone I have created and discarded over a thousand portraits. LOL. Every time I think I have one down and start producing keepers, I stumble across a better pic, or I adjust some color to better fit the portrait into the overall look and I have to redo a ton of work. I just replaced the Heer Infantry yesterday, now I have to redo 374 that I had already made, as well as the SS Arm Infantry. I have done this a couple times already. But getting it right is what's most important. Perfection is what I am aiming for.
I don't know how long it will take. Getting the right pics is painstaking and laborious as hell. For every good one I make I throw out five. But this style will be the definitive version of my portrait mods from here on out. As I complete them I will remove the old versions from the planet. I'll start threads in the corresponding game forums as I progress.
Welp, that's about it. I was gonna keep all this to myself and wait to surprise everyone, but I have been working in a vacuum for a month and it feels good to talk a little bit about it. Especially as I have been going full bore, night and day for two weeks straight. I Hope you guys like what you see. I think it's the best work I have ever done.

Mord.
 

You are both right actually. I should refrain and check in on a later date. My posts aren't helpful at all and don't change a thing. I will do everybody a favor and stop posting until the end of the year.

Reading the CMSF2 homepage I came upon this post by Steve….
“We've been very happy with the level of support shown for all our CM2 products.  Some pay for themselves a little bit better than others, but in the end it works out well for everybody.  I think we should put out T-shirts and bumper stickers that say "Have You Hugged a CMBN Player Today?" 😛” 
….which made me wonder “Why is there no merchandise?”
After seeing many shows, comedy, music etc. most have merchandise for sale, or “merch”. I understand they could a good piece of their income from.
So Battlefront, why no t-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, magnets, jackets etc. etc. etc.
(Maybe it would help CM players recognize each other on the street.)
I for one would load my closets and desktops with all things Combat Mission.

I don't mind that things are delayed, I mind that the customer base is often left in the dark, often for months on end.
This has admittedly gotten much better in the last few weeks, but it has been months of waiting for the 4.0 patch.
 
I can't say for sure how this is effecting the player base but look at how posting has died off for CMFI and CMRT -  titles I personally really enjoy. There are threads detailing bugs and TOE/OOB errors and omissions from 2014 that have still not been commented on. Are they being fixed in the next patch? Who knows?
If BF is aware that for example FJ gun transports in CMFI carry 50mm ammo regardless of the gun in the platoon, and it's being fixed in the next patch, then that's something I don't have to worry about, if they let the customers know and then I don't have to resurrect dead threads from 2014 in the hopes that it will be noticed, only for there to be no response because nobody is posting in the CMRT forum, lest of all devs.
 
In my opinion, it's not the big things like delays with the website or CMSF2 being a little later than expected, and certainly not major additions like France and Italy being added to CMSF2 at launch, it's the lack of patches and dev blogs on the existing titles. Little things like the graphics issues with the BMP-2M in CMBS, generated many, many community posts and were met with silence. Would it be so much to say "We're aware of that, we're fixing it, it will be in the upcoming patch for the 4.0 engine".
The responses to the question about CMBS bugs persisting into CMSF2 and asking if they will be addressed in a patch for CMBS is a ray of hope, I can only hope that there is a more organized way of doing that going forward.
Maybe have pinned threads in each of the titles' boards and one day a week (if possible) have someone a dev or beta tester come in and give a little update on what's being done on the title, what the known issues are, maybe even solicit help from the community if there is uncertainty about a TOE or OOB. So on Tuesday say, go into the Development Thread in CMFI and say "You know, we looked at that Italian infantry handbook you guys posted back in 2013 (and was reposted in 2018!) that mentions the squad breaking down into 3 man teams, but we think that was just for running in bounds and the Italian rifle squad was fundamentally a LMG section and a rifle section and couldn't maneuver as smaller elements than that." and then on Friday post on the CMFB board and say "Yeah, we're aware that the availability dates for HVAP for the 76mm gun might be off, we'll address that" (No more specifics needed, 10 seconds to post!). The following Tuesday, if there's less going on in the development of CMFI maybe just check in and say "We didn't really take the time to go back to look at the Italians after the engine updates, since they were in the initial release of CMFI and we couldn't just port over assets from other titles when we added AAA. We'd like to add stationary Breda 20mm guns to give Italians the ability to have AA units, and luckily we already have this modeled in game on the AS. 42. We'll hopefully have time to add this as a small patch to CMFI between CMSF2 shipping and Rome to Victory"
I know people like to say customers ask for too much. I disagree. We're not asking for detailed weekly dev diaries, just some indication of what is being done.
I know people say that posting on the forum takes away from development time. I disagree. Just say something like: "Not only will Module 1 for CMRT bring the timeline to the end of the war and add German formations and equipment, but the Soviets got a second looks too. So now Cavalry Uniforms are a selection as appearance in the unit purchase screen instead of a mod tag. Oh and since we already had Polish voice files from other titles, we're adding the First Polish Army to the Russian side". That took about 30 seconds and covered questions raised in dozens of threads and hundreds of posts dating from 2014.
 
 

if only we had a third party application loading up and taking up plenty of system ram/cpu for no particular reason... plus doing god knows what else... 

Hello

Here is a short video where I intervene to talk about the fighting in the Falaise Chambois  pocket that you can partly relive thanks to the excellent campaign Kampfgruppe Engel

Faced with the enthusiasm of 3j2m who have seen this video I propose to share it with you

I also advise you to see the excellent series of reports made by Tropa Guripa

any remark moved on my hat is wrong 😉
 
 

That should cover what we can say, but I will add- The screenshot above of the Berlin Map is only the top third of the entire master map, but the rest is WIP. So there is a lot more to see, map wise, and in other locales that are already in good shape.

And yes, I will pass all maps off to the QB chop shop, so Berlin will have QB potential (as well as stock scenarios).

Ahhhh...I will check my mods, i might have them. I mix and match and modify a lot, but I may have the originals.

Greetings! 

This is my first real attempt with the editor - which started out from this real-world Luftwaffe aerial shot I came across for the village of Golynki, west of Smolensk...



...which I stretched to fit more neatly into a CM-friendly grid, and came out with this map:





It is a 2000m x 1792m map, covering a few types of terrain: a peat bog in the northern half, a wooded area and the near-pristine village of Tregubovka to the southeast, and the larger village of Golynki to the soutwest, which has been largely demolished and abandoned under the German occupation. The map is divided in half by drainage ditch running north-south (both it and a secondary ditch on the northeast side are passable 'shallow ford' throughout), and has a major rail line running east-west in the bottom quarter of the map. 



At the moment, I have no data on any actions that took place here - all I learned is that this area was recaptured by the Soviets in October 1943 (I originally thought it was part of the CMRT timeline in 1944, but it is not so). 






It's a very detailed, handcrafted map - it may still need a bit of optimization as I went very heavy on the flavour objects (so the frame rate might drag down in certain areas, depending on your system). On the upside, it's very pretty in places





I'm trying to figure out what to do with it in terms of scenario - and since I have absolutely 0 experience with scenario building and AI programming at the moment, any help or advice would be appreciated! What would you like to see on this map?

At the moment, there is no AI and all the parameters, objectives, etc. are placeholders only. It's only really usable in the editor right now.

You may download my current WIP version of it here: 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hA9cr80cdMmHkGK8mhhbNgZz_LAefsyH

...or in the forum attachment.

If you have anything that you'd like to create on this map yourself, or use it or any part of it for your own scenarios - you're very welcome to do so (with credit for map given).

Thanks for checking it out! 
CCIP - Golynki (v01 map only).btt

For effective catharsis add "hopeless" before "joke". 
Speed varies but I've never had a download fail.  And it taught me to store all my purchased installer files locally for future re-installations. 

Based on my limited testing it appears that the number of textures is directly related to "3D Texture Quality" setting. "Best" allowed me to view all of the stock textures and all of the textures I had in the mod directory.

While we're waiting another episode!

Two completely different game systems, difficult to compare them at all as sburke mentions. These new games have the graphics but they certainly don't have the historical TOE/tactics/FOW etc.  I expect that a grog mod will be required before I get serious with it ( I mean, the AFV system uses health points at the moment for example).  They are a hoot to play though (eg Red Orchestra)

I'd rather eat a fully cooked meal than one that is raw in the middle that "looks okay from the outside".
I've got the RT module well underway- The module is being worked on nearly every day, and has been for well over a year now. But there is still more to be done in order to show people something that incorporates the cool new stuff. Otherwise you get weird, untextured bits, bugs and weird game behaviors when you weren't prepared to show something. THAT causes problems, and opens up questions that are really a waste of everyone's time, because that's not how the game will look by release. 
Getting everything slotted in, in the right way takes a loooooong time and is a huge amount of effort, to say nothing of- planning the module, making the maps (the maps!), making the campaigns, building the scenarios, testing, 2D artwork, 3D artwork, testing, testing, TESTING everything. And so on.
PR may not seem to be the main effort (the crew is too small for that now)- but the games are. That may put some people off that like updates, and I do get it- but within reason. We all like to see the new stuff, I'm the same in that respect.
Really- I would love to show off some things we have nearly done or are complete. But there are other parts that aren't slotted in or in progress, so it would screw everyone up to see them in that state- and give an inaccurate representation of a huge amount of effort. I'm sure Steve would respond "When it's ready....", which is the best, most honest answer that can be given. You can take that as frustrating, or as a truly honest answer- but it is indeed the truth, regardless.
I think I've said all I can say at the moment. Hang in there. The games are coming, and the extra time isn't being wasted. There is constant work being done, to a very high standard on every aspect of the various BFC endevors.