LongLeftFlank

"Silk comes out of the butt of a Chaahneez worm!"

Sorry mate, work spiked again. I found your dropbox link before in a thread, but can't now remember which one it was. Thought it was in CMRT, but can't see it now. EDIT: Never mind, found it. I am head down in work for the next couple days but will try to take a look on the weekend. Salaam alaykom!

It's well acted, shot and choreographed, but also very rah rah Serb nationalist and sentimental and the second half is a bit slow (ok, ok, we get it, it's COLD!) But as you know, Serbs define themselves culturally by their many many many glorious defeats in their rugged borderlands (Krajina), caught between Imperial Central Europe (Rome, then Austria) and the Imperial Orient (Byzantium, then Turkey). Between waves of pastoral nomads from the steppes. But for nonstop unrelentingly awful Miseries of War*, nothing but nothing can beat "Fires on the Plain", 1959 (Japanese, subtitles). Being repeatedly on the receiving end of massive US firepower (Leyte, Feb 1945) doesn't even make the Top Ten ordeals faced by poor dorky and hapless hetai Tomura. It all starts getting blackly comic toward the end. (The 2015 remake is nowhere near as good). Please note there is no CM scenario material whatsoever to be had in this film. Guy Sajer: [nonstop horrible Ostfront stuff happens, Rollbahn E to Dresden] Tomura: here, hold my sake (or uncooked yams) * Although in terms of unrelentingly depressing evil with a side order of banality, "Wannsee Conference" (1984) comes close. It's available online, but I'm not linking to it here. Some stuff is a just little too Beyond the Pale. Same thing goes for that stupid SS revisionist film (even though the Italian actresses are totally hawt).

Not Cold War per se, but nails the 1970s US Army, and the general culture of that time. ... Serbia 1914 setting predates the CM portfolio, but a fine film nonetheless.

Die Brücke (1959), no subtitles. Heer training starts 42:00, teenage Volksgrenadiers come unglued starting 1:05. However, looks like they stuck Grant turrets on Sherman hulls, or sumfink. The Young Lions, 1958, Marlon Brando. Action begins 1:07:45, not too bad for A-list Hollywood mainstream. Bloody awful Cherman accent by Brando though.

Sir, those *are* tanks! I have lost count of the number of times I've felt just like the young officer in that scene, swimming hard against the groupthink and getting punished for it. Although I shaved off my ugly scraggly mustache about 2 weeks into college (before my housemates did it for me). Oh hey look, it's online (for the moment, at least here in Asien)... P.S. you can boat up the river in Pangasinan where most of Apocalypse Now was filmed. By which I mean, hire a crew of guys to paddle you upstream -- the river gorge is far far narrower than it looks in the film. And while there are no Playboy Bunnies, well, it's the Philippines, innit....

Yup, I've been colour blind my entire adult life, to the point where my wife doesn't let me shop for my own clothes. I also have to double check with coworkers on my choice of Powerpoint schemes for presentations, especially greens and oranges. ... But I'm also very good at spotting animals in woodlands, as a few whitetails have learned the hard way when I'm carrying my SMLE. I can pick them out even peripherally, while driving at speed down a highway.

In the Editor for all CM2 games, there is a category of Flavour Objects called Poles (not Posts, sorry). These are very small and simple objects which mark roadsides. My hope is that one of these might be resized into a much larger object; no other changes would seem to be needed. The following screen shows Pole1 (stripes), with an illusion of zooming to show approximately the size I would like to have, compared to the H&E pagoda tower. If you compare with the photo I posted above (Ramadi, by the way), you will soon see what I mean. My apologies for sidetracking your thread so much!

OK, maybe I don't understand correctly. Is that object supposed to go on top of a building, in place of the roof dome? I don't want to use a building for a minaret at all; I don't want entire squads able to go into it and shoot from a high point, which is tactically unrealistic. They are designed for only a single muezzin to climb up to call the adhan. Most use loudspeakers instead now and maybe don't even have a stair. So I'd rather have something no units can enter at all, even though minarets are often used for spotting (sniping from them is rarer, as it's basically suicidal - zero cover). The square tower is also too clunky looking visually (yes, there are some square minarets that look like Venetian church towers in places like Bosnia, but that is not the norm for the rest of the Islamic world). So all I really wanted was a kind comrade to take one of the little Post objects and make it about 8 stories tall. It's the right shape and proportion.

OK, I redownloaded (35kb .mdr file this time, I must have screwed up the last time, sorry). I then tried what you suggested and no object displays at all. When I take the mod out of the Z file, unmodded stump1 displays normally. So strange. I found my way to your JM corner over on the CMBN board, and then found your Dropbox link. But I don't understand where I must go to view the image you mentioned. Do you have a linky? Merci beaucoup. Just to confirm: I now own CMSF2 and do everything on it now. My old CMSF1 is on an old laptop, no longer used much except for GIMP software for BMP textures.

Sorry mate, I get an out of memory error at 54% when I try to load that stump object in CMSF2, even if I use a blank map. I don't know anything about Blender or .mdr files, but I have been able to use the text editor to rename the texture bmp files of some other Flavour Objects without breaking the file (CM usually crashes to disk when I make an error doing that). ....So I opened your file in the Text editor to take a look, and I notice 90% of the code looks nothing at all like the machine language gibberish that shows in the functional mdr files.... it's a bunch of legible (to a programmer, not me) line code talking about Dropbox, web containers, etc. So I tried deleting all that stuff, leaving behind only the small amount of gibberish machine characters that looks like the other files. But that didn't help. I get the same out of memory error. Anyway, I have no idea whether that observation is helpful, but thanks very much for your efforts for me!

Cheers, mate! The watch tower is interesting; I have long thought that CM could add some kind of treetop sniper platform, kind of like a 2x height stationary vehicle, with a 'passenger' capacity of 1 man and a phone pole sized wireframe. So you could place them in a forest, or even do setups like this....

Any Blender aficionados out there willing to upsize one of the round Post flavour objects to the size of a minaret? I just need the mdr file, I can do the bmp texturing myself. I don't care that they are nonfunctional (i.e. units can't ascend or spot from them); MidEast cityscapes just don't look right without them and domed single story building towers are poor substitutes. شُكْراً جَزيلاً!

After 1942 that was certainly true. But following the KMT Left-Right split of 1927, General von Falkenhausen stepped into the shoes of the Soviets as the KMT's key military adviser, and reorganized their forces on German lines. That of course ended after 1937 when the Germans chose the invading Japanese as their preferred partner in East Asia. But while it's plausible that some German kit, including helmets, remained in use by 1945, yes, I'd expect frontline formations to have US gear. Like this! (NOT a war movie, though one of the finest Chinese films I have ever seen, and highly recommended. Minute 27:30) ... But remember, the Chinese do love their costume dramas, and the coal scuttles underline that whole 'KMT = wicked fascist foreign puppets' meme the CPC still likes to push today. Continuing my ongoing (and I hope, good natured) joust with my esteemed old comrade @Erwin, war films need to be considered in the context of their time and cultural agenda: that includes the HBO Pantone stuff!

Mate, you're the one who sailed in here, contributed nothing but dismissed one of my favorite war movies as a 'waste of time' without citing any underlying reason. Don't now try to assign me homework.

Since we're here, a few more. Note that these are all a little on the propagandistic side, although kit and tactics are *largely* authentic. (Erwin, I clearly don't gauge war movies using the same metrics you do, and that may be true for others too) 1. "Assembly." Chinese grand drama view of Korea (and Civil War). HBO style cinematography. 2. Afghan Breakdown, 1991. Riveting, but just brutal. 3. Dear Elza. Hungarian with English. Of two minds whether to include this one. Intense, but cartoonishly anti-Russian (not that the Red Army wasn't cruel to its enemies, 'bread for bread, blood for blood', but come on). And far too much Sam Peckinpah full auto rock and roll. Ammo loadout anyone? Anyway, you have been warned.... 4. Patrolle sans Espoir. Indochine, les Groupes Mobiles. Sans subtitles, good snapshots of the brutalities of guerrilla warfare. But as every CM player knows well, don't bloody well run around when the mortars have you zeroed....

In your own humble opinion. Feel free to contribute something.

Viewable on Youtube now (country blackouts may apply, I'm in Asia). Easy to FF through the talky bits if you don't like plot. "White Tiger" 1944 (Estonian, Bahasa subtitles, a little grainy) Battleground (1949. English) The Mountain Road (1960, Jimmy Stewart) The Odd Angry Shot (1979, Aussies in Vietnam) Couldn't find Schoendorfer's "Dien Bien Phu" or "317eme Section", but did run across this 1956 film on 'le Battailon Corree." Action doesn't get underway until 55 minutes in but then it's worth it for the 57mm recoilless alone. Well ahead of its Hollywood contemporaries too in terms of cinematography. No subtitles. Fighting uphill is hell in any language.

Yes, that "Unentscheiden" period of 1943 from Stalingrad to Kiev, where each side was readily capable of inflicting tremendous tactical defeats on the other, seems well suited to the game.

Hmm, let reconfirm before slandering your outstanding work, but my Powerbook fan was running full blast when I tried including the H&E SpecialEffects folder in my Ramadi mod set. As to the rest, I have no idea what any of that is lol. If it isn't in the control panel then I it's beyond my competence. Although that tiny (backblast?) flames effect in minute 6:50 of your video (HUGE fan btw, first time caller) is pretty awesome. * And the old saying goes, 'Red skies at night, red skies at night, wo-ho, wo-ho-ho-hohoho-hoho.' (sorry, that CMCW Eighties song thread is living rent free inside my head)

I'm not techie enough to understand the full ramifications of this, but has anyone worked up any kind of mod to intensify the brightness of the lighting to reflect actual peak sun desert conditions? (I know folks have altered screenshots, that's not what I'm looking for) The in game sunlight is far too subdued. Anyone who has spent time in the desert, or the tropics for that matter, will know exactly what I am talking about. Hot town, summer in the City.... Settings: Noonday, Clear, Very Dry, Extreme Heat, early July That bubba should be absolutely cooking, lying on the ground like that. If he tried it on the tarmac, his buddies would need to pull him off (and that ambulance would come in handy). Anyway, setting aside an ambient heat shimmer (which would be totally hawt too!), is there a desert sun mod out there that I've missed? I note the cool (though CPU intensive) ambient rolling cloud effect in the H&E mod set. (And no, this isn't a This Game Is Broken© kvetch, just an inquiry. Nothing is written!) White light, blazing heat, through the wasteland searching we....

Work spiked again, so haven't been on for a while. I have now added the #squalor and #burnt tags to my 2012 Baba Amr map. Are we feeling that Even The Streets Want You Dead© vibe yet? I've been adding scorched and burnt textures to a number of Flavour Objects like fruit stalls that would look odd in pristine condition in the middle of a shattered battlescape. This is a 'total war' condition of course (Mosul, Falluja); most of Ramadi wasn't this badly trashed: #squalid tag will do for most scenarios. I also ported over @Mord's classic "Faces of Syria" mod to the Uncon Combatants. (Praise Be Upon Him And Upon His Bunker).

Me struggling with textures late into the night (shout out to my fellow modders). On the plus side, the [burnt] version of Ramadi is starting to look suitably nasty.

Yes, that was curious. No grenade was visible or detonated, so I assume it's one of the close combat animation defaults. The Red guy is a Spy whose 'cover' is blown and he went prone beneath the GI. Btw, I updated the classic Faces of Syria pack for CMSF2 Combatants. Most irregulars don't fight masked unless there are news cameras rolling: bloody uncomfortable in 38C heat! Fighters (JTJ, AQIZ) remain masked.

"Rakkasans" of 1/9 Infantry take down a suspect in the outskirts of al Qatana. Note my latest take on the small open-fronted shops. Texturing that little merchandise display case next to the fruit stall alone was a 2 hour trial and error struggle. The signboards give a lot of life to the streetscapes.