FinnN

I think the problem is that creating any sort of mission is a lot of work. Having all the scripting is good, but even if it didn't output the greatest scenarios something to create basic missions is sorely missing from this game. I have an idea about how to implement something like this by creating a program which generates missions. Basically someone would analyse map elements and put together some basic strategies for different force mixes. For example 'attack a hill', 'attack a trench system' would be basic ones. Next each map would be marked with hills, trenches etc. These basic strategies (you'd have a few different strategies per objective) would be input into the program and the units replaced by either random ones or one from an OOB database or even a dynamic campaign generator. Once that was done it'd then be really easy to generate basic missions in a few seconds with a variety of overall plans (eg attack hill first, then attack a trench, or by rotating the coordinates use maps from different angles, etc) from then on and it doesn't require lots of complicated AI programming. These could then be played as-is or modified in the mission editor. Conceptually it's fairly easy, but it's still a lot of work and will need input from fairly adept mission designers. The German infantry mod I've started but had to pause while I move house and have the second half of my holiday is the first step to doing this so you're looking quite some time in the future before I get anywhere near to even having a test version of it ready, but maybe someone else would like to pick up the idea - or even better the devs could do something similar in the planned add-on. Have fun Finn

I agree, get the bundle - it's fully patched up and doesn't need the CD in to play. If I remember correctly you also get more scenarios than you do with the original individual games (but that could be my imagination). Have fun Finn

I agree that CM:SF's setting has little appeal in Europe - I've bought it, but only because a WW2 scenario is going to follow at some point in the future. And that's exactly why I disagree with the second part - now that there's a CM2 engined game out there interest in CM1 is going to be dropping, and I bet once a WW2 module is out it'll go down even further. Far better would be for them to make a generic CMC engine that would cope with save games from CM1 and CM2, probably by using some sort of plugin system to transform the data to and from those games (or other ones like ToW for that matter). Widest possible appeal and if they haven't taken any sort of account of that during the development of CMC and CM:SF then a big error in the game design IMHO. Have fun Finn

Looks good! Have fun Finn

Definitely something wrong with us, modders I mean. br. Dr.Jones </font>

Personally I think that's the main reason - and it's one I see as 100% valid. One the other hand I wonder if it's ever been considered to do it the way that they did IL2. Basically modders were given a limited SDK in order to create 3D models to the specs required by the game developers. The developers then did the actual conversion and integration into the game, and bundled them with patches and/or paid-for add-ons. Nothing that didn't come up to standard was included but the range of planes included was increased enormously over what would have been possible - which you can bet helped sales a lot. Have fun Finn

I don't see how you can say that someone who has his scenarios included in the first release version of the game doesn't have anything to do with it. That's not to say it's biased or that he wouldn't have said so if he didn't like it, but you can't say there's no connection IMHO unless he wrote and finished the review prior to supplying the scenarios. Personally I think the review at the start of this thread reads like one written by someone who hasn't 'got' the game style and is dismissively negative in tone rather than sounding analytical. As such it's not terribly useful or informative (to me anyway). On the other hand the out-of-eight review seems a bit odd in that it points out negative aspects to the game, but still manages to score it full marks. Although there's a bit more detail in there, it also strikes me as a fairly shallow review. I'm pretty certain to buy the game at some point, as there's a WW2 add-on coming out and I'll want some practice before that, but I'll be interested to read the more detailed reviews that are sure to come. Have fun Finn

I think the 'easier' (none are 'easy') ones to get to grips with are the Allied and German campaigns. Both have a fair amount of variety and seem to have fewer annoyances than the others (I wouldn't be surprised if they saw more extensive testing than the others). The Allied one has the downside that you seem to swap between being American and British constantly so it's possibly best to go for the German campaign first. I think the Polish one is the hardest, and the French one the easiest. Have fun Finn

Yep, I was thinking more of future official campaigns. On units stats, I think it'd be a nice starting point if you could see a man's medals in the info panel without clicking on him individually. This'd make them stand out a lot more, especially in the more tedious moments when you're searching for veteran units to replace the green ones you get initially during unit selection. Have fun Finn

If they added support for cavalry then I think it would widen what could be done with the engine a lot into other eras, but it'd have to be limited to small-medium skirmish sized encounters as I doubt the engine, even after refinement, could cope with thousands of soldiers. Also go farther back in time and hand-to-hand combat becomes more and more important, but there's no animations for that so that'd be another big chunk of work. That said I think the engine would work well for conflicts close to WW2, so WW1 (mobile operations, or trench raiding), Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, Korea, etc I think would all be doable quite comfortably. Have fun Finn

Nope, Soviet only. Have fun Finn

For me the most important omission is smoke and the biggest flaw is the 360 degree view that vehicles have. If the devs are looking at overhauling the LOS system I'd really like to see those two addressed as a minimum. I'd like to see prone soldiers not getting up to reload and trenches not shown on the map until spotted. Also I'd like units to try to keep together more - right now officers and veterans will wander off on their unless ordered otherwise. For bigger changes, when you give a move order to infantry units it'd be nice if the end points adjusted themselves slightly to take cover into account. I'd like to see infantry units able to fire over walls when standing up and (maybe) also jump over low features. For mission designers I'd like an option to open up a dialog box for the player, the save the selection with the mission results on exit. This would allow for mission designers to create conditions for draws, ceasefires, partial victories, etc and use these for creating a dynamic campaign. If buildings get added, then I'd like to see flamethrowers and some demolition weapons. If they get destroyed then I'd like to see occupiable rubble being generated, and for that matter the ability for infantry to take limited shelter in shell holes would be good too. Finally I'd like whoever it is that's designing the official campaigns to look again at the basic philosophy. It seems to me that most if not all missions involve defending (or worse attacking) against huge odds. It's challenging, but it's challenging for the wrong reasons. I guess we're in the realms of fantasy now, but a dynamic campaign would be great! Have fun Finn PS One thing that I'd like to see is more tidbits from the developers - lots of stuff gets mentioned on the Russian forums which never makes it here. How come?

Looking at the Russian forum, the devs were looking for maps of Kharkov, plus there's screenshots of a Marder III and a Soviet Armoured Car (a BA-10?) in the dev diary - which hints at another Eastern Front campaign. On the other hand in one of the forum threads there's some competition results where people were guessing the location of a non-winter German campaign (if I'm understanding correctly) - and the winners were 'close' with some 1944 Normandy guesses, but they couldn't confirm it due to an agreement with Battlefront. Maybe the add-on will have multiple campaigns? Finally, there's been some hints that the LOS system is getting a complete overhaul, and although I can't find it now I thought I saw a screenshot from a dev showing a building interior. Certainly would be interesting to get some ideas on what's being considered... Have fun Finn

Key thing is to extract all the files to the MissionEditor folder. Next launch the SFSExtractor exe then exit it again. The next time you run it it should work - fill in the appropriate extract folder (it should point somewhere outside the game folder) and use the extract option from the tools menu. Finally if you modify an existing file you need to copy it to the game folder in the same relative position as in the extracted folder, where it will override the version held in the SFS files. If you use the JSGME tool you can enable and disable these modifications quite easily. Hope that's enough to get you started, have fun Finn

For 2D graphics, have you tried simply saving as a TGA? Have fun Finn

It'd be hard to combine them as I'm working using a database and then exporting the results - thus minimising the potential for typos. The database includes new infantry types, rank sets, detachments, backpacks, etc which are linked together. This means that it isn't really combinable with one that's been hand edited in the same way that two hand-edited ones would be, but thanks for the offer though. On the other hand I have an installation routine which appends my stuff to other mods rather than replacing them, plus I've been careful where possible to not overwrite the existing units so mine sit side-by-side rather than on top of them. As a result there shouldn't be any conflicts. Have fun Finn

You may want to investigate some of the free versions of Visual Studio, Visual Basic is pretty easy to pick up and there's plenty of tips and so on available online. Have fun Finn

I think a desert mod would be quite do-able as Flanker says by re-texturing units, the terrain and bushes, but there are a lot of missing units although you could just pick out scenarios where they aren't involved. Have fun Finn

About the original question, I think the answer is yes and no. As far as I can tell you can construct new nations fairly easily, but getting the interface to handle it is another matter. The background flags that you see behind the unit icons in the info panel for example are all held on one bitmap, so adding a new one is going be tricky at least. Also, from a quick look at the GUI files it seems at first glance that the various countries are hard-coded (I could be wrong). One possibility I suppose would be to swap in and out single nations, but that's not ideal. Have fun Finn

Possibly there is an upper limit, but you won't have come across it yet if you're adding a few bits here and there - there are loads of extra bits in my infantry mod and I haven't encountered any number of units limit yet. What I've found is that even the slightest typo or missing reference will either throw an error in the mission editor, crash the game or result in missing units or textures and usually with no message. So basically you probably just need to check through the files you've changed. Have fun Finn

I get the impression only one sample at a time is playing, so although it might try to play 5 or 6 shots only one seems to come through. Would need to find my old Close Combat CDs and install them to be sure. If it is the case then they could be sliced up to combine into the longer sample. In any case the sounds certainly sound a lot beefier. As the first few CC games came out under Microsoft I think they had a budget for real recordings rather than the generic ones in ToW (listen to the samples one at a time and you'll find a lot are exactly the same). I miss the distinctive (and correct) 'burping' German LMGs from CC... Have fun Finn

I get the impression only one sample at a time is playing, so although it might try to play 5 or 6 shots only one seems to come through. Would need to find my old Close Combat CDs and install them to be sure. If it is the case then they could be sliced up to combine into the longer sample. In any case the sounds certainly sound a lot beefier. As the first few CC games came out under Microsoft I think they had a budget for real recordings rather than the generic ones in ToW (listen to the samples one at a time and you'll find a lot are exactly the same). I miss the distinctive (and correct) 'burping' German LMGs from CC... Have fun Finn

Unrar the archive and you should have a folder called 'samples', just pop that into the game folder (it contains a pile of wavs). The other one is a mission with a line of men and tanks so that you can try out the sounds, pop that into the folder where the single missions are. Have fun Finn

Unrar the archive and you should have a folder called 'samples', just pop that into the game folder (it contains a pile of wavs). The other one is a mission with a line of men and tanks so that you can try out the sounds, pop that into the folder where the single missions are. Have fun Finn

I'm pretty sure GIMP supports Photoshop plugins - Photoshop plugins use an open spec, so (with a few exceptions) most work in any program that supports them, Paintshop Pro etc. Have fun Finn