Erwin

Hey, I love your work, Olek... Hope my comments are helpful...

One challenge is that units tend to have the same weapons and ammo load-out whether they are in open terrain or in urban. One would think that they would load up with smoke and breach charges in urban. Smoke is essential for safe road crossing etc.

The issue with "black" is that one still needs to see details as in the above photo - not how it appears more grey and has shine than black. One can see all the details. Compare with some of the photos of your mods that appear is if the weapon is a "black hole" with no features standing out to make it look "real".

Maybe my monitor is set dark, but at first it seemed that some of the mods are so dark that I thought an error had been made and it was just a black object (as in when a mod doesn't appear at all) - esp the Stugna and AK mods. Maybe lighten all the mods up a tad? When I brightened my screen they look wonderful of course. But, then everything else looks too bright.

They reassure me that they stand right behind me and have my back. Uh... Yup, still there...

IIRC once the appropriate number of shells are fired, that's it. Don't recall a barrage being called off without using any shells.

Dang. I just found that I had already downloaded all those files earlier this year. The problem is that they were too large to copy onto a flash drive which is easiest way of loading the files into a new computer. So, I guess will have to d/l again onto the new machine directly. PITA. Anyone mention the end of "net neutrality". This sorta huge d/l is gonna start costing us $$$.

I also wish there would be a CM2 or CM3 AFRIKA KORPS game. (Love the desert vistas of CMSF.) But, apparently BF considers there is not sufficient market for it.

There is a "TOTAL CONVERSION MOD" to convert CMAK to enable play of 1940-43 West Front (Sea Lion etc) & and ETO IIRC. This is what I found 4 u Gerry: "This is a massive collection of bitmaps that changes CMAK into a Sealion & ETO game. The "All Combined" theatre from 1940/41 to the end of the war is changed into England or (with some swapping of bitmaps) France, and from the winter of 1943/44 onwards, the "Italy" theatre also becomes England or France. The "North Africa" theatre also becomes an Operation TORCH or Mediterranean or winter-Africa (i.e. greener, cold-weather uniforms etc), but in this version 1.0 the Med/winter-Africa conversion is imcomplete (but playable). Why a "Total Conversion"? Many of the bitmaps are desatuarated (less colour) and so probably won't match most other mods very well, and they are converted to 8-bit colour where possible. Also, although in the past there were several good efforts on Sealion (such as CMWest), it was never 100% complete and looks-wise the rest were a bit of a mish-mash of ideas and theatres/periods. Anything not included? I'd liked to have included Gurra's Westfront Interface mod but I haven't yet heard from him. But I recommend you use it as it matches very well with my conversion. Why also add your cockamaney version of ETO? Because my conversion is desaturated, you couldn't use it for Sealion and yet also keep Inglett's current ETO in the same BMP folder without some disparity. And my ETO is not identical to Inglett's, though it reuses a tweaked form of many of the ETO mods. And I've gone for looks, and matching tri-camo where possible, tweaking for visual consistency, over any concerns of historical precision. My version also includes new snow-versions for some models not previously provided for. Credits: Me (took 2 years), but I also re-used ideas, and recoloured or tweaked many other modders' works as well. And so they should share all credits: Major credits (in no particular order): MikeyD, Andrew Fox, David Inglett, Mark Ezra, Wicky, Tanks-a-Lot and Juju. Other important credits (in no particular order): HeinzBaby, Gurra, Alexoscar, Gordon Molek, Aristoteles, Marco Bergman, RockinHarry, Caffino, badjuju_4, Gautrek,Junk2Drive, Pat, Vossie, Ypenburg, Navy, Sequoia, Limey, Tracer, Samurai_man, Lucky_Strike, Daffy, UncleTgt, and probably others too (please let me know if I've missed you out! and I apologise and will add you in). Cheers Streety streety@blueyonder.co.uk How do I install it? And what are all those optional folders? Preferably install another copy of CMAK, or at least make a fresh copy of your current BMP folder. Then simply unzip and load all the various bitmaps into the BMP folder that you intend to use for Western Front. NOTE there are some optional folders and optional bitmaps. These are mostly just eye-candy for you to swap around to change the look of the "All Combined" region for different seasons and locations. But there are also a few alternative uniforms and armour models to look at. Notes: 1) A very few German internal armour bitmaps from the early (desert) war are re-used in the later (Italy) war. Given the similar colouring in the original game that was not a problem, but it becomes noticed when you change all the German desert-yellow models to European Grey. As a work-around, I've produced a compromise-set of those few bitmaps, which are a sort of greyish-beige. Also, one of the early German guns gets re-used as another late-war gun, so it will appear grey when the other guns are all gelb-based. Whilst I personally just leave it as that, I've provided an optional folder containing two versions (one grau, one gelb-camo) for you to switch around when moving from the early to the late war. 2) When going from the early war (using "all combined") to the late war (using "italy"), you have to remember to switch back your optional terrains to the default-summer set, because these bitmaps appear in both theatres. And when using the winter-snow set for the "all combined" theatre, its probably best to force the weather over to snow (or at least rain and/or fog), and force the temperature setting to cold or freezing so as to best model the weather. Of course, the all-combined region is drier than England, and dustier. There's not a lot you can otherwise do about it. However, I have tweaked the dust-cloud bitmap to look more exhaust-like or smokey, and English air is quite humid with a generally much lower cloud level, and poorer visibility than say France or Italy. And (unlike today) we had urban smog problems back then. And I've been in re-enactments where the English air soon gets clogged up with haze and smoke, so you'll just have to tell yourself all that dust is in fact thick English air! 3) I recommend that you play the "all-combined" theatre on through the end of 1943 (rather than switch to the "Italy" theatre as soon as possible in July43). The reason for this is that the Italy theatre in 1943 uses a colouration filter (changes how some bitmaps look) unless you force/select the weather to snow. I've tried re-tweaking the affected bitmaps but am not 100% happy. 4) My early-war Italian army is a guess and compromise because you can't change the shape of their pith helmets into steel helmets, so I swapped their desert jackets for their mid-war blue ones and recoloured the armour to a shade of green that sort-of matches some illustrations I've seen. Messy, but better than nothing if you want to play them in Europe in 1940-43. 5) If you want to save BMP folder space, or otherwise just want to keep the early armour models in the game as long as possible, just delete their higher-numbered late-game version and the early game model will appear in the late game. But note, the snow-versions only relate to the higher-numbered late game versions, so you might want to at least keep those snow versions."

I see one "Upgrade 4 Big Bundle" purchase dated Jan 5 2017. That has ALL the games for d/l and install? So all one needs to do is d/l the file labeled CM <Game Latest Version Full Windows">? One does NOT need to d/l anything that says <Upgrade>? Is that correct? (And man I wish BF would name or at least number each purchase so you could find what you are looking for without looking at every purchase - just having a date attached to each is not helpful.)

Wonderful Xmas gift. Thank you. Will be traveling without my game computer.

Well who ever predicted back in 2007 that there would be SO many mods produced, and SO many duplicate mod choices to make. The fault is in being an early fan/adopter. The guys buying into CM2 now have it easy. (Bastids!) (Uh... how much do you charge to organize mod collections?)

I beg to differ. There is definitely someone around here frequently with a gun to my head.

You are saying that the Big Bundle items should be in MY ACCOUNT mixed in with the loooong list of purchases with no identification other than dates and product numbers, yes? I went through most items and all I saw are individual purchases for each game, each pack, each module etc. I see no Big Bundle item. Surely I don't have to purchase a "big bundle" for d/l if I already own everything? As I said - totally non-intuitive and irritating.

I bought everything that BF offered immediately at the time each item was individually released. So, am unsure if I have the "4.0 all game upgrade" or where to locate it for d/l. Was wondering if it is in a different area than the long list of individual purchases in MY ACCOUNT which only have dates to identify them. The whole process is very non-intuitive to me.

As I said... Am impressed with your organization, Mord. But that looks like a HUGE amount of work unless one has been doing that from the start 10 years ago. One of the reasons PESE (best tank sim of the 90's) faded into oblivion was that it started to take more time to maintain the game and all its mods and patches than one did playing the game.

Follow-up question... I went to MY ACCOUNT and see a couple dozen purchases (only identified by date) - not sure which d/l's are the "Big All In One" installer for each game. Or are those in another area entirely?? Thanks Bud...

The vast majority of mods should work fine. However, I believe we are always advised to remove the mod folder "z" or whatever b4 installing updates. (Not sure why.) There are some mods - esp like the useful and popular "Vin's Animated Text" that has to be redone for every evolution of each game or it creates problems. Am told there are other mods (eg: from early days of CMBN) that no longer work. But when one has probably thousands of mods it is impractical to check em all to see which work and which should be deleted. Wish there was an automatic way to determine which mods are fine and which need to be deleted or replaced.

Thanks for the confirmation... Am relieved however that there is only one file per game family to d/l and install!

Thank you... To clarify: Is that 1 x 4.0 installer per game family (including all modules and packs)? Or is there now one big 4.0 installer for all the games (including all modules and packs)??

I own everything CM2. Does one need to d/l every game and every module and Battle Pack etc. separately? Or, does the system recognize what one has purchased and one only needs to d/l one big file per game "family"? Thanks...

Well, maybe they are pointing out their friends? Or: "This is the one to surrender to. It has great AC and Central Heat."

Hope springs eternal...

They will probably accept donations. Maybe an "investment" is tax deductible?

I have 30" at 2560x1600 and I have to reduce resolution to read any in-game text - even reading the UI gets tough. It's the main reason why haven't yet bought UHD/4G monitor. (Obviously would be great for other games.) Hopefully, scalability will be a priority for CM3 and one of the many reasons I hope BF starts working towards that asap.