Philippe

There's a link at the Scenario Depot II on the upper left-hand side of the page that takes you to where you want to go.

I just tried the Battlefront site for the patch and it's working. Suggest you try again.

Nice job! It would be interesting to see a few screenshots of the icons being used in game. You'll also need to make a couple of variations of this set and install them in different places to get it to work with several of the scenarios. They don't all use the exact same file in the same places.

There are several free services for this kind of thing. A lot of people use Imageshack, which takes a little getting used to but isn't difficult to use. You'll eventually find yourself confronted with the choice of posting a thumbnail that people click on and expand, or a full size image. Though our hosts would prefer that you post thumbnails because it saves bandwidth, clicking on the little images is annoying and gives my anti-virus software fits every fifth or sixth thumbnail (because the advertisements that you're subjected to in the background of the expanding images are often from unsafe sites). So do everyone a favor and use full-size images on the screen. And don't feel shy about posting pictures of works in progress.

The contents of the old Scenario Depot site can be found at cmmods.com. For CMBO, look under designer name Birdgunner and look for a series of zip files called Scenario Depot Salvage. For CMBB and CMAK look for some recent postings of Sorted Scenarios. There's enough material there to keep you going for several years. You should also take a look at the Proving Grounds and the Scenario Depot II. Not as complete, but lots of recent material.

Why aren't you patched to 1.08 ?

Exact pathing is possible but generally not attempted in CMx1. There's usually a very long command delay involved that discourages micromanagement in CMBB and CMAK. CMBO was different and didn't have the delay. The net effect is that column movement of vehicles is more difficult to simulate in CMBB and CMAK than CMBO.

What form of the game are you talking about? European or American version ? CD or Download? And what exactly do you mean when you say the download from cmmods didn't work? And are you sure you downloaded the right mod?

They're not messed up in mine. What version of the game do you have, what version did you patch it with, what mods are you using. and what order did you install things in?

The WaW expansion is a more evolved version of Blitzkrieg, so you shouldn't really try to mix things from the two systems. Hubert is in the process of porting the Global Campaign to the WaW engine, and from time to time he gives a progress report on these boards. From what he's posted, I suspect it will have more detail than the original because the WaW system encourages a designer to take more things into account. So take the brief wait as an opportunity to play the Spanish Civil War and get used to the enhanced system before the new Global Campaign comes out. By the way, the 3-D icons for the Spanish Civil War are truly endearing. Not only are there clear portrayals of the uniform types for the different factions, but some of the early tank types that show up look like civilian trucks with machine guns and bolted-on armor plating -- delightfully primitive and improvised looking. My 2-D icons can never come close to that as far as period atmosphere goes.

The Spanish Civil War is a standard feature of the SC 2 WaW expansion, which you can buy on this site by cd or download. Click on Products in the upper left-hand portion of the screen for more details. I am not aware of a version of the Spanish Civil War scenario that works with SC 2 Blitzkrieg, v 1.08 or otherwise. And if it did exist, you still wouldn't want to use it -- the SCW scenario takes full advantage of the improved AI and new system features of the WaW expansion that are very important for a scenario on this scale.

Or just go to cmmods.com and download the Authentic Flags mod for SC 2 Blitzkrieg 1.08 -- after you install it it will fix the problem and you won't have to worry about what goes where.

If you are using the English language version of SC 2 Blitzkrieg, a quick but effective solution would be to go to cmmods.com, register, go to the SC 2 Campaigns section, click on Newest Camps, and then download and install a mod called SC 2 Authentic Flag Mod. This is a mod for SC 2 Blitzkrieg and not SC 2 WaW, and is not to be confused with the Authentic Flag Mod, which only works on SC 2 WaW. The advantage to using these mods to try to fix your problem is that they effect all of the flag sprites in the game, but only the flag sprites. If your problem was caused by having experimented with other mods that aren't properly organized for the 1.08 patch, this will fix your problem. If the problem comes from something more fundamental, this will become immediately clear, because you will continue to get the wrong flags in the wrong countries. If that happens, I would suggest installing everything all over again in case something has become corrupted. I do not know how compatible the US version of the patch is with European versions. That might be part of the problem (if you have a European version I would imagine you should patch it with a European patch). But the first mod I mentioned might even have a beneficial effect. Please post what happens, and someone from Fury or Battlefront will be along soon to comment on this.

FYI, if you go to cmmods.com and look for something called Scenario Depot Salvage under designer name Birdgunner, you'll find a number of zip files with hundreds of scenarios. I haven't counted it lately, but I think it's a four digit number.

Version 1.7 of the Authentic Flag Mod has been posted over at Cmmods. It is designed to work with the SC 2 WaW 1.02 patch and should be installed after the patch. It now incorporates and replaces the 2-D unit sprites mod. It will overwrite the old 2-D unit sprites, so if you prefer the old look you'll need to back up your originals first. It also adjusts the appearance of the German halftracks, tanks, artillery, anti-tank, and anti-air 3-D units to a historically correct dunkelgelb base in any scenario starting after February 1943. Scenarios that start before that date will retain their grey colored units to the end of the war. And there are lots of other little improvements to the flags, all listed in the notes.

The last three 2-D icons on the bitmap are there to allow infantry using mechanized movement to temporarily switch to mechanized mode (the way 3-D icons turn into halftracks), and for partroops being transported to temporarily display airborne passenger mode (again the way it works in 3-D icons). Only Hubert can tell whether this functionality will ever become operative.

The game engine will never do as good a job of setting up as a good scenario designer. And it will never do as good a job of map-making as a good map designer either. But a mediocre scenario designer or a mediocre map designer, well, that's another story.

The real mystery of Malta

Looks great! And you know what scenario I'll try it out in...

If you have saved all of your PBEM files it's not a problem. Load in the new textures, and then go back and watch the movies of all the previous turns in order. Just remember to end each movie turn by hitting escape rather than done (but if you forget you can still Alt-Q out of it). This way you will have your new graphics, your PBEM game will continue without contiuity problems, and the old graphics will merely be the memory of a bad dream. After you do this once, you will always prefer to number your PBEM turns 001Axis, 001Allies, 001Movie rather than 001, 002, 003 because with the pure numbers it can be a pain to remember which file you need to click on to watch a sequence of replays. Oh, and when you do it, hit Shift-Q first and make sure your bases and flags are turned off. That way you'll be able to take some interesting screenshots along the way.

Malta, by the way, poses special problems all its own. There are few small beaches and a lot of limestone cliffs. Given the small size of the island and the tendency of paradrops to scatter, a Merita-Merkur-style jump would result in a lot of overshoots and drowned paratroopers. Gliders would have been a better way to go, but geology and the peculiar internal geography of the island make the few viable landing zones screamingly obvious (and adjacent and frighteningly exposed to fire from the town of Mdina, which rises from a limestone mesa that dominates the center of the island). It's a toss-up whether Gibraltar or Malta is worse to assault. The only thing you can really do is try to pulverize the place into oblivion, but one of the problems is that all that limestone has some pretty large caves in it near Valetta (which have been artificially enlarged with flint and antler drills since neolithic times) that act as natural bomb shelters. So the bottom line is that to take the place you'd probably have to use gas. You can't starve it into submission either -- all the tuna in the Mediterranean make a habit of swimming in circles around the island before they go off to wherever it is they're going to, so when you stay there you end up eating a daily diet of fresh tuna steak.

There are how-to folders in both games that make for very interesting and detailed reading. There are also Paintman threads in this forum that will probably give you some of the background that's missing. If all else fails, try sending him an e-mail: I'm sure he'll be happy to answer your questions. Sometimes SC modders put instructions in the mod description on the cmmods site, and forget to include a text file. And always be sure that you know if you're looking at something that goes with SC 2 WaW or SC 2 Blitzkrieg.

Be sure to visit Cmmods.com, a site for storing mods to the Battlefront games. You'll need to register (but won't get spammed), and if you check on the little button on the sign-in you don't even have to remember your password. There's a section for SC 2 Campaign mods. Click on 'Newest' and take a look at what's there (several campaigns and some sound and graphics mods).

Sorry, but it is. Changes to bitmaps have zero impact on anything apart from your own personal enjoyment of the visuals. Oh, there's one exception. If you play with bases off and do a really good job of applying camo, then you may tend to overlook units that blend in with the forest. But that will only have an impact on you, not your opponent.

The mod has been updated to correct an error in the original 2-D unit file for the Battle for Russian scenario. The fix is included in Version 1.1 of the mod. The original files will not be updated until the release of an official patch.