Philippe

You might want to take a look at Mark Gallear's site -- there are a few things there you won't find at CMMODS. A couple of other good sites to be familiar with are Gautrek's and Zimorodok's. The hosted mod section at Zimorodok's site has some especially good material -- it acted as a kind of defacto alternate posting spot during one of CMMODS' longer down periods.

Please. The Knights of St. John may have dropped their high membership standards (more quarterings than most European noblemen knew how to count up to -- for more on this read the first few pages of Voltaire's Candide), but they are most certainly not Templars. Hospitallers, yes, Templars, no. Among other things, the Hospitallers were quite a bit more evolved when it came to tactics. Templars were really good with money, but really bad at tactics and politics.

This bug is intriguing because it borders on being a feature. What was your FOW setting when this happened, and did your crewmen eventually revert to being crewmen? Were they labeled as crew the whole time? I just played Oranges and Lemons from CMAK five times at different FOW settings to watch bailing enemy crewmen pop out as infantry and evolve into crewmen. I rather like the concept that under certain circumstances you can't completely identify your own units. Reminds me of the old Atomic Games V4V series where severly fatigued units would become unidentifiable until they managed to get their act together again.

There's a patch over at Mark Gallear's site that brings the CDV mythical marketing material back in line with the BTS US version and reality (Wafflegrenadieren = Waffen SS). There may also be copies of these patches at CMMODS, but I haven't looked lately. What's odd is that I thought CDV versions sold in North America were the unexpurgated US model with correct German terminology, as opposed to the bowdlerized Eurotrash version which complies with German marketing regulations. Spending a little time poking around military history websites is a good way to get comfortable with authentic terminology. The Axis History site is one of several great places to start. I would also suggest investing in a simple German dictionary. Once you understand what those funny words really mean you won't want to have anything to do with dumbed-down dubbed Hollywood reality.

It might help if you listed these names out very carefully so that we can be sure what you mean. If I understand correctly, only the German army appears with German words in it. Are you suggesting that some of the terms used are inauthentic (e.g. the mythical CDV Wafflegrenadieren)? There are indeed patches that can fix that.

Go to Cmmods, look up CMAK, check under designer name Birdgunner, and you'll see six or seven zip files called something like Scenario Depot Salvage. This is the content of the old Scenario Depot, and there are literally hundreds scenarios and operations.

It is certainly true that the historical outcome is not necessarily the top of the bell curve. But leaving aside the degree of probability of the historical outcome (part of the game designer's job is to assign some kind of implicit probability to what actually occured), what exasperates me to no end are supposedly historical games where the historical outcome is impossible rather than merely unlikely. If a model is incapable of reproducing the historical outcome there is something fundamentally wrong with it, no matter how much of a fluke that outcome really was.

One way to learn to mod is to pick something that has been modded to death, and do an obscenely exhaustive compare-and-contrast job on all the different existing versions of whatever it is you're studying. Not only will you figure out the bmp numbers on that sucker, but as you go through the mod file by file you'll begin to spot mistakes and shortcuts. Then you'll start asking yourself if there wasn't a better way to do that, and next thing you know... There are bmp number lists embedded in the CMMOS File Lists, but the only ones that are consistantly accurate are the ones in CMBO CMMOS (because most of the mods and their numbers were gone over by several editors). At this point the best way to get the numbers is probably to go to CMMODS and download everybody else's work. The more mods the better, because it can really be surprising what falls through the cracks.

My advice is not to bother learning how to use CMMOS unless you're planning on making mods for CMBO and perhaps (but only perhaps) CMBB. Converting a mod to cmmos requires adding a simple suffix or a series of suffixes to a mod's bmp number. That part's so easy it's trivial. But you then have to write a program that integrates the mod into the master program, and then bundle it up into a zip file that the master program can manipulate. This last step requires a lot of trial and error, and should be undertaken by at least two extra pairs of jaundiced eyes. The process is time-consuming and requires skill (not much) and patience ( a lot). And for the conversion to make any sense, people have to be using CMMOS for mod option switching to begin with (which for the most part they're not). Almost all of CMBO has been converted to CMMOS. Some of CMBB has as well, and just enough that it wouldn't be a total waste of time to issue a mod that way. CMAK hasn't been converted, and won't be converted, because the people who converted CMBO have largely decided that there are better things to do with their time. Your best bet for CMAK is to create mods with lots of separate option folders that contain different but complete versions of the mod. The user can then make the switches manually or with McMMM using different names. Creating Mods and How You Present Them are two separate issues. If you're feeling creative you're best off just going for it, and working out the modalities of insomnia cures later. And yes, I use CMMOS almost exclusively for CMBO and intermittently for CMBB (less and less as time goes on because the good modders don't have editors to do the conversion for them anymore).

You might want to take a look at the appropriate section of cmmods.com. CMMODS is the repository for almost all mods at this point.

I think it already exists, but it's called IL-2 Sturmovik... Nothing prevents you making mod recommendations to your PBEM opponents, but because no two people have the same preferences and visual sense, what may look good to you will look awful to someone else. To get a sense of what I mean, do a little research into the aesthetics of bright vs. drab palettes in CMBO, or gridded vs. non-gridded terrain in any of the games. One solution is to take screenshots while you play the game, and then swap image collections after the game is over. CMBO looks surprisingly good when reduced to sepia-toned pseudo-snapshots (so good that I usually become more interested in finding aesthetically interesting compositions than in actually playing the game).

The contents of the original Scenario Depot site was salvaged and stored over at CMMODS. Don't remember exactly what the number breakdown is, but we're probably talking about a couple of thousand scenarios and operations in total for the three games. The CMAK and CMBO scenarios can be found by looking up Birdgunner in the CMMODS designer listings. CMBB scenarios are listed under padivine. There are a handful of scenarios that were damaged and don't open: many of these were fixed in an update file that may or may not be appended to one of the groupings. The way you know you're looking at the right thing is when you see a set of files called Scenario Salvage 1, 2, whatever. One of the zips is the ops associated with that particular game, one of the zips is an Excel spreadsheet that will help you navigate through the mass of material. The rest of the zips are the scenarios in alphabetical order.

Not only are some of the bmp numbers different, but in a few cases some of the polygons are different as well. To be sure that something is transferable you have to compare mods from the two games and compare them bmp by bmp.

If I were a vehicle modder I would answer your question (correctly) off the top of my head. But with the exception of a now-defunct and unpublished CMBO vehicle mod I leave that kind of thing to those most accustomed to dealing with it. In the old days I just would have looked inside my CMBB mod files and told you what was in there. Unfortunately my old computer died last summer in a freak accident, so that's not an option. But what I find peculiar about this is your insistance on a global formula. I think there is one, I don't remember what it is, and I don't need to, because when (and if) I rebuild my vehicle files I'm going to do it one vehicle at a time, as needed. There are so many vehicles and bmp's involved here it just doesn't make any sense to proceed otherwise. If nothing else, even the file lists are suspect. CMMOS lists were released hastily as placeholders, and only got updated to something resembling accuracy if the editor remembered that the lists probably weren't accurate when he converted a mod. So how do you tell what the correct list for a given vehicle is? Generally you download as many different versions of mods for that vehicle and put each in its own separate folder. You do the same for the BTS original (it is, in effect, just another mod). By comparing these to each other and to any CMMOS file lists that might happen to exist you can usually figure out what the list should be for that vehicle, and from that you'll create the contents of the BTS mod folder. There are generally four versions of German vehicles (summer grey, summer gelb, winter grey, winter gelb). There are discreet numbering series for each. If you put together a collection of SPW 250-1's in grey and gelb, summer and winter, it will become very obvious very quickly what is what. You do this by actually reading the middle column of the CMMODS vehicle sort and downloading accordingly. You'll find the occasional mistake, and sometimes vehicle mods are listed in collections rather than separately. But global formulas don't really matter that much because no one needs to remember them on anything other than a case by case basis. If you're really losing sleep over the nomenclature drop one of the whitewashing specialists a line and they'll explain it to you. I think part of your problem is that you're confusing mod style terminology (e.g. Greece, ETO) with game structure. Game structure is all that matters -- you can repaint it anyway you want.

Go to cmmods, pick a vehicle, and look at the bmp listings for the different mods. It will become immediately obvious what the prefixes are. If the bmp numbers for a summer vehicle start with something like 6240, the series for the winter version of the same vehicle will probably start with something like 16240. Something similar happens with the grey version of German vehicles.

Until early 1943 German vehicles usually rolled out of the factory with a base coat of grey (grau in German). For the rest of the war they usually rolled out of the factory with a base coat of yellow (gelb in German), though very strange things started to happen late in 1944. This used to be a favorite topic of armored vehicle websites, and is of great concern to modelers. In-game there are parallel sets of bmp's with different numbers for each base color. Winter vehicles are the same as summer vehicles except that their bmp's have a slightly different prefix. The presence or absence of snow on the ground in a winter month governs whether the game engine will choose a winter-prefix vehicle or a summer version. You can make a whitewashed snow- covered vehicle appear in mid-summer by removing its prefix. And you can make a non-whitewashed vehicle appear in the middle of the Siberian winter by adding the snow prefix to its bmp. Or by not having a whitewashed (or snow-covered) version of it in the first place.

Everybody does this differently, but I always sort my German vehicles into gelb/grau and summer/winter sub-categories.

The mod manager section of CMMODS.

Just be aware that the issue is not so much getting CMMOS to work with CMAK as it is to get CMAK to work with CMMOS. What that means is that each bmp has to be recoded and programs have to be written to get mods to respond to the CMMOS key strokes. CMMOS is really good for handling lots of options on a particular mod if someone has taken the trouble to do the conversion. The trouble is that by the time CMAK came along most of the CMMOS editors were either burnt out or too busy with other activities. I still remember the moment when I realized that I hadn't actually played the game... Bottom line, CMBO was about 90% converted, CMBB was about 30% converted, and CMAK is about 10% converted. Your best bet for CMAK would probably be a combination of McMMM for the main mods and manual folders for the options.

Almost all of the old Scenario Depot scenarios were salvaged and can be found over at CMMODS. Log in to CMMODS, go the game you're interested in, and take a look under the files sorted by designer section. For CMBB look for about half a dozen files named Scenario Depot Salvage under the name padivine. You'll see a bunch of large zips -- download all of them, especially the the Excel wordsheet that explains what everything is. Some of the files were damaged, and there is an update rattling around somewhere on the site. Scenarios and operations for CMAK and CMBO can be found under designer name Birdgunner. Same drill. What you'll find when you download all this is that it is a very unweildy mass. Hard to use, but very handy if you know what you're looking for. I really wish I had the time to sort all of the scenarios out chronologically in three month buckets, but I don't.

I think TCMHQ is being hosted by The Wargamer. You can get to this site (which seems pretty dormant) by scrolling down to the bottom of their featured sites section.

The Scenario Depot Salvage project over at CMMODS contains the unsorted CMAK contents of the original Scenario Depot website. I'm pretty sure most of it has not migrated anywhere else. I just took a quick look and counted about 600 scenarios and 60 operations. Some of these scenarios and operations will already be included on your list, but you'll be relegating a lot of excellent hard work to oblivion if you don't include them. The download at CMMODS includes an Excel spreadsheet to help navigate through the mass of material. To find the old Scenario Depot material look up Birdgunner in the mod designer's list -- everything under his name relates to salvaged material. Similar collections can be found under his name for CMBO and under my old screen name (padivine) for CMBB. A few of the files in the three collections were missing or corrupted -- I think the update was posted to CMMODS somewhere (updates relating to all three games bundled together) but I'm not sure.

If we're talking rocks, the closest thing that I can think of is Tom's Ardennes Mod Winter Rough which is still available as part of the Winter Wonderland set of CMBO CMMOS on CMHQ. If memory serves Winter Wonderland includes all of Tom's Bulge mod. But I find it highly unlikely that that is what he is talking about.

I can find no preorder button on that site :mad: just Canadian porn :mad: :mad: Looks like it has been hacked. </font>

It's hard enough to get modders to provide an image of the work that they've done, I don't think it's realistic to ask them to provide shots of what they're improving. And what they're usually improving is already somebody else's mod in any case. Thinking back to CMBO, the out-of-the box stock art was often too painful to look at, so why would anyone want to preserve an image of it, other than the intro video? Besides, if you really care about how things look you'll lavish a lot of effort on your sample jpeg -- why waste all that effort on something you don't like? You often can't tell that you'll like something from the image alone. So if you aren't using a mod manager (or even if you are), what you do is that when you see something that looks like it has potential, you make two folders in your CMBB or CMAK mod folder labeled BTS original and So-and-so's mod. You put a copy of the original from the back-up BMP folder that I presume that you made before modding anything (if not, do a quick re-install to a parallel path and delete everything except the BMP and Wav folders). Before loading the mod fire up a very small Quick Battle with the relevant pieces so that you're sure you know what you're changing. Then go back, load the mod, fire up the QB that you've saved, and you now know the difference in 3-D, on your computer. Switching textures requires a bit of effort, organization, and self-education (otherwise you may find a collection of readme files in the bottom of your BMP folder with messages like "don't install me untill you've read this"). Some mods just don't look right with other mods, so you always have to do a bit of your own testing. When a good modder does something really drastic that isn't immediately obvious, he usually remarks on it in his readme file. This usually happens because of the shared texture issue (e.g. the Kuebelwagon). And once in a blue moon he might even include before and after shots -- I even did it myself once. But the industry standard is to rely on people's knowledge of the visuals in the game and to provide a jpeg of the mod.