Philippe

Here's something from October 1944: Nicholas Bell Muddy Terrain DD's and Gary Kump's Trees Ed Kinney's Third Water and Ford Tiger's Marsh [ February 13, 2002, 11:21 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

At the risk of making a shameless plug, if you were using the Field and Stream grass sets that would never be something that you would have to worry about, because I made sure that there was always one in place even when the author of the mod forgot to include it. So run over to CMHQ (www.combatmission.com) and get CMMOS, get Field and Stream, and confuse yourself with a plethora of too many choices. Cheers, Philippe [ February 08, 2002, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Don't scare me like that, Michael ! I just retested all the Canadian scenarios on my hard drive with Magua's Normandy and Gunnergoz Normandy and had no trouble switching back and forth. I know you're as thorough as my one-legged German thesis advisor and have already noticed this, but I'll mention it here for those who aren't aware of it. Magua's Normandy grass has a characteristic diagonal pattern that becomes screamingly obvious if you zoom out to the highest elevations and look straight down. It's purpose is to make the colors blend evenly from one grass tile to the next. Gunnergoz uses a different method in his Normandy grass, with tiles that are more uniform in appearrance at a higher altitude. It's always possible that something in the RuleSet became corrupted in transmission, so you might want to try repeating the download. The other thing to do is to check the appropriate Rule in the RuleSet and the corresponding File in the FileList and see if you notice anything odd. The only other thing I can think of is that I've noticed that on some computers it is often a wise idea to make sure you have completely exited CM before you try using CMMOS to effect a switch. Now admittedly I'm a computer-primitive (I also believe in the Cargo cult), and I'm sure you already know this, but sometimes lack of caffeine and the excitement of a new toy... Please let me know if you're still having problems. We'll find a way to fix this, even if it ain't broke. Cheers, Philippe [ February 08, 2002, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Painters don't just see more detail. They see things that other people don't, like the quality and colours of the light or the shape of the negative space outlined by the objects that surrond it. This post reminds me of my favorite apocryphal incident from the Franco-Prussian War. While invading France a young German staff officer crested a ridge and was confronted with a splendid view of the valley of the Meuse at sunset. Being of a romantic disposition he called it to the attention of his commander, Von Moltke the Elder. The great man glanced at the scene and said "The river ? Yes...an insignificant obstacle..." Philippe

For those coming late to this thread, I would just like to clarify that you don't have to download hundreds of millions of megabytes worth of material to get what you want out of CMMOS. Field and Stream, for example, may weigh in at 150+ MB, but it is pretty much broken up into one download per mod, and some of them are very small, less than a megabyte. And the names of the zip files make it fairly clear what each contains. The edition was designed for cherry-picking. F&S can save and reinstall three user defined terrain sets. The use of CMMOS for terrain sets in no way forces you to use CMMOS for anything else. Finally, recent versions of CMMOS have a wonderful little program in them called the BMP Munge. This program allows you to rename large numbers of files at will, altering file number extensions almost instantaneously. And it's so easy to use even I can make sense of it. Philippe

Now if you can identify the image on the first icon in the bottom row, I'll be really impressed... Philippe [ February 06, 2002, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

I am using it, and I think that makes me 15. I use it for every mod that it is available for, and for quite a few for which it is not. I wonder if it would be useful to have a separate thread devoted to basic CMMOS questions ? I get the impression that many people are using it with hesitation simply because they don't fully understand how very easy it is to use [e.g. a mod installed under CMMOS 1 will work under CMMOS 3, though not as elegantly as it would have it if it had been designed for CMMOS 3 -- the trick is to make sure you haven't installed CMMOS to an unusual part of your hard drive]. Maybe Gordon could run a CMMOS FAQ thread for posterity ? [ January 29, 2002, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]

Tiger, Could you send me your e-mail address at padivine@aol.com ? I've been trying to contact you for some time now and I'm afraid I may be using an old and very stale address. Many thanks,

Tiger, Could you send me your e-mail address at padivine@aol.com ? I've been trying to contact you for some time now and I'm afraid I may be using an old and very stale address. Many thanks,

Indeed, we are still searching for permissions, but at this point have the majority of them. We don't really expect to get all of them, but elegance and functionality are enhanced if we have as many as possible. With that in mind, we've got a version in front of the Beta testers. It's becoming clear, especially as we don't hear from our missing stragglers, that we will have to make a few minor changes and ommissions. We also have a few contingency plan work-arounds that will allow us to respect authors' intellectual property and, at the same time, deliver the full scope of the project. They are not, however, elegant. At the moment we still need to contact Gunslinger, Gary Kump, Gwen de Lucero, Kevin Peltz (we may have solved that one), Tiger (we think we have the address, but alas, no answer...). The other bit of news is that the one thing that Field and Stream didn't cover is winter terrain. Thanks to Ed Kinney and Juju that has changed. They have produced a comprehensive winter terrain set and asked me to write the CMMOS adaption, which I have done. While I was at it I thought it would make a lot of sense to do the full monty on winter terrain, so voila, Winter Wonderland, the winter companion to Field and stream. Publication of Field and Stream, the Abominable Snow Mod, and Winter Wonderland are not linked. For more information (and pictures) check Ed and Juju's thread. So to sum up, a lot of progress has been made, and more is being made (even as I write this). This edition will see the light of day very soon, and it's companion add-on will come out shortly thereafter. Cheers,

How one feels about a law is not that important. What matters is whether one chooses to obey it or not. Or more to the point, follow a course of action that could be construed as running afoul, usw.... I am not an expert on German law. But I was under the impression that while flags with the swastika were not illegal per se in Germany, the public display of them was. As a practical matter the use of swastikas on children's toys is forbidden, and computer games like Wolfenstein and Combat Mission are treated as such for commercial purposes. On a more practical note, I shall never forget that gasp that I heard the one time I showed the game to my girlfriend so that she could comment on the landscapes. The fact of the matter is, the swastika offends many people, even when they exist for reasons of verisimilitude. The younger generation cannot comprehend the visceral reaction they provoke. Given that several mods of the wartime german flag already exist (in both the navy/national version and the more common plain red version), it doesn't make a lot of sense to complain about the use of the commerce-friendly flag. It would be a different story if something in the game made it impossible to use historically correct symbols as was recently the case over at IL 2 (until someone figured out how to override the censorship programming). I am not familiar with this bit of folklore about Lebanese goats; it sounds suspiciously racist and of questionable taste. Lebanese women are probably the most attractive in the Middle East, and left to their own devices and transplanted French culture, middle class Lebanese are considerably more sophisticated than their American counterparts. And on that note, I never thought I would ever use the expression, but HI MOM ! Cheers,

You can get CMMOS over at CM HQ at the top of the Third Party Mod section. Philippe

A quick update. I've received about a dozen permissions so far, so we're making progress. The list of missing addresses has changed a bit. The new list of missing contact addresses is: Gunslinger, Kevin Peltz, Gary Kump, and Captain Kez. If anyone knows how to get in touch with any of these artists, I can be reached at padivine@aol.com Thanks for all your help, and keep those addresses coming. Philippe

I cannot speak for Manx, but I was under the impression that there is already a budding CMMOS section on the CMHQ site that is in the process of being expanded. I too have favorite combinations of terrain sets, and I've actually included the combination I use for French trees for June, July, and early August as an option. At the macro level CMMOS makes it so easy to create new combinations that you inevitably find that there were mods that you had ignored that actually look better with your favorite terrain. In its current form CMMOS doesn't save what you happen to already have installed, since it works by copying over particular files with the version of your own choosing. The whole point of CMMOS is that you can mobilize and install many different versions of each component of a natural terrain set, and you can do it very, very quickly and easily. It is a tool for gaining control over what you have in your hard drive. By the way, one of the RuleSets covers converting everything in natural terrain at the push of a button, e.g. all of Magua's Normandy, all of Richard Bell's Muddy Autumn, etc. I had to make a separate icon for each of these "canned" looks before writing the RuleSet, and to do that I had to construct a different look for each, one piece of terrain at a time. What I found was that with CMMOS it could be done in minutes. Philippe

A quick update for those of you who may have been wondering what happened to this project. The work is done, the collection is sitting on my hard drive. In order to release it I'll need (at last count) 26 permissions. I seem to have succesfully contacted 18 authors, and permissions have started coming in. I am, however, still missing 8 contact addresses. Once again, if anyone knows how to get me in touch with these names (or the appropriate parties at these names) any help would be gratefully appreciated. The missing contacts: Gunslinger, the Author of the Floral Hedge, Tiger, BTS (!), MDMP (!), Yeates, Kevin Peltz, Gary Kump. All my thanks to those who have helped me whittle down the list, especially Marco Bergman. Philippe

Thanks, Michael. Yes, because of Gordon's latest enhancement to CMMOS it will be possible to convert a mod to low resolution so your computer doesn't grind to a halt on a computationally intense battlefield. Early on I had to make a decision about what to include and what to leave out. I decided that I would rather do a comprehensive job on subdued terrain than a smorgasbord of velvet, subdued, gridded, and found that almost all of the original textures looked jarringly out of place in a subdued environment. There is going to be a snow-covered enhancement at some point, and at that time, if someone else hasn't already done it, the non-subdued terrain could be revisited. I was always partial to Richard Tremblett's work before I got the subdued bug. In that context the BTS originals would make a lot of sense. Philippe

I am pleased to announce that yet another draft of Field and Stream, a collection of four official CMMOS Rulesets for all non-snow-covered subdued terrain, is nearing completion. Three of the official Rulesets cover all the natural terrain types such as grass, hedges, trees, tree bases, water, marsh. This will allow you to mix and match all the terrain mods that are out there, creating your own customized look in a matter of seconds. The fourth Ruleset, inspired by Gordon Molek, allows you to concentrate on the works of several particular mod artists. You can summon up all of DD or Magua's Normandy terrain at the push of a button. If you ever wondered what Juju's Woods Tree Bases would look like on Magua's Normandy Terrain supplemented with Gunnergoz's Normandy Grass, now you can have your answer without going crazy copying in and out of folders. And most important, if you're about to play a scenario that takes place during a particular season and want specialized terrain to match, the mod rules are seasonally coded, and there are several different mods for each season to choose from. But Field and Stream won't just give you the Rulesets. All of the related mods have been assembled and sorted by mod type and author. That's over 275 Mb of CMMOS-enabled terrain mods. Now if you don't want all of that on your harddrive you can be restrained and just download the parts that interest you. And if you don't want to download anything at all except the Rulesets themselves, Gordon has included a nifty little program for renaming files. Don't feel like renaming all of Magua's Normandy Terrain by hand ? No problem, use the Munge and it takes all of two seconds. Now why am I announcing this, apart from trying to drum up a little publicity for CMMOS and official Rulesets ? Well, in order to make sure that this effort sees the light of publication I need your help. I'm very new to the CM world, and I'm afraid I simply don't have everyone's name and e-mail addresses in my Rolodex. I need to go out to twenty-three mod artists for permission to re-publish their material, and I'm afraid I'm lacking many of their e-mail addresses, and in some cases, their names, assuming they don't want to go by their pen-names. So let me say first that the name of each mod author will pop up on the screen when you move your cursor across his mod's icon, and that each file has a distinctive extension coding that allows you to tell at a glance who the author was. In addition, each Ruleset has a separte button for credits that lists all the mod authors used in order of appearance, states that no graphic changes were made to any of the mods, and prohibits non-personal use of any of the work without the written permission of an author, unless documentation stating otherwise is provided with the download of a specific mod (and in many cases it will be). Whew.... Here is the list of mod authors that I would like to have get in touch with me whose co-ordinates I don't know. If anyone knows how to contact them, please ask them to e-mail me at padivine@aol.com. I will be glad to answer any questions they may have. Gunslinger, Desert Fox (in case I can't find it on the web site), Nicholas Bell, the author of the Floral Hedge, Richard Tremblett, Napoleon 1944, Tiger, Bfamily33, Kevin Pelz, Bob "Old Dog" Toole, Yeates, Wolf. Thanks for your help, everyone. The sooner I get my permissions in place, the sooner Field and Stream can be released. Philippe

The fact that this thread has started flirting with an amateur legal discussion of intellectual property issues is unfortunate. The legal questions can get quite involved, especially since several different countries and legal philosophies and systems are involved here (Common Law vs. Civil Code vs. International Agreement). I do not practise intellectual property law and do not feel competant to comment on matters of copyright, the need for consideration as a test in public domain issues, or the use or non-use of an English symbol by a German to establish ownership. And those who are competant to discuss such matters are quite expensive. We should not be taking this discussion down this path. This community works because it is a voluntary association based on goodwill, good manners, and a certain degree of civility (apart from the Peng thread). If we have to resort to legal arguments when we should be working things out among ourselves in a civilized fashion, then we are in danger of losing something very important indeed. Philippe

This is a wonderful wall and I would be more than happy to have it sitting around my house. I would also be more than happy to see it sitting inside Gordon's CMMOS building set (whose next edition will include a separate line for walls). I will write a rule set for it immediately. If you could send me a copy of the wall (padivine@aol.com) I'll make an icon for it and try to get it into Gordon's (very imminent) next release. Gordon's next edition of CMMOS will also include fairly detailed coverage of natural terrain. In reviewing what has been done so far I couldn't help noticing that the range of rough terrain mods available would be considerably enhanced if an Ed Kinney original were added to it. Any chance I can convince you to make one up ? It might not have to be anything more complicated than the rocks from one of your Ford mods, but please don't let me interfere with the creative process. Philippe

Sorry, Manx. I think I've been down in the trenches so long I can only see my little corner of no man's land. I just went back and realized you were talking about MOD names and I was talking about BMP names. Nevertheless, I do not withdraw your nomination for Registrar. I have no strong position on MOD naming (as opposed to BMP naming). Unlike BMP naming, simpler is probably not better in MOD naming. Information should be maximized, and extensions are probably a good thing. Until recently I was wondering if DD Hires was related to the people who make root beer... Philippe Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

Manx's list of the elements needed in standardized mod naming is most certainly a major step in the right direction. I think his ideas should be applauded, as well as the fact that he has had the courage to put a draft of a system out on the table for discussion, but I would like to add a word of caution. A naming system can have a lot of unforseen consequences and needs a lot careful thought before you marry into it. My own experience with trying to come up with a naming system that works, and then having to live with it in practise landed me in a bit of a pickle. To wit, I ended up having to rename about a thousand files manually (twice !) after I discovered, to my chagrin, that the requirements of what I was trying to do and my own logically elegant naming system were incompatible. The problem was that I had ten different components of Magua's Normandy mod, for example, and had given them ten different names based on what they were along with some specific identifiers. Well, when you're trying to compare all the different summer wheats or all the brushes or all the marshes, no problem. The ruleset and whatever you've done to the file list at that point take care of all the particulars. The fun starts when Gordon suggests (ever so gently) that you need to invoke all the different parts of Magua's Normandy terrain mods at once. I don't believe there's a way in the current version to do this unless they all have the same basic extensions. In other words, as it stands ruleset xyz can call up all the terrain mods that end in _nor, and it won't call up the building _nor mods because ruleset xyz doesn't mention buildings in its list of applicable files from the filelists. If each of Magua's Normandy mods has an identifier that is different (apart from the number), CMMOS won't recognize that they are all Magua Normandy mods, and you won't get an application of all the different but related mods. And it gets worse when you have someone like Gunnergoz who has made several mods that have shared features. (You either use options or have several differently named versions of the same bmp). Now understand that my own problem was relatively simple. My mods were set up so that there was only one layer of extensions and no options to worry about. I leave it to those who have tried writing multi-option rulesets (i.e. multiple layers of extensions that have to be read in a certain order, multiple nationalities with\out areal panels, camouflage, shared AA guns, whatever) to comment on what works and what doesn't. The one thing that I ask the writers of the Uniform and Armoured Vehicle rulesets to remember is that CMMOS gives us the theoretical capability to invoke, for example, all the 9th Panzer division mods at one go, provided you label the mods the right way and write the rulesets correctly. The point is you have to design the extensions so that it will be possible to create a ruleset that can do what you want it to. If you design it incorrectly, when it comes time to write that ruleset for all the ... (fill in the blank)mods, if you didn't plan ahead you end up re-writing the extensions until they end up being something your ruleset can invoke. Now Gordon tells me that he has a nifty new program to speed the renaming, but let me assure you, it's not an exercise you want to engage in, with or without crutches. Now, to cut to the chase, what do I think will work and what am I worried about? The extensions need to be as simple as possible. And even that is probably too complicated. The bmp number already identifies a mod for what it is part of, so you don't have to label it a marsh or a kartoflnwerfer or whathaveyou. Remember, a lot of the work gets done in the filelists and rulesets. I also don't see the need to clutter up a name with CMMOS compatible or non-CMMOS compatible. Something either has extensions that can be invoked in a ruleset or it doesn't. As for the BO versus BB issue, my first suggestion would be to use CM1 and CM2 nomenclature (on the offchance that there is CM3, CM4, and an IPO). Secondly, I would try to dispense with CM1/BO nomenclature altogether, unless Gordon thinks that the CMMOS will get confused by the extra layering that might crop up in CM2, CM3 and CM4 mod titles. (Actually, if there are no extensions used there is no layering, just messy labels...) What I think needs to be done now is to come up with an official list of CMMOS names (e.g. _gs = Gunslinger, _gg = Gunnergoz, _dd = DD, _nor = Magua's Normandy terrain set, _gk = Gary Kump, etc.). This would be somewhat like (shudder) a domain name registry. But the point is that it would be a guide for people to create non-official rulesets for non-CMMOS mods, as well as a guide for modders in naming their work. (And yes, I'm aware that there's an extra dimension here that I'm missing because my rulesets have only had to cope with one layer and notes). So I hereby nominate Manx, as the best man standing, for Official Registrar (title to be enhanced upon request). If he agrees we should all send him our currently used lists of extensions so that he can sort through them, make whatever changes are necessary, and post the official versions wherever he thinks appropriate. But I also think that it is imperative that Gordon have major input into this process since he knows best what will work in CMMOS as it stands, and only he knows what CMMOS will look like in the future. Philippe "Consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds". -- O.W.

Leaving standardized file names aside for the moment (and only for the moment...I've recently become painfully aware of how important this issue is), I would like to come back to Gordon's second question, mod re-use etiquette. Particularly the grey areas as they apply to creating general editions. I'm bringing this up for purely selfish reasons. I've been working with Gordon on a CMMOS edition of subdued terrain mods. The first draft is done and awaiting CMMOS 3. I'm now dreading the prospect of chasing down over a hundred permissions for the separate mods that are going into this edition. Now in practise we're probably only looking at a little more than a score of blanket permissions. But there are indeed grey areas. To make my edition consistant I've had to rename things slightly: several mod authors will be surprised to learn that they've created mods called "Water and Ford". I've also had to take a few editorial liberties. Out of sixteen grass mods that I'm using, few bothered to set up a texture for the background (the low resolution area between the playing area and the horizon controlled by 1503), and several who did did so only occasionaly. To smooth things over I've relied on my own judgement (shudder), picked a tile from the high resolution group that I thought would make a nice background, and voila...a mod etiquette problem. [Yes, the best thing would be to chase each author of a grass mod down and ask him which tile he'd like to use as background, but if I used that approach on everything it would take three years to finish this project]. Similarly, a couple of the Tree mods that I'm using seem to have omitted the overhead view on a couple of the tree tiles. Now most of us play with our nose in the weeds so it doesn't matter that much, but if you do decide to soar like an eagle you may be surprised that your autumn foliage turns green when you fly directly overhead. So the logical thing for an editor to do is to either track down a mod author and wait for him to correct the gaps (and add more delays to the whole project), or to find the closest looking substitutes from all the mods available, use them, and invite the author to fill in the gaps at his leisure. But by doing this we've gone one step farther. Mod author A's overhead of a tree may be showing up in mod author b's trees. [Note that this kind of thing happens all the time anyway with incomplete mods -- installing them doesn't wipe out the entire previous mod, just the parts that are duplicated]. Another issue is what to do about unknown attributions. Anonymous has written some of the greatest music and poetry in several civilizations, and I was really surprised when I discovered that he had tried his hand at modding terrain sets. It is amazing how often people don't write those annoying little text files that tell you what the mod is, or how easy it is for those files to get separated from the mod, especially when it is part of a larger one getting broken up into lots of little pieces. What is the editor's duty to the mod author vis-a-vis attribution ? You go crazy trying to track everything down. What is the editor's duty towards the mod author's notes on a particular mod ? Very different kettle of fish. The edition is, in the end, the editor's work, so the notes (and the selection of mods) are his. Of course, in a good edition it will be screamingly obvious whose Scattered Tree Base you are using. And since the attribution notes won't carry over, you should also make sure that it is screamingly obvious who made the mod from the coding of the bitmap. And this is another reason why a standardized agreement on coding is important. The code remains long after the notes are lost and forgotten. If you see a Woods Tree Base with a suffix of _ju after the number, you should be able to know at a glance that it was Juju's. Same for _gs and Gunslinger or _JohnS and Tiger. Because Gordon encouraged me to make a section of my edtition for total or near total conversions, I have been forced to come up with standardized names if only to make the global conversion rulesets work. And it can get complicated when Gunnergoz decides to do yet another speckled terrain set. Finally we come to the question of permissions for an edition. Suppose someone decides to assemble all the mods for field guns and to write CMMOS rulesets for all of them. He doesn't really change anything, just imposes order, makes selections...and makes choices about shared bitmaps. Does he really have to go out to the authors of the mods for permissions ? Probably. Should the mod authors have any control over the editor's editorial discretion ? Probably not. [The concern here is that a mod author might try to impose conditions on the context in which his mod is presented, the context and form of presentation being the domain of the editor]. Should the mod author be allowed to vet his part of an edition before release ? Maybe, depending on how easy it is to set up a vetting process, and whether the author's involvement can contribute to the editorial process. [Vetting shouldn't be about vanity, it should be about improving the edition]. I hope that some of the issues raised in this post help clarify the thornier ones that come into play when you make a mod based on someone else who made a mod based on yet a third person. [i seem to recall that the old Latin Prose Comp book was called Matthew's Bradley's Arnold]. Philippe "Consistancy is to the life of the intellect as marriage is to the life of emotions, a confession of failure." -- O.W.