Philippe
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Posts posted by Philippe
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What scenarios were these, what version do you have, and how did you go about installing them? You're not being clear.
When you talk about versions, do you mean SC 2 WaW 1.01 as opposed to 1.02? SC and SC 2 Blitzkrieg can't read each other's scenarios as far as I know, and SC 2 Blitzkrieg scenarios need to be converted to work properly in WaW.
Are you sure you installed the scenarios properly? If you just dump them into the SC folder without looking nothing much will happen. I set up my own mods so you can do that and get away with it, but as far as I know nobldy else does.
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Nice work.
This is the last thing you want to hear at this point in your work, but did you try making the counters bigger to fit the silhouettes since you can't make the silhouettes smaller without losing to much detail?
It might make the board too cluttered looking, but all you would need to do is figure out the right size for the widest image (probably the battleship) and make the counters a little bit wider.
You can figure out what the maximum limit is by looking at the british artillery and infantry counters near Alexandria in the last screenshot: as long as they don't overlap you're fine.
I suspect, however, that spacing will work against this.
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Move the contents of your old machine to your new machine. Then go into CMAK (which won't work in the new machine) and copy the BMP folder and put it in a safe place. Do the same for the wav folder if you have any sound mods. Then reinstall CMAK. Then copy the wav and bmp folders back into your fresh install of CMAK. You won't have to go crazy trying to remember if you reinstalled a certain mod or not, only to discover six months later that you didn't.
This is even more useful to do with CMBB than CMAK because, being an older game, it is likely to have a lot more cherished mods that you don't even remember that you installed. And my mod stockpile for CMBB was huge (too big to copy onto CD's).
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And version 1.08 of my Authentic Flag Mod over at CMMODS includes flags, 2-D, and 3-D unit counters for the Typhoon scenario. These will have to be reinstalled every time you update the scenario.
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Depending on whether the two computers are compatible or not, it is possible to hook a cable into both of them and dump the contents of one hard drive into the other. Installed programs won't work after that (you have to reinstall so it gets into the systems registry, or sumfink), but it works very nicely with collections of inert data like a bmp folder.
I'm not that good with computers and I've managed to perform this operation for two different people. It didn't cost very much ($15 for transfer software and cable) and it was a heck of a lot easier than making DVD's of every folder in a crowded computer. And I was just settling down to read the manual to figure out how long it would take and it was done.
N.B. -- It helps if both computers use USB ports.
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And while I was writing that long message you figured out how to post large images. Bravo, my anti-virus alarms are much happier.
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That looks pretty darned good. I really think you should try to release it yourself. You did the work, you deserve the glory.
A couple of long-winded suggestions, though, which you can ignore if you wish.
You need to construct a readme file that covers a couple of points. The version number of the mod (I'm assuming we're looking at 1.0 or its predecessor) in case you put it through several iterations. A comment similar to the one you made in your post -- I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't use barbed wire fences anywhere in Europe, that fence is almost certainly military only (and I've seen photographs of German defenses that use coiled concertina wire and straight wire like what you have here).
I really like the way the wire curls around the post. I'm assuming you have a source photograph for that -- if it's period and colorful by all means include it as a jpeg, otherwise keep the little man safe out of sight behind the wizard's curtain.
You might want to do a search at cmmods in the cmbb and cmak sections for straight wire fences -- there are a couple of them, and I think it may give you some ideas. What would I be worried about? CMBB uses a very dark palette, and you want to be sure that the wire (which is probably a bit on the rusty side irl) doesn't glow in the dark from two kilometers away. Or at least not anymore than anything else does. The way you do this is to feed the wire portion of the mod into a program of the photoshop variety (you don't need the full program, just something that lets you fiddle with brightness and contrast) and get the wire so it looks like every thing else. I suspect the posts already blend in nicely, so you'll need to adjust the brightness/contrast of the wire separately from the posts. You'll have to make a few adjustments, test, make a few more, lather rinse and repeat until you like what you see (then sleep on it for two days and see if you still like it).
Try to mention the name of the modder and his mod that you derived your posts from, if only in passing. Sometimes things like this have surprisingly long pedigrees.
The brightness of the wire issue will vary, of course, from computer to computer. But if you can get it looking appropriately subdued on your machine, chances are, unless its a Mac, it will look good on just about everybody else's. I say this because the light trimming on a lot of the uniform mods (especially the German officers' hats) is way too bright, and outrageously labor intensive to adjust for your own machine if you didn't make the original mod yourself. And it also makes a difference whether you look at the mod from ten (game) meters away or two kilometers. If you can see it from two klicks away, it's too bright.
And I know we're encouraged to save bandwidth, but I hate having to click on thumbnails to see a mod image. Half the time the thumbnails trigger my anti-virus alarms because of their advertising, and they're really slow to load. If you poke around in Imageshack there's a setting that puts the whole image on the forum site from the word go.
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If I understand correctly he thinks showing Korea and Vietnam with the north-south axis running left-to-right looks a little weird. It's not about creating the illusion of perspective, it's about whether you put north at the top of the map or on the left.
If I were designing a board game for Vietnam I'd want the NVA/VC player sitting on the west side of the map facing east with the US/ARVN on the east facing west. But for Korea I'd want the North Koreans/Chinese in the north facing south, with the South Koreans/UN in the south facing north.
[ January 10, 2008, 08:28 AM: Message edited by: Philippe ]
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This should be posted in the opponents wanted forum.
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Actually, in this case you get more than what you paid for. These maps are very good value, but they're only a first step and need to be used intelligently.
Nice resource, nice find!
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It's pretty good, a bit like Dr. Johnson's dog walking on two legs. I'm sure with time it will be an amazing resource, but for the moment my money's still on French hiking maps.
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That's a really great resource for the contour lines.
But never forget that there's been more than half a century of furious change to most of the topographical features, so when you're putting together a map from the 1940's it's a bit like being an archeologist.
So you still need to look at old maps and aerial photographs for things like forests, hints as to which (if any) of the roads were paved, locations of old buildings, etc. And never forget that old maps of the Soviet Union often contained deliberate errors.
Having said that, I'm off to see if I can get Google to do a topographical map at 1:10,000.
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If you look in the Italian section of the Sorted Scenarios in the CMAK section of Cmmods you will find all the finished Salerno scenarios that are available.
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The short answer is CMBO is the ugliest.
Out-of-the-box CMBO (which is what you have) bears very little resemblance to CMAK and CMBB.
CMBO in its original state was unbearably ugly. CMBB and CMAK came out with graphics that were about two point something generations of CMBO mods.
If you really work at it you can mod CMBO up to about third generation. Because CMAK and CMBB start at about second generation they can be modded to about fifth or higher, effectively off the scale in CMBO terms.
CMAK and CMBB share a lot of common mods, but the difference in appearance has more to do with Eastern Europe versus North Africa/Mediterranean/Western Europe. It really comes down to whether you get turned on by hearing your soldiers shouting in Russian, Romanian, and Finnish as opposed English and French.
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Wargames switched from squares to hexagons in the early nineteen sixties. The reason for the change was that a one hex movement on a field of hexagons always covers exactly the same distance, regardless of the direction of the move. On the other hand, a one square move on a field of squares covers different distances depending on whether the move is on a diagonal or not.
If a force is arrayed in a diagonal line on field of squares it is possible to slip a piece through the line by moving along the other diagonal if there aren't any zone of control rules in effect. This can never be an issue with hexagons, because you always move across the side of a space and never through the corners.
You're over forty years too late to even be discussing this. A designer chooses to use squares, hexagons, areas, or points of intersection on movement paths based on what he feels works best for a particular simulation. It's absurd to talk about one system being inherently better than another. You either like the designer's choice or you don't, and if you don't, then go out and design your own game.
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There used to be a set of soviet period maps of southern russia at one of the american universities in california that you could access on-line. The scale was a bit larger than what one would normally look for, but they were so detailed that it didn't really matter.
They were also in Russian and contained deliberate mistakes. But apart from that they were almost as good as a French hiking map. I'm sure that Andreas or Kingfish can point you in the right direction.
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Please don't get the impression that I'm running a commercial for Dell computers, but just for the heck of it I called them up and asked about this and they not only sell many computers with XP but will do a downgrade on most systems from Vista to XP if it's done within the 21-day return period.
Given the nature of your issue you might try dropping an e-mail to Matt at Battlefront and to Hubert at Fury, and see what they recommend. One person I've asked even liked Vista, but admitted that he didn't play older-style games. If it were me I'd bypass the issue entirely and go for XP. But I'm a knee-jerk ultra-reactionary about this kind of thing, still pining for DOS and 98SE systems.
By the way, have you checked to see if updating your drivers makes it any better?
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Very, very nice.
One thing, though.
I'm familiar with expressions relating to grandmothers and eggs, and even to grandmothers and sarding, but I'm entirely ignorant when it comes to mothers and eggs. Care to enlighten us on the full idiom?
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I always assumed that the UK government would relocate to Toronto.
But is there anything specific that we can point to?
Maybe they would have been happier in Vancouver?
Things were done on a much more improvisational basis back then, but you would think someone must have been told to check out available office space during the summer of 1940, just in case...
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If the Germans had managed to launch a successful invasion, does anyone know where the UK government would have evacuated to? Canada? Egypt? India? South Africa? Australia? Was anything written about this at the time that gives an indication?
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Probably.
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Everything I hear suggests that Vista is a contender for the Windows ME award. I would seriously try to take your computer back to the store that sold it to you and get them to downgrade it to Windows XP. I've heard that's been happening quite a bit in Europe, and it's worth a try.
People in the business of selling machines can often make arrangements to return unwanted software that are not possible for individual retail buyers. And their motivation for doing it is that they want your repeat business.
You really don't want to be stuck with Vista. It will take years to get all the hiccups soted out, by which time it will have been replaced by something better. Why suffer?
So talk to your retailer.
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Posting at cmmods is very easy.
You go to cmmods.com.
You'll have to register to get in. You'll also need a password, but if you click on the checkmark you'll never have to remember it.
Go to SC2 Campaigns.
Click on Add a Campaign.
Then follow the directions.
Be sure to include a readme file with installation instructions and a version number for the mod. Also mention which version of which game the mod is for.
You'll need to have the mod zipped and ready to upload, and there must be no spaces in its name.
If you don't have a zip program I would recommend going to subsim.com's download section for Silent Hunter III, and at the top of the page they have links to Winzip and Winrar. Get the Winrar, because it has a much less annoying reminder that you haven't purchased it, and also because it allows you to use zip and rar files, and does a better job with the zip than Winzip (go figure).
Compose your notes for the download page of cmmods ahead of time (copy and paste from a word or a text file), and make sure you have a jpeg sample of your mod ready for upload (this one is not zipped and has no spaces in its file name).
Uploading takes longer than downloading, so you may have to read a book while the file uploads, even if you have broadband.
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Does anyone happen to know what Allied forces were in the neighborhood of Albania from November 1944 on? I read somewhere that the Albanians were supposed to have liberated themselves. Is this correct?
upconvert scenarios?
in Strategic Command 2 Scenario and Mods Forum
Posted
Just downloaded it and it doesn't work in my version of SC 2 Blitzkrieg either.
But there's a readme file in there that says "USE WITH SC2 VERSION 1.02".
Knowing nothing about this particular mod I would have to take the modder at his word. This is a prime example of why modders should always include contact information, because the author is usually the only one who can really support a mod properly.
When you try to load the scenario in the editor you get an error message to the effect that the garrison text file is missing and the game cannot load.
I suspect that to play this scenario you might need to roll your version of SC 2 back to 1.02, which is pretty drastic given that SC 2 is now at 1.08. When you first mentioned 1.02 I thought you might be talking about WaW because that happens to be its current version number.
@Bill The readme file is interesting -- this is exactly the kind of scenario that's been discussed in another forum. If there were a way to open it I'd say it's a candidate for a conversion to WaW along with a complete overhaul and rewrite (because of the differences in the engine).