Lucky_Strike

Two ploughs are always better than one if there’s a lot of ploughing to do, especially if you need to make a deep furrow ... unless of course both are broken.

Hah, you'll be lucky, unless of course you're the mystery benefactor, in which case keep talking ...

Let's also see if we can kill my iCloud, OneDrive and Mega accounts - do Apple or MicroSoft have big enough pipes ... Go here or here or here to get the read me pdf file (please) and for the two zip archives. (Hint - if you just want to get started without any faff then download the read me, grab the first zip file and you'll be playing in no time.) Hah, just realised today is my 18th birthday on these forums to the day - happy 18th to me again ... Now I have to go and make a Sunday Roast - please don't break the internet. I'll post some more links later if needs be.

Try these - I don't think it's been updated in some time and should be fine with Windows 10. You may need to run it as Admin on Windows, haven't used it for a while so not 100% sure. Mod Tools.zip

Thanks Erwin. Okay here are a few links to my Google Drive - not sure how long they will last: Go here to get the read me pdf file (please) Then here and here for the two zip archives. (Hint - if you just want to get started without any faff then download the read me, grab the first zip file and you'll be playing in no time.) These won't last for ever so grab them asap. I will post some other links soon, and will try to get the file to Bootie for the warehouse.

Well that killed my DropBox account fairly quickly, guess we can thank @Petrus58 for that as he seems to be the only one with the files . I'll try to find somewhere else to upload them and add extra links here asap. In the meantime please enjoy the view ...

Okay folks - it's the weekend (still) and now that all the drama is over we can get back to driving tanks through hedges ... and of course today remembering the guys that did it for real. Go here to get the read me pdf file (please) Then here and here for the two zip archives. (Hint - if you just want to get started without any faff then download the read me, grab the first zip file and you'll be playing in no time.) Once it's been out for a few days and nobody has complained that it's broken their rig I'll get in touch with @Bootie to upload it to the warehouse, 'cos he probably hasn't got anywhere near enough to do ... Now try to play this at iron, at ground level, with no spotting icons ... everything will soon suck!

Yes, kinda disturbing that something with such sinister connections can be trivialised so easily and taken waaay out of context. The company that produces this stuff, ArtifexHistoria, also produces some other choice objects, which appear for sale on some pretty mainstream sites, that are quite worryingly near the top of Google searches. Nothing remotely historical or research connected, just tut like t-shirts, phone covers and weird acrylic blocks for your bookshelf. This ain't stuff for reenactors neither, it's just plain ignorance or they've a hidden agenda, I couldn't say which.

Yep, we been lookin’ at the same stuff by the sounds of it. I do have some books in pdf form that I will take a spin through and a couple of very recent tomes that have some less common photos, but don’t hold out much hope of finding an actual pic of one. As Frenchy says the SS tended to issue helmet covers as standard, which were on the whole made of everything but pea dot. And a handful of mud was pretty much just as effective ... Anyway I may have to get me one of those mugs for Christmas...

Not found any examples yet but I'll keep looking. In the meantime ... I've come up with some, huhhum, references that you can consider for another mod These are, perhaps, a bit contemporary but every good Waffen trooper should at least have one or two of them in his kit ... These are all real things ... sigh ...

I thought there must have been a reason why I never made any when I did my helmet covers. Was going to look into it but you’ve saved me a job, thanks. Not to take away from Jace11’s excellent efforts, mind. These types of covers could have been field-improvised from discarded clothes. Now there’s something I CAN research, oh good something else to obsess over ... TA

LOL mod p0rn ... Erwin’s right of course. Just pick one and get yourself an addiction. I personally always do the terrain first, then get stuck into the real juicy stuff like tank p0rn ... RT has less choice than BN but there’s enough to keep you going for a few months until F&R.

Something's stirring in the hedgerows ... ... this weekend get you download folders ready ...

Most like a soldier of fortuna ...

Soon my friend, soon ...

Merci mon ami. Great, atmospheric screen shot, as always. As one US officer noted at the time “the enemy can be ten feet away and be undetected. He can fight up to spitting range” ... Our beloved and feared bocage is almost ready, one tree to finish and then I can release the new version.

Haha, it will be quite close to 'bung it in your Z folder', though you may have to choose what to bung in there - Sycamore or Oak, or both but not a Plane tree - choices, choices ... Oh yes, there'll be plenty that you're not already using. In fact, I will recommend that players remove everything from the earlier versions then do a new install of the mod. It's all seen some updating with many textures getting quite a radical overhaul in the last few months. Some of it will work, maybe, some may not. I don't have RT yet, but judging by what is in the demo that won't be too complex to mod. Waiting for FR to get the big bundle (Christmas is coming ). I do have all of FI so can test it in there. It'll definitely change how they look, but much of it won't suite the environments. FI in particular is a massive beast. There are so many different terrains, textures and climates used. Still I guess I've learnt quite a bit over this year that I should be able to apply some of those lessons to making any future mods. I'll work on the rest of the mod for the BN family first though, we need some bits that are specific to the Arnhem battles and the beginnings of Autumn in Western Europe, have to keep @Aragorn2002 happy Also want to work on the 3D models addendum - this'll hopefully feature, at least, new 3D models for the bocage plus things like trees and bushes, as well as some more new textures - Horse Chestnut tree anyone, gotta love a conker. Of course all of this is dependant on how the 3D modelling goes and time ...

I remember that there was a kind of CD compendium released for CMBO back in the day which did feature a whole shed-load of community-created mods. I guess with today's internet there's no real incentive to release them commercially. Of course, if anyone is willing to bung me a wad of cash they can do what they want with them ... say no more!

Thanks @benpark I haven't done anything to the low bocage 3D models yet. They are a bit more choppy than the tall bocage, which makes them ideal for thickets. They have quite a bit of random height variation, easily enough for a pixeltrüppen to kneel behind or lay down and hide. If I do make changes to any of the 3D models it's more likely to be remodelling the tall bocage as they are rather uniform in height. However the original 3D models are complex so it doesn't take much to foul them up. Here's a screen grab without any lighting changes, shadows/shaders are off, raw colour - you get a better idea of what the low bocage model is doing. This particular piece is a right angle corner, we are looking at the point of the corner from the outside, heavy forest floor ground texture, couple of trees at the same location and plenty of brush (automatically added by the choice of ground texture) ... Here's a piece of bocage I made recently. I'm either doing single plant textures, like the Sycamore sapling which can be seen in the low bocage above (large leaves, middle, left), or complex mixes like this one ... Scaled, stretched and displayed at all sorts of angles, it's often hard to distinguish the various different leaves, but the overall effect is hopefully one of natural chaos. Of course, if I do make any working 3D mods then I'll definitely push those out. I won't include any just yet though as I need to do some more work in Blender to improve my results and repeatability.

@benpark So, as I'm quite close now to finishing the bocage textures and finally releasing the mod, assuming that no other significant discoveries come to light in the meantime, I checked out what we might do for the thickets texture idea. With the amount of textures I have created it looks like we can just use some of the low bocage textures as representative of thickets in woods and forests. The image below shows a wooded area, it features quite a lot of brush doodads, two to three trees per tile, and a single tile of low bocage. The bocage is best used individually, not joined to a neighbouring piece, with corner angles and gaps looking most natural. The bocage provides some cover and concealment whilst there is also a slight mound underneath it. Placed deep in woods on heavy or light forest ground texture, the bocage will be complemented with brush doodads. Placing the bocage nearer the edge of woods with slightly less tree coverage, long grass and weed ground textures and doodads can be used with occasional bushes instead of trees. I think it looks pretty convincing. Whilst the hedge may have worked well if it's remodelled and given a distinct, tagged texture, I think we can avoid this altogether just using a mix of bocage textures, a simpler and easier approach for players and map makers - makers will just need to suggest the player uses some of my mod for full effect. The ReShaded version - single bocage tile and plenty of brush. Same view with @RockinHarry's movie shader - the scene is quite dark as you'd expect in a wood. Anyway, I'll leave it up to you folks to decide how this works. I can make a tagged, custom hedge texture, but for now I'll keep the mod focussed on the bocage as was my original intention. If there's enough of a clamour for a custom texture then I'll see what I can do when I make the customised 3D models addendum.

Not so sure it’s Ukrainian, isn’t that a Russian Blue?

Thanks umlaut, much appreciated. I was just testing a few things when I saw this bucolic view, feeling a bit like a tourist I couldn't resist taking snap of it. I have almost finished with tweaking the bocage textures, then I have the only to finalise the Sycamore tree and make a few last tweaks to some of the other textures, so release is very soon. I know I've said it before, but there's really not a lot left to do this time!

Bocage textures are almost done, and we nearly have Sycamore trees ... A pretty view ... sigh, remember the summer ... ... and without ReShade ... ... just RockinHarry's movie shader

AKAIK the big things that ReShade does that the nVidia controls don't provide are to do with focus and bloom. I think it would be possible to tweak some things in the nVidia controls to change sharpening, colour and those AAA settings (which I frankly don't fully understand). That combined with maybe a custom movie mode might get some of it, BUT the movie mode doesn't play nice with anti aliasing. When I run movie mode with ReShade it somehow switches off depth effects. I don't think anyone has found a way of using the movie mode to alter things like focus and bloom, though it may be possible. The problem is, from my point of view, I don't fully understand what all the settings in the custom shader files and nVidia controls actually do, there's a lot of blind trial and error. With ReShade it's more like using image manipulation software, like PhotoShop, which I have a better understanding of, and, importantly, provides instant visual feedback. I do remember reading a while back that nVidia and AMD were both looking at (and have probably implemented by now) some sort of image post processing, akin to what ReShade does, to work with their graphics cards. This makes sense since cards are now so powerful, why not leverage some of that extra processing power to give gamers more customisation options. Heck, if I was them I'd be licensing ReShade to implement in my GPUs. Imagine the improvements in speed they could bring to the party if it was native to their cards. I know that ReShade is a pig to set up and get right, God knows how many hours it's taken me to get used to its quirks, but once it's running, with just some of the simple filters, it's actual fairly easy. I use a couple of the more complex filters to achieve depth-of-field and light adaptation - these do take a toll on frame rates, but they aren't necessary for colouring and bloom, they're just nice for screen shots. Colouring can be achieved with the simple use of a LUT and one filter which have a near zero impact on frame rate, while bloom is down to just one or two filters with a quite low impact on frame rate. Those two combined are quite powerful and can make a significant difference to what the game looks like. Granted they are not fire and forget, one does need to invest a bit of time to get the software running and understanding how to operate it, but once it's set up it's a case of switching it on and off with one hotkey, or a couple of hotkeys and a menu to change the preset for say different weather conditions, something that movie mode doesn't allow for without a complete restart and swapping files. Maybe when I finish with this mod I'll do a newer guide to ReShade, but to be honest there are a couple of CM related guides that provide plenty of good info, most of which is still pretty relevant. @Mord's guide: and @HerrTom's post and pdf guide here: ... have both provided excellent info to get started. The good thing with ReShade, because it's a stand-alone image post processor, is that it can't do anything to damage your CM installs. Granted it installs some files into your CM game directories but they can simply be deleted if it's not for you.

Thanks Aragorn, much appreciated. I’ve got some new stubble fields that should do nicely for early autumn in the Low Countries, which I’m going to include in the mod.