Lucky_Strike

It is that time of the year when everything seems to be called Pumpkin Spice this or Pumpkin Spice that...

BARB PUMPKIN SPICE VILLAGE DEFENSE
^Udachnyy Vystrel, Soviet Union. Fall 1941. Afternoon in a seemingly quiet Russian village. Light wind from the north. 
^You are Untersturmfuhrer Otto Grossenkeister and lead the 1st platoon of 5th Company in the II Battalion of SS Grenadier Regiment Deutschland of SS Division Reich. Attached to your company is a 50mm mortar and an HMG34. Your ammo supply is severely depleted.
^Battalion reports that several small groups of Red Army stragglers are passing through headed eastward.
^Defend the village while you await resupply.
^You have to hold on for 30-40 minutes. Points are awarded for destroying enemy units and occupying several key areas in the village.
The new scenario file is in the below overall folder link along with the mods folders...
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yoptddfhbnym47w/AAC6dl5WOcTGGxN2jm3CuqRAa?dl=0

Yes, I honestly haven't seen any crashes that I could link to ReShade; all it's doing is taking the game output and manipulating the image more or less.
I've never played ARMA, nor many other games at all for that matter, but I've seen plenty of YouTube content about them and I certainly agree that some lighting FX would be great to have. ReShade can only go so far with things like bloom and other glow FX. It's interesting that we have ambient sound FX but not really much in the way of ambient lighting FX, other than the pretty crude shaders - guess it's just much easier to have sounds loop in the background.
I'm certain I've seen some pine forest floor textures. The biggest issue is one of scale. Finding a texture that is the right scale for how much area the texture occupies. Someone did some experiments with how much the ground textures are stretched in game and I also did some to see how big all the textures would need to be to all have the same resolution. Grass is by far the worst, it would need to be something silly like 500MB to resolve the same as, for example, ground dirt. Just not practical. The forest floor textures are much better as they occupy a much smaller area. I actually use them instead of other textures quite often because of this. They make an excellent base for bocage for instance, especially because of their added brush. I'll see what I have.
No, I get more of a hit just turning on shadows in game!
Yes, I don't rely on in game AA anymore, it's just not that good and again adds to the overhead. I stil use your shader i=on my Mac though - it rocks🤘
Hah!
Yes Butschi's script look fantastic. I love to make small maps for experimenting with mods so I will certainly be looking at it once it's finished.

This is very creative, could certainly change the look of those.
Yes, and 16 is a lot of mods to make, many of which probably only get used by a few players, especially 'cos they have to be added when a scenario is created, so takes effort. I reckon we get the defensive works set done then see how much interest there is.
I got a couple of external USB C enclosures for NVMe M.2 drives - they connect to my Mac via Thunderbolt (USB C) and are actually faster than the internal drive. I have one just for real life work stuff and the other is where all my CM stuff and photos etc live.
Mmhuh ... 🙄
Interesting - does the PaK spring back at all - those things certainly have a kick.
Yep, witness the forums at the moment ...
For sure, we press on regardless. I get annoyed but at the end of the day folks here give me plenty of inspiration.
Yes, certainly wouldn't go amiss. We all have only so much time to give to this, even complete CM devotees have a RL somewhere and interests can easily wane over time. None of us is getting any younger. If BF are interested in making more games and / or money then the younger bloods are where they really need to focus, and those guys will have much higher expectations of their games that old lags like us had at the start. But I know all this has been said before  ...

My new mod project - Girls und Panzer ...

THIS IS A REAL THING!!!
I'm going to bed now to dream about my next modding project!

Yes, why not. It would still retain the qualities of the picket fences, but look like a metal fence. I remember @Falaise wanted a stone wall with metal fencing on the upper part, like one sees in many towns and villages in Normandy, and here for that matter. I think both would be doable. Where'd you get that model Nigel?
 

Thanks Nigel, I'll take a look, see what I think.

Yep, they're fine if your setup matches mine exactly - otherwise ... nah.
Especially when dishing out some .50cal goodness from their M3's

Hey JM here's something that may be of interest to you (and others) in your quest for MDS goodness ...
I was rootling around the internet, like one does, searching for more info on the .mds format when I remembered the link you posted above. It happened to tie in with some other info I found on a dead forum about Castle Wolfenstein (CW), anyway the guy who was mentioned was the same guy as in your link above. So I went to your link drilled down through it ... surprise, surprise ... it's on a github page set up by a fella named Norman Mitschke who has written a very complete looking addon with tutorial for Blender to import and export MD3, MDC, MDS, MDM/MDX and TAG, all model formats linked to CW. Notice the MDS format is in there. More importantly the addon can be downloaded from his github.
Now, before you get too excited 🤪 on your holiday, unable to contain yourself and jump on the next plane, train or automobile home, I have already downloaded it and installed it into all the versions of Blender I currently have installed on my Mac - 2.79, 2.81, 2.83, 2.93.4 - it installed on all, though it's written for 2.80 (presumably upwards), and only complained on 2.79 that it was not meant for 2.79 so might not work. Of course I immediately tried to import a CM MDS file, but on all Blender versions, except in 2.79, I got an error which looks to be a script error perhaps - 'unpack requires a buffer of 52 bytes' - or something like that. In 2.79 I got a whole string of error messages about missing armatures (this perhaps suggests it's in the right ballpark).
Hmmm 🤨. I don't really have enough interest in this to pursue it. My brain already hurts 😫 just from working with MDR files in Blender, but I know you are very keen to learn more about these MDS files. What I did notice is that at the bottom of the home page in the first link above is a copyright notice Copyright 2019 Norman Mitschke which is very recent (in CM terms), you can click on Norman's name to send an email to him ... he is based in Germany by the looks of his email address.
Maybe a step closer ...

In Stalingrad, ironically enough it was most often the 10th NVKD Division themselves who found themselves victim to Stalin's order #227 "Not a Step Back".

This is interesting. I wonder if I create a file in the mentioned location would the game pick up on it, I don't see why not. I have a problem on my 5K iMac - it's such high res that running the game at native resolution makes the GUI really tiny. I use to the aforementioned EasyRes to switch my screen to a workable resolution, trouble is that's a little different than my preferred everyday resolution, so it would be good to have a specific resolution set just for the game without having to change it for all my other stuff as well. Worth a shot.

A free trip to Berlin they said...what could possibly go wrong?

Ah, it's important to hear that from you LS. So now I know presets don't really work as intended.
And in response to my previous screenshots here... I present THE CLEAN UP CREW:



 
I never knew having a dedicated QRF could be so useful

My new mod project - Girls und Panzer ...

THIS IS A REAL THING!!!
I'm going to bed now to dream about my next modding project!

Yes, I do wonder if it's actually doable. Once I get stuck in I really enjoy it so what the hell I'm gonna try anyway.
Christmas trees ... that reminds me ...

 
Now if only there was some way to light it up and put a nice warm glow in the windows of the church and cottage it would look idyllic.
There are some very good free resources out there on the web for textures, so I say go for it. Customising it to your personal taste is what it's all about. If you want any of my original layered files give me a shout.
Now is certainly the time to get out and take some pictures of fallen leaves. 🍂
Yeah presets can be a bit of a problem if the version of ReShade is different (newer). Lots of the fx may have been replaced or superseded. Even on my PC some of my older presets don't seem to load the complete set of FX.
Thanks Harry, you're more than welcome. And yes, I'm determined to get this one finished. 🌲🌳🎄

Harry's talking about my presets from my Hedgerow Hell mod, but yes same problem, I struggled with Herrtom's as well. I think that so much changes with ReShade as newer versions are released that preset become redundant quite quickly. Same issue with some I downloaded from various places, barely any work as expected sadly.

My new mod project - Girls und Panzer ...

THIS IS A REAL THING!!!
I'm going to bed now to dream about my next modding project!

My new mod project - Girls und Panzer ...

THIS IS A REAL THING!!!
I'm going to bed now to dream about my next modding project!

I´d say yes, basically. Reusing geometry for the poles and doing smaller stuff with alpha layers. But it´s quite a lot of work and 16 its options got to be made for full usability. Balconies have also a number of metal fencing that could possibly be reused as well. META again, should all be preserved for flawless functionality I guess. What´s in other games actually? (CMSF2, BS and CW) Maybe one can "steal" something.
Flavor might work better, if you just need few options and connect things to your own needs.
Edit: I use balconies for sunken buildings sometimes.

must be possible we can do a lot and replace it. flavour object are really welcome !
I have a truck with fences, in my wrecks, ... waiting to be delevering !😄
JM

Hey guys would this be possible to make a metal fence from this say by using Picket fence or something?????? Big city all have metal fences etc be nice to add to the collection. Cheers

Yes I know like you the story of the brzs, that you give me a copy of yours "empty" brzs after of course reoganized them in folders, we were talking about this a long time and personly now I am working with folders like mentioned above, for every CMs games that I have, but I keep again the original brz full because I found sometimes, that the game take long to load on the beginning but is perhaps only to me, we were talking about in the past.
Is this always the case to you, are you always working with "empty" brzs, or you are comming back to the original ones ?

I recommand this folders system, to every CMs players to see more clear where is what when you are searching a certain kind of files, that  you dont have to unpack all yours brzs, but this demand a little organisation and certainly, no fear to do something wrong for the good running of your game.
For furthers updates I don t see any problems if we are using this system, so long we are respecting the "order" of news added brzs when an update is available. ...
In case of update I guess that the game copy only the news files, and replace it by the news ones or he do more as that, how work exaclty an update or a patch ?
JM

The Big Boss has landed.

And since I've already shown you a bit of the map, here's a litter teaser:

No new features, I just like the autumn looks on this map. Btw. this where I grew up. Well, at the base of the hill in the background in the middle. 😉 

Autumn, winter, spring, everywhere - yes my plan was always to do a full set of vegetation for all the WW2 titles. Much of it can be ported across between titles so it's a little less work than it might seem. FI is the biggest challenge, the sheer breadth of seasons and climate variations is daunting. I tried HH in FI and, although it works well for some things, it was obvious that it fell short for much of the terrain. If I avoid doing ground textures which are already quite well covered, then it's really the trees and crops that would be most time consuming. Grasses tend to look similar across the wider  European theatre, weeds, brush and flowers change a bit, whilst hedgerows and bocage will also need some work.
I did start RT but had to stop for a while. However now that I'm back into using Blender I can resume my work on trees and bocage. Probably what I'll do is a second version of HH with new tree models and revised bocage as well as some extras for the Low Countries and the Market Garden operations. Then the proper RT summer set. After that making the autumn/winter/spring sets will be easier, though snow covered stuff represents a bit of a problem which I have yet to resolve to my satisfaction. FI will borrow from all the rest with extras like olive trees and vineyards ...
So that's me busy for the next decade 😬, probably just in time for CMx3.
As for the ReShade presets in HH, I should probably replace them or not include them, they are pretty old now and I doubt they will give the intended results in the latest version.

Yep, forgivable on V1 but still not in any new games...well??????