Lucky_Strike

Progress on the Brandenburg Gate ...

Tested the roofless side temples and making the whole thing into a multi flavor object build - virtual lego! Works well, need to do some wall thickening around the roof supports and gables, as well as some slight repositioning of stuff so it's actually attached, not floating - there are small hidden gaps in the original model.

What's nice about this approach is that the model doesn't flick in and out of view so much since more of the mdr origins stay in frame for more of the time. Note also how the guard houses in the front temples can be properly enclosed with this method of building ...

The two guard house temples at the front will probably be the same FO repeated, the two rear ones will be two unique FOs because it's obvious from archive photos how they were quite differently damaged from bombing. The main central support columns and walls, except for two, will all be one FO that can be repeated, the remaining two, which will be attached to the portico, will hopefully have some unique modelling for variety. If you want to start on some textures Nigel you could make the faces for the guard houses - I have used a part destroyed 5 storey modular single block for those.
On a different note and moving ahead a couple of decades ... this could go into CMCW ... anyone planning a Berlin Wall scenario set in the Cold War - bit of Harry Palmer action ... Checkpoint Charley and all that ... 

Should I make the model now or wait for the call from BF? 😉

Progress on the Brandenburg Gate ...

Tested the roofless side temples and making the whole thing into a multi flavor object build - virtual lego! Works well, need to do some wall thickening around the roof supports and gables, as well as some slight repositioning of stuff so it's actually attached, not floating - there are small hidden gaps in the original model.

What's nice about this approach is that the model doesn't flick in and out of view so much since more of the mdr origins stay in frame for more of the time. Note also how the guard houses in the front temples can be properly enclosed with this method of building ...

The two guard house temples at the front will probably be the same FO repeated, the two rear ones will be two unique FOs because it's obvious from archive photos how they were quite differently damaged from bombing. The main central support columns and walls, except for two, will all be one FO that can be repeated, the remaining two, which will be attached to the portico, will hopefully have some unique modelling for variety. If you want to start on some textures Nigel you could make the faces for the guard houses - I have used a part destroyed 5 storey modular single block for those.
On a different note and moving ahead a couple of decades ... this could go into CMCW ... anyone planning a Berlin Wall scenario set in the Cold War - bit of Harry Palmer action ... Checkpoint Charley and all that ... 

Should I make the model now or wait for the call from BF? 😉

While you're at it, don't forget the T-80B.
Lmfao, this **** is so broken.
I really want to like this title, but it's absolute rushed crap. And the worst part is BFC hasn't fixed any of these issues. It apparently takes a couple minutes. Lol. What a high quality game.

Note the difference between the T-80B and the Bmp-1:

That´s what one can suppose I think. Photo is from a UK reenactor group and it´s hard finding real WW2 combat footage unfortunately. 😐 The mod ain´t perfect as well and has to deal with same idiosyncrasies like original BFC setup. But it does the purpose IMO giving just the right amount of protection in appropriate combat situations. One can still take heavy losses if employing these WW2 IFV´s in wrong way (urban, close range engagements, side profile exposure etc). @George MC´s combat manual describes it all very well.
So here´s the graphical misalignments between (modded) machine gun and gunner object as mentioned earlier. Test shootings with CMRT V2.12
Default after "open up" (almost perfect, assuming the gunner targets something faaaar away)

 
engaging target at 400m straight ahead (mesh intersections)

 
target 100m straight ahead

 
400m straight ahead and up a 8 story high building

(black smoke is a test mod btw. Not part of the main mod)
it´s not nice but the "gunner mod" wasn´t intended to look nicer, but give a slight amount of better protection frontally! It still sucks from the side, but so is the game system putting the gunner up when he better should not. 😑

I personally find it actually does look much nicer. Not perfect, but an improvement.

A few shots from today:

I don't know why I hadn't tried this before with tall walls. It's not an absolute guarantee that one can keep the pixeltruppen out, if the wall is destroyed by HE fire they can still get in, or they can use breach charges to get in, but as a measure to stop defenders using it for cover or as an escape route it's ideal. The low wall are perfect for blocking most light vehicles. 
Now it's just a case of more testing, more texturing and we hopefully have a pretty reasonable, functioning model. 

Everyone feel free to post your recent photojournalism from the front, as it happens!
 
Just a little playtesting of things to come.  Here, as evening falls and the sun sinks fast, embedded with the troops in Russia...









 

I don't know why I hadn't tried this before with tall walls. It's not an absolute guarantee that one can keep the pixeltruppen out, if the wall is destroyed by HE fire they can still get in, or they can use breach charges to get in, but as a measure to stop defenders using it for cover or as an escape route it's ideal. The low wall are perfect for blocking most light vehicles. 
Now it's just a case of more testing, more texturing and we hopefully have a pretty reasonable, functioning model. 

Maybe already stated or already understood by all...
I just want to say that using CMFI as the host title for this mod and using CMFI Italians as the host for the IJA is EXCELLENT choice from the point of view of a lot of variety in their opponents (US, British, Commonwealth, French, etc.) AND internally with the "mds-mdr-game code" dynamics, by tweaking appearance and unit type as you purchase the Japanese force in a scenario you can have a pleasant variety of headgear and uniforms (normal Italians, Bersaglieri "featherheads" and the blackshirts gives 3 uniform options and 2 helmet sets).  THEN as a cherry on top of this dessert somebody has gotta do Aleutians in cold weather gear in the snow...  I am busy in a different snowy area at the moment.
Good luck guys. Always awesome tinkerings going on. BFC should be bloody ashamed.

Another test package incoming. It´s modified versions of latest 250/251 as available in CMRT V2.11 or V2.12
They´re geared toward (test) playing @George MC´s CMRT Five Days One Summer campaign from Battle Pack 1. https://www.battlefront.com/red-thunder/cmrt-battle-pack-1/
At least it´s those german vehicles I found in this campaign´s battle 1 thus far. But off course can be test played in any other CMRT battle containing these. They´re:
SdKfz 251/1 D - standard IFV
SdKfz 251/3 D - command version
SdKfz 251/2 D - mortar carrier
SdKfz 251/7 D - engineer version
SdKfz 250/1 neu - standard small IFV
(others will follow. C versions 251 and more)
When applicable I changed MG gunner as well as seating position for passengers. These give sitting passengers and gunners a lower profile vs incoming enemy small arms fire. Included is just the (same) gunner animation, giving him both, a somewhat lower profile and different pose (Black Sea M320 rifleman). Modded vehicles and gunner pose are interconnected, so they only work well if using both the same time!
Note: Gunner pose is only well aligned initially (after "open up"). When targeting an enemy or area, alignment goes FUBAR since the machine gun object and gunner don´t synchronize nor move together well. That´s the same for unchanged BFC original too. However... main idea is reducing the gunners footprint and trade off bits of a misalignment when he starts engaging targets. Any feedback on that welcomed!
Remaining infantry animation files are still under test but otherwise finished. I´ll upload these when ready. These animation (pose) files prevent related infantry types to go full stand up for when engaging enemies outside the carrier vehicle (across sidewall shooting). These include "aiming", "shooting" and "reloading" with related variations (up, down, left, right, transition).
Pose/Animation files will be:
P38 pistol
K98k rifle
MP40 smg
Stg44 AR
and others which have unique pose files and can be loaded on and shooting from modded 250/251 infantry carriers.
So here´s updated file with mentioned centent. (unzip to data/z as usual)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ubzxdunlasuer0/RHZ CMRT 250-251 Test ModPack 211122.zip?dl=0
 

I don't know why I hadn't tried this before with tall walls. It's not an absolute guarantee that one can keep the pixeltruppen out, if the wall is destroyed by HE fire they can still get in, or they can use breach charges to get in, but as a measure to stop defenders using it for cover or as an escape route it's ideal. The low wall are perfect for blocking most light vehicles. 
Now it's just a case of more testing, more texturing and we hopefully have a pretty reasonable, functioning model. 

Yeah would be easy enough to add something, whether it's an extra object, like a single red brick, or something on the texture. I'd prefer the former as it's more accurate.
Well whatever is going on it's not making any sense, a sandbag wall is a sandbag wall, I did nothing to it other than place it on the map expecting it to act as such - it didn't. I tried them on another map, Kubel went around as expected. What the engine/AI seems to do is decide okay on this map I can drive around the sandbags cos there's space, but on this map I can't SO I'LL DRIVE THROUGH THEM! What kind of decision making is that. Absolute tosh.
Nah, it's not a problem adding the buildings on the map, it all fits in quite well now. Skinning buildings is probably easier than adding extra FO parts in the model to enclose the walls, similarly with bunkers. The concrete bunkers aren't used so far as I know Nigel? @NPye, though they would have to added as a force pick by the map maker.
One of my biggest concerns is not so much direct assault on the gate as it wasn't the focus of fighting, rather a prize to capture, no I'm more concerned about the effects of HE on or near it. It being a massive FO a direct hit could easily make it just disappear without so much as a cloud of dust left behind. I tried a few barrages directly on it ...

Mix of 120mm heavy mortar and 152mm heavy howitzer batteries full barrages. Obviously they'll have no damage effect on the gate as it's an FO, but they certainly damage the enclosed buildings, walls and such. Most of the extra enclosed FOs were left untouched, a couple of fountains bought it and a column or two disappeared. Even with the addition of a 300mm rocket barrage to the mix the gate was still there. So indirect HE is not too much of a worry. A lucky shell might hit the sweet spot but chances are against it.

Indirect HE had very little effect even on the surrounding buildings, just a few extra holes in them.
More of a threat is direct HE. I set up a ISU122 about 1km away (imagining the Tiergarten approach) and set area fire on the gate, took just three or four shots then it was gone. What I figured was that the sweet spot for flavor objects is the origin/handle. One HE round there will knock it out. I moved the origin to a more protected place. This time it was much harder to disappear the gate. However area targeting the place where the origin was moved to made short work of destroying it. I did try placing the origin somewhere impossible to target - up on top of the portico - but the game engine does't like that, can't grab it to move the gate.
An interesting side effect of moving the origin right over to one side of the gate - after doing this I noticed the gate was flickering a lot more than it had done previously, popping in and out of view. Thought it might need some LODs but that didn't solve it. What causes this is when the camera viewpoint moves such that the origin is out of view but the majority of the gate is still in camera it will disappear. Seems the engine dumps FOs from view as soon as their origin is out of camera. So keeping the origin central will keep the object in view for longer, as the camera pans away it'll disappear but because by that time it's on the periphery it isn't noticed so much.
This probably explains a lot of the flicking in and out of view of other models, trees and the like, as well.
So the dilemma of how to make the gate robust enough to withstand some direct HE, stop passage by vehicles and look the part still remains to an extent. One other solution that I'm looking at is a multi-part FO. break it down into three distinct objects will give each component part better odds of surviving any direct HE fire. Might also loo again at making the cetral part into a shell for the windmill if I can figure a way to stop entry by pixeltruppen.
Onwards ...

Cool. That opens up some possible solutions that will give you a much more resilient BG and one that anyone else messing with it in their own maps can hopefully abuse to their heart's content.
I've come up with a pretty workable solution to the foundations for it which prevent vehicles passing though easily whilst giving pixeltruppen somewhere to call home but importantly no access to the central arches without a big pile of HE ...

Once the buildings are in place it's then just a case of building up the gate on top, either as a single FO or combination of several parts ... or possibly six or seven parts depending on further tests with direct HE fire.

Foundation walls ...

... buildings for added resilience ...

... FO over the buildings. This all takes a lot longer to write than it does to place the parts!
A few new skins for the various buildings and most of the look and functionality will be done, then it's a case of how I handle the BG FO itself, or it might become an existential part of one of the indi buildings if I can figure that out AND if it's worth the effort.

Fixed. Was an edit inaccuracy of mine not related to 2.12 patch. There´s no new 251/1 D model in there, so the "old" one is still valid. The guys left hand is still FUBAR, but who cares?

Hey George, just downloaded it. Does it still work fine considering the latest 2.12 patch and it´s huge amount of content? I´d guess yes, but just wanted asking. 😎
Edit: Looks like it does fine so far? Put in Aris HT mod as well. 1st battle of FDOS here.

 
my 251 mini mod looks working as well. Though there´s a lil offset of gunner now. Strange.

We had some bloke over here who thought he could be a rebel. Ignoring the will of the people whilst rolling in money and sporting bling. He started a war, lost it, and refused to accept the result, then started another war, and lost that one too. Things got a bit messy after that.
Meanwhile back in the Ardennes, has anyone found this crossroads?

Hey Lucky_Strike, 
I appreciate you getting back to me! I didn't know that about the FO's disappearing if they get hit by direct HE, but honestly, that's even better. The mission that involves the radio tower is the Ukranian retreat from the airport on the second day of the invasion when Russian land forces broke through and a second wave of VDV airborne forces were brought in by helicopter. As far as I can tell from my research of the battle, the Ukranians fired artillery and dropped bombs on the airport as they were retreating and destroyed the runway to make the airport unusable for the Russian's to land more VDV soldiers. The mission in that scenario is for the Ukranian player to pull back his forces while attempting to destroy key buildings around the map (radio tower, fuel depots, and hangars) to render the airport unusable. If the tower actually disappears around the same time the building near the base of it gets destroyed, that's fine with me.
I'll get that DM sent over to you momentarily. Thank you very much! 
As far as the height is concerned, I am not actually sure. There aren't a ton of pictures or videos from the northern part of the airfield so it's hard to really tell. I suppose I could look at the satellite imagery where I first noticed it and do some math calculations based on the length of the shadow, but let me see if I can find it in Google street view from the main roads around the airport and get a rough estimate first.

Cool. That opens up some possible solutions that will give you a much more resilient BG and one that anyone else messing with it in their own maps can hopefully abuse to their heart's content.
I've come up with a pretty workable solution to the foundations for it which prevent vehicles passing though easily whilst giving pixeltruppen somewhere to call home but importantly no access to the central arches without a big pile of HE ...

Once the buildings are in place it's then just a case of building up the gate on top, either as a single FO or combination of several parts ... or possibly six or seven parts depending on further tests with direct HE fire.

Foundation walls ...

... buildings for added resilience ...

... FO over the buildings. This all takes a lot longer to write than it does to place the parts!
A few new skins for the various buildings and most of the look and functionality will be done, then it's a case of how I handle the BG FO itself, or it might become an existential part of one of the indi buildings if I can figure that out AND if it's worth the effort.

Are there FO chimneys in CMBS? One of those might be a good model for it, tallest would be best. Send me the mdr of that as well.
Meant to ask is that picture of the mast a 3D model you have access to? If so send that too.

Hey guys, 
I'm in the process of finishing up a new campaign for CMBS set in late February/early March of this year based around the VDV landings at Hostomel Airport and their subsequent push towards Kyiv at the opening of the Russian invasion and I could really use some help with the finishing touches. I don't really understand the process of creating new flavor objects even though I've tried to follow other peoples instructions multiple times. Is there any way somebody can please hook me up with a radio tower flavor object to replace one of the chimneys? Its a significant aspect of one of the missions in the campaign and it just doesn't look or feel right having a small monument or power pole representing the tower. I've spent literally four months of my life making 1:1 scale maps of Hostomel Airport, Hostomel, a town called Sosnivka, and a stretch of roadway pictured in the infamous Maxar images of the stalled Russian convoy and it would be awesome to not have to cut corners on this one final flavor object. I was hoping for something like the picture I included below if we can make it happen, but if not, literally anything tall that looks similar will work better than the current Monument I am using. Thank you very much for any help you guys can give. I am not sure how to post pics from my computer to the forum, but I'm going to attempt to post screenshots of the Airport map so you guys can see what I'm talking about as well. 

Hey FriendlyFelon,
If we can find a suitable 3D model then this should be relatively simple. There's just one caveat with flavour objects - once they get hit in just the right spot by direct HE they will disappear from your scenario. They are quite robust with indirect HE barrages. So a question: is anyone going to be shooting directly at the mast?
If the answer is no then send me a PM attaching the model (mdr) file you are using and I can return your mast. Note I don't have CMBS so you'll have to do final testing though I can test it in a WW2 game as an FO so we should be okay.
How tall is the mast by the way - I should be able to make it the correct height for you.

Hey FriendlyFelon,
If we can find a suitable 3D model then this should be relatively simple. There's just one caveat with flavour objects - once they get hit in just the right spot by direct HE they will disappear from your scenario. They are quite robust with indirect HE barrages. So a question: is anyone going to be shooting directly at the mast?
If the answer is no then send me a PM attaching the model (mdr) file you are using and I can return your mast. Note I don't have CMBS so you'll have to do final testing though I can test it in a WW2 game as an FO so we should be okay.
How tall is the mast by the way - I should be able to make it the correct height for you.

Hey it's a pleasure mate. The texturing will have to be done at some point - then I'll be calling on your skills. 

Hey it's a pleasure mate. The texturing will have to be done at some point - then I'll be calling on your skills.