Captain_Thunder

I would suspect that T-72 is going to be more similar to the previously released eSim tank game "Steel Beasts". They are currentl working on a newer high end version of SB with many enhancements. [ADMIN: Commercial link removed] [ February 19, 2005, 12:34 AM: Message edited by: Moon ]

This might clear up some of this question: http://www.panzerworld.net/facts.html#1

I have one for the objectives at CMMOD Database. It's in with a TIGER mod file called: cmak-tiger-kh.zip. Designer name: Keith

The game probably won't play the entire thing so you should probably limit it to just the first stanza of the song and use a WAV file compressor to make it smaller. There are numerous version of the panzerlied out there on the web, mostly from the movie "Battle of the Bulge" but there are also many more "authentic" versions from other recordings and German sources. I've got several versions myself from the BofB version, 2 from WW2, and one from a vinyl LP from 1960 by a German Officers Training Corps chorus and band, which I use on my old Steel Panthers webpage.

Or you can try my two files: Panzer_roll_im_Afrika_vor.zip Unserer_Rommel_music.zip Both are authentic Afrika Korps songs posted ON CMMODs Database. Designer name: Keith

That's probably "Night on Bald Mountain".

Try my 88mm-KH.zip zip file for the Tiger or 88mm FlaK. I think you'll like it. You can find it on the CMMOD Database. Designer name: Keith

There may be but I just eyeball it. I keep Paintshop running with my edited BMP loaded so I can "UNDO" my last changes if they don't look right. I save the edited image directly to the BMP folder of the game. The original is saved with a "-A.bmp" extension so the save from PSP doesn't overwrite it. CMAK is running already but at the main menu. I then load a scenario and locate my edited graphic and inspect it for proper proportions. If I have to make a change I abort the CMAK mission. Then bring u PSP hit UNDO and make another editing change from scratch and then resave repeating the process until it looks right. It usually just takes me two or three tries to get it the way I think it should look, so it doesn't take a lot of time to adjust things this way. I can do all several adjustments in just a couple of minutes. There is probably another way, but I'm comfortable doing it this way.

There may be but I just eyeball it. I keep Paintshop running with my edited BMP loaded so I can "UNDO" my last changes if they don't look right. I save the edited image directly to the BMP folder of the game. The original is saved with a "-A.bmp" extension so the save from PSP doesn't overwrite it. CMAK is running already but at the main menu. I then load a scenario and locate my edited graphic and inspect it for proper proportions. If I have to make a change I abort the CMAK mission. Then bring u PSP hit UNDO and make another editing change from scratch and then resave repeating the process until it looks right. It usually just takes me two or three tries to get it the way I think it should look, so it doesn't take a lot of time to adjust things this way. I can do all several adjustments in just a couple of minutes. There is probably another way, but I'm comfortable doing it this way.

Unfortunately, that doesn't always seem to be the case. I've had paniced green crews drive their tanks up on to a ridge from protected hull down positions behind the ridge and into enemy fire, where, of course, they get slaughtered instead of just reversing back behind the slope for protection. There were no obstructions or fires blocking their path to rear either. They just suddenly go "stupid" and more or less advertise themselves as willing targets. "HERE I AM KILL ME!" This should really be looked into by Battlefront.

Yes, you need to stretch the modded BMPs on their background canvas (without changing the canvas size) to get them to appear in the right proportions in the game. And anything that requires a specific "facing" like words (text), a swastika, etc. has to be mirrored (reversed) before you save it so it appears in the proper facing in the game.

I added a small hole in the side skirt armor of my StuH42 mods. It's not the best effect and it appears on both sides of the tank since the side skirt armor BMP is used for both sides. Just like numbers on turrets, they appear on both sides but one side is "mirrored" (reversed) from the other. Okay for holes, but no good for numbers other than 808. If you are going to add holes, keep them small and keep them very few in number so they are not conspicously apparent all the time. The size of the hole will not show off any great amount of detail. I tried to get a jagged entry hole but it just didn't render well. It would have to be a very large hole to have jagged edges appear, IMHO. In the image below, you can see my attempt at two small holes in the side skirt armor. In the bottom pic you can just see the same hole appearing in the far side armor plate just above the gun barrel. CMMOD Database Filename: STuH42-KH.zip

I'm guessing that these "movies" are little more than data files created by the program and not true video files, i.e., not AVI, MPG, MOV or WMV files. There's probably some bug in the game that allows that data to be reinterpreted and thus the outcome is different when the data is processed by the game to supposedly reproduce the battle. I noticed something similar when my computer locked up on me due to a power spike and when I reloaded the autosave file the results of the exchange of fire was different than the previous one. I'm guessing these movie files are probably having the same sort of problem. If you want real movie files you'll have to rely on some screen capture utility like FRAPS to get an accurate reproduction of the battle that was actually fought.

The 128mm AT was never developed beyond the prototype stage. According to the info I have it was never deployed in battle. It was built by Krupp, IIRC. The peformance data on the Krupp PaK 44 is: Model 44, 128mm, 22,500 operational weight (lbs), 6.20 shell weight (lbs), 3,200 muzzle velocity (feet per second), 230mm @ 1000m armor penetration. For Comparison, the standard 88mm PaK 43 peformance data is: Model 43, 88mm, 8,150 lbs, 16.0 lbs tungsten cored shell, 3,700 f.p.s MV, 274mm @ 500m The war ended before the PaK 44 could go into production.

PBEMHelper? Being able to move the cameral independently in playback would be very nice. I'm not sure I'll be doing this sort of thing again. It was just one of those "let's see if I can do it" projects.

It was a long evening but a fun little project just to see if I could do it decently. I wish I could have retained the 640x480 resolution of the original working AVI files, which mades them easier to view, but that makes them about 5 times larger in filesize (6MB) than the WMV 360x240 files I ended up with. Either way this whole process requires huge tracts of hard drive space and lots of time and that was for just 25 turns out of the 40 turns of the mission. I'd upload them final product someplace just so people could look at it but I don't have room on my personal webspace for these three files.

I tried out Fraps99 last night just to see what would happen. Just recording two dozen turns or so uses up large amounts of hard drive space. I paused Fraps at the end of each turn before I issued orders then resumed as the next turn completed loading. This produced about a seperate AVI file for each turn. I then used VIDEDIT and old AVI file editor to remove unwanted bits of each AVI and slow segments of each turn such as a tank moving across a field. Once I had all the AVIs edited the way I wanted them I had to tack them together in order. I tried putting all 25 segments together and saving it but VIDEDIT didn't like that and would not write the save file. I didn't have any other editor that would handle such a large AVI file so I opted for putting 7 segments together in three seperate AVI files. Each one of these work files ended up around 1.3GB in size. To reduce the file size I then ran each work file through Windows Media Encoder and converted them to 360x240 WMV files which compressed them down to one tenth their previous size at 1.5MB to 1.8MB. In the end I ended up with a movie in three segments that has a total run time of about 5 minutes. I used the demo Line of Defense save file made after the Tiger's arrival in turn 16 to carry out my little project. I didn't use and great strategy in the battle and the Tiger had already knocked out most of the Shermans already at the point where the clips starts. I was more interested in creating a little video, which I call TIGER@WORK. It's a silent video. Sound would have increased the size of the files and made it harder to capture in the first place and then edit later keeping the sound in sync with the video. Unfortunately, there is no way to join the WMV files into one single clip even the work AVI files won't merge due to the overall size of the destination file I was trying to create. It was an interesting little project and turned out reasonably well given the nature of the program limitoins and file sizes I had to work with. [ February 27, 2004, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: Captain_Thunder ]

Find a copy of FRAPS. It's not perfect but it does work. It will capture your screen as you play as a movie file. You can then edit out the pauses. You'll probably need considerable HD space to do this or you will need to turn FRAPS on and off before and after each turn.

I bought my first AH game when in college back in 1972. Broke my foot in football two-a-day practices and killed time playing the game solo back in the dorm room. Hobbled down to the local hobby store on cruches looking for "Jutland" but they were out so I bought "Luftwaffe." I stopped buying them when the price went above $25. Still have all the ones I did buy, all have all the counters, some are unpunched. Tobruk was one of the last games I bought from AH. I never could find anyone willing to learn the rules and play so I usually just played both sides myself. I have used a number of AH game scenarios for old SP1 scenarios that I created as have many people over the years. If you have old copies of AH's "The General" magazine, they also have new scenarios and counters to add to various games they created. $79 for Advanced Tobruk?! Sorry, I'll pass unless that's Canadian dollars ( ). [ February 16, 2004, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: Captain_Thunder ]

I used the "Firefight" scenarios for a set of "Steel Panther" missions a number of years ago, which are still available for download from my old SP scenario page.

You definitely need WinZip to extract the files you download from the Combat Mission Mod Database website.

Why bother to RAR a file if it is going to be zipped? Seems like unnecessary baggage.

Judging by the unique turret the tank used was a french AMX-13.

It was mentioned a bit earlier in the thread, the movie you are thinking of is "Play Dirty." A few other desert warfare movies for the list are: "Raid on Rommel" starring Richard Burton, and M48s standing in for Panzers. Commandos allow themselves to be captured so they can then take over the prisoner convoy and discover and destroy Rommels secret fueling depot. "Five Graves to Cairo" starring the director/producer Erich von Stroheim as Rommel. A wounded British soldier cutoff from his lines disguises himself a desert hotel's employee and spies the the German command post setup there. "The Steel Lady" starring Rod Cameron and Tab Hunter who find a tank buried in the Arabian desert during WWII, and proceeds to attack the arabs with it. "Gallipoli" starrring Mel Gibson about the WW1 battle against the Turks. "Lawerence of Arabia" starring Peter O'Toole. "The Best of Enemies" starring David Niven, a hilarious comedy of errors between British troops with Italian prisoners trying to avoid capture by Germans in Libya. If you can find a copy rent or buy it. "The Immortal Sargent" starring Henry Fonda, meets up with a tough sargent and his quirky outfit, who do considerable damage to the Germans on their trek through the desert. "The Desert Rats" starring Richard Burton. "Desert Victory" documentary using newsreel footage of the battle in the desert around El Alamein. "Destination Gobi" starring Richard Widmark as a naval CPO in charge of a naval weather station in Mongolia during WW2. They befriend local mongols with a gift of saddles for the mongolian horses and fight the Japanese. "Lion of the Desert" starring Anthony Quinn as a Libyan muslim fighting against the Italian occupation of Libya during WW2. "Death Race" starring Doug McClure as an American P40 pilot trying to keep his crippled fighter moving along the ground as a German panzer pursues. (Made for TV, 1973.) "Beau Geste" any version, but the one with Gene Hackman as the commander is probably the most watchable for modern movie viewers. [ January 22, 2004, 09:05 AM: Message edited by: Captain_Thunder ]