Sneaksie

I suppose that rushing the guns on opposite slope is the best. Global AI is ruled by triggers, so if you see a questionable enemy behavior it means that mission designer was not expecting what you just did; if mission designer programmed retreat in such circumstances, enemy will retreat or do anything that was programmed, if not, such situation may occur and they will keep advancing until morale fail (and veterans have quite high morale). Some missions were made more accurately than others. Battle of Normandy missions were made after all others and should be more polished; also in ToW2 designers try to implement more logical and 'lively' enemy tactics. Also try to make and play a couple of battles in Battle Generator. Triggers in missions made by it are generic, but pretty advanced to suit most combat situations (including retreat). Look how AI acts and reacts to your actions in those missions.

We have not heard about noticable performance hit with the mod until now. Does anybody experience this?

This means that core data is ok. Try to make a mission in Battle Generator with this tank. If it works ok, then problem lies somewhere else.

Does Firefly have ammo in encyclopedy?

Usually a separate material is used for glass, because it contains tfBlend 1 parameter which is slow (turns on alpha semi-transparency). There is simpler and faster flag used for binary alpha (black-white only) tfTestA 1, which is used for cutting out tree leaves, make wheel texture round instead of square, etc. it's used together with AlphaTestVal 0.5 (it means that all alpha values under 0.5 of entire spectrum are invisible and all above 0.5 are visible). Strangely enough, artists said they don't quite understand why you had problem with names longer than 10 characters, they didn't have such problem. Good luck with your models!

In such situation gun crew will not appear in the game automatically. You will need to create it - create infantry detachment, delete soldiers to have only 4 or 5 of them, set their skills accordingly (decent Gunner skill for 1 or 2 of them) and place this detachment somewhere near the gun. If you want them to be in the towing tractor, this is another case. You'll need to sleep tractor, crew and the gun. Then specify sleeping group containing only gun crew as passangers of the tractor and then unsleep them after mission load by trigger command ReinforcementLand.

1) In Body.msh there are only two strings in [FaceGroups], while Spitfire, for example, has 4. 2) Section [Materials] in Body.msh contains only Material0 string, while it should list correct materials of the unit, as they are set in 3dsMax. 3) Hier.him file usually contain 'Attaching' string not in _ROOT_ section, but in section for one of the bones. It's difficult to say is it fault of the convertor or the model itself. Normally these files are created by converter and special Max plugin. Did you make your model in 3dsMax9? Our converter supports version 9 files only in ToW2, all models in ToW were made using 6 or 7 version. Artists are still too busy to provide more accurate analysis of the model, maybe later they will lokk into it.

Yes you can.

There are strange errors, some units receive order to go to sleep or stop before they are completely loaded and game crashes. This may be caused by too many units. Try to insert delay for several seconds in the beginning of the init trigger to give mission some time to fully load before executing all triggers, or , better, call Disposition Mode before all other trigger commands.

Knokke, your Typhoon fails to load into our viewer program as well in the game. Our lead artist will check your .max file soon (he is currently very busy with ToW2 interface).

On-line download of the game from this site is the first release which didn't have these features Download and install uberpatch for ToW from the same site.

Pathfinding system is one of the main CPU power hogs in the game, and with 4x4 maps it will need to calculate 4 times more cells. Currently its a no-go, but hopefully we'll find solution later.

Map format was changed, but map size is the same, 2x2km.

In ToW scout skill is vital only for infantry (snipers usually kill their targets in one shot because of damage multiplier, it also affects soldier camofliage and distance at which soldier spots enemies). We plan to use this skill more widely in ToW2 though (it will affect spotting distance for some crewmen in open units like Wolverine and AT guns).

Triggers are essential, many games go in this direction (for example, Black Shark from creators of Lock On, upcoming WW2 sim from creators of IL-2, tank sim Steel Fury, etc.). Units behavior becomes more and more complicated and more and more advanced scripting language is needed to control them. Personally, Close Combat series are my favorite games, but AI there is almost non-existant, all it could do is randomly place units on the map and sent them to player positions or fire at player units if they are visible.

FPS-like camera means freelook, when you hold the mouse wheel, you can look around in any direction. I don't quite get what you mean by 'Total War camera'. You fly over battlefield, look anywhere, change altitude by mouse wheel - it's all in ToW1. Camera controls keys are remapable. By clicking on enemy unit icon camera zooms to it (you can zoom to your units by double-clicking on unit portrait or picture). Maybe you mean you want to restrict camera movement to general area of your units?

ToW camera control can be altered in Options - Camera, and there are several presets and many parameters you can change to better suit your needs. In ToW2 there will be 2 camera choices - FPS like, similar to ToW but with significant changes (after flying over hill it will return to original height), and centered, where you can attach camera to unit and it will follow it at distance wich can be changed by mouse wheel.

We consider using ToW resources in ToW2. Most likely, units will be in, while maps and missions are difficult to use in new engine, since map format changed significantly and some trigger commands work differently.

It's unclear in the moment how MP will be changed, it's in the works.

Unit AI (individual behavior) war rewritten from scratch and thus improved. Infantrymen look for possible cover in immediate vinicity, there are also new commands Sneak and Ambush, while unit behavior in old commands was altered. Tanks now react to new threats faster, HMGs will fire almost without stops if there are targets clearly visible, etc. On group level AI uses triggers as before (including new ones) and it's 'cleverness' depends on talent of mission designer. In general, they were tasked to make more diverse and interesting missions. Use of triggers makes possible simulation of any battle situation and any AI behavior if you use them well.

ToW2 render was rewritten to use Direct 3D instead of OpenGL and many visual improvements were made, as you can see on the screens. This means heavier use of video card, but modern middle-end video card will handle this nicely. On the other hand, i'll highly recommend Core 2 Duo family or similar performance CPUs for playing ToW2, older ones like P4, even P4 3.2, are not sufficient for most full-scale engagements in the game. Four core CPUs are still too expensive and have no effect on performance of ToW2, as on performance of most other games.

Yes, buildings can be destroyed by heavy weapons. Only infantry can pass through the rubble, but this rubble don't block nearby areas, only territory of former house itself.

Here is big bridge static, sorry for delay. http://dump.ru/file/1081924 The .rar file contains static.ini and BIG_Bridge folder. Place static.ini in Data\Settings directory and BIG_bridge folder to 3dobj\Environment\Bridges. After that, you should be able to place new bridge in Map Editor. It's difficult to determine why your Typhoon isn't working. If you want, send it to us (dina@1c.ru) and we'll try to help:)

Tanks destroy other objects like people or some statics by their pathfinding square, not collision. This is because two units in the pathfinding system can not share the same cells, while pathfinding squares must be 1x1 (infantry), 3x3 (small vehicles), 5x5 (most tanks) and 7x7 (Tigers, Sdkfz 7 and such). In addition, during move PFS square size increases in direction of move to reduce stops. You can set PFS square for tank to 3x3 instead of 5x5 and it will stop crushing nearby enemy infantry, but this will result in glitches when infantry will be under front or rear of the tank and will not be crushed.

The only way to complete this mission (i think) to wait for enemy on reverse slope of the hill and behind houses on the station to shoot at their sides. First reinforcement is almost doomed, because they are forced to cross large open space under fire, but sometimes some of them make it to the station. Second one is vital to success, SU122 are only ones that can destroy Tigers from front with their 4 HEAT rounds. Use HEAT only against Tigers, shoot HE at other lighter tanks (122mm HE in most cases will take out Pz III and IV). Keep at least 2 of SU122s behind last buildings as last line of defence, they can kill last enemy tanks that wiped out all your other forces and bring you victory. In short, avoid long-range frontal engagements: most German tanks in that period of war are tougher and have superior guns. T-34-76 should avoid frontal engagements against Tigers even on close range.