Kieme(ITA)

THanks Erwin, is there by any chance a full desert Yellow BMP-1 and T-62? I found the BMP-2 by MickeyD in the repository, and some green stuff, but not a plain Yellow 1. All ISIS tanks I have seen where plain desert Yellow.

Thanks guys, yes, I do use other CMSF mods: Vein's effects Vein's Base markers pro-effects smoke Mord's civil war (because I need such a content for IS) Mord's Death knells Mord's syrian fighters billy icons billy gui akd sounds But I'll need to search for more.

Let's not forget the poor AI in CMSF has no idea on how to react, it has no "triggers" in its mind and therefore it's more stupid.

I can say something from what I understood: more sneak peaks will be shown when CMBS reaches a more advanced development stage, this was told about a month ago, so I belive september will bring some more previews for sure.

Thanks for the pictures Saferight, here it is a flag taped on the pickup: Just tryed something for that "mud camo" on the old White hull pickup, it could be used for the ZSU technical, since it is the only one with a dedicated texture: I got an idea for an IS campaign, could be really fun, something like: assault on mannagh airbase in Syria, capturing some tanks and then onto Iraq invasion, something like that, with a big mix of units/vehicles, I'll try something but I am no expert in scenarios ot to think about campaigns..

Thanks Erwin, I will work a bit more on the roads. Meanwhile some wheels: Working on an IS mod so I have done an IS version with specific markings, the most common slogan

I can't really see a CM title with a made up country, it would be silly.

Not really. You can't mod the 3d surface of a road, you must manually place the craters when making the scenario. On another thought you might mod the crater texture to blend perfectly with the road, but you'd get similar craters in all terrain types.

I have been thinking about something, you might swap a lot of stuff and turn the entire US army into actual iraqi army, along with the syrian regulars to provide soviet stuff, and use syrian reservists(with mord's civil war mod) + irregulars as the ISIS units.

I agree with all points, let's not forget the editor, we really need some upgrades if we need to start making larger maps. There have been some tweaks already concerning rendering speed etc. (3.0 upgrade). Although still more can be done. I dream about a -copy and save- system where you can select a certain size of squares (5x5, 10x10 etc.) and save all its contents, from buildings, to flavor objects to chosen textures to foliage, then save the said part with a name and be able to repaste it as many times you want in any scenario you want. This instrument could let you make a nice looking farm, for example, with all the props, and use it in any scenario you need without the need to replace everything every time, thus saving time and letting you concentrate on other things. Or imagine a city block etc.

Meh, the problem with roads in general is the cloning effect. we have 1 road section, that single section has to be used for any road, and if it is a bit longer it will cause an unrealistic effect where something gets repeated over and over. If I place 1 hole in the middle, and make it stand out, you'll see a road section with a series of perfectly spaced holes... When it comes to textures we need to keep them so that when used in large numbers of Tiles they don't show up a repetitive element which would pop out a lot. In the end it's more up to scenario designers to come out with clever ideas than what the modder can do, as the modder needs to think in a wider way, so to say. Unless you use the new [tag] system, that lets you mod something even for a single scenario (on the other hand it is quite an effort to mod for a single use).

I play real time since it came out in CMSF. Sometimes I do miss the chance to review what happened, and indeed real time sucks in very large scenarios, because you miss a lot of action. But I really enjoy a stream game without looking at the blue barrel filling. Also, I prefer the non-stop action that only real time can give.

Did you consider using the [tag] system? With that you can change existing Tiles for a specific scenario only (if that scenario is created using a tag file). It's not adding new Tiles to the game, but at least you can sacrifice something for what you need without causing any troubles to existing contents.

Well, I belive that arab-israeli wars would require a Whole new dedicated game, not sure they would fit as a CMSF module... I'd surely like to see such a game, from 1970s on, maybe it will come someday, but given the great amount of stuff I'd say it should be a stand alone game, with its own modules. But it's up to BFC to clarify officially if they didn't work on arab israeli wars for any specific reason if they want to..

I don't see any reason this game release should be tied up with world events. First of all BFC already stated that this game development goes far back to 2012, if I am not mistaken, and this was advertised in various "heads up" articles and such on specialized internet sites. Second, I see a list of reasons why this game release should not be influenced by current events: -CMBS is not a picture of the actual conflict in ukraine, it's based on a different, yet similar, situation drawn by realistic and plausible geopolitical elements of that world area, involving necessarily the same countries. As a proof of this: there are no irregular units in CMBS, quite a note since, during these months and especially in the starting phases of the conflict, irregular units were and are a common sight on both sides. -a conflict in that part of the world was not so impossible to foresee, and games dedicated to modern conflicts have a well defined and knowledge set of potential theaters to use, you can read a worldwide newspaper and pick them every day. So, given the proability of a conflict to happen in such stated regions plus the need of a modern setting tactical combat game to be plausible there's no way you can't untie the two things. You couldn't possibly belive a combat mission shock force depicting a conflict on Saudi Arabia being invaded by the USA, and for the same reasons you would belive a conflict like that brought by CMBS. -parallel example: armed robbery is a common crime, people get hurt and die to it all over the world every day, but this doesn't stop a game about bank robbery, for example, to be developed and released. yes it's generic, but an open conflict is the same generic event in geopolitical terms. There are games out there that let you steal a car and run on top of people, that's surely less morally correct than any CM game. There are books out there, written by geopolitical masterminds, who forsee every kind of potential conflict, among them something is bound to be proven right in the next few years, just because they take real events, real data and get to impossible to discard results, that doesn't make those Writers responsible for the conflict itself or lightly harted for what happened. -you can pick either force to control. Given the real conflict in ukraine you can simpathize with any side but that doesn't reflect in any way on the game itself, so to speak you can control german units in a ww2 game but that doesn't make you evil or the game not politically correct because of nazi war crimes, which of course you cannot replicate within the game boundaries. CM game is just outside any of that scope. -finally I'd like to stress that combat mission series game is more dedicated to tactical simulation rather than geopolitical/economical/strategic layers, this gives the game a sort of benefit when it comes to depicting actual situations. You can't kill civilians in a combat mission game since civilians are not part of the picture. Of course civilian casualties, mass murder, violence on p.o.w.s, are all real parts of any conflict but combat mission is not about that, despite being a combat simulation. I'd say a CM game is more of a game, indeed, an instrument to see how real assets would behave in a very confined and limited situation, much more "impersonal" than you could say. The "larger picture" such as the setting (Syrian conflict in CMSF, ukraine conflict in CMBS) is necessary to make the game plausible and verged to realism rather than just being crazy by depicting impossible situations. All in all the fact that the next CM game and the next one again that will be dedicated to modern warfare take place in a hot zone of the world is something you just can't avoid. After 3 years of development a real crysis escalates in the same region your game is set, what can you do? Trash everything and set something completely different? I don't want a combat mission modern title depicting a conflict between france and germany, I wouldn't just buy it, in all senses.

And BMP in the works:

It should be, yes, just like a vehicle's texture. Working on a scenario with a long highway I had to recognize that even my battered highway does seem a bit out of place, I have re-worked it to blend a bit more with the terrain, so here it is: Inspiration: Same dusty layer applied to the other pavement (airport like), but I went for a less evident dust (also to avoid a clone effect that might pop out in case of elaborated weathering): THe optional highway Tiles should now blend more with the modded terrain. I'll leave the darker, newer kind in, as it might be useful in some cases (urban scenarios). I'll update the optional highways to include this. I'd really like to make a "standard" highway mod that could fit the original game, but the effort of aligning textures properly is quite overwhelming.

An idea, would be possible by selecting the state of an infantry unit as "destroyed".

Windows are tied to building texture number, there are 8 varieties of these in vanilla game. Each texture number has the option of 1 window for 1st and higher levels or 1 Windows for the lower level and 1 for the upper levels. Also, the wall texture for the 3rd floor to 7th floor is the same, so there's no way to mod each facade level separately, all in all they are 3: lower, middle, top. If you want to remove the Windows, you might try to make a black window by painting over the original ones. I went for some variety with my buildings and I'm pleased with them, although they indeed look nicer with max 3 story buildings, but in general all 4/8 story buildings have a certain repetitiveness due to the middle texture being very labored. Maybe a featureless middle texture might make taller buildings look better in the larger picture but I belive that a detailed middle texture gives a lot better result in the most common 3 story building.

I did a check and indeed the paved roads and highway are all rendered at distance as a plain, large, grey road, by the game. I didn't find any texture dedicated to distance rendering. So I belive there's no way to fix the roads at distance.

I recently noticed a growing number of ukrainian vehicles (used by ukrainians) marked with a single or double narrow band of White Painted by hand on front and/or sides. Maybe this is a field measure to avoid FF?

That's true! I blame BFC for not putting T-72 on ukrainian tables.

Almost forgot the bunker: vanilla: modded into HD:

Those are waiting for CMBS most likely... About tanks driving near your house: This video shows 2 different types of T-72 in rebel's hands (and remember that Ukraine has no T-72), besides, it's Worth to note the use of a gloss green paint (prolly the commercial spray paint in cans we all have access to), used to add slogans and markings to the vehicles. We should have most of these vehicles in CMBS, although I am not sure about the older type of T-72 with ERA and the MTLB with ZSU arranged on top... Russian green on tanks never looked more dull to me.

Well, you can try to use the textures in CMA, the files should be arranged in the same way, but I am pretty sure you'll need to rename some of them. I don't have CMA so it's up to you to try. Besides, I wouldn't like to load another 500mb to the repository with the very same files but on another game's folder, wouldn't be right.