Knokke

There is also an addon with italian vehicles in the making by a russian develloper and his wife , looking very promising.

It would be nice to have a kind of map (with all the needed stuff inside a folder) like the "clear_summer_map" to allow us to create new maps from scratch easily.

I have also experienced this kind of friendly fire: in the first battle of the german campaign, I gave the order to one of my tanks to shoot at a building where a machinegunner was firing at my advancing infantery. Unfortunately, I did'nt notice that there was a building occupied by a few of my soldiers right in the trajectory of the shell. My panzer IV fired a shot and destroyed the building with my troops in it, killing everyone, where I was expecting the tank to move to a clear LOS position before firing. I suppose it happened because I used the order "target area" instead of direct fire

If I'm not mistaken, the roman ruins in Sbeitla are a little bit outside the area covered in the game. That's nice, as the ruins won't be virtually destroyed in our virtual battles

I believe the map doesn't show because there is no load.ini file. If I copy a map from ToW in the ToW2 map folder, the map name shows in the list in the map editor (but wont load, because some elements needed, like textures, are not used in ToW2). So it will probably not work the way I mentionned unless we can extract the map files with SFS extractor from the SFS archive. I wonder if it might be possible to make the ToW maps work in ToW2 if we could add all the missing bits in ToW2?

just copy the folder of the map you want to modify and give it an other name; then use this new map to make your modifications, and nothing will be overwritten. -Knokke

Oooppss... I forgot to mention it. Onboard memory on the video card is 512Mb... and the graphic card is a NVidia Geforce 8400 M. ATI x700 was the card on my previous computer

Vista 32 dualcore 2 GHz 2Gb RAM ATI x700 I also have the same kind of problem: each time I try to save a game, ToW2 will close to the desktop. When I try to load the save (which was probably corrupted), ToW2 crashes to the desktop too. Apart than that, I've no other problem with the game as yet. Anyway, congratulation 1C! this game is really excellent, it is a great improvement over TOW; I really like it and I highly recommend it. -Knokke

What's your O.S?

Great work Tsche ! Thanks a lot to you and your wife for sharing the news about this very good looking italian mod you're creating. I'm very glad to know there'll be the possibility in the future to use Italian vehicles in the game. By the way, this is starting to give me ideas about modding ToW2 too!

just have a look at the top of the page in the "community" tab

You'll need SFSextractor to extract the data from the SFS files. You can use MshConverter v.1.18 to view and save 3D msh files to 3DS format and back. There are no tutorial as such to use theses tools. There is a ToW modding FAQ available on cmmods. 1C has released two 3DSmax models of vehicles as exemple of how to set vehicles up for the game, as well as a file explaining how to mod new units for the game. Unfortunately, I don't have the links to theses files anymore due to a computer crash, but hopefully, someone will be able to provide them for you. Creating models for ToW is not an easy task with the tools and info available at the moment, but it is still possible. For the time being, I've been able to mod only one fully working airplane for the game (so it is possible to have at least a mesure of success). I've been able to import a bridge into the game too, but I'm still stuck with a problem with the pathfinding cells. Any other static object I've moded so far is not working yet, probably because I did'nt manage to set the files properly. -Knokke

try playing with various settings in the video options. I had the same kind of trouble and this worked for me. try first putting everything to the lowest quality, then test. If it is working, try buffing up the options one by one until you hit the one who does'nt work.

One suggestion: Try using SRTM3 data available freely from the internet to make your height map: it will save you a lot of time, and will give you a realistic representation of your terrain, as real world data will be used. There is one drawback though: you'll have to find a freeware utility that can import SRTM data and convert the data back to a RAW grayscale format. SRTM3 files freely available on the internet have a 90m resolution, and each set of data covers an area many times bigger than the 4x4 km area in TOW. The difficulty is to find the correct portion of your terrain in such a big area as the one covered by the SRTM (several hundred kilometers). One way to do this easily is to use Google Earth to retrieve the exact lat/long coordinates of the area you want to model (by way of the markers in google earth), and use theses coordinates to find the small area you need in the big grayscale RAW picture extracted from the SRTM file. There are peoples in this forum who know better than me how to retrieve height data for ToW from SRTM (or an other format, maybe), so they might have an easier solution than mine to get the data to an usable format.

There are a few freeware utilities out there to import digital elevation models usable in ToW. The biggest difficulty is to find good enough DEM data for the area you're planning to recreate. Usually, the higest resolution data is not available freely, one need to pay for it. But there are a number of FTP sites which allows to download free DEM data (but the resolution quality will be considerably less - although it is still OK and will be satisfying enough for most; that's better than nothing, and it's free!) You can find such DEM data here: ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM3/ It is in SRTM format, so it means that you've to use the kind of utilities mentionned above to convert the data to RAW format. The DEM files provided in the link above are in SRTM3 format (90m resolution). It is possible to use SRTM with a better resolution, but such data is usually not free. The 90m resolution is good enough to make the basic elevation of a map, but you'll have to manually edit the terrain in ToW Map Editor to refine the height data where you need.

It's not that hard; it only require basic knowledge of photoshop or paintshop pro, plus the Nvidia plug-in and IMFviewer for converting the texture from DDS to TGA and back to DDS format once the texture have been edited. This can be a good starting project for anyone willing to do some modding for ToW. Only basic knowledge of the files structure in the game and knowledge of how to extract data from the SFS files is needed (and such knowledge can be easily found on this forum).

Great news, Asija!

That's excellent news ! ToW and ToW2 are the best WW2 RTS games available; it can only become better if they could be improved even further. hmmm... what about having mortars, trains, boats, ships and amphibian vehicles as well as less limited bridges and tunnels? I believe I've to stop the list before 1C devellopers starts to hate me ... I know you guys are very busy with ToW2 already. Thanks a lot for the help provided. The file need a bit tweaking, but obviously, the pathfinding cells problem I had is solved in the file you sent me. I sent a mail to you explaining the few problems I had with the file. At the moment, I'm in a spell of bad luck: the laptop on which I was doing my modding for ToW had a failure of the graphic card, it is now in the repair shop. I hope they will manage to repair it, because I don't have a backup for all my work. And worst: my external hard drive died two days before my laptop, which means that all my backup files for my Grave map were lost. The only version I have is now on my laptop... Fortunately, I had some of the files for my other ToW modding projects saved on my FTP; so not everything is lost. Again, thanks for your help and great support Sneaksie. -Knokke

In my attempts to create a new bridge for ToW for my map, I've been unable to model a bridge which allows the AI to pass beneath (which is a big drawback for me). It seems there are only two ways of doing it, neither one being perfectly satisfying: either the AI can cross the bridge on top normally, but will not be able to pass beneath; or the AI can pass beneath the bridge, but will not be able to walk on top. The red squares of the AI pathfiding cells act like a barrier, blocking the way for the AI. This is really annoying, as there are many maps that would require having a bridge crossing a road rather than a river.

That's true. I'm very sad that there is neither a surrender option in ToW2, nor the possibility to take prisonners. It would have been nice to have something like there was in the Close Combat series. -Knokke

I sure too would like to have an english translation of the comments in the files! I believe the devellopers are too busy to do something like that, but if we knew in what encoding they are, some forum members might be able to translate them for us?

I really like the demo. It's a good improvement over ToW. It seems it is running even smoother except at a few moments in the game where it becomes so slow that it is almost unplayable: I suspect this have something to do with the dust that is blown by the wind; I'm not sure though. If this is the case, I hope it can be turned on or off. An other small thing bothering me: I think the infantry should be able to climb steeper slopes. It is very annoying to discover that your men can't climb a 45% slope. The fact that the "recon" mode revert to "assault" mode each time a new move order is given is extremely annoying. It would be far more better if the units would keep moving in "scout" mode until selecting the "assault" mode again. For the moment, I still prefer the way it was handled in ToW, with the crouch, lean and run position. Also, I liked the interface in ToW better. Anyway, this is very promising. I like the indirect fire and the fighting inside buildings. It is what ToW should have been right from the beginning. It is a bit more like Close Combat in 3D, and I like it (even if I wonder why there is still no possibility to surrender or retreat from the battlefield and why everyone have to fight to the death without the possibility of taking prisonners). -Knokke

Not yet Sneaksie; I'm still stuck with the same problem. I'll send you a new file soon with the objects named in a way that should work so that you'll be able to test it properly (I hope!)

Yes, of course Sneaksie. I'm happy to grant permission for JSH mod to use it in their next update.

That looks very promising.