Knokke

I really don't understand the problem you have with this "squad mode". As it is now, the game has the same way of handling squads like in Close Combat (double click on one of the squad members, and the whole squad will be selected and ready to follow your orders). Only there is the possibility that was lacking from CC, to give specific orders to individuals in the squad (you can order some of the soldiers to give supporting fire while some others are ordered to flank an enemy squad for example). If you don't like to micromanage every single soldier, just give a move/assault/ambush/fire order to the squad as a whole. The AI will take care of the "liitle details" like scavenging weapons and ammo from dead bodies. The only grief I could have about infantry, is the high rate of casualties due to friendly fire (it seems that once a soldier has started it's "shooting sequence", he won't stop even if a squad mate moves in front of him). This is especially annoying when some members of the squad are moving forward to assault an ennemy position, and one of their mates decided to throw a grenade at the same time.

I would'nt really say that, but that's true you can mod about everything in the game, even creating brand new units/maps/static objects.

you suppose you can kind of doing that by selecting the earliest or latest hour available in the battle generator and tweaking it further by creating a new "weather" in the weather.ini, pointing to a new skycube map of a dawn/dusk/night sky. You might need to select an overcast sky because I suppose it might be necessary to hide the sun. tweaking the color setting for the ambient light might be helpfull too.

I also have an HP laptop with Vista32, and it is able to run ToW and ToW2 very well, although it is already 3 years old. Is yours much older than that?

Here are the files for the new Spreebort object with collision shapes added: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort.rar You'll need to place the files of the archive manually in your 3dobj folder and add the new entry to the data/settings/static.ini with the corresponding path as explained above to have this fully working.

Hi Nikki, Sorry, I told you that the object was working as is straight from the pack, but I was wrong; I forgot that I had to modify it a bit; as you suspected, the collision objects are missing. I'll try to help as much as possible with this Spreebort object: houses.ms is a 3DSmax script that is used to export a max scene to a *.mcn file and mesh0000.tse file (mcn file is the hierarchical structure of the building - a bit similar to the hier.him file; a *.tse file is all the 3D coordinates info for the 3D model.) Here is how to add the missing collisions to the Spreebort object: First, consider this object to be the same as a bridge if it is to be used as a canal wall (it will have the same static preset as a bridge, since it will be aligned on water) You could decide that it could be used against the slope of a cliff, and use an other static preset to have it aligned with the ground. But since we're going to use this as a canal wall, first we have to modify the position of the Ground_Level object. Being aligned on water as a bridge, the Ground_Level hook needs to be lowered a little bit, so that the upper part of the quay is above water. How much depends of how high above the water you want the quay to be. Here is the Spreebort object straight from the Modpack with the Ground_Level hook set exactly at water level: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-1.jpg You need to add two collision objects (two cubes). One will be the collision for the ground - where the soldiers and vehicles can stand. The other (outlined in white on the picture) will be a wall corresponding to the safeguard rail on the side of the quay. Without this "wall", soldiers will walk straight over the edge of the quay, up or down, if at least a part of it is located out of water. The wall will make sure the soldiers can't go through the hand rail. I kept the height of the wall very low, only up to the constructed part of the quay, so that bullets can fly through the hand rail. Only soldiers standing prone close to the border could benefit of some protection against fire: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-2.jpg Both collisions objects should overlap a little bit. On the next picture, I've lowered the Ground_level hook, so that the quay will be about 6 meters above the water level: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-3.jpg Make sure the pivot of the collision object is set to their center (if you moved the vertices to align the collision shape to the 3D model of the quay). If they're not at the center of the object, collision detection might fail. So we have four objects: the ground level hook, the x0y0_dam0_l0 3D model for the quay, and 2 collision shapes called collision1_x0y0_dam0 and collision2_x0y0_dam0. http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-4.jpg We'll use only one resolution LOD as the model is very simple, and there is no need to lower the number of polys. You could do more lods so that we coud use lower resolution textures, but this would be interesting only with a more complicated 3D model that needs a lower polys count, as the texture will use it's own mipmaps when seen from further away. next we'll export the mono.mcn file and the mesh0000.tse we open the "export mono object" script, and add one lod viewdistance: 450m. (The object will be displayed from 0m to 450m in game) we click on the export mono.mcn button and save it to a convenient location (you could save it in the Meshtools directory). We do the same with the "export mesh.tse" button (don't forget to select the "use light as hooks" radio button, as a light is used as the ground_level hook. http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-5.jpg Now you need to edit the *.mcn file manually a little bit (to give the object the correct collision names, so that the game engine can know what they're used for) right now, the collision shapes are called c1_x0y0_dam0 and c2_x0y0_dam0. we need to name the collision for the ground x_brigde_dam0 (so the game engine will allow vehicles and soldiers to stand on the quay), and we need to rename the collision shape for the wall x_bar_dam0 (so the game engine knows that this will act as a barrier for the soldier and the vehicles). X_bridge is the walkable part of a bridge, whereas x_bar_dam is the parts that will act as the unpassable sides of the brigde MCN file before renaming: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-6.jpg MCN file after renaming: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-7.jpg Now we can start the conversion to *.msh format, and create all the files needed for the object to work in game: open a DOS command line shell, navigate to the Meshtool directory and type the following command line: CnvMono.bat mesh0000.tse mono.mcn hit enter, and the conversion will start and all files will be created in the meshtools directory. http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-9.jpg now we have the following files highlighted files: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-8.jpg If you're creating this object for ToW1, you'll need to copy the info for the BoundBox from the command shell to the mono.sim file. It is not needed for ToW2: mono.sim straight from the converter: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-10.jpg The same file with the BoundBox line added: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-11.jpg We're going to create a folder inside the game for this new object, and put inside all the files needed to make it work: I'll create the following directory in my 3dobj folder: environment/Germany/Berlin/Spreebort/ Inside this folder, I put the following files we created in the Meshtool directory: -the x0y0_dam0.msh file we just created -the mono.sim file -the tex1_lod0.tga from the Spreebort folder of the modpack -the tex1_lod0.mat from the Spreebort folder of the modpack the next and last step is to add the new Spreebort object to the static.ini file (found in the folder data/settings/) http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-12.jpg As you can see, I've added the Spreebort object entry (highlighted) to a new section I've created in the static.ini, to test a few of the buildings of the modpack. Now you can test the new building in game with the Builder utility: http://pigeonh.free.fr/ToW/Spreebort-13.jpg This is a very basic tutorial, but it should be useful anyway. With a bit more complex objects and collision shapes, you can do a lot of different objects.

Nice map, Nikki! Have a look in the Berlin buildings provided in the Mega Mod Pack: there are two "canal walls" representing the sides of the Spree river that might be helpful to you. They're working as is (you only have to add the corresponding entries in the static.ini file) They're called Spree_bort and Spree_bort_short. you can use a setup as this in the static.ini: [buildings.House$Spree_bort] Title Spree_bort MeshLive 3dobj/environment/pavement/Spree_bort/mono.sim MeshDead 3dobj/environment/pavement/Spree_bort/mono.sim Preset Pavement

is the "animation tables.xls" provided in the TOW Modding Faq 1.02 of any help in identifying the correct numbers? I'm afraid I can't help you more on this subject, as I've not been working with animations yet. The only work around I can think of if you can't manage to fix the Pfiat621_driver animation would be to use the animation of an other driver and move the hook to a position where the animation would match the car.

you can configure the hotkeys (and thus see which key is assigned by default) in Settings/Controls

Do you have the TOW Modding Faq 1.02 by Oudy? there is a part dealing with animation in it. I had a quick look, it might be very interesting for you to look at it if you did'nt already. Oudy is talking of how to create a new Panzer IV F1 and how to use the animation of an other model for the crew you can find it in the Battlefront repository. I believe the problem lies either in the way you added the animation files for the PFiat621_driver from ToW1 to ToW2, or it is a problem with the naming of the hooks (the game engine perhaps using an other hook as default). If it seems the animation work correctly, but the hook used is not placed correctly, or if there is an offset in the animation, probably changing the values for its placement by editing the Msh file manually could do the trick. It seems natural that putting an other vehicle crew animation in the fiat, the driver position doesn't match. I believe the positioning of the crew animation is relative to the entry point (driver_in) of the vehicle, and each vehicule have a different layout and crew position. I don't know. But there is are files with an entry about the fiat in it: animator.rc HMesh/VehicleTables.ini SMesh/VehicleTables.ini vehicle.rc

Ok, now I understand

This is strange... the hooks being related to the body.msh, their coordinate information should be stored inside the body.msh, and MshConverter should show the relationship by the "Body HK" bit at the end of the line. I tested loading both hier.him file and Body.msh for the Fiat in MshConverter, and in both case, the "Body HK" bit at the end of the hook name is there to be seen. Check that the hooks are correcly identified as such in mshConverter (the icon at the beginning of the line should be a hook icon, and not a mesh icon or collision icon). If it is wrongly identified in MshConverter, you can force it to be of the correct type by right clicking on the hook and setting it to hook type if needs be.

If you're stuck with mshconverter, and are sure that the problem lies with the msh file and not the configuration files, then there is an other solution: I can use the Meshtools for you to import the modified mesh in TOW2. Blender is a freeware 3D package that you can use to import/export models in 3DS format (so, you don't need to use 3DSmax) Export the fiat model from MshConverter as a 3DS file (rename the nodes so that they have 10 characters maximum if you need, as 3DS format is limited in the number of characters in an object name). if you don't rename them yourself, during the convertion, the names might be truncated if they're to long, and you might wish to give them a name easy to remember instead. You can take this opportunity to modify further the 3D model in Blender if you feel you need to make it more like the Fiat used by the Italian army. Then modify the hooks as you see fit. rename back the nodes with the name they should have in TOW2 Save the modified file in 3DS format. Then send me the file, and I'll use the Meshtools scripts to export the model back to 1C msh format. This should be pretty easy to do, and might solve your problem if it comes from the mesh format (but I'm more inclined to think the problem might be in the configuration files) The crash is probably occuring when the game engine is looking for something that is missing (or wrongly named) in your configuration files. The 3D model displays correctly in the encyclopedia, because the game checks only the hier.him, mat files, texture files, skin.ini and msh files, and theses are OK. Then, when the model is loaded in a mission, it could be crashing because this time, it is looking for something that it must use (it could be a problem happening when the game tries to generate the driver inside the car, for example) As for the hook names in MshConverter, you wrote: I suppose it is for simplification, but make sure the names are really like this: [Hooks] engine_01 <BASE> Body HK driver_out <BASE> Body HK driver <BASE> Body HK driver_in <BASE> Body HK commander <BASE> Body HK commander_out <BASE> Body HK commander_hook <BASE> Body HK etc... Also, you might wish to rename the visible_hook_01 to 03 nodes to comply with the new naming conventions of ToW2 (Vdriver_0 to Vdriver_4 - you'll need to add a fourth hook, as there is only three of them in ToW1) Perhaps this is not compulsory (for the tanks, if the crew vision related hooks are missing, the game engine is using the Gun_01 hook instead; it might be the same with the cars... they might use also an other hook), but doing this would ensure your Fiat is up to date with the new vehicles, and you'll be sure there is nothing fishy here. I hope the problem isn't related to the animations, because I did'nt have a look at this yet, so I'm not sure to be helpful in this area. Did you test using one of the driver animations of ToW2 Africa instead of the Fiat driver animation from ToW1, to see if it is working? It could help to identify if the problem comes from there. Good luck! don't get discouraged by the hassle to get this working; I believe you're almost there; there must be only a little something wrongly set.

Also, how comes the damR lods are replacing only the dam0 lods and not the dam1 lods? And it looks like only x?y?_damR_l0 is used to show the interior of the building. is it how it's supposed to work?

I would like to know if there is any possibility of having several damage levels to building in ToW2, like there was in ToW1. I managed to import in game a complex building made of five different parts, each destructible separately. I made two damage levels for each part (dam1 and dam2); but as can be seen from the screenshot, no matter the amount of shelling the building is sustaining, only the first damage level is showing and I can't manage to have the totally destructed church to display. is it related to the static_preset of the building (I used house_brick_game as a preset), or is it a limitation of ToW Africa 43? I tried to use several different other presets, but with the same result. Also, how comes the damR lods are replacing only the dam0 lods and not the dam1 lods? And it looks like only x?y?_damR_l0 is used to show the interior of the building. is it how it's supposed to work?

it must come from some other problem than msh/txt format; The typhoon I've made for ToW1 was converted with MshConverter and is in msh/text format. It works without major flaw (only thing I can think of is MshConverter not being able to handle smoothing as well as the meshtools utilities) You said you created a new driver_in hook? do you mean you added a hook in 3DSmax and exported back the file in MshConverter via 3DS format? or did you simply rename one of the other hooks to driver_in? There's something here that I don't quite understand. It might be the reason why the msh/txt file is no longer working. Just do a test; import the default fiat body.msh fom ToW into MshConverter. don't change anything, and save it as msh/txt. It should then work without problem in ToW (at least in ToW1). And what do you mean by it doesn't work? is there an error message in MshConverter, or in ToW?

The game will accept msh/text without problem. You don't need to convert back to previous *.msh format. if the game crashes, it must be for an other reason.

I might have found where the problem lies: in ToW1 fiat body.msh, there are the following hooks: Driver Commander commander_hook In ToW1 fiat hier.ini is a reference to a driver_hook as well, but no such hook exist in the 3D model Where as in the opel_blitz_tent_afrika in ToW2, the following hooks are to be found: Commander Driver There is no longer a commander_hook hook, and no driver_hook hook. in ToW1 fiat model, the commander_hook hook is located inside the car (at the position where he would normally be seated) My supposition is that it is this hook that should be used in your model instead of the Driver hook (try to use something like this in your hier.ini: [Hook_Commander] Type HOOK Parent Hull Hook Commander [Hook_Driver] Type HOOK Parent Hull Hook commander_hook If this doesn't work, I'm out of ideas for now...

First thing you should do is check in the Fiat 3D model to see if the hooks for the entering,exiting and driving position of the driver seems correctly placed (Body.msh check hook Driver, Driver_in, Driver_out). I've not yet looked into the animation configuration files, so I've no idea how they're working; you know much more than me about that, so I can't tell you for sure if there is a problem with that. Also, is only the position of the driver wrong, or is also the orientation wrong (does he seat toward the front of the car, or in an other direction? Also, what about the animation of the other crew member? are the passengers position OK? From what I see when opening the Body.msh of the Fiat_tent in MshConverter, the Driver hook seems to be offset to the right at ground level (almost the same position as the Driver_in hook. Did you work in any way on the mesh using MshConverter? If you didn't I would expect your driver to be standing seated on the ground, outside the right side of the car if there was any problem with an offset of the hook. It could be that your problem comes from the orientation and position coordinates of the hook in the mesh file. try saving it in msh/text format in mshConverter, so that you can edit it with notepad, and modify the coordinates of the hook to see if that can fix the problem. Also, you could try to use an other hook name in the part.ini file for the driver position, to see if it changes the position of the animation (for example, renaming the Driver hook to visible_hook_01 might position the driver a bit more inside the cab - giving you an hint of the coordinates you should use for your Driver hook)

I'm glad you made it! As for the position of the driver: there should be a hook (called Driver) to position the driver's animation. A problem with the position of the driver could have several reasons that I can think of: -wrong position of the Driver hook (not likely if you didn't modify the position of the hook yourself and just used the model from ToW as is). -It could be be a problem if you used a different animation than the one that was in ToW1 for the driver (it could be that there is an offset in the animation). Does the animation of the driver match the car when entering/exiting, or is the position offset at all times? try to have a look in the part.ini's [CrewPlacement_Driver] section, to see if everything seems correct. -third solution that I can think of: this might be related to a bug in ToW2: I've noticed already that sometimes, the driver of the Opel_tent car is wrongly positioned inside the cab (but not all the time, so I don't know where the problem comes from). There is also a problem with the animation of the door (it stays opened after the driver/crew exited the car. it doesn't close again after the driver embarks again) Check the node for the driver (HierNode Hook_driver) to see if it is positionned correctly. There are also two other hooks to get in and get out of the car (Driver_in Driver_out). if theses two are correct and only the position of the driver while seated inside is wrong, it might be that the Driver hook is wrongly positionned. I hope this will be of help to you.

I've no idea which file might be missing/different. If it shows in the encyclopedia, it means that all your mesh files/textures/mat files/hier.him are set correctly. So the problem must be somewhere in the configuration files. Try to compare what you have for the Fiat to the files of the opel_blitz_tent_afrika. You might be able to spot something missing. make sure you've added the new fiat car in the file filesid.ini.

you'll need photoshop and the DDS plug-in from Nvidia to save in the compressed format used by ToW and ToW2. Theses "TGA" files are DDS files with the extension changed to TGA (they are not really TGA, that's the reason why you can't open them as a normal TGA). To open the "TGA" files from ToW and edit them in a paint editing program, you'll need IMFviewer by Dr Jones. Once you've done your editing, you'll need to convert them again to DDS format.

when exporting from MshConverter to 3DSmax, the textures should be in the right place. The only time I had problem with the textures was when I exported back from *.3DS to *.msh with MshConverter without changing the U scale to -1. If you don't change this value, chances are that the texture will be reversed in ToW.

Have you any error message showing when you try to open the battle you created with the fiat?

prlugo, in MshConverter, try before exporting to msh to change U scale or V scale to -1 in the Save Options tab; it should correct the problem with your texture (you need to change the scale to -1 to flip the texture, so that it fits the model perfectly)