[Humvee MK19: special ammunition or graphic glitch ?]

Actually, it's not so rare.. I see this bug pretty often..

Paul.

[Newbie recon question: Route Lightning, Objective Grease]

You have to unbutton the crew of the recon HUMVEE for the imagaing array to work I think.

Sure they are unbuttoned.. but no luck regardless..

Paul.

[Newbie recon question: Route Lightning, Objective Grease]

So my question is, is there any way to make use of recon vehicles in this scenario or similar ones (other than as cannor fodder)? Are they just no good at spotting guys in trenches? I would have thought that with a thermal camera, they'd at least get a few "?"s.

CR

I'd like to help but from my personal experience all I can say is that these recon Humvees are just plain blind..

They are not good at spotting anything not only guys in trenches.. In fact they have the best possible and very expensive recon devices but I didn't figured out the way how to use these recon guys..

Here's an example.. In the first scenario of the Forged Steel campaign there's a nice hill on the left side.. I moved on the top of the hill one of the recon Humvees, one M1, one Bradley, FO and recon squad.. The best spotting positions I dedicated to the FO and to the recon Humvee.. This group remained on the hill almost until the end of the mission.. Everyone spotted and indentified at least several enemy units providing FO (who spotted the most) with good areas for the support fire.. The only unit that had no idea what was going on was exactly the recon Humvee that has been seeing an endless amount of "?"s while their equipment has an automatic indentification ability as far as I know..

Sure, that's just mine personal experience..

Well anyways, welcome to the CMSF world.!

I myself discovered this game just a couple of months ago and honestly I love it.. Tons of fun and entertainment..

Paul.

[AI Editor-Just Take a Walk]

1) [This is the purpose for which I wanted to use it when I started this thread] Making patrol routes. As it is, the guys just sort of randomly charge all over the place and then hit the dirt at intervals. Not really suitable at all for a covert op-based mission (yes, yes, I know, CM:SF isn't supposed to simulate this).

Ok, I see.. For this particular scenario you'll need something like "MOVE" indeed..

But then, it's still more reasonable to request directly a "Patrol" order for the AI which is going to be really useful, me thinks..

[AI Editor-Just Take a Walk]

Well, honestly, I can hardly imagine the situation on a battlefield when command "MOVE" is necessary for infantry..

How often do you use "MOVE" command for your own infantry.?

The command is very slow and unsafe.. I personally preffer to advance the infantry by giving "QUICK" command to a more or less covered place and after some pause relocate them to a new position.. While in paused mode the units have a good chance of spotting nearby enemy..

To relocate units to a longer distances there are plenty of personal carriers and IFV for regular units (marines even have the tracks in addition to AAV) and uncons have taxis..

Just order AI to relocate unit carriers to a destination place and then give the command "Passanger Dismount".. All you have to do is just assign a different group numbers to the infantry units and to the carriers to manage them separately..

But as I'm new to the game there's a big chance that I'm missing something or I'm unaware of some tips and tricks so I'd appreciate if you point to any of them..

Paul.

[Where to get Shock Force Mods?]

I don't think you can register any more. If you weren't registered before he decided to close down the site, the Repository is your only option at this point.

There's no reason in the registration at all if the site is going to be closed..

As I discovered there's a lot of stuff on that site which is not represented in the Repository..

Cmmods should allow a free access to all the mod files until it gets finally closed..

Otherwise it will be considered as a shameless discrimination and degrading treatment of all new members of the CMSF community..

[New Campaign - Forging Steel]

Hi George,

I just want to say that your Forging Steel campain is done very well..

I'm in the first mission yet but getting a lot of fun already.. Nice job.!

Also, I'd like to thank you for the great scenario design tutorial..

Very helpful and informative for noobs like myself.! Thanks..

Cheers,

Paul.

[New Smoke and Tracer Mods]

That is what developers say and I agree with them. But why not to make it some kind of an option, cause for me it is pretty annoying as well as for many other players. And that it why I'm asking if the author of that mod can make a small one which exclude small arms tracers. I'm sure lots of people will be extremly grateful)

As the author of this mod I have to say that, in my opinion, tracers are absolutely necessary to have a clear view and understanding of what's going on on the battle field..

But the main reason why I made this mod was exactly to make the tracers appear less sharp and bright, and therefore less visible and annoying, but at the same time still have a clear picture of who, what and where is firing..

Unfortunately, there's no way to separately affect appearance of different kind of weapons as they all share the same and the only texture for the tracers..

In my opinion, each weapon must have its own tracer texture and I'm ready to contribute a set of textures for each type of weapons if needed..

[What's the rame rate for the effects animation.?]

Well there are mods for smoke, flames, tracers, muzzle flashes etc already. You can't change the actual model animations, but texture animations are moddable. (And explosions are done as texture animations, so you should be able to mod them. No idea on any of the technical details though).

That's exactly why I was asking about the frame rate..

There's 39 frames of the flames animation loop but it's unknown how long these 39 frames supposed to play.. 30 frames per second.? 24.? 15 or even 12.?

Sure one can make a mod without this information but knowing the frame rate would help a lot..

[New Smoke and Tracer Mods]

Thank you Stingray.!

@ stikkypixie

Well I really like the dispersed look, but I thought the colours looked too faded, not as dark as I think it ought to be (even though I have no experience with these kind of things). The dust kicked up by vehicle doesn't match the colour of the sand on the ground. But it's kinda minor.

Thanks a lot for the notes.!

Regarding the colors being too faded and not dark enough you mean tracers or smoke.?

As for the dust, yes I agree, the color doesn't match.

But as I said, my intention was to make it look like a bit dirty ground dust instead of looking like a sand dust. I'll look into it once again and probably make a color matched version.

Thanks again.

[New Smoke and Tracer Mods]

@ nikita320106

Thanks.. please share your thoughts after checking :=) crits is really needed..

@ stikkypixie

Thanks.. I'm really glad you like it.. any crits.?

******************

Now I'm working on the muzzle fire.. very tricky stuff..

Additive transparency behaves differently depending on the environment.. But we'll see if I end up with anything worthy..

Here are some WIP screenshots..

[New Smoke and Tracer Mods]

Yesterday I uploaded to the repository three new mods - one Smoke and Dust mod and two Tracer mods.

The difference between two the tracer mods is just the color.

You can download the mods from this page:

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=select&id=6&orderby=2&page=2

The mod names are - proEffects Smoke, proEffects Tracer and proEffects Tracer Light.

I hope you'll enjoy the mods :=)

Any comments and crits are much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

On the following screenshots you can take a look at the mods in action:

[What's the rame rate for the effects animation.?]

I'm no expert at all this computer stuff but the way the thing is put together is that there is very little that you can tinker around with - skins and sound files are doable but not much more than that is my understanding of the situation. Battlefront keep the code for this game very close hold.

The case is that actually I don't have to deal with the code at all (and I really have no idea about the code as I'm not a programmer whatsoever).

For effects animation mainly is used a sequence of images and those are the same textures you can paint/render and replace.

I already made new bilboard textures for the smoke and dust. I think they look pretty solid and I'll upload the mod in the nearest future.

What I'd like to tweak more is the explosion and muzzle fire.

Anyways, thank you for your reply.

[What's the rame rate for the effects animation.?]

Hello everyone,

First of all, I'd like to say that few weeks ago I purchased CMSF with the Marines module and I have to say that I enjoy this game a lot.

It's a great and very entertaining game, the quality which is very rare for modern games.

Well, now to the point. I'd like to ask what frame rate is used for the in-game effects animation so I can play a bit with the appearance of some effects like explosion, smoke and fire.?

And another question - what data is stored in the .mdr files and is there any way to extact and store it back.?

Thank you in advance.

Paul.