Broadsword

Hi DaveyJJ I made my very first map (see El Guettar on the Repository) recently, and found it was quite easy and fun, once I got used to the way the various map editor tools work. Mine took a bit longer because I imported actual Google Earth imagery to use as my texture map and source for terrain elevations, but if you're creating fictional maps, the process should go much faster. With your artist background, it should be a snap. But check the archives on this TOW mods forum for various postings that people have made about map editing and creation. Those tips saved me a lot of time and helped me get started. Even so, I had quite a bit of trial and error before I felt comfortable with the results. If you're a patient person, and if you enjoy learning new things, give it a shot!

Thanks for the coding help, friends. My scenario is coming along great now... Maybe someone can suggest how to do this: I have the AI German infantry mounted in Sdkfz 251 halftracks. But I want to write some trigger code that detects when the halftrack gets within engagement range of enemy infantry, and has the German infantry then dismount to attack them. I was thinking of something like this inside my basic Sdkfz attack trigger (where the variable @unit = the sdkfz ): LABEL dismount set @dist = ( UNIT , @unit , RECT , //define here us infantry ok, with good morale, OK weapon, etc// ) if ( @dist < 301 ) then Delay ( 1000 ) RunCommand ( OUT_CREW , UNIT , @unit , PASSENGER ) Else Delay ( 1000 ) goto dismount ENDIF If that worked, then I'd have to figure out a way to make the newly dismounted German infantry do something - otherwise I'm afraid they'd just stand there. Ideas? I looked all through the canned scenarios, and none of them seem to have any code that dismounts infantry when certain conditions are met. Maybe this can't be done?

I'm a total newbie to coding triggers for TOW2, but I'm having some fun (and success) creating a scenario for the El Guettar map I posted on the repository recently. Thanks to Webwing's tutorial videos and the docs that came with the game, I've been able to script the initial bombardment and smoke barrage, two waves of preparatory Stuka attacks, a working belt of U.S. minefields, and the appearance of the German forces as reinforcements on one corner of the map. By lifting some code from the Faid Pass original scenario, I've gotten my German tanks to make a pretty convincing attack along an array. Now I want some Panzergrenadiers on foot to move with the tanks to support them and fight along the way. I've gotten my Panzergrenadier group to appear on the map, right behind the wedge of tanks, but I've tried 3 or 4 different ways to code their movement/attack, and nothing seems to budge them. They just stand there, while the tanks race off. Any suggestions? I understand the simple movement or attack triggers, but I know I probably need all sorts of If..Then lines to make sure the trigger doesn't crash the game when a soldier gets killed or routs before the destination is reached.

Sorry, I meant set the German deployment at the SE corner, not SW.

Yes, Nokturnal, this map is designed for a specific historical battle, and isn't really meant to be an all-purpose map for random battles. If you want to get the most out of it, some suggestions: Set the play area as large as possible. Set the German deployment area in a very small box at the SW corner, where the highway enters the play area. Set the US deployment in the prepared positions, in the hills and shallows near the NW and N edges of the map, and , if you like, inside the Wadi El Keddab. OOB suggestions: Give the US tons of off-map artillery, no air. Put an arty battery in the prepared position N of the barbed wire. Make most of the US force M-10 tank destroyers, in hull-down positions, with a little bit of infantry tucked away in the foxholes. Give the Germans tons of air support, some off-map artillery, and then a massive force of Mark IV and III tanks supporeted by armored infantry. Use a preliminary air strike and artillery barrage to prepare your attack. Then put lots of smoke between you and the enemy -- you need it to screen the German spearhead, so your forces can advance more safely down the valley. Send the German attack W along the highway, then turn NW before you reach the barbed wire and See how many surviving German units can reach the NW corner of the map. Historically, the Germans

Open the Battle Generator, and create a single-player scenario using this new map. When you launch TOW2, select "Battles" from the main menu, and you should see your new scenario. Launch it and have a blast. There are no downloadable scenarios yet for this new map, but some community-made ones may be posted in the near future.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all you do is extract the *.rar file to the Battlefront\Tow2\maps directory on your hard drive. The map is just a folder, containing a bunch of files specific to that map.

Sorry I didn't put a readme in the downloadable file. Some more notes and thoughts: This map is all custom-textured and hand-sculpted, based on Google Earth imagery. The Google earth image gives the landscape a pleasing and very realistic color variation -- when I look out on the horizon, I swear I can almost see heat shimmering and mirages... Please let me know how infantry fares on this map -- IMHO, the terrain in the original maps tended to lack enough realistic infantry cover (variations in ground, well-located foxholes, camouflage, slit trenches, grasses and vegetation), and that made them tend to die way too fast. Also, you'll find that the G.P. 15 highway on this map is just an asphalt-colored texture, not a real 3D road. Several reasons for that: First, the hilly Point 336 part of the terrain along the N and NE mapedges was tactically significant in the battle, so I needed to get as much of it into the play area as possible. Second, I couldn't a find a simple way to make an asphalt-colored 3D highway (and all the out-of the-box road options looked horrible on the map). Third, the German objective here was to advance from the SE corner, overrun the remaining US forces, and exit off the NW corner of the map. So, on this map, we'll assume the US engineers have mined/barricaded the highway (you'll see the wrecks and oil drums) and that 10th Panzer Div decides to advance along (but not actually on) the highway. The US artillery battery position near the center of the map is in an exposed location and in the actual battle, the panzers overran it (however, the gunners have slit trenches, and they can try to defend themselves with rifles and hand grenades). A good overview of this battle, including OOB information, is in the GHQ miniatures scenario here: http://www.ghqmodels.com/newsletters/julaug2002.pdf I'm now going to try and learn the coding and triggers stuff to make some scenarios -- if anyone else with better experience wants to work with me on this, please let me know. This map could be the basis for 3 historical scenarios: March 17 late afternoon -- 1st Recon Troop/1st ID scouts ahead of the U.S. main body and runs into some sharp patrol actions against the Centauro Division in the hills N of the highway. (Historically, these actions made the U.S. abandon the idea of a frontal assault along the highway, and led to the the famous night action where Darby's Rangers scaled a mountain to the N and took the Italians by surprise on their flank/rear). March 23 a.m. -- The initial 10th Pz Div attack at first light. March 23 late afternoon --The second 10th Pz attack, after their initial one stalled and they pulled back to regroup. The two March 23 actions could even be linked in a mini-campaign: The US player has the advantage of playing defense, but would have to win both morning and afternoon to win the day. The German player needs to win only once. One caveat: It will be impossible to make a historically accurate OOB unless/until we have a way to get the American M3 GMC 75mm tank destroyer into the game. These obsolete, halftrack-mounted tank destroyers fought heroically at El Guettar, until a unit of fully tracked M-10s reinforced them at the decisive moment. I'll just have to use all M-10s for now, and use some balancing tricks to make sure it doesn't give the US too great an advantage. This is a more fun period of the Tunisia campaign, for those who like to play as American, because by March 1943 the US troops were on the offensive, Patton was in command, and they were no longer as green as they were in the Kasserine battles.

Also, many thanks to Knokke and Dr. Jones for their technical help and advice.

Since no one else seems to have noticed or commented on the new patch, let me be the first to say: Thanks guys!

The good news: I've finished my custom El Guettar map, and I want to upload it to the Repository so others can enjoy it. The bad news: In trying to test my map in a quick Battle Generator scenario, there seems to be a map-caused problem that crashes TOW2 before it can load all the way. The red loading circle gets about 70-80% finished, then the game does a CTD and the error says "TOW2.EXE stopped working." My log file gives some clues (errors and failures), but can anyone tell me what they mean and how to fix them?: --- [sep 12, 2009 9:47:43 PM] ------------ BEGIN log session ------------- Sound: Native library (build 1.1, target - P IV) loaded. Main3D >>> renderer type: DIRECT3D9 Available Texture Memory: 1205Mb WWThreadPool.create(): Thread pool is created. Threads count = 0 Load gui skin from: Data/Settings/gui.ini Not exist section "special" in file Data/GUI/Ingame/Indicators/selectmarker/config.xml =========================== CampaignRecList.updateList() begins =========================== =========================== CampaignRecList.updateList() ends =========================== Time overflow (0): speed 0.23828435 ERROR file: File wwrcu not found Initializing DirectSound playback device... Primary buffer created. Playback format is set : sampling rate = 44100, num channels = 2. Not enought hardware buffers (0), hardware disabled Buffer caps : Transfer rate = 0, CPU overhead = 0. Default speaker config is : 1310724. Direct sound audio device initialized successfully : DX Version : 7 Hardware - disabled [buffers : 0] Extensions - enabled : EAX ver. 1 [ ] - disabled EAX ver. 2 [ ] - disabled EAX ver. 3 [ ] - disabled I3D ver. 2 [ ] - disabled ZoomFX [ ] - disabled MacroFX [ ] - disabled SIMD render [X] num channels 32 cannot open file for reading Cannot open audio file samples/Error_empty.wav Initializing animator... Animator was initialized in 3004 milliseconds (3 seconds) Loaded user music tracks: [ingame: 0] [Non-Game: 0] =========================== CampaignRecList.updateList() begins =========================== =========================== CampaignRecList.updateList() ends =========================== =================================================================== Last serial num: unknown Total size in bytes: 0 Number of blocks: 0 VoicesTable.load(): files were scanned in 1050 ms ::: setLoading=true ERROR file: File ww.cmd not found Selected Decal #0: GROUND, TEX 0, BRIGHTNESS 0 --------------------------- Precache Effects begins --------------------------- --------------------------- Precache Effects ends --------------------------- MapsStorage.aiMapAddRoads(): roads where added in 2 ms LandscapeTrees.recalcTreeVisBlocks() recalculated in 0 ms PFS recalculate PFSCache failed: initMission for Normal: nodeNum= 43734, availNodeNum=0 PFS recalculate PFSCache failed: initMission for Normal: nodeNum= 43734, availNodeNum=0 --PFSCache created-- ================ MissionManager.loadMissionBriefing() missions/single_missions/test_mission/briefing.xml ================ ================ MissionManager.loadMissionBriefing() ends ================ === END OF TRIGGER COMPILATION ===

Yippee! I've resolved the problems that were preventing me from making my own texture map files for TOW2. I simply create them in paint.net, using Google Earth imagery and some creative painting on top of them, save them as 24 bit tga files (uncompressed) and now they load into the map editor just fine. The 24 bit part was very important.

TOW2 (not TOW) will accept normal 24 bit TGA? Really? Then I wonder why my 24 bit TGA files are loading into the map editor OK but showing up looking so weird (the gray color and moire patterns). Maybe something else is causing the problem -- but what?? I'm so eager to get on with my map project, and so frustrated by these issues :-(

Thanks, Gnasher, but my maintex.tga and farmaintex.tga got the gray/moire effect no matter whether I save them as 24 bit or 32 bit. It's that whole problem of not having any way to convert the files to IMF format (making them readable by TOW2).

If we're trying to create our own maintex.tga and farmaintex.tga files for a map in the editor, should we save them from our paint program as 32 bit tga files? or 24 bit tgs files? should "compression" be checked or unchecked?

By the way, the same result (grayish image, moire patterns) happens whether I save my maintex and farmaintex files within the IMFViewer or just place them directly in the maps folder as native 32 bit tga files.

Sorry to post here, but I rarely get an answer to map editor questions over on the TOW2board... Using Google Earth and my paint program (paint.net) I've succeeded in creating a nice 2048 x 2048 pixels maintex map and a 1024 x 1024 pixels fartex map. I've saved both files as 32-bit tga (leaving the compression box unchecked). Is that right so far? OK, then I opened both files in Dr. Jones IMFViewer (successfully), and saved them from the viewer as maintex.tga and fartex.tga in my new battlefront/theatre of War 2/maps/(my map name) folder. Then I opened the Battlefront map editor (keeping fingers crossed)...and the map loaded! But everything looks weird -- it's all gray, full of little lines, and when I go to 3D view it's covered with "moire" pattern of thin rainbow stripes. Uh oh -- Any idea what went wrong here? Should I have saved the files as 24 bit TGA originally? Or checked the "compression" box? Or maybe something went wrong in Dr. Jones IMF viewer? I feel encouraged by the fact that the files and map loaded.

I made a discovery -- of sorts -- but still having problems. What I'm trying to do is add some green areas to the texture of my map, to simulate grass and to make any renderbrush grasses placed there be green (instead of brown, the color of grass placed over normal sandy areas). Although I've never been able to open or edit maintex.tga, I just discovered that my photo editing program WILL open maps\(mapname)\GameTypeMapGrassIndex.tga. When I open it, I can see it showing the areas of the map that already have a green painted color. I'm able to close that color and brush it on the map just fine. But then I save the file, try to open the map in my TOW2 map editor, and the file won't open at all. Any ideas why? Does this file need to be saved/converted somehow and then saved/converted back into something that will work in the game?

I think someone who knows more about the technical side of TOW2 might be able to advise you -- I'd like to hear those tips myself! But here's my thought: TOW2 has many elements of a wonderful wargame. So before you write it off, why not try your hand at the map and/or scenario editor, and make the battle just the way you want? My frustration with the canned campaigns led me to try making a new map/scenario. And while it's probably going to take me a long time to finish the project, I'm having so much fun "playing God" with the parameters and terrain that I'm spending more time modding and less time actually playing lately.

I hadn't found that article about El Guettar, Wargo -- thanks so much for posting the link! My scenario will focus on those critical moments when 10th Pz swept into the US rear area, closing in on the US artillery, supporting infantry, and TDs near the wadi. If I can get the balance right, I want it to be just possible for a skillful German player to get close enough to the guns to overrun them.

Wargo, I don't mean to discourage anyone from trying/buying Strategy of War, and I know you must have worked very hard on it. It's always easy to criticize from the sidelines, but hard to create something original! I've only just started to scratch the surface of the content, so I'm sure there's more to it than I've seen so far. It's interesting what you say about how Panzer divisions' tactics undermined them, battle by battle. In researching for the El Guettar scenario(s) and map I'm creating, I read that the 10th PZ Div initial a.m. attack on 3/23/43 actually led with tanks in a huge rolling "hollow square," with Pz Grenadiers hanging back in trucks about 1,500 meters behind, ready to move up at the first sign the tanks were slowing down/meeting resistance. That sounds kind of unusual to me, and I wonder why they did it that way. Any idea?

You're right, Txema -- it's not animated, just more of an interactive book. The tactical lessons are good but very basic, too. I think the best customer for Strategy of War would be a young gamer, experienced in RTS play but with little knowledge of the World War II era --someone who gets the game, blasts around indiscriminately, then starts to grow curious about the actual men and machines and historical background. If you're a grognard, you've probably already read way more on your own than Strategy of War can ever tell you.

Yes, I understand that the texture color underneath grass will color the grass. But the question is, how to paint a texture color or change the texture color being painted? Also: Can anyone explain the simplest and fastest method for building stone walls? I figured out how to clone objects along a line using the F5 key. But all those wall segments are spaced apart. If I try to squeeze them into contact using the F9 key, as the manual seems to suggest, the numbers in the "distance between objects" counter changes but nothing happens to the actual wall segments. I resorted to dragging each segment into flush contact in 3D view, but for a long straight stone wall, this is very tedious. I'm sure there must be a more automated way to get a smooth continuous wall like the ones I see in the maps provided with the game. Ideas?

OK, 1280 x 800 seems to have soved the problem -- sorry.

Well, I took the plunge and bought Strategy of War. It looks promising, but the first problem is getting it to display fully on my screen. The specs say "Monitor Display of at least 1024 x 768 Resolution; higher screen resolution strongly recommended." I bumped mine up to 1280 x 768 and I still get the text and bottoms of the screens cut off. The windows within the program aren't moveable, so that isn't a remedy. And adjusting the vertical display on my monitor upwards doesn't help, because it's the window within the game that cuts off the images/text short of the bottom. What am I missing here?