Broadsword56

No, but -- just curious -- why would you need to do that if you can see the x/y coordinates of each square? To locate any point, just match the coordinates of a particular grid square to the corresponding x/y coordinates of a map tile in the CMBN editor. (The only catch is, I don't know yet how the CMBN editor will number the y axis. My Gimp graphics program numbers the y from top to bottom, but some games' map editors -- like the Theatre of War series -- have used a system where 0,0 is the center of the map and everything is numbered + or - depending on which quadrant it's in. That would be a big problem.)

By a country mile, it's the St. Lo mod for Command Ops:Battles From The Bulge (Panther Games). Not as wide a theater covered by the mod, and no D-Day, but for the June-July hedgerow campaign by XIX Corps to St. Lo it's the best thing going.

No. According to the manual, the CMBN editor has a pretty versatile contouring feature that lets you brush elevations over swaths of terrain, making all the brushed tiles that particular elevation. So it's not as tedious as assigning elevations manually to every tile. Instead, I would need to just find and mark the CMBN tiles where my contour lines would be -- not every tile, just enough to trace the line and places where it curves --and then use the contouring tool in CMBN to brush that elevation along that contour. Still tedious, but at least do-able.

I don't have the video chops to do this, but it's a good idea. Actually, Battlefront could probably make even more $$$ with a "Mappers Resource" module. I could see it including a video walkthrough like you describe, a step-by-step tutorial by the game designers that really gets deeply into the map editor and tips/tricks, plus mapping resource files like topographical maps, historical battle maps, historical photos of what towns and farms and things looked like in 1944, etc.

I know what you mean, Ian -- the exact same problem happened to me when I tried to create more than one polygon. Only my first polygon worked and accepted the altitude values I input into the field. So I just keep saving and resetting that polygon. I don't know why the others didn't accept my inputs, or how to fix that. I looked all over the web for tutorials and help, posted the problem here, too, but never found a solution. Wish I could help you. Anyone?

Here's what it looks like in my graphics program (Gimp 2.6) with the topographic contour image as a semi-transparent layer over the terrain: You can see the 500x500 pixel grid, which for a 4x4km map (if my math is right??) should represent all the 8x8m terrain tiles in a CMBN map.

Here's a screenshot to illustrate the results of the technique I described earlier: You can also see the 1947 French aerial imagery, superimposed on Google Earth as an overlay and then scaled to match (a lot of trial and error dragging the handles on the overlay -- if you can get the roads to line up you're most of the way there-- and when you get it right it's an "aha" moment. You can have fun flipping the transparency toggle back and forth -- it's the closest thing to a time machine.

There's an earlier post by someone (I thought on this thread?) that explained how to do it. In a nutshell, once you're in Google Earth: 1. Select the "add polygon" tool from the top toolbar. Select "Properties" for the polygon. 2. In the "description" tab, write the elevation you want to see. I like to start with the highest one on my map (example: 120m) In the Style and Color tab, set the line color to something very visible (I like red), and opacity to 30%. Set the Color dropdown menu to Filled & Outlined, and opacity to 30%. 3. In the Altitude tab, Write 120m in the Altitude field and set the dropdown menu to Absolute. 4. Click OK On your map, you should see a translucent red shape that now covers everything lower than 120m in elevation. Now you can trace an outline of the shape using the "add path" tool and clicking at points along the contour. Again, use a bold color like red at 100% opacity. Save the path using Save->Save to My Places. Now to make your next contour, just open your Polygon "properties" box again and change the label to the next elevation (125m) and change the altitude settings to match. Click OK and you should see the polygon receded to the next lowest contour. Just keep using the same polygon, but draw and save a new path each time for each contour line.

Just to clarify -- I don't mess with grids at all in Google Earth, except as 1km x 1km zones to establish where my overall map will be. I just use GE to set the boundaries of my map and then get the image into Gimp, where I use the Gimp grids to see my image divided into 8x8m tiles. And yes, at 100% view zoom level my map looks solid black when the grid is active, because the grid is so small. But I just switch the grid off when looking at more distant zoom levels, and then switch it back on again to zoom in on details. At 800% zoom, it's very workable at detail level. It's also helpful to turn on the "snap to grid" option on the graphics program, so that way anything you draw there -- contour lines, for example, will conform to the tiles. To draw things, use a pencil tool at 1px size with a hard edge. That will give you good solidly colored tiles.

I'm also working on a similar project: a 4x4 km zone just W of the St Lo-Bayeux highway centered around Villiers Fossard. Using Google Earth, the 1947 French aerial photos, and Gimp as my image editor. Started with Google Earth and drew the 4 x 4km box. Overlaid the 1947 French aerial photo. Saved the image, opened in Gimp, and cropped/resized to 500 x 500 pixels. Then clicked on "show grid" and now the grid represents all the 8m tiles. Back in Google Earth, I used the process of polygons at specific elevations to find the various contours (every 5 m of elevation) then traced the outline in red lines using the path tool. Gave the area a white background, so now I have a white 4 x 4 km box with just the red topo contours on it. Then I saved the image and placed it in Gimp as a new layer. By playing with the transparencies and layers, I can see what I want to see and locate specific features with the x/y coordinates of the pixels. So this ought to save me time when I have the CMBN editor -- while I can't import my reference image into CMBN, I can at least pinpoint the tiles where things need to go and not have to fumble around as much. I'm thinking I'll get the basic 4x4 box contoured and roughly mapped, then clip off portions of it to make the finely detailed maps for battles. I'll post a few screenshots later if there's time.

Question about the map editor: Does it have a navigation display showing which numbered tile your cursor is on, and/or a way to jump to a particular numbered tile? This would help greatly with making game maps from existing maps that have been scaled with a grid. For example: If the map tiles in CMBN are 8 x 8 meters, then a 4km x 4km maximum sized map would be 500 tiles x 500 tiles. I have a Google Earth image cropped to 500 x 500 pixels. If I set my graphics program (Gimp) to "show grid," now each square on the grid represents a game map tile. If I wanted to use this to create my CMBN map, I'd want to locate my major landmarks (such as the place where a contour line enters the mapedge). Let's say my 50m contour line enters my Gimp map at pixel 200,103. (x,ycoordinates) Now I want to find tile 200, 103 in the CMBN map editor to mark the corresponding spot. Does the editor allow this?

Dingchavez, I didn't know that cobblestones are rare in Norman towns -- can you share some more tips for us about features that would make our farms, hamlets, towns, and cities look more "comme il faut?"

I read the Germans used some of the loose pigs or other farm animals in the area for that purpose -- they'd shoo a bunch of them out of the hedgerow and toward American positions in the night. The rustling would trick the greener American troops into firing wildly, so once they revealred their positions a mortar or artillery attack could be sent down on them.

I second the applause for this 2nd map where the naval gunfire video was shot. Best map we've seen anywhere yet -- with highly detailed farms and orchards, irregular small fields, a great and complicated little town....simply amazing. Those craters from the naval guns look big enough to hide a tank in (can we?). Tremendous firepower -- I could really feel it, and I really like the way the smoke and dust linger. The airstrike video was great, too, and I like the shot at the end where you can see how the stone wall got breached/damaged by the aircraft. Also it's great how destroyed trees don't just end up on the ground or blasted to a stump, but as skeletal trees, stipped of their summer foliage but still standing. I can imagine a picturesque Norman town like this coming to resemble some of those late-July photos of St Lo -- just a moonscape of ruins and skeletal trees, with perhaps the spires of the cathedral (hey, how about a preview of that cathedral building type?) still standing on the horizon.

The Spanish AAR says that while you have to start by buying units as pre-structured platoons, companies, etc., you can customize them after that. So you could buy a forward observer team, for example, and add a Sherman tank. This sort of thing would seem to give you the kind of armor-infantry integration at the small-unit level that we're talking about here. In that case I guess the tank is subordinate to the commander of the infantry unit it's integrated with. Sounds good to me. But in this case would the game limit you to give orders only to the Infantry unit, and lose the ability to micromanage the tank? That would be an OK tradeoff, too, if the unit AI handled the tank intelligently enough (basic fire support, letting the infantry go ahead to screen/protect the vehicle, etc.)

Yikes -- I wouldn't want to meet those gents in a dark hedgerow...

Good decision, Steve.

Yes, that captures it exactly.

This all sounds fantastic, and should greatly improve the way infantry combat is simulated. Since we're talking soft factors here, how would you rate overall the units that actually fought in Normandy in CMBN terms, circa July 11, 1944)? We're talking general terms here, since obviously a particular company or battalion might differ... Leadership: I'd make US units 0 (on the -2 to +2 scale). German units +1, because they still hadn't lost their core of superior battle-hardened NCOs with Ostfront experience at this point in the war. Experience: From what i've read it was pretty equal here between the US 29th ID and the German 352nd ID, both "Veteran" I'd say by this point. (On D-Day the US troops would of course have had less experience, but by July 11 and the drive on St. Lo they'd been slogging in the hedgerows for awhile). The US 35th ID didn't land on D-Day and was inexperienced, but had been trained so I'd rate them "Regular." And the German paratroop units (3FJ, etc, when we get them in a module), I'd rate as "Crack" (saving "Elite" for the SS). Motivation: This is situation-dependent, but as a default starting level I'd say US units would rate "Normal." German 352nd ID and regular Wehrmacht would be "High" (a little more motivated because now they're defending the European mainland and they aren't convinced the war is lost yet), FJ units "Extreme" and SS units "Fanatic."

Motivation levels according to the maual range from "Fanatic" to "Poor." What are the specific levels there, and how many are there?

Wow, thanks for such quick and detailed answers, y'all! So to use a sports analogy: Athletes start every new game "rested," and fatigue progresses as they play. But the more "Fitness" they start the game with with, the better they can resist fatigue as they play. Great concept, looking forward to seeing how it works. Let's say I wanted to simulate a battle where a battalion that's been fighting all day is ordered to make one last hasty attack before nightfall. I should make them "weakened" or even "unfit," depending on how tired they'd be. In the battle, I'd expect to see more units fatigue faster, getting to "tired" and "exhausted" after fairly little fighting/movement. How would that fatigue look on the battlefield? Faster to become suppressed/panic/rout? Slower movement or failure to move at all? Less accurate shooting?

Just wondering if this can be clarified... The manual's soft factors section lists "Fitness" and its various states: Fit, Weakened, Unfit. (Is it just these 3 levels)? But is there also a specific factor called "fatigue?" or is this what the Fitness factor is intended to represent? Because in game screens (or am I just remembering from CM x1) I recall seeing units data displays that showed the unit was "tired" at some point in a battle, such as after running a lot. If there are fatigue states, can they be set in the editor? And what are the states?

Close Combat 1 back in 1995 or 96.

And the Brit/SS module will also include the German "Fallschirmjaeger," correct?

OK, my bad -- maybe someone with the map smarts will eventually share their wisdom with us over on the mapping threads...