kohlenklau

Resurrected up from the graveyard of dead mods...

I would appreciate and pay for the game-coded building blocks to mod my own attempt at a Barbarossa, Fall Blau, Fall Gelb, etc. I don't need to wait for the bottlenecks of TOE research and stock scenarios/campaigns. Charge me like you DID do them. No problem. I already work for free. Lots of us do. I think the R-35 is in CMFI and maybe CMBN but not in CMRT. Same thing with quite a few other vehicles and weapons that the 3D modelling investment and time has already been expended. Scrape all the early war stuff together, have a way to scenario edit OUT the panzerfausts, etc. and make some money. Release like the CMBN vehicle pack and CMBN battle pack. CMRT: Wargamer Kit Barbarossa $30-45 CMRT: Wargamer Kit Fall Blau $30-45 CMFI: Wargamer Kit North Africa $30-45 CMBN: Wargamer Kit Fall Gelb $30-45

Could/would you/BFC ever do a "limited scope" vehicle and weapon module of 1940/1941 mdr's with no TOE updates to allow some fan based modding for the early war periods?

In a CMRT forum thread it was so funny that a couple guys mentioned Tobruk. AND another recent thread on map size had me recollect a crash of the game when I was testing a CMFI Afrika Mod Tobruk defenses map with like 220 strands of barbed wire... AND it was recently Easter... So, please, in the honor of those fine men it seems fitting to offer, upon the 80th anniversary of the battles, if you so desire, download this CMFI scenario "Tobruk Digger Easter Rev III" and the mods folder for some cool stuff to see in the scenario and a readme txt file. kohlenklau's TOBRUK DIGGER EASTER DOWNLOAD Oh, and here is the briefing for the above scenario. PLAY ONLY AS HUMAN ALLIES VS AXIS AI! It is early morning on a day of Easter weekend in April 1941. The mild temperatures of the night are over and as the greatcoats come off here in the desert the temperature will now slowly climb until it is warm soon and eventually even hot later in the afternoon. The khamsin winds blow strong from the southeast reducing visibility. You are in a concrete Italian-built strongpoint on the so called "Red Line" outer ring of defenses around Tobruk, Libya. Your strongpoint, designated R33, is integrated with anti-tank ditches, barbed wire and minefields. ^ Defend R33 and your sector from enemy incursion. (The enemy has hidden touch objectives worth various points.) ^ In this battle your initial focus is 3 Section, 10 Platoon, D Coy, 2/17 Australian Battalion, 20th Australian Brigade, 9th Australian Division. Section Leader: Corporal "Blue" Donnelson. Also assigned to R33 is a Vickers HMG. A D Coy Forward Observer is in the company area and has a radio link to the battalion mortars and the Royal Horse Artillery 25-pounders. Your platoon leader is inspecting the other strongpoints in the platoon sector and should be along shortly. ^ Machine-Gun Battalion 8 is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Ponath. Though reduced in numbers from the 1200 that arrived a month ago at Tripoli to about 300 now, they are well equipped, experienced and highly motivated opponents. Their goal is to penetrate the defenses and create a hole for the tanks of the 5th Panzer Regiment. ^ Your score on this battle determines the follow on battle. Achieve an extremely difficult Total Victory by keeping the Germans from touching anywhere on your side of the wire and the next battle would be on the same map with their renewed efforts to breach the wire. Anything less than a Total Victory and the next battle will assume the axis have successfully penetrated into the Tobruk defenses and be on a different map. However, a "player feedback battle" will open after this current battle concludes to more accurately branch off as the story continues. Note that the spirit of your defense and success in eliminating the enemy will be of great assistance in future battles.

Oh, and here is the briefing for the above scenario. PLAY ONLY AS HUMAN ALLIES VS AXIS AI! It is early morning on a day of Easter weekend in April 1941. The mild temperatures of the night are over and as the greatcoats come off here in the desert the temperature will now slowly climb until it is warm soon and eventually even hot later in the afternoon. The khamsin winds blow strong from the southeast reducing visibility. You are in a concrete Italian-built strongpoint on the so called "Red Line" outer ring of defenses around Tobruk, Libya. Your strongpoint, designated R33, is integrated with anti-tank ditches, barbed wire and minefields. ^ Defend R33 and your sector from enemy incursion. (The enemy has hidden touch objectives worth various points.) ^ In this battle your initial focus is 3 Section, 10 Platoon, D Coy, 2/17 Australian Battalion, 20th Australian Brigade, 9th Australian Division. Section Leader: Corporal "Blue" Donnelson. Also assigned to R33 is a Vickers HMG. A D Coy Forward Observer is in the company area and has a radio link to the battalion mortars and the Royal Horse Artillery 25-pounders. Your platoon leader is inspecting the other strongpoints in the platoon sector and should be along shortly. ^ Machine-Gun Battalion 8 is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Ponath. Though reduced in numbers from the 1200 that arrived a month ago at Tripoli to about 300 now, they are well equipped, experienced and highly motivated opponents. Their goal is to penetrate the defenses and create a hole for the tanks of the 5th Panzer Regiment. ^ Your score on this battle determines the follow on battle. Achieve an extremely difficult Total Victory by keeping the Germans from touching anywhere on your side of the wire and the next battle would be on the same map with their renewed efforts to breach the wire. Anything less than a Total Victory and the next battle will assume the axis have successfully penetrated into the Tobruk defenses and be on a different map. However, a "player feedback battle" will open after this current battle concludes to more accurately branch off as the story continues. Note that the spirit of your defense and success in eliminating the enemy will be of great assistance in future battles.

It is so funny that YOU guys said Tobruk. AND another recent thread on map size had me recollect a crash of the game when I was testing a CMFI Afrika Mod Tobruk defenses map with like 220 strands of barbed wire... AND it was recently Easter... So, please, in the honor of those fine men it seems fitting to offer, if you so desire, download this CMFI scenario "Tobruk Digger Easter Rev III" and the mods folder for some cool stuff to see in the scenario and a readme txt file. kohlenklau's TOBRUK DIGGER EASTER DOWNLOAD

It has been done. Several burnt out vehicles have been modded as flavor objects. Tracks are alpha layered out, wheels too if applicable, rusted and burnt. I had one as a sign for a German unit., a T-34... This was about 5 or so years ago...maybe somebody else did the burnt ones. These are mine. Not so toasty! Just wrecks waiting on the auto club...

You're asking the wrong guy my friend. That was 5 years ago. Nowadays I have lost any feel for video card and processor specs. I guess the big maps are sometimes a show of muscle for what your PC can do but I personally like the tiny battles. Especially when I sit down to write a scenario and I know it is going to be tiny, I can see the finish line. When I play a scenario and it is tiny or small, I can focus and enjoy it, maybe not miss any cool bits of the action. Just my style.

When you say Tobruk, I am humble and I know you all really mean the official BFC module in 2037. But sometimes I can mod and dream...

It was back in 2016, I made the map in the map editor and it was good. Typical North African terrain I would assume is "big map friendly"... But then I started to make the scenario and purchased units including fortifications like barbed wire. I was placing them and at some point here is what I entered in the help desk... Ticket Description: I made a scenario to depict axis assault on the "red line" south of Tobruk. No trees. 2km x 2km map with lots and lots and lots of barbed wire. 22 purchases of 10 sections of barbed wire = 220 sections of barbed wire. It did have some modtags to support getting the proper look with some bmp files.It all seems to play well vs the AI.But when trying to get a PBEM going with 2 other friends, they experienced crashes.I edited out the modtags and kept the wire and it still crashed for the opponent.I finally deleted out the barbed wire and it seems ok now. But we wanted the barbed wire in the scenario.Modtags running fine in other scenarios.Did excessive barbed wire cause this crash?I thought fortifications are not like adding more units but maybe it does tax the system....

@MikeyD I don't understand what you mean...can you post a couple dozen screenshots. I am kind of dense... :-)

Yes, lots of practice!

Mark, I recommend start with the END GOAL in mind. I have a project that I know you can do and you'd love to see it in the game. But to keep it secret and avoid any pressure, I will PM the idea to you and we can still do the "monkey see, monkey do" here in this thread...

OK, don't worry about all those tutorials. It is overload! Like that 1000 piece "Mechanics tool set" Martha and your son wanted to buy you and all you wanted was the basic set of sockets and a few other items for a road trip emergency tool kit...

BLENDER TEST IDIOT'S LOG: 4/5/21: A. The cockpit of a 747 has many dials, buttons, gauges and meters. I was just trying to talk to the passengers! Workspace arrangement that was easy to accidentally change and then hard to retrieve but now I know what they are all called. I have the "outliner editor" in the upper right. Directly below it I have the "Properties editor". To the left I have the 3D view with the actual model in 1 of several modes. Then sometimes to the left of that you have the "UV image editor". I am reading this Blender stuff and all along I am reading UV and thinking UV, like the sun, something about lighting maybe? No, it is just new coordinates system in 2D for the bmp images we have always slaved over. It is UV (u,v) since x,y, and z are all taken. It is pretty cool. B. It took a while to run through the steps and make a few mistakes but I now have a 3rd grade level understanding of what to do. My brain hurts!

Hola guys, I need voice actors. Please PM me if you have an interest and the equipment to make the wave files. Bringing some CMBB countries voice .wav files over to the CMX2 world creates a gap in certain areas. The artillery commands and such as that. I need some Spanish speakers to help make voices for a CMRT Spanish Blue Division Mod later this year! Please PM me if you have an interest and the equipment to make the wave files. Thanks! kohlenklau

Hey Mark! Yes, it showed in the game and I know it needs more vertices to make it rounder and the image needs improved BUT dang, I busted out Jimmy Buffet's "...there's booze in the Blender...and soon it will render that frozen concoction that helps me hang on..."

BLENDER TEST IDIOT'S LOG: 4/5/21: A. I had tried to use Blender to create from scratch a "teller mine 35" but was unsuccessful. It appeared in the game but something was wrong with the UV mapping/mesh/image. B. I instead went the route of hamburger helper or instant mashed potatoes by using the game's flavor objects. I picked the humble fuel drum. The one that is sober and standing up proud, not the drunken on its side one. C. I was successful and there is obvious room to improve the model and the image but this is what I have right now. Modtagged [teller35]. With Juju's UI mod as well. ...more to come...

@Artkin From several viewpoints it would be insane to go and create a CM map of the ENTIRE city. A huge map like that takes a LONG TIME TO MAKE, long time to load and THEN when units are placed on it? I once did what I thought was a huge CMFI Afrika Mod map of the outer defenses of Tobruk. It crashed. The bug report was sent. The reply said that there is an edge/limit to how many strands of barbed wire the game can handle. I must have found it. I also played benparks Ortona map with several battalions and it had issues. Nothing he did wrong, just pushing the edge, "Don't let your ego write checks, your PC/game engine can't cash!"

BLENDER TEST IDIOT'S LOG: 4/1/21: A. Downloaded the older version of Blender that works with CM mdr files. Blender Version 2.79b. Get it from blender dot org under the "previous versions" tab... B. Forumite Aquila has CM forum long thread on this overall New frontier stuff. It contained a video link to a youtube video by a smart guy and in the video description was the link to download a folder of stuff that a smart guy made so we can open mdr files. The smart guy is Stan and his forum name is sbobovyc C. Followed his directions in the video like a monkey to zip an item from his folder and plug it into Blender. It all worked. I can import CM mdr files ...more to come...

Too late! The CM branch of the cancel culture movement will be outside your house tonight with loudspeakers and molotov cocktails! Sandbag the windows and get Mrs Blazing to take overwatch with the MG42... :-) I think we all knew what you meant or didn't take it as you were worried we did. If you are a professional imagery dude for a living and are aghast at doing anything work-related for the CM hobby world, could you please serve as a consultant for me as I struggle with the CM friendly version of Blender, "Blender 2.79b"...? Maybe it is a tax write off?

As some of you know, I took a long break from CM. 5 years? Now as of a month or so ago, I am happily back and have a lot on my CM modding to do list. I don't recall that I had ever heard of Blender before a month or so ago. So, back when I returned to the forums I set it on my list to learn Blender but starting 1 April. For some folks who years ago had been in fear of learning ANYTHING about Photoshop, this thread will serve to try and answer their "new frontier" question "Can any random idiot on the forum learn Blender and use it for their own CM modding purposes?" I have volunteered to be the test idiot!

One of the joys of this CM war gaming hobby is the people you get to meet and if you get the modding virus in your blood, you often get to work with them and interact on projects. I reached out to somebody to ask for a contribution and here is something great he made for the CMRT Romanian Mod. Thank you @jamxo !