kohlenklau

great! Here are some of my old notes just for $hits and grins.... A tiny battle I have been having fun on while learning a bit more about the AI triggers. 208m x 208m. An evening axis probe by the human player against the US Army AI. Axis set-up zone is right there on the road at map's west edge, 1 tile wide. 1. "Tripwire" AI Trigger (enemy). 2. AI Trigger (enemy armor) 3. These are US Army listening posts surrounded by AI Trigger (Friendly). 4. Another "Tripwire" AI trigger (enemy). But they are half-way to the farmhouse... 5. AI Trigger (Friendly). 6. AI Trigger (Friendly). You can only have one set of triggers per scenario so the 3 boxes for #3 are for different AI plans where you can vary the location of the US Army soldiers on OP duty. Anyway, here is how it went in I thought a somewhat comical manner when I watched it unfold on scenario author mode. AI Group A5 is the trooper on OP duty. His AI orders are to hide until the tripwire is triggered. Then he can do a variety of things, like go ambush 75m or max assault or dash to the rear. edit: Triggers for each unit are linear. So for this Group A5, usually an "OR" sequence will only occur in numbered order, and the next order will not take place until the previous trigger is invoked. either by time or action. But here the "OR" meant that for various AI plans A5 can be Rambo and press forward or turn yellow and immediately head to the rear or stay in place and take a few shots. Well, he is the one who will/might trip the friendly trigger around his post. AI Group A1 is LT Lovejoy the platoon leader. He is on hide (asleep!) and gets an order triggered by the OP soldier. LT Lovejoy then gets his a$$ up and runs off to wake up some of the dogfaces. He trips 2 other friendly triggers at 5 and 6 to send off a bazooka team and to wake up the 3rd squad who were grabbing some shuteye. He then gets on the phone to the company CP to report in... The private with the bazooka goes out to his ambush position along the road and if the enemy armor trigger is eventually tripped, he goes on Ambush armor 75m. The 3rd squad dashes off south to behind a rock wall and if the Germans trip the 2nd tripwire, they will assault forward. ---so far I tend to only use the terrain triggers versus the order style triggers. It is easy to get the order style all messed up. Maybe in the future I will start to use them. Edit: But here is a wise caveat from Geroge MC: "I use the KISS principle myself. Like your example above I use a core set of AI triggers that can be used across various plans. By keeping plans simple and broad based you can hope to account for the myriad ways a player may choose to attack/defend. Trying to get too clever wit AI plans (as I've found out to my cost) just leads to all sorts of unintended consequences! I occasional use friendly AI triggers to spring friendly movement but you have to be careful with this. If a friendly unit is wiped out early it can totally FUBAR the AI Plan. In this case having a slightly earlier default move order helps alleviate the worse outcome." Quote

In case you've never seen these..... Proambulator's Youtube series on AI

Oh, sorry. I misunderstood.

Sheeesh. This is getting to be like ordering coffee at Starbucks! I'll take a grande, non-fat kosher latte, non-GMO hazelnut, sprinkled with fair trade chocolate....shaken not stirred. Seriously they all look damn nice. Thanks for all your effort Worghern!

maybe you are experienced, so just my 2 cents! tips when learning to program the CM AI: 1, "Deactivate" 4 of the 5 AI plans, just focus on 1 as you watch in "scenario author mode" over and over. 2. Keep the map really small and only have a handful of units on the map. just A1, A2, A3 and A4 maybe. 3. Use a high visibility terrain (crop 6) in the tiles to be the places to be targets for movement of an AI group as you add orders. Easier to see in 2D and 3D. Fix later to some other terrain type as you desire. 4. Use landmarks onscreen to help develop the plan, delete them later when all done. Have fun!

Hey, is that a Panther II with the schmalturm? Did they even see action?

...at work and don't have the manual in front of me. 1. Wait for issue. a. Do you have some objectives that are triggers created? b. Or create an order for one AI group and set it as "can trigger".

@Tashtego You did all that renaming and brought over the new CMFB winter uniforms for the axis? Thanks. You shall be knighted for that! After you get it to cmmods please....?

STAND TO!!!

He said: plus 50 force specific backgrounds I think he did already?

No worry! Just upload screenshots as is and trim down the time needed for the editing: absolutely AOK with us readers with the popcorn!

I had a 57mm in my battle last night and hadn't fired a shot yet. It had ~50 rounds of AP and 1 of APDS.

Hi Markh, Normally when a bunch of mod folders (Aris and the winter mods for example) are all lumped in the SAME z folder (like your screenshot showed) we had seen issues. Usually it was like a T-34 had a white turret but Aris's hull.... But you are saying none of the winter mods are seen? Please check that your scenario has the modtag imported for your desired case. [snow telo gc] for example. With that you should at least see the snow terrain and troops in winter clothing for axis and allies. ~~~~~~ But to solve a lot of headaches I eventually began to recommend a second install. This is my step by step guide to the procedure for the 2nd install and to have separate mod "z" folders so you can have your cake and eat it too. This also is the route toward allowing you to eventually play another guy a quick battle with both of you using the CMRT Winter Mod.

Just to emphasize it is also very, very important that any Stalingrad Mod map maker have the exact same combination of FLAVOR OBJECT mods in place or odd things will lay about on the landscape for the eventual player of the scenario. Umlaut has a nice pdf in his factory mod to guide and support scenario makers. I now have the Stalingrad Mod 4 folders (I will call SM4) PLUS umlaut's factory mod set and his patch (I will call UFMS&P) and the wooden carts I saw before adding UFMS&P are now displaying as some rusty odd items that are supposed to be derelict factory equipment. Trees look barren of leaves and I see the railcars. So, I think I am good! ~~~~~~~~~~~ There are a lot of cool things in the Stalingrad building mods that Nigel artfully crafted up. But I also see some issues that I wonder if they can be fixed by Nigel. One of the buildings with the lion statues repeats the lions for the 3rd floor but chops the lion in half. Maybe there is nothing that can be done but i just wanted to make mention. I think this happens also for a hanging light on a chain. Maybe it is not correctable and we live with it, which I understand. The interiors in one building are very spooky with a stairwell you see and it has the lighting perfect to look quite convincing. And the building with sandbagged exterior viewed windows (which i think I had specifically requested...). So, thanks for that Nigel!

yes, the same for infantry helmets, faces, etc.

Hi Stalingrad Mod Team, Congratulations on the birth of your baby. I created a separate additional install of CMRT 1.03 to be a full-time Volga playground. The only mods in there will be your Stalingrad Mod download. Currently that is 4 folders from cmmodsIII. 1. But I see an issue. I think you must update the instructions (and maybe add a 5th folder to the DL) because both umlaut factory mod set and umlaut factory mod set patch (horizons) are also needed or you get some big ugly black trees and trucks (railcars). Some folks might already have them so the 5th folder would be noted as optional. 2. Also I spotted a ground rubble texture with the words "turbosquid" and little circles all over it. That is all I have seen so far.

Heinrich505 and I volunteer to help test the QB arena!

Congratulations gentlemen on the release of your project! Question: Does it now or will it eventually have a non-tagged version for the QB arena?

The one I posted is for sure just vs AI as I played a turn and it rolled onward. I will look for it tonight.

I know this is CMFB forum but here goes.... Well Ian maybe my memory is bad but i did find a "special saved game file" for that CMBN MG bridge battle. A project I was goofing around with back a year or so.... It is as axis vs the allied AI only. If interested, download the folder and read the readme.txt and place the file in your CMBN MG saved games folder. It is called MG Bridge over the River Dommel The battle opens in progress but you can read the briefing and see what to do. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w6sm6ccos3udq7i/AAC5Kp4OnRaXVaPfbyhV4lH_a?dl=0 I will still look around for that regular scenario vs the AI for this battle....

....at work now but will look for it later on post a link...

Yes, thanks Ian!

A forumite Jace11 has spotted uniform bmp file issues with missing/incorrect normal maps in this thread... http://community.battlefront.com/topic/122685-uniform-normal-maps/

I should go find the CMBN forum thread on this issue. I recall it was a "market-garden-ish" scenario that could be played vs AI or as human on the side with the demo charge and the breach team showing up as a wide time range reinforcement with white knuckle anticipation at the last minute with "ze detonators" (you gotta say that like you are Hans Gruber in "Die Hard" RIP Alan Rickman...). So an added wrinkle for the player. The human player if playing against the AI gets to see the explosion and is self-umpired to know he failed. AND there was an exit objective there under the bridge so Feldwebel Guyver could hopefully get away to fight again. It was a CMPzC Operation....

Watching the first part of that video really gives me a hankering for early war StuG action. I recall from Wittman's bio that he started out with those short 75's.