kohlenklau

We can move on to Case 2. This was Ost Prussia. Schirwindt seems easier versus Goldap. @Aragorn2002Do you want to be the test dummy alongside me? Can you do Steps 1 and 2 to get tool installed? Nico holds my hand and I hold your hand and we all bungee jump. @Butschi That Polish site...I went there but didn't see how to grab a big tif that encompasses Schirwindt and Goldap... It seems Case 2 is really just Case 1 with free tif versus buying tif data from Hungary. I think.

Herr Doktor, or his new alternate title, Herr Oben Coden Fuhrer, has held my hand in numerous PMs and my 656m x 464m Buda map is now cranking away on my screen. It has been going hard for about 18 minutes andddd....done for elevation. Thank you Nico! @Butschi

Here I go... Not owning CMCW...and being an amateur "Blender-ette" and file snooper, I figure MAYBE the uniform mds file references the weapon *.mdr and not the gear *.mdr. I am pretty sure it could be easily edited. Maybe a few minutes of effort. The pistol in a holster is probably positioned at the anchor point adequately but a naked pistol without a holster seems a bit offset from the body. Does the Soviet officer have a nice holster? THEN the holster mdr is functioning. Or I am wrong and it is in the game code which then is beyond me... ~~~~~~~~ I have never been invited to be a member of any BFC beta team. Maybe it was that nipple shot of Kate Upton I posted years ago? Ooops But if I WAS in charge of said Beta test team I would assign each dude a sub-specialty to check various stuff. Reminds me of the opening scenes in "The Green Berets" movie. "I am Sergeant Kowalski, I am the weapons expert and secondary trained in communications!"... somebody gets vehicle crews somebody gets sprockets and vehicle parts somebody gets weapons ...and then **try** to "in house" correct it with some semi-capable "Blender-ettes" in the beta team. Fix it before it goes out the barn door. The feedback loop to Casio Lima studio seems to be clogged with time delays. Or maybe that is wrong. Maybe the cost to fart out a patch is like X dollars of Charles' time and therefore a LOT of things need to pile up before a patch is cranked out? I have just finally gotten on STEAM. A company makes an ASL type game called LnL and they respond constantly with tweaks for issues. Kind of makes BFC seem unresponsive. Maybe it is the code complexity? What do I know... If 3D modelling fixes wait for a patch that needs Charles, then maybe a new system should be adopted by BFC and an official intermediate solution can be offered as a dropbox link. No need to make a new version number. Just fix it and put it out and IN THE NEXT big "Charles had to be involved" patch, you roll it into the new brz files. RANT COMPLETE, OUT.

@JM Stuff Welcome "Test Dummy" number 2. hahaha

I am definitely a small fry when it comes to scenarios and maps so in the immortal words of Snagglepuss I will now exit stage left! Best wishes to all budding scenario and map makers!

the freeware program paint.NET is very easy to use for rotating your s.e.o. and resizing and drawing boxes.It is not as robust in capability as GiMP or Photoshop but it does support layers. This can be used in a bigger map image to try and define and create and save your final s.e.o. As an example, in an upper layer you could create a perfect square box (x pixels by x pixels) that could be 1km by 1km (as per the scale of the BIG map you have down in a lower layer) or whatever size you wanted as long as a known dimension. Then you use a drag tool to move it around as you see what parts of the map you want in your s.e.o. Then you could rotate a bit clockwise or counter-clockwise to get a majority of your key roads/rails to be "more tame" in 0-45-90 degree angles. Then you carefully copy that final box and save as a new image which is your s.e.o. We're all here to help you learn to fish versus giving you a fish. The old biblical phrase.

I think that a lot of early thought and analysis is best before you actually nail down the "box". Like @Combatintman advised, you sit back with a cup of coffee (or tea?) and decide if it is best to "rotate the world" and "tweak reality a bit here and there" to make the process better/easier/faster. "ROTATE THE WORLD" this allows the road angle limits of CM to show up better in the final product. You CAN use the special editor overlay to make a tiny low effort experiment to see how this works. GeorgeMC has also said he does rotation decision early in the planning so map creation efforts don't go in the trash as wasted man-hours. "TWEAK REALITY" This might be where you purposefully move something "outside the box" so you do not have to create it in CM. Maybe some fork in the river or an odd but not so important little cliff, I don't know. ...one other thing is that sometimes it can be useful to go "map hunting" or "map shopping" and find an EXISTING map to copy/rename and gut out what you don't want and change and recreate into what you want. To me, sometimes it just helps my mental workload as I see the EXISTING map in the editor and it really has so much ALREADY done. Delete the landmarks and objectives if they are there. Master Maps are fully intended for this purpose and nobody really owns the maps. If you feel the need, tip your hat in your designer's notes with a comment "I used a map from forumite yada yada, his scenario yada yada". Just another way to get your scenario completed. That is the goal!

@Aragorn2002 For you or others training purposes. I made a few quicky scenario editor overlays for Schirwindt. a bigger 2km x 2km and a smaller 1km by 1km of "northwest Schirwindt"... I used the old Wehrmacht(?) maps that @Combatintman had shown in another thread. Try one at at a time for training & practice. You would need to rename either to just "scenario editor overlay" and put it in CMRT z folder then restart CMRT. If you then open a new scenario in the CMRT editor, you must change the default starting map size of 320 x 320 to match either 1km by 1km. or <<gulp>>, the big mama 2km by 2km. (I made a little text notation on each image to remind the trainee! 1km x 1km and 2km x 2km) Use if you want, no worry if you don't. It is in my goodybox so others can also try it to see how it works. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yzv4xicma3fkeik/AADxelz4rtznppiuTUy3uOsXa?dl=0

oh good. I DO try and type python commands accurately so I sure hope the "test dummy" is not living up to his title too much! I find myself TRYING to cut and paste the text which is a windows OS capability I suppose and I cannot drag my mouse and copy text in python command window. Oh, but now that I think of it, it is NOT a python command window, this is the DOS command window? Are there any secret shortcuts for text command lines I can take advantage of?

next is conda install -c conda-forge gdal BUT it already had seemed to work without errors so I will try requirements again

tried pip install GDAL==3.2 error screenshots attached

I have 4 grandkids in the house for the holidays ages 10 down to 6...so I will give the various things a try later and send a full report with screenshots.

I deleted my old folder and I have the downloaded package as show here. EDIT: I did keep the merged_ddm.csv for use in making buda.csv

1st one did not seem to work 2nd one seemed to go through pip install r then had same error

I guess this is like being in a band and practicing a song? "Take it from the top boys!" Case 1 is my Buda map using Google Earth coordinates for the TEM data that Butschi bought me from Hungary. 1 square kilometer and I just want for this scenario a certain rectangle. I have it all loaded so I will go open my command window AND CMRT scenario editor and give it a try. OH, HOLD ON, this is a new step to make my csv for the actual map making. Got it! Standby! EDIT: whoops, I got to load the new requirements. hahaha look at the date on the requirements.txt file in the folder and make sure it is the NEW one, hahaha python geotiff2cm.py --input-file merged_ddm.tif --bounding-box 4326, 19.008712, 47.504545, 19.017503, 47.508774 --output-file buda.csv EDIT: I must not have all the latest version of files. I get a red error in the python window.

I wouldn't say that at all! I am just showing my floundering for all to see and hopefully at the end, I have it figured out enough to create a bit of a guide for myself for later when I forget it all! AND for others who might want to try it

I will pick my 2 points using Google Earth as I am used to that! GE uses WGS84 and the epsg code for WGS84 is 4326 that puzzle solved for case 1... my python line will use these numbers 4326 47.504545 19.008712 47.508774 19.017503 whoops I must switch This was Butschi's example. python geotiff2cm.py --input-file merged_ddm.tif --bounding-box 4326, 19.008865, 47.504562, 19.016790, 47.508557 --output-file buda.csv So I do python geotiff2cm.py --input-file merged_ddm.tif --bounding-box 4326, 19.008712, 47.504545, 19.017503, 47.508774 --output-file buda.csv My 2 specific points for the bounding box were the ones I wanted for my scenario. Butschi had just roughed it when he sent me the "gift"...but he was damn close!

I guess I misunderstood and was in the wrong part of the page up at the top "Get position on a map" trying to use the page to find my 2 points I zoomed out and now I see lower on the page to get the epsg numbers. I think

I am done installing 20 roof trusses and 30 sheets of 3/4" plywood so I can return to this effort and see if I can "narrate by text" to show how to use Butschi's CMAutoEditor tool. Case 1 was my Buda map so I will go there first... ~~~~~~~~~~ rule 1, TRY to actually read and heed what Butschi says. Guilty before... I didn't recall his clear guidance on finding the EPSG number. ok, here is my lower left corner for my Buda bounding box... 19.013407 47.507867 and my right corner 19.013407 47.507867 well, it was the same so the page is odd to try and use another thing to try and figure out

I thought I would rattle off some of my thoughts and get some juices flowing! My z folders, with an s, are filled with various "special editor overlay.bmp" files. Of course, they all get renamed a bit as they become "not the real one you use". They collect up as a sort of memory lane of maps I may have INTENDED to do or maybe actually finished (I hope!). Vitebsk special editor overlay.bmp old ortona special editor overlay.bmp when I get all Rambo, I sometimes go "seo krasny bor a.bmp" vs "seo kransy bor b.bmp" ...but the one you see when you load your specific CM title is THE special editor overlay.bmp It is the pixel aspect ratio of the special editor overlay.bmp that MUST match to the CM dimensions meters aspect ratio. if your map is 416m wide by 832m tall you can use any "special editor overlay.bmp" with pixels of the same "aspect ratio" which is 1 wide by 2 tall. A very detailed special editor overlay.bmp could then be 1200 by 2400 pixels in shape. 400 to 800 is the same as 1200 to 2400 for the map editor, It would not be stretched to fit! Use 1000 by 2400 and you would see it stretched oddly left to right. You could grab a screenshot from google earth or an old WW2 Wehrmacht map and use paint.NET or whatever to get any image of the same ratio of pixels width to height. My philosophy... You can let your terrain map rectangle dictate your final CM map dimensions... or You can let your desired CM map dimensions dictate what you must go grab from the the terrain map. ~~~~ I think you can see in the real world the areas of the terrain that will be a big time suck for little interest value payoff. You then can decide to purposefully NOT have them in your map. Using the same 416m tall by 832m wide map TARGETED MAP SIZE, slightly move that "box" to the north to avoid some P.I.A.T. (pain in the arse-to create in CM) odd river fork! It just might not be worth it for the scenario. For example: An Ardennes Bulge CM map could have SOME ugly terrain just to show some of the rugged nature of the offroads. But would you need just tons of it everywhere? At some point the exact modelling of the real terrain is so exhausting beyond the merits of showing it in the scenario. Right? BUT with CMAutoEditor, maybe that Ardennes terrain creation is not so exhaustive and you can be leaning towards getting that exact lay of the land... If I was able to be the "map initial elevation preparer cook" in the process, I would want to be working with a team that valued smaller maps and would not just go "huge" with multi km maps, battalion OOBs and a 2 hour scenario. The modern weapons of CMCW/BS/SF2 may demand this and maybe some long range WW2 armor or ATG action might be cool (Halfaya Pass) but MANY MANY battles/scenarios are fine for smaller maps, smaller OOBs and shorter lengths of time. A matter of taste to some degree of course. Because after all, you still need a good AI plan for that "huge" scenario...

Your new idea is my old idea, and apparently the idea of several other folks. I do hold fast to the desire to keep them from "snowballing down the hill of grandiosity"...getting bigger and eventually too big to finish.

I always have advice that is worth 2 eurocents but it is what it is. To all scenario dreamers, resist the urge to go "grand and big" and instead try to actually finish a very small scenario, some flavorful small aspect of the overall operation you are enamored with. Not everybody is a GeorgeMC. Just try and zoom in to some small tactical encounter with a few tanks and some "accomplishable" PORTION of these towns.

That is a great extra feature. Thank you from the non-coder common mortals!