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Zveroboy1

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Everything posted by Zveroboy1

  1. Right, that's fair enough. I just thought I'd offer a counterpoint in case one of Battlefront's honchos read this thread and also add my voice to the group of players who are not satisfied with the current state of the game and wished it was closer to real events. You just need to look at the number of people who have modded uniforms, added blue and yellow bands, tanks with Z markings or are trying their hands at recreating scenarios about the war in Ukraine. And that's just modders, the visible tip of the iceberg. I am sure Battlefront is already aware there is an interest.
  2. Well of course, that's understandable. It is the same thing when you call tech support and they ask you if the device is plugged or not. Might solve 10% of all calls right away and if it doesn't, well it is one thing you can remove from the list of potential issues so you can keep troubleshooting further I imagine. But realistically, seeing as the vast majority of mods are just texture swapping, it sounds unnecessary to systematically remove them. I mean yeah technically, a patch might change the name of a texture in the new code which would cause something in game to appear black or have the wrong texture applied to the face of an object. And obviously you can't discount people's propensity for messing up in rater creative ways. I wasn't trying to argue that mods can never cause any issues. I just wanted to clear some misconceptions here by stating that the odds of a mod wrecking your game after a patch is rather low.
  3. The only mod to my knowledge that ever caused issues when patching is Vin's animated icons, the one with icons that replace the text that tells you what each soldier is doing at the bottom left of the screen. There was also my Afghan army mod which used a modified string file to replace the displayed names of the weapons (AK to M16). But I removed that bit when I realized it was troublesome. Both messed up the UI and caused you to see the wrong label/name on units or equipment after a game update or something like that. There might be few others but really 99% of all mods are fine and there is no need to remove them when patching in my experience.
  4. Hmm to be perfectly frank, I don't care much if at all about the hypothetical setting any more. Battlefront had a prophetic moment when they managed to identify Ukraine as a potential hotspot and came up with a good scenario for it as a pretext to use the game as a laboratory for future equipments and tactics. And that was just fine until reality caught up with it and a real war broke out. But now current events have diverged so significantly from the fiction that they have made it obsolete in my book. Personally I'd much rather use the game as a sandbox to explore real tactics and actual battles than stick to an alternate reality. I can see the appeal but I mean it feels a bit absurd to keep exploring a hypothetical branch of history while a different reality is unfolding before our eyes. The only reason I suggested this is because Battlefront tends to be quite mulish and always sticks to their guns no matter what and so I figured this modest list of tweaks and addition is the best we can realistically hope to get without having to wait 5 or 10 years.
  5. IMO there are three essential things we need if we want to be able to model the current conflict better. - Much better drones: we need drones that are able to spot static infantry pretty much anywhere except inside buildings. It wouldn't even be that hard to do for Battlefront really. There is no 3D model needed for it. Just take the Zala as a base, change the icon and description and just tweak its values by increasing the spotting capacity tenfold. Even though it would be obviously nice to have, we can do without Lancets or even quadcopters being able to drop small bombs but the drones we now have in the game can barely spot static infantry in the open. This is quite bad. - Heavy machine guns like Kords or even older DShKs. They are very important for long range urban fighting and we have to substitute US HMGs to make do, it is immersion breaking. If it is a TOE problem, just make them available as separate teams in the editor. - T-80s There are tons of other things we would ideally need. But these three fairly simple additions would go a long way. I am omitting western equipment transferred to Ukraine on purpose because this would require lots of work. These are what I think are essentials and would love to see an small upgrade pack with them. Just make it a different timeline so we can keep the alternate really/future conflict with fancy toys without having to revamp everything. But personally I'd be really disappointed if BFC chose to simply ignore the current developments and decided to stick with the sci fi version. I understand the DLC is basically done and it would be daft to just scrap it. So just give us both.
  6. Yes good question, I have been pondering about that too and I am open to suggestions here. Okay the way I see it, I don't think it can be entirely devoid of destruction and ruins. Clearly that wouldn't feel right. However I wouldn't go for fully destroyed either personally. Half the fun in this game is blowing things up after all lol. I mean it is up to you really but yes there needs to be some damage. How much exactly, I am not sure. I haven't added that many fully destroyed buildings yet, less than 20% of buildings, probably not even that. I should probably add a bit more. I have plenty of buildings with damaged roofs though. It would probably make sense that the more you go towards the center of the town and well the west side where the last stand took place, the more it should be rubbled. Maybe less so on the outskirts during the initial stages of the fighting. A nice trick is to use independent buildings here and there. They can be riddled with bullet holes and they look different when rubbled than modular buildings. Especially the ones with 3 floors. They are not completely flattened but have half standing walls. What you should definitely do is add the [rubble] modtag to the map. It turns heavy rocks, a tile that won't normally be too useful here, into rubble. And add some of it near ruined buildings. I also use [trashsoft]. It turns sand, another terrain you can do without into well trash. It adds a nice touch sprinkled here and there I find. No need for brackets by the way. Just create a .txt file with notepad and put it in documents/Battlefront/CMBS/game files. I hope this is useful.
  7. Great. Okay I am not touching the northern flank myself. I'll update the reference map soon with the sectors I plan on doing but there shouldn't be any overlap. There is plenty of real estate available for everyone here really. I don't know how experienced you are with mapping, but if you need any help with picking an area or if you have any questions let me know, I'll try to help if I can either here in the thread or you can send me a private message. Perhaps don't try something too large or ambitious and stick to something reasonable, that would be my advice.
  8. Bakhmut is very hilly. It is not only surrounded by hills, it is actually built on a series of rises and ridges. It is anything but flat. It is not obvious if you just look at footage of the fighting or watch aerial views from drone cams which flatten everything visually but it is not uniform at all. Take this sector for example where Wagner attacked along the red arrow. You got high ground on the north west on the other side of the lake, approximately 150m high. The lake itself sits at roughly 100m. Then the built up area slowly climbs up to 130m towards the railroad tracks to the east before the elevation slowly drops toward the Bakhmuta river. The blue buildings at the bottom center of the satellite photo, a former military base: 165m. The whole place is like a mini rollercoaster. In practice I found myself having to manually adjust the elevation in tons of place in order to avoid having buildings sunk into the ground because of all the slopes. Yeah this is true for every map really, once you have played on it once or twice, you understand the lay of the land and how the terrain dictates tactics you can use. But I find you can mitigate this problem by framing the map in such a way that it is possible to attack from multiple directions. In the Budenivka map for example, you have the historical Russian attack coming from the south side. But the way I have framed it, it is possible to attack from the east towards the west and vice versa as well. Ideally you could also throw in a meeting engagement too. Several maps built on this model would provide with a fair bit of replay value imo. Nah I explained this clearly in the first post. But it is okay, no worries. To be honest I didn't expect too many people would agree to work on this project, my expectations were low but I thought it was worth a try. I know alone I could only create 2-3 maps at this level of details before it gets too tedious and I get burnt out. If more people are interested, that's great. If not, no big deal, I'll publish what I managed to make in a month or two and that's that.
  9. Hmm I honestly don't see how it can work the way you describe it. That way lies madness imo. First it would never get finished if we tried a master map of the whole city. You have got to be realistic. Even with this small project here, we will be lucky if we come up with 3-4 maps, the two of us working together, before it becomes too tedious. Urban maps are hard work. But it is still a lot more manageable to break it down into separate chunks. Also take a look a the streets network. There are all over the place. You can get away with not having perpendicular roads if you do a country side map but streets act as fire lanes so they need to be straight as much as possible and also buildings won't even fit otherwise. Besides how do you propose to have several people work on a master map? That's the beauty of this approach. It is easy to split the work. If we had 3-4 valiant mappers, we could have enough maps to provide a decent sample of the different sectors and give the community plenty of material for scenarios, campaigns and QB maps. I know you are fond of large maps but you should give us a hand and take part in the collab! You can try a fairly large one if you are brave but chances are you will curse yourself in the end lol. Just take a look at Google earth and pick something that feels interesting to you.
  10. This is what I've got so far. map B: Budenivka district 1500 X 1100m I think I am going to try and focus on the southern flank; I have been studying Suriyak maps to find the actual directions of the attacks in each sector. I want to do one of the Optyne road and another one near the Mig monument at the entrance of Bakhmut which is actually right next to this map here. Ideally we'd need the Azom complex and some iconic tower blocks. Some AFU counter attacks could be nice too in the Kischiivka sector for instance. If there are some people who are interesting in participating to the project but are not familiar with Bakhmut, this is a good resource. With daily updates showing the frontline inside the city and where exactly fighting took place. I mean clearly the whole city was a battlefield but in order to frame the maps correctly, it helps to know the directions of the thrusts. Often you can see block by block where the fighting occurred.
  11. Welcome aboard. Okay cool, yeah no rush. The plan is to release something this summer. End of June or July, something like that. We'll see.
  12. This is the two chunks I have picked myself: A is a suburban area called Budenivka or Budyonovka. 1400 X 1000 m B is the railroad with Bakhmut's train station. (haven't finalized the size yet but 700 X 400m or so) See plenty of space left. The idea here is people pick an area, then either save this google earth photo and add their own map frame and upload it to imgur or just send me the updated picture and I'll post it myself. We need this reference map so we don't map the same area. If someone wants to map an area that's outside the frame, just let me know, I could add a second more zoomed out reference picture later.
  13. So I was wondering if there are people who would be interested on working on a Bakhmut map pack together. I floated the idea on discord and thought I'd post something here too in case people are interested. I was going to try and make a couple of maps myself and release a mini pack but I know there are lots of talented mappers around and I thought that if several people worked together, we could fairly easily have say half a dozen maps that we could perhaps release this summer. The idea wouldn't be to map the whole town nor to make a master map. It would be way too long and difficult and anyway the street layout of Bakhmut is such that I don't see how it could be possible anyway. It is a lot easier if instead we can rotate each map in order to have streets align with the CM grid. Anyone interested could participate and you wouldn't even have to be an experienced mapper either. Actually it wouldn't be a bad way to learn if you're an aspiring mapper and have been tempted to give the editor a go. Participants could just select a small area too. Something as small as 300 X 400m would be perfectly fine and actually it is probably better for this sort of thing not too be too ambitious and select something reasonable. Also it doesn't necessarily have to be a city map. Someone could pick an area around Bakhmut too, that would work: fields or a small village, or a chunk of a village in the area around Bakhmut proper for instance. Let me know if you are interested and want to contribute to the project.
  14. Nice work. It is cool to see all the various mods made by the community all put together.
  15. A new WIP wargame: Miracle on the Dnipro covering the initial phase of the war and the assault on Kyiv. The designer's diary might be of interest to some: https://sdhist.com/first-draft-of-history-russo-ukraine-war-d-b-dockter-mark-herman/
  16. Right and there are also commercial buildings, barns and all. But you don't really need to do what you're describing though. If we're talking about independent buildings, the windows/door layout doesn't change. It is purely cosmetic. And for modular buildings you can't pick the texture in the editor without going into map preview mode anyway. I mean if it helps you sure go ahead but I don't see how that's necessary at all. The truth is that you simply can't do it all in the 2D mode. You will have to preview the map and make adjustments to your built up areas in any case after plopping all the houses down in order to get the windows and doors where you want them, the skin for the facades and damage when needed.
  17. Yeah I do that too for independent buildings. It takes 5 minutes really. Just plop down all the buildings on a small test map, close together and laid out in a similar manner as the buttons are arranged in the editor so it is easier to see at a glance which is which. Then take a screenshot and keep the picture open while you map and quickly alt tab to it when needed. Terrain tiles and trees, after a while you tend to remember fairly easy and it becomes second nature but you could use the same technique. This is mine for CMBS: I think Juju also made a small map with all the terrain tiles laid out neatly with an added landmark that tells you what each terrain tile is, but I don't have a link for it and forgot what title it is for. And there is one pdf with flavour objects that someone made which also includes trees.
  18. Cool, I'll probably have something ready soon. I am not even changing all the textures really. There won't be grass; I tried but couldn't come up with anything better than what is already available and there are some other tiles that are perfectly fine for what I have in mind so there is no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. Yeah you could be onto something here, that would explain the presence of these extra minis. However I have unpacked cmbs' terrain brz and there are several minis for the same tile in there but perhaps it is just a remnant of a previous title and not even used by the engine who knows.
  19. @37mm Thanks, I am glad you found the post, I was hoping you were going to chime in eventually and I should definitely have pinged you alongside the other experts in order to get your input with all the work you have done with mod packs and all. I am still trying to wrap my head around the way the whole thing works. I get the gist of it but I'd be lying if I pretended I 100% fully understand how it works lol. But this was exactly the sort of info I was looking for. By the way, you mind having a look at the mod in a week or so? There are still a couple of things I am not entirely happy with so it is not ready yet but I could do with a set of fresh eyes, not so much about the mini side of it but just to get your opinion on the overall look.
  20. Okay yeah actually I was wrong earlier when I claimed that Battlefront default minis are 64 X 64 pixels. I don't know why I said that; the sizes are all over the place, you're right. It ranges from 2 to 128 pixels. And some terrain tiles, not all, do also have several minis for them. But if there is a logic, I can't see it at all.
  21. Okay thanks this was useful. I need to recheck and test SeinfeldRules' trick again to see if it makes a difference or not. I am curious and wonder how he came up with that trick, maybe he knows something we don't. I can try 128 pixels minis but I somehow doubt it will work, surely someone else would have figured by now if it did.
  22. Not quite sure how big the Ukrainian counter-attack south of Bakhmut really was, but it is maybe not that significant in terms of territory seized. It just looks like a local counter-attack really, not so much the beginning of a full fledged offensive there. Time will tell I suppose but it feels a bit premature.
  23. So I am sort of working on this ground texture pack for CMBS because whenever I look at vids or pics of Ukraine, I keep noticing how the soil is often much darker and sometimes almost black, the famous chernozem or black earth Ukrainian soil that is so fertile. And neither the default textures or the mods I am using reflect this in a satisfactory way for me and wanted to try to come up with something a bit more life like. Anyway my question is about the mini ground textures and specifically their sizes. The default ground minis shipped with the game are 64 X 64 pixels. @Kieme in his texture pack has higher resolution textures, 2048 instead of the default 1024, but uses smaller sized ground minis: 16 or 8 pixels except for grass tiles which are 64 pixels. @SeinfeldRules seems to be using a mix of various sizes for minis: mini ground grass: 64 X 64 mini ground grass 1: 16 X 16 mini ground grass 2: 8 X 8 I am guessing this is so there is a smoother transition but I am a bit stumped as to what to use because first it doesn't seem to make a huge difference which size you're using (but maybe I haven't tested this thoroughly enough) and second I am wondering if the game engine even uses multiple mini for a single tile. Any help would be appreciated. edit: a cheeky ping for @MikeyD and @benpark because they might know something about this.
  24. Another pet peeve: human waves attacks. I don't even know how you would describe what Russians and Wagner in particular are doing when they send these squad or platoon sized elements forward with barely any support at all but for me that's not really what a human wave attack is. Soviets in front of Moscow sending companies or whole battalions of conscripts yelling hurrah at German positions (instant cmbb nostalgia) en masse or Iraq-Iran war okay.
  25. You know it is a bit funny but I am not quite sure the translation is accurate in these vids. What is usually translated by "orc" is another word entirely. I think what they usually say is "pidori" which means "f*ggot" as far as I know. And both sides use this expletive. So maybe that's just me but I find the orc thing a bit cringe. Nothing personal, I just thought it was worth pointing out. edit : Ah sorry I see Haiduk commented on that before.
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