sttp

Ok, that does look like we should indeed take a look at the ALOS data I mentioned before. Since I wanted to do that anyway, I'll write something to convert that kind of data - maybe over the weekend.
What you need to do: provide the coordinates of the bounding box for which you want elevation data. In your case that would be the corners of your overlay images, so the data extracted matches your image.

Recently I didn't have all that much time to spend on this... I'm still mainly working on getting buildings right. Single buildings are one thing but of course you want to have larger buildings that are composed of smaller buildings. There is an example of an industrial/commercial zone below.

You'll have to do the roof and textures yourself but the algorithm does its best to deconstruct larger polygons into smaller rectangles the size of different modular buildings in CM.
Also there are still those pesky linear features... Look at the conflict between road and railway above... 😉
Anyway, I'm thinking about releasing a beta version soon (tm) so that I can gather feedback. (There is no way I can test all the fringe cases myself...). My main concern is having a good tutorial or something...
EDIT: I also looked into the ALOS satellite data for @Artkin . Unfortunately that kind of data is really not very good - It is raw elevation, meaning tree tops, buildings etc. which is not what we want here.

I'll be starting part 3 of this mission in a few minutes:
 
 

going to be starting my livestream in a few minutes, continuation of the first mission of the Five Days campaign in the new battle pack: 
 

Hi all
I've created this post to make available some resources that may be of use to players.
I've attached the Five Days One Summer campaign flowchart - so you can see where you are going, if you wish. If you'd rather not see into the future then best not read it.
I've attached the Tigers at Ogledow campaign flowchart - again possible spoilers here so if you'd rather not know, don't look!
Also I've attached a SPW Training Missions Tactics and Lessons document. This document provides a deeper overview of the doctrine and tactics taught (and used) by German armored panzer grenadier units equipped with the Sdkfz 251 halftrack and its variants (referred to as a Schützenpanzerwagon or SPW) in the later part of the war, around 1944. Its main intent is to provide additional background to the series of scenarios and missions in the battle pack for Red Thunder, in particular the series of three SPW ‘Lesson’ series scenarios. My thanks to @domfluff who reviewed this and provided tactical insight, oh and it was his idea originally.
Five Days One Summer Wiking panzer grenadier mods - I've added a wee package of mods I used for the grenadiers in the Five Days One Summer. I basically assembled others excellent mods to create a look which is in the Wiking Mods GMc Mix . Main changes are grenadiers are in light battle rattle - no extraneous kit, crusher caps are M43s and senior officer has a 'Wiking' cuff band and a M43. My thanks to the talent and good will of Aris, @EZ (WSS Senior Officer and WSS camo uniforms), @Frenchy56 (Crusher and side caps to M43) @kohlenklau (No-gear mod - the campaign is mod tagged 'no gear') @Lucky_Strike (Senior officer peaked caps to M43s). I used Aris' Soviet tank mods, his Soviet faces and VM's summer Soviet uniforms.
Five Days Campaign Overview_v1.pdf SPW Training Missions Tactics and Lessons_FINAL.pdf
1831305623_FiveDaysOneSummerMods.rar
Tigers at Ogledow Campaign Overview_v1.pdf

Downloading now. Thanks! Looking forward to checking out all the new scenarios.

I had to keep radio silence for a while to be able to concentrate - my girlfriend noted recently that by now I have coded enough stuff for a decent bachelor thesis at least. Well, I did rewrite parts of the code at least three times and some of the algorithms were intriguingly finicky, at least if you have wood shavings for a brain as I sometimes seem to have. 😄
There is still metric tons of things to do and to tweak. But sometimes I have to remind myself why this is fun, so I had to indulge in some screenshots and I guess it is only fair to share a few (shamelessly cherry-picked, mind you!). 😉





Enjoy!

Maybe it's interesting to have the acutal map for this, too. The sharp eyed among you can probably spy lots of things where conversion from OpenStreetMap is not yet working as it should. 😉

Location in OpenStreetMap

The information in this thread is devolving into confusion.
Why? Why do this:
? You've already got them split, you can control what they do. Why leave it to the TacAI after having micro'ed your approach?
If you're talking about RT, then maybe this has some mileage. But, in WeGo, using your squads split is almost always better: your "own fire support" can be tailored better to the situation by choosing your team splits; you can tailor your wait times at each waypoint to change the emphasis placed on fire or movement and control your troops' fatigue rate/recovery; you can incorporate different movement modes (Slow, Quick and Fast all have their place; Move has no place in an assault evolution and Hunt is of very limited use, since it cancels all following waypoints if it's triggered).
This is simply untrue. It takes time to do, and so probably isn't practcable in Real Time (if you don't/cant pause), but it's entirely possible to do in WeGo or if you can freely pause your game. In fact, in RT-with-profligate-pausing, if you're crisis-managing a squad, you can (if you're prepared to do the micro) do "better" than in WeGo, since you don't have to use "guesstimated" pause times and can perfectly coordinate the actions of the firing and moving elements. The methodology for WeGo has been ably described by IanL.
You can use Face, or Target Arcs, for sure. But this is probably an edge case, since if you're under fire, you probably know where it's coming from and want to hose it down without having to wait for your pTruppen to acquire the target; having them seek a target might well give that target time to suppress the team that just stopped moving.
Erm, wut? The TacAI in CM is a very simplistic rules-based system. It has no capacity to learn anything. And what "scripting" are you referring to.
Or did I miss something.
IanL described the procedure pretty well. Some supplementary points:
split your squads so that the short range weapons are in one team and the support weapons are in another. choose your movement modes for the movement legs wisely. Fast is good, especially if you're using short legs, with longish firing pauses for the pTruppen to get their wind back; you might not want individual members of the moving team to pause to return fire, especially when they'll be stopping soon anyway. Quick is good if you want some responsiveness in your moving teams. Slow is good for one AS if you want your team to drop into cover and throw the opposition's target acquisition off, or for the actual last leg where you're chucking grenades and bayonets might notionally become involved. you can give the "Assault team" (with the grenades and SMGs) Target Arc orders if you want, so they don't spaff their precious ammo on suppressive efforts at long range.  if your squad splits into three teams, you can have two covering and one moving, or the other way round, depending on the situation. you can coordinate teams that are not part of the same squad (either different squads or independent teams) in the same evolution. There are probably other things that you'll pick up for yourself when you start using this method.
The Assault command is confusingly named. It is just another movement mode, and has no direct relationship to "dislodging the enemy from their positions and taking their place". It is, as far as I can tell, a pure convenience, mostly in place for the purposes of unpaused RealTime players, or those who prefer not to have to micromanage. Any other movement command can be used to get up close and personal to the enemy's positions, with varying degrees of efficiency, both inherent to the inbuilt priorities of the mode chosen, and the context in which the choice is made. Slow can be the best way of assaulting through a door into an occupied building, for example.
As far as I know, the Assault command doesn't bestow any particular attitudinal bonus for "attacking the other guy". I think that was confirmed by Steve "way back when". As I recall, it uses the same speed and priority set for the TacAI as "Quick" (so sometimes they'll return fire during a movement leg), and alternates movement between teams of a squad. 

Hasn't George said that his part was basically done, but that (apparently) the Battlepack's not going to be released until the new multiplayer features were complete? I may have misinterpreted something though.

Seven weeks since pre-order. Where are you waiting for, Battlefront?

Ah yes, I remember. This is the kind of thing that makes scenarios much more playable IMHO, having a terrain that is natural and reminiscent of something remembered or something seen. Basing scenarios on real topographical information makes a massive difference to this, and having something like your script to do a lot of the heavy lifting is a great advantage.

And since I've already shown you a bit of the map, here's a litter teaser:

No new features, I just like the autumn looks on this map. Btw. this where I grew up. Well, at the base of the hill in the background in the middle. 😉 

I decided to have a small intermediate release. It is also officially version 1.0.0. 😊
https://github.com/DerButschi/CMAutoEditor/releases/tag/1.0.0
The main change is that I added a tool to convert official German digital elevation models into a CMAutoEditor compatible format. You can find it in the folder data_conversion. It has several command line arguments:
--dgm-dir (required): path to the directory in which you stored the dgm*.xyz.gz files --bounding-box (required): xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax coordinates of the box you want to extract. The coordinates have to be in the coordinate system the data points are stored in (e.g. for NRW EPSG:25832, i.e. UTM zone 32N). There are lots of tools in the internet with which you can convert from latitude/longitude to UTM, e.g. here. --contour (optional): set the distance between contour levels. 5 means you will have a contour line every 5m in elevation. You will get a two output files, one with a value for each square and another one with elevation value only for contour lines. --output-name (optional): a common name for output files. You will get several output files with a name that starts with this string. --water-level-correction (optional): xlow, ylow, xhigh, yhigh Sets the low and high point for water level correction (see below for an explanation). There will be four output files: output-name.csv, output-name_contour.csv, output-name.png (a heat map of the elevation values. units are CM squares.) and output-name_contour.png, which has contour lines of the data you extracted.
The actual data is availble separately for each German federal state, e.g.
North Rhine-Westphalia
Hessen (Fulda, etc. ...)
Brandenburg & Berlin
... I just realized that only the data from North Rhine-Westphalia is in .gz files, the others seem to zipped. I'll make that work in the next update. Oh well.
 
Water level correction:
This is an odd one. While you are all well aware that water usually flows downhill, rivers in CM are actually lakes, i.e. every square belonging to the same water body has the same water level. In reality, this is of course not the case. But on the map I am currently experimenting with, the difference in elevation along the river is roughly 6m. This leads to the river looking fine at one side:
mg]https://i.imgur.com/DNrYDfO.png[/img]
And being in a deep ravine on the other side:

Water level correction is still a bit experimental but it should in principle get rid of this. You provide the lowest point of the river on the map (UTM coordinates) and the highest point and the tool will calculate a calculate a plain and lower the higher side (and all the other terrain accordingly) to the level of the lower side.
Contour Lines:
@Bulletpoint
I added this option because there were concerns about performance and stair-step effects. And of course it takes much less time to only set contour lines. I tested versions and could not observe any difference in performance. And for stair-step effects...
Every point set:

5m contours:

10m

Doesn't look precisely stair-step effect free to me... Am I doing something wrong?
Ah, one final thing: I changed the license under which the code is published. I can't really see how this affects you but I don't want anyone thinking I'm sneaking an evil ninja license in 😉. You can do whatever you want with the code, you can even sell maps you made with it (as long as BF is ok with it, that is). I only speak broken legalese but I thought the new license might be a bit more fitting for community made stuff: the only restriction is, if you modify the code and make something new with it, you have to make it open source just like the original one.
Right, have fun making maps! 🙂
 
.

Elevation data is already available and working. Is it too complicated? I agree, using the current OSM is more useful for the modern titles. My vision here is twofold:
1. Easy integration of OSM via Overpass API, i.e. you just provide a bounding box and the API will just download the relevant content from the internet, nothing else for you to do. -> Modern Titles
2. Importing xml based map files. This would mean you can download a map area from OSM and manipulate it via e.g. QGIS or JOSM. -> WW2 Titles. Would be easier to remove or add content (to fit your scenario) or even entirely make up a map from scratch. I think it would be easier to use real map overlays, aerial imagery etc and just draw areas were a forest is supposed to be.
Currently I'm working on part 1 but I think part 2 is quite doable, as much of part 1 can be used for this, too.
Anyway, I think this belongs in a different thread. 😉

Thank you all! 😊 You should dial down the level of praise a bit, though, because otherwise it will go to my head. 😇
And please, please don't get your expectations up too much, I don't want you to be disappointed. This is not a random map generator. It will use randomneIss to decide which tree or crop or grass and so on it puts into a square. The information that there should be a tree comes from OpenStreetMap.
I keep wondering if they don't have something like this, at least for the professional edition? I have a hard time imagining that the British Army (or whoever is their customer) employs CM scenario designers...

This x3000.
I so miss the random map generator from CMx1 and this looks like the road to having it back.

Wow, this is awesomeness, I can't say how many clicks I've suffered making 'random' forest and grassland. I really hope that BF see this and pay you a big wedge to incorporate this into the game editor in the future. In the meantime thanks! 

Yes, correct. In OpenStreetMap a forest is a polygon with some tags that mark it as a forest. CMAutoEditor has currently two options for such cases. It either randomly chooses a tree type and density individually for each square within this polygon or an identical one for all squares. The latter is useful for other farmland, for instance. The tool works in a way that you can configure what should go into an area of a specific type. So, if the map contains different grassland types you can have differently looking areas. For forests there are, e.g. tags that say 'broadleaved', so you could select only specific tree types instead of the general mix.
Ok, let's not derail this thread, here is a little sneak peek (mildly cherry-picked of course but everything generated automatically), I'll make a dedicated thread once the code is good enough to present.

I'd contribute a CMAutoEditor map. There is still some work to be done but currently I'm in the process of integrating OpenStreetMap content. Currently importing forests/bushes (with randomized tree types), farmland (with randomized crop types) and water works quite well. Importing roads/foot paths works... in many cases (converting lines on a map into those road tiles is algorithmically less than trivial and, sorry BFC, the line drawing tool sucks). I am thinking about integrating buildings (would have to be very randomized!) but no promises as that is a tough nut to crack and there's no guarantee that it would look adequate in any way...
Anyway, how about we do this: You suggest any area of, say, max. 3km x 3km, preferrably in Germany because there I know how to get good free terrain models in many cases. Name a Combat Mission Title. I'll do the script foo and provide the map. Someone else would have to make a scenario out of it - learning AI plans and all that would currently be a little too much for my schedule. 😉

Thanks @Butschi If you got it all working then you´ll likely trigger many map makers releasing stuff that was deemed impossible or too laborous. Me included. 😁😎

So, just to give you a quick update, everything below refers to importing stuff from OpenStreetMap
Wot Is Done Already:
Forests, randomized tree types and densities, tree types configurable, weights for types and densities configurable Bushes as above Grass as above Farmland as above water etc. (basically everything that is just a polygon in OSM can be done in this way) Wot I'm Working On:
roads, Roads, ROADS!!! I became a little obsessed with them. By now I'd like a word with the sadist at Battlefront who decided that doing the road tiles the way they are was a good idea. Most designers don't bother, because it is a royal PITA that you can't just combine most of the tiles, because the widths don't fit (so, you can't go from W<->E to NW<->SE directly, there has to be a tile in between. Not even the official Line Drawing Tool in the editor does it right. Oh well. After rather excessive use of graphs and shortest path finding in there and so on, I found a solution that works. I am just fixing edge cases. And then I will have to destroy it because while correct most people will not like the sometimes resulting wiggly roads instead of just diagonal ones. I guess I'm going insane! 🤪 Once that's done though, railways and streams will be easy to implement and fences and walls should also be relatively straightforward. Wot May Come:
Areas (like forests, grass, etc, see above) with configurable cores/borders, such that you can have forests that are more dense on the inside or have different ground, fields with crops but just plowed ground on the edges (randomly) walled or fenced areas - good for having fences around fields, hedges around residential areas, ... Houses, but only types, I can't do 3D-view Flavour Objects (which you will have to fine tune yourself, no automatic stuff in 3D-view): Bus stops where there are bus stops on the map, power poles, etc.) Well, that escalated quickly from nice little project for a weekend or two...

when?🙂
when??😐
when???🤔
when!😒
when!!👿
when.🥺
when.........😵
when?!?!?!?!🤪

McCarthy isn't the fringe. He's the leader of the GOP in the House. Here's more reporting below: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/18/house-republicans-ukraine-mccarthy/

Well at least they were showing off some of the maps from the CMBN Battle Pack 2 while talking.