IICptMillerII

Some (ahistorical) Ostruppen on the Eastern Front:

Here is a little thing I am working on for my floating icon NATO tactical symbols mods (CMBS Blue Force, CMBS Red Force, CMSF NATO). Right now I am getting it ready for CMSF2 but I'll make the same additions for CMBS too.
Based on my own experience and @Bil Hardenberger's highlighting of how hard it is to tell the difference between FOW tank vs FOW light armour I am planning to augment my existing mods to include some options for the FOW icons based on the NATO Unknown symbol.
Here is what the current iteration looks like.
For those that like to play on Elite and lower there are yellow icons for the FOW (yellow = unknown). This is not really a good choice for iron because all the FOW icons are yellow and you cannot tell friend from foe.

After a couple of minutes of fading.

 
As an alternative and a good choice for Iron players I plan to have a version that uses red and blue colours but uses the unknown symbol shape.

And again after a couple of minutes fading.

Alright, ya blind b****rds, how's this? I think a big part of the problem was the bright white background influencing the colors. If you can't tell the difference now you need to see your eye doctor.

The original doesn't even look bad with a black background behind it.
 
Mord.

Yeah much better than when he was at Cannae and told Consul Gaius Varro that he should charge the enemy center and split them in two.  

We just had a pretty big info dump a few months and weeks ago. I could understand the b****ing before that but as of right now it's just pointless. They just upgraded the website, posted a bunch of SF2 stuff with screen shots (though Steve promised some more) and are in the middle of trying to get the game out. I don't care about updates, as of now I want them to get the game into my hands. Once that happens, Ok lets hear more stuff about whatever, but until then. Just. Give. Me. SF2.
 
Mord.

Ok lightened up the Jihadi flag background a bit. Added a couple styles of Combatant and a Spy. Again all preliminary right now, but pretty damned good looking I think, for first shot attempts. There's a particular detail I added, see if any of you guys pick up on it.

I am really digging the spy.
Mord.

Needed a little side track from the RT portraits so I started some preliminary tests for SF2. Figured I'd begin with something cool looking that I could design the rest of the mod around. Not bad for a first run. I only had to redo the guy twice. Made him too small the first time.

I pulled the pouches up higher (second row pics) so they'd show more in the pic. I am not positive, but one of these may be a keeper with a tad more refining. Maybe lighten the head up just a bit more. It's hard to tell after staring at a screen for a couple hours.
 
This oughta get you jazzed for the release (like you guys need any help)! I know of at least one dude that is gonna be happy I started this.
 
Mord.
 

Covering the road with a little help from big shellholes.

 
That moment of relief when your best platoon, the one that you've had in reserve, makes it across the bridge unscathed.

 
Followed by that moment of shocked horror when an enemy 150mm shell falls completely out of pattern...right onto the platoon leader's head!

 
In an instant, the "power platoon" is reduced to a handfull of shellshocked "scouts." The gods of war can indeed be cruel.

19th Panzer Division counter attacks north of Radzymin. Poland, 1944.

I really hope we get a vehicle pack for the modern titles at some point that adds engineering vehicles. At the least, mine rollers/plows for Abrams and T series tanks. Would love to see more complex vehicles as well, such as a MICLIC launcher, but I think that is much more of a stretch. 

Careful, there are a few here who are going to take this seriously! 😂
For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of your business model. Yeah, it's not the most flashy, and deadlines are more vague than most of us (including the developers) would like, but the end product is far superior to anything else out there, in my humble opinion. The fact that you keep all games operating on the same engine is worth the price of admission and hassle alone. Hopping between CMSF1 and the modern titles is more than enough to convince me of that. I'm glad I only have to chose which front/era I want to indulge in, instead of having to chose which features I can't live without. 

I actually think the older versions look great as well, but the new ones are very nice. I definitely think you're going in the right direction and would be more than happy to use the new portraits as they are now. I know the rabbit hole of tweaking all too well, so I appreciate how much time and effort you must have put into these. 
The Soviet backgrounds really fit well with the UI in your example. Very much looking forward to these!

Hope these can be converted into mine-rollers for CM:RT, CM:BS & CM:SF2. 

For nigh on ten years now my biggest projects have always been my portrait mods. I have invested weeks and months on end, that have added up to hundreds and hundreds of hours of time and frustration creating them. I have made easily over ten thousand portraits, through trial and error, redesign, and updates. It's been a true struggle at times, and I am never happy with the outcome, though I'll say I am, once a project is complete. But I am always fighting the design decisions I started with way back in SF1 and it's hamstrung me artistically. After the FB portraits I decided I wanted to redo all the portraits for all the titles (the BN mod is long over do for an update) . So, after a long hiatus, I set about trying to get to someplace that would finally make me happy. I decided to start with RT to get ahead of the module release, and after a week or so of fiddling, resizing, making test bmps, and checking in game, this is what I came up with.

For about two seconds I thought they looked good. But once again I was confronted by the poor design decisions I adopted all those years ago. You see, I have been in a constant fight with what I term the "bobble head effect", which causes the portrait heads to appear bulbous and fat-headed. It occurs because I opted to show each portrait with a split face on the bmp. It has been my bane since my BN mod and it frustrates me to no end. And considering how I built each face from screenshots, pieces of faces from all sorts of pictures, and the fact I only worked on the left side of the face, well it doesn't leave me room for presenting them in any other way. And On top of all that, I have always felt there was inconsistency in the quality of the faces, and that they appeared too cartoony.  So with that said, I am putting these portrait mods to rest. I have taken them as far as they will go and they have reached a dead end. They had a good run but there really isn't anything more I can do to improve them.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Now, check out what I have been doing for the last two weeks and tell me I didn't make the right decision...



Now for some comparisons of the old style and the new.


 
Now the portraits in the context of their own mod. It'll give you an idea of the overall design.


 
And within the context of the game UI.


 
Some of the portraits are tentative/place holders until I find something that really blows me away. Or will be replaced later. The Heer Armor and Armor Infantry come to mind as far as that goes. Luckily I haven't made anything yet with them, just tests.
Now, unfortunately I will probably have to share a lot of the portraits (mostly Germans) across games, however backgrounds and the like will be changed for each setting.  And I will of course do all the battalions and regiments etc. Whether or not I will be able to keep the quality across titles remains to be seen but I will do my best. It is going to be a colossal amount of work, already has been. For the Germans alone I have created and discarded over a thousand portraits. LOL. Every time I think I have one down and start producing keepers, I stumble across a better pic, or I adjust some color to better fit the portrait into the overall look and I have to redo a ton of work. I just replaced the Heer Infantry yesterday, now I have to redo 374 that I had already made, as well as the SS Arm Infantry. I have done this a couple times already. But getting it right is what's most important. Perfection is what I am aiming for.
I don't know how long it will take. Getting the right pics is painstaking and laborious as hell. For every good one I make I throw out five. But this style will be the definitive version of my portrait mods from here on out. As I complete them I will remove the old versions from the planet. I'll start threads in the corresponding game forums as I progress.
Welp, that's about it. I was gonna keep all this to myself and wait to surprise everyone, but I have been working in a vacuum for a month and it feels good to talk a little bit about it. Especially as I have been going full bore, night and day for two weeks straight. I Hope you guys like what you see. I think it's the best work I have ever done.

Mord.
 

I think calling a cease-fire and withdrawing is exactly the right move here. Enemy positions and strength were established enough to inform a larger, better equipped force to come in and conduct a proper attack. The losses suffered were unfortunate, but pretty unavoidable. On the whole it appears you were able to keep the majority of your force alive.
Speaking of a better equipped force conducting an attack, is there any interest for a follow-up AAR? Could be interesting to see a properly equipped OpFor attack. Maybe even juice the OpFor a bit by giving them good training and morale in the editor to make things more interesting. At the very least it would let all of us see more toys in SF2, and it would likely be very explosive!

I think calling a cease-fire and withdrawing is exactly the right move here. Enemy positions and strength were established enough to inform a larger, better equipped force to come in and conduct a proper attack. The losses suffered were unfortunate, but pretty unavoidable. On the whole it appears you were able to keep the majority of your force alive.
Speaking of a better equipped force conducting an attack, is there any interest for a follow-up AAR? Could be interesting to see a properly equipped OpFor attack. Maybe even juice the OpFor a bit by giving them good training and morale in the editor to make things more interesting. At the very least it would let all of us see more toys in SF2, and it would likely be very explosive!

Careful, there are a few here who are going to take this seriously! 😂
For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of your business model. Yeah, it's not the most flashy, and deadlines are more vague than most of us (including the developers) would like, but the end product is far superior to anything else out there, in my humble opinion. The fact that you keep all games operating on the same engine is worth the price of admission and hassle alone. Hopping between CMSF1 and the modern titles is more than enough to convince me of that. I'm glad I only have to chose which front/era I want to indulge in, instead of having to chose which features I can't live without. 

Careful, there are a few here who are going to take this seriously! 😂
For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of your business model. Yeah, it's not the most flashy, and deadlines are more vague than most of us (including the developers) would like, but the end product is far superior to anything else out there, in my humble opinion. The fact that you keep all games operating on the same engine is worth the price of admission and hassle alone. Hopping between CMSF1 and the modern titles is more than enough to convince me of that. I'm glad I only have to chose which front/era I want to indulge in, instead of having to chose which features I can't live without. 

I think calling a cease-fire and withdrawing is exactly the right move here. Enemy positions and strength were established enough to inform a larger, better equipped force to come in and conduct a proper attack. The losses suffered were unfortunate, but pretty unavoidable. On the whole it appears you were able to keep the majority of your force alive.
Speaking of a better equipped force conducting an attack, is there any interest for a follow-up AAR? Could be interesting to see a properly equipped OpFor attack. Maybe even juice the OpFor a bit by giving them good training and morale in the editor to make things more interesting. At the very least it would let all of us see more toys in SF2, and it would likely be very explosive!

Careful, there are a few here who are going to take this seriously! 😂
For what it's worth, I'm a big fan of your business model. Yeah, it's not the most flashy, and deadlines are more vague than most of us (including the developers) would like, but the end product is far superior to anything else out there, in my humble opinion. The fact that you keep all games operating on the same engine is worth the price of admission and hassle alone. Hopping between CMSF1 and the modern titles is more than enough to convince me of that. I'm glad I only have to chose which front/era I want to indulge in, instead of having to chose which features I can't live without. 

Completely agree. I love that all of the games run on the same updated engine. The benefits of this are massive, and surely outweigh the cost of upgrades at the least. 
I know it gets mentioned occasionally, and to my knowledge we do not have an official statement from BFC at this point, but I think the reality is this; It has taken a decade to get from Shock Force 1 to here. If they started working on CMx3 now, it would take another 10 years for them to "catch up" to where they are now. That, or they would focus on entirely new time periods/fronts. Either of those two options are not very appealing to me. I suspect BFC may have similar concerns as well. Point is, I think we are going to be seeing upgrades to CMx2 for the far foreseeable future, and I wouldn't consider CMx3 to be on the table at this point. 
I think the best way to answer your concern is this: anything you can currently do in CMBS, or the WWII titles in the editor, you will be able to do in CMSF2. If there is something you cannot do in the v4 engine game editors, then you will likely either have to improvise a new way to get the same effect, or you may be out of luck. Aside from trying to replicate what you can do in CMSF into CM v4 editors, the only real thing you can do is wait for SF2 to come out. 
All that said, I am under the impression that we will be getting more features, not less with SF2. If, worst case scenario you do lose the ability to recreate some of the improvised things you've come up with in the old editor, I would still argue that the new editor is a much better product overall. The improvement in performance alone is worth the upgrade in my opinion.
For clarification: in the SF1 editor it begins to lag pretty badly once the map size gets larger than ~1.5x1.5km, making it a real pain to work with. This doesn't mean you cannot make maps larger than ~1.5x1.5km, it just means it becomes a bit clunky and tedious. This problem is not in the modern engine. There are plenty of other improvements to the editor as well, but this strikes me as a major one. 

Do you know what the most 'successful' CM product launch was (based on my observation)? CMFI. Because its existence was kept a strict secret up until its launch. It came as a delightful surprise to everyone. There was no time for people to build up a fantasy game in their heads to compare the finished product against. If you imagined there was going to be Afghani mujahideen in a 2007 Syrian title its not BFC's fault that you're disappointed. Why would you ever think there'd be mujahideen in the title? You might as well wish for Mad Max road warrior vehicles too.

Pretty much this …. combined with the fact that we have a pretty good idea of what we're getting. So why not see what is possible in the editor when the title is released before making judgements?

Ahh ok I understand what you are saying @Mord
Looking forward to seeing the new icons you make @Bil Hardenberger, but not in the official AAR of course.