HerrTom
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Posts posted by HerrTom
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31 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:
There is a reason no modern military has used tank destroyers since 1945.
I'd argue that things like the M901 or Konkurs strapped BRDMs and the Khrizantema or TOW equipped Stryker would be tank destroyers. They don't operate under WWII doctrine but they still are used..
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2 hours ago, Pelican Pal said:
But holy **** guys. Do you absolutely need to string together a bunch of snarky, personally attacking posts that don't add any functional content to the thread
Seriously! Sometimes I wonder...
To add my own little thing - even if it may be obvious:
As far as I can tell from my reading, standard procedure for BMP rifle squads was to dismount a kilometer or so away from the target and advance on foot. The BMPs would then provide fire support for the infantry as they advance. This proves to be quite the effective method in Combat Mission as well.
I used a scout platoon here instead of a rifle company, so I took heavier losses in material than I should have, but the point still stands! I also screwed up the smoke....
Anyway - Dismount your infantry while still well back from the enemy, and move them at whatever pace suits your objective. I have time in this case, so I advanced at normal speed.
The BMPs and T-72s in the treeline engaged targets far away, whether they be enemy vehicles or infantry.
The static vehicles spot better than vehicles in motion, and any fire that is put on your troops will be quickly dealt with.
I managed to advance all the way here without taking any casualties beyond those that I had taken moving into the treeline to begin with! Knocked out two ATGM teams and five BMPs, as well as dealt with a couple of enemy squads. As my troops near the target, covered by smoke (finally!) fire will begin to shift to likely hiding spots. It's always worth wasting a little ammunition on possible strongpoints - better a few tonnes of ammo than a couple of body bags!
This was only a platoon - a whole company would really be able to throw the hurt downrange. In that case I'd have a platoon take the place of each recce team, one left, one middle, one right. Vehicles stay back, staggered with any extras that won't fit neatly sitting further back behind cover. With more weapons to bear, I'd also be more liberal with covering fire - using one or two vehicles per platoon on area fire duty.
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1 hour ago, IICptMillerII said:
the ability to do coop, [...] has already been addressed to some extent and we shouldn't expect to see that anytime soon.
Could you elaborate further on that? Is that specifically related to CM2 or in general?
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Reshade should work with any version of CM2 - make sure you install it as OpenGL - since that's the graphics library CM uses. I can confirm, I use reshade
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On 11/10/2017 at 9:29 PM, Battlefront.com said:
The only way to simulate higher level command stress is through CoPlay. Each player is tasked with a reasonably small force, like a platoon, and the game messes with the ability of the players to communicate with each other. That concept has tons of merit on a realism standpoint. Unfortunately that doesn't transfer over to a single player environment unless we have "wingman AI" that takes control of forces for you. That's theoretically possible, but it is quite difficult to pull off.
I could see it making very interesting scenarios where the AI on your side is programmed just like the opposing AI - you need to meet your timetable to work with it. I can see the adaptability limits on the friendly AI side making that challenging - to account for everybody's play style
Still, this is one thing that I'd absolutely love to see in CM - even without the restricted communication. Having another "entity" controlling a different force on your side opens up all kinds of friction already!
Since (according to the grocery stores) it's that time of season - Please, Santa! Please!
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Here's another little vignette demonstrating the effects - this one from CMRT.
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6 hours ago, Erwin said:
So we should use this higher res version rather than the one you prepped for d/l yesterday?
If you want. As you can see in the Bradley video, it looks better when it gets bigger. On the other hand, it takes 16x more disk space than the original explosions...
2 hours ago, c3k said:The Brumbar shot: the explosion is too fast. It (smoke ball) seems to be created and dissipated too quickly.
That was from the original animation I made, which I agree looks too fast. I had to compress it time-wise to fit in the game's allotted frames.
2 hours ago, c3k said:The Bradley shot: For some reason, that looks better.
For whatever my opinion is worth.
It's a different animation - that might by why! I should have noted last night that that is showing the high-resolution explosions with my smoke textures.
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In the wild.
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I took some shots from the explosions and made them into smoke. Dust, black and grey are from the fireball one, and the white smoke is from the "realistic" explosion.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N0j668Qucr8ZSr5Q2U84ZCP1t8Yzaw7T/view?usp=sharing
Oops - meant to post the above with the correct smoke. Otherwise smoke columns look quite odd!
I also rendered the "realistic" explosion (render 2) at 1024 pixels. Looks pretty good.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bSXAbyJOm1AYGZLaja-tu5ik5jiGZRus/view?usp=sharing
@Mord I made a set up to 40 frames, and made the 41st bright red. No dice - and the animation still looked like it was being cut off. I think the real limit may be 28 or 30 frames unfortunately. CM may be hardcoded there. I also lost the file I used to make the orange explosion. I'll do my best to recreate it, but it won't be exact and may take some time.
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2048 or bust! It will take some time to render so we'll have to wait until I don't mind not playing CM for a day or two haha!
@erwin it doesn't pick randomly now. I just wish it did! And that I had some control over how the boom rotates. A man can dream...
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33 minutes ago, Erwin said:
I like em both as well. You can't beat the spectacular...
Presumably they will work in any game including CMSF(?).
I think it should work in any CM game. I can check CMA when I get home tonight.
1 hour ago, Mord said:BTW, if you notice the explosion bmps have an "a" before the number sequence, maybe that was BFC setting up a way to expand on them in the future? Why else put an an "a" in there, could just have named them "explosion001"
Imagine the game picking randomly from several explosion animations.. A b c d etc. Variety is the jalapeño of life, one might say. I'll try a higher res too. Thought since the originals were 512 I had to keep it!
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Beautiful camera work! Glad you like it. If only I could have the full 5 second animation!
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Link for the orange explosion is below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12UPHcUyeOKzoY26Z7uUgFdxlGVgV7C4j/view?usp=sharing
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Link for the whiter explosion is below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17WqURe_MZf22Hj_b_hdI9_fnpIl7JtuS/view?usp=sharing
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9 hours ago, Erwin said:
Is that a different graphic from regular HE explosions? I was thinking that "regular" HE blast is just a black cloud. AT explosions are obviously different.
RDX for example has a detonation temperature of around 3,600K which will produce black body radiation somewhere around this colour - but real combustion also produces other light emitting reactions beyond simply being hot.
What you'll see (in slow motion) is a bright flash of gas for the combustion products of the explosive which then quickly cools down and finishes burning, which will transition it to smoke of various sorts. Dust and dirt if around will also begin to obscure the explosion.
I've got one that matches the last picture I posted a little better:
https://i.imgur.com/4TzBgGS.gifv
And Mord, I still have the orange one
Video in-game showing a mortar barrage will eventually be here:
It's uploading in the meantime.
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1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
To paraphrase Monty Python... 1024x768? Oh we used to DREAM of 1024x768. Every morning our father would get us up an hour before we went to sleep, then we'd eat a hard lump of coal for breakfast, and if we were really lucky we could watch him use Lotus 123 in 320x240 on a Compaq Portable running DOS 1.00.
Actually, I have fond memories of playing Flight Simulator on my friend's father's Compaq Portable. Ah, life was so much simpler back when computers had less capabilities than a modern day toaster oven.
Steve
Ah, I started on Windows 95. You definitely have the leg up! 😎
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Wow that is a low resolution! I remember how cool 1024x768 was back in the day. Not much higher than that! Haha
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I think you're trying to force the Stryker into a role it was never really designed for. See this thread:
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It should be less red/orange low temperature gas and more yellow/white high temperature gas.
.JPEG)
I'm still getting used to the shader. 😎
It also burns very quickly so should show only as a flash!
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Quick update - changed the smoke bitmaps to one of the frames of the explosion and adjusted some colours. Looks pretty good in screenshots. In action - not so much
3 minutes ago, Mord said:I couldn't really see anything in the vid except for gray. Needs to be closer to the camera to catch the fire. But it seems to be ok. The animation gif was badass. As a test try something around the fifty bmp mark. I am pretty sure you can go over 25...just not sure how far.
Steve once said he'd like to have different explosions. Maybe in an upgrade.
Mord.
I'll give it a try! 150 was quite the pipe dream haha.
Better than anything would be a proper particle system - but that's even more of a pie in the sky than varied explosions.
One other thing I forgot to mention before was controlling the normal of the explosion - some ideas I had would be really good if they always oriented normal to the surface... But that's getting complex!
Edit:
Oh, @Mord the reason you don't see much fire might be because it's only a couple of frames in the final animation
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10 hours ago, Mord said:
I took a bunch of explosion bmps and combined them as a test, the other day, just to see what they looked like. I added in 36 and as far as I could tell they all showed up. To really test it, make say 50 animations, and add a big neon green or purple opaque cloud at the end, something large enough to stand out (like BMP 026 recolored and renumbered would do). Set up an explosion and look for the color at the end. You can keep going until you find a limit, or are satisfied with the amount you need, just keep renaming the neo bmp as the last in the sequence.
I like the color BTW. Keep a set like that before you throw too much yellow in.
Mord.
There's a definite limit. I put together 150 frames.... and it didn't work
Had a beautiful animation ready. Still is below:
Animation: https://i.imgur.com/sXZkHVK.gifvScreenshots are below. I had to cull the 150 frames to 25, which I think is the maximum.
The above I think is my favourite... Great look, methinks.
In action.
Autocannon fire.
And a quick video of mortars. The animation runs a little too fast now, I think...
Clearly my next step is to take a look at the smoke bitmaps and bring them in line.
And...
@Battlefront.com I'm guessing it's 100% unlikely to be added - but I'd love the ability to create arbitrarily long animations using your system...
That and tagging for explosions - like explosiona001[metal].bmp or something for when something strikes metal - like a tasty tank and explosiona001[dirt].bmp for dirt, etc...
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I've been playing around with Blender recently and got the idea of generating an explosion animation with far greater fidelity than I would ever dream of doing by hand...
Does anyone know if there's a cap to how many frames an animation in CM may have? Is the explosion animation limited to say 30 frames, or can I have it last 50? 100?
What I have so far, which is far from satisfactory:
Needs more yellow or glow and I think the smoke is too thick. More tomorrow.
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I think CM2's ui elements are built using bitmaps, so any attempt to scale it will have potentially ugly results. But that's just speculation since when modding it you can edit bitmap elements...
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Just now, sburke said:
Note that is in command mode. Just to be clear that for me anyway it is more useful observing during the action phase. That is where I get to discern their perceptions while actually in action. The command phase is just that for me, figuring out from observing the previous turn who is capable of what and planning for remedying any issues observed during the previous action phase (like getting people back into a better C2 condition)
Seems reasonable enough. I think I'm all cleared up (I hope!
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For anyone curious - it appears that the dimming in Iron mode in WeGo has nothing to do with C2 beyond units that aren't in the same formation. See the below screenshot from CM:FB
That team definitely is not in C2 with anyone else, yet it's still dimmed out just the same as in the other games.
Tactical Lifehack
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
I tend to push a heavy recon force down my planned attack route. Recce engages anything that the main force will find and pins the enemy in place for the next echelon.