Kinophile

Thanks IanL. Advance continues, sporadic sightings/hearings of M1s on the move. Took the inevitable friendly fire hit, from a 152mm salvo still in the air when the cease fire order came down the wire. A salvo of shells caught a forward platoon in the complete open between two houses. Incredibly, 2 men survive, the two fastest at the front. The nearby T90 has blood and parts scattered all over its front glacis. Left Hook Infantry keep pushing into the Housing row. I'm leery of ambushes on the other side. Personally I'd place 2-3 MGs on the facing row on the far side, hide 'em, and then pin down the entire row. Center are maneuvering into overwatch positions, T90s creep forward, light but constant coaxial/remote MG fire on every house that has an eyeline to the center. ATGMs pushing forward into upper stories. I already have a team watching north along the diagonal boulevard... there's an M1 down there, somewhere. Right Flank is working forward steadily, I'm being careful here with MG/sniper overwatch. There are a LOT of blank windows looking at me. FO is about to hop out of his BMP and race up the cathedral spire. I suspect HATO drone watching the cathedral - i dont expect my FO to last long, but all he needs is one turn. I plan a massed arty (4-5 batteries of 152) on the urban build up facing my left flank. A steady, constant, massive, prolong bombardment. I'm gonna shake him out of his hidey holes! Btw, why can I only upload 14.3KB???

Lost a T90 to a deep sited Abrams, about 1-2km away down a street. Holy sheeeet... Learning some rookie mistakes with arty placement.

(Re the tanks through buildings question).

Sorry IanL, you mean in real life or in game? If possible in game, then by golly I'm going for it. Rationale here is my total focus on objective - Advance to Win. This is mirrored in my standing orders to advance through my own Arty bombardment (albeit as it is lifting). "Advance, I say! Damn the artillery!" Using thin skinned bumps is risky, but by God I'm not sitting out in the Open to be picked off by US precision assets. Advance to danger close, attack in.

Ahhh but I would consider it a map bug/sloppy editing if there is a possibility of vehicles getting bogged down the INSTANT it leaves the setup zone.

I can turn off smoke, is it possible for rain? Also, the movie/cinematic lighting opens up a great possibility. Is this run off a single text file with varying values? Because if one can adjust the lighting/colour scheme for thus, then we could adjust it in any manner. Eg, CMx2 WW2 titles could be fought in black and white... I work in Film/TV so I'm very interested in this aspect... KP

I dig this.

Arty's up! 152mm firewall now slamming down on Fire Support Line 1. The cathedral spire freaks me out, getting special attention. The last thing I need is high accuracy direct spotting by buggers with binos and LRFs. Dropping smoke in the Open Ground to disrupt LOS and prevent any lucky long shots. Left hook charging forward, halfway to OBJ Housing Row. Left Hook armor will support the Row assault then pivot right and pop-shoot-scoot along my side of the Open Ground. The trick will be to use Inf and Arty to secure the other side of the Row, allowing my armor through - that right gable end is a keyhole deathtrap. QUESTION: has anyone tried driving a tank over a collapsed building? If I can blast my way through this city, then Ho BOY... Right Flank is trickling forward, seeking contact. Intention here is to entice an enemy advance, then nail him with Arty and counter-attack with my two Coy of BMP. If he doesn't bite and/or proves too entrenched then I'll be happy to observe and snipe until Left Hook is ready to second stage attack, then Right Flank will pile in. Center is advancing, tanks rolling in pairs along parallel streets. QUESTION: If I set a path with specific multiple targets targeted, and smoke subsequently obscures as the turn progresses, will a tank still fire? ie I want to suppress/cover fire through the smoke. NOTE: This map has a bug. A tree line directly parallel to my setup zone has bogged down a T90. As in, right in front, right on the edge of my zone. It's immobilized now. Gonna try using a BMP to BuMP it (geddit?). Overall, Basically, attack is in motion and everything is about to explode. Pics to follow later.

My first ever PBEM and AAR, versus Abbasid111. I'm RUS, he's NATO. TERRAIN STRATEGY FORCES TACTICAL NOTES - KP -

Keime, your mods are superb. There is a lot of them though... Could the various army mods be conglomerated? Eg all the russian mods in one DL, all the UKR in another, all the landscape in a single DL, etc.

Hi all, I'm in the process of adapting/updating the CMBS UI, primarily to satisfy my own OCD daemons... The purpose is to bring a more modern, flat and clean, google/windows 10 style to the UI. Here is my personal revamp, Stage 1, of the Editor UI. This is only a visual mod, no functionality changes of any kind. Stage 2 will: - Tidy up the borders, - Harmonise text background in menus (which for the life of me I cannot nail down yet), - Harmonise the map buttons with the main editor UI - Redo the help text to clarify various processes. DROPBOX LINK </P> </P>

Yes, but it would be far, far more efficient to have the first post permanently editable. Then we would just update our original links.

This rule about not being able to permanently edit your posts, is bizarre. This has to be the first forum I've ever seen with that rule. And on a games forum? On the Mods section? Where mods are constantly updated?.... Anyhow, I digest. I'll update/replace with a new thread shortly.

PM'd you....

Id be interested in bradley experiences in MOUT in CM:BS.

Hi, Looking for a urban opponent. Long range tank sniping is fine and dandy, but bring those hogs into town and we'll see the colour of their fat! Or some such thing. Urban map, high points, heavy arty/air encouraged. KP

I get a big, screen filling red page from chrome when I go to download the toolbar from that godawful software informer site. Essentially, the link is corrupted.

For now, this is purely stylistic alternative. First pass, with some positional adjustments and colour/contrast to finalise. Is there a master shadow frame (b/w) that allocates button placement? Or is it coded in?

Unit info panel; Support/equipment panel still attached, for ease of design for the moment.

Working away on alternate, putting my pixels where my mouth is.... Keener eyes might recognise the inspiration.

This is not an attack. I am fully aware of the amount of work that goes into a UI. Adapting/altering a UI is not easy or quick - I never suggested it would be. Absolutely, everything here is my personal opinion, and response are the opinions of the respondents. The fact that I am stating an opinion, and suggesting (NOT demanding or ordering) an alternative is not grounds to dismiss the suggested alternative. This is not a personal attack, and as this is the MODS forum there should no sacred cows here. The alternative layout is suggested NOT as the perfection of the UI, (bringing joyful grateful tears to all wargame nerds everywhere), but as a more organized, coherent and minimalist BASE, working towards smother flow and a consistent visual heirarchy. It is NOT perfect and is still evolving, per this thread. There's thought, observation and analysis behind the suggested alternative layout, shown in my very first post. The suggested 3 principles are not simple "there i fixed it for you" fan wishlists, or "In My Not So Humble Opinion" uninformed opinions. Using that little stab comes across as defensive and needlessly derisive. Of course this suggested alternative layout is just my opinion, it's the Internet. Its all personal opinions. Does that really need to be highlighted? If I didn't want discussion, feedback, analysis , then why post here at all? In fairness, the Pentagon stab on my part wasn't terribly nice either...my apologies. ----- Yes, there is some organization to the current UI, but it could be argued (and I do) that it is not inherently consistent, efficient, flexible or adaptive. Conversely, it cannot be argued that the current UI is perfect, or not in need of improvement. Vinnart's suggestions highlight more detailed corrections than my broader strokes ideas, but he is absolutely correct in that simple things like the gun icons pointing left-->right actually do have an impact. A small correction, but combined with other small corrections, all following a single principle (e.g. #1 suggested above) the cumulative effect is greater than the whole. ----- Where I'm coming from is that I play a lot of RT games, as well as some PBEM. Now, I love that almost every vital piece of info is immediately available (bar the tweaks suggested above. But, in terms of info-action flow the current UI is Slow. Button placement and hence mouse movement is inefficient. The breaking of the natural left-->right flow is terribly distracting, and in a RT game can have fatal consequences for brave pixeltruppen, and the battle. ----- The Support Call might be a different concept from the more direct Orders section, but you are still ordering a unit to do something, hence it really belongs in the Action section, where the mouse is already. e.g. I order a FAO onto a roof, and add an order there to call in an airstrike. Currently, my mouse starts on the right, then travels a third of the way across to the left, then travels back to click GO. This is just one example, but when I started playing BS I immediately noticed this discrepancy,.

Vinnart makes some very good points, in line with the idea of consistent visual flow in one direction, e.g. Left to Right. However, I suspect you might be a bit too comfortable with the UI as is, due to familiarity..? Anyhow, here is a grid suggestion. This works from a 1 --> 3 --> 4 --> 5 cell horizontal arrangement, And from a roughly 1 --> 1.25 --> 1.2 (not perfect, but a least following the Left to Right decrease in size rule.

Good points all round. However: 1. Customizable UI is, As outline by Steve, of very limited value for far too much effort. 2. The less pop-ups the better - I personally value seeing every bit of information in one sweeping glance, working left to right. Requiring me to click to reveal info is guaranteed to irritate me by slowing me down and forcing me to remember, especially in a RT game. 2. I disagree with Steve re the positioning of sections being critical to user recognition - 2.1 Any info/action panel can be visually identified with sufficiently clean, clear graphics. To suggest that position alone is the only correct way to identify a panel is a bit blinkered. - 2.2 If we're going to justify jutting out the Support Call panel on purely priority reasons, then why stop there? lets make a total mess of the UI top edge, allow any/all panel to jut up, dow, angle in... - 2.2. No. There must be a visual discipline here. The top edge is always, Always clean, complete and unbroken in the UI of every single successful strategy game. The only time the edge is broken is for a major, self contained panel, which is usually position on the extreme left or right. - 2.3. The Support Call panel is given disproportionate weight - yes its important, but it is still only a PART of the entire "Orders" section, and is still below Movement/Target sections in term of how often we use them. 3. I agree with Steve, the UI should Not, absolutely NOT be designed around how current customers want it. - 3.1 It SHOULD be designed with some basic principles,which will guide and arrange everything in a hierarchical and flexible manner - 3.2 As is, there is no underlying coherent organizational grid to the UI. - 3.3 Simply count how many different horizontal lines, at different heights there are and you will get a sense of the visual mess and indiscipline that infests the current UI. The UI is now a fat, bloated, slothful Pentagon-esque project, massively over-detailed, over-weaponed and over (visual) budget. We must strip the fat away, run our 4Km each morning and do our mental push-ups. We must go back to basics. So, we need a few simple, utterly unbreakbale principles to refer to for each decision making process. Principle 1 Info on the LEFT, Action on the RIGHT. Principle 2 Consistent flow from MACRO Info/Action --> MICRO Info/Action, - Again, from Left --> Right. Principle 3 HORIZONTAL CONSISTENCY - Info/action item boxes should work to a flexible grid within a strictly delineated arrangement of rows. - Vertical arrangement is more forgiving, but horizontal is critical - this is because we have a very limited before the UI becomes intrusive on the the view, where as the width provides far more room to work with. We can add more items, but using just these 3 Principles as our rules, will bring huge improvements in readability, usability and visual beauty.

The current info/orders panel is pretty rough on the eyes - a lot of stylistic, proportion and information flow errors. No consistency in vertical break-up, no consistency in panel size/proportions/relations, no consistency in button design. Here is a first draft alternate: Simplification of information flow Information flows from the left, Action sits on the right i/e/ READ --> WRITE Keeps orders/usage to the right hand side Scales consistently tighter in parallel with level of information and priority of action within the game Starts harmonising panel and button styles Here are the original and alternate side-by-side.

Thank you. However, lets get it right down to absolute simple mechanics here: What is the exact button/menu sequence to make a unit arrive and move directly forward 1Km?