Canuck21

I've been searching the manual and the forum for info on movement through barbed wire for infantry units. I'm certain it's there somewhere but for whatever reason I can't find it. I did see in the manual where it says that it will slow down, but not stop an infantry unit, so does that mean you simply plot movements across it and eventually they will get across? I'm assuming it does slow them down (at least) quite significantly (this will get ugly in the scenario I'm designing now ). Thanks for the help.

@kohlenklau - Thanks - great idea!!! Likely next week when I get the new site up, but good thinking. @Falaise - Merci beaucoup! We, I do do the graphics for the scenario links. Very much appreciate the comments . FYI, nicely into a new scenario for CMFI + GL. Everything (I think) is done except for the AI (Allies vs. Italians AI or H2H, if you're a suicidal Italian, maybe ). The AI for this will be easy but some balancing is going to be tricky for this one. It was all Italians except for one very important factor that showed up just in time, so as I say, I may need to work on this for a bit. Hopefully by tomorrow .

@kohlenklau Southern Ontario - tundra??? Oh, and what's a "parachute"? I used to have a sign in one of the seaplanes I flew that said, "If you must smoke, please step outside". No one ever took me up on that, although there was one guy who was particularly belligerent whom I "invited" to step outside (we were only 500 ft up at the time) if he really felt he couldn't go (literally) 5 minutes without a smoke . He declined and put the cigarette out. Good choice . No, unfortunately not. Unless someone responds here, I have no idea how often it's been downloaded. The actual link just goes straight to my Dropbox account. Likely what I will do at the end of this week is just post something here with my site link and people can go check it out at their leisure if they are looking for new scenarios, rather than me announcing every time I put a new one up. I'm about caught up to all the ones I was training on, so from here out I'm hoping to do 2 to 3 a month, but that could be variable. I have an idea for a new one this morning that I'll be working on for CMFI + GL. I've been reading "Operation Husky" by Mark Zuehlke, specifically about a company of Hasty-P's landing in Sicily and some details of how that went, and it sounds like it would make for a good scenario (unless you're the Italians - didn't go so well for them, but it easily could have were it not for one major factor - and that's all I'm saying ). So as I say, the easiest thing for me to do is to simply link it to my site and people can check in whenever they feel like it. @Vacilllator - many thanks for the comment on the artwork . I really appreciate that. I am thinking that once I get a few minutes, maybe next week, I'll make a site dedicated to links for the scenarios. Using my art site feels a little (to me) like I'm pushing my art a bit. It's not the case as I don't sell my work, but still, I'm not sure these two things (art and BF scenarios) really go together that well. Nevertheless, it's really nice that people have commented on the art and very much appreciated .

Ok, I found the problem. Somehow I had the alias up there and not the file. It should work fine now. Let me know if you have any issues (or, further issues ). Thanks for letting me know about this.

Oh, that's weird. Ok, let me check into that. Thanks. I'll post back here when I've reset it (should just be a few minutes).

My third scenario is posted now on my site (My Site). This was actually the second scenario I did, after Dnieper Rising, and is about elements of the British Airlanding Brigade securing transportation routes through from Syracuse to the south. Anyway, have a read both on my webpage and in the Briefing, etc. text files within the scenario itself. This is for CMFI + GL (currently I have it wrong on the promo icon and will be changing it very shortly-probably by time you get to the site). It is playable as both Allies against the Italian AI OR H2H. There is no AI for the Allies (British) at this time. Anyway, that's it for now. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks people. Hope you enjoy them. One is a bit tricky so be sure to read the Briefings in detail . One more on the way today.

My second scenario is now up on my site. It's called "Changing of the Guard" and is for CMBN + CW. It's a tiny battle between the Canadians and Germans, just after midnight prior to the D-Day landings. It's very important to read the Briefing for this one as timing is everything. Unfortunately, I wanted to make it do-able for either side to play the AI but due to the importance of troop movements, it just wasn't going to happen. It can be played H2H, but if the German player doesn't follow the Briefing instructions, then basically the Canucks stand little chance. Anyway, hope you enjoy. The site hosting it is The Art of Glenn Davy as before. Click on the text to enter, then at the top left click on Battlefront Scenarios. It's the second one down.

Thank you @Erwin . Much appreciated. Hope you enjoy the scenario if you picked it up.

Ok, so while I get things sorted out at The Scenario Depot, I have made a dropbox account and will host some scenarios in the interim. Rather than providing bunches of links to the scenarios (as they grow in number), I'm providing a link through my own website located here: The Art of Glenn Davy. Click on the text on the front page and on the navigation bar (top left) you will see a link to "Battlefront". In there you will find my scenarios. At this time the only one up is for Red Thunder (F&R not required). I hope to add a couple more tomorrow. Simply click on the image and you will be taken to the dropbox link for the download. Note this is for the Soviets as the human player and the Germans as the AI/computer player only. If you have any problems getting the file or something's wrong with it when you load/play it, please let me know here. This is the first "real" scenario I've done so there will probably be a few things with the AI that may or may not make sense. Right now it is what it is, but I've gained a vast amount of new knowledge over the past 2 or 3 weeks thanks to people here, so the improvements should be fairly significant going forward. Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Ok, thanks for this. I'll give some a try and see how it goes once I get this scenario I'm working on done. Appreciate the help.

Perfect!! That answers my questions. I ran a couple of tests and of course, they matched your answers. For some reason I was getting them reacting even though no enemy troops were present (in Scenario Author Mode) but I believe the orders were reacting on a time I had set. I had an assault timed between 25:00 and 28:00 but wait for the trigger. Even though the trigger never happened (I had my own people on the trigger point), the assault took place. So basically the troops were obeying the timing. It looks like the timing in combination with the trigger is actually an OR statement, not an AND statement as I was thinking it to be. This really helps - thanks much (yet again ). PS - So I've written out a Truth Table for this. Now it's all clear to me (finally ), so this should be my last question on triggers... (well, until the next one ). Thanks to all for the help!

Getting much closer now. By the by, I do now have an account on the Scenario Depot and am waiting instructions on how to package and upload scenarios. I'm working now on a new one for CMBN. Anyway, maybe an easy question here. In a scenario where you have a trigger (in a building, let's say) that is defined as an "Enemy Trigger". If someone hits the trigger, pixeltruppen located in another part of the map are supposed to rush the building upon the trigger being activated. So, 2 questions: 1. Will friendly units activate the trigger, or only enemy units (let's say friendlies move into the building because the enemy isn't around)? 2. Which takes precedence - the timing or the trigger (this has sort of been answered previously for me, but I'm not seeing what I expected)? 2a. So, for example, I have a trigger in a building and they move in at 10:00. I have troops that are to rush the building again, but their times are set to 08:00 / 15:00 (Exit After / Exit Before). By my way of understanding, it seems to me my troops should rush the building anywhere from between 10:00 to 15:00. Am I correct? If not, what is correct please? 2b. What if the enemy moves in at 10:00 again, but the timing is set to 08:00 / 09:00 2c. (I never said I could count ) What if the enemy moves in at 10:00 again, but the timing is set to 12:00 / 15:00 Simple answers are fine here (such as 2a. 10:00 or 10:00-15:00, 2b. Won't attack, 2c. Will but only if the mother-in-law is present ). I can figure out the "why's" from those. Thanks. Believe it or not, things are really coming together. I'm kind of tying up a bunch of loose ends now with this stuff. Scenarios are coming (have close to 4 new ones now).

So it sounds like you can have folders within the "Data>Z folder. Do they need to follow a naming convention at all, or can you name them whatever you want (i.e. uniforms, terrain, angry mothers-in-laws, etc.)?

@Lucky_Strike and @CaptainTheDark - Thanks very much for all this! Your explanations help immensely. I suspect I'll be looking at mods that use the tags so I don't have to do much/any swapping in and out, as much for the sake of ease as anything. As I mentioned to one fellow, I don't actually spend a lot of time down at eye level in these games (all WWII games), so just how deeply I'll get into the mods is yet to be determined. I'm not worried about space as I still have about 2 TB of free space, but neither do I want to clutter things up too much either. My brain (or what's left of it) isn't as organized as it used to be . Anyway, I've taken notes from this and will disseminate all this tomorrow and maybe try out a couple of things. I'm working on a new scenario at the moment for Normandy/CW so that might be a good place to try an experiment on. Many thanks again. This took you guys some time to come up with and I'll certainly be making use of it .

Thanks hugely for this @kohlenklau!! Really appreciate that. I'll check out the thread in its entirety.

Sounds like good advice @MikeyD. I'm going to put this one aside for right now as I have one for Normandy that I really want to do (tiny, and with a twist). We'll come back to this down the road though .

Well, after 3 8 hour days of experimenting and trying all sorts of combinations, I don't think what I want to accomplish is possible at this time. It may well be I'm not catching on to something, but what I was shooting for (if you'll pardon the pun) was an all out tank battle in the desert. Now the scenario would work (I suspect) extremely well H2H, but with AI it seems both sides just sit back and shoot at each other until there's only 1 left standing (maybe). There's no jockeying for position (unless you program it, and I have no idea how you'd program that since the human player could simply counteract any movements the AI made, and pick the AI guy off). To be honest, I'm not terribly familiar with armoured tactics so maybe it was a case where they grab a position and fire away, I really don't know. I would have thought you'd try to get a flanking or better yet, a rear shot if possible, or defensively try to get hull down, but again, I just don't know. I'm not even sure CMxx is set up to do all tank battles. So, I'm going to work this one a bit more but if/when it gets released, it will likely just be a H2H scenario. It is, obviously, purely fictional as the desert war was over before Operation Husky, which is when CMFI started, so perhaps there won't be much interest in it anyway. If anyone knows me to be wrong about CMxx not being suitable for tank battles, please say so. I may revisit this down the road a bit and tweak it somewhat. Regardless of all this, the help I've received here will pay dividends in spades for other scenarios I'll make down the road, which will be more combined arms situations rather than just tanks. So, there was no time wasted in this thread, as far as I'm concerned. I learned a huge amount about how to program the AI that will carry over to all my scenarios, so I thank everyone who contributed here. Believe me, I've read, or am reading everything here and it's helped immensely, as I say. Now if you'll excuse me, some guy from the Department of the Environment for Tunisia wants to talk to me. Something about a littering issue that he seems to think I have something to do with?

Sounds good, I'll do that. Thanks

Ahh, ok. That's what I was looking for. I wasn't sure if you had to change the features of a map according to the type of battle. Thanks for that .

Ok, it's time for me to start building scenarios for real now. I've amassed enough info and made enough notes that I think I can start working on some decent quality scenarios that won't p.o. the community if they play them, and embarrass me as the author . So, on to other things for a bit. I can now take a little time and look into installing mods, maybe. I won't be designing or making them myself at this time. There are enough really good artists that have taken that on, and I need to concentrate on scenarios and doing other things at some point. However, I have a few questions about them which I'll sort out in time, but primarily I need to ask about installing them on a Mac. Only in Final Blitzkrieg do I see the Data folder visible. To see the Data folder in the other games, I need to right click on the app and then Show Package Contents. In no case do I see a "Z" folder, nor a Mods folder. As I understand it, you need those folders as that's where the mods go. Are they something I need to make myself manually, or does installing a mod make them for you? I know how to make folders obviously, I just need to know if I have to make them myself. Second (and last for now) question is, if you install a uniform mod for the Canadians (for example) into CMFI (for example), does that mean ALL Canadian soldiers display that uniform? For example, let's say I install a uniform mod for the PPCLI in CMFI GL. Does that mean all the Canadian Infantry for CMFI GL will now display those uniforms? If so, will the only way to remove that effect be to manually go in and move the mods out? Is there any harm in removing a mod (i.e. will the game on the next start up show the default uniforms again with no after effects)? I'm not sure I'll be going with mods at this point as I'm kind of all over the place with what I'm playing (when I'm playing at all - right now I'm doing all scenario designing it seems, and little to no playing), but this info will be good to know. I've seen some really outstanding mods out there so I am interested. Thanks much .

I've seen in somewhere that maps for QB's are selected according to the type of battle it is. I took that to mean Assault/Attack, Meeting, etc. How is a map different from the various battle types that can occur, other than size?

Perfect! Thanks for this. I'll take care of that tomorrow

I think I'm getting close to being able to release a couple of scenarios, with more to come soon I hope. So, when I was on here many years ago there was a repository, which I found in my search, is gone now. What do you folks recommend as the best place to host my scenarios for release? Tips and suggestions most welcome. Thanks

This is really great! Thanks very much for this. Off to get that now .