Simulating hedgerow fighting

[Macisle]

Wow, JasonC--thanks so much for your superb and very interesting post! Hopefully, this map will serve as a very good "control" for testing realism and real-world tactics. Since the map is "what it is," if a defense fails, then either the attacker had truly overwhelming force, or the defender's tactics were not up to the task. Or, we should be able to more easily pinpoint elements of the game that need looking at for adjustment.

Okay, not much time today. Gonna' post some pics from yesterday's work. I'll be a bit tied up for a number of days after that.

[Macisle]

Updated work on the "White Manor" overlooking the southern crossroads.

From the southern crossroads looking N by E. VERY early work here, folks!

Northern crossroads comparison of early work. Looking S by E.

Northern crossroads comparison of early building work. Looking S by E.

[Macisle]

Some thoughts on the map and troops. When I started, I was thinking along the lines of a company plus change in defense, too. But as I go, I get the feeling that much larger forces will work well, too. -Perhaps better. I can easily visualize the Defender having a pool of transport vehicles, zipping around the safe road areas to shift troops quickly.

Or to move FO's. My hunch is that defending TRPs are going to really feel accurate to history.

I'm so excited to see what you guys are going to come up with!

I could see advanced players using larger formations (with lots of extra ammo), setting the timer really high, and just duking it out for objectives and attrition until someone cries uncle.

But again, since the map is "what it is," then whatever force size should be fun, I think.

[Michael Emrys]

Looking north from the northern crossroads (same location as above):

Assuming the ditch on the right side of the road was present during the battle, it might be critical to have. Really nice map, BTW.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Is this intended as a QB map? That would bring great joy to my heart.

Michael

[Macisle]

Thanks, Michael! And, yes--when I finish it, I'll post it to the repository as a H2H-only QB map. Maybe later I'll try to make it into a full-fledged scenario. Or, perhaps others can do that and just credit me for the map work.

We'll see.

[JonS]

I know of these two sites:

http://aerial.rcahms.gov.uk/worldwide/?PHPSESSID=jg41gmegnin9qf2jpeh3gi1v63

http://www.wwii-photos-maps.com/

Geoportail. Detailed modern topo maps of France:

http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil

IGN. Aerial photos of France, including a complete survey of the country made shortly after the war:

http://loisirs.ign.fr/

(Hmm, they've changed their site, again, and I don't speak French. I'm danged if I can figure out where the aerial photos are now, but I'm fairly certain they'll still be there somewhere)

Also:

1:25k maps of German from the 1930s: http://lib.byu.edu/digital/germanmaps/

topo maps of Italy: http://www.pcn.minambiente.it/GN/index.php?lan=en

Aerial recce photos of Holland from 1944: http://watwaswaar.nl/#cK-PA-8-1-1v-1-3pyq-1gfQ---gEw

[Rake]

Geoportail. Detailed modern topo maps of France:

http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil

IGN. Aerial photos of France, including a complete survey of the country made shortly after the war:

http://loisirs.ign.fr/

(Hmm, they've changed their site, again, and I don't speak French. I'm danged if I can figure out where the aerial photos are now, but I'm fairly certain they'll still be there somewhere)

Macisle -

The aerial photos on the Geoportail site... There's a link from the IGN site, but I had to poke around a bit to find it. I don't speak French either, but I can read a little bit.

Here's how to find them:

Follow Jon's link above... that will open an aerial view of France. Find the area that you want and zoom in. Click on Cartes (IGN) and you'll get a map rather than the aerial photography. Zoom in far enough, and you'll get the topo...

Click in the box at the upper right that says Remonter le temps

That will bring up a pull down menu from which you will pick Les prises de vues aériennes

Select the 1:50,000 option and drag the handles to the 1940 - 1950 range. Most of the photos in this range will be from 1946. There should be several flight missions to choose from:

Clicking on one of the missions will bring up "X"s inside an orange dot... these are the aerial photos. Selecting one of these will give you the option to view (Aperçu) or download (Télécharger) the image:

Downloaded images will be in jpeg2000 format (.jp2)... Photoshop will handle these, but I'm not sure about other programs. I would think that there's some free software out there that can convert these if the program that you're using won't.

If you download several, you can stitch them together and create a composite photo. This one probably covers the area that you're working on:

If you're interested, I have a fairly high resolution pic that I could deliver via dropbox. PM me with an email address if you'd like to have it. Nice map, btw!

Edit: Just re-read your post and saw that your map is EAST of Carentan... my photo just goes to the south. Still, there are plenty of aerials on Geoportail in the area of your map.

[JonS]

Thanks Rake, that's a very useful and thorough tutorial

Edit: the transition from open farmland to bocage in that photo is striking! It sort-of looks like a half-finished CM map

[JonS]

I like the way you've used the balcony here to replicate the real building on the right

If you want, you can get rid of that door and window onto the balcony by - in the 3D map editor - pressing ALT-CTRL-LEFTCLICK. This will change all the doors/windows on an entire facade, cycling through the various options. Eventually you'll get the balnk wall. Then CTRL-LEFTCLICK on the ground floor (only) to put the door you actually want back in there.

You could also run a high wall along the side of that builcing to enclose the sides of that patio/porch area.

[Rake]

Thanks Rake, that's a very useful and thorough tutorial

Edit: the transition from open farmland to bocage in that photo is striking! It sort-of looks like a half-finished CM map

It does, doesn't it. The field lines are still visible, but it appears that the brush is gone. I believe most of this area between Saint-Côme-du-Mont (off-map to the NNW) and Carentan was flooded during the battle; my guess is that the vegetation along the bocage was drowned and the lines we can see are possibly the berms that remained???

I'm certainly willing to entertain other hypotheses

[Rake]

I like the way you've used the balcony here to replicate the real building on the right

Another way that I've experimented with is to partially place a shelter (flavor object) inside of a building... this gives the sloped roof effect rather than the balcony style roof

The problem I've had with this is that, sometimes, several of the flavor objects have "disappeared" (maybe I ctrl - clicked without knowing), but my guess is that the game won't handle flavor objects touching...

[JonS]

I'm certainly willing to entertain other hypotheses

AIUI, bocage was a particular solution to a particular combination of factors.

Part of it was rocky ground that needed clearing, so farmers picked up the rocks and moved them moved them out to the edges of arbitrarily defined "fields". That would help explain why bocage fields are so small - no point carrying those rocks too far. You may as well just create anotehr line of stones.

Part of it was that in winter time - and most of the year round - some really bad storms rip in from the Atlantic and across the Contentin and Normandy. Having lots of small fields bounded by high and thick hedges meant that cattle and orchard trees could cope with extreme weather a lot better.

So, that explains the tight bocage terrain that extends across a lot of this area. But as you move east the weather coming in off the sea isn't as bad, and small fields are kind of inefficient, so beyong about Caen their use peters out. Also, as you move north, towards the coast, the nature of the geology changes and there aren't as many rocks to clear and form embankments with, which explains why the coastal strip from OMAHA all the way to east of SWORD was open farmland (or, open-ish farmland ... a lot more open than the bocage the Allies plunged into a few kms to the south).

I think

(a similar unique farming adaptation to cope with local geology and climate are the little embankments round Lanzarote vineyards on the Canary Islands - one heck of a labour intensive solution to a shortage of booze! :eek: )

[Macisle]

Rake,

Thank you very much for the French map link info and excellent tutorial! I think the map area I am working on was pretty empty back then, so I'll stick to doing what is there now (but theoretically could have been there then).

The current maps seem to use the same thing as google, but with a finer resolution--which is nice. A strange thing, though: the French site seems to offer two more zoom levels than google, but when you click them, they only show for a split second and then it switches to the "no photo" tiled watermarks on a white background. I'd love to be able to use those zooms it's teasing me with.

The period aerial shots are very nice, indeed. But with the scale and difficulty (for me, anyway) of reading topo maps, I feel much more confident working from google with street level. Perhaps for a future historical map, I might find a place that more or less looks the same then and now, and then use a combo of period aerial, topo and google street to get it right. Still, at 8x8, and without the ability to put walls/hedges on tile edges, it looks VERY hard to get spacing right on period stuff. The layout back then involved many more small structures with narrow, meandering roadways.

As things stand, I'm having to widen things along the roadway between the two crossroads to allow for use of walls and other bits and pieces that I want. A top goal is to give the infantry the kind of cover and concealment that I'm seeing on google street. So, in terms of application, this means a wider road area than I'd like, and my stealing 1-4 tiles from the neighboring fields to give to the building areas along the road.

But I don't feel that this breaks authenticity much, if at all, really. Getting the buildings and their surrounding grounds right is a key concern. A bocage field being 16-32 meters more narrow than on google doesn't really matter, I think.

JonS,

Thanks so much for the top-tip on getting rid of balcony doors! Man, I was beating my head against the wall on that one. I musta' clicked through the window/door combos like ten times before I gave up. I meant to ask about it when I posted the pic, but forgot. That should really be added to the manual.

I tried putting some flavor crates inside the barn there, but no joy. The object just got stuck, with clicks effecting the building, rather than the object. I'd sure love to get rid of the building floor and have an earth floor. Are there any techniques for this? There is a large agro-warehouse complex to the NW of the southern crossroads that will need similar treatement to the barn JonS helped me with.

Another thing I'd LOVE to be added, is the ability to grab and move buildings around in the 3D-view. I've had a number of hamster-wheel sessions where I got all the doors and windows sorted, only to find that I needed to nudge the building over a touch. With the current editor, it looks you have to start over on the building. So now, I do windows and doors last.

If you guys know of any particularly good maps to use as tile references for blending terrrain and foliage types (like around a farm house area or ways to spice up a bocage-lined road, large field, etc.), please drop me their names. You know, stuff that the designer has done a very good job of making look natural and realistic.

Alrighty, time to fix a balcony door!

[Macisle]

Downloaded images will be in jpeg2000 format (.jp2)... Photoshop will handle these, but I'm not sure about other programs. I would think that there's some free software out there that can convert these if the program that you're using won't.

I've got the CS5 Master Collection (it's nice to have friends who get the academic discount!), so I should be good to go. I know my way around Photoshop pretty well. -Such an amazing program! I wish I had more time. I'd love to do some extended CM vids in Premiere Pro. Maybe some day...

[JonS]

That should really be added to the manual.

It is Page 143

... So, ... , this means a wider road area than I'd like, and my stealing 1-4 tiles from the neighboring fields to give to the building areas along the road.

But I don't feel that this breaks authenticity much, if at all, really. Getting the buildings and their surrounding grounds right is a key concern. A bocage field being 16-32 meters more narrow than on google doesn't really matter, I think.

I agree with your prioritisation.

I tried putting some flavor crates inside the barn there, but no joy. The object just got stuck, with clicks effecting the building, rather than the object.

It can be done, you just have to be really precise with your clicking. Some of the buildings (barns especially) in Bois de Baugin have crates and whatnot stuffed inside.

I'd sure love to get rid of the building floor and have an earth floor. Are there any techniques for this?

I generally just put a bare dirt or cobblestone tile under each building. Where the tile is completely inside the walls of the building it's a no-brainer. But where there's an overlap it then depends on whether I want the inside of the building, or the outside, to look better. Sometimes the overlap outside can look quite good, with the cobblestones or dirt looking like a narrow path around that side of the building (it looks better on right angle buildings, but still ok on the diagonal buildings)

Another thing I'd LOVE to be added, is the ability to grab and move buildings around in the 3D-view. ... With the current editor, it looks you have to start over on the building. So now, I do windows and doors last.

Correct, you cannot move a building once it has been placed. Good idea on the work sequence

[Macisle]

It is Page 143

Well...I mean, uh... walking someone through using a balcony to create that effect as you did with me. I read the commands on 143, but didn't sus the integration of the whole wall and single wall commands to make the effect.

-Did more work this evening, but I'll wait to post pics until a larger area of the village is done. Today's frustration was dealing with clashing roofs among modular building blocks. Is there a trick to matching them (before going to 3D preview) or do you have to just do it by trial and error?

On the plus side, I have learned the joy of weeds (amazing what one letter can do). Used liberally along road and bocage lines, they sure help make things look more natural.

[c3k]

Rake,

Outstanding tutorial. Thank you for posting that.

Ken

[JonS]

Well...I mean, uh... walking someone through using a balcony to create that effect as you did with me. I read the commands on 143, but didn't sus the integration of ...

True, but there's any number of other combinations of elements and commands that could, potentially, be in the manual. Besides, part of the fun of the editor is figuring out how to hack it to solve map making problems

[Macisle]

True.

(Making more progress today.)

[Macisle]

Current state of 1st house on right, going S, just past N crossroads:

Current state of map, as of 021213. Full range of foliage will be added last to save on framerate loss while working. Most buildings are still just placeholders.

It is very tedius to get the roofs right in terms of angle and material. It would be great to be able to select these two options in 3D view without having to go back to 2D, take pot luck, and go back to 3D to see if you got it right.

Progress will slow down until the weekend. -Gotta' get back to earnin' a livin'!

[JonS]

It is very tedius to get the roofs right in terms of angle and material. It would be great to be able to select these two options in 3D view without having to go back to 2D, take pot luck, and go back to 3D to see if you got it right.

I've got several reference charts pinned to the wall around my screen, with the kind of stuff I use a lot but can never remember (what flavour object is under which number, orientation and style of crops, which walls of independent buidlings are solid and which have doors or windows, etc)

[Macisle]

That's a good idea. I might have to put some stuff together before I take my unfinished buildings beyond place-holder status and add in flavor objects (just threw in a few for these pictures).

Are there any ready-to-print charts out there for buildings roofs?

[c3k]

Oh, now THERE'S an idea: a series of pdf's filled with the various editor desiderata which is so hard to remember. "Hmm, do I want CTL-ALT-LEFT CLICK or SHIFT-ALT-LEFT CLICK?" And better yet, what do I GET when I perform that action.

Any takers?

Edited to add: Rake, that village cluster looks amazingly life-like. Obviously, being modeled on a true village (hamlet?), that is as it should be. The way people build in any area is hard to create from scratch. Imagined villages often seem fake. They're missing some subliminal cues. Creating a map from a real image is painstaking work, but the results speak for themselves. Thanks.

Ken

[Father Ted]

Edited to add: Rake, that village cluster looks amazingly life-like. Obviously, being modeled on a true village (hamlet?), that is as it should be. The way people build in any area is hard to create from scratch. Imagined villages often seem fake. They're missing some subliminal cues. Creating a map from a real image is painstaking work, but the results speak for themselves. Thanks.

Ken

I'd just like to echo that - this is a lovely piece of work. I tried similar things with the CMBB map editor, and using actual terrain (I used the contour lines from OS maps!) as a template produces a much more realistic geography. The roads then follow a natural line and the buildings nestle into the landscape. Though the addition of props and so on help, it is in the underlying topography that the real battle for realism is won.

Just to go back to the OP, I think that BF took a bit of a risk with this title. The risk is that, from what I've read, the fighting in the bocage was a morale-sapping grind, and an accurate simulation of that is not going to be too much fun. I think we generally agree that they have produced a pretty accurate simulation of WW2 tactical combat. Therefore, because it is a good game in terms of representing what what on at the time, it might not have been a popular game since what it represents was not much fun.