We built this city to Rock and Roll

[sburke]

No I am not a particular fan of the Jefferson Starship (Blows Against the Empire however I liked). Lucky for me the time I paid to see them the Dixie Dregs were the opening band and they more than made up for the ticket price.

I've been dying to start up this thread waiting for Gustav to be released. This one's for you Georgie. So quick flashback -

What it boils down to to me is that there isn't really anything a map maker can do except to make the towns all single story to offset the fact that the tanks can shoot straight up and provide hidey holes for the tube guys in the middle of the street to offset the fact that the game won't allow the tube guy to launch a rocket from a building. Both which would be much more unrealistic than the tube guy being able to fire his rockets from a building to off set the tanks being able to shoot straight up. This would make the urban fighting fun. Right now it simply isn't. In fact it is frustrating. I am really perplexed as to why this condition still exists after several years of complaining by the players. I avoid any scenario that involves urban fighting.

Actually that isn't at all true and I hope to be able to demonstrate that soon. The real issue from my perspective is a lack of creativity and attention to detail in urban maps. Would I like a bit more flexibility for AT teams? Absolutley but trying to factor into the engine the state of the walls of a building for an AT team to be able to use their weaponry sounds fraught with overhead and having them be able to use them universally a separate issue which I am not qualified to venture an opinion on.

I honestly hope to change your opinion on urban combat, will there still be circumstances that frustrate you, probably likely. However I think the situation is not hopeless and I accept the challenge to prove that there is room for improvement in the current incarnation of the engine.

Hello sburke, I hope you can too. Urban combat was a blast, no pun intended, in CM1. I hope you can make it so with CM2.

What I would like to use this space for is not to rehash all the things that bugs us about infantry and armor combat in an urban battlefield, but rather to discuss ways to make it work better within the constraints we have. Obviously I have the perspective that urban environments make for great battlegrounds despite any limitations we face right now. I am reading Stalingrad How the Red Army Triumphed by Michael Jones (foreword by David Glantz) and yes there are limitations in CM relative to what the 62nd Army experienced. I just finished a section on Pavlov's house where they discuss climbing up to the roof as the Pzs could not elevate their guns enough, and attacking them with ATRs. Yeah we've beaten that particular issue to death. Suffice it to say, barring some brilliance from BF, we will likely have that little problem to contend with for a while. There will always be limitations as to what a computer can do versus what real life is. At the point it isn't true we will likely all be brains in a jar and we will no longer know what real life is. I didn't say we'd be smart like Charles, just that we'd be in a jar.

So here goes.

This will be up on the repository soon. The town is about 450x800, with the surrounding hills it is 656x800.

View from the surrounding mountains. vKleist and I are gonna take it for a spin and see how it works. The scenario is set for Nov 1943 snow on the ground and foggy. The fog is to render German FOs on the hills to be ineffective as we want to find out just how well armor fights, not how well a spotter can create havoc for the infantry in town. At some point we'll see what happens when the fog burns off.

Venafro Cathedral - likely one of the objective locations

Another likely objective- the RR station

[sburke]

Gustav Line includes a scenario (Venafro Back into Hell) that was a direct extension of discussions on this forum, experiences playing on Shadow of the Hill by Pete Wenman, other screenshots that folks had posted of urban maps (one in particular from way back shortly after CMBN was released as I recall), some experiments Broadsword and I tried in our St Lo campaign and probably additional sources I am not even conscious of. The other source I had for showing me the sheer fun to be had in an urban fight came from CMSF. LLF's Ramadi scenario and Normal Dude's TF Panther (particularly the 3rd battle, that one was one of the best CMSF battles I ever fought. I still revisit it every now and then for a CMSF fix.) were both really cool playing experiences. I am sure there are others. Also on Gustav is Winter of our Discontent by SDP which I found to be a great house to house fight while testing it.

Backstreet of Venafro.

That third battle in TF Panther has you taking a platoon through the backstreets of a town trying to link up and retrieve a contact. It's all about making your way through the alleys trying to fend off a growing insurgent response ala Mogadishu. The claustrophobia of those alleys was something I wanted to recreate.

Spot the Pz Shk?

Unfortunately the allied infantry did after it fired it's first round

Venafro was not originally intended to be a scenario, that came later. It was just a sandbox created to play around with various ideas on how to use the tools in the editor to alleviate some of the issues introduced by building pathing, placement of AT weapons, better looking urban damage etc.

The map included in the scenario is pretty small. vKleist and I are about to embark on a fight on it's successor. I am posting that map to the repository, but meanwhile the town continues to grow. I expect I will halt at 1km sq. and if it is usable, post that. Slice it and dice it anyway you want.

A jumping off point for the American assault.

There are a couple folks working on maps that include urban terrain and a few are really beautiful. From my view, too beautiful. I wanted a trashed out, beat up, battle scarred town. First because I love the feel of it. Looking at pics of WW2, I don't see too many of soldiers in towns that look neat. Even when they aren't the scenes of actual battle, soldiers tend to trash the place especially if there are no civilians around.

[sburke]

Second reason is buildings themselves are part of the problem, even if you try to use them in a ruined state. So I decided to take ideas I had seen others use and push them as far as I could. A lot of the "ruined buildings" on this map are just elevation changes, flavor junk items, sections of wall and craters. They aren't so squared off, you can have rubble piled out and blocking the street with mounds that block line of sight to the alleys behind those buildings in effect creating covered routes for infantry to follow to ambush armor. Speaking of which there are lots of routes for Infantry to move away from Armor. Your infantry will have to clear the housing blocks in order to protect your Tanks.

The RR yard looking back towards the mountain pass that is the German supply route.

The ravine that cuts into the town.

American Infantry moving up in the cover provided by a tank.

View from German sniper position

GI spotted by German unit lying in ambush

[sburke]

How well does it work? Well here is what happened when the grunts didn't clear an alley first. vKleist will have to help me answer that question in more detail.

[c3k]

A beautiful work! Thank you for the screenshots.

[MG TOW]

Incredible!! Nice to see the city with distinctive areas and districts, not just one big block of right angle buildings. I thought that map would be much larger than the actual dimensions reveal. looking forward to playing this.

[Fenris]

"We're gunna need more men."

Looks awesome. Kudos, must have taken significant effort. I imagine it'll take just as significant an effort to play a game through that.

-F

[MikeyD]

Interesting thing is there's no added snow terrain tiles in the editor (besides a new snow path road type). The snow is handled automatically by picking ground condition. A couple clicks its springtime, a couple clicks it fall, a couple clicks you're buried in deep snow!

[Markus86]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but is snow / cold temperatures somehow effecting the performance of units? Do pixel-soldiers freeze?

[Broadsword56]

Magnificent work. This will be a real feast for the eyes.

[sburke]

Yeah this is the light snow variant. Why'd I go with snow? The greatcoats look kewl!!

The Shrek shot was when I was messing around with the idea of having FJ as the defenders. For now it is Heer Grenadiers of the 305th ID vs the 45 ID and both have attached assets (pioneers/combat engineers and armor).

As to map size, there is a LOT of room to cover. The constraint I am facing is making sure it runs smooth with the troops involved and figuring out how much time it eats up. Plotting movement gets tricky, even selecting units takes a bit of maneuvering as the streets are really narrow. As it stands about 1/3 of the map is the slopes leading into the mountains behind the city.

Yes it is slow to play through. I set the time limit on our scenario all the way out as I have no idea if we will even be able play through it in 4 hours.

[sburke]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but is snow / cold temperatures somehow effecting the performance of units? Do pixel-soldiers freeze?

Not stupid at all. I actually do not know what effect the various settings have on performance. I understand they may have an impact on movement and for sure visibility. So maybe in a non urban setting for example, deep snow might see your units becoming fatigued. I'd have to test that to be sure. Fog definitely impacts your FOs. Make it really thick and your FO is going to have to be in MG range to call in fire. I had that very specific problem in a scenario included with GL and never did resolve how to deal with it.

[Broadsword56]

Do you have to set snow depth for the entire map, or can you have deep snow in some places and lighter snow or mud in others, etc?

[ChrisND]

Do you have to set snow depth for the entire map, or can you have deep snow in some places and lighter snow or mud in others, etc?

You can't place snow manually, you just switch the global variables and the ground changes automatically, depending on what depth of snow was selected.

[MikeyD]

Different 'normal' terrain types get different 'snow' textures, under patchy snow conditions especially. Once you've familiarized yourself with the look you have some control over how your map will appear under snow. Deeper snow ground condition does what deeper snow does, it obscures everything!

[slysniper]

Excellent work. Great looking map.

I will likely have to slice it up and play smaller battles on it at some point.

Playing a battle on the full thing would likely fry my machine and me. I like larger battles but hate turns that take a ton of time to enter or load. So Since I cannot have it both ways. Likely will never use the whole map.

Same thing happened with the Normandy Omaha beach scenario someone made. Just could not force myselve to play it as designed. Just too slow on my rig.

But nice work. Some time in it for sure.

[sburke]

Excellent work. Great looking map.

I will likely have to slice it up and play smaller battles on it at some point.

Playing a battle on the full thing would likely fry my machine and me. I like larger battles but hate turns that take a ton of time to enter or load. So Since I cannot have it both ways. Likely will never use the whole map.

Same thing happened with the Normandy Omaha beach scenario someone made. Just could not force myselve to play it as designed. Just too slow on my rig.

But nice work. Some time in it for sure.

I expect that is true for most if not all. The main reason for doing the large map is so it can be split up and used as pieces, but the pieces all fit to the whole. The core of the map as used in the GL scenario is pretty small, but will swallow up those units pretty quickly. That might be a nice starter map to use in a HTH but you'd have to set your own objectives. I'd be real interested if you do so to hear how your infantry does versus armor.

Venafro was hit by a mistaken bomber strike during the Cassino battles and the town center was hit hard. I'd found that out after working on the map. I wasn't intending to try and create anything that could be used for Cassino. As a historical location with lots of details on the fighting I was afraid it would become too much a discussion of how closely it could depict that fighting. I preferred a battlefield with no preconceptions. Heck it isn't even based on the real Venafro. I decided on it's placement as it had a lot of potential for a fictional campaign and frankly out of some respect/reminder for what those civilians must have gone through on March 15th 1944.

They are hosting a Gustav Lime remembrance/exhibit until June 25th.

http://www.italia.it/en/news/detail/venafro-remembers-the-second-world-war-1.html

Interesting footage on the memorial includes some shots of museum stuff 7 1/2 - 8 minutes in.

It is also a center for military cemeteries from the Cassino battles for French Soldiers.

http://www.montecassinobelvedere.com/version-anglaise.php?page=venafro-en

[sfhand]

I love what you've done with the map and your ideas and attitudes about the game in general. One question, you mentioned fog burning off, does it do this on it's own (like in-game rain having the ability to turn dry earth into mud)?

[MikeyD]

One question, you mentioned fog burning off, does it do this on it's own

My own (very brief) test shows time of day greatly affects LOS. So as time goes on the LOS distance should tend to increase through the morning.

[sburke]

My own (very brief) test shows time of day greatly affects LOS. So as time goes on the LOS distance should tend to increase through the morning.

That has been what I have seen so far. Set the same environmental conditions and alter the date or time and you will see significantly different behavior. I have messed with this scenario a bit and decided to have it begin just before dawn to give the GIs a chance to get moving before the German FO(s) can get better visibility.

[ChrisND]

I love what you've done with the map and your ideas and attitudes about the game in general. One question, you mentioned fog burning off, does it do this on it's own (like in-game rain having the ability to turn dry earth into mud)?

LOS definitely increases as daylight arrives, and that applies to fog as well. In one of the Foiling Fustian campaign missions, the max visibility (with fog present) starts at about 300 meters some time after dawn, but as time passes, LOS steadily increases until it spans the entire map.

(And in another mission, the max visibility is less than 75 meters. It's all about what time of day and date you set, not just what fog setting is chosen.)

[MikeyD]

You reminded me the first scenario I ever attempted for CMFI was set at sundown and rapidly became unplayable. Checking out the 'real-world' phases of the moon I found I has inadvertently picked a date with a new moon. After sundown the map simply went black. Adjust the date a bit and the troops were able to happily fight well into the evening.

[heyhellowhatsnew]

This is a truly amazing looking map. World class.

[ForwardObserver]

Interesting map. And interesting visibility conditions. I can hear an MG firing, but the only I can spot is my troops cowering and the occasional message when German fire hit destroyed AFVs.

This one is going to be quite challenging.

[Vark]

Imagine what Stalingrad will look like! I do hope they will make FIBUA less of a chore and an exercise in pot-luck. CM 1 had the balance down quite well, doable but difficult, CM2 is a path finding nightmare with no SOP's for house clearance available.