People who use the default buildings or terrain. Why?

[Zveroboy1]

Okay terrain mods they make less of a difference but often I watch vids or screenshots where people just use the default textures for buildings and I wonder why they do that when Kieme's buildings for instance are ten times better looking and make a huge difference visually.

Is it because modding your game is seen as a hassle or people don't know how to do it or in which folder to add the files? Is it to make the game run faster? I know Kieme's buildings are double the size of the default texture.  I realize not everyone is into modding your game and that's fine. I am just curious.

Please come forward and explain why.

And by the way this is not me taking a jab at Battlefront of the artist who made these. They are quite all right and functional. And it is pretty much a universal truth with gaming that no matter how good your stuff is, there is a modder somewhere who will manage to make it look better. And if I am mentioning Kieme, it is simply because this is what I am using myself. There are other talented modders out there.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Zveroboy1

[37mm]

1 minute ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Okay terrain mods they make less of a difference but often I watch vids or screenshots where people just use the default textures for buildings and I wonder why they do that when Kieme's buildings for instance are ten times better looking and make a huge difference visually.

Is it because modding your game is seen as a hassle or people don't know how to do it or in which folder to add the files? Is it to make the game run faster? I know Kieme's buildings are double the size of the default texture.  I realize not everyone is into modding your game and that's fine. I am just curious.

Please come forward and explain why.

The majority of gamers do not mod... even the biggest, most famous mods ever made (say Long War for Xcom) only get used by a fraction of players (500k people downloaded Long War... Xcom sold at least a million units, in its first year).

I will say that the Hi-res terrain mods do make the boundary between your Hi-detail bubble, close to the camera, & the low-res world, outside of it, FAR more noticeable* (arguably to the point of immersion breaking)... this is a particular concern with non-CMSF2 games as they tend to have smaller, low-res minimaps.

Sound mods are inherently subjective... the same could be said of effects.

Also, from what I can tell, most people play the game from relatively high up in the air (a few hundred meters), @MikeyD often points out that players are often playing too far from the action to see how pretty & detailed the game actually is/can be (I will also note that the vanilla effects & sounds work great from such heights).

I imagine most people just prefer to play a game as is & don't wan't the hassle of downloading bits & bobs.

 

*Indeed for this, among other reasons, I've been tending towards reducing the Hi-res mods back down to standard resolutions (the textures are often inherently better no matter the resolution)... starting with H&E itself & now extending into my various other modpacks (Syria was recently reduced, as were the buildings for my Afghanistan modpack... your building mods in fact, did you notice?).

[Anson Pelmet]

I'm shocked to hear you say most people play the game from high up in the air and rarely look at the game close-up and see its visual detail. To me Combat Mission's most appealing aspect is the ability to watch events unfold on a macro scale in WEGO, then repeat the go 1, 2, or 3 times and watch interesting events unfold from the perspective of single vehicles and even individual soldiers. For me that's the core of its uniqueness and charm.

[37mm]

9 minutes ago, Anson Pelmet said:

most people play the game from high up in the air and rarely look at the game close-up and see its visual detail

I didn't say rarely... however, going off Youtube (and not just the new recent steam players) & other anecdotal evidence, it certainly seems to be the predominant playstyle to spend the majority of time far above the battlefield.

Even us 'veterans" are usually spending a good amount of play time above the battlefield (usually watching out for new spotting icons or flashing "you screwed up" icons), often many hundreds of meters above it.

[Anson Pelmet]

Yes, I agree that based on viewing youtube vids a lot of player spend almost all their time half-a kilometer up in the air, and play with objectives on, which totally spoils the game's delightful aesthetics, in my humble opinion...

[Zveroboy1]

Yes true if you spend most of your time playing zoomed out then it matters less I suppose.

4 hours ago, 37mm said:

*Indeed for this, among other reasons, I've been tending towards reducing the Hi-res mods back down to standard resolutions (the textures are often inherently better no matter the resolution)... starting with H&E itself & now extending into my various other modpacks (Syria was recently reduced, as were the buildings for my Afghanistan modpack... your building mods in fact, did you notice?).

I saw you mention it in another thread but no I can't say I noticed while watching your vids. The difference isn't very noticeable. I made my textures twice the size because I saw Kieme did it and I figured he knew what he was doing but yes probably not absolutely necessary.

[Bulletpoint]

9 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Please come forward and explain why.

Because mods often cause problems. I was using the TanksaLot modded buildings, and found some of the roof textures would be on the wrong way - turned 90 degrees from what they should be.

Also, the modded buildings remove the floor in some cases, so you have grass and flowers growing indoors.

And there's also the problem that when you mod in something that is much more detailed than the rest of the graphics, those buildings can then seem out of place compared to the rest of the game.

This also goes for tanks - a super detailed Panther next to a bland stock texture Panzer IV seems weird.

As for terrain, I tried a couple of terrain mods and quickly uninstalled them again - I simply thought they looked ugly and not realistic. Part of the reason was that the scaling seemed off. The grass texture was clearly a picture of, well, grass, but scaled so the grass plants were way bigger than they should be compared to the soldiers. So it felt more like playing with toy soldiers in a garden than any real warfare.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[Splinty]

Depending on the game, I mod almost everything. The biggest exception is CMSF2 where I have the stock buildings and US armor because they look great straight out of the box.

[Erwin]

10 hours ago, Anson Pelmet said:

I'm shocked to hear you say most people play the game from high up in the air and rarely look at the game close-up and see its visual detail. To me Combat Mission's most appealing aspect is the ability to watch events unfold on a macro scale in WEGO, then repeat the go 1, 2, or 3 times and watch interesting events unfold from the perspective of single vehicles and even individual soldiers. For me that's the core of its uniqueness and charm.

+1   The whole point of all the work that has gone into the graphics is to see them at ground level.  I have heavily-modded versions of CM1 from the early 2000's and from level 3 and above CM1 looks about as good as CM2.  CM2 is only far superior-looking at levels 1 and 2.  If you play from a high POV you may as well be playing one of those other games.  Yes, it's useful to be high up to examine the "big picture".  But, when the action starts it's great to be at ground level.   

[Dynaman216]

I don't want to be bothered keeping track of mods or going through any hassle downloading and installing them.  The game(s) are great as is for me.  CM1 I did download tons of mods since they did make a big difference to me.

[Lucky_Strike]

13 hours ago, 37mm said:

 

I will say that the Hi-res terrain mods do make the boundary between your Hi-detail bubble, close to the camera, & the low-res world, outside of it, FAR more noticeable* (arguably to the point of immersion breaking)... this is a particular concern with non-CMSF2 games as they tend to have smaller, low-res minimaps.

...

*Indeed for this, among other reasons, I've been tending towards reducing the Hi-res mods back down to standard resolutions (the textures are often inherently better no matter the resolution)... starting with H&E itself & now extending into my various other modpacks (Syria was recently reduced, as were the buildings for my Afghanistan modpack... your building mods in fact, did you notice?).

As a mod maker I tend to watch the action at ground level, so the look of the game is important to me, but I always start with a god’s-eye overview from on high which uses pretty much standard graphics. So @37mm are you saying that the minimaps textures can be improved in older titles like CMBN? That’s to say can they be enlarged, detail added, resolution bumped up?

I also have to agree with @37mm that reducing high res mods back down to standard resolution has much less of an impact on how the mod looks in general game play, some detail is lost but not so much as would be noticed most of the time. For my Normandy terrain I’ve produced the mod in high, medium and standard res where possible, and I have to say the standard res works pretty well.

[chi-chi]

14 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Is it because modding your game is seen as a hassle or people don't know how to do it or in which folder to add the files? Is it to make the game run faster? I know Kieme's buildings are double the size of the default texture.  I realize not everyone is into modding your game and that's fine. I am just curious.

Fundamentally Combat Mission does not look great. Don't get me wrong its pretty good for a wargame but relatively to all games in existence its not great. I've looked at various visual mods and they make it look better but they don't fundamentally improve the visual experience to anything I would consider modern. So I don't mess with it since the effort expended to track down and add the mods isn't worth the gain. You also get into some uncanny valley as you improve textures but still have iffy LODs, and animations.

On the other hand I almost always install UI mods because I find that they transform the experience and make the game better to play.


For me the only difference may be if you can add mods via the Steam workshop as it would literally make it a one-click affair. But essentially the effort made to track down mods and install them isn't worth the visual gain in Combat Mission. I play CM for the gameplay and if I want something that looks like WW2 I'll load up Hell Let Loose.


------

11 hours ago, Anson Pelmet said:

I'm shocked to hear you say most people play the game from high up in the air and rarely look at the game close-up and see its visual detail. To me Combat Mission's most appealing aspect is the ability to watch events unfold on a macro scale in WEGO, then repeat the go 1, 2, or 3 times and watch interesting events unfold from the perspective of single vehicles and even individual soldiers. For me that's the core of its uniqueness and charm.

Back when I first got Shock Force in 2009(?) I would get down to ground level for each and every second of combat. But I've been playing the same game off and on for nearly 11 years. Sometimes I'm in Eastern Europe, Normandy, or Syria but I can only watch the same low-level shoot out so many times.

I still do go down to ground level when something really weird occurs. Like a howitzer shell dropping into the open hatch of a Bradley or a tank shell penetrating multiple vehicles. But for the bog standard "I've been shot" I don't bother anymore.

Edited September 20, 2020 by chi-chi
e

[Warts 'n' all]

I remember seeing Chi-chi at London Zoo when I was a kid.

[Thewood1]

IIRC, mods do impact some parts of performance.  Steve had stated that large sound files can have noticeable impact on performance of the game itself.  And There was some testing done several years ago that showed large hi-res mods noticeably impact scenario loading times.  Combining that with the hassle of keeping track of mods, moving around on new installs, and remembering to remove them on patches, I gave up years ago.  The gain you get with even the best mods wasn't worth it.

[Bulletpoint]

Also, even with good mods, the core graphics engine is still the same.

If I made a list of all the things that break immersion in this game, bland textures would be way down the list compared to terrain dropping to low detail some distance from the camera, flickering shadows that turn on and off depending on camera angle, some terrain not being affected by fog and therefore sticking out like a sore thumb, etc.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[Zveroboy1]

 

12 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Also, the modded buildings remove the floor in some cases, so you have grass and flowers growing indoors.

This sounds strange to me because mods only replace existing textures or sounds. If the modder didn't include a floor in his mod then what will happen is that you will simply see the default floor texture since it was no changed. In order for the floor to disappear, the modder would have to go out of his way to create a texture for the floor and then actually make it transparent . I believe you when you say it happened to you but this is odd.

4 hours ago, Thewood1 said:

Combining that with the hassle of keeping track of mods, moving around on new installs, and remembering to remove them on patches, I gave up years ago.  The gain you get with even the best mods wasn't worth it.

Okay I am not trying to convince anyone here to mod their game if they don't like it or don't see the point, I was just curious. But I'd like to point out that in my experience there is no need to remove mods when patching. The only thing I can think of that can cause trouble is Vin's animated text but graphics or sounds will have zero impact on the patching process. Well I can think of one case actually, in CMBS when the BMP-3 3D model was altered in a patch. As a consequence part of the texture didn't fit on the new mesh. But this is one single case and it won't break your install.

[Thewood1]

2 minutes ago, Zveroboy1 said:

Okay I am not trying to convince anyone here to mod their game if they don't like it or don't see the point, I was just curious. But I'd like to point out that in my experience there is no need to remove mods when patching. The only thing I can think of that can cause trouble is Vin's animated text but graphics or sounds will have zero impact on the patching process. Well I can think of one case actually, in CMBS when the BMP-3 3D model was altered in a patch. As a consequence part of the texture didn't fit on the new mesh. But this is one single case and it won't break your install.

BFC specifically stated to remove mods when patching.  There have several changes to textures that screwed up mods from CMSF1 through all the game updates.

[Offshoot]

Even though I dabble in art and computer graphics, gameplay is much more important to me than the visuals.

And to be honest, the level of visuals in the game are never going to that great anyway given the engine limitations (lighting, shadows, limited normal mapping, limited modding support).

So I prefer to play with a consistent visual style, which you aren't going to get with mods unless everything has been modded to the same style.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Offshoot

[37mm]

8 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

 So @37mm are you saying that the minimaps textures can be improved in older titles like CMBN? That’s to say can they be enlarged, detail added, resolution bumped up?

Nope, well not by us, the minimap resolutions are hardcoded & there's no way to change them... the game just converts any higher resolution minimap mods back down to the hardcoded resolution.

However, as the games have been released over the years the minimaps have improved somewhat...

So CMBN has mostly 16x16 mimimaps with a few 64x64 miminmaps for common terrains.

CMRT features fewer 16x16's, more 64x64 minimaps & the first [tagged] 128x128 minimap.

CMSF2 is near entirely 64x64, alongside several 128x128's.

Edited September 21, 2020 by 37mm

[Zveroboy1]

26 minutes ago, Thewood1 said:

BFC specifically stated to remove mods when patching.  There have several changes to textures that screwed up mods from CMSF1 through all the game updates.

Yes they will do that just like when you call tech support they will ask you if your computer is plugged. That's how troubleshooting works. But mods cause problems when patching only a tiny fraction of the time.

[Thewood1]

But what fraction?  Thats why its always suggested you remove.  I've been playing CM since the CMBO demo days.   Moving the mod folder is just about minimizing risk.  For good reason.

[Zveroboy1]

Well seeing as I can think of one single mod that breaks things when patching among the hundreds of mods ever released, I'd say the fraction is pretty low. And if you stick to only graphic or sound mods that just replace a game texture or a sound with a new one and which account for probably 99% of all mods then the odds become close to nil. And I just explained why Battlefront said that. It is troubleshooting 101, nothing more.

I have also been playing CM since CMBO too, never removed my mod folder when patching and never had a single issue, maybe I was just lucky I don't know, that's possible. And speaking of risk, what do you think is going to happen if a patch breaks your game? Your computer isn't going to catch aids. Worst case scenario if you used the animated text mod and forgot to remove it, you will have some funky unit names and you will have to reinstall the game. Okay sure that's a PITA but It takes 15-20 minutes tops. And there is an easy fix, don't use that mod.

So not only are the odds of a patch breaking your game minuscule, not to say close to zero, the consequences themselves if the game actually breaks aren't exactly a life or death situation. Now if you are so risk averse that this is too much to bear for you, then you're probably going to want to avoid plane travel, going out when it rains and so on.

I mean if you don't like mods or don't see the point, that's perfectly fine, there are plenty of good reasons not to bother with mods and who am I to judge? But fearing a mod will break your game is not really one of them imo. I am just trying to clear some misconceptions here, it doesn't change my life one way or the other whether you use mods or not you know.

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, Zveroboy1 said:

19 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Also, the modded buildings remove the floor in some cases, so you have grass and flowers growing indoors.

This sounds strange to me because mods only replace existing textures or sounds. If the modder didn't include a floor in his mod then what will happen is that you will simply see the default floor texture since it was no changed. In order for the floor to disappear, the modder would have to go out of his way to create a texture for the floor and then actually make it transparent . I believe you when you say it happened to you but this is odd.

From the readme:

"Notes and issues:
Bases have been removed, which makes the buildings look more natural, and less propped-up. Having no bases allowed me to add grass, other foliage and a few doodads around the base, hopefully adding to the realism.

There is one issue that effects buildings 1,2,7 and 8. Removing the bases on those buildings also removes the interior flooring. Scenario designers can reduce the effect of this by placing the building on a terrain type that won’t look so unusual indoors. I feel this is a pretty minor issue compared to the improvement of having the bases removed."

https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cmbn-scenery/tanks-a-lots-cmbn-buildings/

 

[Zveroboy1]

Weird. Yes okay that's on purpose, yeah I don't think I would like this either, having grass and flowers inside houses heh. It should be easy to get rid of it though.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Zveroboy1

[Falaise]

I think that if cm normandie had been of the same graphic quality as cm italy or better Red Thunder I would not have started mods
but frankly cm Normandie is really ugly ...
 once I start the mods it becomes adictive and honestly between my cm Normandie and what I see through my window I managed to get a fairly correct overall impression.
I play every time in ground level and sometime i prohibited me to up the camera for more imersive impression
each play like each like