mod Lucky Strike's Mods: Hedgerow Hell - it's here!

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Falaise said:

waow
You will eventually convince me to test reshade !!!!
I want my evolution month by month and the reshade version give really August impress
even without it is really good what you achieved
I also like the possibility of customizing the mod with the options
again well done and thank you for that

LOL. We will persuade you eventually ...

But seriously, ReShade could go some way to creating a seasons look for you even if you just use LUTs and nothing else. I even saw a snow fx yesterday which was quite interesting if not a little odd, I had snow on my Bocage!

LUTs are very clever, they are just very simple colour references that have a tiny impact of frame rate but can completely change the colour palette used in the game. They only affect colour, the rest of the post-processed image is the same. Unlike CMs built-in Movie Lighting mode they can also be used alongside the games own anti-aliasing.

The things that put people off using ReShade is how complicated it looks and, in Combat Mission games at least, how it affects the user interface. The trick is to install it in the game, launch the game and to then immediately open the ReShade menu ignoring what it does to the game UI. Then set keyboard shortcuts for turning on and off the fx. Once that is done it’s much easier because whenever one launches CM one can immediately switch the fx off so one doesn’t get any of the weird, psychedelic effects on the CM UI. The other thing to do is to toggle off navigation by screen edge in CM as this has been known to cause a spinning effect when the ReShade menu is open. Screen edge navigation can be toggled off or on easily as needed in CM, can’t remember what the keyboard commands are at the moment. Once these two things are done it’s easy to switch ReShade on and off as needed and to play around in the ReShade menu as much as you like. And if it’s all too overwhelming it’s easy enough to uninstall.

[Lethaface]

3 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

The other thing to do is to toggle off navigation by screen edge in CM as this has been known to cause a spinning effect when the ReShade menu is open. 

I get around this (no pun intended  ) by setting 'input processing: pass on all input' in the Reshade settings.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

Thanks!

It is working now

Even the depth effects seem to sort of work, focusing exactly on where the camera is pointing. So guess it can make nice screenshots. Although like you say it maybe a good idea to dive a bit deeper into the inner workings of all those and set it up properly.

 

Great! That’s good to know. It does take some time to get to know what everything does, it’s not the most intuitive of interfaces, but once you start to find your way around it things fall into place. The depth effects are especially amazing, and it’s definitely worth seeing what you can do with them. As you say they are great for screenshots. In CM the depth masking is quite simple so tweaking it is not too difficult. When I have time I will try to do an installation and setup tutorial.

1 hour ago, Lethaface said:

I did get one error when loading the presets: "Some textures failed to load:  'V__PandaFX__NoiseTex'", tried updating all shaders again but that didn't fix it.

Anyway, it does look great already! So, again massive thanks! It is time to see it in action 

Yes I have that same error, it’s a missing texture I think, I don’t know where that comes from, it wasn’t installed with my last version either so I think it’s actually something that is missing from the current installer. I don’t think that PandaFX stops working because of the error, not even sure that the texture is used.

Thanks for your screenshots  - really good to see the mods in action.

[Lucky_Strike]

9 minutes ago, Lethaface said:

I get around this (no pun intended  ) by setting 'input processing: pass on all input' in the Reshade settings.

Is that working correctly now? In the last version I used the spinning drove me nuts. I’ll have to dare to turn off the screen edge navigation thing and see what happens! 

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Erwin said:

I have to try this so have downloaded latest 4.8.2.exe.

Need some reassurance.  If this screws up my machine (or there are weird effects like with earlier versions) is it easy to uninstall completely?  

 

As @Lethaface says it’s easy to install / uninstall. Remember when you install it to install for OpenGL and all should go smoothly. If you hate it, it won’t break anything and you can easily uninstall. Also see my advice regarding setting up keyboard shortcuts to toggle the fx on and off. Unfortunately because CM is quite old and the way its GUI is set up means that ReShade affects the GUI as well, which gets very annoying really quick unless you take control of it. As I mentioned earlier I will try to make an installation guide as soon as I can.

[Lethaface]

11 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Is that working correctly now? In the last version I used the spinning drove me nuts. I’ll have to dare to turn off the screen edge navigation thing and see what happens! 

I learned that trick from a guide from someone on this forum a while back, I think it was @Mord's. Before that the spinning did drive me nuts a couple of times as well
 

[Lucky_Strike]

1 minute ago, Lethaface said:

I learned that trick from a guide from someone on this forum a while back, I think it was @Mord's. Before that the spinning did drive me nuts a couple of times as well
 

Yes I think something broke for a while so that the spinning was just all the time. @Mord’s guide is very useful although it’s getting a bit long in the tooth now, so an update is probably due. It would be great if we could pin a ReShade guide somewhere in the forums that could be updated regularly with installation tips and tricks. I may investigate further, otherwise might have to create some sort of wiki somewhere.

[Erwin]

13 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

whenever one launches CM one can immediately switch the fx off so one doesn’t get any of the weird, psychedelic effects on the CM UI.

Yeah... this is what freaked me out the first time some years ago.  

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, Erwin said:

Yeah... this is what freaked me out the first time some years ago.  

On first run after installation it should be okay since no fx are being used, the only thing that you might get is some mouse pointer trailers across your screen. Once CM has fired up and the ReShade overlay menu has appeared you can follow the brief tutorial to get an overview of the main menus and UI.

After the tutorial is done, and before setting up any fx, it’s worth making a couple of small changes - first go to the settings tab in the ReShade overlay and add a keyboard shortcut to toggle the fx on and off, it’s the second entry I believe. I have mine set to the end key. Next, just below the keyboard shortcuts is a pull-down menu which probably reads Block all input when overlay is visible, change that setting to Block input when cursor in on overlay.

Then you should disable screen edge camera movement in CM. This will stop any crazy spinning in the game view whilst you have the ReShade overlay open. To do this open a scenario, saved game or whatever. Click through to the game view and close the ReShade overlay if it’s open (toggle it on and off with the home key), now press alt-E - this should switch off screen edge camera navigation - test it’s off by moving your pointer to the edge of the screen. When that’s done you can bring up the ReShade overlay and nothing should spin, but you should still be able to navigate your game view by moving as normal with mouse dragging and clicks etc, except when you’re in the ReShade overlay. If you use the screen edge navigation you can toggle it on again with alt-E once you’re done with the ReShade overlay. You can now experiment with the fx.

These few changes mean you can control when ReShade is active. You don’t what the fx running when CM launches, nor in the editor or menus, so you can toggle the fx off as soon as you launch CM and only toggle the fx on once you’re in the game view or 3D view, if you’re editing a map.

[Erwin]

OMG...  Yes, sooo simples lol.

[Lucky_Strike]

23 hours ago, Erwin said:

OMG...  Yes, sooo simples lol.

'bout five clicks, a few keyboard strokes and you're done. Then it's a case of how much, or how little, you want to do with the fx. I'll do a version with pictures at some point.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Lucky_Strike

[Lucky_Strike]

UPDATED LINKS

Okay folks here are the very latest links where you can grab the mod:

Google Drive

Apple iCloud

Microsoft OneDrive

Mega Cloud Drive

Please download the read me pdf first (please), then if you just want to get started without any faff download the file named Hedgerow_Hell_or_How_Not_to_be_Seen_1.zip and you'll be up and running in no time.

NOTE: if you've previously downloaded the mod from prior links in this thread AND you use the latest version of ReShade (4.8.2) then you only need the revised Read Me pdf and Hedgerow_Hell_ReShade_presets_v2.zip OTHERWISE you have everything you need already.

@Bootie If you'd like to grab the latest files from one of the links I think they are about as ready as they're ever going to be to upload to the Warehouse. Let me know if you'd like a couple of images and short intro, happy to provide. Cheers!

Edited November 17, 2020 by Lucky_Strike

[Falaise]

Guess you need the latest version of Nvidia?
I use the driver of December 2017 the following version crashes my game systematically after 20 40 minutes !!
yes I know it's strange but documented

I allowed myself to cut your mod to make a monthly landscape
and then I don't like flowers  so I deleted some
I am still adjusting and then I will be able to finalize it only in June July August by looking at what it really looks like outside

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

'bout five clicks, a few keyboard strokes and you're done.

Ahh... you programming geniuses...  You guys must have been trained to think in different ways from birth. 

As soon as I tried the reshade .exe it asked which game to select.  Am supposed to browse.  But what?  I had no idea what to do.  Select the game folder?  The game .exe?  When I clicked on CMBN .exe it asks which rendering API does CMBN use?  Have no idea what that is.

Completely lost.  Need someplace with crayon level instructions.

[PIATpunk]

Select the openGL API.

[Bootie]

3 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

 

@Bootie If you'd like to grab the latest files from one of the links I think they are about as ready as they're ever going to be to upload to the Warehouse. Let me know if you'd like a couple of images and short intro, happy to provide. Cheers!

Yes fire me them over and I will get it uploaded. 

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, Falaise said:

Guess you need the latest version of Nvidia?
I use the driver of December 2017 the following version crashes my game systematically after 20 40 minutes !!
yes I know it's strange but documented

Not sure, I don’t know which version is recommended, I guess to get the most out of it would require at least a fairly new GPU. I’m lucky that I only just (2019) rebuilt my PC.

3 hours ago, Falaise said:

I allowed myself to cut your mod to make a monthly landscape
and then I don't like flowers  so I deleted some
I am still adjusting and then I will be able to finalize it only in June July August by looking at what it really looks like outside

Would you like the original layered PhotoShop files for some of the textures, you can then turn off the flowers you don’t want?

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, Erwin said:

Ahh... you programming geniuses...  You guys must have been trained to think in different ways from birth. 

As soon as I tried the reshade .exe it asked which game to select.  Am supposed to browse.  But what?  I had no idea what to do.  Select the game folder?  The game .exe?  When I clicked on CMBN .exe it asks which rendering API does CMBN use?  Have no idea what that is.

Completely lost.  Need someplace with crayon level instructions.

Haha. No I just read up on what a few others had done and took it from there. I guess it’s an aptitude thing. I understand your frustration, ReShade is like a lot of open software, I have the same problem with Linux, I just go kinda blind if I try to understand it.

HerrTom did a visual tutorial some time ago which is still useful:

And there is Mord’s primer:

And as @PIATpunk says CM are OpenGL games.

Some other pointers I passed on to wgbn1968 earlier:

Take a look at:

https://framedsc.github.io/ReshadeGuides/setupreshade.htm

and: 

https://reshade.me/forum/troubleshooting/5227

Some of this reiterates what I said early.

• ReShade does slow things down a bit so expect to see your frame-rate drop, depending on the effects you use. Things that effect depth, focus and lighting tend to slow stuff down the most, simple colour effects have less of an impact.

• CM are OpenGL games so you install ReShade for that NOT DirectX

• When you first launch ReShade you might see your screen go into some weird colours - toggle ReShade off when not using it to stop it affecting selection menus, the editor etc, just use it when actually configuring it in-game and when playing or looking at the 3D map if editing a map. 

• When you first launch ReShade to configure the effects you may see your screen image spin like crazy. To stop this you need to switch ReShade off and open a scenario and set Screen Edge Movement to Off (alt-E). This stops the spinning when the ReShade config dialogue is open.

• The order in which effects are applied makes a difference. A good thread to help understand this is:

https://reshade.me/forum/general-discussion/5453-does-order-of-effects-matter#34280

especially the last comment from Jas01

• Don't try to do too much at once, try an effect, if you like it make a note then try another. Once you see what effects can do then try combining some and so on. It's easy to make a mess of things, but remembering what you did and why is harder. Baby steps first, and try out some presets from other users to see what they are doing. If you don't like it you can always start again, nothing gets broken in the game itself and all the fx have a reset to their own default settings

• Remember, ReShade doesn’t break anything as such. If an effect doesn’t work or stops your game from working don’t panic just uninstall or switch off the effect and move on.

 

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Bootie said:

Yes fire me them over and I will get it uploaded. 

Thanks Bootie, will do.

[Falaise]

thank you lucky_strike

yes I will send you the list of those who interest me

[Erwin]

Thank you for the hints and links about RESHADE.  Will check it out when I get back home.

[Aragorn2002]

I'm not often lost for words, but this mod from Lucky Strike really takes my breath away.....What a superb labour of love this is. Yes, the ultimate landscape conversion for CMBN, that's for sure!

Can't wait for the September in the Netherlands mod!

 

 

[Lucky_Strike]

19 minutes ago, Aragorn2002 said:

I'm not often lost for words, but this mod from Lucky Strike really takes my breath away.....What a superb labour of love this is. Yes, the ultimate landscape conversion for CMBN, that's for sure!

Can't wait for the September in the Netherlands mod!

Thanks @Aragorn2002. I’ve had a bit of a rest now and I’ll be getting back to some landscaping over the festive period. May have to tap you for some local knowledge for the September ‘44 mod. Can’t promise it’ll be done soon but we’ll hopefully have the F’n’R module to distract us imminently.

[Aragorn2002]

19 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Thanks @Aragorn2002. I’ve had a bit of a rest now and I’ll be getting back to some landscaping over the festive period. May have to tap you for some local knowledge for the September ‘44 mod. Can’t promise it’ll be done soon but we’ll hopefully have the F’n’R module to distract us imminently.

No, no, no, Lucky Strike, you gave us already so much of your time and talent! Please don't take it as impatience, when I say that I'm looking forward to more. Next year September will do nicely....

Whatever I can do to help you, I will gladly do, so please let me know. But first enjoy your rest. You deserved it!

Edited December 11, 2020 by Aragorn2002

[Lucky_Strike]

4 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

No, no, no, Lucky Strike, you gave us already so much of your time and talent! Please don't take it as impatience, when I say that I'm looking forward to more. Next year September will do nicely....

Whatever I can do to help you, I will gladly do, so please let me know. But first enjoy your rest. You deserved it!

Thanks Aragorn. I know you aren’t pressing me to hurry up . I really do appreciate your enthusiasm and encouragement, it’s what makes creating the mods worthwhile. I wish I could speed up the process, but unfortunately there’s only one of me, so next September is probably quite realistic. These games will be around for a few years yet at least, so who knows what we can make in that time!