Berlin CMRT Map

[Artkin]

4 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Hahah, you ain't seen how slow this thing is, took four turns to travel a couple hundred meters, poor little Protze is gunning his motor under this beast

Sounds like the Valentines 

[NPye]

10 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Lookin' good, lookin' good ... are you planning on any in red oxide camo - fresh from the factory, just enough time for a little bit of dunklegelb or olivgrün - would really complement and contrast with your existing schemes.

Ya could do, i'll need to research that abit first especially the red oxide camo. Cheers

[NPye]

I've made a few visual surprises for BofB V2, but i'm not sure this one is over the top, there were hangings in Alexanderplatz by the SS for what seems any reason they wanted, what you guys think????

 

[NPye]

New Panther, I got this from Woki Panther collection, available from a few good men and just renumbered and slightly texturised it a bit more, but perfect for 25th Panzer Grenadier Division.

 

[Warts 'n' all]

3 hours ago, NPye said:

I've made a few visual surprises for BofB V2, but i'm not sure this one is over the top, there were hangings in Alexanderplatz by the SS for what seems any reason they wanted, what you guys think????

 

Maybe a bit too grim for a game. And that is coming from someone who has previous when it comes to politically motivated killing.

[Aragorn2002]

2 hours ago, NPye said:

New Panther, I got this from Woki Panther collection, available from a few good men and just renumbered and slightly texturised it a bit more, but perfect for 25th Panzer Grenadier Division.

 

I think this camo pattern was also used by the GD division.

[RockinHarry]

2 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Maybe a bit too grim for a game. And that is coming from someone who has previous when it comes to politically motivated killing.

I feel the same. Bits tooo much, even considering the worst of Nazis roamed the streets these day. I´d also get rid of all the swastika stuff. These remind me of all the hollywood crap, where producers might have thought the more swastika added, the more evil Nazi it looks. Better hang a lot of white bedding from windows in russian setup zones instead. It´s more "realistic". That´s my 2 "reichspfennig" on that.

Re white bedding (flags) I think stuff like that can be made similar to the poster flavor objects. Maybe the poster MDR just needs some deforming in Blender, then saved with different heights so they can be attched to a buildings various floors or balconies.

Edit: for grim looks... don´t we have dead horses in any our CM games? I know there´s dead cows (in BN). Or like mentioned earlier, adding some more junk objects composed from heaps of military equipment (few rifles, MG ammo boxes, helmets, a Panzerfaust etc.) The single dead soldier ani files include weaponry and helmets (sometimes) beeing seperated from the body. Something like that.

Edit 2: Yup, Farm #5 flavor is the dead horse. You could add a "gory" version (or several) made from original maybe.

Edited October 22, 2022 by RockinHarry

[Lucky_Strike]

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Seeing some @Lucky_Strike ´s magic in there as well. Is that just dumping in original CMBN HH or an adapted version? I want this urgently!

It mostly works, there are a couple of missing textures since RT has a few extras that BN doesn't have - extra long yellow grass for instance. Just a case of duplicating the long yellow grass and renaming as desired. Recommend the medium res or game res for best playability.

[Lucky_Strike]

14 hours ago, NPye said:

I have the shader on but i have no control over as i can't find out how to do that on an Mac??? Cheers

The only way to control shaders on a Mac is through modding the rather complex blur_shader.frag and blur_shader.vert files which require a degree in OpenGL to get your noodle around. BarbaricCo and CarlWAW did lots of work on these wit limited success. Harry made a good one for his personal use which he was kind enough to share with me - I use it as my default in BN. The modded files just get dumped in your Z folder.

 

[Lucky_Strike]

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

I´m not sure about that yet. There´s some different size flavors in same categories and sometimes size does matter re collision, pivot points and such and likely to be dealt with by META. I´m still investigating here and made small progresses.

Yes I guess regular fountains need less space that large fountains.

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

oh... seen maaaaany times before here. Just like you´re english version "code talkers" something.  I love using metaphors, irony and black humour in german language as well, but I got to admit grasping the english version is quite some challenge for me.

 I'm pretty certain that German humour would be far more difficult for me to get my head around given my German skills are mostly limited to words and phrases learnt from a lifetime interest in WW2 in Europe ... there are only so many Panzer jokes ...

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

I found comparing Blender´s bounding box view mode corners oftentimes nicely correlate to some the META data when assuming it is actual XYZ coordinates. Even more so when i.e rounding up some the META data. So a 0.689 (meters) might actually be just 0.69 for in game usage. That helps reading and allocating it to bounding box data more easily. Think many of that also is relative coordinates refering to a particular reference point in Blender´s/CM´s 3D space.

This is interesting. I tried watching the metadata as I moved or modified stuff but it didn't seem to change, so I suspect we would have to modify it manually. This is probably why we get these mysterious unknown errors - if Blender doesn't know what these unknown values point to it can't handle changes to them, so throws up an error, or something like that. I do recall that @sbobovyc was working on the metadata at one time, but his focus shifted to other stuff sadly.

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Yup, exactly that. No hidden paths. Blast is activated by the cattle fence obviously, not considering any other terrain in same AS. Beside their destruction from the blast which is colateral damage so to say. And as @JM Stuff pointed out it´s even more weird since the big boom doesn´t create any crater as one might likely not expect.

I'm gonna have to go and try to blow up some more dragon's teeth. Using HE shells from something like a Sherman Jumbo will make craters since it takes several rounds.

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

I´ve various ideas to make this more FOW and challenge to human player already.

Exactly this!

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Nasty little and fast moving lighters. 

There's a strange paradox - a cute flamethrower!  (a bee, nearest to a wasp I could find)

13 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Yup, worth a try for sure. It´s just a handful of texture files renaming so should be rather quick test actually. Think gravel road would be good allrounder, but otherwise mission/map dependent.

Probably worth including in the mod when completed. Looks like Nigel has shown how well this can work.

13 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Also forget exporting individual objects META throws some errors as is not selecting full hierarchy. Confusing stuff.

Yes, I think that's an error thrown up by the scripts themselves. I think the only safe way to move model parts around between Blender files is by using the Append command then drilling down through the hierarchy to find what one needs. Importing already modified models can start to compound minor errors.

14 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Yup. Something to investigate for modern CM title owners. If finding those special smoke emitter vertices and then applying to different models at least would be interesting to see what the CM engine makes of them. A CTD would be worst thing that could happen I think. Might download some CMBS demo then unpacking the BRZ and see myself maybe. ... found... https://www.battlefront.com/black-sea/cmbs-base-game/?tab=demo

I did that to look at trees in modern titles, SF uses very different tree models for some of them. I'd hope that at some point, because all of the games use the same engine, that we might end up with access to some of these extra features, especially in BN which, being the oldest, has the least extras and could really use them.

 

 

 

[Lucky_Strike]

14 hours ago, NPye said:

Maybe have it in Burning mode???

Nice. As Harry says we could try moving the fire action point to adjust where the smoke comes from.

I think I'll have a go at some of this once I get a couple other things out.

[Lucky_Strike]

10 hours ago, Artkin said:

Sounds like the Valentines 

LOL, sorry can't speed them up - though we could reskin something else that moves faster to look like a Valentine - any candidates?

[RockinHarry]

Refering to my earlier proposal adding military junk to the scene.

Here´s quick example of some dropped german equipment. One is a junk object with pieces added (appended) to it. Named junk7.mdr. Other is copy of same, but with original object texture made translucent. Named junk8.mdr. Both have all their META preserved so likely won´t give any troubles. Editor placement and manipulation works fine at least.

So other thinkable item heaps i.e might be an abandoned machine gun position, hand grenade heaps, or other compositions. As long as there´s valid objects and textures within CM files, it should be fairly easy going I think.

Edit: flavor objects and texture files DL added

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7aa066bkiq5jp3y/CMRT_FlavorGermanGear.zip?dl=0

Edited October 22, 2022 by RockinHarry
DL link added

[RockinHarry]

2 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Nice. As Harry says we could try moving the fire action point to adjust where the smoke comes from.

I think I'll have a go at some of this once I get a couple other things out.

Think it´s named "Exhaust", "Exhaust2" etc. Moving them should be no problem as is maybe adding more to "thicken up" smoke output? Haven´t tried yet but that seems beeing the basic principle.

[Artkin]

18 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

LOL, sorry can't speed them up - though we could reskin something else that moves faster to look like a Valentine - any candidates?

Haha its all good, theyre just moving too slow in my pbem

[Lucky_Strike]

9 hours ago, NPye said:

Ya could do, i'll need to research that abit first especially the red oxide camo. Cheers

Great, there's loads of ref to these colour ways on the web.

Good to see your ...

7 hours ago, NPye said:

New Panther, I got this from Woki Panther collection, available from a few good men and just renumbered and slightly texturised it a bit more, but perfect for 25th Panzer Grenadier Division.

Always a favourite scheme for late war. Woki's mods are quite distinct, I think he's either manipulating photos from books or possibly photos of scale models which I did many years ago for some Panther mods for CMx1. I'm using one of his Pz IV G skins, heavily modified, for my Berlin Panzer IV bunker ...

8 hours ago, NPye said:

I've made a few visual surprises for BofB V2, but i'm not sure this one is over the top, there were hangings in Alexanderplatz by the SS for what seems any reason they wanted, what you guys think????

It's a tough call. Personally I would probably delete them from my mods folder. They don't really have much to do with gameplay and weren't the result of combat but rather the continuation of heinous actions of a thoroughly debased regime in its death throes. I know it's important to keep in mind that what we play and recreate has a basis in a very dark history, but I think we all (mostly) know that anyway.

Why not include them as an option, so that players can decide for themselves.

Edited October 22, 2022 by Lucky_Strike

[Lucky_Strike]

23 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

Refering to my earlier proposal adding military junk to the scene.

Here´s quick example of some dropped german equipment. One is a junk object with pieces added (appended) to it. Named junk7.mdr. Other is copy of same, but with original object texture made translucent. Named junk8.mdr. Both have all their META preserved so likely won´t give any troubles. Editor placement and manipulation works fine at least.

So other thinkable item heaps i.e might be an abandoned machine gun position, hand grenade heaps, or other compositions. As long as there´s viable objects and textures within CM files, it should be fairly easy going I think.

 I absolutely love  this kind of flavour object. It goes a lot further to creating immersion than a lot of the existing flavor objects IMHO, happily lose them in favour of this flavor.

[RockinHarry]

52 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes I guess regular fountains need less space that large fountains.

that´s two different categories but maybe their hardcoded properties are the same.

52 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

This is interesting. I tried watching the metadata as I moved or modified stuff but it didn't seem to change, so I suspect we would have to modify it manually. This is probably why we get these mysterious unknown errors - if Blender doesn't know what these unknown values point to it can't handle changes to them, so throws up an error, or something like that. I do recall that @sbobovyc was working on the metadata at one time, but his focus shifted to other stuff sadly.

Yep, META data is seperate and I guess it´s "relative" XYZ coordinates always refering to an objects current pivot or center points. That´s my guess and needs to be proven yet. Thus far I only got "unknown" errors when either forgetting import with META and then try exporting with META that ain´t present. Or when messing too much with the META block. This from my memory. Yep, too bad @sbobovyc is gone.

52 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes, I think that's an error thrown up by the scripts themselves. I think the only safe way to move model parts around between Blender files is by using the Append command then drilling down through the hierarchy to find what one needs. Importing already modified models can start to compound minor errors.

Yup, that´s what I learned just today. Swapping and changing stuff between different models. For my learning I try to remain with stock CM files only and keeping geometry sizes roughly to original, so META data and its likely bounding box related data keeps matching. Theory again.

52 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I did that to look at trees in modern titles, SF uses very different tree models for some of them. I'd hope that at some point, because all of the games use the same engine, that we might end up with access to some of these extra features, especially in BN which, being the oldest, has the least extras and could really use them.

Installed CMBS demo yesterday and browsed through its limited amount of files. Thus far only imported the only available russian tank model, the T-90. Checked fire and exhaust points but didn´t find anything that´s not included with WW2 AFV files.

Yes, that would be cool. I hate wasting time figuring out META data by trial and error methods. Could do something creative instead.

Edited October 22, 2022 by RockinHarry

[RockinHarry]

13 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

 I absolutely love  this kind of flavour object. It goes a lot further to creating immersion than a lot of the existing flavor objects IMHO, happily lose them in favour of this flavor.

Exactly my thinking. Fortunately we don´t need loosing anything for the many free and available flavor object slots we still have.

But these sort of flavor objects could be a strain to the system maybe. So limiting object complexity (face/vertex amount) and texture sizes then might be way to go.

[Aragorn2002]

Dead soldiers. That's what I would like to see as 'flavor' object, although that doesn't sound very respectful, which is not my intend.

[Warts 'n' all]

4 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

I feel the same. Bits tooo much, even considering the worst of Nazis roamed the streets these day. I´d also get rid of all the swastika stuff. These remind me of all the hollywood crap, where producers might have thought the more swastika added, the more evil Nazi it looks. Better hang a lot of white bedding from windows in russian setup zones instead. It´s more "realistic". That´s my 2 "reichspfennig" on that.

Re white bedding (flags) I think stuff like that can be made similar to the poster flavor objects. Maybe the poster MDR just needs some deforming in Blender, then saved with different heights so they can be attched to a buildings various floors or balconies.

Edit: for grim looks... don´t we have dead horses in any our CM games? I know there´s dead cows (in BN). Or like mentioned earlier, adding some more junk objects composed from heaps of military equipment (few rifles, MG ammo boxes, helmets, a Panzerfaust etc.) The single dead soldier ani files include weaponry and helmets (sometimes) beeing seperated from the body. Something like that.

Edit 2: Yup, Farm #5 flavor is the dead horse. You could add a "gory" version (or several) made from original maybe.

Yes, there are dead dobbins in Red Thunder. And I think they might be suitable for the streets of Berlin.

I think that the Swastika flags were discussed earlier in this thread. My own tuppence worth is that I can't imagine any nice clean ones were getting hung up once the Russians were in the city. If we have to have them at least make them like they have been torn to shreads.

Edited October 22, 2022 by Warts 'n' all

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Yes, there are dead dobbins in Red Thunder. And I think they might be suitable for the streets of Berlin.

I think that the Swastika flags were discussed earlier in this thread. My own tuppence worth is that I can't imagine any nice clean ones were getting hung up once the Russians were in the city. If we have to have them at least make them like they have been torn to shreads.

Yup, that makes sense. Some shredded or none at all as optional variation set maybe.

[RockinHarry]

More fun with flavors. Ammo dump and assorted weaponry.

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Dead soldiers. That's what I would like to see as 'flavor' object, although that doesn't sound very respectful, which is not my intend.

I think @JM Stuff was making some corpse mods, not sure how far he got ...

[Lucky_Strike]

3 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Yep, META data is seperate and I guess it´s "relative" XYZ coordinates always refering to an objects current pivot or center points. That´s my guess and needs to be proven yet. Thus far I only got "unknown" errors when either forgetting import with META and then try exporting with META that ain´t present. Or when messing too much with the META block. This from my memory. Yep, too bad @sbobovyc is gone.

Hehe, I should have a big check list of stuff to remember before I export a model.

Trouble is there's sometimes a complete lack of consistency - with my Panzer IV bunker I've been religious about keeping the metadata of the original intact, and so far have been successful with that, except one annoying bug has appeared - the hatches will not open correctly, they fly off through a big 180º arc ending up about 5m under the model.  Absolutely unexplainable - I never touched them, and the same thing happens on a fresh import/export. I've seen stuff like this in BF originals reported as bugs so it's not unique to me.

I have managed to at least get the commander's hatch back to looking better when opened, it's opening to the side rather than the rear of the cupola. This was only after a lot of trial and error moving the hatch's origin around.

Another example. The locomotive, didn't touch the base model Protze other than to parent the loco model with it, no hope of exporting it with metadata, just refused to work.

I think a key to this Blender work is baby steps. Do one thing save it, make sure it exports and test the model. It's tedious but saves much heartache and head scratching. Also set Blender to have a big undo history and save automatic backups.