Berlin CMRT Map

[RockinHarry]

41 minutes ago, Combatintman said:

Your opinion obviously and what makes a good map is horses for courses but dragging this back to Berlin, @benpark   the creator of the stock maps for Berlin had started work on them sometime before January 19, 2015, and in March 2018 was unhappy enough with them that he scrubbed his work and started again.  Modding is modding and there is great work done by modders as this threat amply demonstrates but "pretty boring" in stock releases is pretty much what has to be the standard because everybody has to be able to experience the game unmodded and stock scenario designers and map makers have to work within those constraints.

To use CMFB as an example, the maps created by @benpark and @Pete Wenman(and others I'm sure probably) were absolutely superb - I have walked that ground on numerous occasions and the boring stock maps are superbly realistic which give you a sense of actually being there.  

@Pete Wenmanmade the map discussed in this thread for the Market Garden Module in which @Free Whiskyhad high praise for the quality of the mapping and a similar sense of "visiting history".

 

Sometimes real ground is "boring," but it is what it is ...

 

Leaving modding aside (which is or became this thread´s main topic bits of unintentionally) I´m fully aware of what goes into mission/campaign and map creation. I spend about 70-80% my game time in editor then mostly playing or play testing my own crap. Here´s my main interest, thus I rarely look at or play of what it´s in stock game files. And when I do occasionally I feel little impressed with quite a number of things. (happened last time after launching CMFB for the first time). Not considering how many hours went into things by mission creator X or Y. But as said, that´s my personal opinion and POV.

And yep, the past ~40 years I visited a number of WW1 and WW2 battlefields myself, so know what to compare with when it comes to "beeing there" feel in CM. But you can use 50% of current CM games capabilities or a bit more, which I think is or became this thread´s main topic as said. Off course still with focus on Berlin 45 and @NPye ´s personal vision of it.

 

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Combatintman said:

Your opinion obviously and what makes a good map is horses for courses but dragging this back to Berlin, @benpark   the creator of the stock maps for Berlin had started work on them sometime before January 19, 2015, and in March 2018 was unhappy enough with them that he scrubbed his work and started again.  Modding is modding and there is great work done by modders as this threat amply demonstrates but "pretty boring" in stock releases is pretty much what has to be the standard because everybody has to be able to experience the game unmodded and stock scenario designers and map makers have to work within those constraints.

To use CMFB as an example, the maps created by @benpark and @Pete Wenman(and others I'm sure probably) were absolutely superb - I have walked that ground on numerous occasions and the boring stock maps are superbly realistic which give you a sense of actually being there.  

@Pete Wenmanmade the map discussed in this thread for the Market Garden Module in which @Free Whiskyhad high praise for the quality of the mapping and a similar sense of "visiting history".

Have to point out for balance that GeorgeMC doesn't use any mods to enhance for his maps but they do have a fantastic natural feel to them regardless. After playing one of his scenarios and wandering around his maps they stick in my memory like real life places.

I personally appreciate the amount of time and effort it takes to leverage anything out of the game that is natural looking when frankly the graphics are not about that. Guys like Ben and Pete have put an inordinate amount of time into these games and are respected for that, and there's no doubt in my mind that given the tools they would produce stunning work, but that's not their remit. We all know the game has limitations in its appearance but some players - myself included - find that augmentations for a slightly more realistic environment provide added enjoyment to playability, whereas playing on stock maps, which lack these enhancements, is not what we want. I personally wish that BF would devote a little more time to this.

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, JM Stuff said:

I was trying to change the colour of the "smok" from the engine more black (because a tank make more black), but I couldn't do anything... I guess this have to do with the famous files shaders .frag .vert that I don't have any knowledges.

JM

Now that you mention... think I´d seen a couple of parms in those files dealing with smoke, fog and other related stuff. Got to look into them again. But there should be texture files (special effects\smoke) as well. Not sure now if these are beeing used for exhaust. Think that´s what you tried?

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

I had the same criticism of NPye's maps too.

Yes, and this is where there are severe limitations in the game engine that many feel BF need to address - whether they do or not - who knows ...

[Artkin]

Just now, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes, and this is where there are severe limitations in the game engine that many feel BF need to address - whether they do or not - who knows ...

Indoors fighting? Conscript troops do it best. I've had multiple instances of simulated room to room fighting with conscripts, particularly in the larger buildings

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, JM Stuff said:

I was trying to change the colour of the "smok" from the engine more black (because a tank make more black), but I couldn't do anything... I guess this have to do with the famous files shaders .frag .vert that I don't have any knowledges.

JM

This may be a limitation, I don't know what the game uses for the engine exhaust is it white or grey smoke, should be able to change it to black.

[Lucky_Strike]

1 minute ago, Artkin said:

Indoors fighting? Conscript troops do it best. I've had multiple instances of simulated room to room fighting with conscripts, particularly in the larger buildings

Yes you're right. With carefully designed maps and very precise use of the walls, windows, doors and obstacles it can be done to an extent, and this is where you rightly point out that the original game maps were a bit short - my tuppence is that they simply don't have the budgets for all of this, you get what you pay for. I have no idea how much BF pay someone like BenPark but whatever it is I bet it's nowhere near enough to recompense for the real time that he spends on this stuff, and even with that it's still not enough to get everything into the maps. Which IMHO says more about the overly complex map system than the people using it. I know a good workman shouldn't blame his tools for a less than ideal outcome, but if the tools themselves are a limitation ...

[Artkin]

3 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes you're right. With carefully designed maps and very precise use of the walls, windows, doors and obstacles it can be done to an extent, and this is where you rightly point out that the original game maps were a bit short - my tuppence is that they simply don't have the budgets for all of this, you get what you pay for. I have no idea how much BF pay someone like BenPark but whatever it is I bet it's nowhere near enough to recompense for the real time that he spends on this stuff, and even with that it's still not enough to get everything into the maps. Which IMHO says more about the overly complex map system than the people using it. I know a good workman shouldn't blame his tools for a less than ideal outcome, but if the tools themselves are a limitation ...

For sure the fine tuning part of CM takes way too long. Everything ideally should be done in a 3d editor similar to arma 3 (And even Arma 2 had one, it was just a hidden secret).

I'm not even talking about 2 houses connected to each other. I'm talking about fighting inside a single modular building, simulating rooms (In this case not a modular building):

 

[RockinHarry]

30 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Just posted a load of pics of the Panzer IV bunker in the screen shots thread, it's very close to release, this week all being well ...

It adds quite an interesting feature for a small scenario. I ran a quick scenario against the AI with one by itself against a large armoured frontal attack and it lasted enough time to inflict serious casualties. So one or two of these on a junction supported by a few squads of heavily armed, well placed infantry can cause mayhem.

looking great! How does it fare vs some stray mortar or Arty. round? I hope this construction doesn´t suffer from the mentioned pillbox bug as well. So a near hit might consider this P4 construction as beeing unarmored. I´d test try that with some 50mm german or russian mortar first.

[JM Stuff]

27 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

Now that you mention... think I´d seen a couple of parms in those files dealing with smoke, fog and other related stuff. Got to look into them again. But there should be texture files (special effects\smoke) as well. Not sure now if these are beeing used for exhaust. Think that´s what you tried?

I was trying to change in black the file foam.tga (grey) In this time I dont use gimp and was making with paint net without good result so I don t try untill now !

Perhaps is this the solution changing the foam.tga from grey to black ?

Nice wil be that we find the file used by burning vehicles... just an Idea.

23 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

This may be a limitation, I don't know what the game uses for the engine exhaust is it white or grey smoke, should be able to change it to black.

There is 

dudv_map.tga

foam.tga (grey)

also some files .frag I guess for fragmentation ?

shader.vert Vertical, vertice ? no forget vertice 

some nvidia.vert .frag

JM

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by JM Stuff

[RockinHarry]

53 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Too true, I wish we had secret sauce, but in the meantime it does encourage us to think out of the box.

Likely that. But doubt the sauce is even shared with official BFC hamsters. Otherwise they´d make more use of it and it doesn´t look like beeing the case so far. At least haven´t noticed. But what do I (we) know.

58 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes LODS ... can be a real pain to get right. For tanks and the like I tend to just make copies of the main mdr and rename for LODs works pretty much as expected. Can't do that for trees and stuff though, just cripples the CPU/GPU.

Yup, from the few LODs I´ve loaded and looked at I´ve seen nothing that one wouldn´t expect seeing in there, considering what LODs are made for. Trees are PITA like in most other games I guess. I´d switch to 2D billboard types (behind the 3D ones) way sooner than CM game engine does though. Might be dealt with in model and texture quality Option settings, but don´t know ATM. I mostly play all at "best" and occasionally go down to "balanced" if needed. But just for regular gameplay.

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes - it would be very cool if in CMx3 they could introduce permanent destructibility in landscapes for campaigns. It really adds to the emersion. One only has to look at some of the scenes in Ukraine (Slava Ukraini) revealed on our TVs to see what war does VERY quickly to a landscape. Just having a touch of that in game can really enhance a scenario.

Yes that sad running war example gives lots of impressions on that. Considering the mass of videos and that in color and (mostly) high res. We´re so used to b/w WW2 footage that we seem to forget oftenly those battlefields didn´t look any different from what we see today on TV. With all those nasty little details that can be (re-) created in CM, sad as it is.

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Great - you're joining the children to the parents mesh? You can still edit them if needs be, just carefully selecting will allow you to move them etc; wireframe mode is your friend and limiting the section to what you can see.

Not with main mesh object, but the object (also beeing a child) that contains further sub parts, mostly used for ingame animation stuff. I.e load up some the german MG34/42 and check all its components (bipod, bipod up, hatch, clip). Those I joined with "weapon", which parent then is the ammo boxes in latest example.

 

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes, and this is where there are severe limitations in the game engine that many feel BF need to address - whether they do or not - who knows ...

Think it´s mostly the TacAI and AIP capabilities (or lack of them) that makes certain maps more "difficult" than others. Even hotseat or PBEM players will have to deal with it (TacAI). So this requires knowing how the TacAI (and scripted AIP) behaves on certain maps, with used move commands and zones etc. But there´s various means to help the AI finding its paths or prevent it when so desired. Off course programming a capable AI is the ultimate art. From what I´ve seen elsewhere, CM ones is not that bad actually. It just needs bits of a helping hand and a player knowing both its capabilities and shortcomings.  

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

For sure the fine tuning part of CM takes way too long. Everything ideally should be done in a 3d editor similar to arma 3 (And even Arma 2 had one, it was just a hidden secret).

I'm not even talking about 2 houses connected to each other. I'm talking about fighting inside a single modular building, simulating rooms (In this case not a modular building):

Brutal! I don't play other games - I just don't have the time - so I couldn't comment on how they compare - I don't live in a bubble and have seen plenty of other games in action on YouTube etc just haven't played any, so I take your word for it. But I totally agree that there's stuff that we should be able to do in the Editor that's a bit more sophisticated than pushing a few flavor objects around and placing our forces - and for Christsake where's the blo*dy control/command-Z who forgets that when making this stuff?????

I reckon there's stuff we could do to mod certain flavor objects that would add a bit more to the interiors - not furniture and the like, but walls - a fountain could be made into a wall and several in a row would make a decent wall that the pixeltrüppen would have to go around rather than through, not sure what cover or concealment they would get but it would be something. At the end of the day though I think that BF never really intended house-to-house combat to be much more than the abstraction that it is, not that they don't care, it's just not part of their vision for the game IMHO. And I doubt their professional customers are not interested in it either - they'd use real training facilities or VR to simulate it. So, sadly, we are a niche of a niche ...

[Lucky_Strike]

2 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

looking great! How does it fare vs some stray mortar or Arty. round? I hope this construction doesn´t suffer from the mentioned pillbox bug as well. So a near hit might consider this P4 construction as beeing unarmored. I´d test try that with some 50mm german or russian mortar first.

Thanks Harry.

I haven't tried it with indirect HE, but it should behave in the same way as a regular Pz IV since it's based on an immobilised Pz IV G not the PaK bunker. I'll give it a go to see how it behaves - stick a TRP on it and lob some mortar bombs at it. Should be fun

Edited October 24, 2022 by Lucky_Strike

[RockinHarry]

4 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Thanks Harry.

I haven't tried it with indirect HE, but it should behave in the same way as a regular Pz IV since it's based on an immobilised Pz IV G not the PaK bunker. I'll give it a go to see how it behaves - stick a TRP on it and lob some mortar bombs at it. Should be fun

Thanks, let us know about test results then! IIRC I read you embedded it with some ditch locked terrain for desired effects? (blending with surrounding terrain) That "could" possibly be the problematic part, similar to ditch locked pillbox problem mentioned earlier. But I wish you luck and everything working as expected.

[RockinHarry]

7 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

I was trying to change in black the file foam.tga (grey) In this time I dont use gimp and was making with paint net without good result so I don t try untill now !

Perhaps is this the solution changing the foam.tga from grey to black ?

Nice wil be that we find the file used by burning vehicles... just an Idea.

foam related stuff? Ain´t that beeing used for water hit and vehicle move effects (in water)? Never messed with that one. Foam.tga is 32Bit alpha layer file and IDK if paint net reads and writes it properly for CM usage.

8 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

8 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

This may be a limitation, I don't know what the game uses for the engine exhaust is it white or grey smoke, should be able to change it to black.

There is 

dudv_map.tga

foam.tga (grey)

also some files .frag I guess for fragmentation ?

shader.vert Vertical, vertice ? no forget vertice 

some nvidia.vert .frag

JM

My guess goes to one the *.frag files then maybe controling some the *.bmp files. There´s a black, white, gray and dust smoke BMP file and some are likely multi purpose. I´d start with looking into fire_shader.frag first, then playing around with parms that likely deal with RGB, lightness and such. Maybe you´ve luck figuring out what some the stuff does.

Here´s some info on Open GL FRAG related stuff. To me reads like mandarin chinese. lol https://www.khronos.org/opengl/wiki/Fragment_Shader

[RockinHarry]

9 hours ago, Artkin said:

Indoors fighting? Conscript troops do it best. I've had multiple instances of simulated room to room fighting with conscripts, particularly in the larger buildings

Think training level doesn´t plays much of a role. Since "fixing" the "rout from building out into the open" issue, pixeltroopers now very rarely leave buildings on their own, even if under heavy pressure. So indoor fighting occurs much more than we´re used to before that game engine "fix". Thus our play style/tactics needs to be adapted as well. What I´d seen during my last testing urban CM battles is that low morale/low training troopers do surrender much more frequently than before, which is a good thing IMO.

Some my test setup is some german Volkssturmers defending vs. russian AIP infantry attackers. The sturmers are placed and defend from 8x8 multi story modular buildings initially. No matter how I play, the end result is almost always a sea of white flags, making about 25-30% of overall losses (the MIA). Only working german tactic would be holding 1-2 game turns then pulling them back quickly. When they start beeing shattered or broken, you can write them off usually. Any russian then coming within hand to hand combat range makes them raising hands. And I like that as said. 

[Artkin]

58 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

Think training level doesn´t plays much of a role.

I have to disagree. With higher veterancy troops (including Green) you will often times kill everyone inside a house without ever stepping foot in it. Therefore the need to clear houses is not a "thing" in CM.

Using conscripts fixes this. Of course in real life you are unable to see entirely into a house, especially from afar. Even if they're small Eastern European shacks with few rooms.

[RockinHarry]

7 minutes ago, Artkin said:

I have to disagree. With higher veterancy troops (including Green) you will often times kill everyone inside a house without ever stepping foot in it. Therefore the need to clear houses is not a "thing" in CM.

Using conscripts fixes this. Of course in real life you are unable to see entirely into a house, especially from afar. Even if they're small Eastern European shacks with few rooms.

Ah.. that you mean. I misunderstood then. Yep... CM buildings are death traps and one can do much of the killing from outside, even with small arms fire alone.  Indi buildings are particularly worthless cover, with churches beeing the exception.

My test setup included some ditch locked rubble cover in front of the houses. So when the Volkssturmers in the house dived to full cover (prone) from heavy suppression, they were as good as invulnerable from firearms then (terrain mesh cover). So my aggressively pushing russian infantry AIP managed getting into those houses and after short hand to hand combat sort of then got the germans surrendering. Volksturmers were conscript level low morale type, while russian infantry mostly regulars/veteran of high morale.

Some workaround for building defense is placing defending pixeltroopers half circle target arc towards the back of a building (away from the enemy). This keeps them halfway safe until an enemy comes to close combat range or enters the building. It´s high risk and bloody when it comes to that, so the building defenses got to be set up from other positions covering approach routes.

Another thing I´d tried out is putting a modular building into -3m ditch locked terrain, thus creating sort of a "basement". A defender placed on this lower floor just gets LOS/LOF of about 30-40m to outside usually. Same for outside enemy. No direct fire targeting from outside this range. So any (close) combat then will take place within that range and enemy pixeltroopers also might enter the house when defenders are highly suppressed.

[Lucky_Strike]

7 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Thanks, let us know about test results then! IIRC I read you embedded it with some ditch locked terrain for desired effects? (blending with surrounding terrain) That "could" possibly be the problematic part, similar to ditch locked pillbox problem mentioned earlier. But I wish you luck and everything working as expected.

Just quickly - yes it's in a 2m deep ditch IIRC (I'll need to check that) - I did some tests with indirect medium mortar using a TRP next to the PzIV bunker, heavy, full barrage with 3 tubes - no direct hits, the commander closed the hatch after about three rounds and they just sat it out, no damage inflicted. Next did some direct light mortar fire - two tubes with good LOS, left the commander buttoned up, both tubes emptied their ammo stocks, the PzIV took at least four direct hits and sustained minor damage to optics and radio, crew remained calm and returned fire eventually, taking out one mortar and suppressing the other though they'd both already fired all their rounds.

Overall, not too bad, heavier artillery would no doubt cause more damage, a direct hit could take it out, in the same way as a normal medium tank. The biggest difference between this and normal tanks is that it can't take evasive action. Oh, and the crew were rated crack with high motivation, this was so that they would have a chance and stay put when under attack from the Russian tanks.

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Just quickly - yes it's in a 2m deep ditch IIRC (I'll need to check that) - I did some tests with indirect medium mortar using a TRP next to the PzIV bunker, heavy, full barrage with 3 tubes - no direct hits, the commander closed the hatch after about three rounds and they just sat it out, no damage inflicted. Next did some direct light mortar fire - two tubes with good LOS, left the commander buttoned up, both tubes emptied their ammo stocks, the PzIV took at least four direct hits and sustained minor damage to optics and radio, crew remained calm and returned fire eventually, taking out one mortar and suppressing the other though they'd both already fired all their rounds.

Overall, not too bad, heavier artillery would no doubt cause more damage, a direct hit could take it out, in the same way as a normal medium tank. The biggest difference between this and normal tanks is that it can't take evasive action. Oh, and the crew were rated crack with high motivation, this was so that they would have a chance and stay put when under attack from the Russian tanks.

Thanks for taking the time! So that´s good news. Here´s more detailed info on those bug occurances again. In case someone stumbles upon similar case in CMRT.

First time reported:

and last time:

 

[Lucky_Strike]

18 hours ago, RockinHarry said:

Yup, from the few LODs I´ve loaded and looked at I´ve seen nothing that one wouldn´t expect seeing in there, considering what LODs are made for. Trees are PITA like in most other games I guess. I´d switch to 2D billboard types (behind the 3D ones) way sooner than CM game engine does though. Might be dealt with in model and texture quality Option settings, but don´t know ATM. I mostly play all at "best" and occasionally go down to "balanced" if needed. But just for regular gameplay.

Yes, trees that I've looked at from other games are usually done in the same way.

The thing that a lot of players complain about with CM is the draw distances - the hard line that appears so quickly and how it affects their enjoyment of the game. The trees flick in and out of the various LOD stages very noticeably, though the actual models are quite gradually changed until we get the poster / billboard type. I did a load of experiments looking at how the Tree LODs are used and to see if there was much room for improvement, sadly there's not really much we can do. Where a lot of modern games use some additional methods, mist, muted colours etc to deal with distance CM only has the one very intrusive method, and otherwise everything is always in sharp focus, which is quite unnatural, and lacks any change to colour for distance as well as the lack of shadows under things like forest even on dull overcast weather to anchor the landscape. My list of criticism of how the game handles distance is quite long, mostly because I see it as one of the major weaknesses of the graphics engine, but I know that this is mostly down to the engines age and lack of things like multi-processor access, lack of optimisation for modern GPUs etc etc.

I chop and change my settings whenever I see this or that new tip to improve one's game experience, better frame rates, better draw distances blah blah blah; but really these tweaks make barely any perceived difference when one has tried nearly everything. The biggest boost I got to my framerates, at least on my PC, was over-clocking my processor, better framerates meant I could up the graphics quality a little. But yes, balanced is mostly as good as it gets for gameplay. And we wait for the fabled engine update which would add optimisations reputedly...

 

1 hour ago, RockinHarry said:

Thanks for taking the time! So that´s good news. Here´s more detailed info on those bug occurances again. In case someone stumbles upon similar case in CMRT.

First time reported:

Thanks for these links I shall read all about it with interest.
 

 

[Lucky_Strike]

19 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

I was trying to change in black the file foam.tga (grey) In this time I dont use gimp and was making with paint net without good result so I don t try untill now !

Perhaps is this the solution changing the foam.tga from grey to black ?

Nice wil be that we find the file used by burning vehicles... just an Idea.

JM did you try to copy the black smoke bmp and rename it a white or grey smoke?

Also I'd be careful meddling with the nVidia or AMD files as they are supposedly optimisations for your graphics card. The other shaders doubtless contain some stuff to do with transparency and colour/lighting fx but I doubt you can actually change the colour of the smoke image files there. Think of the shaders as more like filters which will change the overall look of the game, like when you toggle movie mode.

[JM Stuff]

7 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

JM did you try to copy the black smoke bmp and rename it a white or grey smoke?

Also I'd be careful meddling with the nVidia or AMD files as they are supposedly optimisations for your graphics card. The other shaders doubtless contain some stuff to do with transparency and colour/lighting fx but I doubt you can actually change the colour of the smoke image files there. Think of the shaders as more like filters which will change the overall look of the game, like when you toggle movie mode.

Lucky I am unhappy now I don't have computer boooo!

I was checking the long text that Harry send me a link (also find some Chinese word's but a little more clear now about this kind of files...

So when I am home I will working on, this is for me a good warm up and take good notes, some days again and...I will push the button again, first the nature...

JM

[RockinHarry]

32 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

JM did you try to copy the black smoke bmp and rename it a white or grey smoke?

Also I'd be careful meddling with the nVidia or AMD files as they are supposedly optimisations for your graphics card. The other shaders doubtless contain some stuff to do with transparency and colour/lighting fx but I doubt you can actually change the colour of the smoke image files there. Think of the shaders as more like filters which will change the overall look of the game, like when you toggle movie mode.

Think it´s just the "blur" stuff dealing with movie mode while the others do what file names imply. Re exhaust, might be that some the textures are used, but I´d guess more it´s rather be sort of "particle system" created.

21 minutes ago, JM Stuff said:

Lucky I am unhappy now I don't have computer boooo!

I was checking the long text that Harry send me a link (also find some Chinese word's but a little more clear now about this kind of files...

So when I am home I will working on, this is for me a good warm up and take good notes, some days again and...I will push the button again, first the nature...

JM

Aren´t you supposed beeing on vacation now? But good luck on learning OGL related stuff. One problem will likely be that you´ll not know what BFC internally used variables and constants are for. Sometimes there´s remarks (the // thing) on deactivated lines, at least indicating what some stuff is used for. Otherwise I could well live with exhaust smoke remain at grey/white. For the Loco spitting loads of steam it should be fine?