Add something new please.

[Cpt_Winters]

On 12/10/2021 at 1:30 AM, StormDog said:

Keeping it simple, I'd like to see

1. A cancel button on the big red button's save email dialog.

Keeping it simple is often the best way.  Hard to argue against any of these improving the current situation.

#1 in particular though just in general terms.  I think I regret clicking the big red button nearly every turn.

[AlexUK]

Would bve good to have a shortcut button to select the last plotted way point of a selected unit. At the moment I have to click on a unit, then click on the last way point (which is often quite difficult to select). Would speed up orders quite a lot for me. 

[womble]

If you could import segments of maps into other maps, there'd be scope for people to work on wee vignette bases that could more readily attain a high level of detail. It's so intimidating to make a whole map that's keenly detail, that it's a barrier to entry. If people could just work on "a farm yard" or "a sunken road" or the like, and then others could import them into their own broader frameworks, there would be scope for modular development of maps, and that can't be a bad thing.

 

[Artkin]

Flavor objects can certainly be improved in the editor. When youre doing large maps, those will hurt the most.

[Artkin]

14 minutes ago, womble said:

If you could import segments of maps into other maps, there'd be scope for people to work on wee vignette bases that could more readily attain a high level of detail. It's so intimidating to make a whole map that's keenly detail, that it's a barrier to entry. If people could just work on "a farm yard" or "a sunken road" or the like, and then others could import them into their own broader frameworks, there would be scope for modular development of maps, and that can't be a bad thing.

 

Something like this would be amazing if you wanted to play the central part of the two Berlin maps that doesn't already overlap.

[Glubokii Boy]

11 minutes ago, womble said:

If you could import segments of maps into other maps, there'd be scope for people to work on wee vignette bases that could more readily attain a high level of detail. It's so intimidating to make a whole map that's keenly detail, that it's a barrier to entry. If people could just work on "a farm yard" or "a sunken road" or the like, and then others could import them into their own broader frameworks, there would be scope for modular development of maps, and that can't be a bad thing.

 

No...It can't be a bad thing 

Using templates might be of somewhat less value when making a fully historically correct map but when making a fictional or semi-fictional map i belive it will be very useful...

For example...Lets make a village map with some farrms and forrest sections...

- import 2 to 3 different VILLAGE templates and complement them with some additional features.

- import a number of different complete farm templates with flavoured objects and all and plink them down on the map.

- import a few different forrest templates and do the same...

- Maybe import a chuch template complete with cemetary and all...

- Make some simple additons to the map...

And you're ready to go...Playing on a nice looking, detailed map...put together very quickly.

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

3 hours ago, womble said:

If you could import segments of maps into other maps, there'd be scope for people to work on wee vignette bases that could more readily attain a high level of detail. It's so intimidating to make a whole map that's keenly detail, that it's a barrier to entry. If people could just work on "a farm yard" or "a sunken road" or the like, and then others could import them into their own broader frameworks, there would be scope for modular development of maps, and that can't be a bad thing.

 

IIRC there was a third party map editor for CM1 that could sort of do this.....It was a bit moody as I recall.

[Redwolf]

25 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

IIRC there was a third party map editor for CM1 that could sort of do this.....It was a bit moody as I recall.

It was OCRing the screen.

That doesn't work with CMx2 because there are several different attributes that a square can have at the same time.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Redwolf

[Glubokii Boy]

I guess that the most difficult thing with a map editor feature like this would be...

How these templates would handle - elevation changes.

Other then that i can see no real problem to implement something like this.

 

[chuckdyke]

We need an editor which can read bitmap (topographic maps) and convert to our 3D map editor code. I can't even find a means to convert them to BRZ files let alone generate a 3 D map. 

 

[womble]

1 hour ago, Glubokii Boy said:

I guess that the most difficult thing with a map editor feature like this would be...

How these templates would handle - elevation changes.

Other then that i can see no real problem to implement something like this.

 

I think you could reasonably make it the responsibility of the importer to ensure that the surrounding terrain blends into the imported section, though "flat" modules might be more popular than ones with uneven elevations at the edges  

Doesn't seem like too difficult a computational problem to make heights within the imported section relative to the height of the ground it's imported to. Sure, you can probably get some shonky results if there are wild variations in either or both heightmaps, but I'd think they'd be pretty straightforward to resolve in the editor to get a sensible outcome.

[domfluff]

Before the master map concept was added to the game, the plan was to have geomorphic, pre-built map sections (meta-tiles was the term used), to have these building blocks, which could be randomly pushed together.

In terms of what I'd like from an actual update there though - the main thing is a 3D map editor. That would make the whole process an awful lot faster and more pleasant, particularly if everything could be done in 3D mode (including the AI plans).

As a more ambitious suggestion, being able to snip something from Google Earth, automatically importing height data and creating a terrain overlay would be an enormous timesaver as well, but perhaps that's overly ambitious.

[womble]

2 hours ago, domfluff said:

In terms of what I'd like from an actual update there though - the main thing is a 3D map editor. That would make the whole process an awful lot faster and more pleasant, particularly if everything could be done in 3D mode (including the AI plans).

As a more ambitious suggestion, being able to snip something from Google Earth, automatically importing height data and creating a terrain overlay would be an enormous timesaver as well, but perhaps that's overly ambitious.

I suspect that once you've done the work to make the editor 3-D, doing the data crunching to import a topology from GEarth wouldn't be too arduous...

[Glubokii Boy]

3 hours ago, domfluff said:

In terms of what I'd like from an actual update there though - the main thing is a 3D map editor. That would make the whole process an awful lot faster and more pleasant, particularly if everything could be done in 3D mode (including the AI plans).

As a more ambitious suggestion, being able to snip something from Google Earth, automatically importing height data and creating a terrain overlay would be an enormous timesaver as well, but perhaps that's overly ambitious.

Being able to both work on the mapdesign and manage AI programing in 3D would be very nice...YES !

Things like tweaking elevation in 'real time' in 3d would be most helpful...

The google earth idea you mentiond would be awsome...

[benpark]

There's a one-man-band WWII FPS game called "Easy Red 2" on the Steam that allows heightmap imports into their editor, for a real-world example of what that looks like.

[BornGinger]

7 hours ago, domfluff said:

As a more ambitious suggestion, being able to snip something from Google Earth, automatically importing height data and creating a terrain overlay would be an enormous timesaver as well...

Although this could help it would sometimes still be necessary to use old elevation maps to correct the result of the imported height data if someone wanted to make it more historically correct. As some areas most likely have been changed by the years since the 1940s the generated 3D map wouldn't maybe look very similar to how the area looked in for example 1942.

Edited December 13, 2021 by BornGinger

[civdiv]

On 12/8/2021 at 9:05 PM, Erwin said:

Yes, this is the most important advantage of CM.  However, CM1 was released in (IIRC) 1999, and superseded after 8 years by CM2 in 2007.  CM2 has been grinding along now for almost 15 years(!)  That's a very successful run considering how little of the fundamentals has changed.  However, CM2 has been showing its age for some time, and many of us old-timers are just hanging in there in the hope that a CM3 will soon be released (in our lifetime).

That’s why I will not buy anything until the new engine comes out.

[domfluff]

8 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

Although this could help it would sometimes still be necessary to use old elevation maps to correct the result of the imported height data if someone wanted to make it more historically correct. As some areas most likely have been changed by the years since the 1940s the generated 3D map wouldn't maybe look very similar to how the area looked in for example 1942.

Yup. Would definitely help though.

[akd]

9 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

Although this could help it would sometimes still be necessary to use old elevation maps to correct the result of the imported height data if someone wanted to make it more historically correct. As some areas most likely have been changed by the years since the 1940s the generated 3D map wouldn't maybe look very similar to how the area looked in for example 1942.

Unless you are talking about using height-map data for buildings, this should matter very little in most circumstances (save for mountain top removal in future CM: West Virginia Mine Wars).

[BornGinger]

It depends which area we talk about. Towns and cities might have grown and new roads been built since the 1940s. And as many villages got destroyed and disappeared during the fighting on the Eastern Front and some towns/villages in the Sudetenland of Bohemia (and maybe the same in Silesia and east Prussia) had their German population killed or forced to move out either to Germany or the Soviet Union with the result that those towns/villages were demolished if Polish and Czech peoole didn't move in the landscape has changed between then and now.

Edited December 13, 2021 by BornGinger

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

On 12/10/2021 at 8:21 PM, The Steppenwulf said:

Fair question! I put it in as a placeholder, since I'm planning to upload to moddb alongside SF2 UI there, just been busy with work matters over recent weeks so just not quite got round to final content check.

There are some significant changes from the version posted on CMMods4, I think I changed the scale of the small arms to match icons on my SF2 UI for consistency. Added a few missing icons and a menu screen also. It will get posted before Christmas day since a break from work commences on the 17th giving me 2-3 weeks leisure.

Thanks for your interest!    

Thank you, CMBS is my favourite CM tittle.

[Glubokii Boy]

21 minutes ago, akd said:

Unless you are talking about using height-map data for buildings, this should matter very little in most circumstances (save for mountain top removal in future CM: West Virginia Mine Wars).

Here in Sweden they are planing to 'move' the better part of an entire city of 25000 people (Kiruna) to allow for the mining in the area to continue...

Quite a project 

[Artkin]

Ive been contemplating a radzymin 2021 map for a while now