UPDATE: Techware GRU (Graphics Realism Update) New Screens !!

[Guest Gunslinger]

Ok, After about 22 hours of editng I have finally gotten the results I want in the fire and smoke!

Let me tell you. Getting good fire was a pain. But I think it is pretty darn close to looking real as it's going to get in CM1.

I have done the following to the Graphics update:

All vehicles, infantry, weapons, grass, buildings are complete.

(left: some trees, photorealistic skys, small tweaking here and there)

New Fire!. This fire flickers like real fire. Smooth animation and nice bright fire effect. I think it looks awesome

Smoke. I didn't know this could be done, but with a little creative editing I have actually gotten the smoke to go up striaght for a few meters then it starts to billow out and fan out just like real smoke. I have changed the smoke texture to look like a real dark oily smoke. The screenshots do not do this smoke justice.

Its really nice to see a tank get hit from a distance and see the smoke going up up up then start blowing around and disappearing.

Go here for new updated screens of the Fire and Smoke effects that will be in GRU 1.0

http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/wohlever/index.html

Teaser

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**GUNSLINGER**

Just Remember, No Matter Where You Go, There You Are.

[This message has been edited by Gunslinger (edited 09-06-2000).]

[PeterNZer]

pretty damn snazzy

PeterNZ

[Jochen2]

Very good work!

Yes, the fires are not so nice in CM. I´m looking forward to download those files.

Go on! And....thank you very much for your time and work to make CM look better!

Greetings from Germany

Jochen

[WendellM]

Geez Louise, Gunslinger,

I didn't know if you were serious about modifying all ~1,600? CM textures when your first posted about it. That seemed nearly impossible/insane...

But it looks like that's exactly what you're doing. Outstanding work! Thanks much/vielen Dank!

Wendell

[pathfinder]

I am always amazed at the quality of the graphics mods (and scenarios) that my fellow gamers have come up with.

I salute you for excellent work sir!

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unca pathy will show ya the path,

if only he could find it himself!

[aka_tom_w]

very very nice

great looking grass tones

the trees lok great

You can get the BEST sky's you have ever seen from KTP Bryce

try:

http://www.hilltopdesign.com/b4materials/b4skies/index.html

http://www.renderus.com/bryce/skies/index.shtml

Thanks for all the effort!

-tom w

[HawkerT]

Hi Gunslinger,

I don't know much about graphics, but your pics definitely look very good through my eyes. It must be an awesome amount of work.

My question is:

Is it possible to put more trees in the different wood/pines/trees sections? Maybe even fill those sections up?

I know that would hide the troops and slow down the pc, but one would still have the 4 increments of tree coverage originally put in the game. Well just an idea.

Thank you very much for the work you put in, so that the rest of us can enjoy CM even more. (That goes for all of you skilled individuals that have brought mods, articles etc. to the CM community).

Frans.

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If at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again. Then give up. There's no use being a damned fool about it.

[Knaust]

please Gunslinger don't pack all bmp files in a huge package...it will be very awsome to download!

Let us download i.e. a fire package, a smoke package, etc.

Moreover we will get first some new wonderful graphic effects!

[WendellM]

Knaust wrote:

"please Gunslinger don't pack all bmp files in a huge package...it will be very awsome to download! Let us download i.e. a fire package, a smoke package, etc."

A couple of days earlier I was all high-speed with my cable modem. But now, for various reasons, I'm back into dial-up land. While GetRight (or a similar product) helps, a (now) mega-huge 10+ meg download again looks daunting if posted in a single block. So I must second this request....

[PawBroon]

Congrats on your outstanding work for the community.

That's quite an answer toward the doubtful of your MODSability.

Even if I should say the Viet in your first post looked ridiculously like a German Panzerschreck lying on the grass.

How could you have overlooked something so obvious is beyond me.

Keep working like that and you'd be on my worship list.

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Either he's dead or my watch has stopped

[Olle Petersson]

Hi all!

Gunslingers intentions and works seems great ... if you have a graphics card to back it up.

Personally I'm at the other end of the scale and currently in the process of making a set of tiles with much less detail and colours to increase game speed.

Sofar I've done basic grass/snow/water in 16 colours (optimised palette), buildings/roads/hedges/walls in 256 colours (Windows standard).

Units, trees and sky will be left as is.

Just wanted you to know, since there are a few like me with low end hard ware.

Cheers

Olle

(Still not assimilated, I think...)

[Gotcha]

Great to Olle! I am definitely on the other end of the spectrum for the time being. I play with everything turned off just to make the graphics/time per turn bearable.

Where can I get the "bare bones" graphics?

[Guest barrold713]

Gunslinger:

I just checked out the files found on the link and I continue to cyber-salivate about the new graphics. They look very nice.

I have a question about graphics. How feasible is the addition of new types and shapes of buildings?

Also I played a scenario I downloaded last night called Trench Warfare, and I was wondering where actual trenches were in the game since the represented ones in this scenario were not too convincing. Perhaps I will do a search.

[This message has been edited by barrold713 (edited 09-06-2000).]

[WendellM]

That's also a worthy pursuit, Olle! Good idea.

[Splinty]

Great work GS,I personally would like the big download(I like to have it done in one install)but I'll take it anyway you want to do it.

Waiting eagerly

Joe

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Nicht Schiessen!!

[Guest ACTOR]

In a word...excellent!

Keep up the good work. Those of us who have no artistic ability appreciate the work you do.

Thanks!

[Whizkid]

S!,Gunslinger,and hearty applause for the fine work you are doing.As a newbie to CM may I ask if this smoke\fire upgrade is available yet,and if not,what is your projected time frame? I cant wait to improve an already impressive Sim.Look what they did with European Air War to mention just one.

[Franko]

Impressive...has promise of being the best set of mods ever.

F.

[Chupacabra]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by barrold713:

I have a question about graphics. How feasible is the addition of new types and shapes of buildings?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Barrold - as far as I know (and that isn't necessarily very far ), you could design new buildings, but they would replace the original buildings rather than being in addition to them. CM has a set of building bmps that it recognizes. You could design hundreds of new building bmps, but if they weren't named the same as the original bmps, CM wouldn't know what to do with them.

I think that we're all hoping that CM2 will feature some snazzy new building types, though

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Soy super bien, soy super super bien, soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super.

[Bil Hardenberger]

Perhaps I am the only one with the guts to say it, but I am not that impressed so far... to tell you the truth, the smoke is bad, a step backwards, the fire is okay, but you can only do so much with that. What galls me, is the fact that Gunslinger claims the dispersing effect of the smoke as his own invention... it is in the code, put there by Charles, not Gunslinger, it is impossible for a new texture to effect the way something behaves. As for realism... I have seen as good and better screen captures by Madmatt... it IS dependant on how good your video card is.

As a member of the MDMP and Beta teams I have to say that while I welcome all mods to CM, they can only make it better in the end, I have a problem with people making groundless claims. Rubs me the wrong way.

Sorry if I insulted you Gunslinger but it had to be said.

Bil

[This message has been edited by Bil Hardenberger (edited 09-07-2000).]

[Buzzer]

But when will GRU1 be out?

[Guest Gunslinger]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bil Hardenberger:

Perhaps I am the only one with the guts to say it, but I am not that impressed so far... to tell you the truth, the smoke is bad, a step backwards, the fire is okay, but you can only do so much with that. What galls me, is the fact that Gunslinger claims the dispersing effect of the smoke as his own invention... it is in the code, put there by Charles, not Gunslinger, it is impossible for a new texture to effect the way something behaves. As for realism... I have seen as good and better screen captures by Madmatt... it IS dependant on how good your video card is.

As a member of the MDMP and Beta teams I have to say that while I welcome all mods to CM, they can only make it better in the end, I have a problem with people making groundless claims. Rubs me the wrong way.

Sorry if I insulted you Gunslinger but it had to be said.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Me insulted? please.. You have to do better than that.

Different strokes for different folks.

You don't like it, you don't like it.

There is a thing a two I would like to correct though.

You said: "What galls me, is the fact that Gunslinger claims the dispersing effect of the smoke as his own invention... it is in the code, put there by Charles, not Gunslinger, it is impossible for a new texture to effect the way something behaves."

Fair enough, the code is already there but with the current graphic the smoke does NOT disperse the way mine does.

The current smoke graphic is one large ball.

I made 3 small balls that rotate as the smoke billows. Example. You have one big ball of smoke covering the entire BMP section. Yes the old smoke rotates but because its one ball you don't see much movement in the smoke. Now, clear out that BMP and place 3 balls touching each other in a traingle pattern. Wala!, the smoke looks like it is moving and dispersing a lot better. Screenshots can not show this.

I am not making any groundless claims.

All I have done is modifed the BMP's

Nothing more, nothing less. Show me where I said I did more and I'll leave this forum never to return.

Again, I don;t expect everyone to like my MOD and to be perfectly honest I am only doing this for one person: Me.

If others want it, they are welcome it to it.

Fair enough?

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**GUNSLINGER**

Just Remember, No Matter Where You Go, There You Are.

[This message has been edited by Gunslinger (edited 09-07-2000).]

[Ricky]

You tell 'em Gunslinger!

Your mod is the best yet! Kudos!

[eba]

Gunslinger:

I haven't yet tried your Mod, but will. If it has even half the class of your last post, though, it'll be great.

[aka_tom_w]

I really like your choice of colours and tones for grass and trees!

It does look alot less like a cartoon and more like a natural setting.

I'm not that inspired by your smoke and graphics, but your effort to re-colour the entire range of CM .bmps is without question a huge project and I welcome your results because I really like your colour scheme and choice of tones colours and textures.

This is somewhat difficult to say because CM is such great game, but I would say Steve and Charles should be very proud of their strengths which include GREAT game design attention to detalil Excellent historical accuracy, excellent armour penetration stats data and modeling and exceptional programing.

but the eye candy factor is not a real BTS strength, but other independant Mod makers such as your self and ColCoolJ and other very talented graphic artists have chosen to help out in this area for FREE any ways. So we all win.

I say this because I think a game like Myth II is STUNNING and for RTS 3D scenary, there is no better game than Myth II

http://www.gameprix.com/field/review_myth_2.html

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/voodoo2/screenshots/Windmill.jpg

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/voodoo2/screenshots/Keep.jpg

http://www.oswego.edu/~kepert/ww2/incoming.html

http://www.oswego.edu/~kepert/ww2/index.html

http://www.oswego.edu/~kepert/ww2/kingprotect.html

Myth II is all about eye candy and it looks great (it does not have resource harvest and it is all about infantry tactics, but it doesn't have tanks and hit damge is just that plain old cumulative idea where if you hit somthing big that takes 100 hits to die 100 times it finally dies, and it has healing and magic, which is not really fun like tanks and artillary and armour and machine guns)

I have also looked at Panzer Elite and I would say it looks more polished and seems in my opinion to have more eye candy than CM as well.

But Gunslingers Mods do look very clear and crisp and pretty and down right proffesional in my opinion.

It would be my desire to see BTS hire a full time professional graphic designer with experience in video games, maybe of the same caliber and with the same experience as ColCoolJ to bump up the Eye Candy factor in a polished and proffesional way for the graphics in future releases.

This is hard to say because I know that lots of Eye Candy and really polished graphical look to CM was not the biggest priority for Steve and Charles and I think they made some very wise choices to get the final build of CM that we see now, out the door and on to the market as fast as they did with as few bugs as there are.

I was really just trying to emphasize their strengths, which are IMHO are not necessarily on the graphic design side of things.

Hope my ranting here didn't annoy anyone too much.

-tom w