ParaBellum Posted April 13, 2001 Share Posted April 13, 2001 I'd like to have an option in CM2 to toggle a terrain grid on/off. IMHO it helps a lot when plotting moves and arty bombardements 'cause it's much easier to estimate elevation changes. I once downloaded a terrain grid from one of our mod artists but I don't want to see it all the time. With all those other beautiful terrain and units mods I sometimes want to enjoy the beautiful scenery without the grid. Any comments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Steiner Posted April 13, 2001 Share Posted April 13, 2001 Hi This would indeed be a nice option. I prefer to use ungridded terrain for astehtic appeal but would be nice to have grid at times during plotting phases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParaBellum Posted April 14, 2001 Author Share Posted April 14, 2001 *** bump *** BTW, HAPPY EASTER! [ 04-14-2001: Message edited by: ParaBellum ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stixx Posted April 14, 2001 Share Posted April 14, 2001 It would be nice. Especially in a nice fine lined small grid. I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to implement. Well ok I'm not that sure but it Shouldn't be that hard to put into the game. :cool: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSpkr Posted April 14, 2001 Share Posted April 14, 2001 **BUMP** Perhaps with the terrain height on each grid location! That would help TREMENDOUSLY! MrSpkr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMcGuire Posted April 15, 2001 Share Posted April 15, 2001 This gets my vote. (I wonder if BTS would run polls on some of these things? Web poll software is readily available and easy to use... I think there's some freebies at www.analogx.com, IIRC.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParaBellum Posted April 16, 2001 Author Share Posted April 16, 2001 Hm, seems most of you guys are still searching for eastereggs... So few people interested in a grid ? OH MY GOD! My fantastic, extraordinary and truely amazing idea doesn't get too much attention. I'm really down. Think I will drown myself in the cesspool... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stingray Posted April 16, 2001 Share Posted April 16, 2001 A BIG YES for grids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzman Posted April 16, 2001 Share Posted April 16, 2001 that would be nice to have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
109 Gustav Posted April 16, 2001 Share Posted April 16, 2001 Might be useful. Perhaps the best way to do it would be to have a hotkey that would switch from a gridded to regular terrain. It is possible to switch textures in-game, smoke does this when you toggle from high to low quality, right? MrSpkr, I love your sig. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Belles Posted April 21, 2001 Share Posted April 21, 2001 That would be nice! The Major Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abbott Posted April 21, 2001 Share Posted April 21, 2001 I like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMcGuire Posted April 21, 2001 Share Posted April 21, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by 109 Gustav: Perhaps the best way to do it would be to have a hotkey that would switch from a gridded to regular terrain. It is possible to switch textures in-game<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There are several ways to do this through code which shouldn't be terribly complicated (according to a friend of mine; my Direct3D skills are fairly primitive). They shouldn't have to switch textures. Or more accurately, they shouldn't have to load alternate texture graphics: one possibility is to draw the grid on the ground textures in memory, a relatively quick and easy operation. In fact, this is why I was so surprised grids weren't available in the first place. It should be very easy to do. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a patch to CM1 as well as inclusion in CM2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParaBellum Posted April 22, 2001 Author Share Posted April 22, 2001 Good! Come on, guys GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! GRIDS! altogether now: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmead Posted April 22, 2001 Share Posted April 22, 2001 Honestly the only time I have seen grids lain over the land is when I am at 27000 feet and looking down from a plane. Don't you think you have enough of an advantage to be able to scoot all over the field, turn the tree and weather on and off, the multiviews and so on? Grids might be nice, but I really don't need them to be effective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbg2112 Posted April 22, 2001 Share Posted April 22, 2001 well, for what it's worth, here's the grids I use; they were generated by a Java utility I wrote. Sample Grid They are quite subtle and I really like 'em. They have major and minor grids, which is something BTS should consider if they add a hotkey to show grids..... (I never published the utility cause it's a pain to use....) [ 04-22-2001: Message edited by: sbg2112 ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
109 Gustav Posted April 22, 2001 Share Posted April 22, 2001 Looks nice, SBG. Can you turn it on and off while in game? How does it work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sbg2112 Posted April 22, 2001 Share Posted April 22, 2001 No -- you can't toggle it. (And, speaking as a programmer, I'm not sure you could even hack it in; while it would be possible to have a keystroke to act as a toggle, I think the textures are loaded by CM when it starts the scenario.) So, it's like any other gridded terrain -- a set of texture bitmaps that you place in the CM BMP directory. The only thing that's different is that you don't have to spend hours in a paint program getting your grid dialed in. You create your gridded terrain by feeding my utility a lot of parameters which specify the thickness of the lines, the transparency level, and colors (including whether they vary by height). As I said, though, it's difficult to use and I don't have time to put a user interface on it. I only mentioned it because I thought BTS might wanna think about some of these things if they embrace the idea of a hotkey to toggle grids. [ 04-22-2001: Message edited by: sbg2112 ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMcGuire Posted April 22, 2001 Share Posted April 22, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by kmead: Grids might be nice, but I really don't need them to be effective.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I was originally ambivalent about how badly I wanted grids, but realistically if I'm Out Standing In A Field (as the floyd would say), I can usually very easily discern the rise and fall of the terrain. In CM this can often be very difficult without an unreasonable amount of what I've come to think of as "camera recon". A grid is an obvious and probably-simple answer to that problem. I would like to see it as a toggled feature for the same reasons I don't use pre-drawn grids or low-res/hi-contrast textures: I think CM imagery is really great, and a permanent grid would significantly reduce the overall quality of my playing experience. It seems kind of funny how this keeps coming up, but BTS has never responded to it (as far as I can recall). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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