Looking for Mod Suggestions...

[Vern_S]

Hello all,

I am new to CM. I have purchased the Anthology and so I have the second CD full of Mods for CM:BB. What I would like are suggestions on what Mod(s)to install in order to beef up the terrain, units, buildings, etc. or Mods that enhance game play visually. Also is the Strategy Guide worth getting for a relative newby to the CM series?

Would greatly appreciate any input..

Vern_S

[Cabe Booth]

the "Combat Mission Barbarossa to Berlin" book for sale here on the BFC website is a very handy book for those just starting out, it is the game manual and is very thorough. The PDF game manual that comes on the game disk can be very annoying to access (but thank god they are included), so if you don't plan on buying the book, i would copy and paste the game manuals to your hard drive so you can Alt-Tab out of a game if you need to look something up. I wouldn't advise trying to print out the game manual on your printer or at the local copy shop. Mainly because it will eat your printer cartridges at about a cost of a new cartridge (which you could buy probably 3 of the CMBB game manuals off this site for the same price of a cartridge).... and Kinkos quoted me over $90 for a color printout of the PDF manual...nice huh?

So for I think 3 dollars and the cost of shipping you can have a 262 game manual for CM. And since both CMAK and CMBB are 99% similar excepting a few details like the "Human wave" action in CMBB, you basically get a manual that will be a resource for both CMAK and CMBB. Just goto the the home page of www.battlefront.com then click on "products" and scroll down until you see "Barbarossa to Berlin" replacement game manual. It is worth the investment to have a hard copy of the manual in your hands.

http://www.battlefront.com/products/cmbb_manual/cmbb_manual.html

When it comes to mods we would probably need to know if you decided to used CMMOS or McMMM (another more simplistic mod manager found at cmmods.com , I like to use it until i can get the time to figure out CMMOS) to apply your mods,

Or if you are just going to install them directly into the BMP folder overwriting the original mods files. Which I would definitely back up my BMP folder before doing anything like that.

I could tell you what mods I use but I would need to know how you plan on applying them.

[ April 09, 2007, 04:13 AM: Message edited by: Cabe ]

[Vern_S]

Thank you for your advice. I have 9 computers and 2 laptops at home so having the PDF up on one computer an the game up on another is usually the norm for me. I actually dislike printed only manuals. If a game gives me a pdf and a printed manual then the printed one rarly leaves the box.

At the moment I have CMMOS installed so I will probably stick with that for the time being. I am mainly looking for Mods to enhance the games graphics and sounds. Cheers.

[MikeyD]

Not to toot my own horn , but i did some much-needed emergency modding on all the PzIVs. I can't stress this enough, a believable looking PzIV makes all the difference. Next in 'order of ugly' to fix would be the T34s, IS-2, Stugs, PzIIIs, Tigers and Panthers.

About a year ago I counted up something like 250 mods I had done for the CM games - and I've done a LOT more since then too!

[Cabe Booth]

I guess the big thing with cmmos is the lack of cmmos mods for CMAK. When dealing with CMBB you are going to get a lot of mods, just from the extra mod disk that came with the Anthology. I have the same version. There are several excellent modders out there MikeyD being one of them. You may find yourself with a new and very time consuming hobby. I actually enjoyed going through CMMODS and comparing all the mods and picking the mods I liked best. I uploaded a file to cmmods the other day that has all the units listed in the game for both CMBB and CMAK, it is just a mixed bag of tables and charts found on different websites and stuff that people sent me. It has modding tutorials and all the BMP numbers for stuff in the game. Would be worth looking at.

If I were to suggest mods off the top of my head:

For terrain:

I would grab all of Juju's stuff (Just look on cmmods and search by designer) Don't forget to get his modslutsmack weapons pack that mods all the small arms in the game, it is amazing.

MikeyD has his rubble and some very nice tree bases and other terrain files such as roads and a nice pack a low rez "doodads" (those are the things that are 3d on a terrain surface like grass blades, gravestones, rocks, brush ect.) I use them myself.

ED's buildings, I know some of them are on the mod disk, also he has very nice tree sets.

Green as Jade (GaJ) has a lot of nice additions to terrain.

When it comes to the base terrain that everything sits on, you have to decide what you preference is, gridded on non gridded. Topo or non Topo. Super realistic or clear and unobtrusive. I have a list I will set down and make of what I used at some point. I like my terrain to look nice but not too cluttered.

A very nice terrain pack is the "Fallweiss" total conversion by pat, if you like super realistic. terrain mod.

Strontium Dog has some great mods on your mods disk that came with the Anthology plus make sure to see what else he has on the CMMODs site.

Check caffino's gridded terrain packs

Then check GaJ topo terrain packs

Then Look at Rocket man and GaJ gridded topo terrain (very nice for showing elevation.)

my apologies to anyone I left out, I just woke up and I am not a coffee drinker. It gives me the.... well never mind.

The best way to do this is to use MCMMM and just insert these mods as you download them, fire up them game with proper weather and season, look at what it does and If you don't like it just use McMMM to pull it out and pop another one in until you arrive at a look that is ideal to you.

I like my terrain to look real but keep the ground clutter minimal. I hate not seeing an obvious AT gun just because I have my screen coated in foliage and such.

As to sound mods, I have not messed with them much as I find them game's sound to be satisfactory as is.

I would definitely get Tarkus's Dark steel interface mod for CMBB and the Olive interface for CMAK. They are great.

When it comes to infantry nobody beats Andrew TF or "AF". All his infantry units should be on that mod disk that cam with the anthology. Any gaps like missing winter units have been filled in by David Inglett so make sure you get them all covered. After that you want JorgeMC's helmets. they look fricking great, I accidentally discovered them recently and they make the infantry units look 100% better. Once again I cannot stress enough have a list of all the units in the game so you can check them off as you mod them.

Vehicles are a matter of personal choice. Since cmmods crashed awhile back, many of the mods were lost and you will have to use what you can find. When I was modding CMAK units, if I couldn't find a winter mod for a certain unit I would search the cmbb files and download one there. Sometimes you will have to change the BMP numbering to make it match cmak, but like I said, it is a hobby and those charts I uploaded to CMMODS will help you in that area when it comes to finding the correct numbering for each unit.

Great unit modders to look at are (with name abbreviations included):

MikeyD

David Inglett or DI

Gautrek or Gaut

Hienz baby or HB

AndrewTF or AF

Panzer Martin

Gurra

Daffy or DEY

Corvid

Gordon E. Molek or GEM

Micheal Stuart or MLS

Junk2Drive or J2D

Wicky

M Bergman or MB

Pat

Navy

Limey

ah well too many too list

many more, but those are just off the top of my sleepy head, I hope folks will add to that list so I don't offend anyone who has got great talent

It took me forever and making a lot of annoying posts to figure out how the numbering system works for both games.

A great place to start is the Band of brothers website and get the charts there. They are also in my pack I uploaded to cmmods, but you can grab them as you need them here http://webandofbrothers.de/tablescharts.htm

Just go down the vehicle list (the are excel files) and check them off as you go.

I would highlight the font of the unit name to green when I had found a mod for a unit and put and asterisk in the next column to let me know that I had found a winter mod for it. Kept me sane during the process. If I didn't find a mod for a unit I would change the font to red. And for all I had not checked yet they would be in default black.

For CMAK you will need a mod for:

Africa/Crete units

Italy units and then a winter mod for the unit

since the games do not have winter mods installed by default. Desert units obviously don't need companion winter units.

So I made a file of each theater, and going down the charts from Band of Brother's site I knew what unit mods I needed for each theater. Some units that appear in Africa do not appear in Italy because they were phased out, and conversely some Italy (or ETO) units don't appear in Africa because they just were not developed yet (or used) at all).

So what I did was make a folder for each theater like this:

"Axis Italy" with a sub folder for the Italians and Germans.

"Allied Italy": with sub folders for UK (would include all commonwealth units since all British empire units and allies share the same mod bmps) and and a US folder.

then repeat for,

"Allied Africa"

"Axis Africa"

"Allied Crete" you will do very little modding here because these units are the same as Africa

"Axis Crete" same as Africa

as you mod you will find that for most part what you have installed or modded for US in Africa will be exactly the same mod for US Italy which saves you a lot of time.

after I did that I went down the Band of Brothers chart "Unit Availability List for CMAK" http://webandofbrothers.de/downloads/Unit_Availability_CMAK.ZIP

and made folders for each unit in each theater folder. Then I went to cmmods.com and did a search for each unit picking and choosing what I liked. As I did this I would mark it off on the excel chart as I mentioned above. If I had any doubts as to the quality or look of the mod I would insert it using McMMM fire up the game and decide if I liked it or not. If I didn't find what I was looking for in the CMAK section of cmmods, I went to the CMBB section and grabbed something there. Sometimes having to change the bmp numbering system to make it work in CMAK, sometimes they don't match but you can tell by looking at those charts and exploring the unit zip file to see the bmp numbering used in the mod.

When you decide to mod CMBB use this chart http://webandofbrothers.de/downloads/m8g_bmp_list_vehicles_cmbb.zip

It is time consuming, but it is fun to look at all the great work out there and pick your favorite. That is just how I did it. Everyone has their own way of doing it. Heck you can even get McMMM to download mods for you, read the McMMM documentation for info on this.

I might sit down today and make a template of the file system I used in case anyone wants to save time making all those folders for each unit. I don't even know if anyone would use it, but It would at least be a good way to get a mod database organized and rolling for people starting out.

sorry for being so wordy, but i remember a month or so back when I had the same questions about modding the games.

Hopefully people will correct or remind me of anything I left out

[ April 09, 2007, 04:16 PM: Message edited by: Cabe ]

[Vern_S]

Thank you Cabe for the "extensive" reply... There are so many mods for CM in general that it gets very confusing and your post has helped me sort it outy immensely. As soon as my work schedule clears up a bit I'll be able to go through all of this in much more detail. I've had 4 jobs drop in my lap this week so I am swamped for the rest of the month. I guess it's better then being a starving artist. As the say, Feast or Famine.

[Cabe Booth]

I know your pain, being an artist myself I wanted and needed more work, now I have so much work that I don't have weekends anymore. In fact even returning moves and modding the game has hurt my work time. Just need to have a week off before I drop dead. So many things I want to mod and still need to finish modding CMBB. Just can't get a break though.

I will sit down and make that mod file sorting template though, hopefully in the next few days.

Just every time I sit down to mess with CM I start to feel really guilty that I am not working, then the stress kicks in and...

[Vern_S]

What kind of Art do you do?

I am a 3D Artist and mainly create Architectural, Landscape and Technical Visualizations. I work from a home studio and when my work load permits I usually have a turn based game running on my "Entertainment" system.

Work has been so intense this year that I rarely have time to play anything except an hour or two of Guild Wars with my wife in the evenings. Thats our way of relaxing after a hard days work. She is a Graphic artist and web designer as well as a Traditional Artist specializing in Oil Painting.

[Cabe Booth]

I work as a portrait artist for Large music venues. I used to fancy myself a ww2 airplane artist, but with the band portrait thing taking off I have no time really to do anything but paint them every day. I have Nokia Theater, Palladium Ballroom, Curtain Club and Pizza Hut Park all having me paint all the performers that come through. I was up until December doing 5-13 paintings a month which gave me time to goof off. But in January the Agency that handles Nokia Theater (AEG) took over the Palladium Ballroom which almost tripled my work load. So now I do around 18-25 a month at a rate of about one a day if I can keep my stamina up, otherwise I start to fade and it can get pretty hairy around here. I am usually in bed by 11am and up by 4 or 5 to get back to work and make my PBEM moves, the girlfriend sits in the other room and grumbles about my lack of free time, but it is slowly killing me too. They are all 4x4 oil paintings and I have been doing it since about 98 . I did get a degree in Painting and Drawing at UNT but I never thought I would actually be making a living doing it. My website has not been updated in about 3 years which is unfortunate because so many acts and better paintings are not on the site. If I could learn how to do it myself, that is if I had the times and inclination it would be updated regularly as I do paint so many a month. I do work from home and love to play PC games. Finding CM has been a godsend because I found a game that I can PBEM and work while I do it. Plus I actually love the game which helps immensely. I wish I had more time for the aviation art, I really enjoyed it. It was hard to sell and didn't pay the bills though. So the band art has become my field. Plus since I worked a lot in band booking and management for about 13 years it was kind of a natural fit.

I will post some examples of my aviation art here. Take a peek. Of course they are for sale and around 4x4 feet except Sakai, he is sold to a musician friend.

[Vern_S]

Beautiful stuff Cabe... My apologies for not responding sooner. Got slammed with a bunch of work with short deadlines. Man that sucks. At least the money is good..

[Cabe Booth]

Hmm, I was sure I responded to this post, but I don't see it, Maybe I missed something in the state of my brain right now.

Thanks for all the compliments. I am so very tired.

This past week I had 4 paintings due, had already done 2 over the weekend. On Monday I started painting and I did not sleep until 39 hours later. I thought that was rough. Problem being is that once I had stayed up so long it was time to paint he next one. So I didn't sleep. I got an 8 hours in and woke up around 8pm on wednesday evening. Feeling somehwat rested I saw my deadlines looming even closer. So of course I was up all that night into the next, and then the next......After 56 hours I finally decided the last 2 paintings wouldn't be worth damn (oh, did I mention another client dropped a bomb on me on Monday morning , or as I called this week "afternoon part deux") If I was dead, so I went to sleep Saturday afternoon around 5pm and woke up a around 11 pm to finish a painting that needed to be at a club by 2am. Then I had to sit down and work on a painting that was due by 4pm on that same day (Sunday now) say down with my overhead projector to draw in all the text (it was kids show so it was all cartoon and colors , "Thomas the train") turned it on and had the light bulb in it blow out 30 seconds later.

So it is SUnday morning at 3 am. Wal-mart is only 24 hour store and hey don't carry ENX lamps/bulbs, so sinceit is sunday I have to wait until 11 pm for the stores to open instead of 9am. So I stay awake (i spent 3 hours trying to locate a 24 hour AV or office supply store in Dallas and now it is 6 am) So I getthe bulb start painting around 12:30 egt it done and race to the Theater to catch the performers just as they were getting into the tour van, get it signed come home and............... I am still awake 24 hours since I woke up last night.

Feels like the beginning of Fight Club over here.

A copy of a copy

Good thing is I only have 3 paintings this week, all in row one on the 5th and two on the 6th. Life is mean.

[Vern_S]

I feel for ya... I have been working on 4 animation jobs for the past 3 weeks. Tired all the time as of late. Have another week or so to finish them up then I'm taking the rest of May off.....

[Der Alte Fritz]

Hi

A clever trick is to open an excel spreadsheet and then go into CMMODS and get a list by country. Cut and paste the list into the spreadsheet. This gives you a list of all the mods for a particular country and references are all weblinks direct to the mod concerned. So you can use the filter command to bring up say all the PzIV mods and then click on the reference and it takes you directly into CMMODS (even asking for your password) and to the mod page. Just a lot quicker than using the search facility on the site and you can record which ones you have downloaded on the spreadsheet.

cheers

[Vergeltung]

Vern, I am a bit late to this, but I'll chime in anyways. I have been played CMBB/AK for a shade over a year now, but only recently began to mod the game.

start with the terrain!!! you will not believe the stunning visual transformation the game undergoes. seriously.

on CMMods, sort by mod type, and you'll find terrain items. "Ed's Trees" are a must. as well as anything by MikeyD. there are also numerous "buildings" mods that are great.

as far as units, start with your favorites and go from there. Agree with MikeyD re the PzKwIVs. life does not even begin without a good PzIV.

[Stndrtnfhr]

MikeyD,

I just started to download mods for CMBB and your MK IV mods are outstanding. You are right, they really make a difference. Keep up the great work, and thanks to all those who have taken the time to make mods for this game. I salute you!

Stndrtnfhr Out!