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Mod packs


Canuck

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I've just recently reinstalled Combat Mission:AK and I'm interested installing some mods. Basically I want the game to look as good as possible. I'm assuming that some (if not all mods) improve on the look rather than simply providing a different look. I was wondering if anybody could provide any helpful tips for which mods to use.

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All vehicle mods by MikeyD are hi-res as compared to the stock bmps. They also are very nicely finished with lots of options such as decals, tactical marking and the like. DEY, whom is listed as daffy on www.cmmods.com, does great white washing for winter vehicles. Andrewtf does wonderful infantry uniforms. Also check out DavidI and Pat's work for all your halftrack & armored car needs.

And of course, welcome back to the game! smile.gif

Tschüß!

Erich

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Sigh I was over at CMMODS but to be perfectly honest there is just FAAAR too many mods. It's a hell of a lot of work to go through each one, check out what it looks like and then download them all individually. The site isn't exactly userfriendly. There's no ratings (that I can see) and you can't search by most downloaded so I cant find out what the 'must have' mods are. I realize there's a reason why it's like that but that doesn't make it any easier for me. I also need a bit of a tutorial in terms of the different BMP's. Are Normandy buildings and ETO buildings different BMP's? Or if I download the normandy set, will my german villages look like Normandy?

I don't know if anybody has thought of this but how about the whole forum gets together and votes on what they consider to be essential mods for CMAK? I'm talking about mods that basically improve the look of the stock game without making any drastic changes (ie total conversions, or mods that will only work in one type of weather so that you have to save your originals.)

Then once that is done we could throw together a modpack and then put it up as a torrent and people on the forum could seed it for everybody else. I think many people use torrents and this would be a perfect use for it. I know the folks over at Octopus Overlords did a similar essential mods pack for Elder Scrolls and it worked quite well. That way there wouldnt be a huge bandwith cost for one website.

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What I do regarding the different mods for the campaigns like Sicily/Italy,Normandy or the Ardennes,is to group the mods together and put them into the game using the Jonesoft Mod Enabler which can be downloaded free.That way you can easily play the various theatres on just one installation of CMAK.

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On the last page before you download something at CMMODS there is a list of the bmp numbers of what is getting downloaded. I find that it is easier, when I'm wondering about something, to simply download it and unzip it into a holding file, and simply look at thumbnails of the bmp's. My old computer had masses of these files, organized by category, make, model, and mod author. But since the death of my old computer (power failure during boot-down), reconstructing all of this is a bit daunting.

I really wish CMMODS had also been organized by specific mod so that I could look up xyz model vehicle without having to scroll through the entire German, Russian, or what-have-you vehicle list. But the problem is that that kind of info is usually input by the uploader (who is often confused), and at this point re-inposing a change to the system on such a massive database would be a daunting task.

I have reservations about the mod pack idea. Perhaps getting a panel of recognized modders to come up with a minimum list of recommended mods and sticky it somewhere.

Having said that, do any old timers still have the old original version of Magua's Normandy mod for CMBO? Since the death of my computer I've come to suspect that I had the last copy of his craters and foxholes that were part of the (now-defunct) full version of his mod.

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I reckon that many people keep their eyes on Mod announcements here, and download them if they look good.

That's how we got to the point where many people don't have this problem, but newer people do.

Have you politely asked COG if he'd consider adding ratings numbers to mods? That'd be one think to think about.

However, at the moment mods are really rated by their number of downloads.

Have you considered checking that out?

McMMM supports the concept of "Mod Sets", including the ability to download all the specified mods from CMMODS in one go. No-one ever really used that feature. Maybe if you came up with the list of must-have mods I'd create mod-set definitions for them in McMMM and we'd see if anyone goes for it.

GaJ

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I'd love to come up with a list of must-have mods but if I could do that then I wouldn't have made this thread smile.gif

I agree that it's possible to just look at the mod announcements but that's better if you've started right from the start and can update right from the get go. Doing it 3 years on is a bit daunting!

One thing I would ask of modders is please please please provide a pictures of the stock version as well as your new and improved version so that I can for myself if I want to download it or not. Filtering through a list of 10,000 bmps only to find one part of the tank I'm looking for is a bit overwhelming.

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Mods and modders ranked? No I don't think that is needed. Most mods have a sample pic. It's an easy way to check them out. I have two versions of CMAK (CM West and a much modded CMAK)-- I do have my favorites, we all do. But I think it would be very detrimental to our modding community to start any kind of ranking system. Modders don't just spring up to greatness, they evolve by trial and error. Let's encourage all modders to keep on modding.

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It's hard enough to get modders to provide an image of the work that they've done, I don't think it's realistic to ask them to provide shots of what they're improving. And what they're usually improving is already somebody else's mod in any case. Thinking back to CMBO, the out-of-the box stock art was often too painful to look at, so why would anyone want to preserve an image of it, other than the intro video? Besides, if you really care about how things look you'll lavish a lot of effort on your sample jpeg -- why waste all that effort on something you don't like?

You often can't tell that you'll like something from the image alone. So if you aren't using a mod manager (or even if you are), what you do is that when you see something that looks like it has potential, you make two folders in your CMBB or CMAK mod folder labeled BTS original and So-and-so's mod. You put a copy of the original from the back-up BMP folder that I presume that you made before modding anything (if not, do a quick re-install to a parallel path and delete everything except the BMP and Wav folders). Before loading the mod fire up a very small Quick Battle with the relevant pieces so that you're sure you know what you're changing. Then go back, load the mod, fire up the QB that you've saved, and you now know the difference in 3-D, on your computer.

Switching textures requires a bit of effort, organization, and self-education (otherwise you may find a collection of readme files in the bottom of your BMP folder with messages like "don't install me untill you've read this"). Some mods just don't look right with other mods, so you always have to do a bit of your own testing.

When a good modder does something really drastic that isn't immediately obvious, he usually remarks on it in his readme file. This usually happens because of the shared texture issue (e.g. the Kuebelwagon). And once in a blue moon he might even include before and after shots -- I even did it myself once. But the industry standard is to rely on people's knowledge of the visuals in the game and to provide a jpeg of the mod.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am a big fan of GreenAsJade's McMMM program and I wish someone would upload their simple CMAK and CMBB "Mod sets" to CMMODS and then we could use MCMMM to download the set. It is a function that, as GeenasJade mentioned, I have yet to use due to the lack of mods sets out here to DL. I did see one on CMMods but it was for either a sealion mod or some such. I just want a basic mod pack for CMAK for all the theaters and weather. I am sure some folks have some nice ones out there all spruced up with Mikeyd and the other's stuff.

All they need to do is upload the McMMM mods pack file with brief description and we will do the rest.

So until that happens I am making my own and it gonna be quite a small task. Here is how I am doing it.

goto the band of brother's website and download the "Unit Availability Chat" for CMAK at http://webandofbrothers.de/tablescharts.htm

Unzip it and it will look blank (it is an exel spread sheet) The text is there, u just need to change the color of the text to black for it to show up. No idea why it is like that.

Now all the units in the game will be listed in this chart. I made a folder named CMAK mods and inside it made a folder for each country.

Then I made a folder for each unit on the chart (I used cut and paste from chart itself) inside each of those folders (UK, US, Germany, Italy, New Zealand ect.) You know put a folder for each German unit in the folder named Germany. Then repeat that for each country you want to mod.

Now you have your own database with all the units that can be modded. Takes some time but it is worth it.

Make another like it using the CMBB unit avaliability chart so you can have a CMBB mod database as well.

Now for each folder do a search of the name of the unit on the CMMods page. Just make sure you search in the correct mods list (CMAK ect.) and look at all the mods on the list and review them, decide what ya like and dowload them into your folder for that unit. In the case of unit packs that have all units, I guess I am going to make an all "unit pack" folder as well. Just make sure you also get a mod for snowy vehicles and winter vehicles, Italian, N africa and east Africa campaigns ect.

Thing is you don't HAVE TO mod EVERYTHING. You can just pick the mods you like for what you play most. The trick here is that you have them sorted and know what you have and what you don't. Since the game already has default mods for units you will always have something load when you play, so don't panic. Just download em as you like them/ need them/ find them.

It's a freaking hobby dude.

After you assemble a collection of mods, let's say an all N. Africa section of mods you can make a McMMM mod set (like the one we both desire.) and upload it to CMMods for everyone to use in McMMM.

Just add one mod at a time and give it a description. You can even rename the mod so you can identify it in McMMM without it changing the root name of the zip mod. Just make sure you only rename it in McMMM, not the actual folder.

Such as "German Tiger I early snowy by MikeyD" and so on. That way when you are in McMMM and use the "Mod name" Tab on the top of the column in McMMM it with sort it by country, then by unit then give you a clue/props to the designer. The you can use the "Edit Mod>>Mod details" tab in McMMM to give it a description after the default Armor, Gun, Terrain ect classification) to give you a quick preview of what it is.

Just don't get overwhelmed. For instance just download all MikeyD's mods by doing an author search in CMMOd's CMAK mod section. Then Do a search for other popular designers mentioned.

When you have sorted those you can just goto this CMAK mod folder database you have made, and if you open a file for...oh say German Wirlblewind and it's empty... then you know u need a mod for it. And a winter version as well. Just do it over time as you see mods you like or just download the most popular mods listed above in this thread to get a nice starter set.

I would always make a backup of this personal database of mods in a safe place, ALWAYS copy and paste instead of cut and paste when moving the mods into a modding program, that way u still know what mods you have and what you need.

If you cut your panzerIIIJ out of the CMAK mods/Germany/Panzer IIIJ folder (your own download database) and paste it into and MCMMM mod folder then how the heck are you going to know you ever had it or have it? I mean I guess you could use McMMM to look at it and such, but why not have them all sorted since these freaking file names can be so confusing in the first place when loaded into McMMM or just looking at them period.

Well,

Since I got started on this project today I am going to be a while on it.

One question though for anyone to answer. (I am looking at you Jade)

To make a complete a CMAK full mod set what do I need in terms of theaters and weather mods?

Are the desert vehicle mods usable ANYWHERE when McMMM loads them or do I need a mod for Desert and another for Italian theater? One for snowy weather and one for winter?

Also, snowy units and winter units... are they the same or are they different BMP numbers or mods? Can I load a snowy vehicle on a winter map? Or a Winter vehicle on a snowy map?

Can I load an Afrika Korps PSW222 armored car into a winter map?

Basically I am asking what mods types are essential to make a full set?

For a tank do I need an Italian, N Africa, E Africa, Snowy and Winter mod? Or can I Just dowload one?

Or Do I only need Mods sorted by weather (ie: non-winter mod and a snowy or winter wod to make a full set for a unit?)

Sorry if that sounds confusing.

Now I am going to go try and get this post bound for publishing.

Thanks for reading my biography.

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  • 4 months later...

Heh this thread reminds me of similar issues I had patching up CMBB.

I've never really played CMAK until now and I was wondering if there has been any progress in these 'popular starter kits'?

With all due respect I do not see the harm in posting one's preferred mod packs.

Every modder has put a tremendous effort in creating the mod, but surely certain mods are used by almost every CMAK player, so why not compile a list of these commonly used mods?

The individual player can still browse through the CMMODs database to find other/better gems to add to the experience, but at least new people will have a 'starter kit' to get up to speed with if such a list is posted.

Think about a:

-Patched up CMAK (desert) mod list

and a

-Western front conversion mod list

Again, with all due respect to every modder out there!

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