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Turning CMAK into NW Europe


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I wanted to put together two folders of BMPs, say "NW Europe" and "Italy", that I could swap back and forth to change the overall look of CMAK to correspond to the region I want to fight in. So far, I have some Uniform mods from Andrew and a nice map icon showing Europe; however, I was wondering if anyone knows offhand which bmps to swap out in order to update the Luftwaffe units for NW Europe.

Another mod that would be REALLY appreciated would be NW European builings. I also need to look around for an appropriate tree mod, but I think one that I have from CMBO will work just fine. It would be cool if we could put together some kind of semi-official European mod pack, something similar to the Tom's Bulge pack released for CMBO.

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Pritzl,

I couldn´t agree more with you. I´ve been buisy on my own, finding solutions for a conversion. There´s a lot of mod stuff for CMBO that works pretty well. Some of it could need an ovehaul to match CMAK's graphics though.

When it comes to buildings, same applies here. Tanks a lot did some very nice hi-res buildings for CMBO, and Panzertruppens Normandy buildings are fantastic, even though they don´t match the sharpness of the new graphics. If you are comfortable with any paint/image program, like PSP or PHP, you could make them a notch sharper and they fit in quite nice. Only prob though is that there is only ONE version of the buildings -no damaged version - which means, and I guess that's alright AS LONG AS IT IS FOR PERSONAL USE, that you could do these versions for yourself. It´s not super difficult but time consuming.

I would find it interesting to put such a thing together as a Normandy Conversion Pack, but I must admit that I do not have the time.

Good luck

Gurra

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bo bmp numbered buildings different than bb and ak. there are more buildings too. i use juju's berlin buldings for large and a collection of bo bldgs renumbered for ak. there is a damaged bldg mod at cmhq for cmbo, but only covers some of them and no snow. see my site

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As soon as I bought my CMAK copy, and maybe before (!), the idea of a kind of total "Normandy CMAK conversion mod pack" appeared in my mind.

Unfortunatelly, this work appears to be VERY time-consuming. Look :

</font>

  • Create an appropriate subdued terrain mod pack, with grass, trees and bases in order to better fit the Normandy countryside.</font>
  • Create an appropriate sky mod pack. The actual Italian theater is way too hilly.</font>
  • Create a complete building map set with shelters, houses and buildings. Quite a big stuff !</font>
  • Do some minor enhancements about interface. Some attempts have been done very nicely yet smile.gif</font>
  • Realise MANY mods abouts units/uniforms/vehicles to correctly fit the NW european theater. Quite a big stuff too !</font>

IMHO, the best way to reach a satisfactory and fast result would be to take back some CMBB stuff, like terrain, trees and skies. But the main effort would be, for the realisation of a complete pack (including houes, terrains...), the complete renumbering of many files to fit the CMAK "BMP list".

In an other hand, the realisation of a brand new mod for all buildings is one of my CM dreams. But the task is long, and unfortunatelly not suited for my remaining free-time.

Finally, and some grogs can surrelly confirm that, another main hard work would be mod numerous units, vehicles and uniforms. It appears that, IMHO, this project may be realised by a TEAM of modders or by some kind people who could take time for renumbering existing CMBO/BB mods.

Anyway, a good point for us, CMBO nostalgics, is that BFC has given tall hedge/bocage tiles in the CMAK editor ! :D

Some times ago (months), I planned to realize a good building mod for CMAK, to create a Normandy theater. As I live not too far from Normandy, I thought the job could be done. But, as I don't have too many time, the project gently disappeared from my "mods-to-do" list (and I'm very sorry about this). The solution for me would be to take pictures of actual french rural houses/buildings and give them to a modder who has enough time... ...who knows ?

However, anything I mentionned above is impossible... smile.gif

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from here combat mission normandie you can dl all of magua's normandy mod for cmbo, non cmmos. i unzipped them into folders, renumbered and made copies as necessary.

for sky, correct me if wrong, cmak uses one bmp 1024x512 for east, one for north south and one for west. i opened with paint 1400, pasted magua's 1024x256 to the bottom and saved to a folder (not the game bmp folder) made a copy 1420 and 1440. zip and swap with mcmmm. this is for clear daytime. for winter i used cmbb 1400, 1420, 1440 pasted to the larger cmak sky. you can play around with the others, but it is time consuming. there are lots of bo sky mods to try this way.

trees are numbered differently too. but you can pick a few from bo mods and renumber to ak, be careful of the bmp shape and size.

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Everyone here has raised some very good points about the amount of work that it would take. I hadn't even thought about the sky backgrounds for instance. I also looked into working on the buildings and realized very quickly, after "repairing" the side of just one of Tanks a Lot's buildings in order to make the undamaged set, that this is a HUGE job.

Unfortunatley I find myself in the same situation as many of you. I have precious little free time at the moment und a limited amount of talent to begin with that makes the work rather time consuming.

I still hope that this will someday be realized by an enterprising group. If that were the case, I would be very happy to contribute, but I just don't have the time to organize it. If one of the Mod Gods wanted to take on that role I would be happy to sign on though.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Originally posted by Gurra:

... Panzertruppens Normandy buildings are fantastic, even though they don´t match the sharpness of the new graphics. If you are comfortable with any paint/image program, like PSP or PHP, you could make them a notch sharper and they fit in quite nice. Only prob though is that there is only ONE version of the buildings -no damaged version - which means, and I guess that's alright AS LONG AS IT IS FOR PERSONAL USE, that you could do these versions for yourself. It´s not super difficult but time consuming.

I have started doing this months ago as I have always preferred his buildings, they dont "twinkle" on my PC setup like the default buildings. I had put them in CMBB and now in CMAK. The un-damaging is very slow and I doubt I will ever finish doing it completely (for personal use only). I live in vain hope that Panzertruppen will redo them for CMAK, they do look fantastic even after all these years.
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I found that using CMBB buildings (with a bit of renumbering) to replace the Italian "villas" gives a quick Northern European fix to CMAK. I also use CMBB's horizon bitmaps, after stretching them to match CMAK's size. All with MS paint.

I plan to bundle these up with a "consortium" Northern Euro & winter bulge mod pack and post to CMMODS in a week or 2. (consortium meaning I only renumbered other peoples mods without modifying the bitmap)

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try my method of pasting, in ms paint, the cmbb sky over a cmak sky. the trees dont get so big. however i play 800x600 so i dont see the top of the sky from ground level. is this different in 1024x768?

another thought on buildings. you dont need normandy coastal buildings with snow on them. the allies were not there by winter. and cmak uses the same southern italy buildings for winter northern italy.

[ May 27, 2004, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: junk2drive ]

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Originally posted by simovitch:

I plan to bundle these up with a "consortium" Northern Euro & winter bulge mod pack and post to CMMODS in a week or 2. (consortium meaning I only renumbered other peoples mods without modifying the bitmap)

Hey ! Looks good smile.gif

Do you plan to include buildings, skies, terrain tiles and some other stuff ?

Can't wait for the mod !

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As soon as I break down and get DSL at my place where I work mid week I can upload all the buildings/skies/Toms bulge light snow&roads/NW Europe icon and a screenshot. I've done most of my modwork down there (where there is no interference from wife/kids) but I dont even have a RW CD rom to copy it to yet!

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  • 4 weeks later...

i'm bumping this for phil

for winter sky i took the cmbb 1412, 1432, 1452 1024x256 opened with ms paint, made the size 1024x512 select all, move the sky to the bottom, use the dropper to pick a blue near the top, flood fill the white top section, save as...

nearly flat, with pines, bare trees, snow on the ground.

this works for bmps that are monochromatic at the top. in 800x600 you dont see the top unless you pan up. dont know if its good or bad in 1024 and up.

this takes a while for all the bmps. 3 day, dawn, dusk, overcast. but you dont need to do afrika.

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Has anyone got a mod that shows Italy AND France, Benelux and western areas of Germany? I'm not into swapping bmp's back and forth, so that'd be pretty much the only thing I'd need to set in mood (French, Italians, they're all Latinos anyway so their towns should all look the same). Please?

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Originally posted by Sergei:

Has anyone got a mod that shows Italy AND France, Benelux and western areas of Germany? I'm not into swapping bmp's back and forth, so that'd be pretty much the only thing I'd need to set in mood (French, Italians, they're all Latinos anyway so their towns should all look the same). Please?

That's a good idea. I don't want to switch either.
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