CMMOS grass mods

[R.C.]

I can't get the grass mods to work. At best, they show up as a few patches only.

I wasn't able to locate a solution when I did a search.

Anyone know what's wrong?

[Philippe]

Please explain what you mean by "a few patches". After that, please give a detailed description of how you installed the CMMOS grass.

The Grass works, it has been used by many people for several months and there shouldn't be any problems with it. If you're having trouble with the grass, you should also be having trouble with all the other CMMOS mods as well.

The usual drill is to review how you installed the grass mod (unzipped bmp's without any folders in the CMBO bmp folder), and make sure you installed both parts of CMMOS (the general part and the part that has the control panel for the mods you are trying to install -- what I'm really saying is that you must install ALL of CMMOS, which is easy because it has self-installing files ). After that, take a look inside the GEM Software Productions/CMMOS folder and pull up the log file. It will tell you what actually happened when you tried to use the grass.

The two most common reasons for not getting CMMOS to work are 1) clicking on the icon for the mod that you want, but forgetting to click on the "Apply" button; and 2) forgetting to completely exit CM before applying a CMMOS mod. Both techniques, which I have used and will continue to use often, produce no result. Nothing happens. Nada. Zippo.

So please come back and tell us what you've done, and we'll get you straightened out.

[R.C.]

Thanks for your response Philippe.

When I said "patches" I meant certain grass squares will recieve the mod, usually a few joined together, but no more than 20% map coverage.

I dowloaded all CMMOS Rulesets and CMMOS V3 first. I installed these to desktop. I opened CMMOS V3 first, then each of the CMMOS Rulesets. The 2 patches (Hi and Low Resolution) I unzipped directly into the bmp. Next I download and installed the mod packages. (except most Allied and Axies vehicles as I already had them) This was the second instalation, I couldn't get the grass mods to work in the first one either. Iniforms, shurbs, music all work fine.

When I view the CMMOS Log it says (low res.)txt" does not exist. With the second instalation I only installed two grass mods to see if I could get them to work first, before installing the rest.

After yesterday's post, I looked into the bmp file. I had allot of folders in there, I removed them. I re-installed all the CMMOS's again in the order previously mentioned. I downloaded and installed DD's grass mod for testing purposes, it didn't work.

Did I miss something? Thank You again for responding.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by R.C.:

I dowloaded all CMMOS Rulesets and CMMOS V3 first. I installed these to desktop. I opened CMMOS V3 first, then each of the CMMOS Rulesets. The 2 patches (Hi and Low Resolution) I unzipped directly into the bmp. Next I download and installed the mod packages. (except most Allied and Axies vehicles as I already had them) This was the second instalation, I couldn't get the grass mods to work in the first one either. Iniforms, shurbs, music all work fine.

When I view the CMMOS Log it says (low res.)txt" does not exist. With the second instalation I only installed two grass mods to see if I could get them to work first, before installing the rest.

After yesterday's post, I looked into the bmp file. I had allot of folders in there, I removed them. I re-installed all the CMMOS's again in the order previously mentioned. I downloaded and installed DD's grass mod for testing purposes, it didn't work.

Did I miss something? Thank You again for responding.

You mention CMMOS V3. Do you mean 3.02, or are you working from the mod CD that comes with the European store version ?

What jumps out and grabs me when I read your discussion is the bit about low resolution. I suspect that may be the culprit. The grass mods were meant to be high resolution, and, to be honest, I never wanted to have anything to do with the low resolution feature so I never tested it (if Gordon were around right now he'd probably want to quarantine me for saying that in public...). I used the high resolution patch at some point way back when, but I've never applied the low resolution one.

I don't want to tell you to start over from scratch without consulting Gordon because the prospect is too horrific (or at least it would be for me, but then I have a lot of stuff in my BMP folder).

And I can think of several methods to actually put this into practise that would reduce the level of pain to...well...horrible but not intolerable.

But let's not go that route just yet. Besides, Gordon will reappear in a couple of days.

I think you should try to play around with a single grass mod, and strictly in high resolution.

So uncheck your low resolution button if you have it checked, and try re-applying the high resolution patch over again. [i don't know as much about those patches as I should...but I'm guessing that the presence of something from the low resolution one may be causing some internal confusion]. I think we need to get you back to a point before you applied the low resolution patch.

I'm making a couple of assumptions, by the way. I'm assuming that you don't have an antique machine, and that it is modern enough to handle high resolution. I'm also assuming that your CMBO preferences file is set up correctly: if it's not, just erase it and the game will prompt you to go through the steps next time you fire it up.

Pick two grass mods that don't look anything like each other. I would recommend Magua's Normandy and Nicholas Bell's. Magua's is not extrememly high resolution, and Nicholas' grass is distinctly brown, so they will be easy to tell apart.

Install them into separate work folders somewhere safe (i.e. completely outside of the game) and spend a little time looking at them. Then copy them into the CMBO/bmp folder. Now go into the CMBO/bmp folder and take another look at them while they're in there. This kind of onsight visual inspection is very useful, but you have to be careful not to change anything. Now get out of the CMBO directory, and fire up CMMOS. You should see the two icons for Magua and Nicholas Bell in the Leaves of Grass directory. Click on Nicholas bell, click on Apply, close CMMOS. Launch CMBO and pick a small scenario. I usually use the tutorial. All the grass that you see should be brown [except the middle background -- the file that controls that dropped out of one of the more recent versions of CMMOS, but that will be replaced in the next (imminent) release]. Close the scenario. Close CMBO. If you got a partial result, check the log in GEM Software/CMMOS, do another visual inspection of the CMBO/BMP folder. Repeat the whole procedure using Magua. If you get a partial result it will stick out like a sore thumb because the Nicholas Bell grass is brown and Magua grass is light green.

When you've done all this, tell us about it.

The alternative to doing this is to rip out all of your mods and start over. As I said before, that's too horrific to contemplate, though there are ways of doing it that will lessen the pain. So give my diagnostic reconaissance method a try, and if that doesn't clue me in to what is wrong, we can try consulting a few people who actually know something about computers.

By the way, a very common reason for a file not getting applied in CMMOS is that it somehow picks up a space in the coding after the extension. In other words, if a file is number 12345 in its natural state, it might have a CMMOS name like 12345_mag. I don't understand why this might have happened to you, but if the coding somehow becomes 12345_mag[space], that [space] is really hard to detect by visual inspection. And the program will read it as a character.

By the way, if you go into C:\Programs\GEM Software Productions\CMMOS [assuming that that is where you have the program, because if it isn't you'll have problems], you should see a bunch of rulesets, including RuleSet351, which is the one that interests you. Take a look inside, see if you can find a textfile for DD's grass [Rule351-001]and for the other two that I mentioned [Magua's is Rule351-003 and Nicholas Bell's is Rule351-020]. Be careful not to change any of the textfiles. If any of this stuff is not there, you will have a problem.

[ June 12, 2002, 12:16 PM: Message edited by: Philippe ]