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Field and Stream: Imminent release of CMMOS Natural Terrain Collection


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I am pleased to announce that yet another draft of Field and Stream, a collection of four official CMMOS Rulesets for all non-snow-covered subdued terrain, is nearing completion.

Three of the official Rulesets cover all the natural terrain types such as grass, hedges, trees, tree bases, water, marsh. This will allow you to mix and match all the terrain mods that are out there, creating your own customized look in a matter of seconds.

The fourth Ruleset, inspired by Gordon Molek, allows you to concentrate on the works of several particular mod artists. You can summon up all of DD or Magua's Normandy terrain at the push of a button. If you ever wondered what Juju's Woods Tree Bases would look like on Magua's Normandy Terrain supplemented with Gunnergoz's Normandy Grass, now you can have your answer without going crazy copying in and out of folders. And most important, if you're about to play a scenario that takes place during a particular season and want specialized terrain to match, the mod rules are seasonally coded, and there are several different mods for each season to choose from.

But Field and Stream won't just give you the Rulesets. All of the related mods have been assembled and sorted by mod type and author. That's over 275 Mb of CMMOS-enabled terrain mods. Now if you don't want all of that on your harddrive you can be restrained and just download the parts that interest you. And if you don't want to download anything at all except the Rulesets themselves, Gordon has included a nifty little program for renaming files. Don't feel like renaming all of Magua's Normandy Terrain by hand ? No problem, use the Munge and it takes all of two seconds.

Now why am I announcing this, apart from trying to drum up a little publicity for CMMOS and official Rulesets ? Well, in order to make sure that this effort sees the light of publication I need your help. I'm very new to the CM world, and I'm afraid I simply don't have everyone's name and e-mail addresses in my Rolodex. I need to go out to twenty-three mod artists for permission to re-publish their material, and I'm afraid I'm lacking many of their e-mail addresses, and in some cases, their names, assuming they don't want to go by their pen-names.

So let me say first that the name of each mod author will pop up on the screen when you move your cursor across his mod's icon, and that each file has a distinctive extension coding that allows you to tell at a glance who the author was. In addition, each Ruleset has a separte button for credits that lists all the mod authors used in order of appearance, states that no graphic changes were made to any of the mods, and prohibits non-personal use of any of the work without the written permission of an author, unless documentation stating otherwise is provided with the download of a specific mod (and in many cases it will be). Whew....

Here is the list of mod authors that I would like to have get in touch with me whose co-ordinates I don't know. If anyone knows how to contact them, please ask them to e-mail me at padivine@aol.com. I will be glad to answer any questions they may have.

Gunslinger, Desert Fox (in case I can't find it on the web site), Nicholas Bell, the author of the Floral Hedge, Richard Tremblett, Napoleon 1944, Tiger, Bfamily33, Kevin Pelz, Bob "Old Dog" Toole, Yeates, Wolf.

Thanks for your help, everyone. The sooner I get my permissions in place, the sooner Field and Stream can be released.

Philippe

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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Amidst_Void:

What happened to Tiger?<hr></blockquote>

He killed himself with an AK.

Phillipe - great work. I guess with CMMOS 3.0 we now have the ability to make all these lo-res, right? So you don't have to go to the trouble of issuing lo res versions?

Will the CM default be one of the options, incidentally?

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Thanks, Michael.

Yes, because of Gordon's latest enhancement to CMMOS it will be possible to convert a mod to low resolution so your computer doesn't grind to a halt on a computationally intense battlefield.

Early on I had to make a decision about what to include and what to leave out. I decided that I would rather do a comprehensive job on subdued terrain than a smorgasbord of velvet, subdued, gridded, and found that almost all of the original textures looked jarringly out of place in a subdued environment.

There is going to be a snow-covered enhancement at some point, and at that time, if someone else hasn't already done it, the non-subdued terrain could be revisited. I was always partial to Richard Tremblett's work before I got the subdued bug. In that context the BTS originals would make a lot of sense.

Philippe

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EVERYONE

Having been privy to this project as it's developed, a truly increadible amount of work and planning on Phillipe's part has gone into it. I can only hope that all the original mod authors can be found and permissions received to allow their mods to be re-packaged (not altered in any other way) for this project. Yes, in the absence of such permissions, people can still unpack and rename the files using the new CMMOS tool "BMP Munge", but I believe this could rekindle interest in a lot of "classic" mods that would otherwise have fallen by the wayside as well as allow for additional "spice" in everyone's gaming experience as your CM:BO world need never look the same again.

Well, at least for the PC users. :D

So, if you can contact any of the above authors, please help Phillipe out.

Thanks,

Gordon

Gotta go and work on my mod licensing agreement with my attorney.

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Whoossh, thanks Philippe !! And are you also French by chance ? :D:D

About author agreements : normally all CM mods already published are "republishable" as long as author is credited and mod is untouched...I and other did publish CMMOS Rulesets without asking each and every modder if he objects...

Why would he ??

Will the guys here succumb to this awful US disease of chronic lawsuitophilia ??

Awful .. :eek:

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  • 2 weeks later...

A quick update for those of you who may have been wondering what happened to this project.

The work is done, the collection is sitting on my hard drive.

In order to release it I'll need (at last count) 26 permissions. I seem to have succesfully contacted 18 authors, and permissions have started coming in.

I am, however, still missing 8 contact addresses. Once again, if anyone knows how to get me in touch with these names (or the appropriate parties at these names) any help would be gratefully appreciated.

The missing contacts:

Gunslinger, the Author of the Floral Hedge, Tiger, BTS (!), MDMP (!), Yeates, Kevin Peltz, Gary Kump.

All my thanks to those who have helped me whittle down the list, especially Marco Bergman.

Philippe

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Does anyone know WHY those guys, especially Tiger, left the scene, and considering they have put lots of work to create the mods why on earth do they oppose (or are indifferent) about the community using them?

This baffles me a great deal.

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Philippe

Drop me your email address so I can send you the an update I did to one of the bmp's tiles in dirtroad.zip(v3) when I was working with Gyrene on the track/road crossing.

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: Pud ]</p>

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This is truly awesome. What I've always dreamed about. Many, many thanks for doing it.

But my question is mix and match. Can I save my custom mix of different terrain mods and bring it back after trying others?

I love my current set that was assembled over the past 18 months piecemeal by trial and error. I can't afford to go CMMOS until I know my current custom setup is preserved. I couldn't re-create it even if I had the time.

Also, is Manx going to pull all the CMMOS compatible mods together on CMHQ so we have it in one place?

Thanks again,

Jake

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I cannot speak for Manx, but I was under the impression that there is already a budding CMMOS section on the CMHQ site that is in the process of being expanded.

I too have favorite combinations of terrain sets, and I've actually included the combination I use for French trees for June, July, and early August as an option. At the macro level CMMOS makes it so easy to create new combinations that you inevitably find that there were mods that you had ignored that actually look better with your favorite terrain.

In its current form CMMOS doesn't save what you happen to already have installed, since it works by copying over particular files with the version of your own choosing. The whole point of CMMOS is that you can mobilize and install many different versions of each component of a natural terrain set, and you can do it very, very quickly and easily. It is a tool for gaining control over what you have in your hard drive.

By the way, one of the RuleSets covers converting everything in natural terrain at the push of a button, e.g. all of Magua's Normandy, all of Richard Bell's Muddy Autumn, etc. I had to make a separate icon for each of these "canned" looks before writing the RuleSet, and to do that I had to construct a different look for each, one piece of terrain at a time. What I found was that with CMMOS it could be done in minutes.

Philippe

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A quick update.

I've received about a dozen permissions so far, so we're making progress.

The list of missing addresses has changed a bit. The new list of missing contact addresses is:

Gunslinger, Kevin Peltz, Gary Kump, and Captain Kez.

If anyone knows how to get in touch with any of these artists, I can be reached at padivine@aol.com

Thanks for all your help, and keep those addresses coming.

Philippe

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  • 3 weeks later...

Indeed, we are still searching for permissions, but at this point have the majority of them. We don't really expect to get all of them, but elegance and functionality are enhanced if we have as many as possible.

With that in mind, we've got a version in front of the Beta testers. It's becoming clear, especially as we don't hear from our missing stragglers, that we will have to make a few minor changes and ommissions. We also have a few contingency plan work-arounds that will allow us to respect authors' intellectual property and, at the same time, deliver the full scope of the project. They are not, however, elegant.

At the moment we still need to contact Gunslinger, Gary Kump, Gwen de Lucero, Kevin Peltz (we may have solved that one), Tiger (we think we have the address, but alas, no answer...).

The other bit of news is that the one thing that Field and Stream didn't cover is winter terrain. Thanks to Ed Kinney and Juju that has changed. They have produced a comprehensive winter terrain set and asked me to write the CMMOS adaption, which I have done. While I was at it I thought it would make a lot of sense to do the full monty on winter terrain, so voila, Winter Wonderland, the winter companion to Field and stream. Publication of Field and Stream, the Abominable Snow Mod, and Winter Wonderland are not linked. For more information (and pictures) check Ed and Juju's thread.

So to sum up, a lot of progress has been made, and more is being made (even as I write this). This edition will see the light of day very soon, and it's companion add-on will come out shortly thereafter.

Cheers,

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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Philippe:

The other bit of news is that the one thing that Field and Stream didn't cover is winter terrain. Thanks to Ed Kinney and Juju that has changed. They have produced a comprehensive winter terrain set and asked me to write the CMMOS adaption, which I have done. While I was at it I thought it would make a lot of sense to do the full monty on winter terrain, so voila, Winter Wonderland, the winter companion to Field and stream. Publication of Field and Stream, the Abominable Snow Mod, and Winter Wonderland are not linked. For more information (and pictures) check Ed and Juju's thread.

<hr></blockquote>

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes......

I honestly think that after we get CMMOS compatible terrain-sets, not much, if at all can be done to improve on CMBO without changing the code...

Incredibly impressive guys!!! :D

After this improvement we're gonna have the most realistic, user-friendly, beautiful, fun, addicting piece of wargaming on our hands...

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  • 1 month later...

I'm wondering is there a list or forum out there to help with buggies? I'm having a terrible time getting CMMOS to run with Field and Stream...system errors that I won't go into here - Is there a FAQ or troubleshooting database that could be of help. I know this isn't supported by BTS or CMHQ, but I could sure use the help...

Thanks

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Originally posted by Toran:

I'm wondering is there a list or forum out there to help with buggies? I'm having a terrible time getting CMMOS to run with Field and Stream...system errors that I won't go into here - Is there a FAQ or troubleshooting database that could be of help. I know this isn't supported by BTS or CMHQ, but I could sure use the help...

Thanks

Please send e-mail to "gordonemolek@earthlink.net" with a description of the problem, what version of windows you are running and a copy of the file "CMMOSLog.txt" from your CMMOS install folder and I'll get you squared away.

Gordon

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My problem: a combination of over-sensitive virus protection with the writing to ANYTHING in the Windows directory including the temp folder, and a new user. Thanks for the response, Gordon - I can't wait to start loading up on the mods.

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