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What to mod?? Any suggestions?


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Just make sure you don't pick a vehicle that's going to be updated later! I've already finished a nice Soviet Churchill III conversion and a hi-res camou Nashorn/Hummel but its only a matter of time before these and most-all the CMBO 'legacy' vehicle polygons get replaced in a patch.

It's hard to decide which vehicle to mod first. Unlike CMBO, most of the default textures are fantastic! I wouldn't mind seeing a redrawn set of roadwheels and a bit of shading on the BT Fast Tanks.

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I second the trenches mod. I hear that the textures are so stretched out that it's hard to make a nice one though. But they sure need help. They are kind of a kludge as far as gameplay goes, but that's another issue. At least we have em...

How bout winter mods? The early T34, KV and russian infantry so we can simulate some good soviet winter offensives in 41/42. I can see the white-coated russian smg troops leaping from their mother-beautiful whitewashed T34 even now... You can leave the germans unmodded for winter as they weren't prepared or properly equipped anyway (at least in 41). smile.gif

Ren

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Tiger, Id stear away from the Jpz's for now, as these are ones we would like to replace time permittting, so I dont want you to waste work on them smile.gif

Trenches are very hard to get right guys, but I look forward to seeing what people come up with. Personally Im not a big fan of the sand bags I have in there to be honest, but after some experimenting I found it the best way to give a flat object a reasonable 3D look smile.gif

Dan

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Regarding Jagdpanzer IV:

As they're still using the CMBO framework, old CMBO mods can still be used:

Here's an example of my ambush colored JPz IV:

Also available is Gordon Molek's mono-colored, tricolored and a hasty camoed version, based on my mod.

jagdpz4.jpg

Marcus

[ October 02, 2002, 06:29 PM: Message edited by: mike8g ]

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I hear ya KwazyDog. Here's my first trench mod: Used shadows and some texturing to make em look deeper and muddier.

About the skies, it looks like you used Bryce but are they still reduced to 8-bit??

trenches_tiger.jpg

Here's a shot of a modified trench without sandbags

trenches_tiger2.jpg

They may look a little dark but the pics are at dawn iirc.

trenches_tiger3.jpg

and the one above with some modification to the "ends" (which tile)

john

[ October 02, 2002, 07:20 PM: Message edited by: Tiger ]

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Looks good Tiger smile.gif

For the skies we used a problem called Vue D Esprit. Great program and it does a beautiful just of terrain and skies.

In CMBB we decided to have 3 textures per sky. One for East, one for West and one for North/South. Have fun getting all of those to join, hehe. smile.gif The reason that they look a little pixelated is that the are 16 bit and we had to reduce their resolutaion in order to keep to a reasonable VRAM usage.

That reminds me...something Ive been meaning to mention smile.gif . With modding for CMBB I would suggest people are very careful about using 'high res' mods, as those included with CMBB are already considerable high and higher res's could actually cause a reduction in visual quality on their system if they bump themselves into another down sampling level.

Dan

[ October 02, 2002, 07:18 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

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Originally posted by KwazyDog:

Tiger, Id stear away from the Jpz's for now, as these are ones we would like to replace time permittting, so I dont want you to waste work on them smile.gif

Dan

Dan, is there any way that BFC can supply a list of some sort containing AFV's that will "for sure" be replaced and the "maybe if we get to it"s? Would sure help this entire situation.

On a related point that would help modders like Tiger out a bunch, when can we expect the promised BMP list? :D

And Tiger, to my eye the CMBB terrain (excepting the trench and skies as you've noted) needs less help than just the few vehicles that BFC didn't have time to do much with. How about, for instance, the lend-lease Shermans (unless they're on the "gonna change" list above)?

- Old Dog

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Old Dog, I cant give you a list at the moment becuase I dont know how far through it we will get smile.gif Basically we are just powering through them as fast as we can. High on that list at the moment is the minor nation vehicles, and then we will more onto the Russian and German gear. Basically though, any vehicle that is a CMBO vehicle I wouldnt touch for now, along with the IS-2 and KV-II which we have higher detailed models for, time permitting smile.gif

Agreed about the Shermans! They were very late on my schedule and out of all vehicles I would like to seem them given a once over. I did both within about an hour, hehe. Other than those I am looking forward to seeing some winter mods myself. I will do up some samples down the track smile.gif

Dan

[ October 02, 2002, 07:44 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

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Tiger, great to hear, that you'll keep on modding for our pleasure!

What i'm still missing (also in CMBB's vehicles) is a more realistic colored/shaded/metallized look of the vehicle's surfaces.

If i have a look at the vehicles, i'm still missing depth information on the plain surfaces.

I was really amazed, when i saw Steven Burvenich's PzIV the first time, and what a great illusion of depth is possible, when using detailed shadowing/metallizing effects on parts of the BMPs.

In the game this PzIV looks even better. You have really the impression of a detailed 3dimensional object: pziv.jpg

http://www.combatmission.com/mods/Vehicles/axis/Burvenich/pziv.jpg

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Originally posted by KwazyDog:

Old Dog, I cant give you a list at the moment becuase I dont know how far through it we will get smile.gif Basically we are just powering through them as fast as we can. High on that list at the moment is the minor nation vehicles, and then we will more onto the Russian and German gear. Basically though, any vehicle that is a CMBO vehicle I wouldnt touch for now, along with the IS-2 and KV-II which we have higher detailed models for, time permitting smile.gif

Agreed about the Shermans! They were very late on my schedule and out of all vehicles I would like to seem them given a once over. I did both within about an hour, hehe smile.gif . Other than those I am looking forward to seeing some winter mods myself. I will do up some samples down the track smile.gif

Dan

Is this going to cause a shifting on unit portrait bmps and vehicles bmps? I notice the Pz38(t) shares textures between the German and Romanian versions now (and among some similar vehicles?) - will they be seperated at some point in the future and utilize their own bmp sets?
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KwazyDog,

I like the way the new German AFVs(Pz III, IV, Panther, 251, 250) came out. Although the patterns are different, the shading and tone is similar so they go well together. When I heavily modded CMBO, I ended up with my German AFVs having vastly different shades of yellow. Although all the mods were excellent, it was tough getting the mix of Mods just right so they looked good together. I can't wait to see the new Jpz IV, Nashorn, SiG 33, Bison, etc (as well as the winter textures). The quality of the German Uniforms are better than I expected, and the variety is more than I hoped for. Keep up the great work!

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Winter AFVs. Like Dan said, I'll probably hold off modding much until the equivalent of CMBO MDMP 1 & 2 comes out. I put those in first and then worked from there. I like your grass too. The trenches are coming on as well IMHO and I will grab when done. There have been a couple of 'mod request' and 'what needs modding first' that generated quite a few hits in some cases. Not sure if you've seen those?

[ October 03, 2002, 02:05 AM: Message edited by: Apache ]

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If anybody sorts out a list of 'BO' vehicles please post it ( & add those other two while you're at it).

Schoerner, I agree w/ you on the shading thing. It seems more Modders are incorporating this into their work, & I think it's a topic that very much deserves it's own discussion. Quickly, my thought so far is that going too 'contrasty', particularly in the very dark end (see my BO 'Grimy JT') doesn't 'sit' well in The Game. OTOH, the BB Hotchkiss & Semovente do an excellent job of being 3D without looking out of place, though they may be a little 'light' for my personal taste. (Whoever did these, they are Very Good. I'm doing the T-26 line from scratch, & they're sitting next to it as benchmarks.) Getting some consensus on this would help w/ a consistant 'look' across Mods, much like 'The PigPen' is trying to do with muddifying 'em.

Sorry to wander OT (& a Mod Forum!).

Strt

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Oak, that was my main goal. smile.gif I found that many of the CMBO mods were quite different from each other with regards to colouring. Although they looked great seperately, they didnt work as well together.

Mchlstrt, I agree about what you said about the contrast. The main problem with the Russian gear is that if you up the contrast you will also increase the amount of pixelation in a texture due to the 16 bit nature of CM and the origional dark colour of the Russian colouring (and German early war for that matter). With patients and time this can be worked around though smile.gif So, you are making the entire T-26 series from scratch? Thats no small feat! smile.gif

Glad to see a couple of you are happy with the origional textures, hehe.

Dan

[ October 03, 2002, 02:47 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

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