Modding Discoveries

[Mord]

In case some of you missed this little treasure; missinginreality found something really kick ass with modding buildings. You can create new facades without overwriting preexisting textures! Which basically gives us unlimited building faces as long your comp can handle it. LINK below.

HOLY CRAP!

And also this tidbit from MikeyD.

Originally posted by MikeyD:

One thing to note - I believe the soldier faces are expandable. By that i mean if the default faces stop at 'syrian-6' (or however its named) you can keep adding more: syrian -7, -8, -9, etc. So new faces don't have to overwrite old faces.

Found here; COOL!

Mord.

[ March 05, 2008, 01:43 PM: Message edited by: Mord ]

[missinginreality]

Am humbled, thank you.

[M1A1TC]

The downside is that the mod applies that texture to all sides of the building, right?

[LongLeftFlank]

Yep. One workaround is to mask it with high walls flush against the bldg, or the long window option.

Another idea I had was for BFC to load up some generic 2d panels and 3d rectangular and cylinder objects of various sizes and heights that we could texture mod to create our own flavour objects.

2d: closed metal gates, signs, graffiti, pockmarks, etc.

3d. Shipping containers, tiny shacks and sheds, stacked crates or bales, machinery, lorries, etc.

Wouldn't seem hard to do and would give much joy to urban photorealism junkies like me.

[Mord]

Originally posted by missinginreality:

Am humbled, thank you.

You're very welcome. I had to spread the word.

Mord.

[Darkmath]

WOW, indeed. Finally, modding could offer far more possibilities than in CMX1.

[MikeyD]

If you REALLY want to drive yourself crazy try creating new wrought iron railing patterns for the balconies. It can be done but its quite a puzzle to figure out how

[missinginreality]

MikeyD raised a good point - make sure you include the alpha channel and save as a 32bit .bmp file to create the transparency.

Also check the alpha channels if modifying windows as I have a feeling these greatly influence LOS through windows.

[MikeyD]

Talk about alpha channels, you should check out VladTemplar's 'Mountains' background mod at cmmods.com. He really did a great job - looks suspiciously like the mountains ringing Tuscon AZ! He properly aplha-channeled the background sky and it all works perfectly.

Y'know, it would be really easy to assemble alternate 'Z' folders to quickly swap in and out of the data folder. This Z folder has mountains and Russian tank skins; that Z folder has Asia faces for both sides; and another Z folder makes all the soldiers look like they're from the movie TRON!

[missinginreality]

TRON units....hmmmm now there's a thought

[M1A1TC]

Thanks MikeyD, VladTemplar on CMMODS is me

Anyway, I was thinking of Star Trek or Star Wars mod

And thats great idea about alternate Z folders!

[missinginreality]

Yep, nice one MikeyD, distribute alternate Z mod folders with campaign zips that can be swapped in and out as needed.

[M1A1TC]

[missinginreality]

Oh mate, "that is art", one for the pool room there

[Paper Tiger]

M1A1TC..

nice one man. Is that pano modded too? I don't remember seeing one like that in the game.

[M1A1TC]

Thanks

Yeah, it's my background mod. You can find it at CMMODS. (my designer name there is VladTemplar)

[Mord]

well just discovered, as well as faces, syrian combatants and fighters are equally expandable. You can have as many as your comp can handle by adding a new number to the file. Syriacombatant 7, 8 and so on, like MikeyD said about face textures.

Too bad they didn't allow this with the US and syrian soldier unis. If BFC allowed number extensions at the end of all the textures for vehicles and unis we could have as many unique vehicle paint jobs and uniforms as we wanted/could handle.

I'd love to at least see uni/helmet extensions allowed for the WWII game...would be cool to see soldiers wearing slightly different stuff like one guy in full grau while another has half camo....or one helmet with chicken wire while another is camoed.

Options baby, options!

Mord.

[Mord]

A more in depth discovery on uni modding by Birdstrike.

Originally posted by birdstrike:

For those who are interested how I made the random uniforms work:

As has already been shown in the Syrian Spy Mod by MikeyD, the game can use multiple textures of the same file if there is an index number added. For example "uniform 1.bmp" and "uniform 2.bmp".

However, this only seems to work for soldiers model, not for vehicles(?)

The U.S. soldiers use 4 different texture files: uniform.bmp, us-helmet.bmp, vest.bmp and ussoldier-molle.bmp

Adding index numbers to these files makes the game use all of them on different soldiers, using a certain mechanism:

If there are multiple, numbered texture files of the same name, the game will combine files with the same index number, as long as the total number of corresponding files is the same.

For example, 3 files of each will look like this:

Uniform 1 will be always be used together with vest 1, molle 1 and helmet 1.

Uniform 2 will be always be used together with vest 2, molle 2 and helmet 2.

Uniform 3 will be always be used together with vest 3, molle 3 and helmet 3.

If the number of files is different, for example, 3 uniforms and vests, 2 helmet and molle textures, the game will randomly apply the files with the lower number to the file(s) with the highest number(s).

If there are 3 uniforms and vests each, and 2 helmets and molles each, uniforms 1-3 will always be used with their counterparts vest 1-3, while helmets and molles are assigned randomly.

I hope this makes sense.

LINKY

Mord.