FinnN Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 After some experimentation last night I think I'm in a position to start modding the game. As an experiment I think I'll add some Luftwaffe Field Division squads. Also a new infantry team structure (by splitting the 10 men squads into constituent elements). So instead of picking a 10 man squad, you'd have, say (just off the top of my head), a 2 man lmg team, a 3 man assault team and 5 man officer and rifle team. You'd select the three bits and their points value would add up to the current one for the 10 man squad, and if you wanted to use them as a single squad in the game you can still add them to a group. Apart from being less work for the player, you'd end up using far fewer groups than you would currently to achieve a similar effect. These won't affect existing missions of course, but would be available for people doing that sort of thing. I've got as far as having them in the game, now I just need to sort out text descriptions etc, make sure all the equipment is correct, ranks and other odds and ends. All that'd need sharing is a few copied and edited text files and a couple of modified textures. Are we allowed to share this sort of thing, bearing in mind it's not officially possible to look inside the SFS files? Have fun Finn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G.Mooyman Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 Originally posted by FinnN: Also a new infantry team structure I have been experimenting with this already. I want to do an Infantry campaign so Ive been thinking about this a lot lately. Let me first explain why. The German Infantry squad was build around the MG and the other rifle men where used as support. The Allied squads did it the other way around; the MG supported the riflemen. Therefor I want to keep the current allied structure but change the German ones. The German squad or Zug consisted of 10 men of which two of them where NCO's. The highest rank officer commanded the the riflemen section and the second in command lead the MG section (preferably that NCO was the gunner himself). Both groups could act independently. Im testing now with 2 groups used as 1 squad. The first is a 7 men squad with 6 riflemen and one Unterfeldwebel as commander. The second group is a 3 men squad. The MG gunner is the commanding Obergefreiter and the other 2 soldiers are riflemen with additional MG ammo. This way you have total control over your MG. It wont move along with the rest in an assault and it can give support at all times. And as FinnN said you can group both into one group in the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drawde79 Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 IMHO something really needs to be sorted out with the .SFS issue. Basically a forum member (Dr. Jones I think) has created a .SFS unpacker/extractor tool for TOW, but the developers aren't keen on this being publically released. I'm pretty certain that the reason for this is that the Il-2 flight sim series uses the exact same .SFS format, and IC don't want this to be moddable because of the likelihood of hacking/cheating in multiplayer. However, TOW looks to have a huge amount of potential for modding, as well as a very open data structure, and MP cheating isn't so much of an issue due to the fairly limited MP aspect of the game (in any case, you can see the stats of your opponent's units, so it'd be fairly obvious if they're cheating by giving their tanks metre-thick armour) and there are a lot of people (definitely including me) interested in modding it. I can't imagine BFC or 1C having a problem with mods for TOW, the problem is how can this be done without also opening the "can of worms" of Il-2 moddability? Personally I think it'd be a good idea to wait for the patch/addon before doing any serious modding (graphics/sounds would probably be OK). I suspect the patch will modify and update a lot of the data for units, missions etc. and any mods created beforehand will have to be redone to be compatible with the current version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr.Jones Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 Hi, just want to say that extractor is hardcoded for TOW only, cannot be used to read other SFSs. br. Dr.Jones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlapHappy Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 I guess that's where Close Combat came up with the German 7-man squads? Separating the LMG element? Does anyone know if Squad Leader squads counters represents squad with or without the integrated LMG? LMG's are represented as separate unit counters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudy Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 G.Mooyman I was just thinking about how you could script an advance. Start with the squad split like you said into the machine gun section and the rifle section. Move, attack, or storm towards your objective then when enemy in that area is sighted drop everyone to the ground in the squad and crawl the machine gun section forward to begin covering fire. Then move the rifle section forward. When the machine gunner has no more targets, move hiim forward again. The only problem is that we don't have an IsVisibleInRect command. We need to be able to tell what units are visible in the rectangle area that is being attacked. Otherwise the unit seen may be halfway across the battlefield. I'm not sure how you could get around this. It would be nice to have the squad split for the players, however. It will be interesting to see how infantry acts in the new patch. Anyways just thinking off of the top of my head. Oudy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlapHappy Posted June 1, 2007 Share Posted June 1, 2007 Oudy One thing Soan mentioned in a different thread was the difference between STORM and ATTACK. Apparently, infantry with STORM orders will continue to advance at a medium rate while periodically engaging any spotted targets. However, in ATTACK units who are moving will stop and engage unit(s) until they either destroy it or lose spotting. I tried changing up the STORM and ATTACK orders and was able to see the difference it makes in the behavior of the troops. One problem with ATTACK is that isolated units who are the first to receive contact invite massed fire from the enemy which is usually effective rather quickly. It actually seems more effective to have multiple troops in contact so that the enemy will "split fire" and give your soldiers a chance to return fire and move up. It's just plain hard to keep those light MGers alive when performing move-attack orders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoke Posted June 2, 2007 Share Posted June 2, 2007 Originally posted by SlapHappy: I guess that's where Close Combat came up with the German 7-man squads? Separating the LMG element? Does anyone know if Squad Leader squads counters represents squad with or without the integrated LMG? LMG's are represented as separate unit counters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smoke Posted June 2, 2007 Share Posted June 2, 2007 Originally posted by Smoke: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by SlapHappy: I guess that's where Close Combat came up with the German 7-man squads? Separating the LMG element? Does anyone know if Squad Leader squads counters represents squad with or without the integrated LMG? LMG's are represented as separate unit counters. </font> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlapHappy Posted June 2, 2007 Share Posted June 2, 2007 Finn Please check your e-mail when you get an opportunity....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobo Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Here is an idea for you. Add the capability for a computer vs computer game and sponsor a tournament for the best scripts. Have BFC run the battles and post the videos on the net for all to see. The winner could get a free CM2 game or something. The rest of us would gain a library of scripts that we can use to improve the AI. Thoughts? - Hobo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlapHappy Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Hobo That's not a bad idea. The hardest part, IMO, would be determining the rules of such a competition. Perhaps a point system like in the game. While you can control such things as movement, timing of certain events, etc. - you can't control how they will engage or react when in combat because of the limited command set. Of course, new scripting commands are always welcome.......developers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
War RaVeN Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Originally posted by hobo: Here is an idea for you. Add the capability for a computer vs computer game and sponsor a tournament for the best scripts. Have BFC run the battles and post the videos on the net for all to see. The winner could get a free CM2 game or something. The rest of us would gain a library of scripts that we can use to improve the AI. Thoughts? - Hobo That is a great idea! View, learn and improve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oudy Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Just as a test, I made a mission with a Pz. IVF1 with the short 75mm KwK37 L/24 gun. I was able to add the tank with the new gun and it worked perfectly in the mission. I wasn't able to change the look of the 3d object, so it still looked like it had a long 75mm gun, but all the stats had changed. Pretty cool. Oudy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom3d Posted June 4, 2007 Share Posted June 4, 2007 hey guys, Im 3d Game Desing for a long time, and I Think this game was the best game ever! Im used to make mods for the serveral games and I just think that this game promisses to be a game with a high longevity, And just to know if in the future will be possible add new 3D models? Or change Texture, New maps (like a good one about the beaches on DDay hehe) Just to know... thx for the attention and congratulations about the Game! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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