Marines to Special Forces Mod: Released!

[meade95]

Great work!

[birdstrike]

Very nice job on the face camo and the helmets.

btw. do Marines and Army use the same US faces? If not, we could need some beards for US desert special forces:

http://tinyurl.com/5dkzgb

http://tinyurl.com/5s2ezg

http://tinyurl.com/5z5jjh

http://tinyurl.com/ywno92

[ChrisND]

Yes the Army and Marines draw from the same files.

[birdstrike]

Aww, that's a pity.

[ChrisND]

I am currently uploading the V 1.1 pack to The Repository as we speak, although I will hit my upload limit, so posting them won't be complete for 48 hours.

All of the skins come in Army and Marine versions.

[ChrisND]

[ChrisND]

Meade95 -

Just uploaded the black SOF to the Repository. They should be visible in a few hours.

[19Kyle72]

I don't know how you get such amazing screenshots, but they sure do sell your hard work WELL.

Awesome stuff.

Now, I have some questions regarding the real life accuracy of what SF are wearing today, and if someone would take the time to answer the questions it'd be greatly appreciated...

I remember a good number of times conversations coming up about how distrusted and despised the at-the-time new ACU and MARPAT uniforms were by SF. I read these postings back when I used to actively play Operation Flashpoint. At that time, all of the high-accuracy mods that were in development for SF units were free of any units wearing ACU or MARPAT, and whenever there was an inaccuracy in how a unit appeared, no matter how slight, it was brought up by community members "in the know" (active SF, or recently retired), and they usually supplied photos to clearly illustrate their critique.

None of these photos depicted any SF wearing the "latest" type of camouflage, which was surprising to me, since they routinely "test" in the field some of the latest and supposedly greatest technologies.

In fact, there were several times that these dedicated-to-every-single-detail mod developers "caved in" to the masses' endless requests to have ACU/MARPAT wearing SF variants made, and nearly every time they were released, someone "in the know" would give the variant a dressing down, in essence saying "we don't wear that sh*t."

Since adding another child to my already overwhelming schedule, I just don't have the time to follow this stuff as closely as I used to, so my questions are these:

(1) Have SF attitudes softened towards wearing ACU/MARPAT type uniforms? In other words, are they starting to wear them due to having confidence in the product?

(2) If they're still scorning them, why? Is it to help establish "plausible deniability" should they be observed, just "stubbornness" or are the older styles of camouflage more effective?

(3) Are you approaching your mod trying to capture the most authentic/accurate depiction of the gear that today's SF are wearing, or are you fictionalizing it to some degree?

Alright, that's it for now.

Keep up the great work!

Kyle

Nov.16, 2008

[ChrisND]

I don't know how you get such amazing screenshots, but they sure do sell your hard work WELL.

I have a specific "scenario" set up just for testing uniforms and posing screenshots. It has Army and Marines with every weapons system on buildings and on the ground within 50 meters of Syrians. I give some of them a move order, start the fight, then pause after 5-15 seconds to screen shot my poses.

Awesome stuff.

Thank you!

(3) Are you approaching your mod trying to capture the most authentic/accurate depiction of the gear that today's SF are wearing, or are you fictionalizing it to some degree?

With the incredibly varied gear they wear, it is impossible to do anything near approaching authentic for CMSF, considering that I have to work with a set 3D mesh. The helmets are authentic; in fact the velcro layouts are taken from pictures of their gear. There is some fudging in that they usually use a different type of NODS mount, and there are often other accessories such as straps and wires etc, but they don't look very satisfying being represented 2D so I left them out. Of course, they often don't wear just MICH helmets.

The vest/molle gear is the probably the biggest fudge. I am stuck with that vest because of the 3D shape of it. I have tried skinning other vests on, but it immediately looks wrong, especially since the 3D model depicts an Interceptor-like vest that opens from the front, while most of the more "high speed" vests don't. The MOLLE gear or one of a million-billion variants are often used, although the RACK configuration is wildly popular and I cannot depict that. One of the bigger omissions is a personal radio and drop sidearm holster. If I had the option of defining the gear, it would be to use a RACK setup with sidearm and radio added.

In a nutshell, it is perfectly plausible to find an SOF unit somewhere using almost the layout shown here. It wouldn't be very often, and there are some omissions that would be universal (no radio).