New Mod: Universal Beach Kit

[birdstrike]

Tired of playing your amphibious assault maps in the middle of the Syrian desert?

For those who'd like a more appropriate landscape, I created a little beach mod:

The mod should work with all the existing amphibious scenarios, including Pete Weneman's awesome From the Halls of Montezuma map, and those included in the USMC module (Mark Ezra's Day at the Beach and MikeyD's To the Shores of Tripoli - which are also awesome, of course )

The background mountains, marsh and ground textures are replaced by new and modified textures to create the impression of a coastline and the amphibious fleet on the horizon:

The UBK also includes various options and features to pick from:

- cyan or dark blue water textures

- light green or dark green background mountains

- western horizon textures with or without ships

- optional mud2shallowwater textures

- and optional Mk45 naval gun icons for US M777 and Syrian D30 artillery - inspired by Scipio's excellent Unit Silhouettes Mod.

However before you're getting too excited about this, there are a couple of drawbacks:

- The mod as is, will only simulate the western coastline (perhaps not a big problem, with the Mediterranean being the western coast of Syria and all...)

- The backdrop ground tiles (below the map) use the same texture as the standard ground dirt tile on lower resolutions (ground dirt.bmp). The mod replaces this ground dirt.bmp with a new one which looks like water. As a result, if you are using 3D Texture settings other than Better or Best, all dirt ground areas on all maps will look like water.

SOLUTION: Set the 3D texture settings in the game options to better or best.

- the backdrop sea tiles stretch out to the mountains, making the maps look like an island.

- there are two thin, black, vertical lines visible on the NW and SW horizon, where two background textures are supposed to meet. This is the result of me using an alpha channel instead of a solid texture.

- similar to the above issue, for the NE and SE horizon, at the edges where two mountain textures meet, a thin line of the blue shines through. I have no idea why this is happening - I tried to get rid of it, but to no avail.

If you think you can live with these issues, the mod can be found at the Battlefront Repository: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=showdown&id=139

[theFightingSeabee]

That is flippin cool.

[CogNative]

Amphibious Assault - theFightingSeabee - Why of course folks suited for both land and water operations are gonna get a kick out of this mod:D

Got your mod and look fwd to testing your painted salamander mod tonight. It looks amazing! Thanks birdstrike.

[handihoc]

Wow!

.. .......

[birdstrike]

Thanks all. Much appreciated.

Cog,

I hope "painted Salamander" refers to one of my uniform mods.

[CogNative]

Yes, The uniform mods not Ensatina eschscholtzi.

Thanks for your fine looking Universal Beach Kit water mod birdstrike.

It looks fine. Just need to fire up a scenario in it soon.

[ChrisND]

Yes, The uniform mods not Ensatina eschscholtzi.

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I paint salamanders all the time. The tricky part is to get them to stop wriggling.

[birdstrike]

I don't know but that sounds kind of naughty.

[CogNative]

Disobedient; Badly Behaved... but Not "Naughty."

I suspect there are many Wayward Warrior salamander sagas... especially Navy... they got big boats and all.

We were discussing amphibious assault:cool:

[birdstrike]

Um, yes. To get the thread back on topic...

I forgot to mention,

I used a higher resolution background for the W horizon with the ships, to make them look less blurred. However, if anyone notices framerate problems which could be related to this, please tell me.