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Wehrmacht uniforms @1944


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Surely feldgrau tunic was standard for the Wehrmacht units but that is not my point. The point is that Battlefront will be making game models for German soldiers in smocks anyway when they will be doing the SS troops (or so I hope) - and I am wondering if it would be much efort to retrofit those models into the main game for a few Heer units like snipers, recon teams and forward observers.

Currently there is no code to have the MODEL vary for a soldier, only the textures, equipment, and headgear. To add a camouflage smock to the current game I would have to specifically assign a camouflage smock model to a specific type of soldier. And that soldier, wherever he appears on the game, would have a camouflage smock 100% of the time. Since combat units often have multiple soldiers of the same type that would mean there would be either hardly any smocks (because I chose rarely seen soldiers), would always bee the same one soldier (like a Squad Leader), or would show up far more frequently than it should (like a standard Rifleman).

We'll see how things go with the Commonwealth Module.

And snipers/recon did wear camouflage often, even though the average solder wore field grey.

Correct.

Steve

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Dunno why the guy on the left, who looks more fit for combat (Y-straps, gasmask, grenades, canteen) is more ready for combat than the others.

Yeah, I noticed the potato mashers too. Probably the impressionability of youth, thinking that it's all very cool. Meanwhile his companions just think all the gear is a burden.

Some things never change. :)

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That was my one, and only, guess! Dude on the left thinks he is being cool, dudes on the right are being practical. Reminds me of the young girls I see out wearing skirts and boys with T-shirts when it is below freezing. We're all young and dumb once, and hopefully because we grew up and not because we were found frozen to death in a ditch somewhere halfway home from Billy's house.

:)

Steve

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To answer the slightly off-topic question:

PLEASE keep balconies mercifully few in number.

Nobody's invading Paris the initial release. :) Balconied buildings appear to be few and far between in the Normandy area so map designers aren't exactly bending over backwards to place them into the game, so far. As a matter of fact, in the last two CMSF modules balconies were mostly placed on buildings by cruel designers to deliberately mess with the player! Chuckle chuckle. ;):D

Enough of that, back to the topic at hand.

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In playtesting on my Ramadi map, I've found balconies are actually quite useful, since they're the (second*) best way to get defilade up the narrow wall-lined streets and fields of fire to hit them are often limited. A great place for small units like RPG gunners and snipers.

* best way is to be at a T-junction.

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Vincere,

Surely nobody is going argue that this is a combat picture? To me this looks like a garrison unit somewhere. Only one of them has a helmet with him. And without the Y-straps I bet there's nothing more than a bayonet and possibly an empty breadbag on his back. No gasmask cans either. Dunno why the guy on the left, who looks more fit for combat (Y-straps, gasmask, grenades, canteen) is more ready for combat than the others.

Yes, leather shortages became more and more of a problem as the war went on. By cutting the boots down to the ankle they saved probably 60% of the finished leather used on jackboots. The rest could be made up with canvas, which could be made from a variety of materials.

Steve

Cheers Steve. Good spot on the FNGs. :) That said, I wonder if the regs had any fashion trends like we sometimes see today.

I hated ankle boots. Took the British Army until after the pletiful trenchfoot in the Falklands to move to a high leg combat boot- so I wondered why they Germans moved to them. I'd guess some of the vets would have different boots; but I don't know what was available.

I was thinking it illogoical for the infantry to ditch the Y straps. They help so much with the weight.

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Personally, I'm a fan of H-straps. This negates the need for hooks built into the jacket to stabilize the belt. And I can't think of any modern force that uses Y-straps any more, probably for that very reason.

The ankle boots were the first boots issued to post-war Bundeswehr. Probably to mitigate the comparison with their jackbooted predecessors. But why they went with ankle boots and gaiters is beyond me. Why not full hight lace up boots? Crazy. And they weren't alone, as many other Europeans also used the British style ankle boots and gaiters.

Soon after the BW got their ankle boots, which were unpopular, they got a slightly modified jackboot in its place. This was the standard combat boot until the middle 1960s. At that point they finally got a full lace up boot and the jackboots were moved over to formal occasions such as swearing in ceremony.

Steve

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The first thing I thought when seeing the german models in CMBN was "Airfix".

I can live with that, I thought they looked like that when I was a kid. I grew up with british and american war flicks from the fifties and sixties when hordes of cellulose-germans sporting gloss "SS" decals on their helmets (even though they have WH uniforms) get cut down.

But when the SS guys are in, and without smocks (maybe only erbsenmuster?) I'll be disappointed.

Seems like a lot of effort went in to the Amis, not so much the germans.

In the end it's just a game. When it is finished and released I will consider buying it based on user feedback.

I too collect uniforms. :)

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We have put far more effort into the Germans in CM:BN than the Americans. It's just you haven't seen much of that work yet :D

And yes, of course the SS and FJ will have camouflage uniforms. This is for the same reason the Heer soldiers don't. And that is we wish to portray the common appearance. With Waffen SS and FJ it was a camouflage uniform of some sort, for Heer it wasn't.

Steve

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Thanks, brah! :D

Truth be told, the color of the (I suspect) HBT "Reed Green" Drillich does not bother me.

If the tanks were all Panzergrau, like in soooo many RTS games, I'd not be so happy.

Just an FYI:

I once wore the Reed Green uniform while reenacting in the winter. -15 Celcius. Never again. And the ankle boots did not help.

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Currently there is no code to have the MODEL vary for a soldier, only the textures, equipment, and headgear. To add a camouflage smock to the current game I would have to specifically assign a camouflage smock model to a specific type of soldier. And that soldier, wherever he appears on the game, would have a camouflage smock 100% of the time. Since combat units often have multiple soldiers of the same type that would mean there would be either hardly any smocks (because I chose rarely seen soldiers), would always bee the same one soldier (like a Squad Leader), or would show up far more frequently than it should (like a standard Rifleman).

We'll see how things go with the Commonwealth Module.

Correct.

Steve

Are you sure there's no way to randomize the models? In my US army HD mod I mixed both the USMC and US Army models on the US army side, so that some would have goggles. So please correct me if I'm wrong (since I was doing it in as very back door way), but you should be able to randomize infantry models if it still works the same way in CMN. I just gave them them all the name of the US army model, adjusted the textures referenced accordingly and did that numerical naming scheme. All it needs is an efficient way to change frequency (at the moment you need multiple copies of a model/texture to influence frequency).

US Army model next to Marine model

th_CMShockForce2010-09-0313-08-37-29.jpg

maybe you could make a heer "recon/sniper" model name and say have one smock and one regular model under that name so that recon/snipers get a 50/50 shot of a smock?

Of course ignore all this if the new gear system or such has made this impossible.

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As I said, the headgear can be varied. The textures on the Soldiers' models can be varied. What can't be varied at present is the model of the soldier itself. I know this because I'm the one that assigns the models to the TO&E :D I don't think there is any big problem coding the game to work that way, but Charles is concerned about overhead.

Steve

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As I said, the headgear can be varied. The textures on the Soldiers' models can be varied. What can't be varied at present is the model of the soldier itself. I know this because I'm the one that assigns the models to the TO&E :D I don't think there is any big problem coding the game to work that way, but Charles is concerned about overhead.

Steve

Perhaps this screenshot will better illustrate it in action. At least in CMSF/CMA there IS code to vary infantry models. Unless Charles hid it away or something, I'd bet it's still floating around in CMN :D . I won't bother you about it again. I wouldn't think there'd be much overhead to adding one or two new models in the mix, CMA does it just fine with the mujahideen models.

th_CMAfghanistan2011-01-1121-32-11-77.jpg

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Ryujin,

heh... I stand corrected! Sometimes my brain remembers things that were true in 2007 but not true after. The funny thing is if I remember correctly I was the one that pushed hard to have this behavior added for the Syrian UNCONs so they didn't look all the same. And yes, this was used extensively in CM:A as well. Duh!

Well, then it is just a matter of making a new model and texture set, then having Charles make some code to swap things around reasonably. We have ruled this out for CM:BN's initial release already because we don't have a model and adding one is quite a bit of work. But we will be putting it in eventually since the Waffen SS guys require the same type of smock.

Steve

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Ryujin,

heh... I stand corrected! Sometimes my brain remembers things that were true in 2007 but not true after. The funny thing is if I remember correctly I was the one that pushed hard to have this behavior added for the Syrian UNCONs so they didn't look all the same. And yes, this was used extensively in CM:A as well. Duh!

Well, then it is just a matter of making a new model and texture set, then having Charles make some code to swap things around reasonably. We have ruled this out for CM:BN's initial release already because we don't have a model and adding one is quite a bit of work. But we will be putting it in eventually since the Waffen SS guys require the same type of smock.

Steve

Sounds good!

(Don't worry, I forget about and even recode stuff all the time. I document stuff, I just never read it :D )

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