Any Interest in US Divisional Patches?

[mjkerner]

I'm doing them for myself, following on from Vein's 82nd and 101 AB patches. I will eventually have all US Divisions in ETO and MTO. It will be a couple of weeks or so until I'm finished, but in the next few days I will have all the Infantry Divs in Normandy, June-August 1944.

Let me know if there is interest.

Thanks.

mj

[Sgt Schultz]

2nd Armored please sir.

--

[mjkerner]

Armored will be done too, Sargeant!

[BloodyBucket]

I'd like to put in a vote for the 28th Infantry Division, if I may.

[Mord]

Hell yeah, man...that will go great with my portrait mod too! Do it up!

Mord.

[Broadsword56]

Definitely interested! Especially in the 29th ID "Blue & Gray" (along with the small patch on the front center of their helmets), the 35th "Santa Fe" and the 2nd "Indian Head" divisions.

[Splinty]

45th and 38th INF would be nice too. Anyway you could come up with some sergeant and corporal stripes?

[mjkerner]

Guys, all US Inf and armor patches in ETO and MTO will be done.

Splinty, the prob is that there are only 3 US uniforms (different color shades), and they go on all of the infantry. So If I put stripes on even only one, all pixeltruppen with that randomly-assigned uniform will get stripes. Short answer: No.

[Michael Emrys]

Short answer: No.

Pity, but there we are.

Michael

[BloodyBucket]

Uh, the Pixeltroopers took off the chevrons when they went in to combat. Snipers, you know.

That's my rationalization and I'm sticking to it, until BFC comes up with a separate uniform slot for every rank in the new patch that they are making with all that free time now that this game has made them unimaginably wealthy.

That's the ticket.

[mjkerner]

Hey BloodyBucket, something about your handle makes me think there's a link with it and your interest in the 28th Division...but I just can't quite put my finger on it.

[Splinty]

Guys, all US Inf and armor patches in ETO and MTO will be done.

Splinty, the prob is that there are only 3 US uniforms (different color shades), and they go on all of the infantry. So If I put stripes on even only one, all pixeltruppen with that randomly-assigned uniform will get stripes. Short answer: No.

Bummer, thanks anywho

[mjkerner]

Coming tonight or tomorrow...I need to write the read me, which might be awhile, since there are a lot of files to pack and explain for those not familiar with handling mods.

All US Infantry and Armor Divisions in Normandy June-August 1944, plus Glider Infantry, MTO Divisions in Operation Dragoon, uniform variety, helmet variety, and a surprise unit or two.

[They show up better in-game than in the pics.]

[Mord]

Damn, son, haven't you been a busy beaver. Sweet job, my man! Very cool looking! Can't wait.

Mord.

[Jaws]

Well done

[Splinty]

Looking great! Can't wait to feed my inner modslut once more!

[Romm]

i like this units.

[bruce90]

Great! Been waiting for these.

[mjkerner]

It's now uploaded at Greenas Jade's website: http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods

Sent to the Repository, but not up yet.

Here's the Read Me:

June 12, 2011

The Mod Pack

This mod pack provides divisional shoulder patches for all US infantry divisions, armored divisions, and two glider infantry regiments that participated in the Normandy campaign June - August ‘44, and the US infantry divisions (plus the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion--a personal favorite) and the 2nd Free French Armored Division from Italy that participated in Operation Dragoon (Southern France) in August ’44. I also threw in the 1st Armored Division from the MTO—in case I ever do an Italian textures/building mod. Also, there is a separate helmet mod and a US infantry uniform mod for adding variety to uniforms when you don’t use one of my divisional patches mods.

Once you unpack the mod using the RezExplode program from the Mod Tools that came with the game see the How To section below), you’ll find a Read Me, an Armor folder and an Infantry folder. Inside these you’ll find the various divisions and other units in separate folders. CMBN has uses three types of US Army uniform: tank crews, infantry, and airborne infantry. Each type of uniform has two or three uniforms of different color shades. I’ve messed with the coloration of the infantry and airborne infantry uniforms a bit, and added the shoulder patches for each unit in the mod, and where I had evidence (usually a contemporary picture—hey, one is good enough proof for me, because I like the way they look!) I added helmet patches. I didn’t make any changes to the armor uniform colors, I only added the patches.

In the words of that modder extraordinaire, Vein, I used a lot of “jiggary-pokery” to get the patches to look right. The 3D models in CMBN seem to do weird things to the size of patches placed on a rounded part of the model—certain areas near the shoulder and on the arm in particular, and around the curvature of the helmet. In many cases, although the shoulder patch and helmet patch appear to be the same size, one is more than twice as large as the other. I mention this only because you may think they don’t look right or don’t look to be the right size. They look good to me, but YMMV. However, I welcome constructive criticism—as long as it is done in a friendly way. ;-)

The Mod Structure

Okay, now the somewhat confusing part. Each mod is in a separate folder—1st Div, 2nd Armored, 327/101 Airborne, etc. Inside each folder are several color variations of uniforms and several varieties of helmets—different colors and some with netting and some without it. PLEASE NOTE THAT EACH UNIT FOLDER IS A SELF-CONTAINED MOD. This means that all you have to do after you RezExplode the downloaded mod pack is pick which unit you want to show up in your game and drop it into your “z” folder. If you don’t already have one, add a new subfolder in the Battlefront\Combat Mission Battle for Normandy\Data folder, name it “z” (without the quotes), and there you have it. That is where the unit mod (and all other mods you use) goes.

This is important, due to the nature of the CMBN file naming convention: You can have one division/unit mod of each type—one infantry, one armor, and one airborne infantry unit mod in the z folder at the same time. But you can’t have two or more…say the 1st Infantry and the 45th Infantry…only one will show up…the highest numbered one. So try to remember that when you want to use a different unit, take the old one out of the z folder first.

The 509th PIB uses the airborne infantry type uniform, so it will conflict with Vein’s 82nd/101st AB mods, so you’ll have to take his out if you want to use the 509th.

Also, in case you are wondering, the 325th/82nd and 327th/101st regiments were glider infantry, and they use the infantry uniform simply because that is what they wore in RL.

If you don’t want to use a shoulder patch mod, but want to use either my OD Dark uniform mod and/or my helmet variety mod, you can put either or both in the z folder---they will not conflict with each other. They will conflict with the patched unit mods, though.

The Uniforms

Each infantry and airborne infantry unit has at least 3 uniforms of different shades, and the glider infantry units have 8 different ones each. All patched units mods except the armor units use at least 2 different helmets—one netted and one not. Some have more. I even changed the legging colors on some. The armored divisions and the independent armored battalion unit mods only have patches added to the two stock uniforms that shipped with the game…I didn’t make any other uniforms for these.

The “OD Dark Uniform” mod has 8 different uniform shades based on the brownish-drab OD rather than the greenish-drab OD uniform that shipped with the game. I have always preferred that look—my late father was a dogface Pacific combat veteran, and always called it “OD Baby**** Brown,” at which as kids, my brothers I laughed every time. Rest in Peace, Dad. I only used these uniforms in the glider infantry mods, simply because I made the uniforms after I had completed all the infantry divisions, but before I decided to add the 325th and the 327th. I will be making another mod using OD Dark on the infantry divisions soon.

The Units

Here are the modded units in this mod pack:

US Infantry Divisions

1st; 2nd; 3rd; 4th; 5th; 8th; 9th; 28th; 29th; 30th; 34th, 35th; 36th; 45th; 79th; 80th; 83rd; and 90th.

The 3rd, 36th, and 45th were veterans from the MTO that invaded Southern France in Operation Dragoon. The 34th Infantry Division I included mainly just because I like the patch, and have an avid interest in the Italian Campaign, so what the hell. Besides, I intend trying to make an Italian Campaign Mod—I hopefully can steal a lot of textures and stuff from CMSF!

Other Infantry

I included the 325/82nd and 327/101st regiments because I wanted to fill out Veins modded airborne divisions. I will be adding the other regimental helmet markings for the 101st, and maybe those for the 505th and 504th/82nd, in the next mod pack. A big shout out to Vein for letting me use his shoulder flag. Works great, Vein!

The 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion was part of Operation Dragoon, and was attached to the 101st in December ’44. Please note I put the “Gingerbread Man” patch on the left breast pocket—a lot of jiggary-pokery went on there, I can tell you—even though it appears to have been worn on their Ike jackets. They sport the 5th Army patch on the left shoulder of their jumpsuits, which they used in Italy…because it looks neat to me. I’ll be adding the 550th and 551st PIB, the 17th AB Division and all the other US divisions that went into action September-December ’44 in a later mod pack.

US Armor Divisions

These only have patches added to the two stock uniforms. I added the 743rd Independent Tank Battalion to represent all the independent tank units. There were just too many of them to bother with, but the patch is small enough that the number is hard to read anyway, so it works as a stand-in for any of the others (for me at least).

Historical Accuracy

Hmmmm. Well, not everyone in every unit wore their patches, I’m sure, especially with so many replacements from the Repple Depple rotating through the units in Normandy. There’s plenty of discussion on the Net as to if certain units painted their emblems on their helmets, or where on their helmets, and when they started to do so or, for that matter, if they even wore the shoulder patch. For example, I have the 504th and 505th PIR helmet markings made up, but it appears they were worn later in ’44 or early ‘45. Same holds true for others, but again, what the heck. It’s only a game and they are fun to use, so these will be in the next pack as well. If you disagree, you don’t have to use them, of course.

How To Unpack The Mod And Load It Into Your Game

Step 1: Download the mod to your desktop or wherever you keep your other mods when they are not being used in the game.

Step 2: Unzip the file.

Step 3: Take the .brz file and put it in the “input” folder found in the RezExplode folder in the Mod Tools Folder, and double-click “RezExplode.exe”. This will take a few minutes.

Step 4: When the “exploded” folder appears, open it and you’ll find the Read Me and two folders marked “Armor” and “Infantry. Inside each you’ll find the unit folders, and in the Infantry folder, you’ll also find the “Helmet Variety” and the “OD DarkUniform” folders. Did I mention that EACH UNIT FOLDER IS A SELF-CONTAINED MOD?

Step 5: Put all the unit and other folders in that place where you put all the mods that aren’t being used in the game.

Step 6: Choose only one unit file each type--armor, infantry and/or airborne infantry unit mods (remember, Glider Infantry is “Infantry”, not “Airborne Infantry”), and place it/them in the z folder inside the game’s Data folder. Did I mention that EACH UNIT FOLDER IS A SELF-CONTAINED MOD?

Step 7: Fire up the game—if you try to load any mods while the game is running, they won’t appear until you close out and fire the game up again.

Step 8: Be overcome with the delirious joy of CMBN, with added wonderment through mods!

Step 9: Please credit me if you use these mods as bases for other mods.

Thanks to Vein for his great mods, for allowing me to use his shoulder flag, and for the term “jiggery-pokery”, and Mord for being one of the most enthusiastic commentators on the forum, for his superb mods in CMSF, and especially his new voice mod for CMBN.

mjk

[BloodyBucket]

Great stuff!

I may well be missing something, but the version at GreenAsJade's site only has a couple of infantry division folders, and one armored division. Is that correct?

Oh, the DLd zip file is 28.5 megs. Is that correct?

[mjkerner]

Bloody bucket, no, that's not right. There should be two folders when you explode it, one armor & one infantry. Inside should be all the respective divisions. I had trouble uploading, though...it never completed (I think the picture was too big.) I closed up and started over and everything was fine.

Dang, it must be screwed up. When I unzip and explode the .brz file from my own comp files, it works fine. I'll go and download it from GaJ's site and see what happens.

[mjkerner]

Yup, it's fecked up the kazoo. I deleted it and will upload again...hopefully before my Granddaughter's ball ghame.

Sorry everyone, Murphy's Law always gets me! :mad:

Delete it from your files.

[BloodyBucket]

No problems, mate!

[mjkerner]

Okay, it's successfully uploaded at Gaj's CMMOD's site. I downloaded the zip from there and it has all the folders and subfolders. I didn't use a .brz file this time...there's no need to since you can't just plop it into the z file as is anyway--automatic internal conflicts would ensue. So I changed the Read Me accordingly, and the file is now called version 1.1 just to distinguish it from the first one. Of course, the zip downloaded slower.

[Mord]

Excellent. Gonna give it a spin later on. Nice work. LOL and don't feel bad I have screwed up more mods than anybody here...I think I have had about three upload without me messing something up!

Mord.