Kursk mod

Philippe · 08-26-2010, 06:19 AM,

There's going to be another round of updates to my mods as a result of work being done on the soon-to-be-released Normandy.

Normandy has turned out to be surprisingly complicated despite the fact that I've been working on it the longest. The problem may be that it came very early in the series, and a lot of things that one takes for granted (visually) hadn't been fully developed. Or sumfink. It will probably be done by the end of next week.

The silver lining is that a lot of basic issues got re-examined, and this turned up a few overlooked features in one or two mods that had been produced but never released. This round of updates will take care of that.

And what is going to trigger the new round of releases is a new method for representing damage: a red circle with a white horizontal line (a 'do not enter' traffic sign) instead of a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark (a computer 'pay attention' sign). I'm not really comfortable with using signs and symbols peculiar to the end of the 20th century for early and mid-twentieth century environments, so I think the traffic signs are a good solution. I had tried various other ways of representing mayhem, destruction, and collateral damage, and found everything I tried to use either visually unsatisfying or too obscure to comprehend at a glance. The yellow triangle has a lot going for it visually, but the circular red sign next to knocked down bridges and torn up track is eye-catching without being intrusive (I hope) and fairly self-explanatory. Their one drawback (which may not be a drawback) is that they don't overwrite trees and buildings and don't stand out strongly in forests and cities.

Of course, after saying all of that about the new symbols, I don't seem to have any screenshots of the first mod that will get updated with them. They'll be obvious in Budapest, but that's probably going to be the fourth East Front update. So untill I get a little further into the series of updates you'll have to use your imagination. I'm also thinking of including a set of roll-back map graphics (six bitmaps) just in case people hate my signs and want to go back to yellow triangles.

While I don't have any screenshots of the new signs ready at hand, I do have a couple of images of Kursk resized for the Blitz (I hope). This should show the new East front buildings that I've been phasing in for the last few updates.

[Image: blitzvnk01.jpg]

You can see more of this in earlier versions by going here:

http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.p...igns-Kursk

The best place to see what I'm working in is GameSquad forum -- they don't resize screenshots and I've managed to keep the posts there up to date. The posts also include directions on how to install my mods, and links to the latest version of my mod along with the latest version of the mods that my mods build on.

Philippe · 08-27-2010, 03:14 AM,

All the Panzer Campaign games that I've done so far have just gotten a new update. I've sent the files off to Australia and you'll be seeing postings in Gamesquad and the Wargamer as I update the links. In the meantime, if you try to download something and the link doesn't work, that means that the new versions are up but I either don't know about it or haven't gotten around to updating the links. What you might want to try in that case is to manually enter a slightly different version of what you see into the command line, e.g. blah-blah-blahTheWhateverModV1.5 instead of blah-blah-blahTheWhateverModV1.4.

What's getting updated is Kursk, Minsk, Stalingrad, Budapest, Moscow, Tobruk, and Alamein/Compass. I took a long hard look at France:1914 and decided that it belongs to a different series, and though there are a few things that I might consider changing, they would require new inputs of thought and judgement. So although I'm not feeling any more hamfisted than usual, changes to France:1914 would require a lighter and subtler touch than I'm up to giving it at the moment. And if you've never seen it, go to the Panzer Campaigns section of the Gamesquad forum and look for La Fin de la Belle Epoque.

I've hived off a few screenshots from the ones that I'm making for the announcements of the updates in the other forums. These show the 'do not enter' damage signs in action. They also show a few glitches that have been corrected in my master copies, and if they don't show up in the next round of updates, they'll show up in the round after that.

I've decided to go with the red signs as a permanent feature. I've included a set of yellow sign roll-back textures in this round of upgrades, but I don't plan to leave the roll-backs in as a permanent feature (they take up too much space). In the meantime, the red signs are really hard to test, so if you come across any anomalies that I'm not aware of (which is easy because I don't have time to actually play these games right now, and when you're playing you notice if something works or not) please let me know about them -- name of game, name of scenario, hex co-ordinates (those two little numbers in the lower right-hand corner of your screen).

[Image: blitzvns01.jpg]

P.Ako · 08-27-2010, 07:57 AM,

What does these mod add appart from new unit's graphics?

Philippe · (This post was last modified: 08-27-2010, 12:47 PM by Philippe.)

I've modded upwards of eighty per cent of what you see on the screen. But it's not immediately obvious because the terrain is done in the style of Jison's MapMod, and the unit images are modified Volcano Man. I'm more interested in perfecting the form than in creating my own style.

So what do you get besides repainted counters?

Parchment-textured clear terrain for normal, soft, mud, and snow, both zoomed in and zoomed out (different versions for Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and North Africa). Don't try this at home, the color selection will make you go blind, the multiple layering will burn out your Photoshop skills, and when you finally get around to assembling the darned thing it's bound to give you Karpel Tunnel.

(Translation: I love Jison's MapMod but I hate staring at a hexgrid all the time. I couldn't strip the hex outlines out of his mod, so I made my own textures. While I was at it I made a set for zoomed-out 2D as well).

Repaint of almost all of the terrain features (zoomed in and zoomed out). Repaint varies according to game and theater.

Various roads and trails repainted (mostly zoomed out but I'm starting to lose track).

Hexsides have been pretty much left alone. There may be a few touch-ups in the future.

Redesign of the symbols on the images in the unit boxes. No symbol (engineer, assault, bicycle, etc.) will ever overlap any other symbol.

Vehicles have been shifted as much as possible without making things look awkward to avoid overlapping either the spotted binoculars or the nationality symbol.

Vehicles with seasonally inappropriate camouflage have been replaced by seasonally correct ones (i.e. no leafy foliage in winter).

Every now and again I replace a figure or a vehicle if I think I can come up with a better one without disrupting the process. If you've installed one of my mods you'll notice that textures that I have worked on are the ones with dark green backgrounds. Sometimes that can mean a new figure, sometimes that can mean a repainted old figure, and sometimes that means I had to make the bitmap bigger and reposition the image to avoid collisions with the national symbols or the spotting binoculars.

The other thing I'm doing, wherever it makes sense and works visually, is to put nationality symbols directly on the unit image. This can range from adding a nationality symbol to an HQ with an officer's image (this just makes it look like the other units of its nationality), to adding naval flags to warships, to adding specific unit or nationality symbols to units that don't get their own separate nationality from the program. This happens a lot in the North African games: if you pay attention you'll notice units sporting flags from New Zealand, Australia, India, and Palestine.

To the extent that the program allows, units will not appear in summer wearing winter camouflage.

Dunkelgelb has been banished from scenarios prior to February 1943. This required quite a bit of repainting of units. Poke around in Stalingrad and you'll see what I mean. It's easier to go from gelb to grau and grey artillery late in the war doesn't bother me that much (even though it's wrong). At some point I'll sit down with Kursk and start repainting all the artillery, and then let it flow through the other mods. It's on my list of things to do, just not at the top of it.

Winter whitewash camo has been added to vehicles where appropriate. In the case of Stalingrad this meant two extra duplicate sets of alternate units.

Map symbols have been partially reworked. It's more apparent in France:1914 where there are several new graphic icons that never appeared before. The main event in the symbols bitmap is that fortification items like mines, barbed wire, and trenches no longer have their own counters: they're printed directly on the map. Apart from that, a few symbols got reworked (e.g. the targeting symbol), a few had extra lines added to the Nato symbols to make them more legible.

Not many people use them, but I did some extensive repair work on the graphic unit icons. My take on what happened is that about ten years ago, when they were first done, someone was either trying to show off newly acquired Photoshop skills or looking for a quick and easy was to look different from Talonsoft (or their successors and/or assigns). Anyway, the graphic icons were run through the directional lighting filter, which isn't really a good idea when you're dealing with stick figures on a small flat surface. Apart from the HQ flag (which I developed for France: 1914 based on my approach for HQ symbols in my Napoleonics mods) not much is different except for some extensive recoloring. Not many people use this feature, but I thought of it because I used to use it in the V for Victory series. If you've never tried it, it isn't as crisp looking as the Nato symbols (which pre-date Nato, by the way), but it does convey a little more information once you learn how to read it.

The 3D units have been recolored to more appropriate colors. German infantry is always grey, except in North Africa. German vehicles follow the dunkelgrau/dunkelgelb convention, and stop being grey in the winter of '42/'43. Russians are Russian uniform color, and everyone is in desert colors in North Africa.

The 3D counters have been repainted, and the bases of the 3D units have been repainted, but the most apparent change is the 3D victory location symbol, which is now a national flag, except for a white cut-out area in the center which makes room for the point value. I may eventually redo the 3D terrain (aka grass) but I intend to finish the 2D terrain in all the games first.

I toss in cover art from time to time, and if you poke around in the info boxes you'll start to see blankbox art that isn't quite what you thought you'd seen elsewhere. But I'm going easy on that because this isn't an artmod (like my Napoleonics). But one thing that you won't find anywhere else (though you may have seen things like it before), is my one-size-fits-all unitbox, made from a detail of an actual military map from 1941.

I'm sure there are lots of other things I've made small changes to, but the main thing is to realize that every single change has been made very slowly and in an attempt to coordinate with everything else that is going on in the mod. I've spent an absurd amount of time working on getting the colors of everything exactly right in relation to everything else (much to the amusement of my painter/photographer girlfriend -- we actually walk down the street and discuss what colors things are). The main thing I've done is try to balance the colors against each other -- and that shows up most in the North Africa mods. The other thing I've tried to do is to do everything in a way that promotes the illusion that you aren't looking at anything different from what you've seen before. It's an illusion. I positioned, repositioned, and recolored most of the trees several times.

Philippe · (This post was last modified: 09-09-2010, 02:12 AM by Philippe.)

**Mr Grumpy** · 08-27-2010, 04:08 PM,

"I love Jison's MapMod but I hate staring at a hexgrid all the time."

You don't have the hexgrid on with Jison's Mod, in the instructions it tells you to turn the hexgrid off. ;)

Jison · 08-27-2010, 11:39 PM,

Yes Foul, you are correct - glad someone actually read the instructions. Big Grin

Perhaps I'm old school and with a boardgame heritage, but I think a hexgrid, if made subtle and non-intrusive, actually enhances the visuals of a wargame.
Anyway, here is how it works in MapMod - the first picture below shows MapMod with the original hexgrid on, and the second picture shows how it looks if you turn the same hexgrid off.

[Image: interface_hexgrid_10.png]

Of course, this means that in MapMod there is no way to get rid of the grid completely, but I doubt people would want to play these games without any form of visible grid anyway.

Sorry Phillipe, didn't mean to hijack your thread - I'm gonna shut up now! ;)

Jison

**Mr Grumpy** · 08-28-2010, 01:14 AM,

A subtle but effective change i think. ;)

Lowlander · (This post was last modified: 08-28-2010, 08:05 PM by Lowlander.)

France 1914.JPG (Size: 408.65 KB / Downloads: 20) We all have different tastes and be thankful for that.
Maybe we could have a night out in the town I prefer blondes and redheads , hopefully you guy's would'nt cramp my style.
Here is what I like a mix and match from six different sources.
Notice how the elevations stand out.
Notice how the rivers and canals stand out.
Notice how the main roads thro cities and towns stand out.
Yeah most of the guys playing these games ain't gett'in any younger and need clear concise map info.

Philippe · (This post was last modified: 08-28-2010, 05:47 AM by Philippe.)

I'm getting pretty long in the tooth myself, but tend to prefer groping around in the dark (if it's aesthetically pleasing).

If you really need to make the contours stand out, hit the contour switch. If that doesn't do it, chances are you need some conceptual help, which I usually get by dropping into 3D. Provided, of course, that the ugly graphics don't make you faint. If you think about it, most units have ranges of one or two hexes at most, so the contours aren't really an issue. What's more important is whether a unit is a qualified artillery spotter for a given gun and whether he can see the target. Which really means playing around with the 'w' switch or the highlight target item in the view menu.

Teleporting modern super highways via time machine has always seemed too anachronistic for me. An alternative, if you aren't too fussy about how things look, is to substitute violent colors for primary and secondary roads. That will make them stand out even in my cities which are a bit denser and more crowded than Jison's.

At one point I experimented with red primary roads, and they worked quite well, even with my failing eyesight. I think I got the idea from an old SPI boardgame about Smolensk. I hated the red roads then, and I'm not too fond of them now, but they aren't hard to make.

Go into Photoshop and replace whatever the base color for the road you want to change with white (or whatever you use as a transparent color). [Note: this can also be done in Paint but it's a lot more labor-intensive]. Then layer it over a field of a color that you're pretty sure will stick out like a sore thumb. When you start playing around with reds and violets small paths will become clearly marked, even in the most congested warrens.

If I ever decide to mod one of the Modern Campaigns I'll probably do something like this. But it just looks too out of place in the early and mid-twentieth century. (Even so, the red roads were pretty tempting -- give it a try sometime, you may find that you like it).

Having said all that, towns and cities are supposed to be tank traps and you're supposed to get lost and confused in them.