Coming Soon....

[Strela]

David, the vehicles look great, an excellent job!

One very minor observation is when viewing at normal scale when a unit has 10+ vehicles and is at 100% strength the second bracket (behind the 100%) runs into the "M" of morale or that is how it views on my PC.

When there is 9 or less vehicles there is no issue and I guess it will be the same when the unit strength drops to 99% or less or both!!

Hi,

Ignore that! This an artiface from the PC (a laptop) which has the font setting set to large. I didn't notice that until after I posted these.

On my home desktop they are fine (which has the default font size).

David

[Mr Grumpy]

David, the vehicles look great, an excellent job!

One very minor observation is when viewing at normal scale when a unit has 10+ vehicles and is at 100% strength the second bracket (behind the 100%) runs into the "M" of morale or that is how it views on my PC.

When there is 9 or less vehicles there is no issue and I guess it will be the same when the unit strength drops to 99% or less or both!!

Hi,

Ignore that! This an artiface from the PC (a laptop) which has the font setting set to large. I didn't notice that until after I posted these.

On my home desktop they are fine (which has the default font size).

David

OK sounds good.

[Strela]

The Aerosleigh Bn with morale of D, thats bull just the cool factor of being in a Aerosleigh Bn should give you a B.

Aaron,

I SO agree with you. You'd get all the chicks if you turned up in an aerosleigh.... i'm just not certain I want to be in one when the shooting starts!

David

[Xaver]

Good job, images looks great, when i see the guards infantry unit my dirty mind moves here



Grenade launch, new olimpic discipline

I like in vehicles the new BT and T-26 images, for me both specially BT where the Achilles heel in art for 41-42 PzC titles.

Well, my coffe pause is over i return to

[Strela]

Hooray, it's Friday afternoon here (in Singapore!).

So before I open a bottle of red to celebrate the weekend , I though I'd put up a few more teaser shots for you.

Firstly, what time I have this weekend will be going into Panzer Battles 2, so this will be it for PzC for the moment.....

As mentioned by ComradeP we have had an improvement in the terrain 'look' with the latest Panzer Battles Kursk release. It's important to understand that Panzer Campaigns works the 'same' but 'different' to Panzer Battles. Panzer Battles has a natural sized hex that is 74 pixels wide. This scales down to a 37 & 18 pixel wide hex. Normally at these 'zoom out' levels we just take the largest hex and resize it. Panzer Campaigns uses an earlier zoom methodology. The 37 pixel hex is the natural sized hex and that resolution is doubled to get 74 pixel hex. This means that the zoomed hex in Panzer campaigns will never look as 'good' as the higher 'natural resolution' hex in Panzer Battles due to smaller number of pixels used in the source graphic.

That said the results are still pretty good. Maybe one day John Tiller will back implement the Panzer Battles zoom system into Panzer campaigns.


So here is a first shot at the standard (37 pixel) zoom level. Caveat - this is all work in process. You'll notice some big changes here. This is an attempt to get a more winter like look. Note the following; Snow covered trees, the frozen river, new transport routes; rail, primary & secondary roads as well as a first attempt to integrate fortifications onto the map (the little yellow 'T' is for trench).

You can also see the larger counters lifted from Panzer Battles and a special thank you to Jison for allowing me to use his Nato symbols at all zoom levels.





Here is the same screen capture but using the 'default' or 'summer' look for trees and frozen river;





Here is the zoomed in view with the winterized details. Overall, its not too bad but not quite up to Panzer Battles standard;





And the equivalent view with the default look;





Moving to the highest zoom out we see the following with the winterized features. Jison's icon's shine compared to default at this zoom;





With the default features;





And as a point of comparison the non snow view of the same shot. The contours show up better here and that is maybe something to be experimented with on the snow maps;




With the previous shot, we move onto the summer terrain. I've essentially used Panzer Battles as a starting point, but rather than use their resized graphics at the 37 pixel level, I have rescanned in the terrain textures. this makes a big difference in clarity, particularly when doubling for zoom in.

This shot is the Oka River valley near Kaluga at maximum zoom;





Here is a shot in the same area at the natural (middle) zoom level. The river valley, transport routes and contours are all very obvious;





And again at maximum zoom out;





Again a reminder these are all very much work in process. I'm trying a range of different techniques and I don't know where we will finish up. I'm hopeful that John may do a some coding for us and automatically switch to wintery features (trees, frozen rivers etc) when snow/frozen is selected. Currently the process requires a few files to be replaced manually.

A final caveat, an (official) graphical upgrade like this is at the discretion of the designer. The fact I am doing this for the two games I have release in the PzC series does not mean that other titles will be also bought up to this standard. The good news is that the terrain graphics as shown here will work with any JTS (not HPS) released PzC title.

Have a great weekend all!

David

[Ricky B]

HI David,

Like the look of what you are looking for. One comment, from my laptop's view. When I looked at the snow vs summer of the same area, it seemed like the summer shows the contours better, as you say, but only for terrain sloping down toward the north. For terrain sloping down to the south, I can't see the contours in the summer shots at all while the snow shots showed that setup quite well. It makes me wonder if there is a difference in the contour colors that lead to this, or if it is just an imaging issue.

Thanks for the shots!
Rick

[ComradeP]

The terrain sloping down to the north has white hexsides, whilst the terrain sloping down to the south has brownish hexsides that blend in with the terrain. As if you're looking at the uncoloured side of a terrain tile that is on top of another one in a boardgame.

Making all slopes white would probably make the hexes stand out too much, so I'm not sure what more could be done to improve visibility aside from changing the height indication colours again. The colours do blend in more compared to the older colours, but it gives the map a more natural look. I guess you can't have it both ways, very clear height difference on all hexsides and natural looking terrain.

[vsadek]

Hi All,

In between working hard on Panzer Battles 2, we have been preparing some updates for Moscow '42 and Kharkov '43.

Hello David, this revamped units and vehicle graphics are outstanding! My main concern is map i.e. after this planned update for PzC is applied will it be still possible to use Jisons MapMods?

[Strela]

Hi All,

In between working hard on Panzer Battles 2, we have been preparing some updates for Moscow '42 and Kharkov '43.

Hello David, this revamped units and vehicle graphics are outstanding! My main concern is map i.e. after this planned update for PzC is applied will it be still possible to use Jisons MapMods?

When these titles are patched they will be the equivalent to the JTS version of other PzC titles.

To get Mapmod working you would need to go to this thread and download accordingly.

https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=67577

I will check that Mapmod works on release of any new patch.

David

[vsadek]

This is excellent news David. I greatly appreciate your effort in this and admire Jisons work as well (and Volcano, not to forget him). JTS should really incorporate Jisons art into PzC like it already did in WWI series (France ’14 and East Prussia).

Regards