Commander Portraits

Hobbes · 06-01-2012, 06:42 AM,

Hi folks, I just had a look at a scenario I made several years ago for WF - Hell's Corner: Vanguard and I was immediately struck by the incongruity of one of the leader images; Lt. Col Matheson. The image is I assume of one of the development team smiling at the camera. This obviously didn't bother me at the time I made the scenario but now I am older it jars. People just didn't smile directly at cameras in the 40's it seems - at least if they were army commanders.

I've been making scenarios for another game in the past few years and I always try to get a correct image for the higher level commanders if I can find them. With CS it seems that the game just allocates a random image to a commander when you create the OOB?
Is there any way to get a realistic image for a certain leader?
It seems strange to me that I have never thought of this before!

Cheers,
Chris

**Warhorse** · 06-01-2012, 07:02 AM,

Hey Chris!! Well, it involves some playing around with files, but yes. You need to note which commander pic it is, then open up the bmp for that particular countries leader oob, by number, say Leader10.bmp, etc. Then you find the picture on there. You then will need to make a picture of the leader you want, then replace that frame, save. Make sure to supply that bmp with your scennie. Best to do this sort of thing AFTER you are done with all leader purchases, since if you don't, the AI could in all likelyhood pick that pic for someone else again!

Hope this helps.

K K Rossokolski · 06-01-2012, 08:06 AM,

This raises an ethical point about respect for the memory of individual soldiers. My own belief is that an individual leader named MUST have his own correct picture. Mike has shown how this can be done to get (eg) the little pic of Patton into the slot for 3rd Army Command.
It is more difficult with those less well known. I have a Kap'yong scen (Korea) waiting Mikes revision of the Chicom values. I felt in building it that the nature of the fight required Aussie leaders down to Coy level. My research gave me the names of those soldiers, one a quite well-known figure in our history. The photo shots in the CS files do not depict any of these men. So should I just allow the computer to pick a face, knowing it will not be the face of any of my Coy OCs? And what about a warrior of the recent past still living, but shown with somebody elses mug shot?

Tricky, I think. One way to avoid using names is to identify a leader as (eg) CO 1MX*, OC B/1MX. But what if the picture attached is that of Montgomery?

One idea might be to have some sort of non-face icon.

* CO 1st Bn The Middlesex Regiment.