Help playtest my SP: Modern Mod.

[sami heimola]

Mr. Wood, could you send those OOBs for me too? This sounds so interesting idea:)...

My address: sami.heimola@pp.inet.fi

[OKW-73]

wow..this sounds really great idea i dont like SPMBT cause bad graphics so idea to make modern warfare mod for spwaw is superb!

[sami heimola]

Hmm... Could anyone "move" SPMBT/SP2's tank icons into SPWAW? Is it possible to do or not? Inf/artillery could be as they are now right?

Well, OKW, I liked SPMBT's tank/airplane graphics (especially Russian tanks) very much:D... They could be nice to see in SPWAW's environment:p.

Sami

[Larry Smith]

The SP MBT Icon palettes are structured differently from SP WAW. I have tried to cross-breed them and the results were quite unpleasant. However, if you look in the Chandra folder in you SPWAW directory, you'll find a master list of icons. Its just that you have to reset the icons in an editor, then boot up the game to see if you did it right. I tried to make a King Tiger look like a Challanger, but used the wrong number, and got a Mig23.

[Bing]

How about chopper graphics? JAM seriously needs these for US and Soviet - plus helo .WAV files.

BTW, if you want the Sov 2S9 and 2S23 120mm SP Mortars to appear in the purchase screen, open the Sov OOB in SPWAWEditor.exe - change the SP Mortar designation for these two units to "SP artillery" and they will show up, ready for action against the Imperialist Dogs.

My guess is that the game engine has no slot for Soviet "SP Mortar" - certainly does for other nations but not Sov - so anything that gets into an OOB classified as "SP Mortar" is a day late and a dollar short.

I am getting a JAM scenario ready - naturally a fictional engagement between US and Sov - in the Motherland, somewhere near the justifiably obscure town of Pokadanoza.

JAM is fun - ast first the helo "evasion" was irritating, then funny, then I learned how to actually use it to get to where I want the chopper to go. Zig-zagging across the landscape, dodging SA missiles all the way - to date I have lost an Apache to roughly every fifteen or twenty smokies tossed at them.

We can't do popups and nap of the earth - would be nice if one of the talented programmers could do us a mod for this - but you certainly can follow the terrain: Staying behind a hill or general rise in terrain will make you untrackable, but don't get careless. The moment the tracking unit has an LOS you will have incoming fire. From 50 and 60 hexes out, depends upon the viz you've set. Pokadanoza will feature a 100 X 240 map, summer time and sixty hex visibility.

Any takers for a test PBEM run? Both sides have a heavy tank company, an elite infantry company, gobs of helos, SP arty and mortars, too many AT and AA missiles to count, TOW units and HUMVV's running all over the place with AGL that are great to chew up infantry. so are M6 Linebackers. A-10 Warthogs - Su-24 Fencers and Su-25 Frogfeet. (More than one has to be "Frogfeet" doesn't it?)

My feeling at the moment is JAM tilts the playing field to the extent play versus AI isn't much of a challenge unless artificial constraints are placed on the human player - Jamie pretty much says the same thing. This one is for H2H. I think that's probably the only way both sides can fly choppers - BTW the US choppers have A2A capability, dont know if it works, haven't had a Hokum or Frogfoot in the crosshairs yet, though it MIGHT have happened during a Sov airstrike (the AI does that REAL well).

Finally, the Soviet choppers have lift capability - and the lightweight Sov TD AFV is in the mix. That could be some real fun.

Someone - let me kmow if you are willing to playtest a JAM scenario with me. This could be so much fun it ain't legal.

Bing

[troopie]

Helicopter graphics still are in WAW. Try icons 155, 156, 158 and 159.

troopie

[Warhorse]

The icons from SPMBT CAN be brought over, I've done it already w/o a hitch for my Comm Chinese!! The problem is that it's a very long, tedious process, and I don't have the time needed to do all the icons, or I would volunteer, oh, then you would need to redo the oob's, to put in changes to icon numbers. The whole thing would need to be redone unfortunately, anyone with lots of time on their hands could do this...

[Frank W.]

hey ho!!

try firing with MLRS batteries!
they don´t stop to fire.... the have
ROF of 255 listed in OOB.

and havn´t the soviet tank a little bit to
weak armor?

but keep it up with this modern mode.
it´s fun.

[Frank W.]

another thing came to mind:

you said something with armor slopes?

is that anymore important with chobham or
composite armor? when you look at leopard 2
or challenger tank they have allmost zero slope.
but it does not have much impact on the stength
of the armor of these vehicles.

and: is the number of "armored skirts" relative to
heat protection??

perhaps you should take a look at the yahoo group
for MBT. there are much things discuused which could
help developing the modern OOB´s .......

[Bing]

I haqve found 18 files in the current (v7.1) shp mix that have tiles depicting helos. Kinda confusing, I haven't done much of this kind of work with WAW. I do have an official helo icon now for one of the choppers in my Pokadanoza scenario - there are so many I hardly know where to start.

I'm off to look at Fred's page again- I have his ShpEd of course, otherwise I wouldn't even be able to see what's in the shp files.

Anyone know of a general guide and introduction to the care and feeding of unit icon .shp files?

Bing

[Randy]

WOW this sounds great. I've been playing SPMBT lately and have been generaly happy, but a WAW version will be awesome! I'm not very computer savy, but if you need info on Marine Corps vehicles I could offer some help/info. Sounds great!!

[J.Wood]

Originally posted by Frank W.
hey ho!!

try firing with MLRS batteries!
they don´t stop to fire.... the have
ROF of 255 listed in OOB.

and havn´t the soviet tank a little bit to
weak armor?

but keep it up with this modern mode.
it´s fun.

That's because MLRS doesn't fire individual rockets, but hundreds of grenade-sized submunitions. The only way to replicate the effect was to give it hundreds of shots and max ROF. That way it empties itself in one volley and lays waste to anything it hits...just like they do in real life.

The Soviet tanks have low regular armour values, yes, but the newer ones have extremely high skirt ratings to reflect their reactive/composite armour. Unfortunately that only shows up in the OOB editor. Soviet tanks have much thinner armour than first line western tanks anyway, because of differing design philosophies.

J

[J.Wood]

Originally posted by Frank W.
another thing came to mind:

you said something with armor slopes?

is that anymore important with chobham or
composite armor? when you look at leopard 2
or challenger tank they have allmost zero slope.
but it does not have much impact on the stength
of the armor of these vehicles.

and: is the number of "armored skirts" relative to
heat protection??
.......

The Abrams has more Chobham armour than anything else and it's sloped like a sports car. The reason older Chobham tanks like the Leo 2 and the Challenger are more vertical is because laminated armour is trickier to work with than good 'ol steel and the engineering process is more demanding. It's easier to build a rectancular box than something that's all ergonomic like the Abrams' turret. And yes, slope still matters A LOT. The laws of physics don't change, slope still equals higher ricochet occourances by making it harder for AP projectiles to "bite" on the armour face, and they have more material to go through if they do because they're going in diagonally.

Also, skirts add to a vehicle's protection vs HEAT effects. It's not a perfect substitute for composite or explosive reactive armour, but it seems to function pretty well given the limitations of the engine.

J

[Frank W.]

but the MLRS firing takes to long.....without "fast arty"
and i generally don´t use "fast arty"

in WW2 the "armored skirts" protect only the sides of
the tank. or not??

i don´t agree completly with the USSR tanks values, at least the
front steel armor should be somewhat higher by some models as
T80 U / BM or even T72 BM and the like.....

okay, but at least they should be much cheaper than western
models...... haven´t looked at the prices till now.
but i´m not THAT expert in modern armor values, so i better
shut up now........

Originally posted by J.Wood


That's because MLRS doesn't fire individual rockets, but hundreds of grenade-sized submunitions. The only way to replicate the effect was to give it hundreds of shots and max ROF. That way it empties itself in one volley and lays waste to anything it hits...just like they do in real life.

The Soviet tanks have low regular armour values, yes, but the newer ones have extremely high skirt ratings to reflect their reactive/composite armour. Unfortunately that only shows up in the OOB editor. Soviet tanks have much thinner armour than first line western tanks anyway, because of differing design philosophies.

J

[Bing]

Unless the various MLRS and Cruise Missile ROF's are changed, PBEM will most likely be next to impossible. Fast Arty ON we have found cannot be used with PBEM - if it is ON the second player will not see his arty, at the most he will get a couple of rounds from the first and/or second entry on his bombardment targeting screen, that will be it. Furthermore, message delay for most current computer systems will have to be set to ~70, further aggravating the MLRS et al problem.

I would think there has to be a way to solve this problem within game terms. Sure, the "real" MLRS might have a lot more than 255 individual bomblets - I've heard of as many as 425 in a cluster bomb (my Phantom driver friend who used them in 'Nam referred to cluster bombs as "fruit baskets"). We could sit arond all day waiting for cluster munitions to finish their business. I am going to try fewer and more significant booms per fruit basket and we'll see what happens. After I get better helo graphics and sounds, that is.

The chainguns also need a better .wav file.

Bing

[Bing]

I am making headway on getting helo graphics into JAM. I've (literally)dredged the forum archives, got all of Fred Chalanda's good spilc/spile files and started using them. I have an Excel spreadsheet with all current 1,320 icon entries in it.

Here's the question for the graphics whiz kids in the house: Icon graphics #'s - not to be confused with Iconxxx.shp numbers - indicate helo graphics were used in the range of Icon0009 thru Icon0158.

But ... when the mech.exe is made to cough up what actually is in there, only a fraction of the helo graphics have been used and they appear to be the ones left over from earlier SP versions - most likely SP2 or perhaps 3. The graphics FILES (again, NOT the Icon files) make use of individual tiles in Icons 0009 thru about 0058 and that's it. There are other, better looking helo grpahics in 0109, 0133, 0134, 0139, 0140, 0141, 0153, 0156 and 0158 (nothing beyond that last number).

Does anyone know if this was deliberate - was this done intentionally or were the graphics just left there, forgotten by programmers? I don't see any references to these files in any of the 1,320 graphics files to those tiles and it would be nice to use them. Body files and "turret" files (turret = rotor blades for a helo) ignore the above entires. Why?

Further question: Copy them over to existing Icon-nnn.shp files in the 1100 range or so - or create a brand new Icon file in that range? If I cover up whatever is in the 1100 range am I doing harm to WAW graphics?

Thanks for the help and by all means scoot this thread over to another section if it will get more attention.

Bing

[Randy]

Bing, I know you have a big job ahead of you, but when you do the choppers make sure the "heavy lifters" can carry small vehicles. In SP2 & 3, they omitted this and I think it hurts the game. It has been included in SPMBT and works nicely. Thanks.

[Warhorse]

Originally posted by Bing
I am making headway on getting helo graphics into JAM. I've (literally)dredged the forum archives, got all of Fred Chalanda's good spilc/spile files and started using them. I have an Excel spreadsheet with all current 1,320 icon entries in it.

Here's the question for the graphics whiz kids in the house: Icon graphics #'s - not to be confused with Iconxxx.shp numbers - indicate helo graphics were used in the range of Icon0009 thru Icon0158.

But ... when the mech.exe is made to cough up what actually is in there, only a fraction of the helo graphics have been used and they appear to be the ones left over from earlier SP versions - most likely SP2 or perhaps 3. The graphics FILES (again, NOT the Icon files) make use of individual tiles in Icons 0009 thru about 0058 and that's it. There are other, better looking helo grpahics in 0109, 0133, 0134, 0139, 0140, 0141, 0153, 0156 and 0158 (nothing beyond that last number).

Does anyone know if this was deliberate - was this done intentionally or were the graphics just left there, forgotten by programmers? I don't see any references to these files in any of the 1,320 graphics files to those tiles and it would be nice to use them. Body files and "turret" files (turret = rotor blades for a helo) ignore the above entires. Why?

Further question: Copy them over to existing Icon-nnn.shp files in the 1100 range or so - or create a brand new Icon file in that range? If I cover up whatever is in the 1100 range am I doing harm to WAW graphics?

Thanks for the help and by all means scoot this thread over to another section if it will get more attention.

Bing

If the icon # already implements a graphic for one of the helo's, you can use it, the helo shp files were just imported over from the existing SP3 engine, but we never got around to using that file. We had wanted to make many more useable associations, when compiling the list for Mike Wood, but in the rush to get things done in time, many of the associations are useless, w/o using Spile/Spilc to make them viable, since some body/turret ***. are already partly in use!!

Any of the shp files like 01XX, or 03XX, are just mirror files for 0000, and 0200 files, you will see they are exactly the same, this goes back to when if green vs green in the desert, or whatever, one side would 'change' to a tan color, this is why Japs don't always use the tan color!! So, that being said, you can't just use any of the 0100, or 0300, and not do the corresponding 0000, and 0200 files, they must be the same!!

Hope this helps, e-mail me for further advise if needed!!

[Tinhead]

Hi J,

excellent idea! I'd love to contribute to your project. It's something I wanted to do for myself for a long time now. SPMBT is great, but lacks some stuff. Would love to get your OOB's and test them out. Also would spend some time on icon-work. Mail address is in the profile.

Thanks and have fun,
Tinhead

[Jacc]

I'd love to participate, even with just playing and whining. I have nothing but spare time till January, when I have to go and serve my country. In Tank Brigade... Yuck.

Oh, and I do have another thing. It's called ISDN...

Let me know if I can be of any help (can you say that?).