Board War Game Map & Counters Mods

[Zovs]

Okay so that got your attention, lol.

Well, not all of this work is mine. A big big thanks goes out to Dave and Steve. For their work and inspiration.

For any screen shots I display I use some combination of my idea of the 'ultimate' board war game map and counter mods below.

Board War Game Map Mods
For the Board War Game Map Mod (at least my take on it) I am using a mix-n-match of the following:

Telumar's Telu IV
Nicolas Bell's Roads
BobW's Blue/Map mod for Rail
Shadrachs Broken Rail and Bridges and his Cursors
Steve's various minor graphic tweak mods


Board War Game Counter Mods
For the Board War Game Counters Mod (at least my take on it) I am using the following:

Dave's Flat 2D Counters (I have modified the brightness by 10):
CounterBackground.png
h_CounterBackground.png
s_CounterBackground.png (added new, Dave's was missing this file)
h_CounterBackgroundShadow.png (added new, Dave's was missing this file, no real changes)

Steve's Corrected Counter Numbers (this mod corrected the Air symbols not showing properly for AIS)
I have modified all these to put back the squad symbol, he had a division one there for some reason:
CounterNumbers.png
h_CounterNumbers.png

And lastly my modification of the Counter Units themselves. For decades the symbols for: Assault Gun, Heavy Artillery, Heavy Armored Artillery, Border Guards and Static Units symbol has always bugged me in TOAW. Well I changed those now.
CounterUnits.png
h_CounterUnits.png
s_CounterUnits.png


At the bottom of this post is all 9 of these files as an attachment.

So here are some base screen shots showing the icons that I have changed (in yellow):

This is the s_CounterUnits file (for map view 2D small):



There are two files (CounterUnits - for map view 2D large and h_CounterUnits - for map view 2D huge), but since I have a 4k monitor I am only showing one (so I don't have to scale it) but I have reworked both and test both images:



Lastly is the CounterNumber's file that needed some slight changing:




In the next post (or two) I'll post up some screenshots using a test file and a ongoing game for ya.

Don

[Zovs]

So putting all that into perspective I made a quick and dirty little test scenario. Please note that I have had to scale all these screenshots so that they don't overload the Matrix forums screen height/width restrictions and so other can see them.

Here is 2D small:


Here is 2D large:


Here is 2D huge:

Showing the Assault Gun icon compared with Armored Artillery and Hvy. Armor Artillery:


Showing the new Hvy. Artillery, Border Guard and Static units:

[Zovs]

Just for reference here are some screenshots of all things put together and with some of my modifications to the existing scenario's to use both the Board game map 'look' with the new 2D Flat counters and new counter color schemes (inspired by games such as Italia, and the GDW series Europa):


AGS 1942-1943 (showing map only)

Map from an upgraded and updated AGS 1942-43 scenario I am working on, jut mainly showing the improved road (gray) and unimproved roads (brown), the lighter rivers and more board game (in my opinion) rail lines and the two different types of urban (dense is red and regular urban is gray).




Italian Campaign 1944-1945 version 4.0

Here is screenshot showing my modifications to the stock Italian Campaign 1941-45 version 4.0 that I am modifying, it uses my new color scheme and I corrected a few discrepancies with the original:



Same scenario but a 2D huge view:




Bulge 44

Here I only created a new color file for Bulge 44, it is similar in color scheme to the old SPI type of board games. Here are two screenshots from that game.

North view:


South view:



France 1944 D-Day

This is also from the stock game France 44 D-Day (I also made another color file for it's sister scenario France 1944 Cobra).

This is 2D large:


This is 2D huge:



Special Project update
This is from my 'special project' I am working on. There is a series of six rather excellent scenarios that have not had much attention in over 20 years, so first up I created a color file and came up with a color scheme based off of GDW's Europa Game Series (think Fire in the East, Fall of France, Balkan Front, etc.). The original creator had some excellent documentation that just needed to be polished up and I reformatted and created some rather nice PDF' for each of the six scenarios. Now that that tedious work of creating color schemes and doing the documentation is done, I then started to modify all six of these so that they can enjoy some of the new features of TOAW IV, mainly the AD and MRPB while doing research on this part, I also started to create a database table of other scenarios and cross indexing their AD/MRPB with the hex, time and unit scales. Idea is to help me, but possible to help others in that endeavor. Once all six scenarios are tested out to my liking I'll post them up for the community.

Here is a 2D large:


Here is a 2D huge:



Summation and thanks
So a big thank you to Dave for his 2D flat icon set, that really started this whole ball of wax rolling, I just love the old flat board war game look. That drove me to modify the Assault Gun, Heavy Artillery, Static and Border Guard symbols as well. Lastly all that inspired me to really push forward with the color scheme methods, I now have a file with over 200 color references for use in other scenario modifications and I have already created about 30 color files that go with some of the stock scenarios. Lastly I have modified about 15 older scenarios to use not only color files but some of the newer features in TOAW IV.

If there is interest in any of these let me know and I'll post them.

For me this has really freshened up TOAW IV...

Hope you enjoy as much as I did creating and or modifying these....

[Zovs]

Some more examples:

A modified and updated scenario I am working on (next two screenshots):



and



This is one that I converted to TOAW III and then on to TOAW IV (still testing after setting the AD and MRPB):



Here is another one (a new and updated St Lo 1944):

[Magpius]

Flat counter set - simply brilliant, and long overdue.
[&o]

[Zovs]

Thanks! But Dave25210 is the inspiration and the originator of the flat 2D counters, I just 'enhanced' it a bit by lightening up the contrast, I did include my own custom board war game symbol mod (border guards, siege artillery, heavy armored artillery, assault gun and static units) and my fix/tweak to the numbers mod.

[gliz2]

Beautiful work and much appreciated.

PS. How to make the fonts in pop-up windows bigger? I figured a way for the main interface (the boxes and unit panels).

[Zovs]

I am away from my keyboard but you can customize the font on the panels.

You look in the manual or scroll down to advanced options here:

https://www.wargamewiki.com/wiki/index. ... er_options