Updated Graphics

[Ormand]

A year or so ago, I posted a set of graphics replacements for the map, and was myself a bit unhappy with some, I kept working on them, and have gotten to a point where they are more than reasonable. So, I thought I'd upload them again, and repost. I have done two things: 1) rework all the graphics and 2) tweak units. In addition to the standard ATG units, I reworked them to make them more like the sft-types in "Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue".

[edited 11/9/14]:
Installation:
Go to the AT Community website and navigate to graphics mods http://www.advancedtactics.org/scenariobank.php?taglink=11 and download all six parts: 4Seasons-1/5.atzip, 4Seasons-2/5.atzip, 4Seasons-3/5.atzip, 4Seasons-4/5.atzip, 4Seasons-5/5.atzip, and 4Seasons-at2-files.atzip. You will need to install all six parts separately. It is in six parts due to the 10MB file limit, and the fact that the at2 files will be updated from time to time to fix "bugs" in the scenario data rather than the graphics. (Note that an update to graphics has happened - see Post 72 on 10/21/14 - but the installation files are current, you only need to use the patch if you did an install with files downloaded prior to 10/21/14. Also, note that Webizen has collected all the graphics into a single 4Seasons atzip file that gives the standard graphics in one single file (40 MB). He also graciously has collected the BIG graphics into a single atzip file as well. I highly recommend installing the BIG graphics as well, as they are of a much higher quality.

Graphics Files:
I uploaded the files onto the scenario bank, and are in six parts. Sorry, but the graphics are about 43 MB. The first five zip files (4Seasons-1/5.zip) contain all the graphics files for standard size. ATG should then generate all the BIG and SMALL files (It would be nice to give you the BIG files since upscaling loses some resolution, but they are even larger).

Scenario files:
The file 4Seasons-at2-files.zip has scenario files based on "A New Dawn" (version 1, I haven't gotten around to version 2 yet).
4Seasons-NewDawn-Basic.at2 --- Basic "A New Dawn" with only map graphics replaced
4Seasons-NewDawn-AddUnits.at2 --- Basic "A New Dawn" with a few new units Airborne II,III,IV and Mountain Troops
4Seasons-NewDawn-Regiments.at2 --- "A New Dawn" with rework of units to construct regimental sized units
4Seasons-NewDawn-Divisions.at2 --- "A New Dawn" with rework of units to construct division sized unit

Path:
The zip files contain the full path, starting with Matrix Games/Advanced Tactics Gold/graphics/4Seasons/...

Several new terrain types were introduced:
Light Forests (deciduous and pine)*
Forested Mountains (both low and high, deciduous, pine, and jungle)
Rough Arid Terrain (models lava beds)*
Sand Dunes*
Mango Swamp*
Bocage
Beaches* (only in regiments and divisions at2 file)

*Indicates terrain used in random maps

Hex-side terrains:
Major River

Transportation:
Paved Road
Dirt Road

Seasons: There are four seasons (hence the name): winter, spring, summer, and autumn. In addition, rivers will freeze during winter turns.

Urban: Capitol, urban, and suburban hexes use the interior drawing style, much like the alt graphics do. One feature of this that causes a problem is that production centers have a base green, yellow, red hex to indicate damage. Unfortunately, this covers interior graphics, so in the standard game these cover the urban graphics. I addressed this by changing these graphics to basically, be an outline of the hex in that color. These are in the the directory Green-red-yellow-hexes/systemgraphics. Unfortunately, these hexes cannot be chosen for the scenario, so you have to replace them in your systemgraphics directories if you don't want a full green hex. I kept copies of the default graphics in these directories. It doesn't cause much trouble to replace them as they would just outline the hex instead of providing a green underlay. And they aren't overwritten in patches (so far).

Specific to Divisions and Regiments file:
For these, a beach terrain was introduced to help model marine units (see below). Beach hexes are placed by an event on random maps. Also, two road networks were used in the rulevars. The tech tree was modified so that paratroopers are not known at the start of the game.

Nato Counters:
These are integrated into the graphic pack, so it is self contained.

Units:
The 4Seasons-NewDawn-AddUnits.at2 scenario is basically "A New Dawn" with just the addition of airborne I, II, III, IV, and Mountain Infantry I, II, III, IV. Techs were added for the new units.

Regiments and Division at2 files are rather different. The sft-types have been reworked based on units in the DC series. In the regiments file, the sft-types may be thought of as platoon sized, while in the Divisions file, they are companies. Stack points, weights, and production costs were altered accordingly.

New units:
Mountain Infantry I, II, III, IV (attack and defense bonus of 1.5 in mountainous terrain)
Airborne II, III, IV
Marine I, II, III, IV
Light Flak I, II, III, IV
Heavy Flak I, II, III, IV
Mobile Flak I, II, III
Fighter V
Self-propelled Artillery I, II, III, IV
Light Cruiser I, II, III, IV (improved AA at sea)
Carrier Dive Bomber I, II, III, IV

Changes to existing units:
Cruiser (cheap capitol ship without enhanced AA of ATG)
Ranger: Increased production cost to 200
Machinegun: can perform air drops
Mortar: can perform air drops
Bazooka: can now perform air drops
Tanks provide some protection to infantry (Light: 20%, Medium: 25%, Heavy: 30%, Super Heavy: 35% chance to absorb one hit from an infantry unit).

Elite units:
Due to superior training and esprit de corps, Airborne, Mountain Infantry, Ranger, and Marine units receive a bonus of +20 xp and +30 morale.

Amphibious assaults:
In the regiments and division at2 files amphibious assaults can only be conducted against beach, capitol, urban, suburban hexes. Beach hexes are placed on a random map using an event. In order to model training of marine units, they have an attack bonus of 1.75 when attacking beach hexes. (Note that units defending against amphibious assaults receive a 2.0 defensive bonus which is set as a rule var, so there is no other way to do this.)

Air drops:
To improve the capabilities of paratroopers and still treat them as an infantry platoon, the support elements machinegun, mortar, and bazooka can now conduct air drops.

New unit categories:
Anti-tank:
Separated these from Artillery to allow infantry to make them their favorite target. The idea is to help the concept combined arms, so that stacking infantry with tanks makes sense. Not sure this works as well as intended.

Divebomber and level bomber:
The idea here is reflect how light and heavy flak work. Light flak being better for low-altitude targets (fighters and dive bombers), while heavy flak is for high-altitude targets, such as level bombers.

Transportation:
Trucks and halftracks were changed to be used for specific units. E.g., a halftrack has carry capacity of 1, and hence carries one infantry, or smaller gun. A truck has carry capacity 2, and can carry two infantry, two smaller guns, or one artillery piece. Horses have a carry capacity of 1 and zero stack points. Their production costs were modified to reflect this. Halftracks have 1 stack point; have a 50% chance to absorb a hit for infantry, and may protect up to 2 infantry units. Tanks (accept assault guns) no longer transport infantry, but now provide some protection

Changes in armor units basically mean that you'll need approximately 5 times as many as before. Stacking points and costs reflect this.

Stack points:
Stack point limit before penalty: 105 from single hex, 210 in total. The base stack point is:
2 for infantry,
3 light and medium tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled artillery
4 for heavy tanks,
5 for super heavy tanks,
2 for inf. guns, AT guns, light flak
1 for trucks, halftracks, and horses
10 for artillery
5 for fighters and dive bombers
8 for level bombers
10 for strategic bombers

I chose this approach in order to avoid having 50 tank units in a single unit. At the same time, it made no sense for tanks to have double the stack points of infantry. So, I settled on a 2/3 approach.


Overall, an infantry regiment similar to what is in DCCB would look like:
24 Rifle/Sub-machinegun
7 Machinegun
5 Mortar
3 infantry guns
3 AT guns
6 horse

99 Stack points

A German panzer regiment:
27 Medium Tanks
5 Rifle
2 Light Flak
5 halftrack
2 Armored Car
1 Truck

105 Stack points

For 4Seaons-NewDawn-Divisions.at2, it became clear that it wasn't possible to have so many sft-types, since you can only have 8 in a unit. So, sub-machinegun, machinegun, mortar, and bazooka were removed, and heavy weapons was added instead. The stack limits are 100 for a hex and 200 total.

An Infantry division would look like:
27 Rifle
9 Heavy Weapons
3 infantry guns
3 AT guns
6 horses

A German panzer division might look like:
9 Medium Tanks
15 Rifle
5 Heavy weapons
10 Halftrack
2 Light Flak
2 inf guns
1 self-propelled artillery
7 Truck

Also, since I had to add some sft pictures, I modified some of the previous ones. These IO mostly got from WWII black & white photos that I colorized and cartoonized.


I suspect that I still have some bugs in the new units files, so bear with me and report if you wish to. Also, I haven't gone through all the Tech explanations, so the changes per tech are not all accurate. Or if you want other units let me know.

[Ormand]

Here is a picture from a random map (medium/temperate)

[Ormand]

Same map spring (different part) see green hexes (replaced the default)

[Ormand]

same map autumn

[Ormand]

same map winter.

[Ormand]

Just updated the 4Seasons-at2-files.zip.

In the start up of random games with regiments and divisions I gave the SHQ 5 trains via rulevar=476. I didn't notice that after I added marines that the sft-type number got shifted. Consequently the SHQ got Calvary III in regiment games. Oops.

[Tac2i]

Link to download Graphic pack 4-5 is missing.

[Ormand]

Oops! That's real embarrassing. I could have sworn I got them all. Anyway, I just uploaded it. Sorry for the mess up.

[Ormand]

I also uploaded a new version of the at2 files. I made what I think is a working version of "A New Dawn v2". I also corrected the basic New Dawn, realizing I left in some of the new unit items. It will take more work to rework the other unit files with new design features.

At 1:21 PDT I also corrected two small errors for light tanks in regiments and divisions.

[Tac2i]

Correct file still missing. The 4/5 graphic pack link is linking to the AT file.

ORIGINAL: Ormand
Oops! That's real embarrassing. I could have sworn I got them all. Anyway, I just uploaded it. Sorry for the mess up.

[Ormand]

Sorry, it was late last night, and I obviously accidentally overwrote the zip file when I put up the New Dawn v2 at2 file. It should finally be there!

[Tac2i]

I've been looking this mod over and noticed a resource (raw/oil) issue with the 4Seasons-NewDawn-Divisions.at2 file. See graphic embedded in this post. The more you improve your raw/oil hexes the more you go in the hole. This issue is not present in the other at2 files.

Also noticed that in this at2 file that if you choose Stone Age you have the option to research SMG but researching it does not give you the ability to produce it.

Note to those trying this mod: you cannot use the 'Install Zip/File' button to install it. Well, you can but the ZIPs are not configure to put them in the proper locations. You must manually unzip them into the correct locations. (update: Ormand corrected this.)

Lastly: Thanks Ormand! I know many many hours went into this mod. Always nice to see folks still producing mods for this outstanding operational wargame.

[Ormand]

Thanks for comments and observations. And I love this game (even though the AI has issues).

I fixed the install issue. Roy also e-mailed me and took me task over that. This was laziness on my part to figure out how to do it in winzip (I don't do that too often - actually at work I tar all the time). Anyway, I corrected the paths and changed them to atzip files, so they will install with the button. I tested this myself.

I keep finding small bugs myself (although not the one you found) and I have uploaded fixed at2 files.

It actually took over a year. Mostly learning how to use GIMP to do the graphics. I had to do the mountains three times until was reasonably satisfied with the edges (they could still be better). I have to give credit to the program Wilbur which eroded the mountains.

OK, SMG missing in divisions is intentional. So, I should remove that tech. The idea was to reduce the support elements because of the 8 sft-type limit. Since an armored division would have to have tanks, infantry, infantry guns, halftracks, light flak, it seemed better to reduce the type of units.

I am surprised that perhaps you didn't find that the first production was strategic bombers instead of trains. This was due to removing some sft-types and not updating the random production start up. Also, all the people pictures were wrong because of this too. There are just a few places moving the sft's create issues.

I myself have been focusing on regiments, as I think things might be a bit better balanced for realistic units. It is OK to fill a unit with tanks (OK nearly so) as this is historical.

I will have to see what the heck is going on with the resources. I didn't really touch this, so it must be associated with moving things around.

[Ormand]

I think I fixed both of those issues, and uploaded the new at2 files. The problem was removing items that can be produced, like SMG, mortar, etc. This changed the order in the list, and instead of producing ore or oil, they were producing carrier fighters (in the 4Seasons-NewDawn-divisions.at2 file only).

[Ormand]

As my favorite economist says on his blog: Wonky!!!

You might ask why it is so big? This is for three reasons:

1) It has a lot more terrain types (and units). For random games, this isn't really necessary, since to use them, I would have to write an event to place them on the map, much like I do for beaches (events# 42 and 43) or for frozen rivers (updated event#11). Some new terrains are implemented via rulevars, like light forest, and the climate string, such as dunes, desert rough, mango swamps. So I could remove some terrains. But, the goal was also to make a toolkit for designing scenarios, where you might want to place lakes, wooded mountains, etc. I don't want to separate them out yet because I suspect that there are fixes still to be done, and maintaining so many files would be a bit complicated.

2) The edges for sea hexes have seven different graphics for each edge type. Thus, maps should avoid the constant repetitive look.

3) I made extensive use of borders. These were necessary to improve the looks of the interface between two terrains of the same general type, forests, mountains, and a specific type. The mountain hexes each tile, and the mountains line up (as well as I could do it), but with climate you could have a fall/winter interface. Or a forest/pine interface. At the hex edge, you would have a sharp transition between the two. So, I used borders in order to make this go away wherever I could. One place that it is impossible to do so is for Capitol/urban/suburban. But, this is pretty hard to see.

On a different note, I think the version 2 file is OK. This proved to be more difficult than I thought. I had trouble importing the masterfile (probably because some things were moved) which persisted when I tried to import research. I got a seg fault, so in the end, I had to maunally insert the new techs, and the model data. The good news is that I learned more about models and am thinking of trying to implement it for tanks, and some aircraft models.

Of course, I actually need to play sometime!

[Tac2i]

This 4 Seasons Mod by Ormand is more than just graphics. It contains several AT2 files to base your random games on. Initially there were lots of issues but Ormand has rapidly fixed things up. I think he has at least one more update to upload to AdvancedTactics.org and then I think this mod would be ready for much wider use/testing. Be sure to read Ormand's description of his mod throughly as some things have changed.

NOTE: You need the graphics and the AT2 files to use this mod. If you discover issues with the mod please specify which AT2 file you were using (full name of file).

Graphics
I've repackaged the graphics part of the mod as one large (40MB) ATZIP file: 4 Seasons Mod (graphics only) by Ormand - updated 11/09/14. Right click link to download.

Ormand's high quality BIG graphics for zoomed in mode are here:

http://rtworks.org/GameStuff/FourSeasonsBIG.atzip (138MB). Right click to download...

AT2 Files
Ormand's AT2 Files - Updated 10/21/14 by Ormand
4Seasons-NewDawn-Basic.at2 --- Basic "A New Dawn" with only map graphics replaced
4Seasons-NewDawn-AddUnits.at2 --- Basic "A New Dawn" with a few new units Airborne II,III,IV and Mountain Troops
4Seasons-NewDawn-Basic-v2.at2 --- Basic "A New Dawn" with tank models (not tested)
4Seasons-NewDawn-Regiments-v1.0.at2 --- "A New Dawn" with rework of units to construct regimental sized units
4Seasons-NewDawn-Regiments-v2.0.at2 --- See note below
4Seasons-NewDawn-Regiments-v3.0.at2
4Seasons-NewDawn-Divisions-v1.0.at2 --- "A New Dawn" with rework of units to construct division sized unit
Note: 1 garrison infantry unit per city except capital and one engineer in capital
4Seasons-NewDawn-Divisions-v2.0.at2 --- See note below

Version 2 Note: "V2.0 is an attempt to encourage combined arms some. I (Ormand) made use of the "prevent hit" feature in the sft by having Rifle/SMG/Ranger units have a chance to prevent hits on armor by infantry and anti-tank units. It starts at 5% at level I and increases to 20% at level III. I did something similar for fighters to provide protection to divebombers and levelbombers. Lastly, in the divisions file I increased the cost of armor by 25% but gave them 2 attacks, instead of just one. I also gave AT-guns two attacks. The idea was that since tanks should be mixed with infantry, there will be less of them, so maybe they should be a bit stronger."

New SFT-Type graphics:

[Tac2i]

NATO Counters in 4 Seasons:

[Tac2i]

Example from an actual random game...

[Ormand]

Thanks for the kind comments. And all the help!

I am in the process of finalizing the text needed to describe the research levels. In the process, I also found a few minor errors in the sft combat stats. I should have them up tomorrow around 11:00 west coast time.

[parusski]

ORIGINAL: Ormand

Thanks for the kind comments. And all the help!

I am in the process of finalizing the text needed to describe the research levels. In the process, I also found a few minor errors in the sft combat stats. I should have them up tomorrow around 11:00 west coast time.

Love your work, thanks.