Matrix Games Forums

One of my concerns before getting CMANO was that I'm relatively new to such hard simulation - I like to be able to zoom right into maps and get a sense of place. Basically, I was worried that the zoom level might not be detailed enough to make me feel comfortable.

Anyway, I was looking at custom overlays. It took me about 10 minutes to learn the basics, and about 20 to start feeling really comfortable with them.

I went back to playing the game, when I realised what I'd thought was a valley was actually a lake... So I thought back to custom overlays.

Within less than ten minutes, I had a map of the area, from a zoomed-out view of the whole AO, to individual streets of the city I was fighting over.

I wanted to make this post to say, if you've not looked at custom overlays, do so - they are INCREDIBLY easy to make, and to say to the devs - thanks! This is a BRILLIANT feature!!

To those looking to make these overlays, instructions are in the CMANO manual - here are three quick tips it doesn't mention:

1. The output image files are saved to the desktop... It took me too long to realise this!

2. The manual says to use detail level 17... However - you can select a large area, use a lower detail level, then zoom in and repeat at a higher detail level, and keep going until you have a number of overlays, gradually focussing at higher details on smaller areas. Load the overlays in CMANO from the furthest-out to the furthest-in, and they'll show on top of each other nicely. In my attached images, I used detail levels 10, 12, 15 and 17. When practising, I even made overlays from the entire UK down to a single neighbourhood!

3. If you need to, you can open the .pgw files with a text editor and change lines 5 and 6 to alter the longitude and latitude if, for some reason, your outputs don't match up.

So, thanks again to the CMANO team! Custom overlays are implemented brilliantly!


Pictures here (they're a touch dark - it's night in-game):

Imgur Album

If you follow the link in my signature and check out my tutorial "Multiple Blended Overlays in Command" it'll show you how to blend the multiple overlays into each other so you don't see the hard rectangular edges. [:)]

You'll get an effect like this:

Yes! I've seen this video! I'm excited to try it myself once I'm more 'settled in' to CMANO. For now, I'm just impressed just how quick the 'quick and dirty' method can be. Your style looks much nicer though.

You are very kind; thank you.

Absolutly! The function to add custom overlays to a scenario is brilliant. Overall, overlays are awesome and add a lot of depth to any scenario. I even edited a few overlays using photoshop, adding tents, weather shelters, SAM sites, etc. to hypothetical locations.

You could also take a look at this: http://baloogancampaign.com/2015/03/15/power-overlays/