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With a bit of help from Cap'n Darwin and messing around in GIMP moving a 50x50px square to locate where the command cycle national colors was getting pulled from on the counter, I'm now able to create a full camo counter for each nation. At the moment I've created the test bed and template around the US woodland camo. Some things I had to compensate for are:

- Can't fiddle, at the moment, with the text colors, so I had to use some light grey and opacity tricks to have the unit names stand out. Testing with the East German strichtarn makes it appear that not all nations will need this "fix".

- Can only be used with NATO counters/symbols only option. Unfortunately the block looked at by the game for the command cycle colors isn't completely obscured by the SILs. I might play around and see if there might be a trick to get around that challenge.

Recommendations welcomed. The other challenges I have is that the West Germans were still mostly using their steingrau-oliv uniforms as flecktarn was only in testing during the 80's (i.e. they will be "boring") and the fact that most of the Warsaw Pact outside of the Soviets used the strichtarn pattern but in different shades, so not that obvious who's who.

Screenshots with the game at 100% zoom. I usually play at 70%, so it's a bit hard to make out but then I'm usually using formation colors + at that level all my planning is done and it's more to watch the battle unfold. Edit: The transparent strip looks weird though if you're fighting the Americans. Maybe a more subdued camo or up the brightness so if it's a player unit you can read the text but if fighting them it's just the camo?

I'm also using the same GIMP files/templates as my flag and roundel mod, so I might package this with both of those as well. Roundels would look best due to not getting covered in any way by the NATO symbols, but if you like having the full flag on there I'd want the option to be available.

Ok, so I was actually able to figure out how to get the camos working with SILs; some national colors will look somewhat different in the Game Control Panel, but nothing too crazy. Tried to lighten up the camos enough that they weren't to washed out but the unit name text wasn't completely illegible. Polish camo is also so finely detailed that it kinda melts together...might take another pass at that. I've tried to make sure all of these are era appropriate (though in the screenshot you can see I also made a West German flecktarn camo so just imagine if you like that more that the Bundeswehr rushed them out before 1990...). Will leave this out there for suggestions/recs and then compile this into a .zip sometime later this week if people like it.
Edit: Had a recommendation on Discord to make the flags a bit transparent and here were the results with 50%:
Any more and it's really hard to see or make them out; too little and they are basically like the completely opaque ones.

Because those detailed counter backgrounds drown the black text label (unit name) and make them hard to read, would an additional and optional light halo around the text label be helpful? (It's not in the game - we're just experimenting here).

WildCatNL wrote: Sun Dec 07, 2025 5:08 pm Because those detailed counter backgrounds drown the black text label (unit name) and make them hard to read, would an additional and optional light halo around the text label be helpful? (It's not in the game - we're just experimenting here).

William,

Yeah, something like that is what I had in mind, but I wasn't fully aware of how to try and get that effect to come out in-game. Honestly, that would be a good addition even for some of the default backgrounds like the American and Soviet ones that are a bit darker than, say, the West German background.

Probably gonna put this one on hiatus to make sure none of the camos run into any IP issues. Not looking for commercial use or getting any sort of compensation personally, but especially the more modern camos I want to make sure I'm not running afoul of anything. The good thing is that it does prove you can add in any customized camo and have it come out looking decent, especially if the text for the unit names can have that fancy border included.

A mod isn't commercial distribution, so I think you're in the clear with any IP concerns.

True for most nations, but worth checking for things like the USMC, which has trademarks/copyrights on a ton of stuff that would potentially be an IP issue. Always good to check first.