September 1939 Mod

[dialektiikka 10]

Are you planning any civilians, horse drawn vehicles or cavalry units?

I know that the myth of Polish cavalry units charging German tanks is just a myth, but a lot of WWII era supply & civilian trafic being handled with horses, it would be great to see such units. Cavalry is just cool. 1930's style civilians would be useful for later WWII, too.

Good to see that this mod is alive :cool: Best of luck.

[JarmenKeLL 0]

Very nice work Topas! I love those light armored vehicles. These are fast and small. Even hard to hit. I cant wait to play it!!

[topas 1]

@dialektiikka

Hmm... leading a cavalry charge like in the vid below would be a dream come true.

CjG5Dj8HEtI&

(@1:55)

If there was a fully working and nicely made horse for ArmA II we'd gladly use it for this and all of you mentioned.

Some time ago I have contacted danosbeano, author of the (so far) only one working horse out there. We'll see if maybe together we manage to get this idea of his a bit further.

Civilians are planned. Infantry is a priority at the moment, but civilian buildings and transportation is being taken care of. So far a CWS T1 and a BMW 327 cars are modelled. Hopefully a bus or two will be added in a while. We're thinking Saurer, Polski Fiat or Chevrolet. If not solely for civilian use; it is to be mentioned that many vehicles have been 'drafted' into the army as the needs to replace vehicles lost in combat grew.

Below an example; civilian cars as part of army colums. Most interresting are the Chevrolet 183FS bus and the Chevrolet C.O.E. truck - someone had even time to apply camo to it.

[R0adki11 3949]

awesome look textures :)

[Gunter Severloh 4056]

Your upcoming mod Topas reminds me of this mod that came out for Arma:

Army of the Czecho-Slovak republic 1938-45

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9050

Mod had some fun and interesting missions, Topas are you going to have some missions included with the mod when released?

[MissionCreep 12]

Are you planning any civilians, horse drawn vehicles or cavalry units?

I know that the myth of Polish cavalry units charging German tanks is just a myth, but a lot of WWII era supply & civilian trafic being handled with horses, it would be great to see such units. Cavalry is just cool. 1930's style civilians would be useful for later WWII, too.

Good to see that this mod is alive :cool: Best of luck.

Many people aren't aware the German army relied very heavily on horses too. The Wehrmacht made extensive use of horses for hauling supplies and equipment. They shipped over 625,000 horses to Russia as part of Operation Barbarossa in 1940. In the winter 1941 Army Group Centre's alone losses in Russia were 1,000 horses a day. In 1945, the Wehrmacht still had over 1.1 million horses in its inventory.

See

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=121594

for example.

Edited February 21, 2011 by MissionCreep

[Kraetzer 10]

So much work for one Month of War :D

[topas 1]

@Kraezter

Maybe, but it was a very eventful month and hardly a reason to laugh.

The 'strange war' on the Western Front (der Sitzkrieg) lasted longer (September '39 - May '40) but doubt it had a similar aftermath...

Hudreds of thousend of men didn't live to see the October on both sides. (189000 killed or wounded on the german side, similar number on the polish, with 7000 fallen fighting the RKKA). Civilian losses (bombing, mass executions) ranging to 300000 is no reason to laugh either.

No detailed information on the numbers is available though, The german archives regarding the polish campaign were either destroyed in allied bomb raids during the war or with the taking of Berlin by the Soviets and Polish in 1945.

;)

Edited February 21, 2011 by topas

[PuFu 4600]

looking forward to it mate! Top notch work :rolleyes:

ps: i am sorry i can help out till july with the environment props

[Kraetzer 10]

I laugh if i want to laugh, and specaly i will not hide my laugh if i´m only speaking about work and not about war.

And now the Banana will dance

[dimitri_harkov 10]

Yeah, finally you guys went public!

I'm really looking forward to this one - there are so many late war mods already, time for something fresh.

Great work on models & textures - keep it up.

Cheers,

D.

[dialektiikka 10]

it was a very eventful month

I really like the approach you are taking with the mod. Instead of just building a set of "sandbox soldier toys", you are taking care to capture the mood of the Polish campaign and giving respect to history. While there is nothing wrong with the "Technological Study of Military Units and Machines" aspect of many mods out there, I like your approach more.

Even with the high detail level of vehicles, weapons etc, it feels as if your mod is about humans. About people in midst of a great conflict. And this with just a few glimpses of soldier models ;) It will be interesting to see what you'll come up with in the future.

It seems that you are doing solid historical research for the mod. Just in case you haven't checked it yet, you could try the US National Archives Collections of Seized Enemy Records 1942-, RG 242.

In their collection the NARA holds the German High Command situational maps from 1939 onwards, including maps from the Polish campaign. I'm under the impression that the maps have been fully digitized a few years ago and are now available to the public. I have no knowledge on their pricing, but it shouldn't be too high. If possible, you could try to work with Polish military museum staff or a university history department in getting hold of the maps. The maps may be helpful for the mod or just of general interest.

The maps should be under the "Lage Ost" maps collection, which comprices some 2000 maps from the Eastern Front sep. 1939 - may 1945.

Contact email for National Archives and Records Administration is Archives2reference(at)nara.com. You can ask any questions about early war Polish campaign maps from their helpfull and professional staff there :)

Happy hunting and good luck with the horses :)

[topas 1]

I laugh if i want to laugh, and specaly i will not hide my laugh if i´m only speaking about work and not about war.

And now the Banana will dance

Ok, sorry, maybe it was me who misunderstood then.

Besides; As long as working on a mod brings fun and content undelivered before; it does not really matter of what lenght the conflict it aims to depict was.

If I recall, there was a group making the US invasion of Panama; and it was like not even 2 weeks long. With the Falklands War it is only 2 months to speak of. :)

Have a nice day everyone

-----------------

@dialektiikka

Many thanks for kind words and useful info! Will make use of it given the opportunity!

-----------------

Your upcoming mod Topas reminds me of this mod that came out for Arma:

Army of the Czecho-Slovak republic 1938-45

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9050

Mod had some fun and interesting missions, Topas are you going to have some missions included with the mod when released?

W'39 and ACSR cooperated on the occasion of previous ofp and arma installments; We are looking forward to do the same here. Petrtlach already offered to share the german panzer force he produced; which seems logical - it would be a complete waste of time to do something already existing once again... Perhaps a polish bunker or two made by ACSR will make their appearance. Time will tell how deep the cooperation will go.

As for the missions; yes, those are planned. No details to be given at this time though; We have some sketches and ideas; but first we'd need to have an island. All in due time ;)

Edited February 21, 2011 by topas
previouslu unanswered posts

[ProfTournesol 956]

Hi Topas,

as you may know i've done working cavalry and horse drawn wagons for OFP, for the Civil War Mod, Napoleonic Mod, WW1 Mod and my new Roman mod. And it very feasible in ArmA2 two.

Those horse (or waggons) act as normal OFP/ARmA2 vehicles : you can get in or get out etc.

I can't offer much more help as i'm still very involved in OFP but let me explain how horse can easily work in ArmA2 :

(1) The hard part : create (or get...) a horse model ; create some very basic animations for it, mainly : standing, trot, gallop, dying, dead stance. Create the appropiate CFGMoves entry (or whatever it's called now) for those animations.

(2) The easy part : create an empty (invisible) vehicle with only two proxys in it, (and some geo / memory lods too of course) : one proxy for the rider, and one for the horse as cargo.

(3) Create a simple script to "createvehicle" a horse (with eventually some randomization in order to get different horse colors) and put it in the cargo of the invisible vehicle at the initialization time, the same script is used to animate the "horse as cargo" according to the speed (and state) of the empty vehicle. (ie "switchmoving" the appropriate animations according to speed of the empty vehicle).

(4) Create all the basic configs :

• for the horse as a "class man" (or whatever class exists now in ArmA2), attaching it to the appropriate Cfg Moves,
  
• for the "horse vehicle" as a simple "class car", eventually armed if you wanna give it some attack possibility (or with some attack scripting if you like it).
  

(5) If you wanna make some horse drawn wagons (i even made some oxen driven ones...), just replace the "empty vehicle" by a waggon.

If you wanna see some of them in action, just follow my VeniVidiVici link and look at the video on the first page of the topic. You'll even see some Elephants :)

[topas 1]

Given time and proper manpower we'll surely get into this! Many thanks ProfTournesol!

Same is with the vehicles being able to tow;

a feature that we would very much like to have implemented for arty towers and other small vehicles;

Edited February 21, 2011 by topas
damn typos

[Maciek95PL 10]

Really can't wait for this mod! Good luck!

[PacUK 1]

Some great looking units there guys, good luck with the mod!

[BLACKMETAL 10]

Nice! Textures good as usual, Jarek. :)

[guy123 10]

Yeah, its really good to see good use of textures! These are all very nice addons!

[lecholas 2]

Very nice news! I feared that the mod was abandoned. I take it you plan to make a new terrain? What area you intend to recreate?

[topas 1]

Thx all on behalf of the team;

Re terrain;

It's definately too early to make any statements on this, Lecholas.

Our heads are full of all kinds of ideas now;

ones being a single large map, by definition fictional but resembling Poland due to custom architecture, objects, roads etc.,

others to have several smaller maps for specific scenarios (like Westerplatte, Piotrków Trybunalski, Tomaszów Mazowiecki).

Time will tell.

Let's not think maps yet; we still haven't shown any weapons or infantry units ;)

[Lagussi 9]

Wow! Looks really, really good! And the era/approach is really interesting as well, as these early days are somewhat forgotten. Just like our Winter War...sorry, I had to add it here, as the situation was pretty much similar on 30.Nov.1939.

Waiting for this!

[topas 1]

Thx Lagus FinP,

The situation was in fact somewhat similar, yet you managed to preserve your independence, despite some territorial losses. We ended up differently.

From what I remember on the Talvisota the allied plans of intervention were rather vague. The British wanted to gain a foothold in Finland, but then again without the need to engage the Soviets. The French on the other hand wanted to send the Polish Armed Forces In Exile to help you.Well, any intervention by the allied would probably provoke the Germans to take actions and attack Sweden...who knows...

Anyway; I am awaiting the finnish WinterWar mod with anticipation myself. Perhaps there's even some room for cooperation too, especially when it comes to the Soviet side. Time will tell.

[jojimbo 0]

loved watching those september 1939 video clips, brings it home that the Polish were also fighting the Russians at the same time, those cavalry are freaking awesome :)

good luck with the mod Topas

[DaveP 66]

As someone of polish descent with relatives who experienced this conflict I'm pretty stoked, nice stuff.