US Civil War Mod ver.1.0 Beta Released

[gavinthecat 0]

Right well ur probably interested in how the confederates are coming along heres a pic, some units are nearer finished than others in this screen, so be forgiving to thoes units still catching up lol

and yes i know the soldiers all have lovely shiney shoes lol (not got to them yet) half of them will just have feet, in all there are 21 variety of irregular appearing soldier, (lots of combinations) this screen shows just half of those, and also a corporal (bearer) and sergeant, and sergeant major (who is very early wip) comments appreciated

http://img168.echo.cx/my.php?image=war36xj.jpg

oh and just to be a bit cheesy lol, heres a period version of that pic lol

http://img227.echo.cx/my.php?image=war48iz.jpg

[Sepe 1]

Love those dirty trousers and that big flag! You really mean those lag even less than the originals?

[gavinthecat 0]

Yeah and ill tell u why, but in doing so i mean to cause no offence to the authors of the last addons.

So first of are the lods, the distances at which models are shown in ofp, in the old units these distances were coded in such a way, that for even quite far away, the first or second high poly lods would be used. Then the middle lod was deleted (for god knows why) and then the last lod, was quite poly intense, for first lod models etc, hats and stuff were added to it.

Now if you combine that with the fact that the textures used in the first lod were generally applied to all lods, and were of a middle to sometimes high resolution (For items that didnt require it at times) it meant that the units are demanding.

The original authors were not experienced addon makers and did a great effort, but their units, while graphically on the weaker spectrum, certainly did not mean they in fact ran better than others, on the contrary they were among the more demanding.

So of course ive reconfigured the lods, added back the missing lods, and used textures that reduce in size the further the units appear. Many units share textures (it does not appear like that ingame) but is designed to reduce cpu usage. Ive been editing in particular units for donkeys years, so im comfortable editing lods etc.

The units i release will possibly come in 2 versions, the standard which will run about 20 - 25% better than the old pack.

and the Performance version, which should run about 30 - 40% better.

That said the performance version if i judge its required would really be only for people running on systems like 700 - 1000mhz that struggle at times with ofp.

The weapons too have lods, the old ones didnt and so they should in combination with the units run faster also.

[gavinthecat 0]

And courtesy of the great jojimbo of i44, he has donated to use from his mountain of models lol these excellent new hands that we will apply to units.

http://img121.echo.cx/my.php?image=hands3wq.jpg

[bigus_dikus 0]

pics look awsome gavin. Any idea when  your gunna

release these new units so we can check them out?

bigus

[Sepe 1]

Beware: If you were about to say "When it's ready" do not. If you will, i'll toast your head and then feed it to my dog.

Those hands are... BIG!

[gavinthecat 0]

lol u mean the hands are tooooo big? i could reduce em a little but if u compare ur own hand to ur face, u see its pretty big, the normal bis hands were for the civilian model (from which these units were based) was too small in proportion i think anyway

oh oh oh and heres feet!

http://img104.echo.cx/my.php?image=feet7jr.jpg

Now of all the variety of confederate infantry, ive basically given the guys that have butternut (be it jacket, trousers or both) feet, meaning about 40% of the confederate troopers have feet. This seems approximately okay.

This pack will feature a lot of groups to help mission makers and for u guys like me who like to set up quick fights (but with detailed and versatile groups) - however rest assured there are no irrelevent groups etc

Okay well, i have VMI cadets, and the confederate zoaves and some black civilans (man and a woman) to do, there are still the optics to be done too, while the siegecannon and mortor still need retextured, so id say about 2 weeks until a team beta is ready, it could be an open beta i suppose, but u see people get open betas, and treat em like finished articles getting fed up etc, so we'll see, if ud like to be a beta tester contact me etc.

tho i warn i expect detailed reports from beta testers lol

http://img104.echo.cx/my.php?image=feet7jr.jpg

[Sepe 1]

Well, they aren't really that big, but it seems that the forefinger is a lot thicker than the others... Yes, it should be thicker, but not much more than the middlefinger is..

Woah, did they really fight without shoes? Now that's why they say the American Civil War was so terrible Just think about it, these guys march hundreds of kilometers without boots? Ow...

[gavinthecat 0]

Righty well heres a wee peak at some of the VMI guys, notice the scarves and blah blah

comments appreciated

http://img107.echo.cx/my.php?image=vmi3qp.jpg

[Sepe 1]

Hmm that musket seems a bit... dark? Or maybe it's just me, don't know if they painted their guns.

Other than that, lookin' great! Keep up the good work!

[gavinthecat 0]

ya dyanmite its probably just the light ingame, in the morning or afternoon etc it looks really different depending on time of day, if u check the guns.jpg thats all the guns in game there including the one in this screen.

Many examples of the stoc ive seen however are dark too however (tho i wouldnt make em too dark)

[gavinthecat 0]

So anyway gents some opinions then, what are u guys wanting in or not?

Basically so far, concerning just units, the pack has been made on the principle foundation of taking the old one and making it super fancy etc, but we can expand some units)

For example the VMI guys, its easy with object selections to give these special units (including the zouaves etc) some ranked units, basically NCOS.

So for the VMI, and zoauves (and union versions) u will be able to put a squad down including an NCO (sergeant and corporal) etc, there is also probably going to be regimental standard bearers for...

Iron Brigade

Union 5th NYC and the 14th Brooklyn

and the er... 2 confederate zoave regiments

the VMI

I was thinking for the cavalry now, and i would like ur opinions on this.

For the first release they might be without cavalry units, as i can focus on these for the second release, and they would basically consist of foot cavalry (dismounted) and mounted cavalry firing dragoon style (basically this will be an all new fancy edit of an animated horse and rider firing like a vehicle)

but if i work on that and hold the release till their done it will be another few weeks, so its up to u guys what ya think? wait till cav are in too, or get a release with a 2nd release with cav later?

If u want cav u can help me now by saying which u would like and the style they should be added ingame etc.

[joshnolan225 0]

wow those VMI cadets look just like the ones on the painting on JM-Hall, amazing, cant wait

[gavinthecat 0]

Im glad u like em buddy cheers, well i have to admit i love feedback, and id love u guys to give feedback for a new member of the mod (er well ive recruited him, hes a great addonmaker) and hes joined the addon department per say,

his name is Zalmoxis, (not in real life tho) er... and this is his work - the new confederate zouaves (mispell i know) 'Wheats Tigers' what u think guys ? i like em' we may add a bit of dirt, but just a tiny bit

http://img178.echo.cx/my.php?image=zovs28kv.jpg

[POPKA 0]

Well gavin, i would say that you should keep the cavalry until the second release, mainly because in CWMod v1.1 i found that i had no use for the cavalry guys realy unless i was using them on PC horse but then i couldent get them to fight very well by using PCHorse so i just generaly palyed with the Zouoves, Infantry and artillery.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Quote[/b] ]On a side note, I noticed a bunch of posts complaining about lag caused by these units and their bayonet scripting. I mentioned this a while ago, but I would highly suggest that you guys (the mod team) look into the bayonets made by the OFP Taiwan Workshop team. Their bayonets use ZERO scripting, unlike the 100% scripted PUKF ones. It is all done via the natural config of the game, so it shouldn't cause nearly as much lag as a constant nearestobject loop.

Well General Barron - scripting master- , you're 100 % right ! I've reworked CWmusket in that way to see if it's possible in cwmod and it is. In fact, it's a very easy way (and non lagging) to implement close combat. CWmod had already a close combat ability (called "melee" or "pouch") which didn't work for AI but it's easy to have it working. In fact, slightly modifying the pouch (creating a modelspecial which is the gun with bayonet) AND the ammo ("strokegunhit") of the melee, the AI choses the bayonet gun when close to enemies. EVEN IF it has ammo left.  

The animation is the strokegun anim, but it's possible (not for me...) to modify anim.pbo and config.bin to replace it by a bayonet attack one  (as Taiwan Workshop did).

@ Popka : i've already modified PC horse so that you can use cw cavalry men riding AND shooting on them (even using sword), but i think cwmod was trying to modify the horse so that it looks a more realistic. That's why, Gavin, i don't understand why we should choose between mounted and dismounted guys if the horse is only a "car horse with gun turret" ?

@ CWmod : if interested by the bayonet thing, contact me. By the way, who is leading the cwmod now ? Are Triglav and the founding members still on board ?

[gavinthecat 0]

Yup i believe Triglav is admin but he's having troubs with time at the mo, basically im organising our addon makers to work coherently with an overall project outline (that we can work out on msn

Anyway yeah well, the cavalry, right so what i was saying is, at the moment we have been using the pchorse addon beta if not correct, while the cavalry units are simply standalone men (that one would stick to a horse)

While the pchorse with a shooting guy, if we were to replace, would simply mean sticking a new cavalry unit onto that horse model, as the shooing pchorse model is classed in ofp as a vehicle.

However prof if you've made a breakthrough with the application of cavalry then contact me on msn, cos certainly that is something we will integrate into the next release without a doubt, i can talk to u then about which cavalry units and stuff we could stick in

//EDIT and also, we could look into enhancing the animations of the horse also, as i have some animation skill, and i know those who are pretty decent too in i44 etc

As for the bayonet, the weapons have all been updated for cwmod (but they use the original code) so any scripts for bayonets u made before WILL work with the new weapons. At present each weapon has its own scripts etc, if its possible for us to improve cpu runnage time with bayonets prof, and uve got an idea id love to hear that too, i can pretty much edit the anim.pbo its not too hard, so we need to chat on msn

[ProfTournesol 956]

Well, you didn't understand me right, but my english is awfull.

In fact, General Barron said that the Taiwan workshop guys just modified weapons config, and don't use ANY SCRIPTS for bayonet attack. I looked through this and understood how we can implement it for cwmod. In fact i modified (just a little !) musket config and now guys attack when close enough with a bayonet gun, without any scripting. It's just a modif of the previous "melee" ability existing but not working for AI. When guys decide to use the melee ability, a bayonet appears on their gun. (In fact, the p3d model of the gun is replaced at that moment by the p3d model with bayonet, without script).

If you want to implement this ability before release, you must modify every riffle config.cpp, and just add to soldiers one magazine (named "pouch" for every riffle at the moment, but with the modif, must be one sort of "pouch" for each riffle type, cause the "pouch" has a modelspecial entry which is the bayonet riffle). And of course suppress any bayonet scripts in the soldiers init (no lag anymore !). And eventually modify the anim for strokegun.

About horses, i've already sent my PC charger horse modified to Pickett : the horse is a car, with an invisible "sharps carbine" turret (pc horse turret was not invisible, it was the horse rider himself, it's the reason why cw cav guys couldn't mount it). With the modified horse, any unit can mount the horse and shoot with the turret, with smoke etc. (Of course, it's more realistic if they already have a sharps carbine). If you're interested, email me (no msn chat).

[gavinthecat 0]

yep im definately interested profs, that would be great if u could email me a copy! I think u have my email address already yeah!

btw guys later on today, Zalmoxis (what a name, sounds like a canadian drug) will release pics of another confederate zoauve - the er... 2nd Maryland i think.

[ww2weasel 10]

Didn't review all pages of your forum, but an FYI:

aTsTwALKER's    2cm flak 30 <AA gun>

Existing script to prolong canon

Prolong is unlimbered cannon being drawn by men or horses while in a "fire ready" condition.

<Mod> Berlin 45  / WW2EC

http://www.storiamilitare.org/be45/b45artGE.php

Video:

http://www.storiamilitare.org/be45/germana...t/2cmflak30.wmv                                           860 kb

<If the above link does not work goto WW2EC's forum page and look for Berlin 1945 < 2cm flak 30 UPDATED ! > You can access video from there. http://www.3dactionplanet.com/flashpoint/ww2ec/forum.html>

Might ask aTsTwALKER if he could share the script with you.

You may need to detach limber from artillery addon to do this

effectively.

BTW - Nice job with this mod.  

[ProfTournesol 956]

Quote[/b] ]Prolong is unlimbered cannon being drawn by men or horses while in a "fire ready" condition.

A horse caisson which is towing the canon has already been done (see previously in this forum), which is more realistic : if the canon itself had driver (the guy pushing the flak gun of ATST), it will move during the battle, runing after its targets   The canon is towed by a script but I managed to make the wheels of the canon turn during towing. The barrel of the canon points down when the caisson is moving, and points normally when the caisson isn't moving. The crew of the canon can fire normally, even "script-attached" to the caisson. And as you can see in Triglav previous posts, i've added two more crews to the canon, one guy behind ("turning" the canon) and one guy in front loading the canon when it fires (just a reloading anim). I think a 4 guys crew is more realistic.

[gavinthecat 0]

Yep ProfT just tried out those files, some excellent work there, i think new animations can be made for the rider and horse, plus new graphic textures etc, but ur coding there is innovative.

So guys i think we can update these cavalry systems profT has shown us to actually in fact make a cavalry unit for the next cwmod release presumably.

Now then who in cwmod calls themselves an addon maker, cos id love to know who the guys are that are making stuff at the mo cos i intend to organise that so we can cohesively organise our next release!

Also what is the status of people in this mod, as i find it hard to know whose in it and lol whose still in it, and it would be nice to clarify that as apart from profT i think im the only guy making more addons? er (apart from contributions from guys outside the original cwmod team like lt. hunter, and zalmoxis)

[gavinthecat 0]

u gotta love this !

http://ofp.gamezone.cz/_hosted....MOD.jpg

we now have a henry rifle and a new derringer! Ill be texturing them soon!

[POPKA 0]

Lt. Hunter's models look great should be a good addition.

[JdB 151]

Thanks

I'll see if I can find the time to make some more stuff.