USMCLuke

I'm guessing this mission isn't being updated any more, but the non-ACRE version mirror is broken and the only version obtainable requires an unknown out-of-date version of ACRE to even launch. I'm going to have a buddy try to tear it apart and removed the ACRE requirements when he gets a chance, so we can play it in-house, but I figured I'd drop a line here in case the author is still interested in the mission. Some of us won't even think about buying ArmA 3 until Unsung 3.0 is released for it so we're still playing good old 2.6 on ArmA 2 until then. :cool:

Can't wait for v2.5! The anticipation has actually got me back into playing v2.1 just to get my fix for now. Since you're showing off some of the new models, I felt the need to point out that the M16A1/CAR15 models should not have the brass deflector behind the ejection port. :cool: That feature wasn't added until the A2 generation for the M16 and wasn't on the CAR15, with the exception of the XM177E1 variant, until the M4 Carbine. The current model for the M16A1 is essentially an M16A2 with the handguards of an A1. Not a major issue, but being a bit of a gun nut, I felt the need to let you all know in case you want to go that extra mile for period realism. EDIT: After reading through the thread I saw this had already been brought up! Were you guys ever able to find/create an alternative for the M119 155mm artillery piece for the US? The M119 didn't see service with the US until the late 1980's and that's always kind of stood out as an eyesore for me seeing them around the FOBs (though I'm sure most people don't realize or care). I figured I'd bring it up again since you appear to have some very capable modellers and texture artists cranking out new content for v2.5. The US 155mm artillery in Vietnam was the M114A1/XM123. However, the M114 is pretty large so if its size is an issue, I think even the M2A1 or M102 105mm artillery could work as adequate alternatives and any of them would go a long way towards completing the overall Vietnam feel/atmosphere, especially on the US firebases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M114_155_mm_howitzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M101_howitzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M102_howitzer

The War Between the States (WBtS) A potential mod for ArmA 2 based on the American Civil War (1861-1865). Preface Greetings from MilitaryGamers.com! Before I begin, I would like to give you all a little back story behind our community's attempt to create a mod based on the American Civil War. We began a short while back to develop this mod using another game's engine, Mount&Blade: Warband, in an attempt to bring a first-person command/shooter/milsim based on the Civil War to life in a game that supported large-scale multiplayer battlefield combat, and that was also, relatively speaking, easy to mod and had a strong modding community behind it. However, we quickly found that the modding community for that game was unwilling to assist in our effort even though the majority of the models, animations, systems, etc. had already been created. Not wanting our small team to spend several months of our time going it alone and reinventing the wheel where it had already been perfected only to possibly have another, more experienced team, release something while we were still in production, the decision was made to move over to one of the MilitaryGamers.com community's even more popular game ventures, ArmA 2, and break new ground. With the switch to ArmA 2 as the backdrop for our mod, many features and possibilities we wanted to implement, but were unable to because of the "hard-coded" limitations of the previous engine are now at least feasible again. In many ways this engine is an even better fit because some of the more common engine mechanics such as shooting, projectile physics, explosions, hit boxes, etc. are all already part of the game and will not have to be added in just to make work. As long-time fans of this series, it was a natural transition for many of us. ArmA 2 also has (arguably) an even larger modding community to fall back on for guidance and support, and since no one has really attempted to create a period mod like this since OFP, hopefully this mod will be better received here and we will be able to assemble the team needed to make this happen. We did, however, lose several members of our already small modding team that had committed to the project because they were not happy with the switch, even though very little actual work had been done, and what has can be converted. However, when making the switch to ArmA 2, we actually increased the number of potential members in our own community that can possibly assist in this effort. Our members have varying degrees of skill in modding different areas of ArmA 2 (some of them famous/infamous posters around here), however each member's time is limited and we will not be able to see this through without increasing the size of our modding team. We also need to get a feel for whether or not we can pull this off before we throw the full weight of MilitaryGamers.com's resources into the effort. We need your help! We need assistance in all aspects, but especially those who are experienced in modeling and texturing, animations and rigging, etc. Eventually, if we can't pull it off ourselves, we will need someone that can create a custom battlefield map (Island) using historical locations. If you can and would like to help, please contact me via PM here or through MilitaryGamers.com's Forums (best) with what area(s) you would like to help with, your experience, and links to some examples of your work (if possible). Please only offer your help if you are experienced and serious! Goals To accurately and realistically portray the American Civil War using the ArmA 2 engine. The initial focus will be to provide a two-faction (USA/CSA) sandbox-style multiplayer mission with defined player roles (ranks) which allow you to take control of pre-made historical company-sized units at camps and march out to fight other players for control over strategic objectives. Proposed Features (WIP) Melee Combat (Is it even possible?) AI Commands/Formations and Bonuses Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery Units and Player Roles Realistic Uniforms, Weapons, and Equipment (With both generic and specific historical units represented.)

We've not gotten the support we'd need to get the ball rolling on this. I'm officially calling it on the mod at this point. I am simply involved in far too many projects at MilitaryGamers.com to attempt this one alone with the few guys I have on my staff that would be able to assist. Here's to hoping that someone can see a vision like this through someday.

Anyone interested in offering real assistance to these efforts please go to http://www.militarygamers.com/forums/ucp.php?mode=register and register an account on the MilitaryGamers.com forums. This is for the guys who've offered model/texture help, animations help, map help, etc. I'd like to include everyone on a team roster on our site to make task organization easier to manage. This doesn't mean you're committed to the project or team full-time, it just makes it easier for me to organize everyone's efforts and to contact you. It would also help for you to make a post under the WBtS forum after you register so that we know who you are and your account doesn't get purged. Registered accounts without memberships are generally purged on a 90 day inactivity basis unless you're actively contributing to the community. Communicating via these forums is fine for brief questions or inquiries, however, I don't check this site as often, and no actual mod work will be handled here, it is all managed on our site. We will post major updates here occasionally, but the bulk of the project will be managed via the MilitaryGamers.com forums.

A custom island is critical for our mod and on our eventual to-do list.

So you're the one that did the Sharpe's units? Cool. I took note of it as soon as I saw it on Armaholic quite a while back. Was hoping to see a full-on Napoleonic mod result from it. I am a jack-of-trades of sorts when it comes to modding. I can work a lot of things that others have created and tweak them to my own ends. I've not created any original content in any recent games that's made it to the public, but as far as ArmA 2 goes, I've done a lot to tweak MP missions, especially Warfare. We used to run a version of Benny's Warfare on a MilitaryGamers.com server that I had heavily modified to meet the realism expectations of the US military veterans of the MG community. I also created the '53 Enfield Model on the first page in about 8 hrs and I'd never used a 3D modelling program prior. I just never taught myself how to adequately texture it... The AI work is going to be such a huge undertaking that it will practically be a mod in and of itself. I have a guy that will be helping work on this, but he is also one of my staff members and is currently already tasked out and since we are at a point where there's no point in investing a lot of time and energy until we know it can actually be a reality. If we can get the initial models and weapons in, then we can begin to tap all the various people that are helping and set them to work in several areas at once utilizing SVN checkout.

We have guys that can mod all sorts of different areas of ArmA 2 within our own community, and are willing to help, and we've also had a lot of offers to help in other areas from within the ArmA 2 modding community, but no one that can do models and that's a bit of a sticking point. I have tinkered with modelling, and mine are OK, but not great, and I have no experience texturing, creating UV maps, etc. I manage the entire MilitaryGamers.com community (over 800 members) from several of our game branches to the website, forums, memberships etc. I also work full time (with travel nearly every month), and I have a wife and three small children. The WBtS project is my vision, and so I'm overseeing it, organizing etc., and I will be helping with some of the coding as well as creating the MP mission when it comes to that point, but my plate is currently too full to teach myself what it would take to create quality models, so I'm recruiting (outsourcing) for this. Until we have textured models, there's really not much point to doing anything else, so no, there's no "base". Those items would form the base.

While ArmA 3 looks pretty, they lost me on the future setting. I've been with this series since OFP and it'll be the first title I don't purchase, at least not for a few years. I'll give it a few years for the mod community to catch up with some total conversions/ports and then I'll pick it up on the cheap somewhere. As far as this mod goes, everything's really just talk until we manage to recruit a model and texture guy willing to get something put together for us to start with.

Sorry for double-posting. Since more people are apparently reading this thread lately, I will post a teaser for you all. It is a rough outline of a MP mission scenario I had thought up quite a while back when we first decided to create this mod in the ArmA 2 engine.

It's probably not StubbleHopper's fault. As the OP mentions, we began attempting to create this mod in the M&B Warband engine but at the time the community was... less than supportive, even though we were fairly well organized and had the project outlined almost entirely. Our focus was also on historical accuracy with little to no exceptions where possible. There were a number of reasons we decided to bring our attempt over to the ArmA 2 community, but mainly because of the capabilities of the engine. We wanted the focus to be on the realistic firearm and artillery components with melee as the afterthought as opposed to the other way around with Warband's engine. Our own links are probably what has confused the search engines since the two games are tied to this mod, and we retained the name. StubbleHopper's attempt in the Warband engine was just better timed I guess, as his reception was entirely different than the one we encountered there. He has received a lot of support in the way of materials to use where we received only snide remarks. Had we the same reception we might not have converted over, but I still think the ArmA 2 engine offers the most possibilities for us with this mod. Getting past the horses/cavalry issues and tackling melee will be two of our greatest challenges, though if we can do these things, the mod will be pretty epic, not to mention groundbreaking as there are very few Civil War mods out there in any engine that truly submerse you into the atmosphere of the era in such a way, and maintain historical accuracy along the way. The main thing we lacked there is what we lack here, quality textured models. If we can get past that stopping point, we can actually begin to make some headway on this mod.

Any chance there will be a patch or updated full download that includes all the updates made over the past several months? Sorting through the uploads at armanam.com and comparing file dates gets to be quite a pain and has turned a lot of the folks I know off until a convenient way to get the latest files is created. If it's on SixUpdater or some such, then pardon the question, but many of us quit using SixUpdater because of how complicated it can be as well. I'd like to continue working on an Unsung version of Warfare but have been too lazy to try and get all the latest files myself since my last reformat.

We're still seeking out talented people to help contribute to this modding effort. We haven't made much progress as we are still in need of several key team members to get the ball rolling. Modellers, texture artists, and animators/riggers are the people we need most at this point in time. PM me here or through our forums at www.militarygamers.com if you want to lend a hand. Please only contact us if you are serious about helping, have the time and patience to see your work through, and are already schooled up/skilled in your area. A quick preview of your current/previous work is appreciated.

Anything's possible if we can recruit a model and texture guy willing to do these things. Right now I can do models, but not much else on that side.

Well, there's many pros and cons to both engines. ArmA 2 won out because of several factors, but the things it does well, it does much better than the things M&B Warband can do well. I honestly feel that the mod will do better and have far better staying power and longevity using this game as well. As mentioned above though, here, it may actually be more work, and more trial and error, but much of it will be pioneering new systems that will help the community overall, as we will share everything, and in turn we're hoping more of the experienced members here will help us as well, quid pro quo. Having lurked amongst both modding communities for many many years, I also think that ArmA 2's community is much more receptive and I'm banking on that. Ultimately, the bottom line is that an American Civil War mod could be a reality within a week with M&B, if the people that have created everything for it would loosen their deathgrip on the materials and cooperate. I just don't see that happening, and if we have to do most of it from scratch, we might as well do it where the rug won't be pulled out from underneath us, and where people will appreciate this mod for what it is and take it to the next level when we release it to the mission making community.

We've already began to create some 3D models, however, this isn't our strong suit amongst the guys currently contributing. We've mainly done/tweaked missions, some people have done mapping/island work, and implemented parts of other peoples' mods/addons into ArmA 2 missions, file tweaks, adding units, vehicles, etc. We also have some guys who can script fairly well in a few different languages. Sounds we can probably borrow for now and a musical score has already been created. I created a '53 Enfield Rifle Musket, after picking up and teaching myself how to model using Wings 3D (for the M&B Engine). 3 days using the app. and it didn't turn out too shabby, however I really have no idea what I'm doing and I'm sure the model could be improved (eliminating hidden faces for starters). It and any others that were created that we can get permission to use now that we've made the switch will need to be converted over. UV mapping, normal maps, specular maps, textures, that's something that we'll definitely need to recruit someone with experience to help with. I don't have time to learn those tasks at the moment due to my real life job, but I can continue to contribute an unmapped/untextured model here and there when needed if someone else can finish them. An M1857 12-pounder Napoleon Cannon (If the creator will allow us to use it still, he was on the fence about the switch): It has 2854 total polygons. http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa186/Krempl/littlenapoleon_strip3.jpg - Sorry for URL only, the forums won't let me put more than 5 images in at once. Also, I will need to check back with the gentleman, and see if the offer still stands now that we've made the switch to the ArmA 2 engine, but one the the primary contributors for the Blue and the Gray Mod for Empire: Total War has offered us the use of his models and textures if they could possibly be converted over.

Thanks for taking notice so quickly and for the advice! Melee and Mounted Combat are the two I think stand out the most simply because I don't think either one has yet been perfected anywhere. I know we don't have the internal know-how to pull these two off. Issues like these are why it's critical for a mod like this to have the assistance of some of the best and brightest from the ArmA 2 modding community lending a hand to make it happen. The MilitaryGamers.com team knows our limitations, but we would still like to pull this off both for our own members and for the gaming community at large since their are no recent multiplayer games or mods that focus on first-person, historically accurate, American Civil War combat on a large scale. We don't want/need the credit for this, and we will plaster contributor credits all over this if need be, we just want to see it become a reality.

Is this a reference to the dark textures around the collars on the uniforms? I thought it was maybe intentional sweat stains, but it is really dark (almost black) even for that and lacks the dark texture on the actual blouse where the sweat stain would also be. I was just guessing at that, but if it's a bug it's that way on all the models for my current settings.

Has anyone got the grenade fix and/or other error report fixes uploaded anywhere? I would like to begin making a Warfare mission in earnest, however, I've been holding off for confirmation as to whether or not these bugs are fixed and I haven't seen any patch updates from the Unsung team either here or at armanam.com. @Polish GI - Is it safe to assume that if any of your files at armanam.com have newer time/date stamps than the release files that they have been updated? I'd like to be able to put together a more streamlined installer package for use by my own community (I'd be more than happy to share the download links), I just want to make sure that the files included are the most current. Also, I've been traveling for work so the time I have to read this thread fully has been limited to skimming. Did I read that there is a fix for the Vietnamese language sounds or is that still in the works?

Anyone else get a constant action pop up in helos? "Pop smoke" tends to be the usual. I'll scroll my mouse wheel and right click to remove it, but it will just keep coming back. Quite annoying, especially when piloting. Also, is there any chance you guys can borrow an M101, M114A1 or other 105mm/155mm field artillery piece from another mod team to round out the period-accurate artillery? The M119 wasn't fielded until 1987. I know 31st Normandy has an M101. I'm doing up a Warfare MP mission for Unsung and I'd like to be able to have the bigger guns available to the US for fire support but I won't include the M119. If you guys are planning future maps, I might suggest a Southern I Corps and Northern II Corps map to make the use of both regular US Army and USMC units a plausible reality. For now I'll be using the S.E.A. map by CSJ (even though it doesn't seem to be a real location) simply because it offers the terrain suitable for MP with a decent size. It wouldn't load until I applied the launch property -exThreads=0, why is that? That will keep some people from being able to play it unless they too know to change this.

Are all non-Vietnam era planes and equipment removed? That is the lynchpin as to whether or not my community will use this. Also, why is OA required? OA adds some features, sure, but it really tends to complicate the hell out of trying to get a large group of people all able to play on the same dedicated server.

Is it just me, or does anyone else always get a "Pop smoke" command while in helos even after scrolling and cancelling?

Any chance someone will post the fixed MP missions? I would like to play this MP with my group, but I can't seem to get the unpacked missions to load in ArmA 2's editor to repack them properly as was mentioned. ---------- Post added at 09:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:24 PM ---------- Good luck and keep up the hard work! Many people are eagerly awaiting a MP mission such as this!

Any chance someone that knows how can fix the MP maps and put a download up so not everyone has to repack them? And then an update to the OP pointing out the download would be extra nice. I used to mod a bit for ArmA 2 way back but my skills are rusty as I've only just reinstalled everything on my new PC specifically to play this mod. I unPBO'd the MP missions, yet I can't seem to open them in the editor to re-package them... Ultimately I'd like to see a Benny's Warfare MP mission done with this mod. That would be phenomenal. Been waiting a lifetime for a good Vietnam mod (in any game, ArmA 2 just makes it that much better). This one takes the cake, gents! Great work!

Well, the good news is we finally have our server running in CO mode with the beta patch. But the good news can't last, right? So because we have to have the beta patch running as a mod, in order to not have our members and the public have to install the beta patch, we have to run it with equalmods=0. Not only have the number of asshats and hackers run out of control, people who come on and play with only OA installed see all the ArmA 2 content as birds and all sorts of other crap. So we're not able to run missions that feature USMC and Army for BluFor and RU and Taki's for OpFor, unless we want to lock our server down or require everyone that connects to have the beta patch installed.