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Striker

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  • Birthday 11/30/1961

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  1. Hi Leon, just noticed your comment. There are 2 separate map packages for these missions. Which one are you having trouble with? They're "Salisbury Plain M1BT Camp V2" and "Hannover Weserbergland M1BT Camp V2". You can find them on the map packages. They don't say v2 in the name though, only in the version number.
  2. You're welcome Gladiator. It was a lot of work but I tried really hard to make sure it was reasonable for appearance and performance. I'm taking notes from anyone that messages me if you find a problem. I'll probably plan on doing an update to it some time next years and release it at the end of the summer like this one. If you run across a problem please let me know.
  3. Hey Thorn, Yeah, I actually took the time to go over the manual (I owned the console and the original game) from the Genesis game and tried to use terrains that reflected the map areas as best as possible. I also recreated the original M1 bases and modeled the repair/refuel ability along with tow vehicles so you can bring back damaged tanks to repair them. It's not perfect by any means but it should give you at least as close to the same experience. I was planning on putting them together in campaign format but kind of dropped the ball while I was working on the Hannover map. When the new version comes out I might go back and do some minor changes and then do the campaign. They should work fine but feel free to send me a message if you find issues or your feedback on the missions after you try them out.
  4. Thanks Gladiator. I just submitted the map today along with the notes on the revisions. I gave it to Sean earlier and he has it but I don't think he's had time to put it up on the server and give me the actual code keys for it. I'll post it as soon as it's available.
  5. Version 1.0.0

    94 downloads

    Use this UUID to download this map from the package manager: 9f89ce20-c2a9-4162-a2f4-becb327a9fe1 I'm finally submitting my reworked version of the Hannover-Weserbergland map. This map contains a huge number of visual and operational fixes for a long running map, so it's somewhat hard to put everything into this one post. I will be updating the information occasionally so please check back from time to time. I've spent close to 8 months and about 1200 hours working on it. I've really reached a limit of the amount of time I can spend on it up to this point so I'm submitting it in a fairly close to finished state. What I would like is for everyone that uses this map to spend some time using it and then submit any problems that they find. Please read any other posts carefully to make sure that you are not resubmitting a prior persons post. Also, please try to be as descriptive as you possibly can on the problem that you find along with coordinates. I will not submit another revision for awhile as to keep the number of revisions as small as possible. I will be happy to revise it in the future, but I will collect all of the suggestions and notes about problems, put them together into one master list, and then focus on the most important changes. Feel free to post your list, comments or suggestions here. There are many problems that exist in a lot of the older maps, and this one really isn't any different. Michael did the best he could at the time adding as many features as possible, but it's really a time consuming project when you dive into working on very large maps such as this one. You will absolutely find that there are areas where towns should be, but there are no buildings. There are also roads that were placed from many years ago when the original map was authored, but no buildings. There are also roads that lead to areas where it doesn't seem to make any sense, usually because they are not complete, again, this is because of when and how the original map was produced. There just simply is not enough time to fill in all the detail in such a large map and I tried to focus on the most important areas. I will absolutely consider extending roads and adding new tows or villages per request. But I wanted to get this version out in it's current state so that the community could have time to use, evaluate, and make suggestions. I've also spent quite a few hours testing the map using different size areas and have found no problems with loading and frame rates. I was able to do a 22 x 22 km area including most of the Hannover city area and drove a M1 tank through it without any issues. I can not attest to how it will run in a multiplayer scenario. You'll will most likely want to do a test of any area you choose first before spending a lot of time placing units and finding out it has lag problems. Based on my testing though, there should not be any major problems. I would however suggest NOT using the entire East Hannover region as you primary mission focus. I would probably be better for performance reasons to use a section of it as a visual reference or starting point rather than as part of your entire battle plan. Extensive testing will help determine if and what is usable. Please keep in mind that the visual part of the work is only a tiny fraction of the actual goal of the work. The primary goal was to make the map have a functional ability that reflects the actual area without compromising performance. Some of the important changes: 1. Added all of the Eastern Hannover area including the medical and hospital areas in the Southeast, most of the industrial areas and commercial areas. I also added a lot of the residential areas along with the parks and trees. The city is extremely complex and I tried to model the different structures as best as possible within the limitations of the models available. I also tried to use spacing that makes sense for the highly populated area without creating a loading problem. This also includes all of the roads that crisscross the area and bridges for road and rail lines. I made adjustments to as many of the existing roads as possible so that it reflects the actual locations or as close as possible. 2. I also added three new towns to the East, Hildesheim, Lehrte and Sehnde along with their respective main roads and rail lines. 3. Fixed the VW plant to reflect what it's appearance should be as close as possible using the current modeling. I also fixed a lot of the roadways around Garbsen. I also fixed the Flughafen airport along with the roads and rail lines around it. 4. I fixed the shape of the forests and types of trees around East Hannover and the routing of the Lein river so that it enters the canal along the lake properly. 5. Leveled a very small amount of the terrain, mostly around the VW plant in order to make the buildings look more consistent. 6. Went through the entire map, square KM by square KM, and spliced all roads and rail lines together while cleaning up and smoothing them out. Having continuous and smooth roads helps with path finding immensely. Also, keep in mind that rail lines just like any path on the map can be used for AI path finding. There's no reason to restrict your vehicles to roads only so cleaning up a lot of the broken paths helps a lot in mission design. I also fixed all of the locations of the rail lines so that they are as close to realistic as possible and fixed the junctions of the rail lines in the city areas so they are merged together at the proper points or as close to the actual points as possible. Moved all of the building structures, or as may as I could find off of the roads ( you may find one somewhere but I did a lot of careful looking). 7. Made sure that all bridges are consistent with the type of road surface so that they match and are all passable by AI during pathfinding or route snapping. This is another important aspect of mission building because it helps the mission designer create routes quicker and if the bridge is wrong, the path will be rerouted. 8. Completely redid the city of Rinteln so that the buildings were off of the roads. A lot of the buildings were placed in a hurry and never revised over the years, so many of the surplus structures were all over the city area. I also tried to make the roads as close as possible within some limitations. You'll notice that the Southern side of the river is slightly different that the real map. 9. Reworked the airports so that the runways use asphalt polygons to represent them instead of a bunch of roadways layered.
  6. Just wanted to update you guys on the progress. I know it might seem like it's taking a long time but I've actually been putting in quite a few hours every day on this with a day or two break in between. It's really time consuming to place stuff correctly. I'm actually almost done now. The last few items are to add a couple industrial areas and then I'm going to spend the next couple weeks finishing up the fixes. I finished the three Eastern cities so I'm including some images here. They start with Hildesheim, then Sehnde and then Lehrte with the map view of each first. I'm hoping that I can get this wrapped up in the next couple weeks. The hard part is essentially done with the adding of buildings. The rest is fairly easy and that's just doing the final road and building placement cleanup.
  7. I personally don't think it will have that much of an impact overall. There are plenty of areas that actually have a lot more density than East Hannover and Hildesheim. If you look at the areas around Garbsen and Seelze they're close in density and Hamlen is even more so. I'm actually being pretty conservative with the number of buildings in comparison. I've been monitoring the performance as I go along and I haven't noticed any difference compared to those areas. I'll also adjust as necessary. A great example is when I worked on the Saisbury map for my campaign. The city was densely packed with the same models all jammed together and when I tried to drive through it I had terrible stuttering. When I spread them out and used varying models the problem went away or was reduced to a non-problematic state anyhow. So having reasonable gaps between models appears to reduce the frame rate issues. A good example of this issue is when you're map editing. If you start stacking a lot of building models in one place so a lot of them are overlapping each other, the engine slows down badly. If you go to the F1 3D view and try to fly around them you can see the problem. Spread them out and it smooths out significantly. Frankly, I don't see people using the entire area as an ops area anyhow, so it will be more for visual reference hopefully. So someone making a scenario might use a section of the city as a reference point but would not put units inside the dense part of the city. It makes navigation too difficult anyhow and you're more likely to get bogged down with just doing that rather than actual fighting. But it will be nice for setting up defensive positions in reference to the location and having it reflect the actual location on the map rather than a blank area. I'll make sure that I monitor any comments that people have about it after I get it done and I'll be able to adjust as necessary. This will just be an initial version but hopefully there won't be too many of them. I'm trying my best to nail it on the first iteration.
  8. Will be testing as I go and so far it doesn't seem to have that big of impact. I can also thin it out a little as necessary. I'm not certain that people will be using the high density areas but you never know.
  9. Hi Gladiator, As Gibsonm pointed out, the map is being worked on. It's actually a massive update that includes adding roads and buildings to Hannover Mitte and the surrounding areas. I'm trying to make it as close to realistic as possible within the constraints of the limited building models but it will look a lot more like the actual cities. I've also been connecting roads, adding some cities to the Northwest and East, fixing railroads, moving buildings off of roads, fixing bridges, cleaning up strange artifacts, and so on. I'm trying to get it done by the end of this month or middle of June at the latest, but it's been a huge amount of work. I've been spending about 4 hours a day of and on working on it since the beginning of December. It's just a lot of picky tedious work so hang in there as it is coming. By the way, there will still be some areas of the map that will be incomplete. There are just way too many actual map object and areas in real life and it would take a lifetime to fill all that in. I'm focusing on the most important populated areas and some of the smaller towns. The map can always be added to in the future but it will be a much better starting point. The reason the map is so goofed up currently is that it's been converted many times and some of the original objects were substituted in those conversions. So I've had to splice roads in a lot of cases and then use the bridge tool to make the proper one. There are many rivers so it's time consuming. I'm about 80% to 90% done I think. Here are some shots of the work in progress. (notes on the map are for my reference only)
  10. OK, it's fixed Magnum. I also made some minor changes to 3 of the other missions but the others were not anything that affect current scenario play. I was missing the penalty zone and used the warning zone accidentally not realizing it would have to be inverted.
  11. Did you bring them into the repair zone? You can tow them back to base using the M88 as long as they're not destroyed. There's a delay but they'll be completely repaired. Move over the the Hemmit's to rearm.
  12. Try my campaign missions. The "Moselle Defense" has 4 Abrams, but all the rest only have 2, very manageable. And they're based on the old Dynamix console game so they're kind of old school. Build primarily for fun and nostalgia rather than training though. Oh, and I forgot to mention earlier that all the missions have randomization. Not crazy random but you can definitely play through them and some events happen differently giving you some good surprises. They'll take different routes depending on decisions you make or spawn in different places depending on which direction you take.
  13. Version 3.1 uploaded this morning. I finally was able to resolve the annoying and persistent problem (not esim's fault, my fault for complexity) of the AI convoy not being able to cross the bridge after the obstacles are breached in "The Road To Bonn". No changes on the other missions. Download the zip file to get the latest version of "The Road To Bonn" mission.
  14. Thank you Sean and Volcano for helping me out with some issues I was having. I was delayed in fixing a lot of the problems because of other obligations and an illness but they're done and back up on the server. Patch notes included in the updated information and text file in the zip folder. Please try them out and report any problems to me in this thread or feel free to DM me. M1ABT Campaign Download Page
  15. I have the missions done and ready to go. Apologies to anyone wanting to try them out. I did the bulk of the work at the end of 2020 and earlier in the year, but I ended up having an illness (not covid) that put me out of the picture for almost 3 months and I couldn't finish them up till now. Thanks to Volcano, I was able to fix the problem I was having with the events on the last two missions and now all is working fine. They're up on the server now. Please PM me if you run any of them and see a problem. I'll be available to fix them when necessary now. The new missions have a huge amount of updates and fixes, including sound files, and sounds for coming close to penalty zones. I've attached a list detailing some of the fixes but I'll also include it in the mission zip file. * All of the missions were optimized for path following. I found that there were a lot of routes that were out of alignment so the AI did some weird things, like trying to turn when not necessary, changing speeds, and stopping completely in some cases. Now, all of the AI units will follow the roads smoothly and respect the speeds that were set for them. * All of the player units and some of the AI units had their ammo updated. I noticed that because of changes to SB, that the ammo selections were set to odd levels. Now, all of the M1's have a good starting ammo setup based on mid 80's and proper fuel. Also, the Mi-24 Hinds have their ammo set to a more realistic setting that limits their Spiral missiles and rockets to what they would have carried at the time. * All of the scoring has been fixed as best as possible to have it make sense according to the scenario. Also, all of the "Mission Over" parameters have been set so that the mission will conclude properly. * All penalty zones where set will not result in the destruction of your engine. Instead, the main gun will get degraded slowly and you'll also get one warning that you are approaching the zone so you have time to turn back. * I split up the routes of the AI enemy on some of the missions because the groups were large enough in some cases for them to get bunched up, they will now come from different directions in some cases but also follow the routes smoothly. M1ABT Campaign V3 Changes.rtf
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