Striker

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.

I made a lot of changes in this version to fix a lot of problems and improve the game play significantly. Please read the text file included in the zip file.
 
These are the completely reworked missions for my M1ABT Campaign. You may find some minor problems or have some suggestions. I'm perfectly fine with you opening the missions in the editor and picking them over to see what I did. Please do not edit them and re-release them though. Submit any suggestions you have directly to me here. You will need the maps that I updated specifically for 4.* and they include the M1 bases. Please keep in mind that this is a fictitious campaign based on the original Dynamics console game, so the elements like bases and transmission towers had to be added to the maps to make them complete. I intend to string them together in a campaign file with sounds and other enhancements later this year but I need them out there so you guys can try them out and give me your input. Once they are in the campaign format, the missions will be locked to prevent any further editing.
 
In 1988, a software company called Dynamix developed a tank combat simulator game for DOS based computers called "M-1 Battle Tank" which was published by Electronic Arts. In 1991, EA teamed up with Sega of America to release it for the Sega Genesis console naming it "M-1 Abrams Battle Tank". Although very limited in scope it provided simulator enthusiasts a console based option and was truly a 3D simulator, meaning you could move or get engaged from any direction. The scenarios I’ve created for SteelBeasts mimic the scenarios from the console game. There are 8 missions in total, numbered and titled but feel free to play them out of order except for #1, "The Moselle Defense" as this mission sets up the story line. When you played the original console game in "Campaign" mode it randomized them somewhat. I hope you enjoy my versions of European defensive and offensive operations based on this classic console game! On some of the missions the score shows slightly wrong even though the victory conditions do work correctly so don't let that throw you off.
 
Thanks! Striker

This is an updated version of the Salisbury Plain map with all of the bridges fixed and city buildings changed. I went through very thoroughly and placed the appropriate bridges for the type of road or railway and also made sure that they didn't have leftover artifacts like partial bridges and also that they spanned the rivers appropriately. This map was changed specifically for my M1BT campaign. I've also enhanced a lot of the map to include my military bases. the bases are located at the coordinates in the attached images. I've also done many hours cleaning up the cities to remove a lot of the clutter that was created when the map was converted. NOT a criticism of the original creator at all. When the map was originally created, Steelbeasts did not have the same number of building units so a lot of maps were made with the limited objects in a very creative way. I just replaced a lot of the original buildings with ones that make sense for the area. I also cleaned up a lot of the city areas and adjusted the roads and re-spliced them. The cleanup and splicing helps with AI path finding and reduces map loading. Please feel free to add comments and or suggestions or inform me of any problems with the map. I'm going to continue to update it and fix problems as they are found.
 
To download this map, enter f4d2ced8-646a-4b5f-9b92-2d70cef7a8b1 as the map package into the steel beasts map tools UI.
 

 

 

 

 
 
 

UPDATED Version, 2-28-2020.
Corrected map UID added, 2-29-1010.
 
This is an updated version of Manteufell's version of the Hannover-Weserbergland map with all of the bridges fixed. I went through very thoroughly and placed the appropriate bridges for the type of road or railway and also made sure that they didn't have leftover artifacts like partial bridges and also that they spanned the rivers appropriately. This map was changed specifically for my M1BT campaign. I've also enhanced a lot of the map to include my military bases. the bases are located at the coordinates in the attached images. I've also done many hours cleaning up the cities to remove a lot of the clutter that was created when the map was converted. NOT a criticism of the original creator at all. When the map was originally created, Steelbeasts did not have the same number of building units so a lot of maps were made with the limited objects in a very creative way. I just replaced a lot of the original buildings with ones that make sense for the area. I also cleaned up a lot of the city areas and adjusted the roads and re-spliced them. The cleanup and splicing helps with AI path finding and reduces map loading. Please feel free to add comments and or suggestions or inform me of any problems with the map. I'm going to continue to update it and fix problems as they are found. I also plan on adding detail to the city of Hannover in the future. It looked like Manteufell was planning on adding this detail but never got around to it. It's a huge undertaking but I love this map and want to continue to update it so everyone can have fun using it!
 
To download this map, enter 41c0fdd9-7ba4-46e3-b111-4c5abba7eab5 as the map package into the steel beasts map tools UI.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

<p>In 1988, a software company called Dynamix developed a tank combat simulator game for DOS based computers called "M-1 Battle Tank" which was published by Electronic Arts. In 1991, EA teamed up with Sega of America to release it for the Sega Genesis console naming it "M-1 Abrams Battle Tank". Although very limited in scope it provided simulator enthusiasts a console based option and was truly a 3D simulator, meaning you could move or get engaged from any direction.</p><p>The scenarios I’ve created for SteelBeasts mimic the scenarios from the console game but are updated drastically to make them much more realistic. There are 8 missions in total, numbered and titled but feel free to play them out of order except for #1, "The Moselle Defense" as this mission sets up the story line. When you played the original console game in "Campaign" mode it randomized them somewhat. I hope you enjoy my versions of European defensive and offensive operations based on this classic console game!</p><p>Please feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions about changing or updating the missions. Please don't try to make changes or upload them yourself though. I've done some updating to a customized map region and there are lots of events that depend on user action and unit numbers. I would like to keep them as close to the original idea that I had for mimicking the original computer game.</p><p>Please enjoy them and let me know what you think!</p><p>Scott "Striker" Hicks</p><p>NOTE: Please accept my apologies for anyone that has already downloaded the file. The reason they were bugged is because I had pulled the scenarios from an older save file accidentally. I created multiple save files in case I had to go to a backup. OOPS!. Anyhow, I went through every mission and updated some of the settings on them and also play tested every one of them myself so I know that they work properly. There are some issues with the scoring though. On some of the missions the score shows wrong even though the victory conditions do work correctly so don't let that throw you off. Please let me know if you see any other bugs and if you want to open it up in the editor and make suggestions for the ending score please private message me with suggestions or a replacement file.</p><p>Thanks! Striker</p>