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Modified German Vehicle xdps for ETO

D

Daiwilletti

Charter Member
These files are now uploaded, under CFS3 other. :salute: NBB: I've added the g_Flaktrack xdp, which I think got left off the original package for stock vehicles....

The changes were achieved by comparing my modified stock German vehicle xdps with the ETO version of the stock German vehicles. I used Winmerge, and sought to utilise the best features from each xdp.

These new xdps for ETO have adopted the ETO Entered Service dates, and the principal ETO guns, like the 76mm_gun and the 100mm_gun and associated muzzleflashes. Also ETO damage effects APC_damage and tank_damage.

On the whole, however, my original mods were also needed for the ETO vehicles - adding ammo and new gunstations, panning and elevation settings, etc etc.

NBB: the new xdps will NOT work in a stock install - they are for ETO only. AFAIK they should work in all versions of ETO, but I recommend v 1.40 because that is the version I used when merging the xdps.

Have fun and don't forget to use the Target to Player view found by cycling F4 to enjoy these babies. Cycle the Player to Target view if necessary, using ctrl+shift+F4.
 
Thank you very much David! :jump:

Are your “Corrections to Stock US Vehicles” already ETO compatible or could you perhaps make an ETO version for them as well? :isadizzy:

Cheers
 
Thank you very much for these vehicle upgrades; not easy to notice the missing defects.:isadizzy:
In the file you also had the g-jagpanzeriv and the g_wespe jpg's are there some mods to be made to the xdp of these vehicles also ?
 
gosd said:
Thank you very much for these vehicle upgrades; not easy to notice the missing defects.:isadizzy:
In the file you also had the g-jagpanzeriv and the g_wespe jpg's are there some mods to be made to the xdp of these vehicles also ?
Click to expand...

Nope, but I took the screen shots because I had to use M3D viewer to check them anyways. :icon_lol: They didn't need any mods. I thought the images are not common so worth including.
 
vonOben said:
Thank you very much David! :jump:

Are your “Corrections to Stock US Vehicles” already ETO compatible or could you perhaps make an ETO version for them as well? :isadizzy:

Cheers
Click to expand...

As long as the stock guns are in ETO, there should not be a problem using the stock US vehicles in ETO. The changes made to the xdps to get to ETO standard in general don't take very long. They tend to be:

  • using the ETO 76mm_gun and 100mm_gun and the AA guns where applicable
  • using muzzleflash where available
  • using the apc_damage and tank_damage effects
  • changing the entered service dates if necessary.

Now I've upgraded one lot it shouldn't take long to do the US vehicles. That just leaves the stock Brits, which I haven't checked properly yet! But now that I regularly use a modified country.xml to get British spawns, it is becoming more necessary. I've set up some armoured columns in the frontline spawns, they move up to the frontline and its fun to watch them come under increasing fire as they get closer to the front. This spectacle is improved if the artillery and other facilities are set up right.
 
Hi David

You always seem to find ways to make improvements to this game! :applause:

How does modified country.xml look like and how do you set up armoured columns in the frontline spawns?

Is it possible to also spawn more infantry in the frontline area?
And more trucks on the roads everywhere?
How do I do that? :isadizzy:

And could you please explain this a bit more "This spectacle is improved if the artillery and other facilities are set up right".

Cheers
 
vonOben said:
Hi David

You always seem to find ways to make improvements to this game! :applause:

How does modified country.xml look like and how do you set up armoured columns in the frontline spawns?

Is it possible to also spawn more infantry in the frontline area?
And more trucks on the roads everywhere?
How do I do that? :isadizzy:

And could you please explain this a bit more "This spectacle is improved if the artillery and other facilities are set up right".

Cheers
Click to expand...

Hi vonOben,

Country.xml - the key change is to ensure that the allied nation you wish to have as the default ground and air spawns is listed second on the allied list. Usually USA is second. There may be a few other niceties, I know sometimes I have to fiddle around a bit. For example, I usually put a British character and pilot model as defaults (see top of country.xml). I take a character's name out of the character's folder, and use the pilot model referred to. IIRC model I use is Mackenzie. I think you will find plenty of threads here on this subject.

However, once you change the default allied spawning nation, you sometimes need to ensure that there are the full range of standard ground and ship spawns available for the period of your campaign, otherwise at the least you will have diminished activity down there. For example, in ETO with US ground spawns, the a_locomotive used to have an entered service date in 1942. Hence in campaigns of a prior era eg BoB, you did not have any allied rail spawning activity. So you can get subtle changes. Part of my recent problems is that I cannot for the life of me get b_105's to spawn - the artillery facility replete with gun emplacements is there, but the bl**dy howitzer is missing and the allies get trashed on the frontline. It was all working perfectly then I did a bit of a tweak - not sure which one though stopped the atrillery.

Frontline.spawns.xml
In terms of troop and truck spawns this is easy. General ground spawns are called for in the ground.spawns spawn table file. But near the frontline, you need to add spawn files to the frontline.spawns spawn table. There are some stock spawn files involving infantry, which I think were never completed properly and can simply be tweaked to get more infantry formations.

IIRC the frontline.spawns table calls for 23 entries. Just add additional truck spawns and infantry spawns to this file. Then change the number 23 and ensure each spawn called has a unique ID in sequence so the die rolls work. Take a look at some of the armour spawns. You will find some have groundtype="direct". This means the formation takes off across country, rather than follow the roads. All I did was simply copy this for several other mixed armoured formations, and made sure the first waypoint was "nearfl" and the second waypoint was "enemy, nearfl" and you get your formation heading agressively across the frontline.

To increase the numbers: Add more infantry spawn entries in the frontline.spawns file. For example, I have 3 different ship spawn entries in the ground.spawns, and two different friendly and two different enemy ship spawns in the frontline.spawns file. More trucks? Add more and varied truck entries to the frontline.spawns or ground.spawns file. You could do a formation with bunched trucks going across country (groundtype="direct"), with a wide group of infantry ranging behind (there is a spacing parameter in the spawn file). in an ETO mission for the BoF, there are some great formations of French troops and tanks in one mission (I think its by HH), matched by massed German armour and troops. Its fantastic to watch and should give you plenty of scope for what to include in the spawns files.

As a matter of fact, I was going to bundle everything up in a massive zip file to release as a modification to stock CFS3, but now I've done the usual thing and gone a "tweak too far" so it doesn't work :icon_lol:. The second problem is that once you start incorporating modified stuff like jonno's v3 scenery, the list of credits becomes massive and I might inadvertently include something that I needed permission for, or I might miss giving someone due credit.

The objective of the heavily modded stock CFS3 is to have something with the quality visuals of ETO, without the complexity of massive .bat files.

happy tweaking!
 
Hi David :salute:

Thanks for taking the time to explain!

It’s a bit hard for me to understand without any examples from the mentioned files. :isadizzy:

I hope you get your problem sorted so you can upload your bundle!

I’m only playing ETO, but if I examine the files in your bundle I might be able to make some improvements.

Good Luck!

Cheers
 
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