Red Front for ToT

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Jimmywaxx
Is that when the wehrmacht is attacked by the russians or is it when a wehrmacht unit is killed in general? Sorry, I have never actually finished a Red Front game. So I am a little unfamilar with some of the events.

It does not seem to matter whether a Wehrmacht is lost when it attacks a Soviet unit or is killed by an attacking Soviet unit. Five new German units are spawned in either case.

Originally posted by fairline Mmm, I see the problem. I think I like the idea of including a mod-pack with the original files with adjustments to the scn file to address this. Care to sign up as Modder-in-Chief Agricola (no pressure )?

Me and my big mouth.
I'd be honored to be associated with this project. I've criticized enough scens to know that it is an almost impossible task to foresee what clever players will figure out in the way of loopholes. Let's see if setting a big rat to stop other rats really works.

Expect a list of other possible mods in a few days so that everyone can critique them.

[Heresson]

Very important note.
I advise You to fix some city placement mistakes that are present in original Red Front.
I do not recall some of them, but the main one, made also but others, is lack of (btw, isn't Breslau-Wroclaw missing too?) of Upper Silesian - Zaglebie conurbation as a city.
It was the biggest industrial centre in the Reich after Ruhra. It definitely should be there.
Part of it (most) belonged to Poland before the war, the rest (Beuthen oslt - Bytom, Hindenburg - Zabrze, Gleiwitz - Gliwice) belonged to Germany.
It was, and still is, a great mining, chemistry, steel production region.

[Harry Tuttle]

Well I went out and bought some soundtracks coming home from work. Hopefully I can get some nice environmental music and background battle music from them. And yes, credit will be given of course. Musicians gotta eat...

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by fairline


OK Curt, we'll post here where upload space allows. The alternative is CDG where I'm sure Pablo would oblige with a sub-forum and larger uploads are allowed.

Sounds like a plan!

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
Does ToT support any other formats other than the 22500 8-bit mono like Civ2 has? I don't suppose the developers put in the extra effort and had it support stereo?

Yes, stereo is supported, though I thought MGE did too. Anyway, the other specs are the same. Of course, a stereo wav file is twice as large as a mono one.

Here's the British artillery wav from OM-G:

[AGRICOLA]

Bad finger trouble.

[fairline]

Originally posted by Heresson
Very important note.
I advise You to fix some city placement mistakes that are present in original Red Front.
I do not recall some of them, but the main one, made also but others, is lack of (btw, isn't Breslau-Wroclaw missing too?) of Upper Silesian - Zaglebie conurbation as a city.
It was the biggest industrial centre in the Reich after Ruhra. It definitely should be there.
Part of it (most) belonged to Poland before the war, the rest (Beuthen oslt - Bytom, Hindenburg - Zabrze, Gleiwitz - Gliwice) belonged to Germany.
It was, and still is, a great mining, chemistry, steel production region.

I take your point H. and no doubt it is valid. HOWEVER, I'm opposed to making major changes to a scenario without the original author's permission and posting the results. If we start changing city positions where would we stop? I could suggest a couple of changes to the unit file to produce better historical accuracy for example (Wespe SP gun is available far too early in the War for one). If we take this road, this would no longer be a conversion of RF for ToT but rather a new scenario.

I would apply a simple test to any prospective changes: is the mod designed to alleviate a problem / bug with the original or is it a change based on our 'knowing better' than Nemo about the history or geography of the War on the Eastern Front?

[Catfish]

Originally posted by fairline
You...can..get...them at Techumseh's site by downloading Operation Market-Garden. I think they are Tech's originals; all the rest of the terrain in Catfish's screenie is changed from the original.

That's right. The roads are Techumseh's (I just added some noise), the canals are modifications of Techumseh's ones and the flags are Sarsstock's. It's just the graphics set I'm using. Fairline asked me for it a few weeks back and I forgot all about it. This is basically a reminder notice for me to finish up. Back to Red Front…

Originally posted by fairline
Good stuff - I think I'd like to lower the health bars with the rest as well so I foresee a bit of SpriteGen action

I'm not a big fan of that because it lowers the superimposed fortified and fortress icons. See this thread. Boco did it in El Aurens. For this you'll need CivSprite.

Originally posted by fairline
On a (sort of) related subject, what do you think about the use of unit flags drawn onto the icons? The upside is they aid civ identification, with the obvious downside of adding to the general clutter when a lot of units are displayed on-screen. They look a bit silly when reversed as well. Views anyone?

I don't mind them too much. I stripped them off the air units in Market-Garden; they already have visible markings – good enough for me, but not necessarily others. Not everybody's familiar with WWII units either; that also makes a difference.

Originally posted by fairline
Oh Jesus

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by fairline
On a (sort of) related subject, what do you think about the use of unit flags drawn onto the icons? The upside is they aid civ identification, with the obvious downside of adding to the general clutter when a lot of units are displayed on-screen. They look a bit silly when reversed as well. Views anyone?

I really appreciated them in Market Garden. They are a nice touch and did help me see how miserably I had (mis)managed to scatter the 82nd Airborne. Also, they were a huge help in writing an operational summary for each turn.

Originally posted by Catfish
I don't mind them too much. I stripped them off the air units in Market-Garden; they already have visible markings – good enough for me, but not necessarily others. Not everybody's familiar with WWII units either; that also makes a difference.

I found that with only four types of Allied aircraft present, with icons quite distinctive in size, shape and color, there was no need for unit flags.

Market Garden is a bit unusual in that opposing forces can get intermixed and it is helpful to be able to tell where Allied divisions and brigades are operating. Red Front is more of a "linear" situation with Soviet units to the east and German units to the west and, excepting Guderian's 2nd Panzergruppe, there is no attempt to identify major units. IMO, the colors in the health bars should be sufficient to differentiate German and Soviet units.

[curtsibling]

Unit Icons for the Soviets and Germans are quite symmertrical, so I think there wont be too many probs...

[Heresson]

Originally posted by fairline


I take your point H. and no doubt it is valid. HOWEVER, I'm opposed to making major changes to a scenario without the original author's permission and posting the results. If we start changing city positions where would we stop? I could suggest a couple of changes to the unit file to produce better historical accuracy for example (Wespe SP gun is available far too early in the War for one). If we take this road, this would no longer be a conversion of RF for ToT but rather a new scenario.

I would apply a simple test to any prospective changes: is the mod designed to alleviate a problem / bug with the original or is it a change based on our 'knowing better' than Nemo about the history or geography of the War on the Eastern Front?

If Nemo commited a major mistake, and I treat lack of Breslau and Upper Silesia as cities as a huge mistake, I think it ought to be corrected.

Oh, You don't have to correct ALL mistakes. You don't even have to trouble with Breslau.
Just make the Upper Silesian conurbation and name it by one of its cities... Like MY HOMETOWN, for example
But the claim is serious. lack of USC is a serious historical mistake.

[Arthedain]

Originally posted by jim panse
I don´t know if you might want to use parts of that Gareth. I edited those basic Nemo cities for some projects on my own. Maybe you can use them?

Please tell me that you got suburbs for these cities Steph. If you don't will you please make them?

[Eivind IV]

Those city graphics are amazing, Catfish! Reason enough to play this redux thingy!

I'll be lurking these threads and follow about the development

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by jim panse
I don´t know if you might want to use parts of that Gareth. I edited those basic Nemo cities for some projects on my own. Maybe you can use them?

Remember you can add tons more colours to them, since we are in bitmap territory!

[curtsibling]

This might be a good time to show a He-111 that I tweaked for another project...