Full Mod for Panzer Campaigns Demo

[Philippe]

I tried playing Panzer Campaigns Mius but it was far too ugly to look at.


The basic scenario looked really interesting, however, so I wasn't willing to give up.


First I improved the map graphics, which was quick, painless, and easy when you've done mods for the other East Front games. The map and units of Campaign Mius are pretty much the same as what gets used in Kursk.


But that wasn't enough. The unit portraits were still too ugly to look at, and I was having trouble rationalizing doing that much work for a one-scenario game.


After realizing that no one else was going to produce proper unit images any time soon, I finally bit the bullet and pulled together a set of unit images and headquarters symbols in the hopes that it will make it a bit easier for Volcano Man to come up with a set of _alt scenarios, and, perhaps, a scenario for the August counteroffensive.


Because a lot of people who have never had a proper Panzer Campaigns experience before will consider trying this mod, I've decided to make things as easy on them as possible. So (for now) this is going to be my only one-stop shopping Panzer Campaigns mod.


To use it, all you have to do is download and install the demo that Steve Traub is hosting at the SDC site, and then download and install the mod.


Here are a few screenshots, which may or may not give you a good sense of what it looks like, depending on the kind of image compression this site is using this week:




























To use this mod, simply install it over a clean install of the Mius demo. Unlike my other Panzer Campaign mods it doesn't require that anyone else's mod be installed first.


The mod includes a red star and an iron cross that can be used as desktop icons. Go to wherever you have the program installed, right click on the program exe file, and select create shortcut from the drop down menu. Drag the shortcut onto your desktop (usually done by partially resizing -- as opposed to minimising -- the Mius folder and then dragging the shortcut onto your now partially exposed desktop). Right click on the shortcut, select change icon from the menu, navigate back to where you have the program installed and select one of the two new icons. Don't forget to click on the apply icon button to make it stick.


I've included my night background sound mod, which is really a modified version of a sound that was used for one of the Pacific Squad Battles games (much quieter than day sounds, crickets chirping softly in the background, no artillery). I've also included Ed Williams' movement sounds: these are actually a part of the game that tends to get left out, and ordinarily I would direct you to Scenario Depot Center where Steve Traub is hosting the missing sounds. But they aren't that large and in the spirit of one-stop shopping I've included them here. But I do strongly recommend that you download my Kursk mod and use the three pieces of victory music that you'll find in the media folder -- I'm running a bit too low on available space at my mod host to include victory music files for a demo game.


The map graphics are done in the style of Jison's Mapmod, so if there's some part of his mods or my mods that you don't like, you can mix and match to taste. The only texture I've been able to identify that is actually completely his is the large 2D undamaged railroad track bitmap. The main difference between his work and mine (which evolved out of his) is that I have a strong aversion to staring at hex grids when I don't absolutely have to, dislike having anachronistic modern landmine markers littered all over a WW II map, and prefer to have map symbols drawn directly into the map rather than cluttering it up with needless counters (this really isn't a board game, and lots of extra counters take up space and don't add anything). I'm more interested in getting the map to look related to the period than in getting a pretty overall effect. If you prefer high concept, you won't like my mods.


As a reminder, there are very few situations where you actually need to see the hexgrid. The game has a drop down menu that highlights maximum artillery range and headquarters command range, and you can get a unit's maximum movement range by pressing the red arrow on the toolbar above the map. These ingame aids make the grid almost unnecessary, but for the few situations where you actually do need it you can turn it on and off by checking an item in the drop-down menu.


A word about the color of German tanks and guns. A lot of people think of these as being grey, which was certainly the case early in the war. Two summers of fighting on the Russian steppe made the Germans realize that grey stood out too much against a background that was, as often as not, the light tan of heat-wilted grass. So in February 1943 OKH (the German Army High Command) decreed that henceforth all vehicles would receive a basecoat of dunkelgelb (dull yellow or tan) instead of dunkelgrau (the dull grey commonly associated with panzers. The Germans were masters of optics and, consequently, camouflage, and their units had already been issued pots of paint of different colors -- dark colors for the summer months and a water-based white for the winter. As the directive to change the color of the base coat came out when von Manstein's Kharkov offensive was in full swing, it's unlikely that many supplies of oil-based dunkelgelb reached the front line during February. What probably happened was that the vehicles already on the front lines remained grey with an increasingly thin coat of water-based white paint throughout the winter, and when the offensive was over and the snow had thawed, the white was washed off and everything got repainted in gelb. So the color conversion would have been complete long before the Kursk offensive in the summer of 1943. As for camouflage patterns, the Germans were too smart to be predictable about how they camouflaged things -- due to limitations of the game engine this can't be shown in the mod. But it would seem that camo patterns varied from company to company and, in some cases, platoon to platoon. My favorite Eastern Front photograph is a close-up of a Sturmgeschutz that was probably camouflaged by someone who had been to art school before the war and who was clearly influenced by the Abstract Expressionist movement.


A final note: if you try to right-click and read unit info on a selected unit, you'll give yourself a ridiculous case of eyestrain because the text will be white against a light background. Do yourself a favor and only try to right-click and read info on unselected units: the text will be white on dark grey and you won't need to squint.


Get Panzer Campaigns Mius here:


http://hist-sdc.com/spotlights/pzc_m43.html


This is a download from Steve Traub's SDC site and doesn't require registration or giving out personal information.


Get the Mius mod here:


http://tfe4.wordpress.com/graphics-and-s...ps-titles/


(It's in the East Front Series of the Panzer Campaigns section).