Panzer General Classic Mod (Help wanted) [0.15]

[HBalck]

Today I give this mod a chance and I play the 1st scenario, but the map details are missing - only one hex typ from the map edit output without fine tuning - thats not playable for me.
Also I don't like the new Pz35(t) icon - looks to different !
Very good are the old PG1 audio briefings - 10 min to transfer it from old PG - but good job !

The Campaign have no chance for me to play it - to small interest on beautiful map details (also in PG1). Also I played the PG1 campaign over 100 times in the last 17 years.

Also now I see really the great difficult between my units and the original - its no more playable for me ! Its another level yet !

H.Balck

[nikivdd]

Putting the developer's work aside for a few days, i finally started to play the latest version of the revamped PG classic.
I think the transition has been very well done. I have all those great feelings of that time back again.
Great job! And ofcourse, as usual, it is never possible to please everybody, but at least this is a playable and addictive campaign for an SP armchair General .
Perhaps you should consider it as a basis for an even more extensive version (and more of your icons!).

[rezaf]

Today I give this mod a chance and I play the 1st scenario, but the map details are missing - only one hex typ from the map edit output without fine tuning - thats not playable for me.

Agreed, however, I haven't been trying to hide the fact that I consider this a WIP.
About the tiles, it's the fault of the editor that it doesn't mix up the tile versions - wino made a tool that should help in making this a little better, I just need to get around to do the grunt work involved.

Also I don't like the new Pz35(t) icon - looks to different !

Well, I'd love to incorporate a better icon if you want to donate one, but otherwise, I'll have to make do with what I can find.
It'd be cool if Slitherine would provide the original 3D models as modding resources, so everyone skilled in the apps used could make icons EXACTLY in that style, but that hasn't happened yet and I don't really believe it ever will.
The only alternatives are someone emulating the style perfectly or someone recreating ALL icons in a different style. That's a mammoth task and probably won't happen anytime soon. I fully respect your work on 3D icons, but when it comes to the total number of units in PzC, you have barely scratched the surface so far.

Very good are the old PG1 audio briefings - 10 min to transfer it from old PG - but good job !

It actually took a little longer, but yeah, once I knew how to proceed, it wasn't that hard a job. Never claimed it was.

The Campaign have no chance for me to play it - to small interest on beautiful map details (also in PG1). Also I played the PG1 campaign over 100 times in the last 17 years.

That's unfortunate, but at least people can play it RIGHT NOW.
I had to chose between leaving this on the backburner for as long as it takes to get it as finished as I could, or I could just release it into the wild to allow people to play it - and then improve on it later.
I went with the former option.

Also now I see really the great difficult between my units and the original - its no more playable for me ! Its another level yet !

Personally, I like the style of the Panzer Corps units better (except for the crews, that's a very good idea from you), but that purely subjective - I don't think anyone will argue that your units are of outstanding quality.

Like I wrote above, if you want to see better models in this mod, feel free to make them and donate them - I'll gladly incorporate them.

The mod WILL be improved, or so I hope, anyway, but it all takes time, of which I only have a limited amount available - sorry to tell. But thanks for playing.
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rezaf

[rezaf]

Perhaps you should consider it as a basis for an even more extensive version (and more of your icons!).

I am considering a lot of things, but everything takes time. For now, at least you can rest assured that I AM continuing work on this.
Should I ever stop doing so for whatever reason, at least you have what's there - it's fully playable and can be completed, and I've struggled to fix any gameplay bugs like missing flags.

Thanks for playing the mod nikivdd.
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rezaf

[nikivdd]

I am considering a lot of things, but everything takes time.

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rezaf

I know exactly what you are talking about
As long it is fun and not an obligation.

[Eltare]

Hi!

I play unhurriedly have a fun. In Washington did not want to go, so it passed through Africa, the Caucasus, and from there on the longest path to Moscow 43. Well, now began to "Overlord."

While the major remarks and bugs have been found. But there are a few "buts".

1. PC gives wide opportunities for decorating maps. However, the cards in mod look monotonous and boring (especially early in the game).

2. I understand that the PG had no railways, but why not add? Especially, a 280-mm railroad gun is available for purchase.

3. Problems with the weather. Normal winter was only on the map "Kharkov". In Moscow in December, the snow is not there. In addition, as I recall, in the PG all or nearly all of the missions near Moscow tanks had mud puddle.

4. In Moscow, 42 briefing says that the victory margin is given for 10 turns before the end of the scenario. I graduated later (maybe 6-8 turns) gave margin. I had to load and skip a pair of turns.

5. In the Kursk after the capture all key cities and the destruction of all units of the Red Army, scenario does not end there. I had to click at the end of the course until the time of the scenario not ended.

[rezaf]

1. PC gives wide opportunities for decorating maps. However, the cards in mod look monotonous and boring (especially early in the game).

Agreed. I placed very little emphasis on this, and it's very unfortunate that the editor doesn't at least mix the existing versions of a hex around a bit by himself when generating tiles, but wino came up with a tool to help with this and I plan on revisiting all maps to make them prettier.
I would have preferred additional tile decorations to chose from, but noone seems to be developing any - other than the excellent city and forest tiles by massi, that is.

2. I understand that the PG had no railways, but why not add? Especially, a 280-mm railroad gun is available for purchase.

Main reason: They were not in PG. Secondary reason: I don't think they are very useful anyway, and combined with the main reason, I don't think there's any chance for me to add those, sorry.

3. Problems with the weather. Normal winter was only on the map "Kharkov". In Moscow in December, the snow is not there. In addition, as I recall, in the PG all or nearly all of the missions near Moscow tanks had mud puddle.

I tried my best to approximate PG weather settings in PzC, and I did run into snow a number of times in Moscow scenarios. But maybe not often enough, I'll give you that.
I'll put this on my todo list.

4. In Moscow, 42 briefing says that the victory margin is given for 10 turns before the end of the scenario. I graduated later (maybe 6-8 turns) gave margin. I had to load and skip a pair of turns.

Either an error with my briefing file or with the victory conditions. I'll check on that.

5. In the Kursk after the capture all key cities and the destruction of all units of the Red Army, scenario does not end there. I had to click at the end of the course until the time of the scenario not ended.

Same as above.

Thanks for playing and for reporting those issues Eltare - I appreciate it.
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rezaf

[Eltare]

Hi again!

Another pair of notes.

1. In the mission "Anvil" is one of the allied fighters starts with zero experience. Small thing of course, but I noticed.

2. The operation "Market Garden", Allied forces did not attack (stand on their positions, occasionally snapping). I think because in allied scenario game options exhibited defense mode.

[MartyWard]

I really like this mod. I hope in the future the new campaigns wil have some of these scenarios included. I'm going to get the new content which means I will need to apply the 1.04 patch. Will this mod work with the new updaate?

[rezaf]

I really like this mod. I hope in the future the new campaigns wil have some of these scenarios included. I'm going to get the new content which means I will need to apply the 1.04 patch. Will this mod work with the new updaate?

I'm not changing to the new campaign model yet since modding support works kinda poorly, so if you continue to use the mod manager (or make the changes manually) it still works - I tested that.
I'll implement the 1.04 changes eventually, but I consider them nonessential.
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rezaf

[rezaf]

I've finished writing a tool that can generate transitions for any given terrain background (there's only grassland in base PzC, but I plan on adding more).
With wino's help (thanks!) I've now added proper terrain types for Desert and Rough Desert, with their own movement rules, and will be replacing all ordinary coastlines used on desert-borders with my newly generated transitions.
Here's how it currently looks like - your chance to tell me what I should do differently.


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rezaf

[VPaulus]

Great!

[RobertCL]

Awesome!

[El_Condoro]

That looks great, rezaf. Am I right in thinking the tool takes adjacent hex types and smooths the transition between them? If you have the time would you mind sharing how you did this - not so much the tool but how you made the new tiles and the movement rules. That would be very illuminating for someone like me who has wondered since starting playing PzC!

[Shrike]

Big improvement on the "desert" hexes that were there before!

[RobertCL]

Hi,

I used v 0.15 at Leutnant level (with Panzer Corps beta 2 and historical mod).

Great campaign!
I won easily and managed to start Sea Lion 1940 but there I lost my Stukas and I was sent to Greece.

I really love the idea to find back the original game!

I loved the Eifel tower on Paris city, great detail!

Icons for Pz35 is not as good as the others and was this unit really useful ?
I prefer the Me 210 for instance, better icon and more useful unit.

I shall keep on posting.

Congrats!!!

[manticore]

rezaf,

Are you continuing to work on this?

Love what you've done so far!

[bebro]

Are you continuing to work on this?

That's my question too. Plus:

Do you still need gfx help? I admit I haven't read most of the thread (I don't feel like reading 10 pages right now) so I probably missed a lot.

Also, on a purely egoistic note Do you plan to release that terrain tool mentioned above at some point?

[rezaf]

@manticore: Technically, yes. I haven't done much work on it since early december, though.
Negotiations with DMP about using their desert graphics fell through, though, and my earlier efforts had some downsides - no desert mountains etc., so even if desert looks much improved, the mountains and hills in between look rather weird now. I'm still not entirely sure how to solve this.

I also need to rework a lot of maps for more diversity in vanilla tiles. I toyed with the idea of replacing a lot of the grassland with countryside - what do you guys think about that?
From what I can tell, their movement rules are identical, but much of the landscape that's only "grassland" in Panzer General is densely populated, so at least countryside would reflect that a bit better.
I'd love to have some "rural" tiles to chose from, though.

I had planned to work on the mod during my christmas holiday, but first I got completely lost in Skyrim, and then I decided to get some other stuff done first - you'll hear about at least some of it soon.
I'm still planning on resuming to work on PGClassic, though.
Anything specific you'd want to see?

@bebro: You already made a major contribution with that awesome AEC icon - thanks again.
Other than that, unless you plan on making rural tiles like I mentioned above, nothing comes to mind just now. I'll let you know if that changes - no obligations for you, of course.

About the terrain tool ... you mean the one that generates transitions? It still has some nasty bugs and is currently not in a releasable state, but if I iron those out, I can tecnically release it - hadn't really thought about doing so. At least I can provide it to you eventually. Should you need any transitions in the meantime, drop me a PM and I'll see what I can do.
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rezaf

[bebro]

About the terrain tool ... you mean the one that generates transitions? It still has some nasty bugs and is currently not in a releasable state, but if I iron those out, I can tecnically release it - hadn't really thought about doing so. At least I can provide it to you eventually. Should you need any transitions in the meantime, drop me a PM and I'll see what I can do.

I thought of having "shallow sea" tiles in my mod using some lighter greenish/blueish color to indicate flat waters, but it's low priority right now. If I ever dig this up again I may come back to your offer since it would be cool to have those soft transitions then

As for rural terrain: I don't consider my terrain tiles for USMC my best work, but if that doesn't bother you and there is some terrain you need I can give it a go...