Slitherine

McGuba wrote:

To avoid "offending" anyone maybe you can just label the units and not use the "SS" moniker (ie: 8 Kav./Florian Geyer..8 StuG/FG..1 Inf/LAH).

Ah, yeah, this is exactly what I am doing... a few examples: "Das Reich 2/5 TCo", "Wiking 5/II Art Btn", "Hohenstaufen 19/I Gr Btn", even if it is a bit euphemistic...
Strange, that we had the same idea, by the way. But, in a few occasions it is not possible to avoid making a direct reference, such as with the 12th Hitlerjugend Divison or 1st LSSAH. However, in the latter case I could use LAH instead, as you wrote.

For the Jugend Division I would use HJ.

I have a book that has all of the Waffen SS Regiment and Division names and their abbrviations that appeared in paperwork/soldatbooks,etc (IE: Das Reich was SS-DR...Hohenstaufen was SS-H..Hitler Jugend was SS-HJ...etc). If you need any drop me a pm.

It might save you room by using the abbreviations instead of having to type out the full didvison name as well as dropping the SS to mitigate any controversy.

Thanks for the info. I have typed in these already, so I think I will not change them for now. Save for the HJ and LAH, that is a good suggestion.
If I am right, the other names, i.e. Florian Geyer, Totenkopf, Wiking, Das Reich, Hohenstaufen, and Maria Theresia do not contain direct references to the Nazis, they are named after historical figures or concepts so they could be left. Das Reich is a bit ambigous, though, but it can also refer to the first (Roman) or second (German, up to 1918) Empire, not only to the third one.

You are correct sir.

Excellent work and keep it up.

If you need anything let me know.

McGuba, I just posted some Panzerschreck attack animations in the unit factory thread; I may be able to make some variations for your Páncélrém infantry units, but the position of some of the figures would have to be changed/tweaked a bit.

For your Hungarian '44 infantry the animation would work if the figures are moved; you can use Bebro's icon as a guide to get the muzzles aligned with the flashes.

For the Motorized '44 infantry I can probably make a variation of the animation (without the rear rifle muzzle flash and a sound based on the paratrooper), but it would help a lot if the Páncélrém gunner and machine pistol figure would have the same positions as in Bebro's icon. But I don't know how easy it is for you to relocate and align the figures to the animation, so let me know what you want to do and if there are any problems, I may be able to help make some adjustments.

To be honest, I did not expect that someone would eventually take the time and make it, so many thanks for it!
Back in the golden age I used to edit Panzer General animations, but I did not want to venture into the wilderness of Panzer Corps animation files. I have edited just about everything else, anyway, and that is enough for me.

I checked your animation with bebro's icon and I think it is simply awesome! I have already rearranged the Hungarian toy soldiers of my Inf 44 to match it with no problem, it took just few minutes. I like this cooperation by the way, bebro makes the original icon, you make the anim for it, and I can add a new late war nation specific infantry icon. Two thumbs up!

For the Motorized '44 infantry I can probably make a variation of the animation (without the rear rifle muzzle flash and a sound based on the paratrooper), but it would help a lot if the Páncélrém gunner and machine pistol figure would have the same positions as in Bebro's icon.

No problem, again it took just something like 5 minutes or less:



Please make it and post it here or somewhere else, just let me know when it is done, I would be very grateful! I am basically finished with the campaign and it would be nice to add it before the release of ver.1.0.

Wow, you're quick! I'll try to make them within the next few days, it should not be very hard with your new icon, thanks for making it. I will use the paratrooper sounds and add a heavier shot like I did with the these, I hope it will sound OK.

BTW, did you manage to rotate the 'leaning' Budapest Parliament? I came across my originals while copying your new motorized infantry icon, but I had forgotten to ask you about it (I was distracted by some nice Turans I guess). If you haven't been able to do it I can rotate the original image I posted here for you, if that helps.

It is enough to make just one animation and the corresponding sound file for a unit. You do not have to make all three, if it makes your life easier. I would be more than happy with just one anim.

Yeah, I rotated the Parliament a bit, I think it is better now.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/hwv1jq

Well, it took a bit longer than I hoped. I discovered a small glitch in the first Bazooka animations I made, which was present in the stock infantry animations that were copied. So I first cleaned up the original set of animations I made (you can overwrite the old).

For your motorized infantry, I added three more animations, including sounds (based on the paratrooper sounds with a heavier gun mixed in). I just ran a quick check, it looks OK, but let me know if something is not alright. I still have all the 'master' files, and I set them up so some things can still be changed relatively easily.

When you first posted your Pancelrem units in the factory thread it really helped motivate me in trying to make an animation for these types of weapons. So I didn't make them just for Bebro's icon, although I found it was easier to use his icon as a template. Also, I reckoned you could still change your icons a bit , I just made sure I could easily add some changes later to make some variation possible.

So a very nice cooperation indeed, it's amazing how some semi-random but related events (Bebro's icon, your icons & mod, my vague plans to try some animation) can actually produce some solid results. BTW, I think it is very funny that one the most obscure weapons I've ever seen (the Pancelrem) will be the first to use these animations in a mod, instead of a common Bazooka or Panzerschreck.

Good luck with the mod, it looks real nice so far.

Many thanks for your help. When it comes to a free fan made custom mod every contribution is extremely valuable.

Please keep the master files for possible later use, some might come up with additional requests, or you might decide to create new animations for some other units. Not too many modders have this knowledge, so you are one of the few.

Soon I will release the first full version of this mod which will include all these improvements.

You're welcome, and yes, I could hardly find any modded animations. Very strange, as there are tons of modded graphics available, but only a few custom animations. Most seem to be done by Bebro (I've seen some in his IJA mod) (EDIT: those animations are made by VPaulus, as it turns out), but I have no idea what method he uses. He reacted quite enthusiastically when I posted my corrected battleship animation, which was not a very big job, so I guess it's not his favourite pastime either...

And you're right, if you have to make everything yourself, you will need to put in so much time in every little thing, it can be very demoralizing. I'll definately keep the files, they can be remade for recoilless rifles, which were in use with both German and US forces, so the paratrooper fans might get some use out of them as well.

BTW, taking into account how much people generally know about weapons, I'm curious how many people will start complaining that one figure of your infantry units seems to be firing backwards... I'm not even completely joking, I've had similar comments before when I had modded something for another game a little bit too accurately.

Animations overload the memory of the system and you get CTD's.

That why there are not animations.

It is well documented in the Sound mod.

Edit...what's the point. I'll be the one coming out looking like the a@#hole


Yeah Razz, you're just a paragon of positive feedback

umm... interesting.

I only pointed out a fact. Check out the Sound mod and you will see it is documented.

I never put down THN adding animations.

I just listed the what happens when the system gets overloaded.

How many animations can you add with sounds mods before you encounter problems? I do not have the the exact number or combination of numbers for each modification that causes it. But CTD's happen. Just like large scenario's with 200 plus units for each side. CTD's are encountered.

Actually there are allot of positive posts.

Edit: see viewtopic.php?f=147&t=30216&start=200#p396755 about the memory issue.

ThvN wrote:You're welcome, and yes, I could hardly find any modded animations. Very strange, as there are tons of modded graphics available, but only a few custom animations. Most seem to be done by Bebro (I've seen some in his IJA mod), but I have no idea what method he uses. He reacted quite enthusiastically when I posted my corrected battleship animation, which was not a very big job, so I guess it's not his favourite pastime either...

To be honest - I've never touched PzC anims so far. What you see in the IJA mod is VPaulus work, as he did a lot with sounds and anims for his RSM mod and for others

Thanks for mentioning Bebro, I had read the credits you included in your IJA mod, and it mentions VPaulus' RSM mod, but I had a brainfade and assumed you only used his sounds... So I mistakenly assumed you made those animations yourself.

I believe in World Peace!
Guys, while I absolutely agree with you I would like to ask everyone to refrain from making personal comments about each other. This enchanting 'community' contains people with different cultural and language background, and we have to respect each other's views and work. Even if we do not necessarily agree with them.

Razz1:

Animations overload the memory of the system and you get CTD's.

How many animations can you add with sounds mods before you encounter problems? I do not have the the exact number or combination of numbers for each modification that causes it. But CTD's happen. Just like large scenario's with 200 plus units for each side. CTD's are encountered.

Currently I am testing the final scenarios of this mod with quite a lot of units (a bit over 200 Axis and Allies units combined and NOT for each side) on a map together with ThvN's new attack animation and I have not encountered a CTD so far. (Most of the time I am using a four year old laptop with 2 Gig RAM and WinXP, so it is not the latest stuff.) Actually, no one has reported a CTD so far, except for Uhu, but it appeared that it is was his 'fault', as he messed up something in the equipment.pzdat file so it was not related to this memory issue.

I would really like to avoid forcing the player to use to /nocache suffix when running the game, as I think it needs too much user interaction and thus it is not very user friendly. For some it might be a problem to make even this small change. Not everyone is a computer geek.

However, ThvN is right, it would be nice to know more about this memory issue in general, when it happens, what are the limitations, etc. I guess only the devs could answer these questions, and Razz1 is not a developer, but a moderator, if I am right.

On the third page of this topic, after I asked if this mod has crashed to anyone, VPaulus wrote:

It didn't crash with me. It's a heavy scenario (Alexeyevka), but after finishing it, the system still had more 50/100Mb free before entering the crash zone. With the /nocache switch on, Uhu, shouldn't have any issue.
However, I remember also a case, during one of the betas, that the player would also crash before entering the usual danger zone which is around 1GB.

So it would be nice, if someone could clarify this 'danger zone' or 'crash zone' , and how I could monitor how close I am to it at any moment. It seems to be possible, as VPaulus could tell exactly how many free Mbs he had.

McGuba wrote:So it would be nice, if someone could clarify this 'danger zone' or 'crash zone' , and how I could monitor how close I am to it at any moment. It seems to be possible, as VPaulus could tell exactly how many free Mbs he had.

My apologies for my earlier off-topic. I posted my questions about the issue in Paulo's (VPaulus) RSM thread, and he has given additional info: viewtopic.php?f=147&t=30216&start=200#p396755

So the crash zone seems to be around 1 Gb but it's not a strict number, so I guess if you are approching this value it can start happening sooner or later, but will not be at the same moment for everyone.

I can monitor my memory usage under XP very accurately, and I can see how much it increases after animations/sounds are first played. To monitor the usage I use Process Explorer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96653.aspx

No problem. Thanks for tracking down this issue. I will try Process Explorer and see how close I am to the danger zone.

I replayed the last scenario of this mod (Spring Awakening) and at the end of it Process Explorer showed that PanzerCorps.exe was using some 1 150 000 K which is just over the 1Gb threshold, if I am right. Still I did not have CTD this time or during any of my previous test plays, even though I tried very hard (I was running a few more programs in the background).

I monitored the memory usage and saw that the memory used by the game gradually increased throughout the scenario and every time a new battle animation is loaded the memory used by the game increased with 10-20 000 K. So it seems that it is not the number of units in a scenario, but the number of units using different animations what really matters. Still, it is reported that CTD usually occurs when there are more than 200-300 units in a scenario. It seems that if all those are from the same class using the same animation (e.g. regular infantry), memory usage and the risk of a possible CTD would be significantly lower or negligable.

Luckily, the game has a built-in auto save function so even if a CTD occurs due to passing the 'crash zone', the player only need to run the game again and reload the last autosave. Then the counter goes to zero again, and he might be able to finish the scenario this time. If not, runnig the game with the /nocache switch can be the last resort.