Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I've just released version 3.5 of my Campaign Waterloo mod, and thought I ought to mention it here in case it gets lost in the shuffle.

The Waterloo mod is currently a graphics-only mod that combines elements of Volcano Man's, Ezjax's, and my mod work.

Volcano Man's unit images have been lightly repainted and mounted on unit flags, horses, wagons, and cannon images.

Ezjax's 3D images and terrain have been lighted adjusted and some of the flags have been repainted. There's a set of alternate 3D symbols that preserve the 'no blood' option (default is 'blood'). A few of the 3D unit bases have been slightly redrawn and all have been repainted: they now follow the same color scheme as the unitboxes, and selected units will be lighter in color than unselected units.

The 2D map and symbols is a combination of work derived from my Panzer Campaign mods (the terrain) and a much earlier version of my Waterloo mod (the unit symbols) that was released several years ago.

I haven't had time to keep all the screenshots up to date, but here are some images of a slightly earlier version of this mod:






















The main difference between the version in the screenshots and the current version of the mod is that the screenshots use the old bases (3D Prussians are mounted on grey rather than Prussian blue bases).

This mod preserves much of the incidental artwork from a version that was released several years ago, so it's a bit more baroque than my recent mods.


The Waterloo mod can be downloaded here:


https://www.box.com/s/1d9cea9d7565155a7e8f


Be sure and look at the README file attached to the mod, if for no other reason than to learn how to use the desktop icons that are included with it.

_________________
Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.

History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.

Very nice!

_________________
Generalfeldmarschall Scott Kronprinz "Vorwärts" Ludwig von Preußen
Kommandeur des Königlich-Preußischen Armee-Korps
Chief of Staff (CoS) of the Allied Coalition
Allied Coalition Webmaster & Club Website Support

I've given my Waterloo mod a major overhaul to bring it more in line with my other Napoleonic mods. This brings us one step closer to posting the comprehensive mod list.


The Waterloo mod has now been updated to version 4.0.



Most of the incidental art has been changed, though many of the old images have been kept as alternates.



The units images file has been redone: the French Imperial Guard now uses a better flag, the Young and Middle Guard are now wearing the right uniforms, and a few new images will crop up from time to time (e.g. French cuirassiers, French Grenadiers a cheval, and Dutch militia).



There have been adjustments to the 3D terrain (chateaux and fields), and the campaign maps now have better flag symbols.



The victory music has been improved.



My original intention was to put together a music folder that relied heavily on the background music of the old Talonsoft Waterloo and Prelude to Waterloo games. I constructed the folder and it weighed in at less than 200 MB, but then discovered that the program would only select a few of the pieces and play them over and over.

So my fallback was to take the background sounds from my Leipzig and 1814 mods (lightly edited versions of the original), and retitle them so they would overwrite what was probably already in most people's Campaign Waterloo music folder. This turned out to be a good solution because the background sounds are much less distracting than the music, even if it is the better quality selections from the older games.

But a side effect of all of this is that if you think you prefer to hear the music, you MUST back up (or rename) the music folder before installing this mod. The mod was painstakingly designed to obliterate the contents of the original music folder, so don't be surprised if you don't hear music while playing the game. WAD.





Here are some screenshots of the latest version:





























For those of you who aren't afraid to mess around with the inside of your game folders and who also have Campaign Leipzig or Campaign 1814 as well as my mod for those games, there is an alternative to using the music folder in my Waterloo mod that might give a slightly better performance (less repetitive looping in the selections). Look inside the HPS Simulations/Campaign Waterloo folder and disable the Music folder by changing its name to something the program won't recognize (e.g. Copy of Music or even just Music=). Look inside Campaign Leipzig (or Campaign 1814), find the Music folder, and copy and paste it into Campaign Waterloo.

For those who find this too troublesome, complicated, dangerous, or frightening, using my Waterloo mod's Music folder as is will give you pretty much the same result and you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference. Just be aware that my mod's Music folder is designed to obliterate the entire contents of the plain vanilla HPS Campaign Waterloo Music folder, so your are strongly advised to make some kind of copy (probably by renaming files) just in case you find yourself missing the music six months from now. Worst case scenario, you can always retrieve it from the game's cd.



The mod includes three Desktop Icons that you can use as shortcuts on your desktop.

To use a desktop icon, make a shortcut from the cpw application file, and move it to your desktop (in Windows XP move your mouse over the file, right-click, choose create shortcut from drop-down menu, partially shrink your screen by clicking on the middle of three icons in the top right-hand corner, find the newly created 'shortcut to cpw' icon - probably the last icon in your Campaign Waterloo folder - and slide it onto your desktop).

Go to your desktop and find the 'shortcut to cpw' icon and right-click. Then click on properties and change the icon. Remember that you'll have to navigate back to the Campaign Waterloo folder and look for the Desktop Icon.


Once you've changed the icon (and don't forget to click on 'apply'), you'll probably want to rename the file from the cryptic 'shortcut to cpw' to something a bit more transparent like 'Waterloo' or 'Campaign Waterloo'.


I've included three desktop icons so you can choose whichever of the three protagonists you feel is most representative of the battle. If you decide, instead, to link one of the icons to the campaign game rather than the standard game, the file that you should use to create a shortcut is named cp_start.







Here is the link for downloading this mod:



https://www.box.com/s/1d9cea9d7565155a7e8f






Be sure to read the README file (which has instructions on things like how to use a desktop icon).



As everyone has probably noticed I update my mods fairly frequently, so it's not a bad idea to check it from time to time to see if the version number and upload date have changed.


As an additional note, the hosting account that I use tends to run out of bandwidth towards the end of the month. For a while I deluded myself into thinking that it wasn't that big an issue, but as of this morning the account has burned through a scary amount of bandwidth for this time of the month. So Marc Jones' Plan B is starting to look increasingly necssary, and this mod update (along with the Bautzen mod which has been in the works since midsummer) puts Plan B a lot closer to being ready to implement.

_________________
Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.

History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.

Philippe,

Yes, Thank you so much.

Just to reinforce what was said above.

Please take a moment and read and understand the README file.

Philippe,

Just a quick Thank you for all your hard work and deserved praise for making these unit icons and Maps as Historical as possible. You've made this Series a step above because of all your hard work!!!


P.S. Loving the Era Music as well!!!

Yes, this is great job and really impressed.

I picked up a copy of JTS Campaign Overland about a month ago and started poking around inside of it so that it wasn't too painful to look at. Somewhere along the way I realized that there were things about the terrain in my Napoleonic mods that needed attending to, so I've decided to start rolling out a series of adjustments. I'll apply this to each of the other Napoleonic games. It will happen soon, but not sure of the timetable.



Here's what the 'new look' actually looks like. Some of it resembles traditional HPS 3D terrain, but there are some subtle and important differences:
































I decided to remove all images of trees from the 3D building textures. While I was at it, I decided to use the transparent shadows that first appeared in my Campaign 1814 mod. As a reminder, the 3D images of chateaux do not have walls around them, because sometimes a chateau is surrounded by a hedge, sometimes by a wall, and sometimes by nothing at all. I've kept to the convention of including a cow (these were farmhouses, after all) so that you can tell the difference between a large house in a village and a chateau.

The 3D images of trees in forests have gone back to a more traditional look. They may or may not be a tad darker, but they also have the same transparent shadows that show up around the buildings (the hobgoblin of little minds strikes again). I've also remade the half-size version of the 3D buildings and trees from scratch, so they should be a lot clearer to look at.


The big change in 2D was a decision to roll back a failed experiment with woods textures. My 2D woods were too thick, and although it was easier to see where roads and trails crossed forests, you often couldn't tell what the underlying altitude was, and I finally decided that the end result was too angular and I simply didn't like the way it looked (took me the good part of a year to figure that one out).


Finally, the names on the game map had a few troublesome spots. The one that bugged me the most was the Chateau de Goumont which, although not technically wrong, was probably the least common of the three possible names. I went for the one that I'm most comfortable seeing, and then corrected a few placenames that could only have slipped by a non-French speaker (e.g. Mon Flaisir for Mon Plaisir). I'm sure I missed a few (correcting Flemish names is tricky), but if anyone spots one that I haven't fixed and can point to a convincing reason for changing it, I'll make the adjustment in the next patch. And just to be clear, the map hasn't been changed at all -- I've only corrected the spelling.




Here is the link for downloading this mod:


viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13017


The link will take you to the thread where I have links for downloading all my Napoleonic mods. Last time I looked they were in chronological order, so Waterloo will be at the end of the list.


Please note that there are two download links under each mod: a box account link and a dropbox account link. The link for the latest iteration of the Waterloo mod has only been uploaded to boxnet. I haven't decided whether to stay with dropbox as a backup (it's a pain for me to use), so make sure that the Waterloo mod you download is at least version 5.0a.


And be sure to read the README file (which has instructions on things like how to use the desktop icons that I've included with my mods).

_________________
Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.

History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.