New mod for Campaign Leipzig

[Philippe_at_bay]

I've added a mod that changes the unit images and terrain to the Gamesquad downloads section.

The mod is in 9 parts to keep each part of the download (and upload) as small as possible.

The first 8 parts are the mod itself. The last part allows you to switch from summer to fall colors and back again (most of the small battles took place in the summer, but Leipzig itself was fought in mid-October).

The mod mounts the JTS plain vanilla unit images on flags and (where appropriate) cannons and horses to make the distinctions between infantry, artillery, horse artillery, cavalry, and supply easier to recognize at a glance.

The mod uses 2D terrain that is largely derived from my Panzer Campaigns mods, but that does contain some Ezjax terrain.

Most of the 3D terrain is Ezjax material, though I decided to rearrange his grass layers.

The mod will need to be reapplied after every JTS patch.

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

The third part of the mod (the one that contains the units file) has been updated to correct a missing cannon and a stray horse and saber.

Apologies to those that have downloaded already. At least you won't have to redownload the whole thing.

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

There are screenshots showing what this mod looks like over at The Wargamer.

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/posts.asp?t=582191

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

I've made a few updates to the first of the nine zip files in the downloads section. I've changed the coloring of the terrain box and the text is now much easier to read. I've also done away with the yellow framed phasebox and replaced it with a simpler, cleaner look. The images haven't changed, however.

Finally, I've thrown in a small bitmap that can be used as a shortcut if you keep one on your desktop. Just change the properties of whatever shortcut you're using, navigate to the Campaign Leipzig folder, and select and apply the file named shortcut. I didn't need to convert it into an icon file, so remember to select 'all files' when looking for it rather than just 'icons'.

 

[Marshal Lannes]

Woo Hoo ! More good stuff, must be Christmas....

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

I've just given the Leipzig mod a major overhaul and gathered it together all in one place.



So if nothing else you won't have to make umpteen million annoying little downloads to get the mod. And I won't have to go totally crazy every time I want to make a slight improvement.



Besides getting all the pieces of the mod under one roof, another big change is that I've repainted the 3D trees and terrain features, so that there are now two completely different sets of terrain: one for summer terrain and one for fall terrain. As a result I've decided to set the mod up for a double install, much the way I did for Napoleon's Russian Campaign/Retreat for Moscow. The limitation on how many installs you get from JTS has recently been lifted, so this won't create any copyright issues.



(Actually, it's not even a separate install -- you install once, copy and paste the game to another part of your JTS folder, and rename the copy something else.)



I've also done some work on the sound. I didn't like hearing someone yelling "God save the King" in the background of battles that were being fought between non-English speakers, so I edited out about four seconds of background sound. I've also never been a fan of the music selections, so I replaced the victory music with some period music selections. There's even an alternate for the draw music: if you don't like Beethoven there's an alternate clip of a French military bank giving the signal to pack it in for the night.



The two mods are now referred to as the Leipzig mod and the Dresden Mod. Use the Dresden mod (desktop icon with a green background) for playing summer scenarios, and the Leipzig mod (reddish background on the desktop icon) for playing anything that happens in October or later.



Here are some screenshots from the Dresden mod:

And here are some shots of the Leipzig mod:

The 3D units are now fitting a lot more snugly on their 3D bases, and that will improve over time. The mod also includes some corrections for missing unit images that may or may not make it into the next official patch.



Like my other Napoleonic mods, I've included horses, cannons, and wagons so you won't be able to mistake a couple of teamsters for a battalion of infantry. The cannon images have been painted with gun carriages and metal fittings in the appropriate national colors.





The Leipzig mod version 2.0 can be downloaded from here:





https://www.box.com/s/7fxly8ss99hovj1equon





And I'd like to extend a huge thank you to The Big Red One from Task Force Echo Four for providing a platform for my mods.

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

The Leipzig mod has now been updated to version 2.1.



Among other things, I've redrawn and repainted all of the bases and repositioned all of the units so that they now fit squarely inside their bases.



The bases now have slightly rounded corners (sort of like what a wargame counter looks like after you trim the corners with nail clippers), and they're always the same color as the base color in the unit box.



This update is actually a by-product of an overhaul of Campaign 1814, so there will be plenty of screenshots of the new look when that one comes out.



In the meantime, you can download the latest version of Campaign Leipzig here:



https://www.box.com/s/7fxly8ss99hovj1equon

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

The Leipzig mod has now been updated to version 2.2.





Besides a small surprise when you first fire up the game if you happen to play with the sound on, the main event involves corrections to the units bmp and an overhaul of the way leaders are presented.



Leaders now appear in ovals as in most of the other games. They also tend to be more colorful, more accurate, and better quality images than in the past. The look of the whole thing should be reminiscent of what I did in the Napoleon's Russian Campaign mod (though I had to change the background color of the brown matting behind the leaders).



The units bitmap is really long. So long, in fact, that if you look at the start or the end of the file you still can't see what's in the middle. And that's where the mistakes were.



There were a few small changes to the 3D terrain. The 3D crops in Dresden are no longer the same color as the 3D crops in Leipzig: they're greener to reflect the earlier season. And the crops in Bautzen will be greener still.



Because I never posted screenshots showing the effect of the overhaul of the unit bases from the last version, here are a few screenshots of leaders and 3D units from Leipzig. Dresden would be similar, except that the foliage would be less autumnal.

In case anyone was wondering, the Bautzen mod has proven trickier to produce than originally anticipated, largely because working on it has turned up glitches in Leipzig and especially 1814. Although Leipzig, 1814, and Bautzen share the same units file, the 3D files (in the mod at least) differ from game to game. A revised version of the 1814 mod will be ready very soon, and the Bautzen mod will come out shortly after that.





On another front, there is now a bit more bandwidth for downloads than in the past, so running out of availability at the end of the month is less likely to be an issue.







The Leipzig mod (and it's attendant Dresden sub-mod) can be downloaded here:







https://www.box.com/s/7fxly8ss99hovj1equon

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

I've finally gotten around to updating my Campaign Leipzig mod.

First, the missing Italian unit that was included in the last official patch has now been incorporated into my mod. You probably won't have noticed anything was missing because the mod used a similar unit to fill the gap. What earlier versions of my mod didn't have was a skirmisher texture for the missing unit. That has now been fixed.

The Leipzig mod uses the new look previewed in the latest version of my Waterloo mod. I've thinned out the 2D forests so that they look less hexagonal, have reintroduced modified versions of the original 3D tree textures, have removed trees from the building textures, use the same semi-transparent shadows in the tree and building textures, and have developed a new marsh texture (a very prominent feature of the Leipzig battlefield).

No screenshots at the moment, but the 3D environment looks fairly different. My plan is to roll this change out to all of my other Napoleonic mods over the next few months as soon as I'm sure I didn't miss something.

The links for downloading this (and all my other Napoleonic mods) can be found here:

http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.php?111328-A-complete-list-of-the-links-to-Philippe-s-Napoleonic-mods

Each mod in the complete download list has two links. The first link has had it's mod updated, the second link probably won't untill sometime later this year when all the mods have been upgraded.

 

[Philippe_at_bay]

The Leipzig mod (and its attendant Dresden mod) has been updated to version 3.3.


The update harmonizes my mod(s) with the latest official patch.


The only change from previous versions is that the new terrain contour lines will now appear, albeit in modded form (52% different from what's in the official patch). The long and the short of it is that I don't believe it's appropriate for there to be shadows in a 2D map.


The latest version of the Leipzig mod can be downloaded from the Leipzig section here:


http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.php?111328-A-complete-list-of-the-links-to-Philippe-s-Napoleonic-mods


I've only updated my box account, so if you use the dropbox link it won't do any good because it links to an earlier version.