Kuban Autumn Nth Africa Desert Beta upload - Updated version to 8. 10-01-2023

[Off_Winters]

4 hours ago, No_85_Gramps said:

Okay, first off, this mod is fantastic! So, just to be sure, you need to install the Malta beta1 mod, the Kuban Autumn 1943 desert beta 2 mod and the beta 2 update? Correct? I assume that for MP/Coop gaming that all parties need "mods on" activated, and have installed the 3 mod files. Correct? One last question with regards to mission building, currently, when using the mod, the original Kuban templates are used for populating the map? And lastly a hearty thank you for all the work you have done on this mod!

 

 

Hi Gramps,

For the North Africa mod, you need to install the two files in the first post. first the main Beta2 file and then the small Beta 2.1 update, which drops into the main Bet2 folder to overwrite several files. you then use jsgme to install into game.

you then install the Malta Mod after you have installed the Nth Africa mod if you want to play that. 

Then as Beebop states, remove both of the Mods if you want to fly in any other scenario.

regards Rob.

[No_85_Gramps]

Thanks meplanes and Off_Winters. Your posts, along with beebop's, have clarified some things for me.

[No1_Charlie]

I dropped the updated 'Desert beta 2' folder into my 'Mods' folder as advised. Then I dropped the updated 'data' folder into the Desert 2 beta folder to overwrite the original. I set up a quick mission and can see the desert skins etc, but when I start the mission, the game crashes with 'Luascripts' errors relating to torpedo boat and other objects. Am I doing something wrong here? 

 

Just to add, I deactivated the original version out of JSGME first.

Edited November 26, 2020 by No1_Charlie

[Beebop]

19 minutes ago, No1_Charlie said:

I dropped the updated 'Desert beta 2' folder into my 'Mods' folder as advised. Then I dropped the updated 'data' folder into the Desert 2 beta folder to overwrite the original.

This is where you made the error.  Merge the folders before putting them into JSGME.

 

As Off_Winters advised.....

20 hours ago, Off_Winters said:

first the main Beta2 file and then the small Beta 2.1 update, which drops into the main Bet2 folder to overwrite several files. you then use jsgme to install into game.

 

HTH

[No1_Charlie]

38 minutes ago, Beebop said:

This is where you made the error.  Merge the folders before putting them into JSGME.

 

As Off_Winters advised.....

 

HTH

Ok cool...all working fine thanks very much!

Edited November 26, 2020 by No1_Charlie

[Beebop]

?

[Mysticpuma]

On 11/24/2020 at 1:49 AM, 352ndOscar said:

Taken by a member of our little band from our Sunday Night session.  Really shows this mod in a great light!

Genuinely at first glance I thought this was a real world image! 

[keeno]

Awesome........... I'm gonna try this one!

[keeno]

Ok.......... I've tried it............. it's superb!! ?

Edited November 30, 2020 by keeno

[Off_Winters]

Hi All,

I have been tidying up a few more buildings (including fixing the large control tower texture that had the incorrect settings in the alpha channel) and a few other facilities for airfields, and have updated the Afirka Korps infantry with Detcords excellent template update. have also been adding in a bit of Hurricane goodness. several historic skins to replace stock Russian ones in the official skin list, and a revised VC texture. as shown above in an earlier post. And a heap of other little bits and pieces to bring little items into the Nth Africa look and feel. Have redone the weathering on the B25 desert skin, softened/toned down the exhaust smoke etc and touched up fabric coverings and metal wear. I hope to do another update in the very near future. (nearer than 2 weeks)

regards Rob.

 

 

 

repainted stores buildings, original below. and revised dirt around the base aircraft encasements to be more red brown instead of the light grey/white of the original.

 

Revised Afrika Korps texture. I also worked out how to tone down the colour bloom (bright shiney light colours) on textures. notice the skin colour is crisp with no flairing or blooming of the edges of the face etc. Its to do with the alpha layer. I will be changing all the stock infantry alpha layers to fix this on all characters.

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Off_Winters

[Blitzen]

So wait for the update? Can do.

( BTW I seem to remember a post somewhere that we could leave trees in place if we wanted to.I’m not sure if it was here or elsewhere or if i just imagined it...)

[Beebop]

3 hours ago, Off_Winters said:

I hope to do another update in the very near future. (nearer than 2 weeks)

This is going to be the most comprehensive "repaint" yet.  What's another two weeks for an addition that, except for the plane and ship variety, will, IMO, rival Tobruk and look better overall.

 

BRAVO ! Off_Winters!  Huzzah!  Huzzah!

[Robert_Molders]

Great news and great work mate! Keep up the good work!!! Amazing!!!

[Stonehouse]

Just in time for Christmas flying - thank you!

[Off_Winters]

13 hours ago, Blitzen said:

So wait for the update? Can do.

( BTW I seem to remember a post somewhere that we could leave trees in place if we wanted to.I’m not sure if it was here or elsewhere or if i just imagined it...)

Hi Blitzen,

In this coming update I'll have the option for trees if people want to see them.

regards Rob.

[TP_Silk]

One of the things that I find most unrealistic about this game is that all the roads, rivers and railways are so tree-lined. Most of them have trees for almost their entire length. It's absolutely absurd.

 

Sure, many do have trees along them, but not evenly spaced every 10 yards along the entire length.

Edited December 5, 2020 by TP_Silk

[Beebop]

I thought that too at first but maybe not so much. Here's a rural road outside of Moscow around 1940;

 

 

A river in Russia;

 

 

and a railroad;

 

 

Just some random pictures that cam up when I typed "Russian (roads/rivers/railways) near Moscow, 1940.

So yes, while trying to take out that train, river gunship, convoy, it can be frustrating, it just makes me become more patient and wait for a straighter, clear section of the transit way.

 

 

 

[Off_Winters]

Hi All,

whilst testing a few things, I found that you can greatly reduce the shiny/bloom effect of textures which have light colours such as white included in them

In the startup.cfg file in the data folder if you edit the Bloom_enable = 1 to 0 you get much more transitional colours without the super shiny effect blinding the details. case in point the train smoke and white sand bags. 

this screenshot shows how much better the train smoke and sand bags look. you can see the detail in the sand bags and almost see through the smoke. without overly bright/shiney light colours detracting from the view.

 

it may be different for others, but I highly recommend making the change, you can always go back if you don't like it.

regards Rob.

another shot, absolutely no overly shiny/bloom effects, you can clearly see all the details, regardless of lighting position.

 

Edited December 7, 2020 by Off_Winters

[THERION]

1 minute ago, Off_Winters said:

Hi All,

whilst testing a few things, I found that you can greatly reduce the shiny/bloom effect of textures which have light colours such as white included in them

In the startup.cfg file in the data folder if you edit the Bloom_enable = 1 to 0 you get much more transitional colours without the super shiny effect blinding the details. case in point the train smoke and white sand bags. 

this screenshot shows how much better the train smoke and sand bags look. you can see the detail in the sand bags and almost see through the smoke. without overly bright/shiney light colours detracting from the view.

 

it may be different for others, but I highly recommend making the change, you can always go back if you don't like it.

regards Rob.

 

Just be aware, as soon as you enable HDR again in your game's graphic settings, the bloom option will automatically be set to 1 again too. But you can still run

the game in HDR without bloom effect - you need to alter this manually in the file.

 

Cheerio

[Off_Winters]

2 minutes ago, THERION said:

 

Just be aware, as soon as you enable HDR again in your game's graphic settings, the bloom option will automatically be set to 1 again too. But you can still run

the game in HDR without bloom effect - you need to alter this manually in the file.

 

Cheerio

Thanks Therion,

good point, that is what I'm promoting, doing a manual edit of the startup.cfg file once you have your game settings finalized in the UI menu.

regards Rob. 

[Stonehouse]

Just curiosity - the textures used for the lake water - are they a common water texture or a particular lake water texture? 

 

I was wondering if they could be made to look like salt lakes/salt marshes without impacting the ocean? I guess streams might become wadi's if the lake and stream shared textures

[Beebop]

Not an expert but my guess would be that one water fits all.

Hmmm, there's a thought.  The Black Sea as the Bonneville Salt Flats. New module, BLSR, Battle of Land Speed Records.  ?

[jollyjack]

On 12/5/2020 at 6:22 AM, Off_Winters said:

Hi Blitzen, In this coming update I'll have the option for trees if people want to see them. regards Rob.

 

I take it that you can only activate or de-activate ALL the trees at once, and not partly?

 

BTW a fantastic MOD, this Kuban desert stuff, rather use this than Tobruk.

Latter has more ships and bombers, but the graphics are not there yet. And Malta is also missing there ..

 

10 hours ago, No457_Stonehouse said:

Just curiosity - the textures used for the lake water - are they a common water texture or a particular lake water texture? 

 

I was wondering if they could be made to look like salt lakes/salt marshes without impacting the ocean? I guess streams might become wadi's if the lake and stream shared textures

 

I only saw some surfline options in Surface Edit - select objects mode.

Still try to figure out how to use them, tough trial and error thing with a constantly crashing ME (latter is working better thanks to recent NVIDIA driver advice from @Rapidus) .

 

[DetCord12B]

Still texturing the vehicles for @Off_Winters and the NA mod.

 

Sent him an early WIP version to take a look at but having now really played with the in game time-of-day settings, it's apparent that I'll need to redo all of the alpha maps to reduce the that awful glow they all have, something more akin to reality with a matte appearance.

 

 

[Beebop]

?It's so nice to see German trucks that aren't silver grey both summer and winter.?

NICE work DetCord!

[Soto_Cinematics]

1 hour ago, DetCord12B said:

Still texturing the vehicles for @Off_Winters and the NA mod.

 

 

Looks good Det

[jollyjack]

Guess i have to disable other mods first: Quick Mission generated .... trees not gone, and Train on a road in the Kerch srea:

 

 

Nope, disabled all other mods .... guess it must be that i ungtp'd all Kuban maps, here's the mission.

ADDED: just reinstalled the default Kuban maps; it fixed the railway, but i still have the trees.

 

Kerch Afrika Train error.zip

Edited December 9, 2020 by jollyjack

[Off_Winters]

11 hours ago, jollyjack said:

Guess i have to disable other mods first: Quick Mission generated .... trees not gone, and Train on a road in the Kerch srea:

 

 

 

Nope, disabled all other mods .... guess it must be that i ungtp'd all Kuban maps, here's the mission.

ADDED: just reinstalled the default Kuban maps; it fixed the railway, but i still have the trees.

Hi JollyJack,

In that screen shot, it doesn't look like the MOD has been implemented at all, you still have the green based ground textures in view and the stock train wagon paint scheme, as well as the trees.

The easiest way to tell if it loaded correctly is to check the load screen when a quick mission is loading, you should see the title "The Desert Air War" on the load screen title box. could you post a picture of your folder structure showing were the mod folder sits.

Another user had the same issue, but turned out he had the MOD folder inside the games main Data folder, whereas I have the Mod folder sitting beside the data folder with the first level of folders inside the Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2 folder is the  "Data" folder.

IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad/MODS/Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2/Data/etc etc.

regards Rob.
 

[DetCord12B]

@jollyjack

 

Make sure you have the Autumn Kuban map selected. I made the same mistake when failing to read the instructions and launching the summer map...?

Edited December 10, 2020 by DetCord12B

[jollyjack]

8 hours ago, DetCord12B said:

@jollyjack

 

Make sure you have the Autumn Kuban map selected. I made the same mistake when failing to read the instructions and launching the summer map...?

 

Ah, I had summer LoL. Choosing Autumn gives texture errors and trees:

 

 

========================================================================================

 

 

8 hours ago, Off_Winters said:

Hi JollyJack,

In that screen shot, it doesn't look like the MOD has been implemented at all, you still have the green based ground textures in view and the stock train wagon paint scheme, as well as the trees.

The easiest way to tell if it loaded correctly is to check the load screen when a quick mission is loading, you should see the title "The Desert Air War" on the load screen title box. could you post a picture of your folder structure showing were the mod folder sits.

Another user had the same issue, but turned out he had the MOD folder inside the games main Data folder, whereas I have the Mod folder sitting beside the data folder with the first level of folders inside the Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2 folder is the  "Data" folder.

IL-2 Sturmovik Battle of Stalingrad/MODS/Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2/Data/etc etc.  regards Rob.
 

 

 

Thnks, i will have to for check more issues; i think in my installation also some textures used are missing due maps exported to my graphics folder.

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by jollyjack

[jollyjack]

Hi Rob. Reinstalled Il2 4.503 again. i stil have that error, and i think some files won't unzip: tried 7zip, WinRAR, and windows 10 for unzipping:

With the Kuban installed only the same as the picture above, white spots. Guess a texture is missing, and the forest is still there. (JSGME) Removing the mod, all seems OK

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Error report Message (windows):

! J:\- GAMES IL2 download\- !! GREAT BATTLES 15-nov-2020\3rd PARTY addons BoX\- MODS downloaded\- Off_Winters MODS\Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2.rar: Checksum error in Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2\data\graphics\LANDSCAPE_Kuban_a\landtexturesquality\carpetb_009.dds. The file is corrupt
! J:\- GAMES IL2 download\- !! GREAT BATTLES 15-nov-2020\3rd PARTY addons BoX\- MODS downloaded\- Off_Winters MODS\Kuban_Autum-1943_Desert_Beta_2.rar: Unexpected end of archive

------------------------------------------------

I re-downloaded the  main beta 2 (named 2x now) the same error 7zip unzipping, please see pic below:

Unzipping files individually gves an error on carpetb_009.dds:

 

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by jollyjack

[DetCord12B]

@jollyjack that's just odd. I redownloaded the zip file and didn't encounter any archive errors, so no idea what's happening on your end.

 

I'm sure you did but I'll ask anyway:

• Have you tried launching only this mod and without any others in the load order?
• Did you deactivate the mod in JSGME and remove it before attempting to reinstall a fresh version?
• It's possible your Kuban install was corrupted before this. Have you tried deleting the updates folder, relaunching the game without the mod activated, and allowing the client to determine if any files are missing or corrupted?

I've uploaded the mod to my GDrive account for you for testing purposes. This is the version I'm using so I know it works.

 

The link will expire in four hours - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hn-c8SgLFdbWFaPoxO-5yRlelrcbOSYl/view?usp=sharing

 

 

[jollyjack]

Thanks, yep on the 3 counts, ships-rule they say that is here. Still downloading your version ... i'l post here when it works later.  ==>  BINGO, it works !!!

Not a camel insight, but this damage model looks great ...

 

Now up for some exploring and desert Mission making .... maybe some non historical fantasy FC1 stuff? We have a Camel already called Sopwith.

 

Edited December 11, 2020 by jollyjack

[DetCord12B]

Glad you got it squared away. Did you determine what the issue was?

[Beebop]

On 12/10/2020 at 11:52 AM, jollyjack said:

maybe some non historical fantasy FC1 stuff?

Biplanes in the Middle East?  OHHH YEA! 

 

I already have a Russian Lebed XII

 

and an Iragi Hawker Audax

 

hacked for the Po-2.

Bring it on!

[jollyjack]

6 hours ago, DetCord12B said:

Glad you got it squared away. Did you determine what the issue was?

There was a texture missing in the original RAR file, but not in your zipped one; that worked ...

4 hours ago, Beebop said:

Biplanes in the Middle East?  OHHH YEA! 

 

and an Iragi Hawker Audax

 

hacked for the Po-2.

Bring it on!

 

 Ah, the Yellow Jackets on the job.

BTW the Halberstadt c2 is a 'better' crate, faster, bombs more destructive, alas no rockets. 

 

[Off_Winters]

Hi All,

whilst testing (which I usually do in an allied plane) I realized that because the mod uses a Russian map as a base, the enemy forces when flying as an Axis pilot would be Russian models shown (when flying quick combat, mission builders can over come this by specifying correct forces). to this end I have been swapping out the Russian models with equivalent models from UK and US where available. I wish we had more allied tanks available to pad out the selection, for the moment the M4 is standing in for about 6 different Russian tanks. I can mix it up a bit with varying paint schemes for each to break the monotony. 

So now when you fly as an Axis pilot you see something more inline with Nth Africa than Russia theatre of ops.

Unfortunately there is not an equivalent hi-level animated soldier model to swap out, so it will have to be a uniform repaint to try and make the Russian soldier look a little more 8th army looking.  You see English or American soldiers in the vehicles etc, but once you damage one and the occupants flee then it reverts to the Russian model. This can be corrected in the future as I'm sure there will be hi-level animated US and English infantry models once Normandy is released.

Slowly reworking paint schemes to be Desert themed for the allied vehicles.

regards Rob.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Off_Winters

[Beebop]

?

WOW!  This IS going to be good!

 

Be sure to open up a "coffee shop" so we can share a cuppa java and show our appreciation for all your hard work.

You are definitely going above and beyond the call.

[Off_Winters]

M16 repaint coming along.

regards Rob.

 

[jollyjack]

Looks Fantastic !