Flags of our Fathers -- German leaders, units, and equipment

[Philippeatbay]

Flags of our Fathers -- German leaders, units, and equipment
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The fourth iteration of this mod has been uploaded to my box account and is ready for download.
It will show up as version 3.1
This mod mimics the game's original design concept but uses historical symbols.
It will overwrite all of the German portions of the Data/Art/photo.

The mod can be downloaded here:


https://app.box.com/s/8c1hck3m7xkrk7l5gid0hyu8upnbwefq



The mod changes the game-convention German flag to a more historically accurate one on the units and equipment.

It attempts to mimic the design of the vanilla game so that everything remains in the same style.

I was forced to use solid color side banners (as opposed to partially transparent ones) to cover over the three-colored red, white, and black stripe from the original game. Although there is probably enough historical precedent for the banner, its shade of red had to be adjusted so as not to clash with the brownish photographs. The first time I made this mod I actually used the historical colors, only to discover to my chagrin that bright red looked awful against the sepia tones of the photographs. I'm hoping I won't have to make this mod a third time.

The mod now changes the flag banner on the leader portrait as well. It uses the Reichskriegflag or warflag for leaders from the Wehrmacht-Heer, a blue banner derived from the penant flown on officers' cars for the Luftwaffe, and the SS runes for the SS. The red of the Reichskriegflag has been modified in the same way as on the Parteiflag.

Here are some screenshots from the inside of my computer that show what this mod actually does:

Units and equipment (including airplanes) before modding:



Units and equipment (including airplanes) after modding:





Leaders before modding:



Leaders after modding:





INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

Copy and paste the new Dat folder inside your Gary Grigsby War in the West folder. (It overwrites the German part of your Art/photo folder).

Make sure you keep choosing 'yes' whenever your system asks you whether you want to overwrite something.

Back up your originals.

[stolypin]

Excellent, thanks!

[Philippeatbay]

Glad you like it.

It turns out that in solving the color problem for the units I may have accidently solved the problem I was having with the leader portraits, so keep watching this space.

[Philippeatbay]

The mod has now been expanded to include German leaders. You can download the mod from the link in the first post in this thread (which has been updated as well).

About a third of the leader images are fine as they are, but about two thirds of them (over two hundred) need to be individually repaired. I've started on this but have other commitments and don't know how long it will take. So rather than delay the release of the mod by what could turn out to be several months, I've released the leader portraits in their current state and will update them when they're repaired.

[Philippeatbay]

Work continues on the mod and I've gone through about two-thirds of what needs to be done as a bare minimum. I expect to finish retouching the most problematic German leader portraits before the end of next month.

[Philippeatbay]

I've decided to post the German portraits in their current state. The Flags of our Fathers/German portraits and equipment should now be showing version 3.0 and can be downloaded from the link in the first post.

In this version I've trimmed the flags on 225 portraits, so the portrait faces are now always in the foreground, and the flags are always in the background. The screenshot in the first post in this thread has been updated to show the what the mod looks like in it's current state.

In the next version of the mod I'll try to even out the coloring and contrast on several of the trimmed portraits from this set, and I'll look into improving the image quality on about 200 portraits that didn't have overlap and trimming problems. Unfortunately once I stray into image-improving country on the German portraits, I'll have to worry about doing the same thing for the other nationalities. Since the mod is beginning to snowball and I have other commitments, I thought it best to post everything once things reach a logical turning point. The mod is probably finished, but like of all of my other mods it can always be improved.

[Philippeatbay]

I've made a minor adjustment to the German leader portraits and updated the mod to version 3.01.

I've lowered the saturation on a half dozen portraits, so when seen together none of them should stick out too much. I'm not sure if it makes any difference in game, but if you look in the photo folder (or at the 'after' screenshot in the first post) you should see a difference.

The links in the first post will take you to the latest version.

There are still just under two hundred German leader portraits that could stand improvement, but that will happen after I review all the portraits in the photo folder (probably next year).

[Philippeatbay]

Three quarters of the German leader portraits have now been replaced. You can download them from the link in the first post of this thread (version 3.02).

In case anyone was wondering why this is taking so long, here are detailed before and after screenshots.

Before:



After:



There are about ninety more German portraits that need replacing, and I'm hoping to finish before Christmas. My dance card is pretty full right now and my mouse is wearing out, so someone else may have to replace the leader portraits for the other nationalities.

[Philippeatbay]

The German portion of the mod seems to be finished. All of the 359 leader portraits have been replaced, some of them several times.

There was a contre-temps last night when I got excited because I realized that the end was in view, and accidently deleted the entire mod from my hard drive. Fortunately I make lots of duplicates of my work in progress files so I was able to reconstruct it when I discovered the disaster this morning.

The link in the first post of this thread will take you to the latest version of the mod, version 3.1.

[Once Joey]

Nice, very nice...Thank You for your excellent work.