Historical Flags Mod (Full Version)

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Philippeatbay -> Historical Flags Mod (1/3/2018 5:45:22 AM)

Strategic Command Historical Flags Mod version 1.8
-------------------------------------------------------------



This mod attempts to make the flags displayed by the game as historically accurate as possible.
It only changes the graphics of the mod, so it won't effect pbem games if one player uses it and the other doesn't.

The mod only makes changes to the flags and flag roundels.

The main correction to the flags of the game was the flag for the United States, which is not easy to work with.

Throughout most of the twentieth century the United States flew a 48 star flag, and this was the flag that was used in both World Wars.

The difference between 48 and 50 stars is not merely a question of adding a couple of stars:
the 50 star arrangements are set up in a checkerboard pattern, whereas the 48 star arrangements are set up in aligned columns and rows. The two flags are visually different, and you don't have to count the stars to be able to tell which one uses 48 and which one uses 50 stars.

For those of you who come from one-flag countries and aren't familiar with these things,
most countries have two or three different flags which they use in different situations.
France, the United Kingdom, and the United States are all single flag users,
which leaves their citizens conceptually impoverished and easily confused when looking at the flags of a nation that keeps its flag functions relatively distinct.

Countries usually have a general or civil flag, which tends to get used as the short-hand symbol for everything else.
Another common flag category is the state flag, which you'll often see flying in front of an embassy or government building. A third and extremely common flag type is the War flag or military flag.

Things can get a bit confusing when the categories overlap.
Poland has an elegantly simple civil flag, and a state flag and military flag that are identical.
Germany uses the same flag as the civil flag and the state flag, but its military flag is different. Other countries with distincly different military flags are Finland, Slovakia, and Romania.
And Japan has one national flag and different but extremely similar flags for the Army and Navy.


Here are a few screenshots so you can get a sense of what this mod does:



[img]https://i.imgur.com/oeFwKfF.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/REUhYNj.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/9wjMROe.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/svdt8zZ.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/wyWgqLY.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/6FWyrU8.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/6Pv9Ydg.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/IV2ajLH.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/LYh06Ji.jpg[/img]

The mod changes all of the flags and roundels in all four language versions of the Media folders. Here are before and after screenshots of a sample of the flag changes.

Before:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/0D6Y9SW.jpg[/img]

After:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/uk5gi90.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/QlDhVNb.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/5SGuNz4.jpg[/img]




WHERE TO GET THE MOD:



The Matrix and Steam Version:

https://app.box.com/s/qqyuzge4dds77cmt6amnghmt46hz0vj3




HOW TO INSTALL THE MOD

I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21rst century, so Steam and Matrix both use the same version of the mod.

Follow the instructions included in the mod, but basically what you do is copy and paste the Historical Flags WIE 1.8 into your documents folder in the Strategi Command WIE mod folder.

These mods get downloaded from my personal Box account.
Be aware that I sometimes run out of bandwidth towards the end of the month.
It hasn't happened in a while, but if it should happen, please mention it on these boards.
Ordinarily the solution is just to wait until about a week into the next calendar month.
In the unlikely event that the problem becomes endemic, I will set up a pair of mirror accounts in Dropbox.

There are a few niggly little flag issues that will either get cleared up by future game patches, or will get addressed by future versions of the mod.
My mods usually suffer through several versions, because I can never make up my mind when confronted with a palette of colors.

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

IronX's Knight's Cross and Philippe's Historical Flags mods combined:






[In order to keep us all as confused as possible, Box recently changed the presentation of its download screen. Ignore any references to logging in -- what you want is the download button in the upper right-hand corner of your screen].

Part I:

https://app.box.com/s/6z85mfb1jle51anwdsvoif5an2ca6jgq


Part II:

https://app.box.com/s/z5aoe6tpvrjtu2mlnegef8xfhhrtihhf


Part III:

https://app.box.com/s/ylfnuk86wqfpnv0thctl68bi9yq23s8d


The combined Historical Flags + Knight's Cross mod is a large mod, too large for the bandwidth that is currently available to me.

For that reason I have had to break it into three pieces (Parts I, II, and III) that need to be put back together before you install the mod onto your computer.

Inside each of the three parts is a folder named 'Historical Flags + Knight's Cross combined' and two text files.

Reconstruct the original combined mod by copying and pasting all three parts onto each other.

It probably doesn't make any difference, but if it were me I'd copy and paste the folder in Part I to the inside of Part II.

You'll get queried about overwriting, but what's really happening is that you're putting the two pieces of the bitmaps folder back together.

If you then copy and paste the folder from Part II into the folder from Part III, what you should end up with is a single 'Historical Flags + Knight's Cross combined' with the entire mod inside.

After you've done this it's safe to read the notes and the instructions on how to install the mod.

Just to be clear, the three folders named Part I, Part II, and Part III only exist to keep their contents separate.

Once you've merged the contents of these three folders, you shouldn't allow them to get anywhere near the game (the engine won't know what to do with them and won't be able to read the mod).








mroyer -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/3/2018 9:30:40 AM)

Nice!




nnason -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/3/2018 10:12:37 AM)

Nicely done with good commentary about the why the flag mod is significant, with examples showing results, and clear installation instructions.




Taxman66 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/3/2018 12:11:09 PM)

Any possible way to get this to work on a campaign folder, particularly a modded/ing campaign folder located in 'my documents/my games...' instead?




PHalen -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/3/2018 1:29:02 PM)

Great work & very interesting comments!
Thanks!!!

I’m normally no swastika fan but this is irresistibly well made.
And what the real war flags looked like after all.

I especially like the Finnish & Romanian war flags.




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/3/2018 1:34:56 PM)

The mod actually consists of six folders: bitmaps, interface, and four language-dependant media folders. If the game engine always looks for their contents in the campaign folders, it might be possible. However, in an earlier incarnation of this game (the two WW I games) I went crazy trying to figure out where I had to put things to get them to show up. In those games Emerson's hobgoblin seemed to be at work because some textures wouldn't show up if they were in the campaign folders, and some wouldn't show up if they weren't in the campaign folders. I haven't run any tests on that because I haven't needed to, but it should be simple enough to pop the six folders with the mod content into one of the later campaign folders in a clean install just to see what would happen. But you'll need to go over the game with a checklist to make sure everything is appearing where it should. The game has several mysteries, including at least one file that seems to be an artefact of an earlier incarnation.

What exactly are you actually concerned about?




Taxman66 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/3/2018 1:42:07 PM)

Just want to keep the basic install/scenario pristine.

Additionally, the designer's own instructions about installing graphic mods state to create a new campaign mod (which is located in the my games folder). This would also allow playing around with custom counters or other mods.

But mostly just paranoia about messing with basic game and/or future updates.





Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/5/2018 11:27:40 PM)

I make parallel installs whenever I feel I really need to be sure I've got a pristine version. I do it a lot because I make a lot of mods. Right now I happen to have an un-modded Matrix version and a modded Steam version.

But there's a lazy man's way of going about this.

One of the really nice things about getting a Steam key is that you can revert to the original installation almost painlessly by going into Properties in your Steam Game Library and asking Steam to verify the integrity of your installation. Any file that isn't identical to one you downloaded from them will get automatically re-uploaded: in other words, verifying integrity will obliterate any mod you have installed. It's a nuisance if you aren't expecting it, but it's a good thing if you realize what it does and learn to work with it.




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/5/2018 11:42:59 PM)

I was getting lonely because I hadn't seen the gremlin, but he's finally shown his ugly little head.

There was an inexplicable glitch involving the flags of Albania, Algeria, and Argentina: they sit next to each other in the top row of roundels, and all of them apparently decided to shift one slot to the left.

The bug has been caught and squashed, and the links in the first post of this thread will now take you to version 1.1 of the Historical Flags
Mod instead of 1.0.

I've also replaced the German flag on the morale flag sheet, and repainted and re-rendered the 3-D Headquarters bases from version 1.0 and added a few more minors as well.

The game was originally issued with bases for majors only, but I intend to make bases for all of the minors, probably in the next version.








Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/6/2018 6:33:10 PM)

At the risk of admitting how long in the tooth I really am, I can still remember when Algeria was a part of metropolitan France. The flag flying over Algeria changed from the tricolor to the star and the crescent when I was in elementary school. The school was run by the French embassy in Washington, and not long after the handover my classmates whose parents were French military attaches suddenly dissapeared when the French army staged an unsuccessful coup to overthrow De Gaulle. One tends not to forget things like that.

My experience in that school was one of the most traumatic events of my childhood, in spite of being accorded special treatment because my older sister was the school's darling. I can still remember my delight when many years later I was in Washington for a conference and drove past the building on the way to a meeting. The school was closed and the building had been turned into an Algerian consulate. Sweet revenge.

Now that you know some of the background for why I tend to be sensitive to the Algerian flag, I need to mention that the Algerian flag used in the game is completely wrong. Houari Boumedienne would have loved it, but it wasn't used in Algeria until 1962, which makes it even more anachronistic than the checkerboard version of the Stars and Stripes from the base game.

While worrying about what to do about the Algerian flag, here are some of the period images that I've been looking at:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/RI3Wy2P.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/zCrpoln.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/bszfI17.jpg[/img]



The most illuminating images came from a 1941 boardgame designed to teach French children about the glories of the French colonial empire:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/if0xWjI.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/JkmK5ox.jpg[/img]

The individual colonies fly the tricolor instead of their own flag.


[img]https://i.imgur.com/aXHtwCt.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/bmkDQU5.jpg[/img]


After much agonizing and rumination I've pretty much decided to replace the star and crescent Algerian flag with the plain tricolor. For I while a was toying with the idea of using an ahistorical tricolor with a white and green, green, or black border and actually made the roundels. But after thinking about it some more I've decided to stick to history and use the tricolor. This will be the flag used in the next version of my historical flag mod (along with more 3-D HQ bases for minors).

The problem is that all this forces me to confront the issue of what to do about Vichy. But that's another issue and I'm going to sleep on it for a bit before doing anything rash.






Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/7/2018 3:46:58 AM)

Having consulted the tea leaves I've decided what to do about Vichy for the moment.

In the new version of the mod the Etat Francais will use the tricolor on the game map, as will the Third Republic and the overseas territories of Algeria and North Africa.
This reflects how things would have looked at the time.
I've kept Marshal Petain's personal standard as the emblem for announcements about Vichy France as well as for the Vichy headquarters flag.
What France was going through at the time pretty much amounted to a civil war, and in the event that Vichy French troops square off against non-Vichy French, the headquarters flags need to be different.

I've also made a few minor adjustments to the French, German, and Italian morale flags, and added what I think (and hope) will be the last of the 3-D headquarters flag bases for minors.

I may decide to fiddle with the alignments of the 3-D flag bases at some point in the future, but apart from the inevitable minor issues that will emerge over time, the flag mod is pretty much done.

You can download it from the first post in this thread, and the links have been updated to point to the latest version (version 1.2).




mroyer -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/7/2018 2:36:02 PM)

Nice!

> in the event that Vichy French troops square off against non-Vichy French

Indeed, this happened at least once in real life in the Levant, if I recall correctly.

Thanks Philippeatbay for attention to detail!
-Mark R.




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/7/2018 11:07:02 PM)

I made the mistake of actually playing the game and found myself missing the Piast eagle. So I whipped up a couple of flag roundels to fill the gap. The plain flag still appears on the game map, but reports that involve the Polish state will always have the white eagle.

The links in the first post of this thread have been updated to take you to version 1.3.




AstroCat -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/10/2018 8:52:45 PM)

Getting connection time outs... hmm, reached capacity or something else?




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/10/2018 9:47:30 PM)

Probably something else. I've only burned through about 20% of my bandwidth this month.

(If I were a cynic I'd call it a side effect of the end of net neutrality.)

Perhaps if you try again in a couple of hours?




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/11/2018 2:45:37 PM)

I tested one of the links this morning and it worked perfectly (download was less than ten seconds on my setup).




crispy131313 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/11/2018 2:52:23 PM)

Sorry for the TLDR approach to this, but if I understand correctly there is a mod file to place historical flags under each 3-D HQ?




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/11/2018 5:10:18 PM)

The game engine applies the flags from the master flag file to each HQ when you're running the game. So you don't need to mod the HQ's, just the master flag file.

That's what's been modded, and I've organized the mod files in such a way that they will fall into the correct place when you paste the appropriate mod folder to wherever you have your Steam folder or your Matrix Games folder.

And yes, all the 3-D HQ units now have flags under them.






PHalen -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/14/2018 4:44:00 PM)

Hi Philippeatbay.
I just noticed that the white sections of the Finnish flag is transparent - rather than white - in the zoomed out NATO unit file "unit_nato_flag_sprites_zoom.png".
Which makes zoomed out Finnish NATO HQ's look rather "odd"...




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/14/2018 4:54:00 PM)

Thanks for noticing.

I recently became aware of that and thought I had fixed it in the latest version (1.3b).

I'll take a look, do the needful, and report back.




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/14/2018 5:07:27 PM)

You may not be using version 1.3b, or at least I hope you aren't.

I just checked the source files and unzipped the files that were uploaded, and everything looks fine.

It was such a minor change (one tiny part of one texture) that I didn't feel it deserved a whole new version number when I corrected it a few days ago.

That'll teach me for not making a post about it.

Sorry for the confusion.




PHalen -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/14/2018 9:06:08 PM)

Ah! Thanks!
Your're right! I hadn't noticed the 1.3b version and was still on 1.3.
My zoomed out Finnish HQ's are all sorted now with version 1.3b.




crispy131313 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/14/2018 11:35:03 PM)

Could you possibly add Portugal to the Unit Flag list if there is a future update? Specifically for HQ.




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/15/2018 3:17:18 AM)

You mean for 3-D HQ bases? I think Portugal is already there for everything else.

I didn't make a flag base for Portugal because it didn't seem like there was any way anyone could buy a Portuguese HQ. But adding one should be simple enough. I'm pretty sure it's already there for the flags for the 2-D Nato symbol units.

Are there any other flags that seem to be missing?









crispy131313 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/15/2018 1:02:36 PM)

Thanks for opting to add Portugal to the 3-D HQ Base. It is for personal use [:D] as there is the option to obtain a Portuguese HQ in the scenario I play.




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/15/2018 5:47:21 PM)

The mod has been updated to version 1.3c and can be downloaded from the links in the first post of this thread.

The only difference between 1.3b and 1.3c is that 1.3c has Portugese 3-D HQ flag bases that won't appear in the unmodded game.

You only need this version if you have version 1.3 or lower, or if you use mods that give you Portugese HQ's.




crispy131313 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/15/2018 5:55:03 PM)

[&o] Thank you for the mini-update!




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/16/2018 4:19:36 PM)

I've just taken another look at the mod to make sure that the latest patch didn't change anything.

The good news is that the patch doesn't disrupt anything.

The bad news is that I've just noticed something about the 3-D HQ flag bases that I wouldn't normally be aware of because I prefer to play with the 2-D Nato counters.

The long and the short of it is that I'm going to have to redo all of the 3-D bases because of the way the shadows from the 3-D units are falling. (Deep breath)

The silver lining in that particular cloud is that while I'm redoing all the bases, if exhaustion doesn't set in I'll be able to add a few more minor nation headquarters that don't currently appear in the game.

So while I'm girding my loins to redo the flag bases, this would be a great time to mention any neglected favorites like Slovakia, Croatia, or Persia.




PJL1973 -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/16/2018 6:08:40 PM)

Wikipedia has a nice section on the historical flags of Persia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Iran




Philippeatbay -> RE: Historical Flag Mod (1/16/2018 9:27:26 PM)

Wiki tends not to be a great source on flags, though that Persian flag article is pretty good.

The relevant issue, though, is that I need a valid reason to expend the effort to make extra flags.

From past experience I know that when I've finished re-making the set I have now my brains will be leaking out of my ears: there are a lot of individual steps involved in making a 3-D flag base. One flag more or less may not seem like a big deal when you start the series, but when you get towards the end of it an extra flag or two makes a difference. If somebody tells me that there's a mod that makes it possible to purchase an HQ from a certain country that's fine and reason enough to include something, but I'm not going to start cranking out flags just because I can. I need to draw the line somewhere, and something not showing up in the game or a mod seems like a pretty good place for a line.


So I really need to hear if I've missed something from the vanilla game, or if a mod does something that makes it need a flag that isn't already in the mix.




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