[Pete]

This thread serves to keep you informed of our progress with the Ortona '43 mod.

This mod has been in a testing phase for several months now. So far I have not experienced any data crashes. Data are basically the same as the Scheldt mod data with some adjustments necessary for this specific battle.
Roofs and coding were incomplete when we took the helm and 99% are now done. 1 Map was missing and it has been drawn by Buck and works fine and looks just brilliant. Hard to tell the difference between his style and PT's. Another map will be drawn because one map is more or less a copy of another one.  
VL's were added , needs some refining.
Stratmap connections are done but stratmap layout might have to be altered.
Most graphics are finished; unit icons will be redone with as many new images as possible.
Forcepools need a lot of work, especially the Germans need work at this point. Not many sources are available.
Battle groups need some work.
All maps have been tested.
All battles, operations and GC have to be created. Need to reread Mark Zuehlke's book.
Test Op's and GC work fine so far.

Cheers,

Pete

[squadleader_id]

Thanks for the update, Pete!
I didn't know Ortona was already at an advanced stage of development when abandoned!  Great news!

[Tejszd]

Wow, great progress you two are making!!!

Thank you for the update.

[Buck_Compton]

Hey Guys,

Well about 42 maps where allready done before we took over you guys know this is the hardest part of mod making. It's just a matter of fine tuning and graphical work...

Cheers Buck

[Buck_Compton]

Ok as Pete told you I was working on the New San Nicola Map. I did the job in 2 evenings work. Took me 5-6 Hours coding included. The map is a combination of several terrain feature's we took from the battle discription in the Book Ortona. on the very right you can see the jump of point wich was a larger farm then a gully with a river and rolling terrain lots of fields with olive trees an wineyards. and then the actual village of San Nicola.

Currahee :P

Buck

[Tejszd]

Looks Great!!!

[squadleader_id]

Nice looking map!  Great work, Buck!

[pagskier]

looking good!!!

[Buck_Compton]

Hey Guys,

A short update on what whe have done so far. Pete has been working on the data the main concern was finding the right mixture of teams within the BG's. Pete is also busy with scanning the Strategic map. As it turned out at least 2 maps where double in the game. And has been checking if there were others with these kind of issues. He is also busy with the BTD's and checking out if all the connections match up with the real time area described in the Book: Ortona, which can be found on google earth.
I've been busy redoing those maps and some graphics like the comsideselect and the battlestatus screen. If Pete is finished checking I will start to evaluate and update the stratmap for the mod. Also i'm busy play testing some op's

Cheers Buck

[MF_Church]

Well Done !

Buck you can make something sound simple and yet at the same time convey great weight and work  put in.

Thanks for the great update and work involved! from you Both!  :D

p.s.  That map is one of the best i've seen! to Fight on!!!  

[Pete]

My main concern is that in my opinion there are too many maps to represent this small area. The maps are very good representations of the actual country but some do not represent completely actual battlefields (meaning they are too small), which might not be a concern for most players but personally I would like to see maps drawn with consideration for geographical features that influenced the actual battles. I am considering cancelling a few maps and reshuffling the stratmap a bit. However, I will not change too much out of respect for PT's original plans.
Fighting on these small maps is good though. What helps is that I am assigning only a small number of vl's per map.

[Tejszd]

Thanks for the update Buck/Pete!!!

[pagskier]

Sounds great!
thanks for the infos

[Buck_Compton]

Hey guys,

A short update of the progress in the mod.

Pete has been busy checking out all the maps made by PT weather or not they are on the right location on the stratmap and if the connections are correct. He also checked the relevance of the maps within the mod. He came to the conclusion that certain maps where on the wrong location or that there wasn't much of fighting on that actual location. I can't specifically tell you what he has found out but it led him to conclude that there was need of a new Vino ridge.
I have been busy over the last few days making that actual map and for the first time in my life I used a 3d program (3ds Max) for rendering the height map. I'm quite satisfied with the actuall result.

Other than that there isn't much progress. As soon as pete returns from his holidays we will start to update the stratmap.

CHeers Buck

[QM]

Great stuff guys, thanks!

[squadleader_id]

Very nice looking map, Buck! Well done!

[Ivan_Zaitzev]

Im looking forward to this mod.
Ortona is a really interesting battle and its not much known.
This last map looks a little dark, it might just be me dough.

[Pete]

Well, the new stratmap has received its final shape. Buck has put a lot of work in it and created a new stratmap in one weekend. It's me who is slowing down the progress of this mod . There will be 40 maps on the stratmap. 3 Maps are new and created by Buck. We deleted 4 maps on the bottom half of PT's original stratmap because I felt it was historically unbalanced in the sense that the Allies would be able to win the GC without capturing the major target of the mainroad Orsogna-Ortona. Now it's about 50/50 and I will make sure when assigning VL's that capturing the road Orsogna-Ortona will tip the balance.

[CSO_Talorgan]

[Buck_Compton]