Medals

[kane5442001]

The question is do have to complete a certain number of missions or objectives before finishing the France chapter?

[Major Pain]

It depends on what missions...   I just do not know the answer to that.

But, in most situations, you must complete objectives in such a manner that you are rewarded based upon your tactics, use of force, command, limited number of casualties and how many enemy casualties you inflict.     If you fail to reach certain criteria, you might win the battle and complete the objective, but just not score high enough on one or more areas to win the medal.   Some times, the amount of time is a factor.

If I looked at the mission, I could answer your question...  

You can send me the associated files to:

[e-mail]



I'll need:

The complete Chapter Folder
The complete Mission Folder
The Map Lua and the Map file.


Or tell me where to download it.   Of course, if you translate it or send me the English or German versions, it will help.   I cannot speak French, or read French... but I do like French Fries.

Danke

[Major Pain]

I've noticed you are one of the inhabitants of  "Birthplace of Confederation"  so you must also be 1 of the 4% of the population that speaks French.

Very few know where the  "Eilean a' Phrionnsa" is...   so you are lucky to live there...

[kane5442001]

No, I just used google translate. But Yes i do live on PEI.

[kane5442001]

Also, I'll be sure to email you the files when I get a chance.

[Major Pain]

Very good.  


I was trying to make the others have to do some work before they knew what I was talking about.  


A History Lesson of sorts.

[kane5442001]

Link has been sent.

[kaoz]

Few years ago, I have also been looking for these different possibilities in chapter lua files. In the files that come with BK vanilla (data.pak), you can find some examples, but it's not always clear what they do.

if (GetStatisticsValue(1, 0) >= 6766) then
AddMedal("medals\\german\\OrderSwords\\1", 0);
end;

The example above does indeed give medal if more (or equal) than 6766 enemy units are killed, and the only one I have used so far. I'd have to check my other computer (which is not here at the moment) to see if I know other value sets. I remember to have taken some notes about this somewhere in a textfile.

Anyway, it would be nice to know all possibilities!

[Scyooff]

Dec 24, 2015 0:26:57 GMT 1 Major Pain said:

Very good.  


I was trying to make the others have to do some work before they knew what I was talking about.  


A History Lesson of sorts.

 Parva Sub Ingenti 

Kane was referring to the France chapter (the map and .lua are named Belgium) of the Allied campaign in BK1.2.

[Major Pain]

Thanks Scyooff....   I can confirm this....

This is my response by email after he sent me the data files...

Ok, it looks like in the France Plan D mission, no medals are awarded..



In the Tobruk Mission you can earn the Georges Cross, but it is based on your tactical skills. If you suffer more than 400 points in a specific category, then the Medal is not awarded. I will let you guess as to which one, that you might be able to manage better.





I did not know which France Chapter you were working on.... there have been several over the years. But this is the very first Blitzkrieg France Chapter from BK1. If I was aware of that, I knew the answer because I have played it a few times, at least 10-12 times over the years.



We could have avoided you sending me the files. I should have asked what Chapter you were playing and the Game Title. So that was my blunder.... and I'm sorry,





MP

Kaoz, you are correct in your response.

Enemy Casualties is exactly what is being checked.   That affects your tactical skill.

But there is another stat that affects your tactical skill even more... and those are your casualties...   Each of yours counts as two against you... so your guys are worth twice the numbers of enemy.

All of the Stats for Campaign and Chapters are maintained in a file named Elements, which is stored in your Mission Profile File.      

Don't worry about trying to find it... you can't.   It is not something that you can look at, and not in a format most people would be able to open.

This is a part of Blitzkrieg that I'm trying to use for GEN II.   The data can be used in many different ways by the player.  For some reason, NIVAL Programmers did not give us a way to really look into it deeply...   I'm trying to correct that.  


When you Play a Campaign or Chapter, the maps will allow the use of Core Units.    These CORE UNIT Stats are kept individually within your Elements File.   This data is maintained in a Game Table during play, and saved at the end of each mission...  and saved into a Master File if you do a Game Save.   

My thinking on this is this should be expanded to cover the stats for all Units in a Mission.  

That was a tough deal in 2000-01 on older systems, because that is a huge chunk of data in memory and hard drive space in the old days.   It is a piece of cake today.    Hard Drives are only about 500 times larger and computers can have memory up to 1000 times more than the old days.  

Most players that add models, maps and MODs today do not have issues with memory or program glitches, slow downs, freezes...   which were common back then.    The game runs so much smoother today since it barely encroaches into the system resources.   And because the game engine uses C along with Machine Language means it is a pretty light and fast program.    

Older machines could only use Machine Code because we had nothing else... I'm talking about the late 1960s, (67-69).      We did have COBOL and Fortran, but no one at the time except for a few guys at MIT even tried to play a computer game.     

And that was odd since it was all in numbers....   0_s and 1_s...   in a Octal Binary (which=1 Bit) with 8 slots that were either turned off or on, that could produce a Code Value between 0 and 255.   Each value was a command or a source code.   It took 8 lines of code just to put the word "Hello" on the Screen.    Each letter in 'Hello' had to be coded in order to display it.  

Example:   Code 65 = the Letter A   

So what does that have to do with Blitzkrieg?   Everything if you wish to understand the Game Code.   But since we compile everything...  you guys do not have to worry about it.

[kane5442001]

I guess I should have specified it was the the first French chapter of the German campaign. Would have made things a little easier. As for the medal in question, its the War MErit Cross 1st Class.

[Major Pain]

yep, the 2nd most difficult to earn...   You mentioned France.   It is actually in Tunis.  

Perhaps...one medal for each Chapter?            7 medals?  

And so you look and find only 6 Medals... right?


Here is the way it works.   I will not reveal the exact data that is used to determine whether or not you get the medal.    The exception of course, France and Normandy.    France is a reaction to the German attack... where you must destroy enemy forces that attack.   You played it, you know the drill...   And we all know how it ended, even though the battle does not address the outcome.   But my thinking is the Script/Mission guys wanted to cover this important phase of the war, and still allow the player to consider the positive aspects that actually favored France.    

France had a much larger Armor and mechanized Force than Germany, but their failure was due to how they trained tactically.   The high command was still thinking about trench warfare, WW1, and had not yet expanded their thinking on what mechanized meant.    But of course, most of the world was in the same boat but had to adapt based on what they saw in France...  that was the catalyst which really unleashed Blitzkrieg.


So here we go....   and now you can adjust accordingly...

Norway:
George Medal - courage or gallantry in action


France:  
Medal of Honor - highest award for valor in action against an enemy force//conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life or her life above and beyond the call of duty.   (depends on objective success)

or 

Silver Star - awarded for gallantry in action and is the third highest military award for the U.S.A. (depends on if Player stats in Element is half of of enemy (AI) stats in the same Element)


Tobruk:
George Cross - awarded for an act of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger



Tunis:
EAM is a Company Service  Medal that almost all Allied Soldiers received in the Africa & Middle East, Italian and Normandy theaters....   European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign



Italy:

Bronze Star - awarded to military service members for combat heroism or for meritorious service. 



Normandy:   (Same as France)
Medal of Honor - highest award for valor in action against an enemy force//conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life or her life above and beyond the call of duty. (depends on objective success)

or

Silver Star - awarded for gallantry in action and is the third highest military award for the U.S.A. (depends on if Player stats in Element is half of of enemy (AI) stats in the same Element)



Ardennes:
None



I must comment a little on this Campaign.   It  does not end right.  Ok you survive the Ardennes Offensive and the Campaign just ends abruptly...  


There was still about 3 months of war left in the Fatherland, which included Patton's worst blunder of his career.  




Merry Christmas to all... and to all...  Goodnight!

[kaoz]

Dec 24, 2015 4:30:06 GMT 1 Major Pain said:

But there is another stat that affects your tactical skill even more... and those are your casualties...   Each of yours counts as two against you... so your guys are worth twice the numbers of enemy.

...Which would be value 3, like in the following:

if (GetStatisticsValue(3, 0) <= 400) then
AddMedal("Medals\\Allies\\Gcross\\1", 1);
end;

All of the Stats for Campaign and Chapters are maintained in a file named Elements, which is stored in your Mission Profile File. This is a part of Blitzkrieg that I'm trying to use for GEN II. This data is maintained in a Game Table during play, and saved at the end of each mission... and saved into a Master File if you do a Game Save.

This is what you mentioned earlier in the Hurtgen project and it goes way passed my knowledge, but I hope to see this evolve!

[Major Pain]

I had hoped that I could patch the Element functions for BK1.2, but that was not possible without a total code rewrite.    At that point it is no longer just a patch... that is a major code change which requires the release of an entire Game Engine.   That is pretty much what the Multiplayer patch did last year, that was a brand new game engine and net.dll file.  To date, 75% of the new code for GEN II is dedicated to gameplay, new unit parameters and binary game tables.   I'm just glad I did not try to patch BK1.2 to BK1.5 ....  BK1.3 is of course the Multiplayer Version of Blitzkrieg, and BK1.4 is the BH-RT Multiplayer Version, not yet released but in final BETA.    

I never got a response back from Scott at GameRanger on the possibility of working on a joint system to Mainline all Multiplayer Titles through them, so I'm talking with another Legacy provider right now.  This move will be vital for the BH-RT Multiplayer Game Engine and GEN II once that MP goes hot sometime in 2017.    Reports I'm getting from a couple of Multiplayers over at GameRanger is it is too easy to Cheat, which means the Control Systems are not yet in place to verify Changes to original files and use of MODS.  What I do not know is how many players are aware of this.   I know what GR was using to verify the Game Title and Resource File Data when we last spoke, but my suggestion at the time was to not use that method because it left too many holes in the mismatching of game units.      
The problem with that is some players may not be aware their tanks have actually been wiped out for minutes before they see it.  A single Super Tank can wipe out the opposing player in a matter of minutes...   Of course, this would be a difficult position for the Cheater to be in since word would quickly spread about the player who cheats.   But I think about this issue a bit differently than most of you were ever consider...   I consider it a form of Spamming...   someone could change IDs frequently just to torment players...   i know of at least 3 cases where this has happened, and that was some time back... so it is possible that GR has improved the Verification of Game Files.

Which brings up another subject.... we are going to have to make some decisions on as a Community....   we need to vastly improve MODs and Add-Ons for System and Game Consistency...   there are way to many MODs around right now that will not pass the Multiplayer Version Tests for either Blitzkrieg or Rolling Thunder, which will be the Actual MP Interface Host for BH and RT.  I considered working on another solution which would make BK1.4 Backward Compatible to the Original Blitzkrieg game from BH or RT... which would only require changing the .pak file structures and aligning them for each version, so depending on which Blitzkrieg Title you wish to play, the Single Interface would actually only install the .pak files for that version.   This can be done exactly the same way the BK Start Tools works.   Once that is put into place... then any Blitzkrieg I Title can be added.

So going back to why BK1.2 was not a good candidate for GEN Migration through patches...

Imagine trying to update the game engine every time there is a change to the code.  That is exactly why GEN II will be a complete major Re-master of the program code.   There is no way that I could have made changes and released a string of game engine updates.   That would be a nightmare and not everyone would ever be the same page at the same time as new DLC was released.  I'm already on Build GEN II-0.72...  GEN II-1.00 will be the Final Released version.   So if I had started trying to update BK1.2... there would have been at least 72 versions of updates...     Some of these were false starts which were found to have immediate issues which required scrapping that version and moving on.   Most of this was working on the Game Tables and New Game Unit Types and Binaries, but at least 30 covered the Morale codes and attempts to bring that system back into the Engine.   Morale for the moment has been abandoned in favor of streamlining the other 100+ Major and Minor Changes.

I'm involved in another project right now that are doing that exact thing, a game from 1999 that I was asked to come back to and rebuild the code and make huge changes in how data is handled.   The team is 6 people, and a Game which I had worked on for the 2nd Title of the project.   I can hand off my work to another guy that is suppose to come back in January to work on it.   We have so far reached about an 80% change in successful code.   Code Releases are being plugged in along the way, with a major change coming next week.    

I went over to GR to see how many BK games were underway versus this other game which has attracted at least 5000 new players in the last month through STEAM...  BK = 3   /   The other Title 50-53 I lost count.     The new code is already installed in around 25% of the machines... this is where the owner played the game in the last week.   The Updates are done automatically and exclusively at STEAM.   Players who do not use STEAM will not get this code until later in 2016 if they download it from the host or mirrors.   The game is really hot right now.

It was one of those games that was mostly impossible to MOD at the time, but finally after a huge comeback of the game on STEAM, it has also led to new community projects which includes user created tools to access the game source files.   So a decision was made awhile back to open the code to the players.  

That might have been my fault since I am a huge proponent of games that have open code and architecture.   So at least one great old game is currently undergoing that transition right now.   The original developer is long gone but the rights are owned by a very large software house...   Currently, new projects are already in development which will add perhaps another 10 years of new life for this game.   The game ran the same track as BK, but Version II was the most popular, where BK I was ours.    The 3rd Title bombed and put the game house out of business real quick after release.   So the 2nd Title is on the comeback with all efforts going there.

Do not ask... I cannot discuss exactly what it is and I cannot even confirm a correct guess.  But based on the type of community we have here, it is very unlikely any of you would be playing the other one right now.    I can discuss it sometime in 2018.... I'd have to go back and read if that is correct.

With the XP OS still in use by around 30% of the world's computers, a lot of concern has been shown by some companies as to if they will continue to support XP in their Software.   This game will have continued support for XP for another 2 years or perhaps longer depending on trends.    XP continues to defy Microsoft's efforts to kill it off.    MS should have gone back and just brought XP back into the foal after the Win8 crap.     At least these guys are planning to release both XP-32, Vista-32, Win7-32 versions alongside of XP-64, Win7-64, Win8-64 and Win10-64 versions.     XP-32 will be dropped in late 2017, and XP-64 in mid 2018.   

Since I know our management over there currently reads this Forum and watches our work here, I should mention my appreciation for their listening to my position on this.   In the long run, I think the gamers win on this and that is exactly what creates a good following of gamers.   I am just amazed that a game from 1999 has such a huge resurgence after it was nearly dead.... but the GameSpy melt down has actually brought many people back to games from 15 years ago.    

We are also seeing a huge resurgence in Blitzkrieg I, both here and at STEAM.   The STEAM BK Community members are working their way to here, but right now I see a huge following over there that is trying to add a Members Download Section for their own projects.   They are perhaps 5-6 years behind where we are here right now.   This is due to the lack of artists over there.   But as people find their way here, I'm pretty sure they are passing the word along.    I'm seeing a lot of discussion and use of recent MAPS.

I should mention that there is another Major Pain over at STEAM.   I don't think he counted on me starting the Community at STEAM, and contacted me about 2 minutes after my first post.   That exchange was pretty funny because he was assuming that I was yet someone else using the same name.   While he did not come right out a tell me he was the same MP from here... but I think it was on the end of his fingers to type that in...    I volunteered that was who I was in my second post...   I don't think he was a believer at first until I provided the same email as the one here.    I also know who he is and he is a member here...    aren't you?    lol... I just had to give him a hard time... I thought it was both clever and funny.  I just wasn't sure how he was going to provide models for DLC... which I will not do at STEAM...    I use the same method as here...   MEDIAFIRE, which I pay right at $400 per year to provide the download hosting service.   That has been the best decision I made in years...  I have had ZERO issues over there. 

I think that Scyooff was actually online at the STEAM BK Community when that conversation was going on.   I think that is the only person from here that I have seen over there.   I do need to mention that the STEAM BK Anthology is not the same as the original BK Anthology which about 90% exact to the Current Anthology available at GOG.com.    STEAM BK Anthology is not compatible with the other two versions due to how game files are maintained.   Multiplayer is also affected.   This is going to become an issue for popular MODs not working on STEAM Versions.   I've visited with NIVAL on this when I completed the Multiplayer Code Upgrades (BK1.3), but we did not finish the project after the BETA Test Failed to finally solve these issues.   With my health issue earlier this year, I withdrew from the project until I could again work on it... which is underway now.   It is going to require a rewrite on the Game Object Folders and how the .pak files are handled.

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Sorry for the long post, of which, some of this really belongs under my topic or the GEN II Topic...  but this topic really goes back to our very first roots when many of us played our first ALLIED or GERMAN  Campaigns.   I need to inspire one of you guys to become an author and write a Book that covers many of the questions like this...

To those of you that have been playing this game for a long time, everything is mostly routine for us now.   We already went through our own learning curves in those early days.   We must remember what we went through and do everything possible to help the new players as they join us.   The mission today for many of us is helping these new players get on the fast track in their knowledge base.   We really should have been documenting a lot of this stuff over the years so it could be handed down to this new generation of players... -----we actually hurt ourselves by not doing that.   

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Ok... I am all talked out now.   I have nothing left to talk about, which is very strange...   My brain usually runs about 10 times faster than my fingers can type...   so it had already withdrawn and gone to sleep about 10 minutes ago as the fingers were still at work.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas... and now we can plan our New Year Resolutions and the 2016 Party!!!

[Deleted]

Dec 26, 2015 17:01:34 GMT 1 Major Pain said:

Ok... I am all talked out now.   I have nothing left to talk about, which is very strange...   My brain usually runs about 10 times faster than my fingers can type...   so it had already withdrawn and gone to sleep about 10 minutes ago as the fingers were still at work.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas... and now we can plan our New Year Resolutions and the 2016 Party!!!