MOD me up Scotty: An Applicationist Walkthrough.
  By PawBroon

Original BMP by Big Time Software

But soon enough MODs were emerging.

Those allowed the game to be graphically tweaked as it was clearly devised by BTS...

People were in awe.

Tweaked BMP by Marco Bergman, DD, Old Dog, Gordon Molek & Magua

Since then, many a request have been done to give guidelines on how to do a MOD and about what kind of tips Would Be MODers could gather from Established Ones.

I do not pretend to possess the talent of any of the known MODers of that screenshot above.

However, and to the best of our knowledge, we created with DeanCo a method which we called the Applicationist School of MODing.

Our object is to promote Applicationism while teaching how to go from there:

Universal Carrier by Big Time Software

To there:

Universal Carrier by PawBroon

So what the heck is Applicationism?!

It's quite simple really.

As with the writing of a book, the most impressive thing is to be faced by a white glowing screen and with no clue where to start from...

Applicationism is a way to overcome that syndrome and quickly produce good looking MODs while generating a library of reusable components.

An important phase before the releasing of any given MOD is the Beta Test.
Most of the MODers have their own team of Beta Testers that they know and respect and whom they trust to give some feedback after much testing.

It's often merely comments, sometimes pointers on some resources off the Net to get a better grasp of what and how to MOD and in some extreme cases (IE Marco Bergman), a complete rundown of the MOD tested.

Universal Carrier HEAVILY Beta Fedback by Marco Bergman

So then it happened that DeanCo was on the receiving end of such testing while we were chatting over ICQ.

Upon opening it, he was instantly crying to Heaven and laughing is ass off and asked me straight away:

Hey that looks cool, what is it?
You found a vehicle I never saw before...
I'm not kidding you man, I never played with this but painted up like that, and the square back, way cool!
What do they do, they shoot fire?!

Well you get the general idea.
Seeing as the same day my Dad told me he loved the Wasp because they had that 88' gun, I was ready to believe ANYTHING really...

What I got from that is the fact that they thought I had downsized a tank, put some transparency on the turret and gun and created a convertible tankette used to lift bimbos while still in France.

The fact that my Dad is French and Deanco lives in Paris must be related to their virginal approach towards World War II somehow.

What came out of our chat was that I wouldn't have been able to do what they thought I did in the first place because I simply can't even draw a circle.

DeanCo and I agreed that we are just Photoshop users and cannot be compared to the likes of Fernando Carrera Buil or Marco Bergman.

Those are the real artists I dedicated all my previous MODs to.
They create value, they are innovating.

What we do is processing their value and that of what could be found on the Net or books.

Because we are in Paris and we are fond of Art Gallery Mumbo Jumbo, we called our way, the Applicationism.

That is, the careful application of others' work in a stylish Cut & Paste routine...
That's what I'll show you now. However I will not be teaching you the Tools or Filters of Photoshop or of any other software. I am assuming some computing literacy and that you'd be able to adapt the method to your own paint software.

What I aim to do is to give pointers to Would Be MODers and have them produce MODs faster with a less stress inducing method. That would be good for the community as a whole and would enlarge the pool of drawings from which to produce further MODs...

First thing is to use a software like Copernic or a search engine like Google and do some queries about the MOD you're willing to produce.
In that case we are looking for anything concerning the Wasp, the Bren Carrier or the Universal Carrier as they all share the same BMP in CM.

Templates: Web

The more you can get and the easier your work will be.
Not only that but a complete iconography will give you a feel about what's to be done and more importantly, what will be your needs for step 2...

For that second part, the trick is to use a software like ACDSee for example and browse the BMP folder of CM to get a glimpse of what's there to help you produce your own MOD.

By that time you should be quite aware of what you need since the above pics show unit markings and kits that you feel you can't produce on your own.

Templates: MODed BMP

It could be anything from a patch of hull so that you get the coloring straight or as in the present case, accessories.

If you use a paint program like Photoshop, you can then create a project called Templates or Library and put all of the usable elements in different layers after singling them out from the rest of the surrounding pixels. Such a file will speed up the MODing process of your next MODs.

Bags off Marco Bergman

A closer look at 3680.BMP will explain further the advantage of that method.

Side of the Wasp

Not only is it easier to work on each part when they are in there respective layers, but the producing of optional files is just a matter of clicking on the Display checkbox.

All layers displayed

So by using a Library of components, you speed up your MODing process and offer a wider range of choices that would suit the needs of a larger part of Combat Mission's community...

Alright then, we now know what we want to produce, we have the tools of the Trade and the necessary elements from both the Web and your own BMP folder.
Let's start rolling...

Remember the why of Applicationism?
The late Douglas Adams would say, Don't Panic...

That's it!

If you are concerned by that white paper syndrome then LOAD SOMETHING.
Let's head over the original BMPs off your CD and copy 3680 to your working directory.

Best thing is to double the image size and let the software do its magic with all those settings I couldn't care about.

If you're into bilinear over bicubic, into 72DPI vs 144DPI or worst, into the testing of all the hundreds of filters Photoshop could apply, then you are not an Applicationist.
We are talking serious lazy Sunday morning MODing here guys!

By the way, no matter how trivial it looks, you've just done your first ever HiRes MOD...

Take a closer look at the upper left pic we grabbed off the Net.
That hull would be just perfect for our newly enlarged 3680.BMP, so let's rip it off with the polygonal lasso and drop it over the one we're working on.

Look Mom I'm a MODer!

I know for a fact that some of you are Poolers and that you are basically thinking along those lines:

Teeheeee, it's all screwed, that French is a useless git.
So, thanks Mace, we almost began without you.

Some of our younger readers might remember their puberty with a certain fondness when they had all those buttons to play with, Photoshop's Tools have that kind of Back to the Future Bells & Whistles.

Straight as Justice, err, nevermind...

So all that's needed is to select the Upper Hull Layer and do a Free Transform.
First a Skew and then a Scale. As you can see the result is already quite an improvement over the original BMP we started with.

That's the first thing Applicationism should give you, easy and fast results...
MODing IS a long process, and you'll see that even if Applicationism gives you the basis it doesn't dispense you of actually doing a MOD, being graphically sound and achieve an overall pleasant result.

So let's jump ahead in time because it wouldn't be fun to redo that whole Wasp just for a few screenshots.

Mickey Mouse camo

We now need a Camo Layer and the fastest and more historically accurate way to do that is to realise a quick Mickey Mouse camo for our Wasp...

It's always a killer look on any MOD for the English players and it's just a matter of drawing ellipses and circles overlapping.

The pic above shows the result of some such combination before rasterizing the layer.

MODed upper side hull

What have we got now?

For all MODing purpose, our work is almost finish (I always tell that to myself, it helps plowing along for hours on...).

The sides of the Wasp being mirrored, you can see how fast such method could drive you.

Mirroring? Darn?!

Who was that bugger who posted on the Forum saying the name Spirit of Atlanta or whatever wasn't bloody palindromic?

Ok then, Y80-AV for a hull number is not bad if the police used for it allow for a vertical Y. The other side of the Wasp would say VA-08Y, nothing dramatic as in CANADA for example...

In that particular MOD, the trick is to take care of how you actually place the layers on top of each others.

You got to do it from bottom up as you've seen in the Layer Box screenshot above.
So it is:

Hull
Mickey Mouse camo
Bags/Markings/Painting (that Wasp painting is also from the Net, the colors are tweaked and it's set a 75% opacity so that the effect could be light and faded).

But the Hull is still not looking like we want it to be and give the overall impression to be factory clean.

There is a simple solution to that.

First thing is to use the Burn Tool and with a large brush and a little exposure, put some shadows over the BMP.

Next steps are very straightforward and depend on tastes so I would not give numerical values since you'll have to experiment for yourself.

Without even using some of the more powerful tools like the Curve, you have to play a little with those friends of all MODers, the Hue & Saturation Tools, the Color Balance and the Brightness & Contrast. The resulting BMP is the following.

Tweaked upper side hull

Now this is where we jump ahead of time again since the rest of 3680 is basically of the same stuff and offer nothing more to dwell on it.

Take care of one classical misgivings though, the one and only Dreaded Pink Spot.

Pink Spot Ready...

That is one of the Truly Classical Ones and while a single pink spot is hard to notice at the fringe of other pink ones, it's standing out like a zits when smack in the middle of your newly released MOD...

In the example above you could see in a VERY exaggerated way (sadly enough it's never that obvious while you're actually doing the fumble) one of the common way to produce those pinkies...

The upper drawing is with hard clean edges, there will not be pink spot.
The lower drawing will be a MODing nightmare.

Simply because you either used wet edge, or light pressure or any of tens of parameters and many of those impacted on the pink transparency color and thus resulting in the alteration of its RGB value that would then hinder the transparency effect while playing in CM.

This is the end of that first part.
Now that we're done with the side BMP, we'll go on from the one I zipped in my MOD to do the other parts. That way you'll have the same file as I to work on the examples.

Now because Applicationism is a newly born concept, it's still looking for its structuring devices.

So basically we'll do a web site that could be either of those:
http://www.applicationism.com

We have the Applicationist Knowledge and are willing to sell it.
http://www.applicationism.edu

We have the Applicationist Knowledge and are willing to teach it.
http://www.applicationism.org

We have the Applicationist Knowledge and are willing to keep it for ourselves.

If it's a DotCom as it will most certainly be, the releasing of the MODs will be done on a Pay Per Pixel basis and they would assuredly be Ultra HiRes.

A probable period of 30 days of TBYB (Try Before You Buy) will be available for download, testing or reviewing purpose.

After said period, the side BMPs of all Applicationist MODs would display the following Nag Screen:

Uphold the Law! Register your Pixels today!

Next installment of MOD me up Scotty: An Applicationist Walkthrough based upon a combo of time and feedbacks...