Fixed Maps for Blitzkrieg Africa Mod
(Please note, I am not part of or affiliated to the Blitzkrieg mod team in any official capacity).
After discovering Company of Heroes (COH), only this April 2015, I fell in love with it immediately. I'd been an AI ("Artificial Intelligence", "bots" and so forth in games) addict for years as I don't tend to play in live, online multiplayer games due to health issues. So after struggling with the AI in games such as Battlefield 2 (BF2) and other "FPS" shooters, I then found COH. I have never been able to understand why no one mentioned the AI in this game to me as they can do almost anything a live human player can do. The same with COH2. Try getting the AI to do some of these things in BF2 ! There seems to be a bias against third person games in some circles as if they "aren't hardcore enough", I wonder if they've ever played COH properly or even heard of it ? I would guess not. The same thing seems to apply to games like Just Cause (which is third person) which is rarely mentioned by the "hardcore FPS gaming crowd" presumably because it's not seen as a "real game" ... and, yes, I do play games like ArmA 3 and other FPS games, and they are very good ! Borderlands series is very good for example. But why these odd demarcations between game genres ? That just makes it difficult for enthusiasts to find some really good games out there.
So I found myself getting deeper into COH. I eventually found the famous Blitzkrieg mod (BK), and being an WW2 Africa campaign nut, Blitzkrieg Africa (I'd already been playing similar maps in Forgotten Hope). However even though BK include a couple of desert themed maps there are not many out there for such an amazing mod as BK Africa (you should see the attention to detail in its various features, sound effects and so forth!). As I discovered a BK Africa developer has obviously noticed the same thing. However his map pack, although functional in online multiplayer, did not have game saving and loading for "Skirmish" mode: battling with the AI. Remember I'm an AI player right ? So this was somewhat frustrating for me even to the point where I fixed Hibernation for my Windows 7 and could freeze the process, hibernate and come back to it later. But this is not practical as it ties up the whole system until the game is over ...
So I started trying to fix the maps ! Long story eh ? Well, heh there's more !
Seeing as I've never modded COH and only dabbled a bit with BF2 and other games this was not an easy process. Especially when I could not seem to get any responses off anyone about this problem. The first missing part of the puzzle was missing entries in the ".module" file .... "Africa.module" in this case. Putting the map in the BK folder and adding to the module file enables saving and loading. This does not work by installing the custom map to the recommended location in "C:\users ..." and the main "noob" COH guides mention nothing about .module files ! Presumably adding the map to "c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Company of Heroes Relaunch\RelicCoH.module" would fix the saving and loading for vanilla COH, but I've only done that with BK Africa so far. Even a support request to SEGA failed to turn up anything, even they seem hazy on these basic details of map installation and just said "we cannot guarantee the operation of any custom maps". Pretty laughable when the fix is so simple.
But some of the maps in the map pack needed more fixing; loading screens, atmospheres, wrong mod set, and so forth, so here they are. I'll add them here as I fix them.
To install maps so that they save and load properly put the map in the BK archive directory "c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Company of Heroes Relaunch\Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\" and then add an entry to "c:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Company of Heroes Relaunch\Afrika.module" ... I've done it like this in the "[data:common:04]" section of the file ...
archive.38 = Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\8p_Vire_River_extended
archive.39 = Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\8p_veules_les_roses
archive.40 = Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\8p_fields-of-engagement
archive.41 = Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\8p_Carentan
;; User Maps
archive.42 = Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\6p_Desert_Rats.sga
archive.43 = Blitzkrieg\Archives\Maps\8p_desert_airfield.sga
That should allow save/load for most maps. Other maps may have other problems that break game saving like the wrong mod defined in the file. The one's I fixed of those are below including maps that save/load if installed properly as above but have missing load screens, atmosphere's or other assets.
Changelog:
=== Originally "Desert_Rats_1_4.sga" in BK Africa map pack - http://www.moddb.com/mods/d-day-june-1944-and-afrika-43-for-bk-mod/addons/desert-battles-maps/
* Changed scenarioname in info file to show "BK MOD TIP" hint.
* Changed modname to correct "RelicCOH" (was "CheatMOD").
* Correct wrong size for map loading screen to correct 2134x1200.
* Added scenariodescription to record fixes by me, DJ Barney.
====
The following maps mostly just had loading screen fixed and "BK MOD TIP" added in front of the map name.
( Next map could be Desert Airfield but there are two separate maps in one sga archive and atmosphere's need fixing ... more on the way).
email: temporalcoldwar24[-at-]gmail[_dot_]com