Forums de l'Alliance Francophone Sudden Strike

Bon c'est dommage, on dirait qu'il n'y as pas de nouvelles maps SP :-(

Dites, une nouvelle version ca vaut bien un post dédié si ce n'est bien plus non?

Pas de nouvelles cartes SP depuis un moment en effet.

Ls post pour la nouvelle version arrive avec la mise à jour des autres posts.

_________________
[center] [/center]


[center]
[/center]

Hi there!/Guten Tag/Bonjour/Konnichiwa!

I'm assembling a single-player map-pack for HS2: Fusion 4.21. Right now it consists of maps for HS2: Fusion, HS2, HS1/APRM, SS2 and SSNM; because maps for all of these mods are compatible with HS2: Fusion; although their playability and balance is affected to various degrees - some might become too difficult or too easy when played in HS2: Fusion, some strange or out of place units might appear (particularly when playing SS2 maps in HS2: Fusion). But by and large, most are perfectly playable with only minor issues.

I'm counting about 519 maps so far.
But I've only tested about 150-200 of them for duplicates. By duplicates I mean those maps that:

a). Have different file names but are actually one and the same map.
b). Are the same map but in different languages with different file names.
c). Are different versions of the same map (e.g. 1.0 and 1.1); without any large-scale, visible changes to the map or mission between versions.
d). Are the same map but for different mods/game versions (e.g. the same map for HS2 and for SS2).

I'm trying to eliminate as many of these duplicates as possible. The way I'm deciding on this is by:

- Favouring english-language maps over non-english language maps.
- When the same map for multiple mods is available I chose the one that's likely to be the most playable - i.e. HS2: Fusion > HS2 > HS1/APRM > SS2 > SSNM & other mods. Except in those cases where an english-language version of the map is available only for a mod lower in the heirarchy; in which case I prefer it instead.
- Later versions (e.g. 1.3) over earlier versions (e.g. 1.1) of the same map, unless the versions visibly differ substantially; in which case I include them both.

I estimate that I'll cut-down another 50-60 maps this way, perhaps more. So my final total for now would be about 450 SP maps, all of them compatible with HS2: Fusion. When I release the map-pack, I'll keep them seperated into different folders; perhaps with some scripts to join them into a central folder and rename them with prefixes (i.e. "(SS2) <mapname", "(HS1) <mapname>", etc...); if that's what the user wants.
I might also keep some of the duplicate maps and allow the user to chose which versions he wants via the scripts.
For example, instead of prefering the english-language versions of maps; the user would be able to indicate his preference for the script to pick Russian/German/French language versions of maps instead.

BTW, the original SS2 campaign is compatible with HS2: Fusion too. All you have to do is replace the CAMPAIGN folder in HS2: Fusion with the one from SS2. I'll include it in the map-pack too.

But hold - there's more! I have no plans to stop at 450 maps. There are many more out there. And many different language versions of the same maps too. Which is where I need YOUR help:

1.) This rar file (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxk5Ll ... sp=sharing) contains all 3 of the official SP map releases from the SS2 developers. However, all 3 map packs take the form of these weird .exe 16-bit installers, that don't work under 64-bit versions of Windows (such as my Windows 7 x64), and that can't be extracted with WinRAR or 7-Zip. These exes create a temporary directory before failing, and its possible to access this directory and the map files; but the map files have not been processed by the installer yet and don't work. I also attempted to extract the exes in Wine under Linux, but to no avail. It seems like SS2 might need to be installed for successful extraction, although I might be wrong.

Long story short, I need someone with a 32-bit version of Windows to extract these maps, put them into an archive and send it to me, or put it up for download here.

2). The fabled Chinese map pack of 307 SS2 SP maps.. it can be found right here: http://hs2-gameboy.haotui.com/viewthrea ... ra=&page=1
Unfortunately, the download links are dead or seem to be dead. I've looked through the thread but couldn't find any new links to the files. Also, the downloads haven't been saved by the Way Back Machine (https://archive.org/); before anyone decides to check.
I don't suppose anyone here has those archives or maps.. do they?

3). I need the english-language versions of the SS2 Total Victory maps. Right now I only have the German and Russian versions. Anyone have 'em?

4). I want the SP maps from the original HS1 release; I remember I used to own it on CD like 10 years ago; it came with a bunch of SP maps. I think most of them have since been redone for HS2/HS3/whatever, but I would like to make sure, maybe there are a few that have been lost to time. Does anyone still have the original HS1 ISO, or the SP maps from that release?

5). I'm particularly interested right now in Russian and Polish language versions of SP maps for SS2/SSNM/HS1/HS2/HS2: Fusion. Any websites or resources, or maps themselves that you have would be welcome.

6). I'm always on the look-out for more maps. I think I got the SS2, HS2, HS2: Fusion maps in the bag but I'm pretty short on maps for HS1/APRM and SSNM. Again, any web resources or the maps themselves would be welcome.

7). I suspect that SP maps for other, mostly older SS2 mods - are compatible with HS2: Fusion too. I'll soon investigate the SP maps for the early versions of RWM. Anyone know anything else?

legend:
SS2: Sudden Strike 2 (vanilla version)
HS2: Hidden Stroke 2
HS1/APRM: Hidden Stroke 1 or Allied Power Resource Mod
SSNM: Sudden Strike Network Mod

Hello dear burning Python, King of the Flames! Welcome to the French-speaking Sudden Strike forums.


Your project seems very interesting. This idea (searching for compatible maps in the other compatible mods) has of course already crossed our minds before, but you sir, are the first one that has begun to search & work on this project. Congrats!
Though, as you already wrote, strange minor problems may occur on these maps, and some of them may be difficult to complete. Hence why we did not include lots of maps from the vanilla HS2 game and/or from other versions.


But I guess it is still possible to make that kind of project work, especially if the players adjust their difficulty level when the map requires it (when the map is too difficult because of the realistic changes made since.
"Très facile / Facile / Moyen" ("Very easy / Easy / Middle") difficulty levels will increase the "arcade gameplay", which may help complete these maps.
On a side note, and AFAIC, I would love the "multi-language" approach over the "100 % English" approach.



Moving on to your questions now!


1) Windows XP 32-bit / Windows Seven 64-bit dual boot here! Although you'll have to wait for a reboot of my computer, as I'm a geek and have currently several programs opened that I don't want to close right now (yeah, I know, kinda lame excuse...). Well, someone might be faster than me anyway and help you way before I reboot in a couple of days


2) No luck here I'm afraid
Those Chinese websites are not very well known in the French community. I didn't even know that a website called "hs2-gameboy" existed.

BUT WAIT! What a blast from the past! The list written on your link is kinda strange, as I recognise the titles of somes SP maps. They are Sudden Strike Forever (!!) maps that I made over 10 years ago. i.e. :  (TWO)LOGE AVEC PIEDESTAL.ssm, (TWO)TECHNOPOLE.ssm, ...

Those are titles of my old SSF maps, what the hell they are not compatible with HS2. So I doubt everything on this list would be playable anyway.


3) Total Victory was a very rare item in France (and also in UK, I think). So I don't think anyone here has it, but I might be wrong, who knows?


4) [url=http://hs2france.forumprod.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=60]Jee 1207[/url] has them, [b]no doubt[/b]. I had them as well, but my disc is missing, it seems that I've lost it
So yeah, ask him, although it will be the French version of these maps (yeah, HS1 was released in France and even had a French version !).


5) Well, err... 404 error, no data found.
Did you search on [url=http://www.sudden-strike-maps.de/]Sudden-Strike-Maps[/url] as well? Nothing there ?


6-7) I've got nothing intelligent to answer to those questions, but maybe someone else here can.



Anyway, your project is very ambitious. It would be interesting to see the result, although I think that some maps would appear outdated and/or playable with strange units that were not intended in the vanilla versions.

Good luck sir!
If nobody has done that in the meantime, I'll post again in a few days in order to bring you the 3 SP maps from the SS2 developers.

_________________
"Délibérer est le fait de plusieurs. Agir est le fait d'un seul."
[Charles De Gaulle]

Salut!

I appreciate the answers, and the support that you're willing to give me; I'll be waiting for those maps from the mappacks then either from you or someone else.
I've also posted on the Russian modplanet.net and German sudden-strike-maps.de forums, asking for their assistance too.

Actually, half the work is done already - I've collected most of the maps I need; with the exceptions I've already noted in my previous post that I'm still looking for. But there are a few big things left to do:

1. Write scripts that will enable maps to be installed with options for preferred languages and adding prefixes to file names (what mod it was originally for, recommended difficulty, playability in HS2: Fusion), as well as an option for excluding those maps that are available for HS3, as I prefer HS3 to your HS2: Fusion and will make a map-pack for it too soon enough  
I have very little experience with Windows scripting (a little more for Linux), so I may just write a small program in Java instead for this task, unless someone volunteers to help me here.

2. Actually organizing the maps for the scripts and putting their details into some sort of .xml file for the scripts to read; so that the scripts know which map is available in which languages and for what mods. This would entail examining a lot of these maps in HS2: Fusion themselves to find out which ones are duplicates, etc... because many have completely different names depending on which language they're in. I've done this for about 30-40% of the maps already, but plenty more still to go

3. I only decided on the multi-language idea yesterday - as I realized that it was crucial for drumming up support from your forum, the Russian modplanet.net forum and the German sudden-strike-maps.de forum
Beforehand though I was only planning for an English-language version. As I've been working on this project for the whole week already, whenever I used to come across non-English maps which had English-versions available - I binned and deleted the non-English ones. I lost quite a good few non-English versions of popular maps this way - mostly German ones; perhaps 10-15 or so in total
Still, this means that I will have to go over all my downloads again, from all the sites, as well as the maps I downloaded years ago (I've only come back to SS2/HS2 recently after a ~2 year absence), and find all the maps I deleted. This will take some time, and I won't release the pack until I've recovered all that I've lost!!!!

4. Investigate what other mods' SP maps are compatible with HS2: Fusion.

About the Chinese map pack - yeah to be honest I think there's a lot of BS here, I translated the Chinese thread using Google Translate and there is a lot of talk of some password on the archive, while other threads on that forum talk about paid map pack releases, etc... it's all pretty fishy.
I also checked and it seems that the maps from 2 of the 3 official SP map packs (the ones that I want you to extract) are included in that Chinese archive; but not from the 3rd one.
Anyway, I think it's no great tragedy if I don't get a hold of it - the main reason I wanted it is because I saw some Russian-language versions of SS2 maps, and possibly there may be some rare ones there.

I've sent a PM to Jee 1207, hopefully he'll get back to me.
And French maps are good.. but I want the English language ones too and whatever other languages there are.

About the Total Victory maps; I found the German ones in a Sudden Strike Universe .iso (compilation of SSF + 2 map expansions, SS2 + Total Victory and SS:RW I think), and the Russian ones in the Russian Sudden Strike Platinum edition; which is basically a Russian version of Sudden Strike Universe.
But - I would really like the English-language map versions; I know they must exist.

I've tried a lot of the SS2 maps in HS2: Fusion already. Most are pretty playable, and surprisingly many play pretty close to the originals far as I can tell. But a few have become far too difficult. One of the Berlin ones that I tried yesterday for example, with 1/3rd of your forces being wiped out by massed Jagdtigers at long range as soon as you start the map  
But fortunately such examples are rare.
The biggest problems with replaced units is that German snipers turn into Yugoslav snipers, German medics turn into Yugoslav medics (or some other country's) and some other units turn into British sappers (German sappers perhaps?) and German SMGers turn into German crews. I've only really played as Germany in these maps so this is all I can tell you. There might be some problems with the vehicles too; that huge predominance of Jagdtigers in the Berlin map looked pretty suspicious.
But overall, these aren't very big problems - mostly they're either trivial annoyances, or make the map slightly harder than it should be.

Maybe, once I've finished this mappack, and we have this central resource available, with scripts/lists of maps/whatever else, me and some others can start to think about translation of the most popular maps - from French to English, English to Russian, Russian to German, etc... Many many people would be interested in something like this, especially on the Russian forums. And it would absolutely increase the popularity of your mod.

Hello,

As far as I can help you for the 1.
You should install cygwin on your windows system and write linux scripts there to manipulate the files and names.

_________________
[center] [/center]


[center]
[/center]

[quote="Cpt_Love"]Hello,

As far as I can help you for the 1.
You should install cygwin on your windows system and write linux scripts there to manipulate the files and names.[/quote]
Yes but the users need to be able to execute those scripts; unless they have Cygwin themselves installed, they won't be able to use them.

[quote=" flamming_python"][quote="Cpt_Love"]Hello,

As far as I can help you for the 1.
You should install cygwin on your windows system and write linux scripts there to manipulate the files and names.[/quote]
Yes but the users need to be able to execute those scripts; unless they have Cygwin themselves installed, they won't be able to use them.[/quote]

Then Java should be the best way

_________________
[center] [/center]


[center]
[/center]

SO.....

Can anyone extract the maps in the .exe map-packs for me?

Quick update: a helpful poster over at the http://www.sudden-strike-maps.de forums has extracted those .exes for me - so that's that problem sorted!

Quick update on the map-pack - I've filled out details on some 133 maps so far into my database; about 300-400 left to go by my count

I'm composing an XML database of all the SP maps I can find, and I'll make a Java-based installer/map-manager program to go along with it; to handle all these complex operations and hierarchies. It's gonna be good!

I'd like to think that +90-95% of all the SP maps anyone's ever heard of for SS2 and HS2/HS2:Fusion are sitting on my HD now, with a few exceptions such as the English versions of the Total Victory maps, and the SP maps that came packaged with the original Hidden Stroke 1 release. But categorizing them and filling out their details for the DB is taking a long time. I reckon it will be another 3 weeks or so before I'm done. And then there's the program to code too.

For each map in my DB there are details on everything - mod (if any), map-version, language, author, tileset, size, nations and on which side, map-type (general, historical, mini-game), historical operation/battle (if any) and a bunch of other things.
It's all being done very intelligently, so that variants of the same map but different versions, or ones adapted for different mods, or translated into different languages - are all grouped together and counted as the same map - the idea will be to allow the user to select between them or to automatically select the variant based on the users mod & language preferences.

Salut

I'd be greatful if you could let me know where I can find those maps too.
thank you for your great help