CE Map making

Document concerning what I know about CE map making.

Related to the subject of CE tab-maps, CE textures and map making in general. Someone <tba - mapmaker program credit/about> made a program to help: mapmaker.zip

Edit: I have only been able to get the mapmaker utility program in the above zip to run in windows XP and earlier. Although I didn't try very hard.

CE health check on my new system

FYI post. CE multiplayer still runs prefect (@1920x1080*) on my new 2021 system with the following specs:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10850K CPU @ 3.60GHz; ASUS motherboard; Aus Geforce RTX 2060 - driver 456.71; Windows 10

I checked CE versions v1.42 & v1.43. 

(*I had to apply the forced resolution issue fix as detailed in my 2016 post below.)

Please let me know via the comments below how its running on other systems, especially AMD based CPU and Video based systems.

CE Stopped Working?

Symptoms:

• On starting a level: "InitD3D fails".
• Configure / options shows no available resolutions.

If you have updated your 3d card lately or your PC/laptop is simply new, then CE may have stopped working with the above symptoms. It appears that ce.exe may be misinterpreting directx GPU make/model and resolution capability information for newer model 3d cards / drivers and is trying to start games with a corrupted screen resolution.

I don't yet know if its CE's fault, or a directx, or a driver problem. My guess it is CE not handling extra long model information strings and/or long GPU resolution capability lists and is corrupting its memory.

It may be a while before I fix the problem properly, but I have a quick fix patch in the interim. The patch simply hard-codes a game resolution into ce.exe, specifically 1920 x1080 @ 32 BPP. The patch may be applied to CE versions 1.42 and up. (Do not use it on ce v1.36 or older, it will not work.)

Get the patch here.

Open "ce142ForceRes.xsc" in a text editor for info on how to apply the patch. As mentioned, the patch is currently set to hard-code the game to 1920x1080, but if you know hexadecimal you can easily update the script to hard-code other resolutions.

Thanks to Skjalg and others for bringing this to my attention.

Codename Eagle Replay Server

This program replays a previously recorded CE multi-player game session within the actual CE game client. The program does this by emulating a CE server and playing back the game session to the client.

This is made possible by the fact thet CE is a 100% server based game in that all shared game variables are server controlled. (The disadvantage of this is that this makes for a horribly laggy internet gaming experience and thus CE can really only be enjoyed as a LAN game. Typically in modern FPS mutli-player game only a percentage of variables will be server based {e.g. projectile positions} and the remaining variables will be client based {e.g. local player world position and orientation}.)

For more information and instructions, refer to the readme file that comes with the replay server program.

{A link to the program to go here}

Screenshot of the CE replay server program:

Log Replay Tool

This is a small program that will playback a recorded ce multiplayer game in a in 2D map. This program only works for the official CE multiplayer maps (unmodified).

To record a match:

Simply, before joining, replace the intended level's red.scr file with a modified red.scr file that will record a mutlipler game to the CE error.log text file located in c:\

Level numbers are:

Name:No mans land Val:128
Name:Breakpoint Val:129
Name:The palace Val:130
Name:Carrier war Val:131
Name:The airbase Val:132
Name:Fever valley Val:248
Name:Fortress Val:133

E.g. to record a No Man's Land match navigate to the ce\level128 directory and replace red.scr with the one that came with the CE Replay Tool.

NB The red.scr file only needs to be updated/installed on the client PC logging the game.

Then play, kill, win. When finsihed, quit CE, run the CEReplayTool.exe and load c:\error.log.

Thats it.

Enjoy finding out where that darn team-mate went off to at a critical moment.

Technical support is not provided so don't ask

Original map textures cannot redistributed with this program, so dont ask for them either.

Here are some examples of the CE Log Replay Tool:

In the above e.g., player's positions are represented by circles, the higher they are the larger the circle, also, stats like health, armor, ammo & fuel and whether or not a player is carrying the flag are also indicated. The scroll-bar at the bottom controls the replay.

In the bottom e.g. this shows the entire track in an hour long 3vs3 fortress map.


To get the CE Log Replay Program click here (linked updated 21 dec 2011)

Map Editing in Codename Eagle

Currently a work in progress but click the link to see what information I have published so far.

Dafoosa's Unofficial Patch v1.4.2 -> v1.4.3

ce.exe v1.4.3 Features:

- Removes the 2000 limit on the 'viewdist' command line parameter. Draw the whole map every frame! Recommend ~ 5000

- Removes the zoom-out limit in the F9 view

- Removes the zoom-in limit in the F9 view (not so useful except for those extreme machinima closeups)

- Removes 100 ... 500 limit on the Field of View (FOV) F12 command line parameter (250 is default). Warning dont go much outside the original limits.

- Lengthened the vehicle popup distance so vehicles appear in the distance sooner. (NB CE must be set to high detail for this to work)

- Fixed CE hanging intermittently upon exiting the torpedo boat. This makes maps with torpedo boats now fully playable in multiplayer.

- Fixed Font scaling at higher resolutions so text does not overlap and it can be clearly read

- Similarly fixed the version display on the level load screen so it can be read at higher resolutions.

- Show teammates as a "T" symbol in the tab map (Todo: Hide phantom player re dedicated servers)

- Fixed bug in the scripting function "REFGetPlayerInx(PlayerNr, Inx)" to allows it to handle undefined PlayerNr's



CE really looks spectacular @ 1280x1024 with full Anti-Aliasing and a viewdist of 5000



Download the patcher here (link fixed 21 dec 2011).