20 minute timer GCs

[xe5]

1 each US and Ger GCs edited to have 20 minute time limits.

Player Elite vs AI Recruit
Force Morale on

[Andrew Williams]

hmmmm... I might post them on the support page


thanks

[advo]

I support. 15 minutes are not enough, and 30 minutes too long.

[goidel]

i also prefer 20-25min.gives you time to think about tactics and deployment rather than hurry to those victorypoints.

[panzerlehr62]

Hi guys,

Ive got 2 GC's going. One is at 15m, the other is 30m (all beach maps 15m). Basically what ive found is your territory gains will be very similar but your casualties will be a little higher with a shorter game time. Both are playing fine thou in either case. I have to agree 20m would be the perfect time for this game overall, sure be nice if matrix takes note of that. [:)]

[panzerlehr62]

This is results of the second GC.

[goidel]

so,is there a way players themselves can change the timer in the programm themselves and if so;where is that line located?

[vonRocko]

Hi,
What file do I have to download this into?
Thank you.

[Senior Drill]

ORIGINAL: goidel

so,is there a way players themselves can change the timer in the programm themselves and if so;where is that line located?

To modify an operation or campaign to have a custom timer:

1. Create a new operation or campaign and immediately save it, then close Close Combat.
2. Open the saved game file of your operation or campaign in a hex editor.
3. Identify the 35th and 36th bytes - this is the timer setting in reverse order hexidecimal.
4. Open a hexidecimal calculator - Windows calculator with View set to Scientific will do or there are converters available online.
5. Take your prefered time in minutes and multiply it by 600 tenths of a second.
6. Convert the result from Decimal to Hexidecimal.
7. Reverse the byte order of the resulting figure.
8. Replace the existing 35th and 36th bytes of the saved game file with the new timer setting, insuring to only replace bytes, not add any.
9. Save, close. Reopen CCTLD and test.

In xe5's example from tm.asp?m=2111693&mpage=1&key=timer&# 28 23 represents a 15 minute timer.
The bytes are reversed, so reverse them, or unreverse them to read as 23 28. 2328 Hex is 9,000 Decimal. 9,000 divided by 600 tenths of a second equals 15 minutes.

Now the other way around. 20 minutes is to be the new timer setting. 20 minutes times 600 tenths of a second equals 12,000. 12,000 Decimal is 2EE0 Hexidecimal. Reverse the byte order of 2E E0 and it becomes E0 2E. Replace the 35th and 36th byte with E0 and 2E and save. The operation or campaign will now have a 20 minute timer.

Simple, eh? [;)]

(Edited to change the location of the bytes from 24th and 25th to read 35th and 36th.)

[vonRocko]

Thank you for the step by step instructions Senior Drill, I'll give it a try.

[Senior Drill]

Yer welcome. I haven't tested this out, but observation shows that there are two additional bytes of 00 beyond the minute digit bytes followed by a 01 byte. 01 is often a stop, or end of data sign. The 37th and 38th bytes could represent seconds of a minute. So it might be possible to edit a battle, operation or campaign to be 21:18 or 37:52 by applying the same decimal to hexidecimal and reverse byte order formula I outlined above.

Note to modders: Using modded battle, operation or campaign files in H2H is cheating if you do not inform your opponet of the mods and send the modded files to them to either accept or reject. A transparent and level playing field, gentlemen, is a must.

[Andrew Williams]

See pics below from CC4 and Cc5... I'll try and update for War/tLD


cc4




CC5

[panzerlehr62]

Hello Drill,

I just tested your instructions out on a old game and it worked perfectly. Not sure opening the file and saving it could damage anythg else, but I sure like ability to set a GC to 20m. You are the master out here with info like that.

You are also correct about modding a game file and making sure oppenent knows. Be tuff to hide a time change, lol, but considering amount of time invested playing this game, specially the way I do were months are involved, it would be a real sad day to think fixing the game file would make one feel good about the outcome. This is first time I ever downloaded a hex editor to open a file like this, but I do thank you for your time and effort. I just wonder if we change our game file say at the next turn, will it hurt anythg else. After having our orginal game file get screwy after the patch and losing 2 turns I am kinda gun shy here right now about changing anythg since its working so good.

To matrix, I have to say so far I am really impressed with this game. The beach maps overall seem about as real result wise as it happened back in the day. Ive got one oppenent that knows how to use the bunkers and hes making it very difficult for me to make any type of progress. Playing with deployment rule only adds to it, because it takes back ground or cuts off areas if you dont keep a good spread on the advancing troops (sometimes you really are forced to the edge advancing and basically have to take a flag if you want to keep that area). Really at no point has it piss'd me off either, because I think it should be tuff and its always fun waiting for the end battle results to see what my actual gains are (depending on what they are, makes either next beer taste great or less filling!). [:D]

Gz...

[DesertedFox]

Whilst Drill's instructions work, I ONLY play 20 min games but I use an application called CCREQ and a couple of clicks I am set.  Its a tad easier, okay, a lot easier than having to mess with Hex Editor. Its available at CC series site.





Mark

[Senior Drill]

ORIGINAL: panzerlehr62
..... You are the master out here with info like that.

Thanks, but I didn't figure it out. Others did years ago. I'm just passing the knowledge on.

..... I just wonder if we change our game file say at the next turn, will it hurt anythg else.

No, it will not hurt the saved game if all that is changed is byte for byte. Adding extra bytes or deleting bytes probably will corupt the file. ALWAYS BACK UP your files prior to modding.

@ Deserted Fox: Don't know the app. Would you please post a link to it? It sounds like a much better way.

[DesertedFox]

Hi Drill,

This is the link to the site, I am sure you know it already though. http://www.closecombatseries.net/CCS/

However you have to register to go into the downloads section. Its free to register and its a solid CC Wargaming community, so don't worry if you think you may be signing up for something dodgy.

Just go to the download section then Close Combat 5: Invasion Normandy -> Tools
the app is called Ccreq.zip. Its only 447 kb in size to download, Ooops there is also one called CcreqXP.zip, for XP users. Then it might take a few minutes to work out what to load but basically you load your saved game file and edit the grand campaign settings. You can make changes to ALL of your games settings which is nice.

To have 20 min from the start you need to create the game first, save it, go out of CC and use the app to alter the time to 20 min, save etc.

Then go back into CC and play single or multilayer, whichever you like. You can also alter any existing game the same way.

Also once you change the settings to whichever time you want and go back into the game, the game WILL show your original settings like 15 or 30 min but don't panic, once the fighting starts it will be 20 minutes, if you not you didn't save the settings correctly in Ccreq.

Hope that helps.

Mark

[GS_Schimpf]

Although we can change the time settings on our own this way, I still hope Matrix will implement a 20 min timer setting with a patch for both WaR and TLD.

PLEASE!