Please help - making a LAN party custom campaign

[hobbes52]

Been playing ET with my friends at LAN parties for many months now. We would like to be able to play some of the custom maps as a campaign on a LAN. I’ve searched around a bit. Can only find instructions of how to make a custom map campaign for an ET dedicated server. Thanks for the help!

[Schaffer]

Custom campaigns will work on dedicated and non dedicated servers.

To create a custom capagin you create a text file called <campagignfile>.campaign (eg hobbes52.campaign)

This file has the following contents:
{
name “European Push”
shortname “custseven_complete”
description “1944. The Axis power is weakening. Allied forces have gained a valuable foothold in Europe and own Africa. The Allied forces are now trying to push the Axis back into Germany quickly by attacking from the Mediterranean, in the East and from the North. A quick victory will save the lives of millions.”
maps “navarone;venice;stalingrad;transmitter-beta2;v1_rocket_b2;v2_factory;bulge_beta1;”
mapTC 374 374
type “wolfmp”
}

Name: is the name is it appears in ET on the level load screen and at other points
Shortname: is a unique ID for your campaign
Description: nice story to read during level load
Maps: the names of the bsp files (minus the .bsp extension) in the order that the campaign will flow through. There is a semi colon between each map and there is no semicolon at the end)
mapTC: The center point of the large command map to show the pins on. If you get this wrong then the pins will show outside of the map area and looks crap.
Type: wolfmp

This file is then put into a directory called scripts (all lower case).

You then zip this directory up so that the directory name is included in the zip file and ensure that the zip extension is .pk3

Finally put this into etmain, start up ET, select campaign more and you will see your campaign. Disable dedicated server on the Host Game menu and all is well, but you need to ensure that download of files is enabled (Host Game: Advanced: Downloads: Client Dowloads -> Yes) from the PC you are running as host to allow players to get this pk3 file. Make sure through that all players get a copy of the custom maps before you start to play because otherwsie it will take foreevere to download through et and will probably fail as well.

The above campaign is one that I did some time ago and was a lot of fun. There are a lot of other great maps out there but unfortunatley for me, my LAN mates want to play UT2004 and BF:V and WC3

[fattakin]

Nice Description there mate, i was looking the same info a few weeks back - maybe get this made into a the sticky

[hobbes52]

Thank you very much for being thorough. I think I’ve done what you said, but it’s not working yet…

Here is what I’ve typed in a text file named hobbes1.campaign

{
name “hobbes1”
shortname “hobbescustcamp”
description “WELCOME”
maps “secret_bay_et;venice;falcon2;ffr_final;northpole;supplydepot2;airassault_fp1;caen”
mapTC 374 374
type “wolfmp”
}

I zipped it up like you said using WinZip. It just doesn’t show up on the campaign menu in ET. I’ve tried using other maps, less maps and original maps. Nothing works.

I’ve also tried modifying existing campaign files in the etmain directory. If I change even one map, the whole campaign is no longer available in game.

One bit of your instructions I don’t understand though…

You then zip this directory up so that the directory name is included in the zip file and ensure that the zip extension is .pk3

what exactly do you mean by “so that the directory name is included in the zip file”?

Thanks again!

[DG1]

that’s so that if you were to extract the .pk3 file, it would make a directory (folder) called “scripts” which is where the files would be. Aslong as you put the files in a scripts folder, then zip the folder (rather than just everything in it) it should be OK - I’m pretty sure by winzip and winrar etc have “store relative paths” (or similar) set by default.