Scenarios, adventures and conquests

The three kinds of map the game has. They are made in the game's map editor and saved as a .bfhp file; a mod only has to put that file, and the few files that go with it, in the right folder.

The kind is not chosen by the folder: the map itself states it, according to what its author picked in the editor. The folder has to match. An adventure or a conquest in scenarios\ does not appear in the Scenarios list, and the validator warns about it.

Scenarios

Put the .bfhp in scenarios\. When someone picks it in the room, the game draws the preview from the map's own terrain, with its players and their civilizations: there is no image to provide. The colors come from the game's minimap tiles, so a new terrain looks right if it brings its tile in minimapzoom8\terrain.

In mod.json use "category": "Scenarios" and tell how many players the map has with a Players tag ("Players: 2", "Players: 2-4"). See Publishing.

Adventures

Each adventure is two files with the same name, in adventures\: the .bfhp and a .bmp (The Punic Wars.BFHP and The Punic Wars.bmp). The game's own campaigns keep each series in a subfolder: Adventures\GreatBattles\ and Adventures\GreatChallenges\, with the missions numbered.

In mod.json use "category": "Adventures" and a Language tag with the language of its texts.

Conquests

A conquest is a .bfhp in conquests\ and a folder in conquestmaps\ with the images and the list of territories. The game's own, Conquests\mediterranean.BFHP, stores the name of its folder inside: ConquestMaps/1 - GBR Europe. Your conquest does the same, so the folder of conquestmaps\ has to be called exactly what the map says.

The folder of the game's conquest has these files:

The territories of the game's conquest are Spain, Britain, Gaul, Italy, Carthage, Egypt and Germany. To make yours, copy the folder of the game (<game folder>\ConquestMaps\1 - GBR europe) and change it: it is the quickest way to get index and state right. The conquest template has the layout and a trimmed territories.xml.

Cutscenes

An adventure or a conquest can play videos. Put each .avi in movies\ in the mod and play it from the map's script, in the editor:

PlayMovie(Translate("movies\\MyVideo.avi"));

That is how the game's own adventures call theirs (movies\\1_Intro_Great_B_Zama.avi). The game looks for the file in the active mods first, in load order, and then in its own Movies\ folder, so a mod can also replace one of the game's videos.

The game plays videos through Windows (DirectShow), so the computer has to be able to decode the format. The game's own videos are AVI files with Xvid video (1920x1080, 25 frames per second) and PCM audio: use the same format.

Videos are the same in every language and do not count as gameplay.

In multiplayer

Maps, adventures and conquests are gameplay files: everyone in the room needs the same one. With "redistributable": true in mod.json the host can send the mod to players who do not have it.

Check and publish

node tools\validate-mod.js <your mod folder>

Then follow Publishing on GameBanana. A .zip that only holds the .bfhp, without folders, is placed by the game itself when it is installed, by the kind the map states.