Instant Action Mod: Play offline with computer players

[TommyCD1]

This mod allows one to play the multiplayer maps offline with computer players without the use of a trainer.

Download link

Extract to your Army Men RTS root directory.

Does not interfere with online play!



This slightly modifies the lobby of a multiplayer game to allow you to force a game to begin even without two players.

The lobby will have a new button labeled 'offline'. Press this button after adding some computer players to start your game! Be sure to set all your settings properly, as this button bypasses any checks for a valid game. Don't set everyone on the same team!

Pressing this button and launching the game with other players will not crash the game, however you will need to abort loading if you want to make a new game.

This mod also features an improved map select feature. Now when selecting a map, you can have a much larger list to pick from and can even pick a random map. (Note that the random function of the game is not true and therefore does not reshuffle; the only way to reshuffle the list is to add a new map to the directory.)

One final note is how this mod works. It accomplishes this by launching the current game as a single player map instead of a multiplayer one. This is completely function and reads all of the attributes of a normal multiplayer map; including teams, team colors, names, and HUD elements.
However, the one flaw in this method is that this will also read difficulty settings, which while this wouldn't be a problem normally, Army Men RTS has no difficulty level that is 'even'. I.E. easy difficulty and normal difficulty are both a greater than 1:1 ratio, while the hard difficulty is more than a 1:1 ratio.
To fix this, I made the hard difficulty truly even, and also decreased the first two difficulties by the same ratio. This is, I feel, to be a reasonable compromise, as the only immediate difference you will ever see with this modified difficulty is that Sarge can now take an extra hit from a sniper on the easier two difficulties; and that's assuming he does not take fire from anything else at the time.

Please let me know what you guys think, and be sure to report any problems here.

[E]x[F-Sniper]

Wow Tommy, that is probably the best mod I've seen so far. I tested it on one of my computers and the very first time I launched it, the game started but then ended right away. I tried it again and it worked the 2nd time. I don't know why it didn't work the very first time I tried it but it worked after that. I'll be testing it a little more. Nice job man.

[TommyCD1]

Yes, even though the game can be forced to launch at any time, the game will still apply a ruleset and any win conditions with it, so if you don't have any enemy computer opponents, or everyone is on the same team, then the mission will end immediately.

[Secg]

Shouts out to Tommy CD1!

Instant Action works fantastically ,on all maps, except for Frenzy maps for reasons already explained elsewhere.

May I add this Instant Action feature to my Heroic Mod? I will again give you Credits, ofc.

[TommyCD1]

Sure, if you believe it to add to the experience then do so, I hope you'll link back here.

But this is a shell mod, does that mean the your mod is a mod to the base game and not a map?

[Secg]

But this is a shell mod, does that mean the your mod is a mod to the base game and not a map?

Yes, this Heroic Mod is the fully modded base game. The mod has its own root directory & can be played without installation. However, under no circumstance must it be extracted into the existing AMRTS root directory (to prevent online desyncing). Unless two or more players has the same Heroic mod version, ofc.

[TommyCD1]

Hopefully fixed some bugs with this mod.

• Disabled offline button for non-host clients.
• Added confirmation dialogue when attempting to launch game offline.
• Fixed an exploit that allowed Players to join a game that had already been launched.

[TommyCD1]

Turns out I broke the link when I fixed the bugs. The link has been fixed and should install correctly now.

[Holithicus]

This is awesome, I've tried it and set this up with my friend. He was a newbie and had to get in some practice.

However, me and him were wondering if possible could you Tommy make or know how to make a mod that allows client cheats in
multiplayer.... or something of the equivalent. Oh and if you could point me in the direction of where to head for additions like such that
would be helpful as I'm new to the website.

Holithicus

[TommyCD1]

If you are looking for additional mods for the game you can see what you can find here on the forums. viewforum.php?f=34

I will not however make something that allows cheats in multiplayer. Not only would it allow anybody to cheat in multiplayer of course, but it also requires editing of the engine's data to allow cheats to even function, which is something I don't know how to do. If you need cheats in multiplayer, just practice at the game and get better. Otherwise I would stick to single player and cheat there.