Toying around with the Online Beta

I was wondering if I could run the Online Beta we have in the Demos section. Just out of curiosity and to see, if they changed anything.

The Online Beta was given out to selected testers prior to the actual release of the game.

By default, it tries to activate a license online, which obviously doesn't work anymore. But we can run it if we own the full game:

• I've backed up this registry key first:
  Code:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Particle Systems\Edge of Chaos\Settings
  This is where the path to the game and the version information is stored. It will be overwritten by the Online Beta.


• Afterwards, I installed the Online Beta. Which is a bit tricky. If I run the .exe directly it tries to install some licensing system into the control panel, which fails (doesn't seem to work on XP). So I renamed the IW2OBd54.exe to IW2OBd54.zip, extracted the contents and ran the setup.exe. It's finally installed!


• Then I copied the loader.exe from the full version of the game into this directory to get rid of the licensing system:
  Code:

  C:\Program Files\Infogrames\IWAR2_OnlineBeta\bin\release
  
  
• Done! The game can be run with iwar2.bat from the game directory. But it's not possible to do anything with it, because there's no option to start a Multiplayer server. But the switches I just discovered for a dedicated server still work


• So I modified the iwar2.bat to look like this. Now I can run the Beta and start a LAN game from the menu against bots:
  Code:

  start bin\release\loader.exe -ac iwar2.icServerApp -aic 2 @bin\release\loader -ac iwar2.icGame -w 800 -h 600 -d 32 --play-movie iw2_act1.mpg @exit

The game itself has a few more options in the Settings menu and by default, it starts
on a map called "Carl's World", which isn't in the original game.

Carl's world may not be used, but some files related to the map are in the folder. In the zipped resource file => geog => multiplayer there is a .map and a .lws file named Carl's World.

You're right, I totally forgot to look into the resource.zip file! :woohoo:

I wonder what's the difference between .ini maps and .map maps - just the file format? In the beta, they added the map like this:

Maybe I can add the maps from the geog directory to the dedicated server here, let's see...

Edit: Well, it doesn't load that map directly like it did in the Beta. But I see that the map is defined in the file for the "Bomb Tag" gametype as default. Maybe I'll just have to cycle through gametypes to get to that map.

Edit #2: Nope. "Cal's World" is just broken and can't be loaded. Damn, it's a fun map in the Beta.

Edit: Well, it doesn't load that map directly like it did in the Beta. But I see that the map is defined in the file for the "Bomb Tag" gametype as default. Maybe I'll just have to cycle through gametypes to get to that map.

Yes, I recall more map choices for different game types.

Edit #2: Nope. "Cal's World" is just broken and can't be loaded. Damn, it's a fun map in the Beta.

Would it be possible to make a mod that adds the map from the beta into the finished version? Of course anyone who joins would have to have the mod active.

Yes, I think that's simply done by just copying the file over.

But I won't add it here, since this would make the server unuseable for the retail version.

I'll tinker with adding a second server, hopefully this will be possible.