It looks to me that a historical battle/historical campaign editor may be possible. A historical battle/historical campaign editor is not the same thing as a campaign editor, such as the promising one that has just been created. Historical battles are the packaged battles found in both STW and WE/MI. Historical campaigns are the new linked battle campaign type created in WE/MI. I believe that both historical battles and historical campaigns are currently limited to single player play. What is far less certain is if such an editor could ever be used for multiplayer battles.
There are three text files that are associated with scenarios: a .bdf (battle description) file, and two .adf files (army description) files. The .adf files include provisions for setting up odd sized units and for specifying initial deployment locations. For historical campaigns there are some .hcf (historical campaign) files; text files that apparently describe the scenarios included in the historical campaign.
This leads to some questions.
1) Is it possible to modify a scenario file to make it multi-player rather than just single player? The .bdf files have definitions for AI and active players but does changing an AI player to an active player in those files work or simply crash the program? Could a predefined historical battle be modified to be hosted on a LAN or through the EA servers?
2) There are several folders containing different .adf and .bdf files. These folders have names starting with "MO_" and are not clearly associated with a scenario. They appear to be older files and are probably of little use, but what are these files for?
3) I have not been able to find text files associated with Custom Battles, the standard format used for multi-player play. Do they exist or are they unfortunately binaries?
I know that these files are not of as great interest as those for adjusting unit stats or creating new strategic campaigns. However consider this:
If there was a way to create an edited file that could be hosted for multiplayer tactical play, then with a lot of effort it would be possible to create a new multiplayer strategy game that linked to the existing multiplayer tactical play in the Total War system.
How? If scenario conditions for MP games can be saved and then loaded by all players then a separate program, a strategic game, could genarate the scenario data. How do the battle results get loaded back into the strategic game? Our good old friend, the logfile, could have its data read back into the strategic game. Such a strategic game would have no relationsship to the STW strategic game but at least it would provide an interactive strategic background for tactical play.
I don't recommend going to such an effort unless one is a fanatic and it has become certain that EA/CA has completely dropped doing their own multiplayer STW campaign game. I also point out that at this time EA/CA themselves are not certain that they will finish a MP campaign.
However, it may make sense to whisper into EA/CA's ears that if they do not end up doing the MP campaign that at least they leave some hooks for someone else to do it. The hooks that are needed would appear to be an inclusion in the next patch that would allow multiplayer play of created Historical Battles. This would be a long desired feature improvement anyway and it might be considerably easier for EA/CA to do than a full MP campaign game. Another route to the same goal would be to ask EA/CA to have Multiplayer Battle setups be saved and loaded from a text file.
Having said this, I am certain that everyone of course would prefer that CA includes a full multiplayer campaign in the patch. I know that I do.
-Tangent
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