Tintin's Close Combat Tools

by Gerry Shaw
gerry_shaw@yahoo.com

Archived on GitHub

August 8, 2013

Uploaded all code, docs and binaries to GitHub to ensure they are always available to anybody interested.

Last Program Recovered

October 29, 2001

Today I received the last program I lost, the CC1 Org Chart Viewer. Thanks to everybody that sent stuff in.

Editing Community Lends a Hand

October 6, 2001

I cannot believe the response from people that sent in files. Within twelve hours of asking for the files I received every file except the Close Combat 1 Org Chart Viewer. This was one of the reasons why I enjoyed making these tools back in 1998/1999. Its really nice to see the community still as helpful as it was then.

Save Game Viewer Posted

October 6, 2001

I posted a previously unreleased tool for viewing CC3 save games called OOB (Order of Battle). Not that useful but you might learn something from the included source code.

Web Site Nuked

October 5, 2001

I received an email from a CC2 player asking what happened to my site.  It would appear that NBCI shut down all the accounts and I must have missed my notification.  Maybe this is a blessing in disguise as it will force me to update my site - hopefully everything is still available.

Map Maker Updated

January 7, 1999

Mick (Game Stats web editor) has put together a great package on making maps. I have included a version of it with the Map Maker archive.

Texture Maker 3 Posted

November 24, 1998

I had a vision of what the graphics file format might be like for CC3. This may or may not work but since they've dropped Mac support I bet it's close to the same as before but with Intel style fields. This may or may not work but will be corrected once I get the demo. Sure would have been easier if I was on the beta team.

Quibble Posted

November 12, 1998

I've created another new tool called Quibble. This is for the people that are about to kill Excel for not being able to save a file without that stupid .txt extension. Quibble is rather scaled down spreadsheet program I whipped up on Remembrance Day.

World Viewer Updated

November 6, 1998

I've created a new version of my 3D Height field viewer that uses textures. It's not that friendly at the moment so download at your own risk. You will need Map Maker to extract the height field TGA and the map graphic. Once the map graphic has been extracted resize it to 256x256 and save it as a .bmp. Right click to bring up a menu to select new files. I've added one of the more interesting CC2 maps with the archive. Unless you have a RIVA 128 or RIVA TNT or some other OpenGL accelerator you are going to get dismal performance. Since it runs in a window (not full screen) voodoo 1 & 2 owners are not going to get any speed up. That said it should work with any system that has OpenGL installed. On my p450 with a TNT at 1600x1200 I'm getting my monitor refresh rate (75fps).

World Viewer Posted

October 16, 1998

Well it's been a while since I've updated this site but it's still getting hits so that's good. More than 1000... hard to believe. Well not too much of an update, just a fix for all those people trying to get the 3D height field viewer to work. I didn't include the glut32.dll that is needed. This DLL adds extra code to make writing OpenGL programs a lot easier. Download the program, unzip to a folder a type world map100e.tga and you should get a window you can control with the mouse and mouse buttons. This is a total hack and is really just a gimmick.

Oh yeah and just so you know I got on the CC3 beta test team... NOT! Damn.

Los Maker Posted

June 19, 1998

After making a request for people interested in doing a LOS generator Vincent Viaud came though all the way with a handy little command line tool for creating those .los files. Thanks for solving the last map making problem Vincent. Download cc2los here (42k) with complete source code. The files are not quite the same as Atomic but seem close enough. John Anderson mentioned that the los program they use takes overnight, this one takes about 5 minutes on my P200. Please post all feedback to the Game Stats editing forum for this tool and all others so everybody can contribute to the discussion.

Texture Maker Updated

June 15, 1998

Updated my Texture Maker tools that I originally had posted on Game Stats. The update now enables the tool to create the graphic files needed for maps without requiring you to hex edit the files.

Org Chart Updated

June 5, 1998

Updated the CC1 Org Chart to use the release libraries so non developers will be able to run the program. Thanks to Peter Fisla for pointing this out.

Org Chart Posted

June 4, 1998

Added an old Close Combat 1 tool that was never released. It is a organization chart of your forces. I hope something like this will make it into CC3.

John Anderson replied to an email of mine giving detailed instructions on how to create a line of site (LOS) file. I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to create the program so if anyone is interested in doing it I'll give you the information and help you with the programming. It requites 2D algebra knowledge and some intermediate programming ability (dealing with bit fields, file parsing and line intersections).

Note you can two other tools I've written from cc2.gamestats.com. The first tool is a texture converting tool. It's really handy with a hex editor to convert to and from CC's graphic format and TGA files. The other tool is an experiment in hacking the sound file format. It doesn't do anything but if you are working on hacking that file you should check it out.

Web Site Updated

May 25, 1998

Added a screen shots of Map Maker and the height field viewer. They are bigger than the programs (90k) but I know that I always like to see a program in action before downloading it.

I would really like to see some maps in work, send me screen shots of the current work (jpg them first please). This would really give me incentive to finish the LOS tool.

John Anderson dropped by the newsgroup (comp.sys.ibm-pc.games.strategy or something) and spoke up about Atomic's stance on editing. I'm really not sure why people like to attack them so much. John has been great at answering my questions, and I can see the point about not wanting to release a map editor that produces maps not at the quality that they can produce them.


Licensing Information

All the software and content on this web site is covered by the following modified BSD style license.

Copyright © 1998-2001 Gerry Shaw.  All Rights Reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  3. The names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.