Noticing that the 'ParagonChat' application only had some 60+ map names to visit, I went searching the forums for any addition maps to visit, other than the standard city map locations. I asked myself where are all of the additional city or mission maps. This sent me on a mission of discovery! But, why was all of the work done on finding maps, was almost 4 years ago (7/2015) and yet the number of maps were showing a large disparity from the maps listed in the Architect?
The recent 'bitters' zone.cfg and quickchat.mnu mod was essentially the same data that:
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https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=11144.msg187961#msg187961
A few extra Zones
'orht'
on: July 16, 2015, 07:24:35 PM
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was produced by 'orht' was back in 7/2015, and I searched the forums for a more updated version, but didn't find anything newer.
Also the 'quickchat' version that corresponds to this 'zone.cfg' file:
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https://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=11188.0
Quickchat Emote Menu Addon
"lexicon"
on: July 28, 2015, 08:51:15 AM
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that was documented by 'lexicon' was also back in 7/2015, and I was unable to find a more updated version on the forums.
I did find some comments about adding a few more zone maps or groups of maps to the original content but not really a full listing of the current state of the file.
The chat members: 'bitters' and 'crashpositron' have a website where they distributed the latest updated copy of the 'zone.cfg' and 'quickchat.mnu' files:
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'bitters' / 'crashpositron'
pchat.life" social information/loading bitters' mod" link from the following url:
www.sgeorgia.com/pix/bitters.html
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emote.cfg
zone.cfg
quickchat.mnu
In addition to the two files I was looking at the 'emote.cfg' had also been updated and was available here!
The 'zone.cfg' and 'quickchat.mnu' files can be found here and updated the number of available zones to over 440+ zones.
But in my research of the Architect system I notices (and also remembered) that there were not just one file in each group of mission maps, but there were from 3 to 28 maps in each group. so I started searching and found that there were 1312 maps defined in the Architect list that were available for player Architect missions. So I added them to my copy of 'maps.mnu' for ICON and found that it did not cover all of the groups that were listed in the 'zone.cfg' file that had been updated to 444 map zones. After noticing the disparity in the maps I then started looking for other list of maps and found one on the "wayback machine" website archive of CoH data, that listed 1885 maps. But again, there were holes in the listings. I figured that the "wayback machine" list was from 2008 and they game didn't shutdown until 2012 with Version I24 beta. So I chalked that up to the difference. I then went into the 'mapXXX.pigg' files and dumped out all of the file names that I could find. And, this effort yielded 2326 map file names. I then took all of my research and put all the lists I found into a spreadsheet and then sorted the list. I then removed all of the duplicate map names that I had found. This yielded a total of over 2866 map files. I then started testing some of the more obvious filenames for being an invalid map, like: 'mapname_audio' or 'mapname_pieces' and determined that this was indeed an invalid map. So I removed 147 maps that had odd names or didn't look like an actual map bringing the list down to 2845.
It was brought to my attention that all we really needed is one map file in each group of maps, that they are all basically the same map in the group. But when I played the live version of the game, one of the things that I enjoyed was not knowing what/which map you were going to get for a lot of the missions. Some missions were always played on the same mission map. But there were other missions where that map could be different each time you went back to that mission. This was one of the things I really liked about the game content; you didn't always get the same map. So in my case I would rather see all the maps and not just one out of each group. If there is 2800+ maps then give me 2800+ maps and don't short change me with only 450 some odd number of maps. Because in the limited number of maps that were currently being seen in the .bitters. mod; when I ran through the single map, I was remembering some rooms or locations that I did not find in the available maps at this time. Yet durring my limited testing of the additional map that I have tested, I have found specific locations that I remember from the live game where we had 'team wipeouts', 'exciting play', 'needed to employ special tactics to survive', that I could not find in the current single mission map groups of the current files.
This is a table of some of the data I found:
| File | Numb# Maps | Comments |
| ------ | ------ | ----------------------------- |
| zone.cfg | 444 | contained number of map zone definitions |
| quickchat.mnu | 477 | map definitions, some commented out did not have a corresponding zone number |
| Architect | 1312 | defined mission maps available for making player missions |
| maps.mnu(ICON) | 1444 | defined maps after adding the Architect mission maps |
| waybackMachine | 1885 | defined maps that were tested and archived in 2008 |
| | | Note: was unsuccessful in finding this link again for a url link to the data |
| mapsXXX.pigg | 2326 | extracted a list of map names from the (.pigg) files searching for text only |
| | | did not use a pigg file reader so not sure if I would have found more |
I found that not one of the lists I found contained all of the maps, each list wound up adding some file names that didn't exist in all of the other lists. I wonder, if I had used a 'pigg' file reader if I would have actually came up with a list that contained all of the maps from each list.
I am currently running against this list and have shared the modified 'zone.cfg' and 'quickchat.mnu' files with:
bitters
crashpositrron
aeb
and I have received some feedback and modified the contents of my copies of these files and believe that they are ready for testing and evaluation to examine them for any additional map files that are broken or bogus in the list.
The current number of map file names that I am running with is 2845.
The map numbers have been modified to try and play nicely with the existing internal city maps and the bitters mod map numbers.
I have read where 'codewalker' mentions that the file 'defnames.bin' contains all of the definitions of everything in the system and one shouldn't have to search anywhere else for names because they are all found here.
The trouble is that I have found no file with this name or any '.bin' files in my current 'i24' game folders, or in the original game folder from back in 2012.
So I didn't know where he was referring to when I couldn't find one that exists. Unless this was a file that was extracted from one of the '.pigg' files, of which I still do not have a pigg file reader.
Riot
I currently do not have a way to distribute these files for review. So not sure how to get them in use other than myself and a select few who agreed to look at them for review.
I also edited my copies of:
'emotes.cfg' for ParagonChat, for clarity and readability, updated from bitters mod
'maps.mnu' for ICON, to reflect the same maps used in 'zone.cfg' and 'quickchat.mnu'
'cos.mnu' for ICON, for clarity and readability
'mov.mnu' for ICON, for clarity and readability
'time.mnu' for ICON, for clarity and readability
'npc.mnu' for ICON, for clarity and readability, also work in progress, sorting through the file checking it with a list found on the wayback/machine. Still looking to rediscover the link for this table that I didn't record.
'macros.mnu' copied the macro section from the 'quickchat.mnu' to use with the ICON version, so I could add macros to add the other ICON menus from one place instead of adding each menu separately when starting up ICON
Riot
I also do not mind finding and exploring unfinished maps. Gives me Goosebumps where there are maps that could be edited to become new usable maps inside of Paragon Chat.
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