A project I was working on that I've decided to release to the world. No one has ever made a harder version of the original unmodded Zero hour challenge. So that's what I've decided to do. The original 8 Generals from Challenge Mode are back with a vengeance. They can and will use what assets they have to ensure your destruction.
Some bugs remain but tons were fixed. Let me know of any bugs you find that need fixing.
Compatible with GC Vanilla Loader.
Optional Leang addon included to play as her.
Place .big files in the Main Zero Hour directory to install.
v1.4 Update:
Granger no longer crashes at the vs. screen.
1.3 Update:
Added/Fixed AI attacks and General Power usage across all maps.
Tao and Kwai use EMP bomb now.
Granger gets better reinforcements.
Leang's Base Defenses require less power.
Tech Oil Refinery on Leang's map moved to westernmost village.
Many other changes that I couldn't remember or were to small to mention.
v1.2 Update:
Added an optional file to unlock Leang. Makes your game incompatible for online while used though.
Fixed Leang's Bridge pathing.
Hedges should now be 100% annoyance free.
Attempted fix on Thrax's team movements.
Thrax's non-Stinger infantry are more Toxin resistant.
Granger now uses Burton in Combat Chinooks.
Granger's Paradrop no longer requires audio trigger.
Added/Fixed some audio lines.
v1.0 Changes below. Many more changes were made than this, but these are the most notable ones that I recall the most.
General:
Starting money is now 20000/15000/10000 from Easy to Hard.
Initial Supply Dock on some maps moved to allow better placement for Chinese Supply Centers.
AI uses more General Powers.
AI use more of their respective arsenals.
AI starts with their relevant upgrades(excluding individual units upgrades like Drones).
AI will use those individual unit upgrades on Normal/Hard especially.
AI uses more audio lines.
Most buildings are rebuilt an unlimited amount of times.
Most Generals use a different color now.
Some Generals start with Tech Buildings.
Updated Object lists to include units that were missing or made sense to add.
Targeting priorities changed for various teams across all maps.
Most attacks requiring a specific condition(i.e. owning 1 super weapon) are now time based instead.
On Hard, all Generals gain extra money when possessing Cash Generators.
Granger:
Has more Patriot Batteries defending base.
Less Oils on Hard Mode.
Garrison teams use more infantry.
Now attempts to claim and defend city supplies if uncontested.
Townes:
Made hedges less annoying.
Spy drones around base entrances are no longer indestructible and invisible.
Particle Cannons no longer prioritize specific targets.
Particle Cannon 1 is delayed slightly. 2 and 3 start counting down after the PC before it would've fired.
Replaced inner Guard Towers with Laser Patriots. Added more power plants to compensate.
Garrison teams use more infantry.
Base Oil no longer deleted on Hard difficulty.
He will send rangers to try and capture tech buildings later in the game.
He now has Supply Drop Zones.
Added more music.
Alexander:
Comanche patrol fixed. No longer attacks the players base at the start.
Particle Cannons no longer prioritize specific targets.
Uses better logic when deciding to sell 1st Particle Cannon.
Supply island and main base now share a land connection.
Chinook drops are more packed.
Alpha Aurora attacks are delayed but now target differently.
Her Sentry Drones and Avengers now properly Guard.
No longer spams avengers in her base. Uses a varied base defense force.
Impassable terrain less atrocious especially at the northeast Power Plant plateau.
Sneak Attack is no longer free for GLAs.
Kwai players can build Inferno Cannons to compensate for the map design and difficulty spike.
Tao:
Black screen intro bug fixed.
Now rebuilds all his non Nuke Silo buildings.
Nuke Silos no longer target specific spots.
His Nuke timers now 15 minutes. Player Nuke timers normalized.
His infantry now have Chemical Suits.
Speaker Towers now inside and around the village.
Now uses the Internet Center and puts Hackers in there.
Kwai:
No longer builds multiple Nuke Silos on top of each other.
Attack delay pushed further to compensate for difficulty spike.
Air attack delay pushed further to compensate for difficulty spike.
Hackers now garrison the Internet Center.
Kassad:
Both Kassad bases are now allied with each other.
Battle takes place at night.
Anthrax Bomb no longer targets specific area.
Now uses Jarmen Kell.
Garrisons are stealthed.
No longer sends a group of spawned Terror bikes.
Aircraft no longer path around water plant building.
Thrax:
Rocks are now passable and can be built on.
All bridges replaced with land connections.
Now uses tanks especially Marauders on Hard.
Tunnel network guards are now vehicles instead of infantry.
Attack waves now stop to engage units.
Swapped positions of southeast Arms Dealer and forward Barracks.
Chemical Bunkers now emit Gamma variant.
Aircraft no longer path around water plant building.
Leang:
Winning/Losing conditions now aligned with the rest of the challenge maps.
Battle takes place at twilight hour.
Initial bridge replaced with land connection.
Base entrance bridge replaced with a less buggy one.
Garrisoned bunkers can be properly attacked by Dragon Tanks.
Her patrols and garrisons have more units.
Her initial attacks come later while her mid-late game attacks and General Powers come sooner.
Building a Tech Center no longer triggers her main attacks to start.
Removed some crates near the SE corner and Chemical bunker on Hard. Added some near her base.
Her initial Sneak Attack is now properly used as a General Power instead of being spawned.
Her Sentry Drones now properly Guard.
Made hedges less annoying.
Her Power Plants no longer generate double power.
Capturing and possessing all 3 Super Weapon Bunkers grants a small reward.
Her units are at peak power on Hard.
how to put it in file of game?
Place the file(s) in the main Zero Hour directory with the rest of the .big files.
Played it. It's brutal as expected. I did try hard mode but i ended up go back to normal difficulty since i feel i am more comfortable in normal.
So far i only beat Granger so i can't say much about it. Although he is by far is difficult as expected in normal mode since he always annoy your base a lot.
Does can works same others Mods when I input like Boss Generals
Unlikely unless its the default Boss General because each army has to be scripted into all the maps to create win/lose conditions. And any other mods would cause conflicts if they have any .ini files that this mod also uses.
It has lot missing upgrade too can you see the commandsets
Paced
hi love your mod but i have 1 problem when facing granger in challange it crashes i played most other generals with no problem i dont know what is wrong
Mod is very cool! Sadly Granger crashes during loading. Crash info is empty, only "Reason Uncaught Exception in GameEngine::update". Tried with the EA version and the CD version, with and without GenTools. Also I wanted to try an older version like 1.2 but couldn't find it.
i have problem when i play challenge vs granger i get crahing from wich mean im fired from game
great mod but it crashes when you face air force in challange mode
It's a nice mod, though the air general challenge crashes the game.
I'm wondering what can be done to make the late game more eventful. Perhaps adding 1 or 2 more factories per challenge which will activate at a certain time make things more interesting? Virtually all attack groups from the AI are like 5 tank long with too much delay between groups, so you can straight up roll over the ai with 1 or 2 factores of your own and little to no thinking
I finally fixed the Granger problem.
doest it work on mods? like contra and shockwave ??
It's only meant for the unmodded game.
It's been a while i haven't played this and after a while i decide to replay this as Dr.Thrax.
As usual the difficulty set in this challenge is normal since i am still not comfortable with normal difficulty.
I haven't beaten the whole challenge yet so this might be updated on next reply.
Kwai : Not much to expect in Normal difficulty. His emperor overlord as usual it's bulky
He has so much infantry to send but few tanks which i guess Kwai wanted to be different than Tank general.
One kind of difference here is how he got Tank drop which he manage to drop on my command center.
(Hard mode will be different from what i read since he will drop EMP Bomb)
Despite it feels slightly brutal, He have some slight weakness where rebel ambushes and capture the building and then deploy a sneak attack there, With better secondary economy(by that i mean multiple black markets), you could just spam basic tanks and even better quad cannons.
Townes : The design of Townes's ground attack originally is a bit limited but it seems he is a bit annoying to deal due of 2 avengers and 1 laser tank with hellfire drones can make a slightly big difference where you are forced to rely on cannons since any type of missile will get intercepted by those Advanced PDL.
Aside that, They got firepower bonus thanks to the Bombardment strategy.
Particle cannon still annoying just like in vanilla.
Still, His middle base are slightly unguarded as if i recall deploying a rebel ambush is a bit impossible since there's a guard team like comanche though i am not sure since i never played vanilla challenge mode so correct me if i am wrong.
Also, The usual speedrun strat no longer work here, Normally few of his building are not required to destroy(or i might remember it wrong).
However there's a big surprise there since after townes lost a lot of building, Townes starting to sell his defenses and charge toward your base.
With a horde of fully upgraded infantry and ton of avengers.
It almost shredded my base so i have to train jarmen kell, garrison the building and then snipe them one by one.
After that, I finished the challenge by destroying the remaining power plants.
Kassad : Just finish playing against Kassad.
This version of Kassad deliver the brutality that the creator wanted.
Rocket Buggy now doing a hit and run tactics where it annoy your buildings and then come back to their base and then rinse and repeat after several seconds until your base shattered.
I do wonder if anthrax bomb now target highest cost area? But all i noticed that he still target my command center.
And i keep forgot that Kassad love to send terror bike, I somehow forgot about that until i read it after i finished it.
Similar like Rocket Buggy, Jarmen kell will love to snipe your vehicle and then leave to the base. And then do the same thing over and over again.
Similar like sneak attack but it's more chaotic as what it does is deploy the forces and bring it back by a few seconds.
This make brute force tactics become nightmare to implement especially with scud storm love to target your highest cost buildings in the area and then sneak attack itself which make things even more hell to finish.
GLA is where things went flexible in term of economy until they got a cash bounty. It's quite overpowered and pretty useful when dealing against somehow brutal AI.
Throughout the progress i beat this challenge. The easy way to deal with the rocket buggy is using angry mob which is slow but has insane firepower.
But using angry mob is not enough, I have to rely with radar van and buy a scud launcher science so i can break through his defense.
Until i reach his first base, Kassad will throw a punch in the face with his Campaign unit called Sniper(Which is jarmen kell in pocket).
Using toxin tractor brute force won't help as the garrisonned buildings has a lot of RPG Troopers while angry mob will get killed easily by Jarmen Kells.
Forgot to mention, Throughout the playthrough, I never build superweapon which sounds concerning but i could make my life easier to deal against them but i remember that this addon has ai who love to rebuild it's building for unlimited times, So using superweapon only help a little.
Maybe in the next challenge i might try to use superweapon.
By far this is imo the best and annoying map you ever edited(Sounds double-edge but that's what i feel).
Alexander :
The USA General who love to turtle and use superweapon as an offense.
It's been a while i haven't touch this challenge map and i forgot how to exploit her attack.
One thing i noticed here is how she is quite rarely to attack. But the biggest change here as GLA General is having no Sneak attack at the beginning which force you to wait until maximum possible rank just to get sneak attack.
Which i guess that probably an indirect way to make the map long to beat.
She also now spam spy drone in your base which as Stealth General it will uncloak their buildings, But as for toxin general, It's useless.
Also all of her particle cannon are now activated. Which is a hard mode moment.
I am not sure about her attack pattern but she somehow doesn't like to send her forces often.
With no sneak attack at the beginning and rare attack patterns, This force me to rely on turtling tactics and at the same time fire against fire which is superweapon against superweapon.
In order to make things less stressful, I have to take care her superweapon first since that's the only thing that's not possible to rebuild due of it's located on cliff and her base is unpassable at some point.
After reaching rank 5, This is where sneak attack are must bought science.
As soon you deploy a sneak attack at the powerplant base you destroyed, It seems Alexander has a lot of Comanche on her base, This make ambush slightly harder to do.
After her particle cannon destroyed, Focus on her command center and her airfield, And make sure her dozer is destroyed so she can't rebuild her base.
It's a matter of time until all of her base destroyed with scud storm spam.
I am kind of aware of the difficulty on this addon like if i play as airforce for example.
Unsure about it.
But i might try to finish everything so i could test other faction.