Introduction to Command Ops Steam Workshop

This guide will explain how Steam Workshop works with Commands Ops 2.

Introduction

Before you start using Steam Workshop, please make sure to backup all your custom contents!

Command Ops 2 Steam Workshop supports four contents types:

• maps;
  
• estabs;
  
• scenarios;
  
• map graphics.

Upload quotas are currently set to 100 Mb and 1000 files per user.

Basics

There are two Steam interfaces available to users:

• Steam Web GUI;
  
• Command Ops 2 Workshop Manager.

Steam Web GUI for Command Ops 2 Workshop is accessible here. With Web GUI you can:

• search for Workshop items created by other people;
  
• subscribe (and unsubscribe) to them;
  
• change visibility status, title and description of your own items;
  
• add custom images and videos to your own items;
  
• configure dependencies of your items (e.g. make them to depend of particular DLC, or other Workshop items).

Workshop Manager application is a part of standard Command Ops 2 Steam installation and is accessible from the regular Steam Play menu:



With Workshop Manager you can:

• install items you're subscribed to (also install updates);
  
• uninstall items;
  
• upload your own content to the Workshop (also upload new versions of the content).

Web Interface

Browsing

Command Ops Steam Workshop web page is available here or in Steam Client. These two interfaces are nearly identical, so all the instructions below apply to both of them.

Workshop contents can be filtered:


In most cases you'll be looking for scenarios, the rest of the contents may be considered as scenarios' dependencies.

Subscribing

Once you've found a Scenario you want to install, press the big green button "Subscribe":



Popup window may appear, telling you about dependencies required to be installed:



Be sure to click each of them (they will open in separate tabs or separate mini-windows) and susbcribe to every of them.
It may happen, that you have already subscribed to some of these. In that case you will see these dependencies will be have special indication:



Naturally, you only need to subscribe to those items you have not yet subscribed to.

Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing works the same. Find the item (usually, a scenaio) you want to unsubscribe and press the same green button:

Installing, Updating and Uninstalling

Actions described below are done using the CO2 Workshop Manager app (see above).

Main Screen

Tree views group content nodes under author nodes. You must subscribe to an item to see it in the Manager.

Item State

There are four possible states of an item, namely:
- item is installed and is up to date. Possible actions: uninstall.


- item is not yet installed. Possible actions: install.


- item was installed, but is not up to date and can be updated. Possible actions: update, uninstall.

- item is installed but is a dangling one (usually it means either you have unsubscribed from it or it was deleted by its author from Workshop). Possible actions: uninstall.

Item Details

Double-clicking any of content nodes will show the details screen, e.g.


Use buttons to the right to start any appropriate action - installation, update or uninstallation.
All the content types install, upgrade and uninstall in the same fashion, except maps. Installing a map requires a map cache to be built. This may take a significant amount of time, especially for large maps and on slow machines.

Note: once installation starts, it may not be interrupted.

Group actions

Group action buttons can be used to conveniently install, update or clean items.



E.g. after you have subscribed to a number of items (maps, scenarios, estabs and graphics) you don't have to look for them in the trees and then install one by one. Just press "Install All" button (which should become active as soon as you get new subscriptions downloaded by Steam client) and everything will be just installed.
Same goes with "Update All" button, which becomes active when there are updates available for any of items. This is both a convenient indicator to let you know that updates are possible, and also a tool to update all such items at once.

Note: please be patient and check your Steam client logs and connection state. It may take up to some minutes before Steam client will download a new subscribption.

Note: Be advised, if you have several maps to install or update, that'd mean many maps will have to generate their caches. Given sufficiently large number of maps and sufficiently large map sizes, that may take extreme amount of times like an hour or more!

Troubleshooting

Workshop Manager will report a warning if:
- attempted installation (or update) of an item requests to overwrite some existing file(s);
- attempted uninstallation (or update) of an item requests to delete the inexisting or modified file.

In such a case it would be better to cancel the action. In some cases, though, you may be knowing what you're doing and opt to proceed at your own risk.

Publishing and Updating

Note: you are not authorized to publish official Panther Games content, either from free core engine or from DLC packs.

Note: it is strongly advised to:
- keep your custom content outside of the game folders, because otherwise it may be overwritten if you subscribe to your own content and decide to install it;
- backup your work before doing any publishing;
- in general, backup your work on a regular and frequent basis.

Publishing a new map

While at the Manager's main screen, please select Upload -> Map menu item.
The Map publish dialog will appear:



It doesn't matter where the file is actually located, as all the maps will be installed directly into the Maps folder.

Note: Custom Maps, custom Map Graphics and custom Estabs from any author will be installed into the same common folders: Maps, Graphics and Estabs, respectively. Therefore users won't be able to install two identically named files, unless they overwrite one with another. Please keep an eye that your item does not share the same filename with another item; the app will also try to detect that and notify the user.

Once the map file is selected, it will be processed by the tool and you should see something like this



The manager will try to read the title string from the map itself, if the title was set in MapMaker. Otherwise it will use the filename to generate the title.

Note: title may be changed later via Workshop web interface.

Note: Title and description may not contain any non-Latin letters or < and > symbols.

The next step you should take is to select the country (from the list of sovereign states as of 1939), the subregion and the reference map date.

Workshop Manager app will pre-generate some description for you, using the data extracted from the map file like map dimensions and heights.
You're free to modify this pre-generated description. Description may be re-generated again using "Generate" button (this will overwrite existing description).

Finally, press Publish button. Depending of your map size and internet connection, it could take some minutes to upload the map.

Upon successfully publishing an item you will be redirected to its homepage in Steam client.

Updating existing map

You may want to update your item later. The whole procedure is exactly the same in that case.
The app will automatically detect the item you've published before, and will warn you about that.

Note: the app uses filenames to uniquely identify items and determine whether the particular item was published before or not. If you change the filename of an item, the app will consider it to be a new one, rather than an update, even though the file itself might not be changed at all.

Publishing an Estab

While at the Manager's main screen, please select Upload -> Estab menu item.
The Estab publish dialog will appear:



Publishing and updating an Estab is identical to publishing a Map, except that you don't have to fill counter and subregion fields, but rather two dates.

Note: the filename of an Estab will be used to uniquely identify your item. It will be installed directly into "Estabs" folder of the game.

Publishing a Map Graphics Mod

While at the Manager's main screen, please select Upload -> Graphics -> Map menu item.
The Graphics Mod publish dialog will appear:



Here the major difference from other item types is that you have to select a folder with map graphics, rather than a file.

Note: the name of the folder will uniquely identify your item. Map graphics will be installed into "Graphics/Map/<selected folder name>" folder of the game.

Note: the folder must contain at least one subfolder (usually these are named "normal", "ice", "snow" etc) and every subfolder must contain at least one BMP file, otherwise publishing will fail.

Publishing a Scenario

While at the Manager's main screen, please select Upload -> Scenario menu item.
The Scenario publish dialog will appear:



Publishing and updating a Scenario is identical to publishing an Estab.

Note: scenario filename is used to uniquely identify your item. Scenarios will be installed into "Scenarios/Steam Workshop Scenarios by <your Steam username>" folder of the game.

Setting up Scenario dependencies

Setting up all the dependencies is an important step for Scenarios. This is done in Steam web interface rather than in Workshop Manager.
If your Scenario depends of a custom Map or an Estab, please publish them as well. Then go to the Scenario's homepage in Steam Workshop:



In the example below, I've set up my Radziechow map and EasternFront-1939-1941 estab as dependencies:



Note: you may set up others' content as dependencies and even official DLC packs.

Additional Information

Although we try to test and ensure Workshop Manager is working probably, there may still be some bugs left. Please report any issues as soon as you notice them.

Once more: please save and backup your work often and keep it away of the game folder. We do not bear responsibility for any data loss, whether it happens because of your misuse of Workshop Manager, or because of a bug in the software.

We do definitely plan to enhance and develop Workshop Manager in future, like, for example, we do plan to add support for uploading Forces additionally to Estabs later. If you have any ideas about improving the interface or adding new functionality, please let us know.

[Babipoki]

"Unable to execute update query: please report this issue to the developers."

An error popping up when submitting a map to workshop. ^^^

[Fierman]

\o/

[ioncore]

Workshop will go live this weekend.

[ioncore]

We undergo closed beta test right now. All the functionality is already in place, but some bugfixing still may be required within next few days, so we may start public beta in a week or so.

[Fierman]

Thanks for the extensive manual. When will the Workshop Manager be available for users?