Company of Heroes 3 Modding guide

Describes the basics of modding the game through tuning packs in detail, for now at least.

In the future I plan on listing more advanced techniques as I gain experience as well as adding sections for map making and also game modes.

How to access the Essence Editor and it's limits

The Essence Editor (will be abbreviated to EE for short) is basically both the CoH2 modding tools and WorldBuilder (map maker) combined into a single application, for convenience I suppose.

The problem however is that unlike the CoH2 modding tools, it's not listed under the Tools section of Steam. Instead it can be located in the game's files which you can access by right clicking on Company of Heroes 3 in your Steam library, then going to Manage and clicking on Local Files like so -



After which you will land here and find the EE -



I also made an attempt at an extra bit of convenience for myself where I tried adding the EE through Steam's non-Steam game option here but it might be a bit dodgy at times for some reason -



After you open the EE you will need to load the Attributes from the option, after it's done loading you will most likely end up in the ebps section where we will start this guide off from as well.

A word beforehand however, modding so far in this game is very limited at the moment, something which I hope and wish for Relic to amend in the near future because if I have to be quite honest this game is mechanically the best in the series and also has a lot of potential to grow and for future mods.

And what I mean by limited is that we cannot create anything new, only clone existing things, edit them and then we need to again reference the game's default files, hence why I use the vanilla files as examples instead of my modified ones as to not confuse people. We also cannot edit the campaign unfortunately, something which is truly saddening given our newly found Total War-like dynamic campaign which is ripe for expanding and modifying.

More information on what we can currently can and can't edit can be found here -

https://knowledge-center.community.companyofheroes.com/article/Tuning_Packs/Tuning_Packs/Capabilities_and_Limitations

How to create, edit, save and build a mod

In this section we'll be looking at what happens after you actually open the EE.

You will be greeted by this window, where for this example we will make a new tuning pack because that's my main area of expertise at the moment in terms of modding this game -



After which if it's your first time opening it, click on the "Create A New Mod" button and it should give you this prompt, if you've already made a mod use the "Open An Existing Mod" option and point it to your mod's files or just click on whichever project you want to edit from under "Recent" -



Between the 3 options only Tuning packs are currently covered in this game like mentioned previously so click on it.

After that it will ask you some things such as a name, description and where do you want to save the files. I recommend placing your mods somewhere safe that's not C (your Operating System's drive which might get corrupted or deleted during a fresh reinstall) or your game's directory (same reason as above, but this time more Steam/game related).

Then you will want to hover over the "Attributes" tab and click on the "Open Attributes" option so you can start editing after you clone the files -



This black window is how the new Attribute Editor is going to look like while loading -



You will then be presented with the ebps tab where, again as mentioned before, you right click on whatever you want to edit, then left click to clone it, but keep in mind to always reference the vanilla file and not your mod's one or else the game won't read it as will be mentioned several times throughout the guide as a reminder of that. More on ebps editing in it's own dedicated section below.



After making your changes, hover over the "File" option on the top left of the screen and then click on "Save", alternatively you can just press Ctrl and S on your keyboard as a shortcut. Remember to save often, sometimes the EE crashes and you might lose a lot of time if you've made many changes that you didn't save.



And finally after you're done with all of your changes and want to test it hover over the "Build" option and press "Build Mod"



And you will then have a couple of windows popping up saying "burning" which is actually just the modding tools creating the .sga file of your mod so the game can read it, simply click on "Ok" to continue.

Lastly, open your game, click on "Single Player", then "Skirmish", then "Skirmish" again with a little text saying to start skirmish under it and once you're in the lobby click on "Game Options" and then on the field that says "Tuning Pack" make sure to select the LOCAL version of your mod. This is important because you might have experimental changes that you haven't pushed on the public version of your mod which is possible to leave you scratching your head on why you're sure you've made changes to the mod and if everything else seems right still aren't registering, meaning that you've forgotten to select the correct test version. Also keep in mind that if you make a public lobby and select the local version of your mod it will give people trying to join an error message since they can't download it, only the public version is kept on the cloud, your local one is only on your computer which is a good reminder to also have a backup copy of your files as well.

And a helpful source of modding tools and guides for the previous games - https://companyofheroes.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/245191/big-coh-modding-mapmaking-tools-and-tutorials-list

What is ebps and what can you do with it

After you've opened up the EE and loaded up the Attributes you will most likely land here. Entity blueprints (ebps for short) are just that, entities. What I mean by that is when talking about entities we mean the actual models within a squad for example. So we don't say that a squad has 5 models for example, we say that a squad has 5 entities. I know modder lingo is probably not on many peoples' priorities but I'm just trying to get us all one the same track here so nobody is left confused when I talk about something here.

The ebps section of the EE handles the entity side of things, meaning for example the population and manpower cost of each individual entity in a squad, what weapon an entity has plus other things which should be explored in your own time because listing every single little thing here would take days and I doubt anybody would read it anyway. Most importantly, here is where you edit your structures, meaning about the production buildings and emplacements/defenses.

The first example of what you can do with the ebps will be for the production buildings -



This is the most basic of things, the spawner, or in other words the section where units are listed for production within the building. A quick note that the "reinforce_radius=30" part of the code is what enables an entity to reinforce as well, in case that you want to give the ability to let's say the 250 Halftrack to reinforce.



Here is also a handy little picture guide of the column and row numbers so it's easier for you to imagine what will go where, keep in mind that buildings often have the rally point set at column 4 row 2 while as is the case with structures the back button is located at column 4 row 3 -



I apologize in advance for those with OCD like me but this is the best I could do in paint. Anyway, the coordinates mapped out like this become simple, with the number in blue indicating the column position while the number in red indicates the row position. So for example if you put a unit or a building or an ability at column 3 row 3 you will now have a bit more of an idea where it will actually go. I would also advise the use of excel spreadsheets to further ease mapping of ability, unit and building menus for larger mods.

Another thing which entities and more specifically again in this case, production building have are abilities. I'm pointing this out because this plays a somewhat big role in this game compared to previous titles in the franchise -

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As you can see these are the abilities of the DAK HQ building, what all HQs have in common is the auto-reinforce ability as well as the auto-build ones for their respective factions.

Some however have additional ones, such as the Wehrmacht Infanterie Quarters having the conversation for the Grenadiers to either Panzergrenadiers or Jägers -



Or the British with their vehicle withdraw in the Company Command post -



A couple of things I would like to note here, first off is that the British in the normal matches use the British_Africa ebps and sbps sections, the normal British ones are ONLY for the campaign so don't waste your time trying to change the regular brit files. The other thing is that building, units, abilities and upgrades often have different names in the files compared to what you see in the game so keep that in mind that what you're looking for to change might not be named as you may imagine it.

Moving on, back to the DAK's Light Support Kompanie building ebps we have the upgrades list -



This is where all building and defensive structures/emplacement upgrades are dictated from.

Speaking of which, moving on to said defensive structures and emplacements, we have the entity_blueprint which is the actual model that you see in the game -



This is an example of the DAK Base defense MG bunker, note that it's a different entity compared to the one which is enabled by the Italian Infantry battlegroup so it can have it's own price and requirements. Entities of moving units also have the alternative_sua listed here as well which links their respective file in the Art.sga which is where all of the game's models are located in.

These are the basics of ebps modding, a final word here will be a repeat of what I wrote before for the actual process of said modding. Currently the tools are extremely limited in what they allow us to do, if you want to read more about that you can help yourself here - https://knowledge-center.community.companyofheroes.com/article/Tuning_Packs/Tuning_Packs/Capabilities_and_Limitations

But basically summed up in a few words, we cannot create anything new, only clone and change already existing things, doesn't matter if they're ebps, sbps, abilities or upgrades. Meaning that if you want to change something you need to reference the vanilla game file and not your mod's one. This is important because otherwise no changes will take effect as the game will not read your mod's files. Also keep in mind that the common and default sections are what you want to edit in whatever file you're changing, the sp one does nothing as it's for the single player campaign which we can't access, at least currently.

What is sbps and what can you do with it

Squad blueprints, or again sbps in short, are the actual moving units that you have in the game. This is where almost all units have their abilities, upgrades, structures they can build and loadouts listed.

We will begin with looking at loadouts in the sbps section of a squad which dictates what entities there are in said squad -



As you can see here listed in the DAK's assault grenadiers' squad's sbps we have the unit_list which contains 5 of the assault grenadier ebps entities.

By comparison, the US Riflemen also have a squad leader/officer entity with a different weapon listed here as well -



So you can have different entities, all in the same squad. Just again, make sure that after whatever changes you do to said entities, the sbps is referencing the default game's ebps, not your mod's ones. Also for those that are wondering what the female chance thing is, it's a random number generator (RNG) for the possibility of spawning female entities within a squad which is left over code from Company of Heroes 2 where there was a chance for a female Soviet sniper team to spawn instead of a male one, so just a quick note there.

The abilities and upgrades sections here are the same as in the ebps so I will not mention them again, however something more unique is the structures they can build list, called the squad_engineer -



Previously in the 2 other games there were 2 types of construction groups, for the engineer units at least. One was for base buildings while the other was, as is the sole case here, defenses/emplacements. I'm just mentioning it here for those with prior modding experience from either CoH and/or CoH2 to bring you up to speed. Take note that defenses such as sandbags, barbed wire and mines have different versions for both the engineer and mainline infantry units with different requirements. Those for the regular infantry are often locked behind tech requirements, just keep that in mind if they're not showing up.

squad_formation as the name suggests deals with the squad's formation, some units such as the Wehrmacht Stormtroopers for instance have this unique 4 man diamond one which might cause issues with infinite loading times in matches, something which I will address in it's own section later, if you give them a 5th squad member -



The simple fix is to just copy and paste a bigger squad's formation, like the Grenadiers' one for example. Credits go to Achronos on the CoH discord server mentioning it because I stumbled upon the same exact problem when I tried to edit the pioneeers -



Next up in the spbs we have squad_requirement section which lists the requirements in order to produce said unit. We'll take the British Guards here as an example of what something like that looks like -



There are different types of requirements, the most simple one is required_player_upgrade. Another one is require_any or require_all in list, the names speak for themselves I believe. In order not to break the AI I've used require_any with my own edited tech locks as well as the ones the game uses. How effective that is exactly is not entirely known to me because I've noticed that the AI does random things most of the time but so far I haven't seen it producing heavy tanks for example and we sadly cannot edit the AI from tuning packs as far as I'm aware, only through game modes, at least currently. Another type of requirement is the required_squad which limits a unit to a certain amount, more on that later.

squad_speech is obviously what the game assigns as voice files for units, I'm just pointing it out because I've noticed that certain ones don't have any speech although the code is listed like for the DAK mortar team, Wehrmacht Officer and a few of the British units as well such as their own Officer, Sniper and SAS Commandos.

Lastly, we come to the squad_ui which much like the ebps ui_ext section contains all of the ui information for said squad, or again entity in the case of the ebps -



As it's evident in the Canadian infantry section's case you can see where the description and icon lines are at. Further down that are not visible on the picture are the portrait and screen_name lines which dictate the portrait picture and name of the unit in the game respectively.

What are abilities and upgrades and what you can do with them

Abilities much like the ebps and sbps sections have their actions, costs, requirements and UI codes.

I will not go much further as they are mostly tied to SCAR (Scripting At Relic) so their functions are a bit unknown to me at present, basically I'm trying to say is that in order to edit abilities you need to be a bit more experience in knowing of the game's code. Plus we can't really make any new abilities right now either way.

However I will mention the unit caps which are mostly tied to the battlegroup call-ins within the game currently, namely for the Tigers and Churchill Black Prince -



As you can see in the picture besides the tech requirements you also have the required_squad line which I mentioned previously in the sbps section with the max_squad_cap indicating the amount that you can produce of a certain unit.

The same goes for upgrades, which are also pretty straight forward given their name, they also have their requirements, costs, ui, ui position but what I want to note is that they also have this special little line called ui_production_group which indicates whether or not this upgrade is listed in the upgrade panel of a unit or building or the production one, as an example I will show one of the DAK Armory upgrades which occupies such a unit production spot in it's menu -



As you can see highlighted is the line of code which does exactly that. I'm mentioning it here because I found it rather useful to free up some space for more production of units given our limited circumstances of the tools not allowing us to edit the HQ building or add new ones.

Game modes and SCAR

I will not go too much into detail here right now because of my extremely limited knowledge and experience in terms of game modes which uses SCAR (Scripting At Relic), a lua based programming language used in many of the game's currently mostly locked areas and systems, however this might come in useful - https://knowledge-center.community.companyofheroes.com/category/Game_Modes

In general game modes are secondary mods that you can select within a lobby system and they go far and beyond normal tuning pack modding, they're more complex and time consuming and require basic if not extensive programming knowledge and experience.

A few good examples that I can give here are the following -

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937361656

GameModes+ provides additional resource and population cap options in the game lobby.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937361544

CheatCommands does what it says on the tin and provides you with abilities you would not normally have in the game with which you can for example test your tuning pack, strats and so on and so forth.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2942790265

AdvancedAI again does what it says by giving you additional options for the AI in the lobby.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2979655924 and https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984660419

Now these are pretty interesting, apparently their creator, The Quban, seems to be an ex-Relican and created these custom mini-dynamic campaigns all through the use of SCAR and what I'm assuming is knowledge as well as experience of what's possible within the game because he worked on it himself. Fascinating stuff and I hope to see some German ones one day as well.

Map making

Again same as the Game Modes, I have limited experience and knowledge here but I will currently mention a couple of things.

First off there's this, which might come in handy - https://knowledge-center.community.companyofheroes.com/category/Crafted_Maps

Second, before this game both CoH and CoH2 came with what was known as a "WorldBuilder" which was the previous map making tool that shipped with the game. So if you would like to find more literature on the matter looking for some World Builder guides might come in handy on older places on the internet, the original game had loads of those but sadly most of the websites are either jumbled or gone but you still might be lucky and find some.

There is also this video series on world building in CoH3 by GBPirate, here are some videos from there -

And the playlist itself -

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuTgUUQqa_aMasDyO5YUvk2V5mLabmxjR

How to enable higher and lower camera zoom

Taken from this topic - https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/forums/11-coh3-modding/threads/3619-change-camera-zoom?page=1

In order to change the amount that you can zoom in or out with the camera you need to edit the distance_max and distance_min values in the cam_module_isometric within the default, default_camera and default_multiplayer in the camera attributes like shown here -



I also believe this is mentioned in the official modding documentation on the CoH website as well.

How to enable forward barracks in ambient buildings

Originally I believed that this was actually an upgrade but it turned out it was an ability instead so I decided to make it it's own little section here for those who were confused like me.

CoH2 had a commander ability for this while in the original CoH it was something that every ambient building gave you as an option to do for the US, Wehrmacht and Panzer Elite. Either way, here is how you actually do it -



Because as you can see in the picture there are no normal requirements I used the search function to look for other possible such code lines and found this so I removed the common value which says "varies" in the highlighted "statetree_node_prereq_self_requirement" code line in order to re-enable you to convert neutral ambient buildings into forward headquarters/barracks.

There is however another such requirement code line found in the casting_options section as you can see here -



And the result -



Just a note however that for some reason having a garrisoned unit disables the auto-reinforce ability -



I'm not entirely sure what it does for now at least but I'm just happy that I could enable this which was actually in the game during the pre-alpha preview and also of course in the original game, being one of my favorite functions there. Customizing the build menu for unit production continues to elude me however, only the US and British have forward barracks listed in the ebps section but editing them does nothing from what I've noticed. I just gave the friendly territory requirement to the ability for now as to prevent abuse but this will require further investigation on how to edit exactly.

Further more it appears that it depends what buildings you're trying to convert as well. Safehouses will give the US and British Partisan safe houses from the campaign with their respective upgrades and partisan units, while the Wehrmacht and DAK get nothing. I also tried to edit said ebps of the safe houses but I got nothing so I think it's really interesting how they made it and how it works exactly, seems like some voodoo magic right now.

Edit: There's been an update since I last made this section, now that we can edit the "army" attributes we can find and modify what units are available for us to spawn in the 3 different types of neutral buildings that I mentioned previously once we have them converted into a forward barracks -



As you can see, The field_support_production_styles will be our ticket in the Army tab for doing that.

How to give units the ability to follow other units

This is actually pretty simple but I've found it to be very useful for command and support units such as officers, command tanks, halftracks and logistic trucks as well as AA units -



The highlighted line in the captain's sbps is the ability. This was also a function from the original CoH that I sorely missed in CoH2 which the British Cromwell Command Tank had in order to follow the Sherman Fireflies around so they could shoot a bit more often than just every 5 minutes.

How to make mobile HQs for DAK

In this section we will be looking at bringing this original idea back, why for DAK you may ask? The answer is quiet simple, we are limited to using already existing abilities and upgrades due to the locked state trees.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's get down to business.

We will be looking at 3 separate categories here and 13 different things, starting with the abilities tab -



The autobuild "station" abilities are what we will be looking at here. For the record these 4 are the ones that I used, besides the infantry, mechanized and panzer support there are 2 additional ones in the form of the heavy_weapons_support and the observation_post_250, however I couldn't find what exactly they were pointing towards in terms of entities so I haven't touched them. Speaking of entities -



Once again we have 4, with the exceptions here being the medical and repair stations. These are the building used by the abilities as "mobile HQs" but they were set up in a strange way so what I did was just copy and pasted over the code from the production buildings to simplify things. Do note however that we will want to keep them somewhat unique and thus separate with new upgrades for example, so there is a reason why we're not directly using the base building autobuild abilities instead. Also, the UI will be part of the sbps which we come to here -



The 250 "medical" halftrack will be our horse, and carriage, in this instance. Apparently that medical_station_250 autobuild ability that we saw in the beginning was meant to spawn a triage center and the unpack ability specifically mentions the 250 as well as spawns it in compared to the regular logistics_packuo ability which does nothing so that's why we will be using the previous one instead -



And because we want the 250 to actually have the Opel Blitz truck model which is also featured in the DAK base buildings we will want to clone it's ebps and replace the entity animator here -



And voila, we have our mobile HQ truck -



With the field base building deployed -



Just don't forget the requirements on the abilities and of course the UI data. And for the record, this isn't as elegant as the setting up animations for both the British HQ trucks from the original CoH or the OKW ones from CoH2 and the AI can't use them, however given our limited tools and options it will have to do, at least for now.

How to remove unit limits

Not to be confused by the population cap (also known as pop cap for short) which is only editable through a game mode.

This is most commonly asked and used for things such as heavy tanks, because we all love watching Tigers and Black Princes brawl in large numbers.

We will begin with the Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK) Tiger first and because it's a special call-in unit not normally produced through a building we need to find it in the ability section and remove the limit requirement which is what we're after here -



Next we have the Black Prince which is a Battlegroup call in that has a similar requirement to the DAK Tiger as we can see in the picture below, just keep in mind we are looking for the Africa version but you can remove both if you feel like it -



Lastly we have the Werhmacht Tiger which is as simple as the Black Prince -



The US unfortunately does not have a heavy tank currently so they will be absent in this section, at least for now.

That about wraps it up, remember that this is basically the same for any limits which outside of the abilities like here are most often also found in the sbps of said units.

Update:

So apparently after the 2.0 Anniversary there is a new line of code that needs to be removed as well in order for the limits to be gone as DroppinDead puts it -

"Relic for some arcane reason added an new parameter to all the new heavies abilities called "statetree_node_prereq_self_recharge_requirement". All it does is stop the recharge from starting so remove that"

How to change starting units

Credits go to KevinTDW on the official CoH discord server for bringing it up.

This is most commonly done for the US with their Scouts being replaced by Engineers, as was in the original game.

Here's how exactly you can do this which is simply by going to the Army attributes and cloning whichever faction's section you want to edit and then replacing said unit like I've done here -



And voila -



For the record, I'm guessing you can also do this for the base defenses that spawn at the start of a match, let's say if you want to replace the MG bunkers/nests with either a flak emplacement or AT one, however I haven't tried it out yet so feel free to experiment.

How to enable bunkers and MG nests to be garrisonable

This goes mostly for the Wehrmacht MG42, Medical and Repair bunkers as well as the US fighting position .30 cal version.

Contrary to popular belief simply searching for "garrison" in the structure's ebps will not yield the results that you wish, for that you will need to actually look for "hold" instead like so -



And more specifically, you need to edit this part of the code which indicates the amount of individual models as well as squads that can enter said structure -



If there is no "hold_ext" in the structure's ebps as is normally the case for the Wehrmacht specialist bunkers for example, you will need to create it. I suggest simply copying the code from the regular bunker to save time, and in my case, I upped the squad limit to 2 instead of 1 like it was in the original game.

And here are the results -

How to swap turrets and weapons of units

Again credits go to my friend KingDarBoja, I was un-successful while trying to put the DAK Flak 88 emplacement instead of the 20mm of the Flak Halftrack and crane of the recovery vehicle but he seems to have been able to manage a bit better than me -

How to edit and create an emplacement

The first example that will be given here is that of editing an emplacement, which is faster and easier.

As stated in the ebps section already, the construction_ext lists the squad which spawns inside the emplacement.

While the entity_blueprint lists the actual emplacement model itself.

Currently the British have a 17 pounder emplacement, but it's not actually present in the game and it's a bit broken, but with a couple of fixes we can make it working again like so -



In the place of the hmg_next that you see above you need to put an actual emplacement model instead, I've taken the one from the 25 pounder from here -

attachments\attachment_lists\environment\objects\defenses\sandbags\sandbag_emplacement_01

Afterwards I just removed 2 models from the crew of the 17 pounder squad inside it's sbps that was spawned once the emplacement was built so they wouldn't move around too much and take up more pop cap as well and added it to the Sappers.

Next we have actually making an emplacement, for this our genuine pig will be the German LeFH 18 or 105mm howitzer as it's stated in the files since we can't can't actually create new entities or squads right now, only edit existing ones as stated previously.

The emplacement itself is actually fine and working right now and you can spawn it from the Cheat mod, the problem is that it's just the American M2 105mm howitzer emplacement, apparently either the LeFH 18 model was forgotten or just never made and is something left for the future.

Either way the process is a bit lengthy but I managed to make the Obice da 210/22 working in the game, it's the coastal gun battery model found inside the Italian campaign -

However the Saphire Jackel update changed up the models and broke it a bit but following this guide from CoH2 managed to fix it a little bit, however keep in mind that it's not 1:1 as some things are different between the 2 games and their respective tools so you'll need to play around with it a little bit - https://www.coh2.org/guides/81345/25-pounder-emplacement-modding-guide

How to transfer units to other factions

Most commonly used for switching German units between the 2 current Axis Armies in the game, those being of course the Wehrmacht and Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK).

This is well explained below by Starbuck -



And some picture examples -

How to make squads more than 6 or 7 members

So this is going to be a bit of a continuation of the small snippet for formations found in the sbps section.

To recap, there's some sort of bug where some formations do not allow you to have more than a certain amount of entities within a squad, as is the case with the Pioneers for example or the Stormtrooper 4 man diamond one. Upon an attempt to load into a match you just load infinitely.

Now, as mentioned above this bug was resolved for the 3/4 man squads already, but what if you wanted to go over 6? Well this is what we're going to answer here.

After I became more interested in this myself I stumbled upon this discussion in the CoH discord and decided to ask Überchad, who was nice enough to answer that he was actually able to do it and describe how exactly -



And I can confirm this actually works after doing it myself like so for the Grenadiers at first as a test -


First with 10 entities -



And after that 12 to see if it would work and if 10 was the hardcoded limit as the code suggests, turns out it wasn't -



So that's about it for having more than 6 entities in a squad, I'll also leave a link on the old CoH modding forums here for anyone interested in making more historically accurate squads -

https://web.archive.org/web/20141013231729/http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?130209-Historical-Squad-sizes-and-Equipment

How to replace the main menu background and music

Taken from the Company of Heroes reddit by the user "ProofFun2514" as he explains it -

1. Find a video or background.

2. Convert original game main menu .webm to .mp4.

3. Open it with video editor and edit it with your own video or background.

4. Save as mp4 and convert it to webm again.

5. Name it as FG_Smoke_2k_30FPS_WEBM and replace original main menu background.

Example -



I would also post a video but I sadly cannot upload it here. And just for the record going by memory the same was possible in CoH2 with the faction specific flag themes there as well.

How to add custom 2D assets (icons and portraits)

Apparently the powers that be have granted us the ability to add our own custom 2D assets, and here's how found by SneakEye and confirmed by StarBuck -





Also here's some custom 2D icons made by NicePersonsGarden on reddit that you could use to try it out unless you already have some assets -

Where to dig through the files for art

I imagine people would be interested in where either the models or 2D (UI, HUD, etc.) art for the game would be so here is the easy answer -



You just click on File, Open and then go to here for the game's Art.sga which contains all of the 3D models -



The same place also contains the UI.sga, which has all of the game's 2D art -



A shoutout to KingDarBoja from the CoH website and discord server, I actually met him on there in the modding channel when I posted the video about the Obice 210, cool guy -

https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/forums/11-coh3-modding/threads/3947-how-can-i-extract-images-such-as-unit-icons-unit-portraits-skill-icons-etc-from-the-game?page=1#post-22689

And he was also nice enough to provide this link with all of them already extracted as well - https://github.com/cohstats/coh3-cdn/tree/master/public/export/icons/races

How to open mod .sga files

If you like what you've seen in another mod and would like to see how it was done you can open it's compressed .sga file to somewhat do that, however you cannot directly copy over the function so just keep that in mind.

Your subscribed mods can be found in your Documents\My Games\Company of Heroes 3\mods\extension\subscriptions folder.

You will see a few numbers there representing the mods you've subscribed to, Steam assigns these numbers to each item uploaded to it's system and there are 2 ways in which you can see them. You either need to open the mod's workshop item that you want to look at in your browser, or enable the address bar from your Steam settings inside the application.

Afterwards there's 3 ways to open said .sga files.

First is directly from your EE using the Open function there.

Second is a method which I've personally tried and can vouch for Company of Heroes 2 but I'm guessing can also work for CoH3 if the first one is unsuccessful - https://steamcommunity.com/app/231430/discussions/0/541906348043471021/

Third is this using some third party community tools which I haven't tried out but if the first 2 fail I guess it's worth a shot - https://companyofheroes.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/244202/need-help-recovering-files-and-getting-back

Again this is strictly for learning purposes, you cannot directly use anything that you see and even if you could please don't steal other people's work, modding communities are small as it is and it only takes a few minutes at the most to ask for permission to use people's work which they will most likely grant in most cases, there's rarely where you will be told a simple "No", especially without a valid reason.

Also remember to credit said people for their work, as you would probably want to be done with your work as well.

How to upload a mod to the workshop and give it a thumbnail

Because the thumbnail part might not be so straightforward here is where I picked it up from, credits go to MidnightChems on the coh2.org forums who got it from somebody from the official CoH website -

https://www.coh2.org/topic/111233/coh-3-how-to-setup-workshop-thumbnail

"Call the image "mod.png" & put it in your mod folder named "assets", same place as the mod.rdo & _default.burnproj files. The dimensions must be divisible by 4 e.x 1024x1024".

As for uploading or updating a mod, you just need to go to the game's "Mods" tab and then right click on your mod in order to do that as shown here -



Just keep in mind that every time you update a mod however that the description will be reverted to what you originally wrote in the EE's box when you first created the mod so I suggest you make a simple little text document with your description so you can just copy and paste it after each update.

Ending notes

Welp, this is it for now.

As mentioned previously I will continue to add and improve to this guide as time goes on and my experience grows but for now after making my Expanded mod for the game - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943814397 And learning a lot I decided to make this handy little guide for those with questions, like myself, as I did for some other games as well.

As always, feedback as well as suggestions and ideas are appreciated that you can share here on our discord server - https://discord.gg/cNpU9fmHyB

[Armored Baron]

SP stands for single player yes, thanks for pointing out something which I might have skipped to mention.

[BenBacaar]

Ah that's ok, I think I found where my problem came from: there are three columns for the modifications 'common', 'default' and 'sp'.

I thought 'default' showed the base values and 'sp' was for the values we want to change. But in fact, the three columns are modifiable! ^^' And 'sp' must concern the game in 'Single Player' mode, right?

Sorry for the inconvenience !

[BenBacaar]

No, I didn't use the HQ.

To be exact, I added 'spawn_item' in the 'barracks_africa_uk' entity (which I cloned). I assigned columns and rows to them (thanks to your table) and I indicated the type of squad to use (attributes\sbps\races\british_africa\infantry\canadian_heavy_infantry_africa_uk).

Is there anything else to do?

The only difference with the default building is in: 'construction_ext/on_construction_complete_state_tree_refs/on_construction_complete_entity_state_tree_ref' => its value is 'event_cue_library\entity_construction_events\construction_complete', while in my clone there is no value.

Then save, build, and test in game by selecting my mod (local)

I modified the camera also which lets me know that my mod is well supported

I took the time to read your tutorial before coming to bother you. ^^' Unfortunately, my English is not perfect, maybe I misunderstood something.

[Armored Baron]

If by British Command Post you mean their HQ then sadly you will need to add them to somewhere else because as far as I'm aware you're still not able to add new units to the HQs as I've also written here.

[BenBacaar]

Otherwise, an archive containing some basic examples with the source files (not the .sgb ^^) would be ideal to explore and understand on our own. It could serve as a role model for many people in my situation.

From experience, I was able to learn a lot of things by dissecting the maps of the different players on COH2, which allowed me to create a rather correct map. :)

[BenBacaar]

Hi.
First of all, thank you very much for your tutorial.

I am new to modding and would like to create my first mod for COH3. The one you made represents a colossal job.

However, I would like to start with something simpler. I tried to apply your advice to add Canadian troops to the British command post... Unfortunately, there is an information that I misunderstood or a step that I must have forgotten because I added the units but they do not appear in play.

I imagine you have other things to do, but I would like to take advantage of your knowledge. If you have any links to tutorials that detail these steps a bit more, I would appreciate it.

Thanks again for the work you do. I will continue to dig the subject on my side while waiting for a return from your part.

See you soon. :)

[Armored Baron]

Heh, thank you but I double it as it's not getting nearly enough publicity for it to have a big enough impact to actually do anything for the game besides maybe just inspiring a few more people to try and mod it.

I'm thinking of making a video about it as well but I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment with a lot of other things.

[Faux]

hopefully you may save this game with this guide

[Like A Ninja]

Thx for the tutorial.

[Armored Baron]

Only way to do it is to manually copy over the UI text.

That's why I tried to premptively copy an ability first and then the unit that it's tied to to avoid doing that. It's also pretty much the same with everything else that has a dependence. I'm not sure why this isn't done automatically already.