BZCC: How to Start Modding

This guide has been designed to teach anyone on how to start modding with BZCC. This covers the very basics on how to get started, and will include links to other guides that will be helpful when getting started.

Recommended Tools

For this guide, I will be following the old method of how mods were run in Battlezone 2, and how to set up a mod config file, and a shortcut, so you can mount your content on top of the base game assets, and get started.

Recommended tools:

• A decent IDE (such as Visual Studio Code, Notepad++, or Sublime Text). Basically, something that isn't Notepad.

Please follow the below information. I have created separate messages so I can include images during this guide.

Creating the mod config file

To begin your mod, you need to navigate to your Battlezone: Combat Commander directory, and find the bzone.cfg file. When you have found it, make a copy of the file, as this is what is used by a shortcut to run your mod.

This is what the file contains:

During a recent lesson, we covered this file, and I have created a copy of the default bzone.cfg and named it bzone_tut.cfg for the tutorial. You don't have to follow this naming scheme, though, you can call it whatever best suits your mod. Some examples:

• For the G66 mod: bzone_g66.cfg
  
• For the BZCC:R mod: bzone_x.cfg
  
• For the ZTV Long Journey mod: bzone_ztv.cfg

I would recommend that you keep the prefix of bzone_ to make it easier to identify later on.
Before we create our own copy of the default config, we need a new folder in our directory for our mod. For this guide, I have created a new folder called TutorialMod:
Now that the TutorialMod folder has been created, we can go ahead and set up a new bzone.cfg file for the mod. As previously mentioned, I have created a bzone_tut.cfg file for this guide:

Here is the contents of my config file:

There are two lines that have been highlighted with a blue arrow:

• The first arrow isn't too important, but what this will do is create a sub-folder in My Documents/My Games/Battlezone: Combat Commander/. As I have this line enabled, when I launch the game with my mod, it will create a sub-folder for my mod in the directory like this: My Documents/My Games/Battlezone: Combat Commander/Tutorial-Mod. Any logs, such as AIP logs, saves, etc, will be placed in this folder by the game for your mod.
  
  
• The second line is the most important line. AddDirRecurse tells the game to "Mount" a directory when it launches, and loads all content within that folder. Notice there are two lines for this: AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\TutorialMod");, AddDirRecurse("@rootdir\bz2r_res");. The first one mounts my mod content, and the second one mounts the main resources folder for the Battlezone: Combat Commander game.

Now you might be curious, why do I mount my mod folder before the base game resources? Well, it's simple; the config is executed in a sequential order, meaning that because my mod folder is "mounted" before the base game resources in the CFG file, it will load my mod content first, and then the base game resources. This is especially useful if you want to make any UI changes, as the game will read your modified copy of the UI first, before the base game version.

Creating the mod shortcut

The next step is the simplest step. Once you have created and configured your mods config file, you can then create a shortcut to tell the game to run it via the /config command line argument.

To do this, first, create a shortcut from the battlezone2.exe, and rename it to whatever you think is relevant.

Once you have your shortcut, right click on it, go to properties. Make sure the "shortcut" tab is selected in the properties window if it hasn't been selected already.

When the shortcut properties window is open, you will see a target value, that will look something like this: D:\Steam\steamapps\common\BZ2R\battlezone2.exe.

To get the shortcut to register your mod, simply add the following to the end of the target value: /config <YOUR_CFG_NAME>. In this example, as my CFG file is named bzone_tut.cfg, my shortcut target would look like this: D:\Steam\steamapps\common\BZ2R\battlezone2.exe /config bzone_tut.cfg.

And that's it! You can now launch your game with that shortcut, and it will mount the new folder we created, meaning you can now get to work on your mod.

FAQ

Will I get bad assets if I play the normal game?

Nope! That's the beauty of Battlezone being modular. If you want to play a normal game, just simply open up Steam/GOG, and launch it as you normally would. Your new folders/files will not cause any issues, as they have not been loaded into the game.

I tried launching my game with my shortcut, but it doesn't run. What's happening?

One thing I have noticed that is the possible cause, is Steam. Steam doesn't prevent the launch, but it will warn you that you are running the Battlezone .exe with custom arguments from the shortcut. If you are trying to launch your mod, and nothing is happening, check your Steam client, as it may have popped up with a warning.

If you are not experiencing this with Steam, feel free to ask in this forum and we can help you out.

I am having some issues getting started, and I have followed this guide. Can someone help?

Most certainly. You can join our Discord and ask questions there: Discord[discord.gg]

I have completed the guide. What next?

Ultimately, that is your choice, but I do have some recommendations if you want to get started with the basics before jumping into anything major.

• ODFs: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1423355866
  
• AIPs: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1451714014
  
• UI: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1497464096

I personally find that the above 3 are the easiest to start modding. They are not that advanced, and are quite easy to learn when you commit the time.

If you want to try something more advanced:

• https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1488402495

[FeiXy]

Hey, i saw your guide and it inspired me to try modding myself for the first time. Problem is I ran into a problem with your step of attacnhig the .cfg to the shortcut. I tried changing the target value but it keeps giving me an error that its not valid and displays the path as ".../config " instead of the .cfg name. Is it something like a windows problem due to recent updates? Would be happy about a reply :D