From the frigid cold of the Eastern Front to...
Back around 2016, I started working on what would be the “Wargamer Scenario Depot” Project; trying to preserve as much digital gaming history as I can before it's lost.
I'm in my forties, so I was pretty young and 'in' the scene(s) back in the day of the late 1990s and early 2000s when so many things were going on as it was a time of great creativity for game mods/scenarios that had been unlocked by the potential of the 2000s internet to somewhat distribute 20-30 MB files to anyone across the world relatively cheaply.
You had Operation Flashpoint's FFUR, the Shipsets and Carrier Battles Mod for Space Empires IV, early releases of Steel Panthers World At War and the SPCAMO DOS versions of Steel Panthers: WW2 and Steel Panthers: MBT.
NWS [Naval Warfare Simulations] was doing the NWP [Naval Warfare Project] for Fleet Command and the FSP [Fighting Steel Project] for Fighting Steel after obtaining the source code for Fighting Steel from the original devs to keep Fighting Steel alive.
The Close Combat series had tons of mods like RealRed for CC3; and European Air War had total conversions enabling you to play:
From
the frigid cold of the Eastern Front to...
...the
blistering hot sands of North Africa.
It's now 2023; some twenty six years later, and the internet is terrifying in its seeming permanence, coupled with its impermanence.
Websites last for 20 years (Rugged Defense for The Operational Art of War [TOAW]) and then disappear.
Websites die when the owner dies and he can't renew the web hosting from the grave.
Websites die when the hosting service does an "oops"; and the owner, even though he's still alive, wasn't able to keep detailed backups of the database(s) -- this is something common with interactive Web 2.0 websites; as shown by the first iteration of the Scenario Depot for Combat Mission in the screenshots below:
The
First Iteration of the Scenario Depot (TSD I), showing the Web 2.0
interactivity that ultimately doomed it...
...as
shown here. The owner would later create The Scenario Depot II (TSD
II), but a good amount of data was lost.
People developed mods for games, and distributed them through an impermanent web link or dodgy filesharing service; leading to the common scenario playing itself out over dozens of game forums:
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Person A: "Hey, does anyone still have X for $Insert_Game_Name$ ?" Person B: "Yeah sure, here, let me put it up on my webspace or on a random download server like Mega.NZ" <five years pass> Person C enters the thread and gets excited. Person C: "The link doesn't work anymore!" *pause* Person C: "Hey, does anyone still have X for $Insert_Game_Name$ ?" |
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A nice example of this dynamic is Bill Nichol's 688(I)'s Custom Missions, shown by the exchange below from Subsim (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=119919) |
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Howdy, anyone know where I could download all the 688i custom missions? Looks like Bill Nichols had a bunch at one time. I saw a link stating Over 200 custom missions from Bill Nichols and the VNC for 688i, but cant seem to find the download for it. Thanks for any info. Lonny |
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After a number of computer replacements, I seem to have lost my 688i custom missions. I know I've sent CDs to people in the past, certainly someone has those missions laying around. Bill Nichols |
Today, people just use Google Drive and DropBox (cheap, reliable and stays up for a while with decent filesizes), which has solved a lot of the problems in stable mod distribution; but people didn't have a lot of options in the early 2000 to 2010s for large files.
Seemingly permanent landmarks of the web; such as the Wargamer Scenario Depot; which were so seemingly permanent that game companies (Matrix Games) linked to them disappear and die.
While the Wargamer brand is still around at (www.wargamer.com), the site has gone through about three different changes in ownership/staff and at this point anything it had from the earlier iteration is gone.
This is what the Wargamer Scenario Depot had as of 2014 or 2015, shortly before it died – somewhere along the way, scenario uploading had been broken; so new scenarios weren't being uploaded for several years.
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Age of Empires (3) |
Elsewhere, in 2020, YahooGroups dissolved and shut down everything. There was a lot of early wargaming stuff maintained in the files of various YahooGroups, because it went from 2001-2020.
To give you an example of how this impacted the digital history of gaming, I was only able to recover a 745 scenario, 31 campaign compendium for SSI's Age of Rifles because long ago, I joined an Age of Rifles related YahooGroup, and downloaded it, keeping it on my hard drive; so when YahooGroups went poof, I still had the data.
But even before the Second Age of the Internet in the mid to late 1990s; there was the First Age of the Internet (yay, a Tolkien reference!).
It used to be a long time ago; when people got modems for their computers, they'd use phone lines to dial into other computers running Bulletin Board System (BBS) software, to exchange files or play primitive shared online games (BBS Door Games).
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This user edited scenario originated from the Harpoon Scenario Editor BBS; operating it's terminal at 718-746-7466 in ANSI emulation (2400/1200 N-8-1) using A WWIV TERMINAL VERSION 4. Sometimes you may find Procomm Plus terminal up when sysop is conducting other business. However this terminal also accesses the directory with the HARPOON SCENARIO WAREHOUSE files. On July 16, 1990 the Harpoon Scenario Editor BBS Warehouse was started as a place where a central point could be maintained for the uploading and downloading of the Harpoon Game edited scenarios. As interest and usage of the BBS grew. The BBS improved it's service and terminal to a full fledge BBS on October 2, 1990. The BBS will continue to work on improving the terminal and services as long as interest continues for Harpoon scenarios. The true test of success will be the users and plenty of uploads of scenarios made by members with the Scenario Editor. Feel free to call at anytime to upload any scenario you wish to share and download some more for your pleasure, and share this scenario with others. When you connect to the BBS and you are a first time user type in "NEW" and follow the prompts for initialization as a member. Veterans of the original Pro-comm Plus terminal will also have to reinitialize onto the new WWIV terminal. Correspondence can be mailed to 19-21 Clintonville ST. Whitestone, New York 11357 To save callers time on line; the following files have been made: HARPTEXT.ZIP/ARC - File containing all text files associated with the edited scenarios available for downloading GIUKTEXT.ZIP/ARC - File containing all text files for scenarios to be played under the GIUK battleset. NACVTEXT.ZIP/ARC - File containing all text files for scenarios to be played under the NACV battleset. HARPBB.TXT - File containing information regarding the Harpoon Edited Scenario BBS. BBGUIDE.ZIP/ARC - file containing the WWIV terminal manual explaining the commands and menus used. |
There were also "national" BBS like systems such as CompuServe, Prodigy and America OnLine; which maintained special file areas, as per the Harpoon I FAQ from 1994 on where to find Harpoon scenarios in 1994:
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On CompuServe, in GAMERS forum library 3 (user created scenarios) The Harpoon Scenario Warehouse BBS located near New York City. The BBS can be accessed via modem at 516-829-2557. Currently offline, but likely to reopen once Harpoon II ships. The PC to MAC user scenario convertor is available on CompuServe, in library 15 of the GAMAPUB section |
A big thing for these early BBSes was file sharing (besides Door Games); and by the early 1990s or mid 1990s, many BBS owners had racks of CDROM drives loaded with "shovelware" CDs that provided files on demand.
The Internet Archive has preserved many of these shovelware CDs, and if you know how to look, you can dig up interesting stuff (such as Lucasarts X-Wing / TIE Fighter editors) from the First Age; but a lot of First Age stuff is lost.
There's been a lot of loss of Second Age stuff; because places like the Internet Archive only archived if:
1.) The file in question was popular enough to be clicked on enough to trigger an archival crawl by a web-bot. For example, I was able to save 496 SPWAW scenarios off of the deep backups of the Internet Archive, vs only 61 SPWW2, 124 SPMBT and 1 SP2 scenario. The reason for this is due to the popularity of the games at the time. In the early 2000s; running DOS was becoming harder and harder -- DOSBOX wouldn't come out until January 2002; so SPWAW was more popular at the time; since it was a native Win9x app, so more of its scenarios were saved, versus the pure DOS versions (WW2/MBT and SP2).
2.) The Web crawler bot could access it -- a lot of Internet 2.0 websites liked to "wall off" downloads and such behind a username/password wall -- internet crawlers can only grab what's grabbable by the public.
Elsewhere, there's been a loss of files for a variety of reasons:
1.) We were all young at the time, and Windows broke a lot more. I can't begin to tell you how much data I lost as a kid from Windows 95/98 crashing and requiring a format/reinstall as we didn't have easy technical support from our phones. It's from this I evolved my practice of separate OS and DATA drives in every build I have put together.
2.) We were all young and broke. 30 to 40 year olds look at the price of an external HDD ($100) or a stack of DVDs ($30) and don't bat an eye at paying those costs. But teenagers can't afford to drop money to pay for backups.
3.) Our interests changed. I used to be big into the whole TOTAL ANNIHILATION scene, because Cavedog Entertainment would post official free DLC that added new units that you could download, and other people figured out how to make Total Annihilation mods; which was a "neat" thing back then in like 1997. I didn't keep any Total Annihilation stuff as I moved from PC to PC.
4.) You look at an old CD-R and think “I don't think I'll need this again...”
5.) It was a lot harder to download files -- for a lot of us, we didn't get cable internet and steady connections until well into the early 2000s. Also, mass download plugins weren't easily available (I think) for internet browsers; making downloading say...50 scenarios an exercise in tediousness.
But enough meandering down memory lane about when needed a new heel for my shoe...So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em...
Even though I've been able to recover a lot...I'm in my 40s, and there's a non zero chance I might die, and this probability only increases each year.
A potential solution for long term “storage” for lack of a better word, might be with the Internet Archive. It's funded by a foundation and they seem to be relatively durable; so they're the closest thing to archival on-line storage we might see for some time.
So I started to use the Internet Archive to store files as I recovered, analyzed and catalogued them.
At first, this started out as a project to recover the Wargamer Scenario Depot; but as time went on, it morphed into a general “save the 1990s-2000s modding culture from oblivion”. So there's stuff in here that doesn't quite fit the ethos; or was made after the Wargamer Scenario Depot imploded.
Obviously, I'm not going to try and save every DOOM *.WAD ever made; as I don't have infinite time.
The starting point for my recovery attempts was this site rip by "leonardr" on the Internet Archive:
leonardr's Wargamer Rip (2016-05-14)
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This is my attempt (as of 2016-05-14) to archive the 4833 computer wargame scenarios hosted at the Wargamer's Games Depot and at high risk of being lost. I was able to archive all of the metadata but only 1449 of the scenario files--the rest seem to be already missing. The 1449 scenarios in this pack cover 71 different computer wargames. These are the most common: Steel Panthers: World at War (528 scenarios) The file scenarios.json contains extracted metadata for each scenario, along with the scenario's (possibly broken) download URL and the path to its (possibly empty) file on disk. |
I supplemented it with my own site rips and use of the Internet Archive to recover more data; as well as digging into CDROMs I have lying around.
The Combat Mission x1 series (Beyond Overlord, Barbarossa to Berlin and Afrika Korps) is heavily dependent on graphical mods (especially Beyond Overlord) to look it's best. Additionally, scenarios are a big thing. I've managed to save a significant portion of both (scenarios/graphical mods) and have uploaded them to the Internet Archive.
SCENARIOS
Denhost's CMBO Scenario Collection (Internet Archive) – This 32.4~ MB file used to be hosted on Battlefront.com; containing about 1,625~ scenarios for the original Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord game. Unfortunately, at some point; Battlefront.com changed their website, and the file was "lost in the move" and was lost for many years, until in September 2022, someone contacted me with a copy that they had found on a USB Pen Drive that they'd backed it up to years ago. Now, here it is, backed up on Archive.org; so that it won't be "lost" again.
The Proving Ground (TPG) / The Scenario Depot II (TSD) (Internet Archive) – These were the major CMx1 scenario upload depots; and they have been preserved here. TPG contains: [6 x CMBO, 281 x CMBB, 223 x CMAK Scenarios] and TSD II contains: [52 x CMBO, 587 x CMBB, 527 x CMAK Scenarios]. There's also a decent amount of maps for all three games from both depots.
CMBO Scenarios – I think this corpus constitutes most CMBO scenarios made – Pacific Mod (and Graphics), Rune Pack, Ardennes DeSobry Pack, CMMODS 4.03 (290~ scenarios), CMHQ Depot (306 scenarios), Koen Pack, Rhine Pack, St. Malo Pack, Blitz CMBO Pack, TheGamersNetwork Pack, TLD Scenario Pack, and Zuf's CMBO Pack (1,645 scenarios), etc.
CMBB Scenarios – I think with all this, we have most CMBB scenarios ever made. I've tried to include everything I can; there's too many to describe here; from the Stalingrad Pack, Kursk Pack, Russian Training Set, Denhost CMBB Pack, Philippe CMBB Pack, a Boots & Tracks site rip (scenarios and AARs). Zuf's Scenario Pack with 2,164 (!!!) scenarios; etc.
CMAK Scenarios – I've tried to include everything I can – Philippe's 11-part pack, BFC Companion Scenarios, Boots & Track Pack, Koen Pack, Small Battles Pack, Blitz Pack, Tiny Battles Pack, WBRP Pack, Zuf's Scenario Pack (1,001 Scenarios), etc. I'm confident to say that even though there may be massive amounts of duplicates, this corpus constitutes most CMAK scenarios published.
MODS
Beyond Overlord (CMBO) Mods – On 5-10 May 2021, I cleaned out cmx1mods.greenasjade.net in an attempt to archive as many of the old Combat Mission 1x mods as possible to safeguard against the probability of greenasjade.net disappearing in the near future. I downloaded 458 out of 458 files; and their total size is 1.46 GB. (NOTE: PHILOCMAK-MISC-SOUNDS-FOR-CMBO.zip is bad and “lost”).
Barbarossa to Berlin (CMBB) Mods – On 5-10 May 2021, I cleaned out cmx1mods.greenasjade.net in an attempt to archive as many of the old Combat Mission 1x mods as possible to safeguard against the probability of greenasjade.net disappearing in the near future. I downloaded 1,806 out of 1,811 files; and their total size is 4.35 GB.
Afrika Korps (CMAK) Mods – On 5-10 May 2021, I cleaned out cmx1mods.greenasjade.net in an attempt to archive as many of the old Combat Mission 1x mods as possible to safeguard against the probability of greenasjade.net disappearing in the near future. I downloaded 1,605 out of 1,605 files; and their total size is 4.69 GB.
Combat Mission CMMOS Mods – This was created from an old DVD that I burned with about 3.7 GB of Combat Mission CMMOS data on or around 2004.
They released a few games as a developer (Big Time Software) and acted as publisher (Battlefront.com) for a few more games.
Flight Commander II – This contains the FC2 Demo, FC2 v1.04 patch and the following Scenario Packs:
Hagler11's Scenario Pack (500+ Scenarios)
Big Time Software Scenario Pack (35 scenarios; all the official ones on Big Time Software's website except for the USA Battle Pack of 8 scenarios by Alex Halpern.)
Strategic Command 1 – A few scenarios were recovered.
The classic naval combat sim.
This includes not only scenarios but the actual games themselves per a statement (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4530262) by HPS' Scott Hamilton approving them for free distribution with the proviso:
THERE WILL BE NO SUPPORT PROVIDED BY HPS SIMULATIONS FOR THESE TITLES. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.
The archive contains
Tigers on the Prowl v2.08e
Panthers in the Shadows v1.22e
Broken Alliance v1.03 (26 Mar 1998)
Dragons in the Mist v1.02 (26 Mar 1998)
As well as the following campaign disks:
CAMPAIGN DISK #1 (Tigers) – 7th Panzer Division "Panzers Forward!"
CAMPAIGN DISK #3 (Panthers) - 1st Bn, 1st SS Panzer Rgt "Liebstandarte in Normandy"
CAMPAIGN DISK #5 (Tigers) - PanzerGrenadier Div "Grossdeutschland on the Steppes"
CAMPAIGN DISK #6 (Panthers) - II/8th Pz "Heia Safari!"
CAMPAIGN DISK #8 (Panthers) - Operation SEALION
CAMPAIGN DISK #9 (Panthers) - The Fall of France
CAMPAIGN DISK#10 (Tigers) - KG Peiper in Russia
CAMPAIGN DISK#11 (Panthers) - Rommel in the West
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How to convert old TOAW I/II/WOTY/COW scenarios into TOAW3/TOAW4 scenarios NOTE: It's really helpful if you know how to use Virtual Machine software such as VirtualBox to install the older versions of TOAW before the Matrix Edition(s) into an old Windows XP Virtual Machine. This prevents the 1990s era copy protection found on the discs from contaminating your modern Windows PC. Step 1: Start the original game engine that they were created in. Make sure that the game has been patched up to the final patch. Load the scenario in the scenario editor. Resave it. (Do this step if it's a TOAW I / WOTY / TOAW II scenario). Step 2: Load the re-saved scenario in Century of Warfare (patched to 1.04) inside the editor. Re-save the file yet again. Step 3: Load the COW re-saved file in TOAW3 inside the editor. Re-save the file yet again. ADDENDUM TO STEP 3: Something happened with the latest (c.2016) TOAW3 patch, which makes it impossible to load some COW scenarios. To fix it, you need to load and save them using a old TOAW3 executable (version 3.2.29.27 is one such working executable.) Then you need to load that resaved v3.2.29.27 file in the latest TOAW3 executable, and re-save it AGAIN. It's highly suggested you append each saved step with a suffix, like this example: Richmond39 1.0.SCE (original TOAW 1 scenario downloaded
from the internet) |
TOAW: Wargame of the Year Edition
TOAW II: Modern Battles 1956-2000
TOAW III – 94.3% Recovery of Wargamer Scenario Depot Files; plus various graphics mods, 35+ Scenarios/Maps from the Matrix Games Forums done as of 17 May 2021, 220~ scenarios from 2016 of Rugged Defense, 417 scenarios in Legacy Pack from GameSquad, and TOAW Beachhead stuff.
TOAW IV – This is the result of a methodical crawl of the Matrix Games' forum for TOAW IV mods/scenarios on 17 to 18 May 2021.
TOAW Archive – Over a period of April to Mid-May 2016, I cleared out as many scenario depots for TOAW as I could, and the scenarios list for this collection is HERE. This is essentially my old Alternate Wars TOAW website, but preserved.
Steel Panthers I by SSI – This archive contains:
A Beta of Steel Panthers 1, dated 18 July 1995 that was mistakenly assumed to be a demo by PC gaming magazines and put on their cover CD-ROMs – preserving it for us.
Hapschott's SP1 Scenario Collection of about 1,300~ scenarios.
Miscellaneous SP1 scenarios, old SP1 editors and game guides.
Steel Panthers II by SSI – This archive contains:
SSI Steel Panthers II Demo
Miscellaneous SP2 Patches
The Bulge 1999 campaign released by SSI on their website (NOTE: If you own the Steel Panthers Arsenal collection, you will need to download the Bulge 1999 files as the version found on the SP2 Arsenal CD is bad.)
The original SPCAMO icon repaints for SP2.
The Original TGN/SPCAMO/Wild Bill's Raiders SP2WW2 mod for SP2 that eventually launched SPCAMO WW2/MBT and Matrix' Games SPWAW.
Hapshott's SP2 Scenario Collection with about 685 scenarios and a new campaign (16 linked scenarios in the Libyan campaign v1.0 that replaces the 1998 Okinawa Campaign).
Many campaigns/scenarios from the old French Wargaming magazine CyberStatege as well as old internet sites.
Steel Panthers III: Brigade Command – 100% of all the old Wargamer Files were recovered; and the extras are:
Hapschott's SP3 Scenario Pack (400~ scenarios plus 25 campaigns)
SP3 Moderna v1.1 Mod
Many campaigns/scenarios from the old French Wargaming magazine CyberStatege as well as old internet sites.
KOB Editor, along with a bunch of modified KOBs, including a partial WW2 "single man per unit" attempt at squad combat.
Steel Panthers WWII by SPCAMO – This contains the following:
Russo-German War Mod for SPWW2 v2.2.
The following DOS versions: SPWW2 v2.0b, v2.07, v2.20, v2.20b, v4.0, v6.0, v7.0, v7.01
Misc Scenarios/Campaigns, etc. NOTE: SPCAMO has been slowly updating and revising their games over the last twenty years; and as part of that, they actively seek out and include quality scenarios posted to their "main" haunts (Yahoo Groups, now the Shrapnel Games Forums), into next years' patches for SPWW2; and keep them updated as OBATs and icons are added/revised. So only use scenario/campaign files if you can't find the scenario in the “Stock” WinSPWW2 install circa 2023.
688(I) Hunter/Killer – Scenarios and such saved from across the internet.
NOTE: If you have "SUBMARINE WARFARE DIVISION LIBRARY -- Over 200 custom missions from Bill Nichols and the VNC." contact me at the Matrix Games Forum in this thread. That file is MIA.
Fleet Command – This contains:
Naval Warfare Pack (various versions - 14.2, 14.5, 15.1, 15.2, 19.01, 19.2)
Warship Database Project - Advanced Fleet Command v11 and Scenarios from 2001 – this appears to be an immediate precursor to the Naval Warfare Pack.
Official Sonalysts Patches
A few scenarios from around the internet.
Sub Command – Scenarios from subsim.com and an internet archive backup of Bill Nichol's old website (www.subguru.com)
Dangerous Waters – Scenarios from subsim.com and an internet archive backup of Bill Nichol's old website (www.subguru.com) as well as a Russian-made megamod from (ra-dwx.narod.ru).
Close Combat 1 – 45.4% of scenarios were recovered; plus a site rip of www.closecombatseries.net for CC1.
Close Combat 2: A Bridge Too Far – A near-complete (I may be missing a few individual maps) site rip of CC2 content from www.closecombatseries.net in case that website is obliterated by the march of time in the future.
The Perfect General by QQP – Two versions of the WW2 Scenario Disk for this, plus eight scenarios.
The Great Battles Series – 33 scenarios for the three Great Battles Games.
Take Command: 2nd Manassas – 4 scenarios.
Horse and Musket Series – 7 scenarios, a scenario pack, and misc stuff.
Russo-German War 1941-44 – Three scenarios (Liberating Smolensk / Typhoon Variant / Hitler Moves East) and some graphics mods.
HistWar: Les Grognards – 4 Scenarios and 1 Map.
Man of War II – 10 Scenarios + a bunch of bonus scenarios from the old http://manofwar2.napoleonicwars.com website.
East Front I – Miscellaneous scenarios and mods for East Front I.
Clash of Steel (100% Lost) – No scenario was recovered; only a copy of the manual and the v1.1 patch.
Battles of Napoleon – This is a recovered set of 12 scenario disks from the now-defunct NOVASTAR company of California, which was a small operation run by David and Martha Landrey. The disks were recovered through finding a boardgamegeek forum thread.
BON Scenario Disk 1: Austerlitz, Marengo, Redoubt, Utitsa, and Maida.
BON Scenario Disk 2: Bridge, New Orleans, Medellin, Albuera, and Santon.
BON Scenario Disk 3: Revolutionary War battles of Camden, Hobkirk, Guilford's Courthouse, Cowpens, Eutaw Springs, and King's Mountain.
BON Scenario Disk 4: Hill, Eylau, Wagram, Leipzig I, Smolensk, Plancenoit, Waterloo II, and Bladensburg.
BON Scenario Disk 5: Ligny, Vimiero, Village, Retreat, Leipzig II, Podubno, Quatre Bras II, and Aspern-Essling.
BON Scenario Disk 6: Pyramids, Jena, Corunna, Raab, Borodino II, Craonne, North and Wavre.
BON Scenario Disk 7 (ARW): Includes 40 Revolutionary War battles of Concord, Great Bridge, Quebec, Harlem Heights, Pelham, Trenton, Hubbardton, Oriskany, Freeman's Farm, Germantown, Paulus Hook, Yorktown, Bunker Hill, Long Island, Kip's Bay, White Plains, Fort Washington, Princeton, Bennington, Brandywine, Bemis Heights, Monmouth, Savannah 1779, Staten Island, Lexington, Moore's Creek, Three Rivers, Five Mile Run, Paoli, Redbank, Newport, Boonesborough, Savannah 1778, Vincennes, Stony Point, Newtown, Charleston, Ninety-Six, Green Spring Farm, and Gloucester.
BON Scenario Disk 8: Toulon, Mondovi, Friedland, Ebelsberg, Talavera, Polotsk, Lutzen, La Rothiere, Lundy's Lane, and Gilly.
BON Scenario Disk 9: Valmy, Lodi, Nicopolis, Elchingen, Sacile, Bussaco, Berezina, Liebertwolkwitz, Montmirail, Villere Plantation
BON Ancients Scenario Disk 10: Marathon, Thermopylae, Plataea, Delium, Mantinea, Cunaxa, Leuctra, Herkleon
BON Ancients Scenario Disk 11: Chaeronea, Granicus, Issus, Gaugamela, Hydaspes, Asculum, Raphia, Pydna
BON Scenario Disk 12: Jakobovo, Kliastzy, Kobryn, Krasnoi, and Pobobna.
Wargame Construction Set II: TANKS! – The files included are from Fabio Prado's THE ARMOR SITE at (http://id3486.securedata.net/fprado/armorsite/main.html) as a way of archiving them, in case his website disappears. Also included are three NOVASTAR scenario disks found on the Internet Archive:
The Most Terrible Night: Arab-Israeli Wars
Remagen Bridge
Gold-Juno-Sword Beaches
Wargame Construction Set III: Age of Rifles – The following files are in this archive:
Age of Rifles Scenario/Campaign Compendium v1.1 with 745 scenarios and 31 campaigns. This compendium was originally in a series of spanned ZIP files on the Age of Rifles Yahoo Group with each part padded to exactly 5 MB. Unfortunately, it used an unconventional spanning mechanism, so I had to download and run a specialized program in a virtual machine to extract all of the files.
Age of Rifles Cyberstrategie Magazine Scenario Compendium. From the now-now-defunct French strategy magazine Cyberstrategie from 1997 to 2000.
Age of Napoleon (1813-1815) Mod by Max v. Schweinewitz – This patch for Age of Rifles includes hundreds of new icons that represent uniforms of all important nations that were involved in the events of the last years of the Napoleonic Age. While the main focus is on the campaigns in Germany in 1813, there is much eye candy for people interested in the Hundred Days. Includes a Wartenburg 1813 scenario to show you what can be done with this mod.
Age of Napoleon Mod by Andreas Kopp – No README file was issued with this.
Age of Muskets v0.4 Mod by apollon/Laudon – Contains a significant amount of uniform combinations (tunics/hats/pants/shoes) and replaces the African and Arab paperdolls with Caucasian paperdolls (one with mustache, the other a wig).
Complete (as of March 2015) archive of the Age of Rifles Yahoo Group Files Section.
Age of Rifles v1.30 Patch.
War Wind Series – I was able to recover an old official scenario pack by SSI for War Wind I.
Great Naval Battles Series – Patches for the series and a few scenarios for GNB games – this game series came and went rather quickly.
Geoff's Custom Campaign for GNBNA.
Hunt for the Bismarck: Operation Reinubung by Justin Prince for GNB 4.
Die Andere Z Plan Alternative by Ranier Fett for GNBNA (you need America in the Atlantic and Superships in the Atlantic to run this, so you should have a CD-ROM copy of GNBNA).
Fighting Steel – About 45% of scenarios were recovered from the Internet archive as well as the www.german-navy.de website.
The Fighting Steel Project (FSP) downloads as of 13 May 2021 are archived here as well; including the FSP Scenario Pack as a safeguard against the NWS-FSP web page from disappearing in the future. I have seen too many websites go poof to risk FSP disappearing as well.
Imperialism Series – This archive contains scenarios/maps/tools for use with the two Imperialism games by Frog City and SSI. A lot of the stuff in here is from (http://adistantmirror.com/imperialism-downloads/), much props to him for saving it.
Soldiers at War – Sixteen scenarios for SAW.
Panzer Commander – I was only able to recover 13 scenarios; but the simhq.com forums brought me into contact with the user "33lima", who sent me two files containing Panzer Commander Scenarios and Campaigns; allowing me to raise recovery to 77 scenarios.
Silent Hunter I – A significant amount of mission packs were recovered from various websites, they are in no order:
Jeff Johnson's COMSUBPAC Mission Pack (10 Missions)
Jeff Johnson's Mission Library (117 Missions)
SUBSIM Pacific Mission Pack (7 Missions)
Jim Atkin's (silenthunter.com) Missions (36 Missions)
Tom Martin's Missions (12 Missions)
Also included are various game guides, the SHReal Mod, etc.
Flanker 2.0 – Three missions recovered from simHQ, as well as patches 2.01 and 2.02.
Destroyer Command – 100% of the Wargamer Depot files were recovered; and I pretty much made a copy of the subsim.com mod database for Destroyer Command, as a backup against it disappearing.
Panzer General – A ton of scenarios and campaigns from Dirk Kremer's Herr General (LINK) in case it disappears.
Allied General – A ton of scenarios and campaigns from Dirk Kremer's Herr General (LINK) in case it disappears.
Panzer General II – A ton of scenarios and campaigns from Dirk Kremer's Herr General (LINK) in case it disappears.
Panzer General III: 3D Assault – 100% of the Wargamer Depot files were recovered; thanks to the scenarios and campaigns from Dirk Kremer's Herr General (LINK).
Fantasy General – This contains the Fantasy Continent Mini-Campaign by SSI, patches, editors and the FG Demo.
Pacific General – A significant of scenarios and mods were obtained thanks to:
Dirk Kremer's Herr General (LINK) site.
Steve Strayer’s Pacific General Armory. Steve's site shut down back in 2006 thanks to Compuserve going away. It was recovered thanks to The Wayback Machine. The original URL was (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sgt_stryker/armory.html).
Crown of Glory – This archive contains mods and scenarios taken from the Matrix Games forums for both versions of the game (Crown of Glory and Crown of Glory: Emperor's Edition).
Forge of Freedom – This contains various Forge of Freedom Mods and editing scratch files from the Matrix Games forums.
Uncommon Valor – This is a rip/compilation of all the information on Spooky's UV & WITP Fansite (http://mathubert.free.fr/index.html) which was actively maintained with new files from the 2000s up until around 2009. As of June 2021, it's still working (!!!) but the external links for some mods not hosted there have died.
War Plan Orange: Dreadnoughts in the Pacific – This is the “Turtledove War v1.1” scenario.
John Tiller's Battleground: Napoleonic Wars – This is a single mod – JT's Battleground: Napoleon icon mod
Decisive Campaigns Series by VR Designs – This contains Decisive Campaigns mods and scenarios taken from either VR Designs' official website, or the Matrix Games forums for these games.
Warsaw to Paris: Case Brown (Switzerland), Case Green (Czechoslovakia) and Historical Flags & Symbols Mod v1.1 and v1.2.
Case Blue: Extra v0.1 Scenario, Operation Trappenjagd, and Historical Flags & Symbols Mod v1.6.
Barbarossa: A whole bunch of graphical and terrain mods.
Ardennes: Operation Nordwind, Bridge at Remagen, and graphical and terrain mods. NOTE: If you patch your Ardennes game, you will get a new scenario "MARTIN" based on Rundstedt's Plan Martin.
Eric Young's Squad Assault: West Front – A couple of scenarios.
Massive Assault – 26 Scenarios.
Gary Grigsby's World At War: 4 Scenarios.
Gary Grigsby's World At War: A World Divided – 5 scenarios/mods.
Titans of Steel: Warring Suns – 5 scenarios + a few more bonus campaigns, plus the final 2009 patch.
Airborne Assault: Conquest of the Aegean – 5 Scenarios (Malta 1940, Siwa Oasis, Safe Passage from Egypt, Clash of Armor, Operation Sealion: Folkestone).
Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge – 3 Scenarios (Operation Epsom, Epsom Phase 4, The Woensdrecht Isthmus)
Flashpoint Germany – 4 scenarios (FPG Mod v1, Blue Star Scenarios, Red Star Scenarios, Red Star 2 Harder).
Warplan – This is the result of a methodical crawl of the Matrix Games' forum for WarPlan mods/scenarios on 19 May 2021. While I may have missed one or two graphics mods, this is I feel, reasonably complete.
Volcano Mods Site Rip – This is what was on the old volcanomods.com website.
This contains a collection of Space Empires III/IV/V mods – I was a big Space Empires IV player back in 1998 through 2004 or so; and the game is heavily dependent on mods (shipsets, etc) to actually be great. So I basically went through www.spaceempires.net and dumped/ripped their download archives on 30 May 2021. Not all of it is here -- there are about 15 or so SE5 shipsets missing, because they weren't hosted on spaceempires.net directly, but linked to another website instead.
While I only briefly played the HOMM2 demo (being more interested in modern wargames than fantasy games), I decided to do this for the HOMM community as a whole, and for newer gamers who got into HOMM from GOG.com sales.
NOTE: Newer Paradox games like Stellaris have Steam Workshop support enabling cloud storage of mods and scenarios, but there's a lot of older Paradox stuff like HOI1/2 and Victoria that are “aging out”.
Hearts of Iron I – This has a lot of HOI1 mods from “back in the day”, including:
Historic Japanese and German Flag Mod plus a "safe" version.
NATO Symbol Mod v3 and v3.1
Production Icon Mod v2
Sig Rune Mod
Stony Road + Stony Sprites
The New Order (v3.1, 4.2, and 5.0)
Shep's Tech Mod 5 and 6 (and many variants)
CORE (various versions from 0.2 to 0.92b)
USSR Hack event/AI by bouis
Red Baron 3D – About 15 years ago, I had a friend who was big into WWI flight sims, and he had a very spotty internet connection; so I would download all the Red Baron 3D mods for him. As a result, I ended up with a lot of mods which are now hard to acquire due to the march of time (2022 vs 2005); and I'm putting them up here so that the RB3D community can enjoy them once again.
MODS INCLUDED (not an exhaustive list)
Full Canvas Jacket Editing Tool
Campaign Manager v10 & v11
Hell's Angels Superpatch
Western Front Superpatch
Russian Civil War Superpatch
Promised Land Superpatch
Middle East Superpatch
Italian Front Superpatch
Eastern Front Superpatch
SWAT 3: CQB – About 15 out of 42 downloads were recovered.
World At War Series (Atomic Games) – This contains patch files for all three of Atomic Games' "World at War" games; for both IBM PC and Macintosh; as well as a manual for “Stalingrad”.
Wooden Ships & Iron Men – This has four official Avalon Hill scenario packs (April/February/March/May), as well as the 1.02 patch; which fixes the problem with the game crashing on 8MB systems, especially in the scenario editor.
Fifth Fleet – This contains a copy of the official scenario disk for 5th Fleet as well as the patch and demo for 5th Fleet. Because Fifth Fleet sold less than 50,000 units *globally*, this scenario disk is incredibly rare.
Fighters Anthology – These files came from four locations:
www.flightsim.com's file library, which has many old files going all the way back to 1998 or earlier.
JK Peterson's old website at (http://farc.3synergy.net) -- some files were recovered this way.
JK Peterson's website currently up at (http://jkpeterson.net/fa/index.php).
Gunship Series – Pilot editor for Gunship, and a whole bunch of missions for Gunship 2000.
Falcon 3.0 Series – These files came from www.flightsim.com's file library, which has many old files going all the way back to 1998 or earlier.
Lock-On – Two campaigns for LOMAC (The Pipe Line Of Azerbaijan and Border Conflict).
Stealth Fighter Series (F-19 and F-117) – Pilot editors for F-19 and patches for F-117A.
Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain – Scenario/Mission Packs and a Pilot Editor.
Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe – Scenario/Mission Packs, Plane Mods, Pilot editor, and a siterip of http://home.comcast.net/~swotl which was THE SWOTL site on the internet.
X-Wing – Mission Editors, Pilot Editors, and some custom tours.
TIE Fighter – Mission Editors, Pilot Editors, and some custom tours.
Wing Commander Academy – Missions from the early BBS days.
Wing Commander Armada – Ship editor from the early BBS days.
Strike Commander – Difficulty editor from the early BBS days.
The archivist of the Wargamer Scenario Depot project was born deaf; and as such, certain games have posed problems for him. As a public community service, I'm adding specific mods that are aimed at helping deaf people in specific games. Current mods are:
System Shock 2 English Subtitles v2.00 – To actually understand the game's plot, gasp!
InGameCC mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (v1.00) – All NPC phrases which were spoken in English are subtitled and then some. Certain sound effects got closed captions as well.
Doom3[CC] (circa 2006) – This not only subtitled everything, but also provided a "sound radar" indicating visually on screen that noises are coming from a direction.
Alien Isolation - Freeze Specific Units. – The game is very much a psychological horror game which works great for most people...except deaf people. Why? Because deaf people can't hear the the alien moving around. There are no subtitled cues on screen like <YOU HEAR FOOTSTEPS NEARBY> so the only time you know an alien is nearby is when you get the "get speared through chest by tailspike" animation and GAME OVER. There's only so many times you can do that before you ragequit.
Steve Strayer's Armory Site Rip – An old Panzer General II / Pacific General site. It was knocked offline due to COMPUSERVE ceasing operations back in 2006; but I recovered most of it through the internet archive.
Zerstorer's Site Rip – An old SSI (Panzer General, Allied General, Pacific General and Panzer General II) themed website that originally resided at Geocities.
PEGWW2 Site Rip – This is a site rip via the internet archive of (http://www.pegww2.net) which had a lot of WW2 People's General mods.
People's General.de Site Rip – This is a People's General website that resides at (https://peoplesgeneral.de/). It was largely still functional as of 20 May 2021; so I ripped it to ensure a backup for when angelfire inevitably disappears.
The Blitz Site Rip (May 2021) – This file contains 16,521 files (2,620 scenario files in ZIP files and 13,901 HTML metadata pages) for a variety of wargames. It was ripped on 4 May 2021 from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM EDT using a custom Python script that is included with the distribution. The reason that this was done was:
Reason #1 "What if The Blitz and it's Scenario Depot disappeared tomorrow, like other previously big scenario sites?" Besides the scenario data, there's also the ladder ranking data that qualifies hundreds of scenarios as "slightly British leaning" or vice versa -- important if you want to find a balanced scenario that you and your opponent can enjoy.
Reason #2 To obtain more scenarios to fill in blanks from other (now gone) scenario sites.
The Last Defense Site Rip – This is an early CMBO site that astonishingly was still up in 2021(!!) so I ripped it for a backup when Angelfire finally dies.