A short history of Empire Earth II Unofficial Patch 1.4 - for voodoogaming.co.za

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Dr.MonaLisa
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A short history of Empire Earth II Unofficial Patch 1.4 - for voodoogaming.co.za

Post by Dr.MonaLisa »

Written by: Dr Mona Lisa, especally for voodoogaming.co.za:
http://voodoogaming.co.za/voodoo3/index.php/232-empire-earth/empire-earth-ii/264-empire-earth-ii-unofficial-patch-1-4
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The Unofficial Patch 1.4 for Empire Earth II has been released on 4th May 2013, however the first BETA version of the new patch was available to download since 10th March 2012. UP1.4 is a successor of Unofficial Patch 1.3 which has been released on 1st September 2011. UP1.3 relative to UP1.4 had not many changes. The most important change was support for 16:9 screen resolution: 1600x900. Defaultly Empire Earth II supports only 4:3 screen display resolutions what makes the game look bad on newer monitors. Why 1600x900? The answer is smiple - I just got a new 17'' laptop, and I wanted to play my favourite game on "full screen" Image.
I was around 12 years old, when I started work on UP1.3, that's why this version wasn't that perfect. The thing I'm proud about is a No-CD .exe file which connected Empire Earth 2 GameSpy (Multiplayer) community. How it connected? There are many versions of Empire Earth II: CD, DVD, DigitalDownload, etc. - unfortunately Empire Earth 2's checksum system disallowed players with the other versions to play together. UP1.3 solved all the problems of the community. I also created a "CAM-FIX" which removed camera limits in Empire Earth II. You can watch Unofficial Patch 1.3 YouTube Presentation
[iframe]style=display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;src= width=640 height=360 frameborder=0 allowfullscreen=allowfullscreen[/iframe]
UP1.3 has been downloaded over 10 000 times within 3 years. It was probably the most famous mod for Empire Earth 2. After the big succes of UP1.3 I have been keep asked to create the patch which supports more screen resolutions. I haven't got the source code of Empire Earth 2, that's why I had to edit the .exe file with HEX editor.
I have to admit - it was very hard, but finally I modified the .exe file to support new screen resolutions: 1366x768, 1600x900, 1920x1080. The other Empire Earth 2 players helped me with UP1.4, especally: DomDom, RGV1, Fireheart2 and CompagniaDellaMorte. DomDom - Dominik is a modder from Germany. He's the creator of "Pro Map Maker" a usefull tool for map creators.
The author described it as: "Changing of the sizes of different tools, for easier map making". Dominik also helped me with the new maximum population options in game and he recorded the YouTube video about the new patch:
[iframe]style=display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;src=https://www.youtube.com/embed/zcd2apm0yyu width=640 height=360 frameborder=0 allowfullscreen=allowfullscreen[/iframe]
RGV1 is the modder from Russia, he created the amazing mod - EE4 mod and he used to help me a lot.
Fireheart2 (Cody from USA) and Compagnia (Marco from Italy) were my "guinea pigs", I tested un-ready .EXE files on them. Without their help there would be many compatiblity problems. In UP1.4 I decided to include 120 maps created by players since 2005, and some Multiplayer scenarios like: "Zombieland", "EE2 World Simulator 2013" and "EE2 Pirates". Sometimes Empire Earth 2 doesn't work correctly with Windows 8/8.1, that's why in January 2013 I created a Windows 8/8.1 FIX The fix itself has been downloaded over 15 000 times... Amazing! So in UP1.4 I decided to create a new .EXE file - the launcher which detect if Operation System is Windows 8/8.1 and starts Windows 8 FIX when needed. UP1.4 has CAM-FIX ver. 2.0 - this time I focused on better zoom-in camera settings.
The full changes list in Unofficial Patch 1.4 is here. On 21th September 2013 I released "Update 2.0" for UP1.4 which contains a lot of new features. The most important things: built-in Music Player (EE2Amp), for Empire Earth II The Art of Supremacy: changed flying height of all air units and ICBMs. Within 9 months, UP1.4 has been downloaded and installed over 15 000 times! I didn't even expect that this game has so many active players.
I'm very happy that people enjoy my work. I never heard any bad word about the new patch. Everybody loves it, especally 1920x1080 screen resolution. This was a short history about my Unofficial Patches, written specially for Voodoo Gaming Thanks for reading, and have fun with the new patch! If you love Empire Earth II, here's some links you may like:
EE2 Status Center
EE2 News Twitter
EE2 News Facebook Page
LeaderEE2's YouTube channel
Written by: Leader (Dr Mona Lisa)
Best regards,
Dr.MonaLisa
Ministry of Game Affairs
Department of Control and Complains

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