"Close Combat - A Bridge Too Far" (abreviated CC2, ABTF, CC2-ABTF)
was the second game of the CloseCombat-series created by Atomic and presented
by Microsoft to the Windows- and Mac-community. It was also the last game
of this series for the MacOS. The series was then continued by SSI (later
by UbiSoft and Mattel Interactive) for PCs only (up to day CC3, CC4, CC5,
CCM and RoadToBaghdad). The game was released in 1997 on a hybrid-CD, running
on PCs and under the MacOS 7.5 up to 9.2.2 / MacOS X 10.2.6 / 10.3 (in Classic
environment) as well. Later (localized) releases of CC2 were for PCs only.
A trial demo of CC2 was also released in 1997 (Mac & PC).
The CC2 player community growed quickly, and first unofficial patches of
the game were presented for the game's demo before the original game was already
released (Elite Clash, a Scenario/AlOOB/AxOOB patch for the demo by Tony Swash,
Oct. 1997). Little efforts were made in patching the game's graphics files
until Adam 'The Man' D'Arcy discovered, that the graphics files are using
the reverse byte format (nearly all CC2 files are MacOS-born files, as we
know today). Adam D'Arcy, Blackhound and Dany 'Bad' Gauthier released their
first custom map for CC2 in June 1998. After the file formats of most of the
CC2 files were discovered, tools became available to edit maps (map editors
by Gerry Shaw 'Tin Tin' (MapMaker.exe, in May 1998), by Chris Ellens (CCEdit
for MacOS) and Cpl_Filth (3C.exe)), other graphics files (tools by Gerry Shaw
'Tin Tin', Mark Clouden 'Escobar', Cappy-R, Sgt_Wilson, Kyle Scott 'Fish',
Manfred Fischer 'Mafi') and sound (Phil Lane (for PCs) and Mafi (for MacOS)).
A lot of guides and helps were published on the internet (main actors of the
early days were: Mick Conmy 'xe5', Adam D'Arcy, Blackhound, Andrew Glenn 'Naked
Foot', Vincent Viaud (solved the LOS-file structure), David R. Tidy 'The Other
Dave', Cpl_Filth, Frantz 'Fritz' Pergolini, Robert Valerian 'Cappy-R' Ellison
Ralph, Marcus 'Zorbo' Hofbauer, Piotr 'Czolg' Lewandowski, Kyle Scott 'Fish',
Konrad, David Vilmen, Matt Neuman, Matthew Hills, Wouter Pinkhof, Frank Fijneman,
Marc 'NineNail' Porebski, Taki, Mizuchi, Frank Scott, Mohammad Elwakil and
many other people). In August 1998 the first CC2-custom map contest started
at the site of David Vilmen.
The steady stream of published custom CC2-maps slowed down in 2000/2001,
when the game's successors became more popular (CC3, CC5) and old CC2-fan-sites
disappeared. Today we have much more powerful CC2-tools available than it
was in the early days. Converting of a CC5-custom maps to CC2 format took
only a few mouse clicks actually. But most of the CC2 data and internal logic
secrets are still undiscovered, therefore only few 'big mods' (total conversions)
of CC2 are available (for example: WW1 patch by Tim Catherall. But some of
the largest attempts to publish a total conversion of CC2, CC2-Kreta and CC2-Afrika,
are still unfinished yet). Until today the game has its (small) fan community.
In the very first section of this 'museum guide to CC2 maps' the first attempts
of the early days will be shown. All these maps were made from scratch, using
partially graphical textures of the original maps and the graphical quality
of the background graphics is varying.
The next section contains maps published after the closing of the main CC2-publishing
sites 'cc2.gamestats.com' and 'The Observation Post' in 2000. The main source
for CC2 maps for a long time became 'www.closecombat.org' and remaining sites
of the large mods for CC2 ('www.greatwarpatch.com', the CC2-Kreta site, the
CC2-Afrika site, the CC2-Dieppe site ...):
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