Africa at War--History

[TheBigRedOne]

Have been spending some of my time here at home the last three months organizing the files on my new desktop computer, as well as updating all of my SB games with the newer JTS ones.  In the process of cleaning up folders, I've been strolling down memory lane looking at all the SB files I've accumulated over the years as the site commander for Task Force Echo 4.  It's kind of hard to believe that it's been around 12 years since I took over that site, and even with the slow-down in the SB world, I'd like to think it serves as a nice history of the series, even if some of the files were lost to the void.

One of the biggest moments early on in the series was the creation of the first full game mod, Africa at War.

Created by the original commander of TFE4, Frank Harmon, with help from some of the true legends of the series, this game really was a benchmark, and probably inspired a lot of the other game mods that have followed it, notably the mods from IronX, one of the more controversial folks in the SB history.

The game was based on the Pacific War platform, mainly due to the terrain features being similar to Africa.  One of the main features, which caused a bit of controversy and discussion, was Frank changing a lot of the lethality numbers on the weapon systems, making them much more deadly.  Get caught in the open in Africa, and you are going to be in for a world of hurt.

If you are unfamiliar with the game, hop over to TFE4 (link above) and read the synopsis for yourself, written by Frank.  The installer is still there, but I do recall it being somewhat temperamental.  My workaround of not having to re-install was simply copying the entire folder over as-is, to my new computer.  I even updated the exe file with the newer PW one from JTS and it seems to work just fine.  If folks want to try the game, but don't want to over-write PW and have to re-install, I can copy the entire folder, minus the PW exe file (don't want Rich H coming after me!), and upload it to TFE4.  From there you should be able to simply copy your PW exe file into that folder and it should, in theory, work.  If someone wants to be the guinea pig, fire me an EMAIL.

Explore Africa, you won't be disappointed.