Release: GeneralsZH: Thrax Edition: Max Visuals, Performance & Fun
Hi all,
we've been quietly working on a personal Zero Hour build for a while and figured I'd put it out there in case anyone else finds it useful.
The main thing that bothered me about vanilla Zero Hour was how badly the renderer fell apart during big fights. FPS would tank like crazy.
This build does a significant performance pass on the renderer so you're not staring at a slideshow the moment three armies converge on the same base. Borderless fullscreen works properly now. Also the minimap got full visual overhaul.
On the gameplay side, the biggest change is that allied bots in skirmish actually listen to you now. In stock Zero Hour your ally just does whatever it wants and you hope it picks the right flank. Here you can type something like "green move right" in chat and the bot(s) will move actual combat teams in that direction. Just "move right" will make all bots move.
It makes it feel like a real team game instead of two separate solo matches happening on the same map.
Another big one: The Granger challenge got fixed, since the Air Force General mission was checking the wrong objects and never properly running the scripts EA built around it. So you can, for the first time, play against the *real* Granger 😄
Right now, this is not an online client. It is purely for skirmish, challenge maps, and replays. It installs as a single exe drop-in replacement.
Download is on GitHub: https://github.com/philb12312/GeneralsZH_Thrax_Edition
Happy to hear feedback!