Using Custom Maps
In this article, I'll describe how Swedish Legion serves custom maps, and show you how to use them.
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Often, players of Call of Duty grow tired of the standard set of maps included with the game. Luckily, third-party map developers are allowed to extend the game by creating custom maps and providing them to the gaming community as add-on modules to the base game.
Understanding Custom Map Ranking
In order to serve custom maps to you, the game server must run what is called a "mod" (short for "modification"). Besides allowing a server to serve custom maps, mods use their own ranking systems, which means that player ranks are initially reset to 0, and a separate rank is kept for each "mod". So when you connect to our server while it is running the SwedishLegion mod, your rank will be different than it would be when you connect to our server (or any other server) not running a mod. Your rank for non-mod servers is safely saved so that you don't lose your ranking on non-mod servers.
Playing on Custom Map Days
Swedish Legion has selected a few choice, good-quality custom maps to serve to you. We run these custom maps on certain days of the week. See the console messages in-game for announcements of which days are "custom map" days.
Obtaining Custom Maps
The custom maps we serve are hosted by this web site for fast downloading. With reported download speeds of up to 800 kbps, maps hosted on this server may be downloaded as fast as just 2 or 3 minutes. In contrast, maps hosted on a Call of Duty 4 game server are limited to only 13 kbps, which translates to extremely long download times. There are two ways to get the custom maps we serve:
Automatically Downloading Custom Maps With Call of Duty
This is the preferred way to get custom maps, because it is completely automatic, with less potential for human error. To automatically download custom maps with Call of Duty:
1. Start Call of Duty 4.
2. At the main menu screen, click Options:
3. Click Multiplayer Options:
4. Set Allow Downloading to Yes:
5. Connect to the Swedish Legion game server on any custom map day, and your Call of Duty application will automatically download and install the custom maps as the game server plays them.
Manually Downloading and Installing Custom Maps
For those who do not want to use the preferred automatic method, we provide ZIP archives including all of the map files for every single custom map we serve. After downloading each ZIP archive, you will need to decompress it, and then move all of the map files into the correct directory within your Call of Duty data folder, as described in detail below.
Manually Installing Custom Maps
It is important that you place the map files into the correct folder, or your COD4 client will still try to download them from the game server. Maps typically consists of three files:
mapname.iwd
mapname.ff
mapname_load.ff
These three files must reside in a folder named the exact name of the map, and that folder must reside in a folder named "usermaps", which, in turn, must reside in the Call of Duty data folder on your computer. With the files in the correct place, your COD4 client will not download them from the server (unless a map on our server has changed since you downloaded it).
For Mac users, the Call of Duty data folder is typically at:
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/
For Windows users, the Call of Duty data folder is typically at:
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4
Mac Examples:
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/usermaps/mp_burgundy_bulls/mp_burgundy_bulls.ff
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/usermaps/mp_burgundy_bulls/mp_burgundy_bulls_load.ff
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/usermaps/mp_burgundy_bulls/mp_burgundy_bulls.iwd
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/usermaps/mp_village/mp_village.ff
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/usermaps/mp_village/mp_village.iwd
/Applications/Call of Duty 4/Call of Duty 4 Data/usermaps/mp_village/mp_village_load.ff
Windows Examples:
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4usermapsmp_burgundy_bullsmp_burgundy_bulls.ff
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4usermapsmp_burgundy_bullsmp_burgundy_bulls_load.ff
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4usermapsmp_burgundy_bullsmp_burgundy_bulls.iwd
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4usermapsmp_villagemp_village.ff
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4usermapsmp_villagemp_village.iwd
C:Program FilesCall of Duty 4usermapsmp_villagemp_village_load.ff