Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available! 1.48

Quintillus · Aug 18, 2016

Yeah, it's a bit odd, but as far as I can tell their policy is "we won't actively add anything that will cause it to not work on XP, but we don't want to be officially committed to supporting XP for 5+ years after Microsoft has quit supporting it" - since Java 8 came out in April 2014, the same month Microsoft ended XP 32-bit support, and is supported for 5+ years. The first releases wouldn't install on XP but would run with a manual install, but about a year and a half ago they fixed the installer so it runs on XP, albeit with the warning message.

Java 9 is going to require Vista (or maybe 7), but it won't be out until next year, and as unlike Java 8, I don't think it will have anything eminently useful for the editor, it's unlikely I'll be moving the editor to it anytime soon.

Kirejara · Aug 19, 2016

Quintillus said:
For the upgrade/enslave actions, I tested what happened when upgrading across class. In short, you cannot do it, and I was not able to successfully enslave a unit across classes either. The only potentially interesting use of it might be due to the fact that once, for example, a land unit's upgrade to a sea/air unit becomes technologically available, you can no longer build that land unit. So this could theoretically be used to obsolete earlier units in a scenario - perhaps we could obsolete Cavalry one Bombers become available, in the standard ruleset. Thus there's a chance I might re-enable it for that in the future, especially if someone comes up with a scenario that would like to do that, but for the time being the utility of class-specific upgrades seemed to be more beneficial.

This is allready possible, by simply leaving the checkbox "Unit Upgrade" under special orders unchecked and setting the units upgrade path to a resourceless unit.

In my game the Starfortress (Metallurgry) can no longer build after Replacable Parts, because the Guerilla is set as its successor without being able to upgrade (or in this case a downgrade, as the Fortress has the same defence with additional hitpoints, but can not move for obvious reasons

).

Kirejara · Sep 5, 2016

I think, that I have discovered a bug in the enslave options.

If I set a unit to enslave and then select the "enslave results in" unit, as soon as I move to another unit, the "enslave result" resets itself to "none".

Sometimes if I move via cursor keys to the next unit, it looks like the "enslave result" is moved to that unit. But then click into another unit or save, close and reopen the editor, the "enslave result" is reseted to "none" for every unit.

The editor has so far only accepted one "enslave result", but that unit (Corvette) was an enslaver befor and only switched from one slave unit to another (Corvette instead of Galleon).

I am a little clueless if I have done it wrong. :blush:

Thanks again for your help!

Quintillus · Sep 5, 2016

After playing around a bit, I was able to reproduce the issue you mentioned - it looks like there is an issue with Naval and Air units, but not with land. And it appears to affect only Enslave Results In, but not Upgrade To. I'll take a look at it.

Quintillus · Sep 7, 2016

Version 1.03 is now available. It has two small updates:

Fix a bug that would cause "Enslave Results In" to not work properly in some cases
If you use the Recently Used File menu to open a file, the Save dialog will now pre-populate your file's name for you.

You can download the new version here.

ZergMazter · Sep 7, 2016

Hello

This has been bugging me lol. Look what the unit selector does when you scroll down using the down or up arrow. Sometimes it also does it when changing from unit to unit with your mouse pointer.

Start scrolling down from your very first unit all the way down to your last and see how many times it does it. Maybe you can replicate it.

Kirejara · Sep 7, 2016

Thanks! that was fast (again!)! You are fantastic! :goodjob:

I have tested the new version and the enslave options seems to work proberly now.

Quintillus · Sep 12, 2016

ZergMazter said:
Hello

This has been bugging me lol. Look what the unit selector does when you scroll down using the down or up arrow. Sometimes it also does it when changing from unit to unit with your mouse pointer.

Start scrolling down from your very first unit all the way down to your last and see how many times it does it. Maybe you can replicate it.

I thought this sounded familiar, and sure enough you mentioned it last year, and I tried to reproduce it, but could not. However, at that time, with version 0.97, I disabled multi-select in the Unit list, since there was no functionality associated with it, and I figured that the bug wouldn't be able to happen any more if the list didn't support multi-select.

But it appears that it can in fact still happen. So I tried to reproduce it again tonight, scrolling down both by holding down the down/up arrows, as well as by pressing them once per unit until reaching the end of the list. But I still can't get it to happen locally

.

I'm wondering if there's something unique to one or more of the units in the scenario that's causing it, but that isn't present with the ones I'm trying? If it's possible to upload/send the BIQ file, I can try with that specific file, and that would eliminate what I suspect is the most important difference between your test case and what I've been able to test with.

The other thing that could be helpful in figuring it out is looking in the log.txt file that the program creates, and looking for any areas with an error, which will contain a bunch of lines in a row with things like "com.civfanatics.civ3.xplatformeditor" and "javax.swing." in them. If these exist, they would point to where in the code this would be happening, which might set off a lightbulb in my head as to why it's happening. It might still not be enough without being able to reproduce it myself, but it would at least point to what part of the haystack the needle was located in (since we know the tab, we at least know which haystack... but it's still one of the larger haystacks).

Kirejara said:
Thanks! that was fast (again!)! You are fantastic!

I have tested the new version and the enslave options seems to work proberly now.

Thanks, glad it's working for you!

Oni Ryuu · Sep 27, 2016

I’ve wanted to use enslave results in Freight (foot unit) for transport ships and enslave results in Salvage (tactical missile unit) for missile ships. Will this work for the 1.03 editor? I like the idea of looting someones ship over capturing it. Also, is there a way to get the AI using this editor to use "Disband Units". They seams to be player only units.

Quintillus · Sep 27, 2016

Oni Ryuu said:
Ive wanted to use enslave results in Freight (foot unit) for transport ships and enslave results in Salvage (tactical missile unit) for missile ships. Will this work for the 1.03 editor? I like the idea of looting someones ship over capturing it. Also, is there a way to get the AI using this editor to use "Disband Units". They seams to be player only units.

I think you're saying that transport ship (naval) would enslave a freight (land unit), which would be transported on the ship then? And missile ship (naval) would result in salvage (land, similar to Tactical Nuke in the base rules)? So in both cases, a naval unit enslaves into a land unit.

If I understand correctly, it isn't possible in 1.03, as it restricts upgrades/enslaves to the same class. The reason is that in general it's more convenient, and when I tried to get upgrade/enslave to work across classes, I was not successful in getting the upgrade/enslave to happen; see below:

Quintillus said:
For the upgrade/enslave actions, I tested what happened when upgrading across class. In short, you cannot do it, and I was not able to successfully enslave a unit across classes either. The only potentially interesting use of it might be due to the fact that once, for example, a land unit's upgrade to a sea/air unit becomes technologically available, you can no longer build that land unit. So this could theoretically be used to obsolete earlier units in a scenario - perhaps we could obsolete Cavalry one Bombers become available, in the standard ruleset. Thus there's a chance I might re-enable it for that in the future, especially if someone comes up with a scenario that would like to do that, but for the time being the utility of class-specific upgrades seemed to be more beneficial.

However, if you'd like to try, Version 1.01 does allow setting cross-class upgrades (go to the first post, scroll down to near the bottom where it says Old Versions, download 1.01). 1.01 and earlier do have a bug where if you delete a unit, it can throw off enslave/upgrade results in for units later in the list, but as long as you're just setting them, it should work fine.

If you do find a way to get it to work, I'm up for adding an option to re-enable it in a future version. I considered making it toggleable from 1.02 forwards, but haven't thus far as I couldn't find a way to get cross-class enslave/upgrade to work in-game, and it's not very useful if it doesn't work.

Oni Ryuu · Sep 28, 2016

Thanks Quintillus. That was exactly what I wanted to know.

I am using the commercially issued Civilization III Conquests.
I’m trying to import from the Firaxis Conquests editor to yours. Your editor can’t detect the Firaxis editor files (my own mods) and my PC won’t detect the SAV files in any way other than “load game” from the game menu or in game. I was once able to go into the Civ file structure and delete the SAV files but now my PC says 1 item (the “Auto” folder). I went into the Firaxis editor and saved a copy of the mod outside the Civ file structure. This allowed the computer to recognise that there was a file. When trying to open that file with your editor I got this message.
“An unexpected exemption occurred: java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsExemption: Index: 32, Sixe: 32”.
The “input from SAV” feature can’t detect the SAV file either and obviously I’ve tried all file types. Is there some way for my PC to detect the files again because manually transferring the information won’t be fun?

Thanks again.

PS. All this is to get the AI to use land transports. I’ve removed Rail and added trains, trucks and TELs etc. in or to make it a game of logistics.

Quintillus · Sep 29, 2016

Do you happen to have Civ installed in C:\Program Files (x86), or C:\Program Files, and have Windows Vista or newer? If so, Vista and later protect those folders, so that it's quite difficult for programs other than the ones that created files there to see the files that are located there. It's a common bane of Civ modders, since Civ's files are located in the folder where Civ was installed to.

The specific name for the process is the VirtualStore; to the program (Civ, the Firaxis editor) that saves the BIQ/SAV, it looks like it's being saved to C:\Program Files (x86)\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Conquests\Saves (or similar depending on your disc version), but Windows actually puts it in a different location, so other programs (and yourself, via Windows explorer) are not able to modify it. However, if the program that created the file asks for files it created in Program Files, Windows will report them as present. The basic idea was that it made it harder for viruses to corrupt your programs, but a side effect was it also made modding old games a lot more painful.

The most reliable, least painful workaround is to re-install Civilization III to somewhere outside of Program Files... I have mine at C:\Games\Civilization III currently. However, you should first find the SAV and BIQ files so they don't get lost when uninstalling. I believe they should be somewhere such as C:\Users\<your user name here>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ProgramData\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\etc. You'll probably need to enable showing hidden folders in Explorer to find it. Then copy them somewhere safe, uninstall Civ, and reinstall it somewhere outside of Program Files.

There are a couple other options involving User Account Control settings, but those are tricky once Civ is already installed (I gave up on Vista years ago due to not being able to figure them out), and they reduce Windows' built-in protections more. With the above method, only Civ itself would be exempt from file-modification protection, which is okay since you are trying to modify Civ files.

It is a lot of work for using the editor, although it also will allow you to download and modify the many other mods from CFC, and be able to locate them later. So whether it's worth it is up to you. But I have a sneaky feeling that's what's going on - there have been a lot of other people who've run into very similar problems and posted on CFC trying to figure it out over the years.

My guess is the error you saw from the editor is related to it not being able to see the other Civ files due to the Windows VirtualStore. You may have luck modifying the BIQ by going into Options --> Settings in the editor and unchecking Map Enabled, and restarting. This will cause the editor to not attempt to load any graphics files (which is may not be able to see in Program Files). However, it won't be possible to edit the map or view unit icons with this disabled, although the map will still be saved in the BIQ unmodified when you save it.

Takhisis · Sep 29, 2016

Install them in a dedicated folder, e.g. C:\\Games

Oni Ryuu · Sep 30, 2016

Once again, thank you Quintillus.

I'm going to get an external hard drive for my Civ files before I start the reinstall process just to be extra cautious. I'm going to use the 1.03 editor to keep things simple. If that works I'll try using the 1.01 editor as you suggested for "cross-class" units.

Just as an afterthought. When starting a large mod from scratch, I often use 3 place holder blanks for every 10 units in case I find a new unit or need to reorder the list. Will it be possible in a new version of your editor to rearrange the list of units or insert a unit at the desired space within the list? This is something that has lead me to retype my entire list many times before using the blanks and the blanks only go so far.

Oni Ryuu · Oct 4, 2016

I don’t know how much work it would take or even if it’s possible to add more attributes to the game. If it’s any interest to you I have the following suggestions.

Unit Abilities

· All terrain – Can move over land and sea like an air unit (if not immobilised). Able to defend itself in ground combat and take damage from bombard (unlike air units). No transport characteristics so it can be tagged as a normal unit, tactical missile or foot unit. Able to be tagged with sinks in sea/ocean. To be used for true VTOL aircraft and true amphibious vehicles.
· Light weight vehicle – To be used for cavalry, air transportable vehicles and medium artillery.
· Transports light weight vehicles – Foot units can load into foot unit transports, light weight vehicle transports and normal transports. Light weight vehicles can load into light weight vehicle transports and normal transports.
· No disease – For armoured vehicles and hazmet soldiers/workers.

AI Strategy

· Disband unit (Land) – Disband in nearest city
· VTOL (Air) – "Hit and run"

Worker Actions

· Build obstacle – Uses all of a units moves like barricade but has a negative defensive bonus.
· Build canal – Turns a tile to coast
· Reclaim land – Turns coast to plains

If this is a workable idea I can imagine an explosion of new Civ 3 mods and re-releases of the best mods in the archive.

Oni Ryuu · Oct 5, 2016

I can’t find explanations for the following editor attributes.

Charm barrier (BLDG)
General Telepad (BLDG)
Teleportable (Unit – Special Orders)
Telepad (Unit – Special Orders)
Use Extra Cost (Unit)
Telepad Range (Unit)
Legal Unit Telepads (Unit)
Legal Building Telepads (Unit)

Do you have a guide I’ve missed?

Bluemofia · Oct 5, 2016

Oni Ryuu said:
I can’t find explanations for the following editor attributes.

Charm barrier (BLDG)
General Telepad (BLDG)
Teleportable (Unit – Special Orders)
Telepad (Unit – Special Orders)
Use Extra Cost (Unit)
Telepad Range (Unit)
Legal Unit Telepads (Unit)
Legal Building Telepads (Unit)

Do you have a guide I’ve missed?

Most of these are from the "Cracked Editor".

Charm Barrier: The building functions as a charm barrier, protecting units from the effects of charm. However, charm attacks can now destroy the improvements within the city.
Acts as a General Telepad: Allows this improvement to receive teleport units.
Teleportable: Determines if the unit is capable of teleporting.
Telepad: Determines if the unit is capable of receiving teleporting units.
Telepad Range: Determines the teleport range of the unit.
Legal Unit Telepads: Determines which unit this unit can teleport to.
Legal Bldg Telepads: Determines which building this unit can teleport to.

"Use Extra Cost" is not in the base editor, so I differ to Quintillus.

Please see this thread for more information, and links to other threads which did more in depth testing.

Delta_Strife · Oct 5, 2016

Hey Quintillus was trying to use your editor for the first time. When I go to map view I get a white screen. However if I right click it will select the terrain. How do I make the map appear? Using newest version of Java and your editor on windows 7. Sorry if this has been solved somewhere else in the thread. Cheers!

Quintillus · Oct 5, 2016

Oni Ryuu said:
Once again, thank you Quintillus.

I'm going to get an external hard drive for my Civ files before I start the reinstall process just to be extra cautious. I'm going to use the 1.03 editor to keep things simple. If that works I'll try using the 1.01 editor as you suggested for "cross-class" units.

Just as an afterthought. When starting a large mod from scratch, I often use 3 place holder blanks for every 10 units in case I find a new unit or need to reorder the list. Will it be possible in a new version of your editor to rearrange the list of units or insert a unit at the desired space within the list? This is something that has lead me to retype my entire list many times before using the blanks and the blanks only go so far.

This is possible, but a question of time. It's been requested a few times, and is gradually climbing the priority list for the editor. I did actually start working improving the unit list several years ago, but the effort was not completed... at any rate, possibly, but I wouldn't hold your breath for it as I don't spend as much time on the editor as I did when it was new.

Oni Ryuu said:
I don’t know how much work it would take or even if it’s possible to add more attributes to the game. If it’s any interest to you I have the following suggestions.

Unit Abilities

· All terrain – Can move over land and sea like an air unit (if not immobilised). Able to defend itself in ground combat and take damage from bombard (unlike air units). No transport characteristics so it can be tagged as a normal unit, tactical missile or foot unit. Able to be tagged with sinks in sea/ocean. To be used for true VTOL aircraft and true amphibious vehicles.
· Light weight vehicle – To be used for cavalry, air transportable vehicles and medium artillery.
· Transports light weight vehicles – Foot units can load into foot unit transports, light weight vehicle transports and normal transports. Light weight vehicles can load into light weight vehicle transports and normal transports.
· No disease – For armoured vehicles and hazmet soldiers/workers.

AI Strategy

· Disband unit (Land) – Disband in nearest city
· VTOL (Air) – "Hit and run"

Worker Actions

· Build obstacle – Uses all of a units moves like barricade but has a negative defensive bonus.
· Build canal – Turns a tile to coast
· Reclaim land – Turns coast to plains

If this is a workable idea I can imagine an explosion of new Civ 3 mods and re-releases of the best mods in the archive.

This, unfortunately, it not possible. The attributes are all buried in the Civ3 code, and while there are occasionally cases where the base editor locked things down to be more restrictive than the game allowed, and there were the Charm/Teleport attributes that the base editor did not expose at all, it's not possible to add new attributes that the base game didn't have at all (whereas Civ4 does allow that, with sufficiently advanced modding skills). You'd essentially have to rebuild the game from scratch, including AI and/or multiplayer capabilities, to add new capabilities.

The one that you can sort-of simulate is the Light weight vehicle. By assigning the Wheeled unit ability to lighter units, and not heavier ones, you can effectively restrict the terrain choices of heavy ones, and use it as light/heavy instead of strictly has wheels/does not have wheels.

Some cool ideas though; would be nice to add if it didn't require rewriting the whole game!

Oni Ryuu said:
I can’t find explanations for the following editor attributes.

Charm barrier (BLDG)
General Telepad (BLDG)
Teleportable (Unit – Special Orders)
Telepad (Unit – Special Orders)
Use Extra Cost (Unit)
Telepad Range (Unit)
Legal Unit Telepads (Unit)
Legal Building Telepads (Unit)

Do you have a guide I’ve missed?

Bluemofia answered most of them. Use Extra Cost is actually Use Exact Cost. The Apolyton documentation for the SAV format states:

use exact cost (If 7 cost=# shields otherwise cost=shields/rows)

In Conquests, this is almost always 7, and means that if you say a unit has a Shield Cost of 40, it will cost exactly 40 shields. Otherwise, it's how many "rows" of shields the unit costs, where the number of shields per rows scales by difficulty. So let's consider AI cost on Regent (100%) and Warlord (120%). If exact cost is 7, and the shield cost is 40, it will cost 40 shields on Regent and 40 * 1.2 = 48 on Warlord. If exact cost is not 7, and shield cost is 40, it will cost 40 * 10 = 400 shields on Regent and 40 * 12 = 480 shields on Warlord. On earlier versions of Civ3 (Vanilla in particular, though I don't recall the exact sub-versions), non-7 was the default, so an Archer had a Shield Cost of 2, for example, and a Knight 7. By Conquests, there were units such as the Jaguar Warrior that had intermediate shield costs (15 shields), so the default switched to using exact cost rather than number-of-rows cost.

As far as I know, all numbers other than 7 work the same, but that is something that I've trusted the pre-existing documentation on and have not experimented with myself. You'll probably want 7 for Conquests scenarios, although in theory it should work to have a mix (if you can keep the different shield costs straight).

I should probably either do like the Firaxis editor and make it always convert to Exact Cost, or make it a check box in case there's some desire to keep an old scenario how it was. It is kind of puzzling as it is now.

There is a Help system (F1 or Help -> View Help), but it is far from complete at this point, and does not cover those specifics.

Delta_Strife said:
Hey Quintillus was trying to use your editor for the first time. When I go to map view I get a white screen. However if I right click it will select the terrain. How do I make the map appear? Using newest version of Java and your editor on windows 7. Sorry if this has been solved somewhere else in the thread. Cheers!

Did you happen to start it with launcher.jar, or directly with the Conquests Editor.jar? I don't think it should matter with the latest version of Java, but with older versions, it wouldn't always get enough memory if you didn't start with launcher.jar (even on computers with plenty of memory, due to Java requesting early-2000's levels of memory by default). Trying the other one couldn't hurt (although I'm not sure this is it, as it should give an error pop-up if it runs out of memory).

The other thought is that if the Civ3 Install Directory is incorrect for some reason, it wouldn't be able to load the graphics. You can verify that it's correct via Options -> Editor Settings, and then it's Civ3 Install Directory, which should match the location in which Vanilla is installed. Although again, it probably would have thrown an error message in this case.

I'm not entirely sure what might be causing this though, as it's a new one. If it still persists via the other launch and with the install directory verified, see if there's anywhere in the log.txt file the editor creates in its folder that mentions "Error" followed by a bunch of programming stuff that likely includes "com.civfanatics.xplatformeditor". If so, uploading that portion of the log.txt file here could point me in the right direction for identifying the cause of it programmatically.

Delta_Strife · Oct 6, 2016

Quintillus said:
Did you happen to start it with launcher.jar, or directly with the Conquests Editor.jar? I don't think it should matter with the latest version of Java, but with older versions, it wouldn't always get enough memory if you didn't start with launcher.jar (even on computers with plenty of memory, due to Java requesting early-2000's levels of memory by default). Trying the other one couldn't hurt (although I'm not sure this is it, as it should give an error pop-up if it runs out of memory).

The other thought is that if the Civ3 Install Directory is incorrect for some reason, it wouldn't be able to load the graphics. You can verify that it's correct via Options -> Editor Settings, and then it's Civ3 Install Directory, which should match the location in which Vanilla is installed. Although again, it probably would have thrown an error message in this case.

I'm not entirely sure what might be causing this though, as it's a new one. If it still persists via the other launch and with the install directory verified, see if there's anywhere in the log.txt file the editor creates in its folder that mentions "Error" followed by a bunch of programming stuff that likely includes "com.civfanatics.xplatformeditor". If so, uploading that portion of the log.txt file here could point me in the right direction for identifying the cause of it programmatically.

Thanks for the quick reply. I have to launch it using the start.bat file. Here is what the log is spitting out:

Spoiler :

Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available! 1.48

Archiving Civ3 Content

King

King

Archiving Civ3 Content

Archiving Civ3 Content

Prince

Attachments

King

Archiving Civ3 Content

King

Archiving Civ3 Content

King

Archiving Civ3 Content

¡Patria y vida!

King

King

King

F=ma

Deity

Archiving Civ3 Content

Deity

Similar threads