Version 0.55 is live. It includes the major requested feature of being able to merge the map from one BIQ with the rules from another. At present, the user is responsible for making sure there are no conflicts between the BIQs in items present on the imported map (most notably, that the resources are the same on the BIQs, but also possibly including units and buildings), and, while a valid BIQ
MAY be produced if such a conflict exist, the behavior is undefined.
As such checks are desirable, and will be added sometime after this weekend, this is a "light" version of this feature, and not a full Version 0.60. However, it has been shown to be able to produce the intended merged BIQs well when the conditions are right, and thus is being released.
Change list:
- Added initial support for merging the rules from one BIQ with the map from another.
- Added a small number of tooltips for the primary interface buttons.
Step-by-Step of How to Merge Two BIQs
1. If the there are resources on the map of the "map" BIQ, VERIFY that the two BIQs have the same resource sections. Especially critical is that the number of resources is the same, but if the order is different, or the icons are different, you won't see what you expected on the finished, merged BIQ. If there are no resources on the map of the "map" BIQ, it doesn't matter if the resources sections are the same.
2. Repeat step one, for units, buildings, and civilizations, as pertinent (civilizations will be if cities or units exist, as they own units or cities).
3. Open the editor, and open the "rules" BIQ.
4. Click the "Import Map" button after the "rules" BIQ loads, and open the "map" BIQ (note that this BIQ does
not need to have custom rules). You will get a warning about doing step 1 and step 2, just in case you jumped in without reading the directions.
5. You should receive a Success! notice. If so, you can go ahead and save the new BIQ and you should have your merged rules and map! If you receive an error notice, make sure you followed (1) and (2), and if so, post a bug report here.
Note that PLYR sections are NOT currently imported, so if you import a map WITHOUT cities into a BIQ whose original map had NO default starting units, your new BIQ will give your civilizations neither cities nor starting units by default. Thus, you may have to play around with your PLYR section some to get a reasonable starting position for your BIQ.
Importing the PLYR section will be possible someday, but importing it would require that your ERAS, GOVTs, DIFFs even, to be the same between the BIQs or be set to "Any" for all players in the source map. Requiring almost everything to be the same rather defeats the point of this, and adding helper functionality for merging is beyond the scope of this weekend.
Initial tests do show that a BIQ with that gives neither cities nor starting units for the human civilization lets the human simply watch the game in an "observer" type mode (if there isn't fog of war/undiscovered territory), with no interaction with other civilizations. This in itself may be useful for testing pure AI-AI interactions.