Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available! 1.51

[Takhisis]

Inadvertently posted on Steph's thread instead of yours, Quintillus:

A weird idea: does your editor allow for setting upgrade paths for land units to change into sea units or viceversa?

 

[Blue Monkey]

In the case of Malucca Pirates & Mughals it was the terrain buildings pcx. Simple substitution resulted in the map tab opening & displaying correctly. Thought that the same might be true with TAM. The imported maps have no preplaced terrain buildings. Looked at the TAM pcx. It is the same as the standard Firaxis file. Still got the result of TAM Fertile Crescent showing a blank map while the imported maps show just fine. Given what worked with Mughals a non-standard terrain file is likely the cause. But which could it be? Larger resource file? Off-size city? Is it a more general case that variable size files can cause similar problems?

 

[Quintillus]

The editor does have a pop up warning to restart via the loader. All my recent tests & the posted logs were opened via the loader jar. I've set that as the icon in my dock, so it's consistent.Opened file again & compared to pristine pcx on C3C install DVD. Original file is 512x256. File in Mughals is 384x256. Looks like the fourth column was trimmed off - otherwise the content is identical. Sorry I didn't catch that. Have to try swapping files out & see what happens.

Doesn't explain the difference between the TAM & the imported map biqs' behavior. They reference the same TAM art files.

It's getting too late to concentrate. Next session I'll swap out the Mughal terrain buildings file & see what happens. If nothing else it will be something to add to the list of files that need to be standard. Wonder why Firaxis' editor didn't reject it?

Firaxis's editor knows what format the game expects for PCX's, and may well use the exact same code as the game. Whereas I am not always aware of the different variations on PCXs (particularly size) that can be used. But see also my response to your next post.

With regards to the out of memory one... I've added some code (since 0.82) to report how much RAM is being used and available when that happens. It seems odd that it should be running out, but I'll at least be able to figure out how much it's using in the logs in 0.83 and later. The place where it's failing is very near where it failed when I tried without the launcher, which would indicate it wasn't getting more memory like it should have for some reason.

In the case of Malucca Pirates & Mughals it was the terrain buildings pcx. Simple substitution resulted in the map tab opening & displaying correctly. Thought that the same might be true with TAM. The imported maps have no preplaced terrain buildings. Looked at the TAM pcx. It is the same as the standard Firaxis file. Still got the result of TAM Fertile Crescent showing a blank map while the imported maps show just fine. Given what worked with Mughals a non-standard terrain file is likely the cause. But which could it be? Larger resource file? Off-size city? Is it a more general case that variable size files can cause similar problems?

Ahhh... the 384x256 terrain buildings PCX is a Vanilla one, without barricade graphics (this might also be a PTW one, I think barricades were from Conquests). I hadn't added in support for them since I've only done Conquests BIQ support thus far. Although in retrospect, it makes sense that some Conquests BIQs might be continuations of PTW scenarios that had custom terrain buildings PCXs that weren't upgraded for Conquests. I can probably add support for that style of terrain buildings without too much trickery.

Does the log have an error for TAM? If it's a graphics file, it should specify in the log which file is causing the hiccup. However, it is kind of late here, so I may have to re-read this later, too.

I will have to make this sort of error more visible in 0.83 so it isn't necessary to look in the log to know which file to investigate.

Variable sizes (width/height) of PCXs are likely to cause issues, although support is starting to be added for that, generally in accordance with when I'm aware of them being used (such as for city graphics). Larger-than-normal PCXs may simply cause things to display oddly (ex. my editor didn't know how to treat blown-up city graphics, and they wouldn't have been centered right before 0.81), but smaller-than-normal ones are likely to result in errors due to trying to chop them up into their sub-images and running off the edge of the PCX.

Takhisis/Ozymandias... response coming up...

 

[Quintillus]

Bizarre: I can't d/l the new version from the Google page -- the IE tab it's on freezes (repeatedly.) Any ideas?

Thanks,

Oz

That is bizarre. I just tested it in IE8, Opera 11.52, and Firefox 17, and all three times was able to download (although Google put me on a landing page first ). So, I don't know why that is - maybe a Google bug, I've seen their websites be finicky with Opera for short periods of time before - but in the meantime, I've attached the current version to this post and will leave it here for a week or possibly until I run out of attachment space.

If it continues to prove troublesome, I can add an alternate upload location. AtomicGamer would probably work, although they'd have a 3-5 minute wait since it's over 1 MB (which is why I don't use them as the default - seems a silly wait for a file that fits on a floppy diskette. You could probably move it on an actual floppy diskette faster than that!).

Inadvertently posted on Steph's thread instead of yours, Quintillus:

A weird idea: does your editor allow for setting upgrade paths for land units to change into sea units or viceversa?

Good question. You can set such upgrades as I just added every unit to the "upgrade to" box. Whether it will work in-game, I don't know, and I hadn't considered that before. It's 3 AM so I'm not going to do a proper test right now, but will at some point if you don't do so first.

My guess is that it will probably work, but the AI will probably do silly things like upgrading tanks to battleships in interior cities and then having a bunch of nearly-useless beached battleships. But, you can find out!

 

[Blue Monkey]

Does the log have an error for TAM? If it's a graphics file, it should specify in the log which file is causing the hiccup. However, it is kind of late here, so I may have to re-read this later, too.

The full log in the spoiler of this post is for TAM.

 

[Quintillus]

The full log in the spoiler of this post is for TAM.

Right... the error is happening when it's important the landmark base terrain files (such as lxggc.pcx or lwOOO.pcx), but I don't know which particular one of those nine. However, it isn't giving an error with the graphics per se - it just ran out of memory. Which is odd with the launcher. This will probably have to wait until I can release version 0.83 (or a pre-build of it), which I'll be able to do when I'm back at my main development machine. A PCX file shouldn't cause this error unless it's REALLY big, far bigger than any Civ3 PCX should ever be.

Also, I didn't know you could link to posts like that, with tags. Learn something new every day...

 

[Takhisis]

You wouldn't believe the amount of things you can do with text and images in this forum…

 

[Blue Monkey]

Such as

[IMG=right]picture url[/IMG]

to put the image beside text rather than below it. Can come in handy in a thread like this if there are posts with a lot of both.

 

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy Quintillus,

i finally got around to reading my civ mail. [*blush*] glad you are still interested in this util. it's been quite useful to me ... thanks!

if you are looking for a temporary file host location, you may want to look at this site ...
Game Front File Hosting FAQ | GameFront

i'm looking forward to playing with the new version. [*grin*]

take care,
lee

 

[Ozymandias]

@Quintillus - Ironically, I was finally able to d/l it -- using Opera ...

Thank You,

Oz

 

[Quintillus]

After getting a nice dedicated block of time to ponder this, I've overcome the previous barrier with implementing zooming, and thus have a preview:

Spoiler Preview :

As of 10 minutes ago, the editor can now display maps at nearly whatever zoom level you specify. Right now it's displaying at an 18.8% zoom level, just low enough for the WWII Pacific to fit completely on my monitor.

There's still work to be done to get this ready to release, though, and a bit more than fixing the zoom button so it shows the correct zoom level. But version 0.83 will have zoom.

You wouldn't believe the amount of things you can do with text and images in this forum…

That's quite a handy link. I never knew there were quite so many options.

howdy Quintillus,

i finally got around to reading my civ mail. [*blush*] glad you are still interested in this util. it's been quite useful to me ... thanks!

if you are looking for a temporary file host location, you may want to look at this site ...
Game Front File Hosting FAQ | GameFront

i'm looking forward to playing with the new version. [*grin*]

take care,
lee

Glad you're finding uses for it! I might start using GameFront as an alternate. Although I also recently noticed that it's now possible to include up to 10 MB files to the Downloads Database at CFC... so I might be able to simplify that, and only have the old versions stored externally.

@Quintillus - Ironically, I was finally able to d/l it -- using Opera ...

Thank You,

Oz

My favorite browser! It still beats me why it wouldn't work with IE. Maybe something on CFC or Google doesn't like recent versions of IE?

 

[Blue Monkey]

After getting a nice dedicated block of time to ponder this, I've overcome the previous barrier with implementing zooming, ...

As of 10 minutes ago, the editor can now display maps at nearly whatever zoom level you specify. Right now it's displaying at an 18.8% zoom level, just low enough for the WWII Pacific to fit completely on my monitor.

 

[Quintillus]

Version 0.83 is now available! Download it from the usual link! The file itself is now hosted at CFC, which hopefully is more convenient.

The big new feature is zoom. You can zoom in or out, at nearly any zoom level you like, and continue to use the editing capabilities at that zoom level. See the screenshot below:

Spoiler Screenshot From 0.83 Pre-Alpha :

The full list of changes:

• Zoom has been added. After opening a BIQ, click the "Zoom: 100%" button to change the zoom, and type in the new zoom level. Note that the map tab is slower the further you are zoomed out, but still works the same regardless.
• Fixed a bug where the first spaceship part would be set to zero required when loading a BIQ. It now keeps its original number required, as intended.
• Added memory usage diagnostics to the log file.
• Backend work on code quality, and slightly improved BIQ import capabilities. (No visible end effect)

There is one zoom-related setting you can change under Settings->Map. This allows you to improve the quality of the image while zoomed (making city names and borders in particular more legible), or improve the map-drawing speed slightly. The default is a balance of the two.

BlueMonkey/I], the memory usage diagnostic change in particular may be helpful in identifying the cause of the out of memory issue you've encountered. With this version, if you encounter that error, it will put in the log file how much memory it was using, and what the maximum was. At the very least, that will tell us if the problem is that Java isn't being given enough memory, or if the program is using much more memory than expected.

 

[crazyanswer]

 

[Blue Monkey]

Thanks for the update. Dl'ing now. IIRC OsX did a scheduled update to Java since our last tests. Maybe that will help with the memory problem.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Two quick questions:

• Does the editor incorporate the ability to make maps of unusual (large) sizes you discussed here?
• Does it include the ability to stitch together maps as does Map Tweaker?

I apologize if these questions were answered earlier in the thread. & please don't consider them demands/requests. Not even on the serious wish list. Just mapping out the pipeline.

 

[Quintillus]

Two quick questions:

• Does the editor incorporate the ability to make maps of unusual (large) sizes you discussed here?
• Does it include the ability to stitch together maps as does Map Tweaker?

I apologize if these questions were answered earlier in the thread. & please don't consider them demands/requests. Not even on the serious wish list. Just mapping out the pipeline.

- You can create maps of unusual sizes if you start with a BIQ that doesn't already have a map. Load up that BIQ, and then check the "Custom Map" check box to start the process of creating one.
- It doesn't have the map tweaking/stitching/nudging/etc. features that MapTweaker does. While nudging has been considered, these are all unlikely to happen anytime soon.

 

[CyberChrist]

Does your editor require the various pcx files to be in a specific format?

I ask since it is currently not displaying the resource graphics correctly in my age-old project which makes use of a rather larger resources.pcx (regular/cracked editor and game displays them correctly).

 

[Quintillus]

Does your editor require the various pcx files to be in a specific format?

I ask since it is currently not displaying the resource graphics correctly in my age-old project which makes use of a rather larger resources.pcx (regular/cracked editor and game displays them correctly).

It's generally OK with them as long as they are the expected size. With irregularly-sized graphics, support is so-so. In the specific case of resources.pcx, it expects a PCX with six columns of resources, and in theory should be flexible with resources.pcx files that have varying number of rows, as long as each row is the expected 50 pixels in height.

If you can link to/post the pcx file in question, I can test with it and add support for its dimensions. The entire scenario shouldn't be necessary.

 

[CyberChrist]

It's generally OK with them as long as they are the expected size. With irregularly-sized graphics, support is so-so. In the specific case of resources.pcx, it expects a PCX with six columns of resources, and in theory should be flexible with resources.pcx files that have varying number of rows, as long as each row is the expected 50 pixels in height.

If you can link to/post the pcx file in question, I can test with it and add support for its dimensions. The entire scenario shouldn't be necessary.

Ok, I will just reformat my resources.pcx from 24 to 6 columns then - I need to do that to get around the shadow* resource problem anyway (I make use of a lot of bonus resources, but not quite that many - heh).

Btw, why not just make the format require the width of the resources.pcx to be divisible by 50 instead of a specific number of columns?


EDIT: I do ofc mean phantom/ghost* resource problem