Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available! 1.51

[Quintillus]

Sorry for being away for awhile; I've been fairly focused on work and politics lately. Even some politics at work, but that's largely been positive, thankfully.

Is there a way for a unit with multiple moves to be limited to one rebase per turn and still rebase to units such as aircraft carriers? I don’t know what I’m doing with the telepad option.

I'm really not sure on that one; that would be an "experiment and post the results" topic.

Been solely using your editor, and it is amazing. Does it allow units to be selected as Charm units? I thought it did, but I can't seem to find the selection on the units tab. I will try lowering the safety settings, see if it appears.

Glad to hear it's generally working. When I volunteered to create January's COTM, I also made sure to only use my editor (rather than jumping back and forth as I often had in the past); figured it would be good to give it a realistic test rather than just a developer-of-it test.

I thought it supported Charm for units as well, but it appears that while I did add Charm for buildings, I did not get to it for Units. I found "TODO: Add support for Charm, Telepad, Teleportable" in one of my code files, and a message from August 12, 2010 saying:

Final changes for full support for standard items.

Remaining:

Charm support
Telepad support
Teleportable support

Which was the most recent mention of Charm in my list of changes. So it looks like it escaped notice .

If i made longevity a normal improvement will it only double the growth of its host city?

I want city level 3 to be an attribute of a sewer system and hospitals to have double population growth.

P.S. I know you get pestered on enabling a "building requirement for units" option, I thought that the Manhattan project may hint at a way for that to work .I'm sure you've already checked but its best to say something than assume.

Good question, but I've never tried it. Although I've left a fair amount of things open within the editor, I never really got around to testing the edge possibilities much. tom2050's answer is as good as I can provide.

Can someone describe a working example of the telepad function?

Does it have to be able to teleport to a unit that can transport that type of unit (e.g. Foot Unit transport)?

I think Blue Monkey hit all the big threads in his post. A Study in Teleportation in particular is the place to start.

Hi Quintilis. I’ve found a bug in your conquestseditor1_03.

The last 2 resources on my list were undeletable. Both were strategic resources in use. They were deleted due to not showing in a randomly generated map. All other resources were deletable. All resources of the terrain allowing the 2 were automatically deselected and wouldn’t accept new ones. Additionally the editor wouldn’t allow me to give the explore AI strategy to my explorer/scout units. All of this was eventually remedied by loading the BIQ onto the Firaxis editor, saved as a new file and reloaded onto yours. I had to correct a number of things that automatically change when doing that but everything works now. I don’t know what information is useful to you but if it helps, I attempted to delete the resources whilst in use and all units and buildings requiring them reset to requiring none.

I'm somewhat confused about the precise workflow, as it sounds a bit like two different issues. So one at a time:

- For the resources, I'm confused over that you said the last 2 were undeletable, but also mentioned them being deleted due to not showing on the randomly-generated map?
- I'm also not sure what you mean by "All resources of the terrain allowing the 2 were automatically deselected and wouldn’t accept new ones" - do you mean the resource on them was set to None and you couldn't select another resource for that tile, or something else?
- Deleting a resources should remove all instances of it from the map, and units/buildings/techs that previously required or revealed it should now require/reveal None instead (that would be intended).
- I don't think there's a case where you shouldn't be able to delete a resource. You can't (yet) delete civs/units on a custom map, but resources should be deleteable even with a map. So it would be a bug if there's a case where they cannot be.
- Separately, I believe the Explore strategy should always be assignable, however I am able to reproduce that it does not seem to stick in at least some cases. It does stick in Firaxis's editor, so that's probably a functional bug.

In summary, it's probably a bug if you can't delete a resource, but I need some more clarification on what happened when you saw that (and if it was really undeletable on the GOOD tab, or something else was unexpected). There definitely seems to be something strange going on with Explore, so I will take a look at that and see what's happening there. They probably are unrelated, however.

Edit: Investigated the Explore issue; the Explore AI strategy was not being updated due to an error in which the explore strategy and the explore order were switched. Effectively, that meant the explore strategy was never updated, although the explore order was unaffected as there was separate code later on that ensured it was always updated with the correct value of its check box. This fix will be in 1.07.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

I'm really not sure on that one; that would be an "experiment and post the results" topic.

I have had no success so far.

Good question, but I've never tried it. Although I've left a fair amount of things open within the editor, I never really got around to testing the edge possibilities much. tom2050's answer is as good as I can provide.

No success. It seems to remove the ability so it no longer applies to any city.

I think Blue Monkey hit all the big threads in his post. A Study in Teleportation in particular is the place to start.

I got the telepad stuff working but I couldn't find a use for it in my game with its limitations.

I'm somewhat confused about the precise workflow, as it sounds a bit like two different issues. So one at a time:

They honestly couldn’t be removed from the editor. When you right clicked over them the option would appear but nothing would happened when chosen.

but also mentioned them being deleted due to not showing on the randomly-generated map?

I had to load the BIQ into the Firaxis editor to delete them.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "All resources of the terrain allowing the 2 were automatically deselected and wouldn’t accept new ones" - do you mean the resource on them was set to None and you couldn't select another resource for that tile, or something else?

The two terrain types that allowed access to “Hardwood” and “Workable Stone” had all of their resources deselected. This was unalterable until I transferred the BIQ to the Firaxis editor.

Separately, I believe the Explore strategy should always be assignable, however I am able to reproduce that it does not seem to stick in at least some cases. It does stick in Firaxis's editor, so that's probably a functional bug.

This wasn’t the first occurrence of one of the AI Strategies being deselected when I change page (select another unit to edit or go to improvements).

My post looks like a dig so please know that I’m only being this thorough because I really like your editor and your customer service and want to help.

 

[Quintillus]

Hmm, interesting. For the deletion issue, it sounds like something where I may need to play around with the BIQ to be able to reproduce it. The new post does clarify the behavior - and what happened which shouldn't have - and while I'll see if I can find code that would explain how it happened and altered it, it may be an edge case that would be difficult to reproduce (it's often quicker to reproduce an issue and look at the error messages than to try to predict the cause while looking just at the code).

I'll go through the AI strategies one-by-one as well and see if I can find any others that don't update properly.

I appreciate the specifics; one of the most helpful things when fixing issues in software development is having precise instructions for how to create the conditions that are causing the errors. I'd rather learn about any issues, and how to reproduce them, now than have someone else run into them later because I wasn't aware of them.

----------------

Unrelated to the current version, I successfully got version 0.99 Legacy working on the oldest and least-powerful hardware I have that is theoretically capable of running the editor; a Pentium MMX 166 MHz laptop with 104 MB of RAM and Windows 98 SE. Loading a compressed BIQ file with the standard game rules, the map disabled, and the resolution set to the laptop's max of 800x600, it took a little bit of time, but loaded it up in the end; auto-save has also been working as expected. Some sample timings of how long tasks took according to the logs:

- 7.96 seconds to load the main window (after double-clicking the .jar file)
- 38.01 seconds to load all the tabs in the background (including the time to load the main window)
- 4.96 seconds to process the BIQ file (including decompression, which was less than 0.2 seconds)
- 7.99 seconds to load the BIQ file, including processing and sending data to the tabs
- Roughly one second to save a BIQ file (not nearly as much needs to be processed as when it's opened)

I will note that the 7.96 seconds figure seems optimistic; using a stopwatch after noticing this, I clocked about 21 seconds to load the main window, versus 8 seconds. I suspect it's actually more like 13 seconds to initialize Java, and then 8 seconds for the editor's initialization once Java is up and running.

After it was loaded up and I went to the Civ tab and loaded Sumeria, I checked memory usage; it reported 7625 KB of memory was in use by the editor - less than 8 MB. Interestingly, the same scenario on Windows XP x64 resulted in 15,863 KB of memory being used. I suspect the newer (and 64-bit) version of Java on my Windows XP x64 machine - the latest major release, from 2013, versus the 2004 release - accounts for most of the difference, via various small overheads that add up in the end. Memory use also fluctuates slightly; a later measure showed 7574 KB in use. But regardless, the memory use proved to be significantly lower than even I expected.

Alas, there is not enough free space on the laptop's hard drive to install Civ3, and even if there were, I don't think it would be powerful enough to run it, though I have run both on a more-powerful computer running Windows 98 First Edition. But as long as a slightly old version and rule-only editing is acceptable, I'm now fully confident that the editor can be run on any computer that can run Civ III.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Hi Quintilis

If I have a mod made with your editor (with stats that require exploratory settings) then open and save it with the Civilization 3 conquests editor, will it still use all of the applied stats? I know it will retain the stats (except for reducing the number of players to 16) but I don’t know if saving it in your editor (with exploratory settings activated) is needed for stuff like out of class AI strategies to work. I’m also aware that looking up something with extra stats will cause the editor to demand that you change them or automatically remove them.

I want people to still be able to edit the map with the Civilization 3 conquests editor without losing the extra stats.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Downloaded and gave the latest version a trial run by making a map of Lovecraft's Dreamlands.

It's been so long that it took a few tries to remember how to get a good result in a streamlined way. It's like riding a bike - pretty wobbly if you haven't done it in a while. But the workflow is getting intuitive after a few do-overs.

A couple of comments on the editor itself:

• fyi: running OSX 10.9.5 and Java 1.8.0_121
  
• Instructions in the OP still say to use the launcher. Running the launcher included in the most recent zip does nothing. Opening the editor itself works. This was discussed earlier in the thread, but maybe the OP should be updated?
• Problems we had discussed in the past about problems with the drop down menu - such as it being blank until scrolled over - persist. I don't remember if this got put on the "oh well, due to limitations beyond our control we've got to live with it", or the "on the to-do list but not as urgent", or some other pile.
• May or may not be related to that - some peculiar behaviors with map zoom and the scroll bars. Inconsistent so hard to describe.

This was only a quick test - maybe half an hour at most.

 

[Quintillus]

Development update - as of tonight, I have river-painting working. It's relatively late and I have work in the morning, so I don't plan to package it up tonight (and I might also add charm support for units before the release), but river painting should be arriving soon.

Hi Quintilis

If I have a mod made with your editor (with stats that require exploratory settings) then open and save it with the Civilization 3 conquests editor, will it still use all of the applied stats? I know it will retain the stats (except for reducing the number of players to 16) but I don’t know if saving it in your editor (with exploratory settings activated) is needed for stuff like out of class AI strategies to work. I’m also aware that looking up something with extra stats will cause the editor to demand that you change them or automatically remove them.

I want people to still be able to edit the map with the Civilization 3 conquests editor without losing the extra stats.

It should. As far as I know, the Firaxis editor (similar to this one) will not modify parts of the BIQ that you do not view in it - so a civ, building, etc. with non-Firaxis-approved settings should be unaffected, so long as you don't view that civ/building and run into the "invalid values!" trap that you mentioned at the end of the paragraph.

However, I can't guarantee this, as it's ultimately up to the Firaxis editor. You should generally be okay, but backups are advisable, especially when switching between editors and using non-standard values. I unfortunately don't have the time to test every possibility in this area.

Downloaded and gave the latest version a trial run by making a map of Lovecraft's Dreamlands.

It's been so long that it took a few tries to remember how to get a good result in a streamlined way. It's like riding a bike - pretty wobbly if you haven't done it in a while. But the workflow is getting intuitive after a few do-overs.

A couple of comments on the editor itself:

• fyi: running OSX 10.9.5 and Java 1.8.0_121
  
• Instructions in the OP still say to use the launcher. Running the launcher included in the most recent zip does nothing. Opening the editor itself works. This was discussed earlier in the thread, but maybe the OP should be updated?
• Problems we had discussed in the past about problems with the drop down menu - such as it being blank until scrolled over - persist. I don't remember if this got put on the "oh well, due to limitations beyond our control we've got to live with it", or the "on the to-do list but not as urgent", or some other pile.
• May or may not be related to that - some peculiar behaviors with map zoom and the scroll bars. Inconsistent so hard to describe.

This was only a quick test - maybe half an hour at most.

Interesting about the launcher. I might be one Java update out of date, but the launcher has still been working on the Windows (8.1 and XP) systems that I'm running. I remember discussing that the launcher no longer seemed to be necessary, but didn't realize or didn't remember that it could cause the editor to not launch at all (perhaps only on OS X or with the latest Java update? I haven't had a Mac to test in a long time). At any rate, I'll make a note to remove the launcher from the next release, and then update the first post.

The drop-down menu will have that behavior if the map redraws while it is open, which occurs every 5 seconds (and may be right after the drop-down menu is opened). It's a "to-do list but not urgent" item; essentially I need to have a flag for when the menu is open that prevents map-redrawing, but the difficulty is choosing any option will have to unset that flag, and you can also access and leave the menus with the keyboard. Perhaps there's an easy way to do it, but I'm not aware of it currently.

There were some peculiar issues with map zoom and scroll bars in the past, although I am not aware of any particular ones currently. However, zoom is a tricky beast, since the map is entirely custom and CPU-driven, so I can believe that there may be a few edge cases yet.

Thanks for the update!

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Thanks Quintilis.
I’ll go ahead with the transfer (keeping backups). We’ll know if it doesn’t work if I get a load of error reports when the game’s released.

 

[Blue Monkey]

I haven't had a Mac to test in a long time).

i'm still at the stage in developing scenarios where pretty much mapping is all I do as far as specific components go. But anything to do with the UI or basic functionality of the editor I again have time to test for you as needed.

The drop-down menu will have that behavior if the map redraws while it is open, which occurs every 5 seconds (and may be right after the drop-down menu is opened).

That would explain the intermittent and irregular occurrences. OTOH I'm pretty sure the problem with the volume/directory selection is happening even without the map open. Will check again and give you more detail.

There were some peculiar issues with map zoom and scroll bars in the past, although I am not aware of any particular ones currently. However, zoom is a tricky beast, since the map is entirely custom and CPU-driven, so I can believe that there may be a few edge cases yet.

The most obvious symptom is that the scroll bars sometimes disappear. The other visible evidence is that at small percentage zooms part of the bottom edge of the map sometimes intrudes into the scroll bar area and makes the covered area unclickable.

When you get to looking at these problems further down the road maybe a screen recording would be helpful?

 

[tom2050]

Interesting about the launcher. I might be one Java update out of date, but the launcher has still been working on the Windows (8.1 and XP) systems that I'm running. I remember discussing that the launcher no longer seemed to be necessary, but didn't realize or didn't remember that it could cause the editor to not launch at all (perhaps only on OS X or with the latest Java update? I haven't had a Mac to test in a long time). At any rate, I'll make a note to remove the launcher from the next release, and then update the first post.

I use Win 7 still, and I use the launcher, it works perfect. I use it everytime to launch, so I think it would be worthwhile to keep in there. I just had to do the Java update as you mentioned in the instructions.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Sometime the behavior on OSX boxes is different - for weird reasons. Glad to hear it's still useful for others.

 

[chickenx4]

Hello I'm new in this topic does this work in win 10

 

[Blue Monkey]

Yes it should.

 

[Quintillus]

Version 1.07

Version 1.07 is now available! Changes include:

- You can now paint rivers directly on the map
- There is now a button on the PLYR tab for updating the number of players
- The Explore strategy and AI order will now both be updated correctly when changed.

Rivers show up under the Overlay section; you can start painting Overlays by pressing 'O' while the map tab is open, or on clicking the fourth icon at the top of the map's right-side panel, which looks like a starting location. "River" is the last option in the Overlay drop-down.

Painting works like it does in the Firaxis editor, though with a slightly different feel. By and large, it works by clicking the boundary between two cells where you want the river to appear. There are two options in the Map section of the Settings area (which you can bring up through the Options menu, or with Ctrl+P) that you can use to tweak the feel of it to your preferences, modifying either how near you must be to the cell boundary to paint, or how far you must be from a corner where four cells meet. I've left the default at what feels like a pretty good fit to me after playing around with the options, but you may find you prefer somewhat different settings.

On the PLYR tab, while it was possible to increase the number of players by typing in a higher number and pressing Enter before (and this will still work), the button provides a more visible way to do this. It is not currently possible to decrease the number of players (the code to safely handle cases where a deleted player owns items on the map is not yet present); that will be in a future update. As I know river painting has been a frequent request, it seemed better to release that sooner than to wait until the code to decrease the number of players was present as well.

 

[Jorsalfare]

Just wanted to pop in and say that I'm glad you still take some time to tinker with your (already) great editor. It lets us "push the game-envelope" with rules and concepts not available with Firaxis' editor, so thanks and Cheers!

 

[chickenx4]

Hey I want to know if I see my resource and building that I added In my mod

 

[Quintillus]

i'm still at the stage in developing scenarios where pretty much mapping is all I do as far as specific components go. But anything to do with the UI or basic functionality of the editor I again have time to test for you as needed.

That would explain the intermittent and irregular occurrences. OTOH I'm pretty sure the problem with the volume/directory selection is happening even without the map open. Will check again and give you more detail.

The most obvious symptom is that the scroll bars sometimes disappear. The other visible evidence is that at small percentage zooms part of the bottom edge of the map sometimes intrudes into the scroll bar area and makes the covered area unclickable.

When you get to looking at these problems further down the road maybe a screen recording would be helpful?

A screen recording could be helpful. At this point I'm not sure if it's something like I saw on Windows in the past (and perhaps an edge case that I haven't triggered), or something platform-specific, or something else, and a recording that captured the zoom level it occurs at and reproducing it could help narrow it down.

Things that could use testing/general non-code improvement include:

• Which of the pushing-the-game-envelope possibilities work well, which work with some caveats or required setup, and which don't work. Initially I'd envisioned the safety levels evolving to capture this, but due to the amount of time required to test each combination (can a regular improvement have a Wonder flag? which ones? how does the game or AI behave when units have strategies from a different class? do some work better than others? etc.), that hasn't really come to pass.
• General documentation. If you go to Help --> View Help twice (there's a bug with the first time you click it currently), you can see the Help documentation, which is OK in some areas but nonexistant in others. Ideally it would be as comprehensive as the main editor's, but at the least it should include concepts/options that aren't in the main one, such as telepads, and it doesn't always do that. This is why it covers Deepwater Harbors, as an example. As a side note, there aren't any images there currently, but there's not a requirement that it not support images going forward (that was mostly due to the older versions of Java having poor HTML support, including for images, and somewhat to keep download size down). The main requirement here is not in any particular format, but accurate documentation of how certain aspects of Civ work; at times that may include a conceptual overview and a link to an existing well-written CFC thread for the nitty-gritty details. I'd like to have a clickable image like Firaxis's, but am not sure how to do that.
• As always, UI suggestions and wouldn't-it-be-cool-if-we-could ideas are welcome, with the understanding that some of them aren't possible in Civ and others aren't (or aren't for the present) due to time.
• If you are fluent in languages other than English, I would be supportive of translation efforts. There at least used to be sizeable Civ III communities in Russia, China, Germany, and France, and I think collaboration between these communities has been lower than it could have been - certainly in part, due to Firaxis's lack of support on this compared to Civ4, where the game easily supports multiple languages, and mods can as well. I've split an idea for this out below to avoid this point becoming too lengthy.

The cross-language idea is, suppose a scenario writer from Quebec wants to make a mod, and they're fluent in both French and English. If they want to make it available in both languages, they can, for example, complete version 1.0 in French, and then open the BIQ, change all the names for everything, save it, and have an English version 1.0. But then let's say they want to make a version 1.5 with significant changes. They can either make all the changes to both, or make all the changes to 1.0 French, and then rename everything again - a lot of dull, repetitive work. So it's likely that even if the author is fluent in both languages and doesn't mind the translation time, they'll only release it in one, or at least won't consistently release it in both.

It wouldn't be technically very difficult to add a component to the editor allowing you to specify what the name of units, buildings, etc. should be in another language. You'd have to add to it as you added units, buildings, etc. to the scenario, but you'd never be in a situation of having to make all your changes twice, or typing out every translation again. The editor could save this in another file that it associated with the BIQ, and then could, with the press of a button, create a different-version language of the same scenario.

While I suspect most mod authors either wouldn't have the multilingual skills for it, or wouldn't have the inclination to do it, there probably would be a number of scenarios that would have this if it had been easy in 2001 or even 2003, and both CFC and other civ forums would likely have more scenarios as a result. However, it's hard to justify adding this feature when the editor itself is only in English (although I suppose that could still work as long as the author knew English, but it wouldn't for, e.g. a Pole who didn't know English using it to add German to their scenario), and I don't have the skills to make accurate, natural translations into another language across the breadth of Civ's concepts.

I use Win 7 still, and I use the launcher, it works perfect. I use it everytime to launch, so I think it would be worthwhile to keep in there. I just had to do the Java update as you mentioned in the instructions.

I will add it to the first post like the old start.bat, but it seems to be a net decrement to keep it in the default distribution if it isn't working on OS X. Now that recent Java versions on Windows aren't RAM-constrained by default, there's no benefit for it on Windows, and it seems that it's causing it to not launch properly on some of the more recent versions of OS X.

Hello I'm new in this topic does this work in win 10

It should, but I don't have a Windows 10 computer to test it on (I have 8.1 and XP). In the past, however, I can't recall a Windows update or new version ever causing an issue with the editor, so I would be surprised to see any Windows 10-specific issues.

Hey I want to know if I see my resource and building that I added In my mod

They should show up in the editor once the scenario is loaded. Note that the graphics for buildings aren't displayed in the editor, and graphics for resources are only displayed on the map, but they should appear in the list of buildings/resources at least.

Just wanted to pop in and say that I'm glad you still take some time to tinker with your (already) great editor. It lets us "push the game-envelope" with rules and concepts not available with Firaxis' editor, so thanks and Cheers!

Thanks for stopping in! I'm glad to see that it still gets use; it's only really worth tinkering with much if there are others still playing Civ III and also tinkering with it.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

I'm glad to see that it still gets use; it's only really worth tinkering with much if there are others still playing Civ III and also tinkering with it.

There’s no aspect of my mod that I can think of that’s not been improved by your editor.

 

[tom2050]

Same here, it's the only editor I'm currently using for everything.

There is alot of stuff that could be tested with it, but yea its time consuming to test various ideas. I remember I was going to do that a long time ago, but time is always an issue with the amount of game variables involved.

 

[Oni Ryuu]

Do you know if anyone has tried reducing the minimum unit for the building production bonus? The current minimum is 1 (25%), I was hoping to be able to reduce it to 0.04 (1%) to have a greater variance. If no one’s tried, I’ll get to testing it at some point in the next week. I expect if it’s successful to be able to apply fractions to other stats (as long as the in-game result is a whole number).

E.g. I have a waterwheel providing a 25% bonus and want to add a millpond. An additional 25% is far too much and anything I do will have a knock-on effect. If there was a way to set a 10% bonus (or any other figure) it would have a significant impact on many people’s mods.

EDIT: Nope; the number resets to 1 when I entered 0.2 or .2 (5%) and saved. Removing all safety features also has no effect.

 

[Quintillus]

That would be near the top of my if-we-had-the-source-code wish list: allowing production bonuses in increments smaller than 25%, and tax/science/luxury bonuses in increments smaller than 50%. Unfortunately, the production bonuses are simply stored as an integer, and the game treats each number as a 25% increment. You may be able to do -1 for a 25% penalty, but due to the fact that it's stored as an integer there's no way to store a 0.2 or 0.5 for the game to multiply by its 25% standard.