Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available! 1.51

[Adrain]

Happy to help if I can

TBF it sounds like a re-install was probably a better idea than fixing reported problems as they came up and as determined from the error messages. That could have been a long-winded approach if the install was corrupted somehow.

Cheers -Ade.

 

[Kirejara]

Do you have more details of why it (Civ3 Multitool) doesn't run?

First I had some missing DLLs. After searching and downloading them, I received another error-message.

Then I had made no further attempt and deleted the tool.

EDIT: Sorry, my fault. I just looked into the C3MT-Thread and found the solution. I have to run the setup program with WinXP compatiblity under "Eigenschaften". It is working now.

 

[Adrain]

Frankly that's great news

You post a question; look into it a little further in order to clarify the problem for someone (me) who shows some interest; and come up with the answer and everything works fine.

As an added bonus you even post the solution so others further down get the benefit. Sounds perfect ;-)

-Ade.

 

[Bungus]

Anyone have problems saving? I keep getting the Phantom resource message when I click save, then nothing. Autosave feature gives me an error popup every few minutes or so.

 

[Stew Pid]

Anyone have problems saving? I keep getting the Phantom resource message when I click save, then nothing. Autosave feature gives me an error popup every few minutes or so.

Yes, same here, I believe it has something to do with two or more resources overwriting each other's .

 

[Civinator]

In my eyes this great editor worked very well with signalising the occurence of the phantom resources bug (as it is shown in Stew Pid´s screenshot, too) . For me the editor with this function detected a phantom resources bug in RAR (that was included in RARR, too) and that nobody had detected in more than ten years in one of the most popular mods of Civ 3 , triggered by the luxury resource 'Natives' in RAR.

Here is a screenshot showing the detection of a phantom resources bug in RAR 1.02 by this wonderful editor - and the bug was really there. Now in the next version of the RARR biq, this bug is fixed.

Stew Pid, the phantom resources bug adds an additional strat./lux. resource to your cities without needing a connection to that resource. When developing SOE about 15 years ago, this nasty bug was not known and crashed the complete great original concept of that scenario. In the first posts at CFC, this bug was also named 'resource overflow bug', but the name 'phantom resources bug' in my eyes here is fitting much better.

 

[Takeo]

For me the editor with this function detected a phantom resources bug in RAR (that was included in RARR, too) and that nobody had detected in more than ten years in one of the most popular mods of Civ 3 , triggered by the luxury resource 'Natives' in RAR.

Wow, all these years I had thought it was intentional by the creators to allow 1 or more civs to build the Barbarian Raider unit.

 

[Bungus]

Yeah, I never noticed it either. Mine was with saltpeter and mustangs (think its a typical second horsie resource for adding to the americas in epic mods at this point, req some late mid age tech. Guess cause everyone has saltpeter by the time they colonize it was never noticable. Odd, never got 'stangs when connected to saltpeter, but I dont fully understand how the bug manifests itself)

Quint is industriously updating a version with the ability to disable the warning. I've read on its wiki the elExpanded Editor allows the reordering of items, that may be an option for actually rectifying the bug itself.

 

[Quintillus]

Version 1.30

Version 1.30 is now available! There are two features in this version:

• You can now disable checking for the Phantom Resource Bug and Infinite Unit Upgrades in the Settings area
• An experimental Histograph for SAV files has been added to the editor

The first item covers the topic being discussed above. Note that both checks are still on by default, but you may now toggle them off. For the Phantom Resource Bug, this may be handy if you want to do a quick update to a scenario that has the bug, and fixing it would be too onerous (although it's still advisable to fix it before releasing the mod). I haven't thought of a case where upgrading the Infinite Unit Upgrade check would be useful, as having such upgrades results in infinite AI turn times, but the option is now there should you find a use for it.

The second item is more esoteric. I've been gradually adding code to read SAVs, but due to a combination of reasons (mainly competition for time, and that I have about fifty times as many games competing with Civ3 for my attention now as I did last decade) it's been going slowly. Thinking back, one thing that allowed both this editor and Steph's to come into being was releasing features as they were finished, and getting feedback on them - for example, version 0.50 of this editor did not support viewing the map, much less editing it. So in that spirit, I decided to add something fun from what I could already read:

Spoiler New Histograph :

This is a Power histograph from year 1959 of my Conquest of the World game. As you can tell, I was doing fairly well by then. But it also illustrates that, while in the squashed-column view of Civ3's histograph, it would look like America was losing power, in reality their power was fairly even over the past couple dozen turns.

In addition to Power, Score and Culture histographs are supported. You can also hide civilizations by clicking their name in the legend, and un-hide them by clicking their name again - making it easier to see how everyone else was doing, in this case. The Y axis will automatically adjust its height when the civilization with the highest score/power/culture is removed, to make it easier to see how everyone else is doing.

There are a couple caveats to note. One is that not all saves will be openable yet, due to the incomplete nature of SAV reading. The menu option ("File -> Open SAV") has thus been labeled Experimental. It will, however, inform you whether it succeeded or not, and update the title bar with the SAV's name if it is successful. The other is that in late-game histographs with many civs, it may take a few seconds for the histograph to appear, even on decently fast computers. I probably need to optimize it a bit, as right now it could be plotting up to 15,000 points (500 turns into a 30-civ game). But compared to an AI turn time in such a game, it will still be fairly quick.

 

[Vuldacon]

Quintillus... Great Additions. The New Histograph Looks Excellent and will be Fun to use

 

[Bungus]

Cool. More in depth analysis. Now I've got to actually play a game

Guessing you were running as Greece in this one?

 

[Quintillus]

Quintillus... Great Additions. The New Histograph Looks Excellent and will be Fun to use

Good to hear, and thanks!

Cool. More in depth analysis. Now I've got to actually play a game

Guessing you were running as Greece in this one?

That's the challenge, fitting in playtime for an actual game!

I was indeed Greece in that one. That game was my first big CivFanatics endeavour, which I wrote up in this thread. It went well enough that I decided to stick around here for a bit.

 

[Bungus]

Well, I think I'm approaching the play stage with my own endeavours. Will probably step back and take a few days off before starting an actually game. Here 17(?) years post release with so much additional content and utilities available, after every debug run through I find there's always 'one more thing' to add or adjust (currently still trying to get AI to prioritize courthouses in its new satelite cities- shame the 'add x building in every' improv ability is hard coded to GW's only)(or maybe some additional perk to improve expansionist trait).. or maybe drop another polytheistic cattle next to moscow..

 

[Shmelkin]

Is it possible to allow reordering of resources in existing scenario? For example, to fix phantom resource bug, or adapt scenario to another map which has defined and placed resources.

 

[Quintillus]

Is it possible to allow reordering of resources in existing scenario? For example, to fix phantom resource bug, or adapt scenario to another map which has defined and placed resources.

Not currently; the best option right now is the same as in the Firaxis editor, which would be manually re-ordering resources.

That said, as of tonight I've started the work that will lead to being able to re-order more tabs (beyond the current Tech and Unit tabs). It's a fairly complex endeavour, so it's definitely not a "done next week" type thing, but I agree it's a good idea, and like many of the features added over the years, seeing demand for it is a motivator for getting it done.

 

[Civinator]

Quintillus, I agree that an option to adapt the sequence of resources of a map (especially the strategic and luxury resources), that should be used by a mod would be great. Per example if I want to use the WWII Global Gold worldmap for playing CCM2 or RARR, it would be great, if the map could use the strategic and luxury resources of the mod, that are in the mod in another sequence as they are in the biq of the map, without replacing each of those resources manually on the map and to add only those resources of the mod manually to the map, that are not included in the biq of the map. With the current editors each resource on a map must be replaced manually on the map again, if an existing map with a different listing of resources is added (imported) to an existing mod. I never asked for such an option, as I thought this cannot be done.

To add something to the answer to Shmelkin´s post: The current versions of this great editor are able to detect phantom resources settings in a biq and to alarm the modder about such a constellation. Per example when redoing the biq of the RARR mod I received an alarm by the editor that there is a phantom resource constellation in that biq triggered by the luxury resources coffee and natives. When looking in the city screen of a city, that had access to the luxury resource coffee, I saw that here another luxury resource was added to that city without having access to that resource for that city. The Native resource of RAR 1.04 was not enabled for any of the civs and not available for any terrain, but it was still in the RARR biq, too. In the next version of RARR the Native resource is deleted. Nobody of the many users of the RARR mod (including myself) had noticed that bug before.

Quintillus, one more time a big thank you very much for all your great work with that editor.

Per example the settings of a cultural victory in my mod CCM2.50 (that holds an unit that can provide a base value of 1.000 culture points to a city) wouldn´t be possible without the option in your great editor, that allows to exceed the limits for a cultural victory massively over the limits that are possible with normal Civ 3 editors.

 

[Quintillus]

Quintillus, I agree that an option to adapt the sequence of resources of a map (especially the strategic and luxury resources), that should be used by a mod would be great. Per example if I want to use the WWII Global Gold worldmap for playing CCM2 or RARR, it would be great, if the map could use the strategic and luxury resources of the mod, that are in the mod in another sequence as they are in the biq of the map, without replacing each of those resources manually on the map and to add only those resources of the mod manually to the map, that are not included in the biq of the map. With the current editors each resource on a map must be replaced manually on the map again, if an existing map with a different listing of resources is added (imported) to an existing mod. I never asked for such an option, as I thought this cannot be done.

The editor actually does support remapping resources from maps imported via the Import Map functionality (Map --> Import Map). It requires both BIQs to support custom rules, but I verified it just now by importing the WWII Global Gold 1.1 map into a copy of the CCM 1.7 BIQ I had opened in the editor. I'd added a copy of the "Tobacco" resource (WWII Global 1.1 technically has two of these, but I chose the one that was misaligned with CCM 1.7) since I had difficulty finding the 8 that were already on the map, saved WWII Global Gold, imported, and the new Tobacco resource was right where I'd placed it, despite the GOOD being in a different order between the two scenarios.

According to my release notes for version 0.96,

- A few improvements to the Import Map (from BIQ) functionality. In particular, you no longer have to restart the editor to start editing the new map, and it will now automatically align resources between the two BIQs based on their names (though it doesn't do so for units, civs, etc. - it's still recommended to stick to fairly plain maps when using it).

This remains accurate - goods are re-mapped when names match, and units and civs are not, and looking at the code, buildings within cities are not either. Which does suggest "clear cities/units" as a useful improvement (and one which other utilities may already offer).

 

[Quintillus]

Version 1.31

Version 1.31 is now available! Changes:

• You can now remove all cities, or all units, from the map in one fell swoop
• Under-the-hood changes for the Tech list, on the tech tab. You should not notice any changes, but if you find any bugs report them here. Note 1/7: There is a visual bug with this, as described in post #1121. If you are editing technologies, version 1.30 is recommended.

The first change is inspired by Civinator's post #1116, and aims to make it easier to get up and playing when you wish to use a map from scenario B, with the rules from scenario A. The editor already will map resources up based on name (and clear those it can't map); this it another necessary step to get up and running without a lot of work. If you want a nice map and resources, clear both. If you want to keep the cities, then you can clear the units, and (if necessary) re-assign city ownership.

Please comment if the "map from scenario B, with rules from scenario A" situation is one that would be appealing to you. There are further improvements that could be made to make that easier (e.g. allow mapping city ownership on import, at a civilization level), and I think it would be cool if it were easy enough for a modder to release remixes of their scenarios on various maps - even those originally designed for other scenarios - for that to be common. But one of the continuing challenges is knowing what additions would strike the best balance of most creativity unleashed by the community, to the time it takes to add them. This step was very low in "time it takes to add", but most things are not!

The second change is preparatory work for adding reorderable lists for more tabs, and thus far only the tech tab has the under-the-hood changes. You shouldn't notice any changes at this point; as progress continues, it should eventually lead to improvements on the BLDG and GOOD tabs (and quite possibly other, smaller tabs after that).

----------

Administrative updates: Added permanent, mirrored Java 8 links to the opening post as a precaution against link rot/future changes to Java 8 availability. Also updated the official Java link for OS X 10.4 "Tiger".

 

[Civinator]

This is great news!
I will test it when I have finished the big RARR-update.

 

[Ozymandias]

... And I with The Forgotten World