MapView 2.0 - Civilization 4 Editor

[CivRulez07]

Okay, i fixed it. But i disabled some stuff during development so i cannot upload it immediately. Give me a little.

alright - that's cool

Was really good you asked for this. There was a really bad problem which is now solved. This fix increased the general fitness of MapView a lot. Crashes when changing mods should be much rare now.

that's great to hear! it's good news for all MapView users!

 

[kevinman4404]

My mod has been producing fatal xml errors, I'm gonna first try and troubleshoot my mod and see if that has any effect. EDIT: but of course I look forward to the update!

 

[Gr3yHound]

My mod has been producing fatal xml errors, I'm gonna first try and troubleshoot my mod and see if that has any effect. EDIT: but of course I look forward to the update!

The way MapView 'learned' was not very clever. Basicly i relied on things like <BonusInfo><Type>BONUS_</Type> where things had to start with Bonus to work. I changed that so you can use whatever you want. Doing my checks again <BonusInfo> now. That's the reason why amrev etc. crashed.
Amrev chrashed for "AMREV_LEADER_WASHINGTON" since MapView didn't really know it was learning about Civilizations. So it tried to write to unallocated memory. That's far better now.

 

[Gr3yHound]

Oh, i just noticed i had some leftover things in the editor that will currently just steal you some room to work on. I will push out a new version of the editor.dll tomorrow. That advanced city editor in the left bottom corner is not yet really.

 

[Genghis_Kai]

Your tool is great!

I would like to report some bugs (not sure whether you would consider them bugs though).

When I open my scenarios in your editor, these kind of errors have generated:

18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(20): NumAdvancedStartPoints=0
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(8696): numsignswritten=13
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(8697): RandomizeResources=false
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(11253): CorporationType=CORPORATION_7
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(11254): FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_MERCHANT
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(13220): FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_MERCHANT
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(14065): CorporationType=CORPORATION_1

It seems that the tool doesn't support great persons and corporation pre-placements.

 

[CivRulez07]

Oh, i just noticed i had some leftover things in the editor that will currently just steal you some room to work on. I will push out a new version of the editor.dll tomorrow. That advanced city editor in the left bottom corner is not yet really.

so is this available now, or is it delayed?

 

[Gr3yHound]

Your tool is great!

I would like to report some bugs (not sure whether you would consider them bugs though).

When I open my scenarios in your editor, these kind of errors have generated:

18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(20): NumAdvancedStartPoints=0
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(8696): numsignswritten=13
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(8697): RandomizeResources=false
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(11253): CorporationType=CORPORATION_7
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(11254): FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_MERCHANT
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(13220): FreeSpecialistType=SPECIALIST_GREAT_MERCHANT
18:24:42: Unknow or unexpected line(14065): CorporationType=CORPORATION_1

It seems that the tool doesn't support great persons and corporation pre-placements.

Thanks for the props.
And yeah, i didn't come to support all keywords. Yet. What mod is that? I thought i had at least Vanilla support completed.

so is this available now, or is it delayed?

Delayed. No idea when to get my hands on it again. It's suposed to help you doing the same changes for a lot of cities at once. Like adding buildings and stuff.

 

[magic_stick1376]

OK, first of all, I would just like to say that your program works beautifully and thank you so much for the pic2map; that saves A LOT of time for building an Earth map.

However, when saving a map, does it matter where I save the map to? I ask because every time I try to load my mod, Civ IV crashes. I have tried saving in both BTS and Vanilla and both ways crash Civ. Can you please tell me what I'm doing wrong, if anything?

 

[Gr3yHound]

idk actually i have almost ZERO modding & modification experience.

It could be possible that the mod is expecting the scenario to have some lines that mapview doesn't generate by default. Somewhere in the thread someone mentioned that he had to add several things to the map by hand first to make it work. I think that was somewhere between page 5 and 8 in this thread. Also, did you try loading it with Vanilla? And have you checked if Civ4 generates some kind of error message log that could be helpful?

 

[kevinman4404]

@Greyhound: It appears 2.0.9 has fixed the compatibility issues as you said, despite my game being messed up. Thank you!

Now that I can load it, for some reason, all the terrain/feature graphics (except one or two) are mixed up! For example, my oceans are a khaki colour, tundra is light green, the graphics for plains is instead the graphics for tundra, and other bizarre mixups. I am using custom graphics but have been since the beginning. What may be causing them to be mixed up?

Also, I'm in the process of making a graphics expansion for Mapview, with graphics (map graphics and icons) for 90 bonuses, more terrains and features, simplified terrain graphics (to make the map so much easier to analyze), and a better flood plains graphic.

I still have all the icons to do but other than that and a few missing resources I'm done.

EDIT: I also get the following messages when I load the map:

21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(37): StartingY=123
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(62): StartingY=135
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(87): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(112): StartingY=172
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(137): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(163): StartingY=103
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(188): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(213): StartingY=45
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(238): StartingY=212
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(263): StartingY=137
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(288): StartingY=58
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(309): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(323): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(337): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(351): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(365): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(379): StartingY=0
21:17:36: Unknow or unexpected line(393): StartingY=0

I will investigate the map file to make sure it's not because of me

I just posted them for your comments, I'm not sure the above messages are causing any problems that concern me. But who knows.
I imagine it just means it is having trouble placing starting units.

Kevin

 

[kevinman4404]

@MagicStick: (Assuming you still can't create a new map inside mapview) If it's a vanilla map and you don't load a mod while in mapview it should work in vanilla.

To make a map for your mod, I'd imagine you'd have to load the mod before you start editing the map.

However, this is just a guess, I may be wrong.

And there is definitely stuff you have to change in notepad (for BTS or for mod compatibility, I don't remember which)

 

[Gr3yHound]

...

I'll take care tomorrow ... thanks for your great reply. The Grafics inside mapview are weird? Or inside civ? I only touched the rendering algorithms to render the grid, no effects on anything else. Can you provide a screenshot?

Btw. The StartingY things might be a verys small bug, if it wasn't almost 5am on a workday eve i'd tell by now.

I'm off, i'll come back tomorrow

P.S: Try using mapview without your custom replacements. Just the plain installation, does this also cause weird texturing? Again: A screenshot would be very helpful for a first diagnosis.

 

[kevinman4404]

I'll take care tomorrow ... thanks for your great reply. The Grafics inside mapview are weird? Or inside civ? I only touched the rendering algorithms to render the grid, no effects on anything else. Can you provide a screenshot?

Okay, thank you

Unfortunately, I never took a screenshot while it was working properly (with the new graphics), so you we have nothing really to compare it to.

Here are screenshots of the terrains/features being problematic:

In picture 2, you can see the ocean's green, and random swamps in Turkey, Lebanon, around Ukraine, etc.

In picture 2, you can see a whole bunch of stuff out of wack- light green tundra, missing plains (which are now swamps), green ocean, etc.

Picture 3 shows the proper colours. NOTE: this was an old, old picture and is missing lots of my new terrains

Picture 4, although it has more terrains than picture 3, shows that the colours are now off. Much is different. For example, all of South America is green! Strange, but it looks like everything's just been shuffled around (see below)

These are the terrains in my mod, in order from Cold to Hot:

Snow
Tundra
Thinsoil
Grassland
(Fertile) Plains
Arid Plains
Wasteland
Desert
+Coast, Ocean, etc.

The problems seem to be:

1) Fertile Plains instead has a swamp terrain graphic
2) Tundra instead has a Fertile Plains graphic
3) Tundra graphic is nowhere to be seen
4) Ocean instead has a Thinsoil graphic
5) Snow instead has the Ocean graphic

I will also see if I can write up something about formatting maps edited/made by Mapview, but this will be a little later

Oh, and if I hover over the mixed-up tiles, it says it's the correct terrain. I also checked my custom graphics and they are fine too.

Kevin

 

[Gr3yHound]

Hm weird, i need to try that myself. I wrote you a private message.

I also uploaded all versions of mapview so you can go back to 2.0.7 or 2.0.8 if you don't have the file anymore. You can do that on the main page or via the wiki article.

 

[magic_stick1376]

@ kevinman, I tried to load the mod into Mapview and then save and load my Mod in Civ, but that didn't work. I don't exactly know what's causing this issue because it was working fine this morning.

And also, on a side note, when using pi2map, Mapview doesn't let me edit the map and its probably something dumb that I'm doing but I just wanted to let you know. So, what I've been doing is planning everything in Mapview and then using World Builder to actually place cities, units, etc.

I hope somebody knows what's wrong with my Mod because I've been working on a map issue for a few days and would love to finally play my Mod, lol.

Thanks in advance.

 

[kevinman4404]

@Magic_Stick: try what greyhound suggested: in notepad, or notepad++ if you have it (you can download it, it's a far nicer text program), open both the file you saved using mapview (that causes crashes) and also open a map that you made for your mod that works. If you don't have one, you can go in-game, load your mod and save one from worldbuilder. Then, compare the beginning of each file (all the stuff before it lists all the tiles). Make it so the crashing map is formatted the same way as the working map.

I think you only have to do this once, and from then on it should always work. I only remember doing it once.

Let me know if you need more help; if it doesn't work I can always try getting it to work for you.



@Gr3yhound: I can't hand over anything from my mod, because it needs the whole mod to work, and the filesize would be too huge. For example, my map requires a ton and a ton of xml stuff and art, it would be quite crazy. So handing over the map would be difficult (certainly not able to do it from these forumse)

But attached is a .zip containing the custom terrains from the texture folder and the terrain atlas.tga. If you need the map, let me know via pm and I can gather everything and upload it do a download site

Oh, and I was reading the thread, and forgot I had told you I would make art for the forest variations. I'll include that in the basic art expansion; I hope you will include forest variations afterwards, that way you don't have to go in worldbuilder later to finish the map

Kevin

 

[magic_stick1376]

Good thinking, kevinman. That did the trick!

Now, does anybody have a clue as to why my pic2map isn't letting me edit any maps it generates?

 

[kevinman4404]

XD it was Greyhound's suggestion, but glad it helped

I tried pic2map, and I have a bug to report

the first time I tried it, I converted a .jpg, and I noticed there was no terrain toolbar for hills, mountains, plains, etc. It was working VERY slowly (1 frame every couple seconds) and the x's on the map tabs disappeared.

the second time I tried it, I converted a .png and it worked perfectly. then immediately after i closed that map tab and converted the picture i tried before. everything was working but it crashed after a couple seconds

the third time I tried it, I converted the same old .jpg and it worked perfectly

really strange

@magic_stick... what's the exact problem? is it missing buttons or is it that changes don't show up?

 

[Gr3yHound]

I noted all your problems. Hmm, basicly it should work. I have no idea how pic2map could even "lock" the map. You should try to klick on the base layer after the map was generates. Also make sure you tried clicking on the pen tool. This is usually done automatically when clicking on a toolbar item but just to be sure, try it.

@Magic: What lines did you have to add so it worked? I will make sure mapview will provide them by default.

@kevin: Yeah, i don't need the actual mod. I'd be happy if i could just have the textures (that i have now) plus "any" map where i can be sure that it is causing problems for you.

edit: Kevin, my first look tells me that the tex atlas looks correct.

 

[Agent327]

Thanks for the props.
And yeah, i didn't come to support all keywords. Yet. What mod is that? I thought i had at least Vanilla support completed.

Genghis_Kai is the creator of Giant Earth Mod. BTW, any plans for a 3.19 update?