Need testers for new editor

[Steph]

Why do people never read the doc?

COMPRESSED FILES ARE NOT SUPPORTED

@Ward: making them obsolete may not work. I tried that, but the building was removed only from the cities that were on the map when I discovered the tech rendering them obsolete.

When I created a new city, they were back...

 

[Deth McBones]

So how do I uncompress a file?
And I had no idea my files were. I had read the file, but didn't understand.
Sorry.

 

[againsttheflow]

View -> Options

Re-save.

 

[Deth McBones]

Thank you very much againstttheflow, now I can use Steph's editor!

 

[Steph]

I have two other ideas worth checking to workaround the initial building problems.
First, give them a specific required government, that won't be researchable (or perhaps just anarchy), and chekc if they properly disappear as the government is not the same.
Second, try the same with a required building...

However, even if it could work, there is still a big flaw.
It seems the "autobuilt" buildigns are not always the same, depending on the total number of buildings.
It means if you carefuly create a mod, with let say 500 more buildings, 50 are autobuilt, and then you add a 501 buildings, your autobuilt building would be different, and you have to start again.
Hopefully, it may be just a matter of reordering them, which is not to difficult with the new editor, but may still require a lot of work.

If only I could have access to this damn source code to fix these problems...

 

[Steph]

BTW, I'm wokring on the scenario properties, and in the cracked editor there is a "campaign" value, from 0-100.
Does anyone know what it's used for?

 

[embryodead]

First of all, awesome piece of work. I finally got myself to play with the editor some more, and while I don't have any bugs to report at this stage, I have a few comments/suggestions:

256 building limit
I predict this is a lost cause, because as Keroro said, it looks like the phantom resource problem. While you can have a lot of them, the variable that indexes them in-game is limited to 32 and then overflows, if that's the right word - so every resource X is treated also as resource X+32, X+64 and so on. The pattern is different here, but it looks like the reason is the same.

Landmark tundras, jungles etc.
They work, as explained here. Again, I added them by manually editing the data in the BIQ. Civ3 editor properly reads these new landmarks and can edit their stats - why not give the option to enable them in your editor as well? Of course, given that Civ3Edit map editing becomes a problem and LMs have to be placed with hex editing again... it'd have to show some warning when you try to enable them them.

Master file
I like this idea, although I'd also recommend saving it for later, when the basic editor is done. It would help a lot with creating sub scenarios, even if it's only for civs. The way I see it - have say, 40 civs in your editor, select 31 "export" ones and hit export.

Barbarian cities
I've been experimenting with them long time ago just by hex editing the BIQ and got same results - it worked fine in the editor, but the game would always remove the cities at start. Yesterday, I decided to use your editor with Skyer2's exe hack, which enables barbarians to capture cities. And the good news is, it worked! The problem with Skyer2's hack, apart from the fact that it only works with a cracked exe, is that it looks ugly (no city graphics, or leaderheads instead of cities...). With your editor I was able to fix that problem. So now barbs have nice looking cities and build new units in them, even settlers. The only remaining problem is that they don't seem to use Defensive unit strategy and leave their cities unguarded and mostly unproductive because of resisting population. Anyway, I'll play with this a bit more and see how usable this can get.

Civ limit
Would it be a lot of work to enable adding of civs beyond the 31 limit, for testing purposes? (since another Skyer2's hack allows increasing the civ selection number in game beyond 31).

Bonus resources & appearance ratio
Another experiment suggestion - enabling the appearance ratio for bonus resources.

That's all for now

 

[Steph]

256 building limit
I predict this is a lost cause, because as Keroro said, it looks like the phantom resource problem. While you can have a lot of them, the variable that indexes them in-game is limited to 32 and then overflows, if that's the right word - so every resource X is treated also as resource X+32, X+64 and so on. The pattern is different here, but it looks like the reason is the same.

I'm not sure it's the same problem, because the buildings appear in the building queue, and if it really was an overflow problem, then building 257, 258, etc would be the same as 1, 2... And it's not the case.

Landmark tundras, jungles etc.
They work, as explained here. Again, I added them by manually editing the data in the BIQ. Civ3 editor properly reads these new landmarks and can edit their stats - why not give the option to enable them in your editor as well? Of course, given that Civ3Edit map editing becomes a problem and LMs have to be placed with hex editing again... it'd have to show some warning when you try to enable them them.

Well, perhaps if one day I do a map editor as well... But that's not for soon. I'll have a look into it.

Master file
I like this idea, although I'd also recommend saving it for later, when the basic editor is done. It would help a lot with creating sub scenarios, even if it's only for civs. The way I see it - have say, 40 civs in your editor, select 31 "export" ones and hit export.

Yes, I had something similar in mind. My idea is to have many civs, units, techs, buildings, etc all ready.
And then to say "I want to play only with the Europeans civs for the ancient and medieval eras". Then export a new biq... Open it with the regular editor, import a map of Europe, add the starting locations, et voila!

Barbarian cities
I've been experimenting with them long time ago just by hex editing the BIQ and got same results - it worked fine in the editor, but the game would always remove the cities at start. Yesterday, I decided to use your editor with Skyer2's exe hack, which enables barbarians to capture cities. And the good news is, it worked! The problem with Skyer2's hack, apart from the fact that it only works with a cracked exe, is that it looks ugly (no city graphics, or leaderheads instead of cities...). With your editor I was able to fix that problem. So now barbs have nice looking cities and build new units in them, even settlers. The only remaining problem is that they don't seem to use Defensive unit strategy and leave their cities unguarded and mostly unproductive because of resisting population. Anyway, I'll play with this a bit more and see how usable this can get.

Sounds interesting, I'm looking forward to additional testings. Perpahs the "available to barbarian chiefdom" for units will at least be used for something

Civ limit
Would it be a lot of work to enable adding of civs beyond the 31 limit, for testing purposes? (since another Skyer2's hack allows increasing the civ selection number in game beyond 31).

No way it can work, it won't be possible to specificy which civ can build a unit due to how the available civ for a unit are stored.
If I try that, I think either:
- The extra civ won't be able to build any unit
or
- The extra civ will be able to build every unit

Bonus resources & appearance ratio
Another experiment suggestion - enabling the appearance ratio for bonus resources.

When the editor is finsihed with all the pages done, I plan to experiment with increasing some limites (like can we have a strength of 10000?), and try to activate such options, to test if they can work in game.

 

[Steph]

This page is still a work in progress, so a few controls are not finished yet (Barbian and playable civ), but I'd like to show you to new features

First, the search folder shows each folder in a list. I think it's much easier to read this way. I'll also add text coloring if the folder doesn't exists

Second, I always dounf it very boring when tweaking the time scale to see when the scale change.

Here, I can now that the scale will change from 20 to 10 months in May 2646 BC...

Obvisouly, I need to correct it a bit

 

[Virote_Considon]

If I try that, I think either:
- The extra civ won't be able to build any unit
or
- The extra civ will be able to build every unit

If it's the 2nd, then surely a mod can be designed to give each of the civs past the 31st their own, unique tech-tree?

 

[Steph]

It may work

 

[Steph]

I have two other ideas worth checking to workaround the initial building problems.
First, give them a specific required government, that won't be researchable (or perhaps just anarchy), and chekc if they properly disappear as the government is not the same.
Second, try the same with a required building...

Neither solution is working

 

[Virote_Considon]

I guess we'll just have to learn to make use of "dummy" improvements

 

[Moosezilla]

Undoubtedly a stupid question- can buildings be "invisible"?

 

[Steph]

They can have an "empty" name, but then they would appear as empty lines

 

[RedAlert]

For the moment, I did not implement the restriction that you can find in the regular editor. So you could have strategies, or attack/defense for army, which is normally not possible. However, I have no idea if using a "extra" combination can crash the game, or if it can have an effect in game, you'll have to test it.

Well, I tried it out - doesn't work.
I gave the army attack and defense values, but the moment I tried to enter it into combat the game would crash. I also tried giving a regular unit the army flag. The same thing happens, but also, it seems the unit would not appear in the build queue.

Thanks for making us a new editor, Steph! It looks beautiful so far and is sure to be a vast improvement over the old one.

 

[Ward]

Steph,

The bottom line of the whole building idea is that it breaks through the 256 barrier. Even if I have to trial and error the names to things like hut 1 thru 5 to make it work, it will be worth it in the long run. If a solution does come through in the end that doesn't take up all your time, that is even better.

I know that I will continue to work around as a Beta to help along this area and if something comes into my head I will pass it on. There are lots of other things that will and are beneficial in the game that your editor are helping with.

It looks like you are going for a total upgrade to the editor/map creation feature currently in place. That along with your Civopedia editor go a long way to making it easier to modify the game.

 

[Varlin Saliptor]

This is just a small note to all who are using Steph's editor at the moment.

After you finish editing, open the map and save it in the real editor before you play it, if you want access to all the advanced unit commands (Goto City, Automate Build Trade, Network, etc). For some reason, these options are not available when loading a biq directly from the Extended Editor in the game without first saving in the Conquest's editor.

Just an interesting thing I noticed.

 

[Steph]

After you finish editing, open the map and save it in the real editor before you play it, if you want access to all the advanced unit commands (Goto City, Automate Build Trade, Network, etc). For some reason, these options are not available when loading a biq directly from the Extended Editor in the game without first saving in the Conquest's editor.
Just an interesting thing I noticed.

Some comments are duplicated in the file format.
Do you have a list of the commands that don't work, and are they disabled for all the units, or only new units?

 

[Varlin Saliptor]

All units that should have advanced unit actions (see below) have them disabled, even when the "Show Advanced Unit Actions" option is checked in the in-game preferences.

Goto City
Built Road To
Build Colony To
Automate Build Trade Network
Automate Clear Forests
Automate Clear Wetland
Automate This City Only
Automate No Terrain Modification
etc.

I also get the following error when clicking on the last two resources in the resource list, without fail, no matter how many resources there are.

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index

One other bug: When a worker is set as less or more efficient than 100 Worker Strength, every time you select the unit, the WS goes down by one for no reason. This is a bug which is present in the Conquests editor as well, though it would be nice if you found a way to fix it in yours, Steph.