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- Mar 17, 2007
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Yes, that's right - the 362 tile width or height restrictions are not mandatory! There's no reason that one (not both) of them can't be greater on a Civ3 map! Created and tested! BIQ's attached at the end of this post to show documentation of this ability.
The inspiration for poking around with this came from Leaven's thread about the maximum world size on the front page of this forum today. Conventional wisdom has always held 362x362 to be the maximum, but I already knew from hex editing that the 7-flavor limit was artificial, at least in terms of what the game can handle (I have not done testing to see if more than seven flavors were actually used by the computer with in-game calculations). So why not the map size, too?
It turns out the 362 tile limit isn't arbitrary. 362*362/2 = 65522, just below 65536, aka 2^16, or the maximum value of a signed integer in 32-bit systems. And indeed, Civ3 cannot handle more than 65536 tiles. An attempt to use a map larger than this will result in the preview looking either like nearly all ocean, or very wonky (see the file 512x256=65536.biq in the ZIP), and trying to load such a file in either the editor or Civ3Conquests will cause a crash to desktop. However, Civ3 does not, as far as I've been able to tell, have a limit on the number of horizontal or vertical tiles - that is entirely in the editor's settings. If there is a limit, it is very high. I've tested with 710 horizontal tiles and 1191 vertical tiles (in separate BIQ's). Considering that the total number of tiles must be below 65536, those tests (both included in the ZIP) already result in very stretched-out maps.
Credit also goes out to Steph, whose editor's map tools made the creation of these very large BIQ's possible without excessive effort. Note that his editor does not currently support editing the actual terrain, but the regular editor does support editing these files, including the terrain. Thus, it appears that there is nothing preventing a map maker from making, for instance, a 450x250 map (remembering to divide by two because of the isometric grid, thus yielding 56,250 tiles), provided they use Steph's editor's map tools to expand an initial map, and the regular editor to create the actual terrain.
The game seems to function properly with these BIQ's as well - a test on the 110x1191 BIQ, which clocks in just a shade below the limit at 65,505 tiles, shows it working properly throughout the AI's turn.
(warning: the zip decompresses to about 12 MB from 300-some KB. Those decompressed Civ3 BIQ's really are not compressed!)
The inspiration for poking around with this came from Leaven's thread about the maximum world size on the front page of this forum today. Conventional wisdom has always held 362x362 to be the maximum, but I already knew from hex editing that the 7-flavor limit was artificial, at least in terms of what the game can handle (I have not done testing to see if more than seven flavors were actually used by the computer with in-game calculations). So why not the map size, too?
It turns out the 362 tile limit isn't arbitrary. 362*362/2 = 65522, just below 65536, aka 2^16, or the maximum value of a signed integer in 32-bit systems. And indeed, Civ3 cannot handle more than 65536 tiles. An attempt to use a map larger than this will result in the preview looking either like nearly all ocean, or very wonky (see the file 512x256=65536.biq in the ZIP), and trying to load such a file in either the editor or Civ3Conquests will cause a crash to desktop. However, Civ3 does not, as far as I've been able to tell, have a limit on the number of horizontal or vertical tiles - that is entirely in the editor's settings. If there is a limit, it is very high. I've tested with 710 horizontal tiles and 1191 vertical tiles (in separate BIQ's). Considering that the total number of tiles must be below 65536, those tests (both included in the ZIP) already result in very stretched-out maps.
Credit also goes out to Steph, whose editor's map tools made the creation of these very large BIQ's possible without excessive effort. Note that his editor does not currently support editing the actual terrain, but the regular editor does support editing these files, including the terrain. Thus, it appears that there is nothing preventing a map maker from making, for instance, a 450x250 map (remembering to divide by two because of the isometric grid, thus yielding 56,250 tiles), provided they use Steph's editor's map tools to expand an initial map, and the regular editor to create the actual terrain.
The game seems to function properly with these BIQ's as well - a test on the 110x1191 BIQ, which clocks in just a shade below the limit at 65,505 tiles, shows it working properly throughout the AI's turn.
(warning: the zip decompresses to about 12 MB from 300-some KB. Those decompressed Civ3 BIQ's really are not compressed!)
