BAD rules txt file! BAD!

[Exile]

Merc, Curt tells me that you've got a secret weapon that handles bad rules.txt files.

Is this true?

If so, you wanna have a go at this one;

[Jerec]

You mean the Civ2Tech utility?

http://apolyton.net/upload/view.php?file=94070_859_civ2tech.zip

Instructions-

Just drag the rules.txt onto the unzipped program. It'll show one error at a time. After the first error is found, correct the error, re-drag the rules.txt, correct the next error, and repeat until no more errors are found.

[Exile]

Tried it. Said everything was ok . . . which it clearly is not. But thanks, worth a try.

Merc?

Does anyone know how many squares MUST be sea for a map to be valid? Is it proportional to size? If, for example, a map was valid, with enough sea squares to start with, and, in the process of design, one or two squares were changed to land . . . would that throw the thing into a tizzy? Anyone ever run into this? How would you determine that was the problem?

[Catfish]

I gave the file a quick scan using the eyeball method. I notice that Bats and Ravens have 0 hit points. That'll cause a crash. Minimum is 1.

Battle of the Five Armies, eh? BTW, shouldn't it be Dain Ironfoot?

Originally posted by Exile
Does anyone know how many squares MUST be sea for a map to be valid?

What do you mean by valid? Is this an MGE scenario editor issue? I know bugger all about that. I've used all-land maps before without a problem. As far as I know the Civ2 Map Editor only checks for available grassland/plains terrain (fertile in the eyes of the AI).

[Exile]

Bats and Ravens will be changed. Had no idea a HP of 0 would muck it up. Thanks.

Dain Ironfoot. Got it.

Ocean squares; "The lack of ocean squares is known to cause two serious problems, and there might be others that have, as yet, gone undiscovered. First and most important, if there are not at least 20 or so Ocean squares on the map, the game locks up--simply stops working with no notification that there's a problem. Sometimes this happens right at the start of a game, but more often you're thirty to a hundred turns into the game before things freeze up, which is more than a little annoying."

--John Possidente's "The Complete Guide to Scenario Building"

[Ecthy]

I've played games on all-land before, but that was pre-TOT. You guys talking TOT?

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Exile
Tried it. Said everything was ok . . . which it clearly is not. But thanks, worth a try.

Merc?

Civ2tech only checks the technology tree, not the other parts of the rules.

Originally posted by Catfish
Battle of the Five Armies, eh?

Seriously? Nice! I've thought about doing that myself once upon a time. I have "The Atlas of Tolkien's Middle-earth", which also includes a map of the mountain and the battle, if you need it.

John Possidente's "The Complete Guide to Scenario Building"
The lack of ocean squares is known to cause two serious problems, and there might be others that have, as yet, gone undiscovered. (...)

Originally posted by Exile
Does anyone know how many squares MUST be sea for a map to be valid? Is it proportional to size? (...)

Do you mean valid as in what the "Analyze Map" option of the map editor says, or as in what John Possidente said?

They don't have anything to do with eachother in any case.

John Possidente is just describing some quirky map-related Civ2 bug. I hadn't seen that before, I don't think. And I certainly don't know anything about games crashing because of that, let alone specific conditions under which it would happen.

The map analysis details irrelevant, but for those who are interested...

Analyzing a map simply tries to make sure a map has enough land, and enough fertile land for Civ2 to be able to find enough room for 7 civs and their starting points when playing a standard game.

I do know what the map analysis checks for (besides the max. of 64 landmasses/bodies of water):
- At least 195 land squares,
- At least 100 arable squares (= grassland or plains),
- At most (3 * arable + 3) non-arable land squares.

[Exile]

Well, Jorrit, I'm the last person to take issue with that, after all you're the map maestro, no doubt . . .

but Possidente states . . .

"While the artists were busy bringing my somewhat bizarre . . . units to life [to be used in the FW 'Mars' scenario], I sat and played the scenario. It crashed every time. . . . The Mars scenario crashed, consistently and repeatedly, on turn 32. As it turned out, we had run into a flaw in the Analyze Map feature of the Map Editor. That particular tool . . . doesn't check to see if your world has enough Ocean squares. There are a few AI functions that depend on being able to find an ocean, and I had bewildered them by including no Ocean squares at all. That's why there are a few Watershed (Ocean) squares near the poles when the scenario opens; I had to add them so that the AI would agree to play along."

I was informed by this. You disagree?

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Mercator
John Possidente is just describing some quirky map-related Civ2 bug. I hadn't seen that before, I don't think.

It's the first I've heard of it - then again, I've never seen Possidente's book.

Originally posted by Mercator
I do know what the map analysis checks for (besides the max. of 64 landmasses/bodies of water)

Ah yes, forgot that one.

[Mercator]

Hmmm... Well, how can I possibly disagree with John Possidente.

It's not a bug then, though the Ocean is needed for "AI functions" it may still be a complicated matter, and the map analysis will still be useless (though it shouldn't have been).

I'll, um, add it to my to do list, finding out what a minimum amount of Ocean might be.

Edit: And I may have to add getting that book on my to do list too...

And actually, the best I can suggest is to add at least one ocean of more than 10 squares to your map. Only water bodies of more than 10 squares get a proper body counter. All water bodies smaller than that get a value of 63. I imagine those numbers have something to do with how the AI deals with things.

[Exile]

Read that bit about the ocean squares long time ago. It's why I placed actual ocean squares along the Chir River in the ChirBattle scenario. I just assumed all you programming savants were aware of this stuff.

Complete Guide to Scenario Building, ISBN # 1-56893-904-3. Library of Congress Catalog Card #: 98-84117