Civ 2 map file/scenario file format

[vomitus]

Forgive me if I'm asking a stupid question.

I'm working on a Civilization type game that resembles Civ 2 in appearance. I would like to be able to allow users to load a Civ 2 scenario and be able to play it in my game engine. So, to do that, I need to know what are the file formats for the game. Anyone know where I can find that?

[Mercator]

Well, I could send you the last version of the "hex-editing doc" that mentions what we know about savegames. But I don't think that will be enough for you to load Civ2 savegames. The file type specification hasn't been released, so all we have is what the community has been able to figure out.

Then again, your game engine will be different from Civ2 anyway, so you might not need some of the specifics and peculiarities of the format, because they'll be different anyway. The most important bits like the map and the location of cities and units are known.

The map format, on the other hand, is quite a bit simpler than the savegame format, so that format is completely known.

Oh, savegames and scenarios use the same file format. And another "oh", that hex-editing doc isn't a full description of the formats of the different versions of Civ2. It mostly describes the format as of the "Fantastic Worlds" add-on (with a bit of MGE and ToT mixed in). The general structure is the same for all versions, but exact offsets will be different, so you'd probably need to do a bit of puzzling.

You can find the hex-editing document and the map file format here:

http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/reference.htm

The hex-editing doc there isn't the latest version, though. But it should be enough to tell you if you can use it. PM me (or Agricola) if you want the last version.