Freeciv map creation

[himasaram]

I'm creating a new thread for the editing and creation of Freeciv maps. The 'events' thread was getting cluttered.

A quick recap:

Freeciv maps/savegames are cleartext files. They are often compressed by gnuzip (.gz) and on Windows you will need an app like 7zip to decompress them. Then you can simply edit them with your favourite text editor.

Tools

Map editor (a Windows build of the development version of Freeciv, featuring a built-in editor)

Civ2 to Freeciv map converter (alpha version)

[himasaram]

Originally posted by CapTVK
Ok, more good news. The Freeciv map collection is about to double. I've converted a number of realworld maps to the FC format. Most maps didn't list an author but where known I've included the name in the SAV description field.

This poses a problem. Unless we have the authors' explicit approval, we may not release these maps under the GPL. I know some people will even oppose them being published on freeciv.org for this reason (though I'm not one of them. )

I've only given a few maps a quick test so I if anyone would like to give it a try and report the bugs, be my guest.

(snippet)

Bug report - tested with the 'editor' build running on WinXP Home:

not working

africa3
aussie
caribe
eurasia
geurope
holland2
india
italia (even makes the client unstable)
samap
seasia

corrupted

alaska
batic (what's "batic" anyway?)
bosnia
japan (an 'arctic line' that might or might not be intentional)

[CapTVK]

I´ve tried out the editor today, seems simple enough although we could use a "show whole map" option in the menu.

As for the non functional and corrupted maps. I´ll have to see if there´s anything odd about them in Civ2 and what exactly goes wrong in the conversion. If necessary we´ll have to do some editing by hand to make them work.


As for finding the authors, in many cases they don´t have an author listed. Tracking them down will be difficult. It´s not impossible (i managed to find most of the Civ2 graphic artists eventually) but many of those maps date back to the first years after civ2. For the meantime we´ll have to settle for Apolyton being the map depository.

[himasaram]

Originally posted by CapTVK
I´ve tried out the editor today, seems simple enough although we could use a "show whole map" option in the menu.

Yes it's almost too simple. We should request features directly to the dev team (basically, Jason and Per) as we find the need for them.

To see the whole map, just type /obs in the chat window and hit enter. I agree that the editor could need some kind of gui command for this though. Let's request it!

As for the non functional and corrupted maps. I´ll have to see if there´s anything odd about them in Civ2 and what exactly goes wrong in the conversion. If necessary we´ll have to do some editing by hand to make them work.

IMO you should send the Civ2 maps that doesn't survive the treatment to Egor. There could be bugs in his program.

As for finding the authors, in many cases they don´t have an author listed. Tracking them down will be difficult. It´s not impossible (i managed to find most of the Civ2 graphic artists eventually) but many of those maps date back to the first years after civ2. For the meantime we´ll have to settle for Apolyton being the map depository.

It should be safe enough to publish maps on freeciv.org, as long as we can prove that they aren't based on maps shipped with Civ2 or any of its modpacks/editions.

[Harry Tuttle]

...and if they are actual Civ2 Microprose conversions then it is entirely possble to just post them here for individual download and use. They can still be used, just not bundled with the developers version.

[CapTVK]

Exactly, in the meantime I´ll let Egor know what maps cause problems. The faster we give feedback about the bugs and conversion errors the better the maps will be in the future.

Btw harry, what´s your opinion on the editor?

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by CapTVK

Btw harry, what´s your opinion on the editor?

I think it's functional and useful. I really like how it's in-game, which makes it much easier to use. I noticed that city size can be changed. Terrain and improvements can be edited easily.

I think it's a good start. Some more features should be added, like editing city improvements, city food caches, city shield caches, and perhaps more detailed border editing.

I'll have to do a full report in a few days, but those are some of the features I can think of adding in the future.

[CapTVK]

Well, i've checked out the non-functional maps and in all cases I found the same error in the converted sav file:

the width was halved to its original value


africa3 Civ2 76 > FC 38
aussie Civ2 114 > FC 57
caribe Civ2 120 > FC 60
eurasia Civ2 200 > FC 100
geurope Civ2 104 > FC 52
holland2 Civ2 120 > FC 60
india Civ2 140 > FC 70
italia Civ2 150 > FC 75
samap Civ2 100 > FC 50
seasia Civ2 136 > FC 68

[evyscr]

Posted by CapTVK
Well, i've checked out the non-functional maps and in all cases I found the same error in the converted sav file:

the width was halved to its original value


africa3 Civ2 76 > FC 38
aussie Civ2 114 > FC 57
...

Strange enough... I'll check these maps today. But for the first look africa3.mp contains 4C 00 as double width, so it should be 38. Is this map playable with _standard_ Civ2?

Please note, that converter now works with maps from standard civ2 and generates maps for Freeciv S2_1 branch (from which is Freeciv-2.1.0-beta1).

--
Thanks, evyscr

[evyscr]

Originally posted by evyscr

Strange enough... I'll check these maps today. But for the first look africa3.mp contains 4C 00 as double width, so it should be 38. Is this map playable with _standard_ Civ2?

Please note, that converter now works with maps from standard civ2 and generates maps for Freeciv S2_1 branch (from which is Freeciv-2.1.0-beta1).

Africa3 and italia maps seem to be playable for me. (Converted under linux, tested with Freeciv S2_1 [gui-xaw client])
Screenshots: http://evyscr.murom.net/freeciv/my/africa3.jpg

http://evyscr.murom.net/freeciv/my/italia.jpg

PS. In Mercator's Map Structure one can found that Civ2 coordinates are _not_ the same as map editor coordinates.

[Mercator]

Looking through the source code I can see two problems.

(1) I suggest you change the file open mode from "r" to "rb". That could certainly explain why it works fine on Linux while it has problems on Windows.

(2) Your conversion from Civ2 to Map coordinates for the starting points isn't correct. You now just use the following for the X coordinate:

startpos[i] / 2

That should be:

(startpos[i] / 2) + (startpos[i + 21] % 2)

[CapTVK]

When it comes to maps Mercator is the man to ask.

[evyscr]

Thank you very much for your help, Mercator!

1) I have changed mode of fopen() to "rb", but I'm not sure that this will help much.
2) Coordinates translation fixed.

Now windows binary made by mingw32 at my machine and tested under wine (with problematic maps). After changing "\r\n" to "\n" (windows and linux ends of lines) maps which made by linux version and by windows version are identical.

--
Thanks, evyscr

[CapTVK]

I've redone the original set with new convertor. A quick inspection with a texteditor seems to show correct maps this time but betatesting is welcome, as always.


Next attempt is converting a gigamap...

[CapTVK]

Well conversion went without a hitch. This the original Gigaworld map (254x230) by Julius Brenzaida converted to FC.