Using Excel as a design tool

[Boco]

Sounds like various designers are using spreadsheets to help design scenarios. I'd like to improve my own set of tools by mooching some of your ideas.

The one I've been using for EA reads sections from a ToT Rules.txt file. Sadly, it doesn't write to the file, so it may not fit your needs. Nonetheless, here are some screenies of it. It's attached, if you want to look at it. Most likely, you'll be asked whether you want to enable macros. That's what it uses to read Rules.txt and calculate odds of success in combat (first tab).







Couple of notes:
• Column A width is set to the max that will show without overlap in pedia or advisor screens

• Row 1 has some filters to allow you to view units or advances of one nationality, domain, role, preq1, preq2, etc. It's being used to view ship units in the third screenie.

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
@Cyrion: I was already thinking of sharing. What I've done is copy pieces of my rules.txt to another text document. From there I opened up the new text document in Excel and used the converter wizard to drop in the individual values into cells. Then I simply made my changes, identified the changes in bold or with the highlighter, and used the Excel document as a source document when re-editing the rules.txt file.

By using Excel I can make notes, use titles for identifiers, etc. This way I can't screw up my text file to bad by editing blind.

Sharing... Harry, do you write the xls section as a txt file, then copy paste into Rules?

[Harry Tuttle]

Re: Using Excel as a design tool

Originally posted by Boco
Sharing... Harry, do you write the xls section as a txt file, then copy paste into Rules?

Sorry, no. My use of Excel in scenario making doesn't extend past pasting text files into Excel for editing. All I've been doing is using Excel as a framework and hand editing any changes into the rules.txt file. I've used different methods each time to get my rules to work.

I've never taken the time to actually write a full template of the rules file for Excel, but I see you have put a tremendous amount of effort into it. I guess the next step is finding a way to get it to auto-write to a text file, as you said. Let me take a look at the file, I think I'll be extremely impressed.

[Harry Tuttle]

Jesus, you have done quite a lot of work...

Alright, mine is not as involved as yours and nowhere being complete (I'm currently redoing the units), but I think it'll look somewhat similar.

[Boco]

Your looks like the last several tabs of mine, but with important notes. Are "Gifted Wonders" given by BestowImprovement events?

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Boco
Your looks like the last several tabs of mine, but with important notes. Are "Gifted Wonders" given by BestowImprovement events?

Most of those identified will probably be gifted using bestowimprovement and the others will be buildable through the gifting of technology. I'm sure it will all change somewhat once I get things in working order.

[Harry Tuttle]

Hmmm, well I just saved a worksheet as a csv (comma delimited) file and then opened up the csv in Notepad. The commas carry over fine at the cell borders, but of course there's no spacing like a normal rules file.

I'm going to do a test by importing a generic rules.txt file into Excel (after turning off spell checker) and then try to recreate the txt file so that it can run in a scenario.

[Boco]

It's a low priority, but...

If you succeed, and have a chance, can you "Record a New Macro", repeat the export process, then "stop recording", save the xls, and post it? I'd love to have that example code to incorporate in my file. It wouldn't be much trouble to put it in yours as well.

[Harry Tuttle]

Well, here's my first try. I had to make sure to identify all the columns being exported as text when I used the wizard or else I would have had some real problems with the numbers.

Everything looks moderately ok except for the additional commas. I also had to go and use the Replace function in the output text file and get rid of all the quote symbols that had been created.

All that's left, I assume, is to eliminate the extra commas to get the file to work. At present it does not work as a rules.txt file. I think a mitigated use of the Replace function could eliminate duplicate comma symbols as it seems that the game only ever uses just one to seperate values.

My opinion is that the process could be made to work but there would have to be a detailed set of instructions and editor rules to follow.

[Harry Tuttle]

Cross-post.

I will see what I can do. It might not be tonight.

[Boco]

Don't worry, HT. If it were tonight, I wouldn't do much with it anyway. Btw, I can write some formulas in Excel to make the text strings align in each of the @sections. That should make for a prettier export for the alignment freaks (moi? ). Might make the end of line commas disappear in @IMPROVE

Does ToT read the file okay with all the extra commas? I suspect (hope?) it will, which is good news.

Don't count on anything this year, though!

[Edit]Struck out all text that would never had been written, had I bothered to read your post. I still think we can make an export that won't choke ToT. Do you think the ones after @XXX entries are the culprits? Can you post a screenie of the crash message? If not, I'll check myself next weekend. [/Edit]

[Boco]

Later that night...

For my Burma scenario, I've toyed with this Excel file a bit. It's at the point that it can export parts (@UNITS, @CIV, and @COSMIC) of a Rules.txt file. It shouldn't be too hard to complete the remainder so that it can write a complete Rules.txt.

The idea's seriously geeky, but would anyone be interested in using Excel to edit Rules.txt? The main advantages are:

• a more intuitive organization
• notes and tips from SL/Cradle of Civ
• places for your notes
• a possible hook into Merc's tech tree checker
• a hook into my combat odds calculator

I'll be using it for my own scenario, but I didn't know whether it would be of general use.

[McMonkey]

I'm always willing to try new things and learn new tricks!

[Cyrion]

Re: Later that night...

Originally posted by Boco
The idea's seriously geeky, but would anyone be interested in using Excel to edit Rules.txt?

The answer to your question is a definite YES!

I already use Excel as my main design tool, for all the reasons you described, but wihtout the added advantages (namely automatic updating od the rules file) you mentionned!

So please finish it!

[Boco]

Thanks for the interest. This'll take a few steps:

1) Roughly drafting the user's input sections
2) Setting up the formulas to write all the sections in Rules.txt
3) Testing the result
4) Setting appropriate limits for the user's entries
5) Formatting (including tips & notes sections)
6) Hooking into other programs

So far, I've only gotten @COSMIC-@GOVERNMENTS completed through steps 1-2. Once I get all sections through steps 1-3 working with EAv2, I'll check with one of Cyrion's files. If that works, I'll let it loose for kibbitzing on 4-5.

Civ2 is my hobby. My wife's hobby is redoing the kitchen. I may need to enjoy her hobby tomorrow, so this'll take a bit.

[Boco]

Steps 1 & 2 are complete for all sections of a ToT Rules file, as are parts of 4 & 5. Need to test, test, test.