River editing

[Michael Daumen]

Is there a utility that allows mapmakers to place rivers? Was it the only thing the most excellent hex editors who frequent this board couldn't crack?

[Boco]

Re: River editing

Originally posted by Leon Marick
Adding rivers after you start designing your scenario
It has long been thought that rivers could only be created in the map editor. Now, thanks to LeMay and Harlan Thompson, this is revealed not to be the case. To create rivers:
1) Open up the rules.txt file and change the base time for engineers to transform terrain in the cosmic principles section to zero (0). Also in the rules.txt file, temporarily change the terrain that all the terrains you plan to alter are transformed into to "no". After you have finished making rivers, change them back.
2) Create three (or more on other terrain types. For example, mountains take eight) engineers on each of the squares you want rivers to appear. Lastly, create any unit of that civilization off to one side (see next step for why).
3) Select the unit off to one side, and give it any order. This "initializes" the method, and tells the program that all future sets of engineers will be making funky terrain. Without using the mouse, issue the "o" (transform) command to engineers on the squares you want rivers to appear on as they start blinking in turn. As the third engineer on a desert, plains, or grassland square (or more on any other terrain) receives the transform command, the terrain will turn into a odd river/coal/desert combination.
4) To restore the proper terrain type, simply use the cheat menu to alter terrain. All the funny-looking graphics will disappear, but the river will remain.

— Found in Advanced Scenario Design. Also discussed in Adding Rivers to a Saved Game file, a thread started by Kull.

I was hoping to find a version of Merc's CivEngineer that could help with this, but to no avail.

If you want to hex and have Excel, you could try your hand with TileByter, a hex-editing aid I cobbled together and mentioned in The Sea Kings!, p2, a thread by EZRhino.

Hope this helps!

[Michael Daumen]

Thanks, I found it eventually too. But now it's on my control panel.

[Eivind IV]

Be careful with civengineer. I used it once and it completely fvcked up my sav file. Was it not a beta only?

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by Michael Daumen
Was it the only thing the most excellent hex editors who frequent this board couldn't crack?

Rivers can be hexedited but the process is very time-consuming .

In map data block #2 [see Mercator's Hexedit Compendium] each square is represented by a sequence of 6 bytes. The first byte determines the terrain type: 00 for desert, 02 for plains....... 09 for jungle and 0A for ocean. For any terrain except ocean, prefixing the terrain number with 8 puts a river in the square [i.e. 80, 81........89].

The time-consuming part is identifying which bytes need to be changed.

Idle question:
What would happen if one changed an ocean square, normally 0A, to 8A? Would that ocean square produce an extra trade arrow?

[Boco]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
The time-consuming part is identifying which bytes need to be changed.

That's the part TileByter greatly simplifies.

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
Idle question:
What would happen if one changed an ocean square, normally 0A, to 8A? Would that ocean square produce an extra trade arrow?

Not in the test I just made. The Status panel did confirm that it contained a river, though.

[AGRICOLA]

That's the part TileByter greatly simplifies.

Thanks for the instantaneous reply.

Fortunately I have Excel and will download your TileByter ASAP and have a go at it.

[Michael Daumen]

Just as an aside for the low tech option, changing the terrain to grassland before transforming it sped things up for me.