UTILITY: bicstats

[Tventano]

bicstats is a statistical tool to give information about a .bic file.

It can be useful for players and map creators both to compare statistics.

History:
0.3 added resource distribution statistics and continent information
0.2 windows application (need mfc42.dll)
0.1 command line tool for dos commandline

Input is requested and welcome.


Just to illustrate on a random file it gives the following information:

Tile Statistics:

1334 Land Tiles (26%):
81 desert 168 plains 292 grassland
84 tundra 63 floodplns 190 hills
111 mountains 178 forest 167 jungle

3666 Water Tiles (73%):
592 coast 589 sea 2485 ocean

Strategic Resources:
12 horses 12 iron 9 saltpeter 9 coal
9 oil 9 rubber 10 aluminum 8 uranium

Luxury Resources:
6 wine 6 furs 7 dyes 6 incense
7 spices 6 ivory 6 silks 7 gems

Bonus Resources:
13 whales 13 game 13 fish 13 cattle
13 wheat 13 gold

20 Goody Huts 0 Barbarian Camps

8 Player Start positions

[Keygen]

Nice work Tventano

A small txt file would be nice also

A notice: The file name must be in 8:3 format otherwise the tool won't recognize it. Therefore to open "Earth (Standard).bic" or "Earth (Huge).bic you have to rename them first. At list under Windows 2000.

[Tventano]

Keygen,

The tool is far from finished, but it can already do something useful, therefor I uploaded it. Here at home I use it in a 4dos box under Windows Me, and also these long file names are properly read in.

At the moment I am thinking of changing it to a Windows program. Having some menu options and a text box which allows copying to the clipboard is probably easier to use for people than a commandline with multiple options and redirecting the output.

Btw I see that I did not mention yet that as a second parameter you can use the word "sections" to get an overview of all sections in the bic file. Or the name of a section (like WMAP) to give the info in that section. Most sections at the moment just give the uninterpreted hex numbers.

[Keygen]

Well, that is perfectly understandable Tventano and from the version (0.1) it is obvious that you are in the very start
I just made a small note to let you know.

Windows version? Yes, that would be better

Anyway, I like your mod

[Tventano]

Version 0.2

I just uploaded version 0.2

It is a straight translation from a commandline tool to a windows program. Advantage for the user is that you do not have to use a dos box, nor to type on the commandline and redirect the output to some filename.

Opening through a standard open file dialog box.
Standard display shows title, description and the same statistical info as the dostool. Second option (press a button) shows all other info in the bic file, at the moment most of this info is still hex only.

First coming development will be more statistical information.

[Unconquered]

Great program, this will come in handy for balancing my newly created maps.

[Tventano]

Version 0.3

I just uploaded version 0.3

Terrain and resources per continent are indicated.

Further I give some information on the resources. Both the average distance between all iron resources and the average distance between all nearest neighbours. For the standard earth it looks like this:

	horses    51,12	iron      55,11	saltpeter 50,18	coal      50,16

	oil       54, 8	rubber    38,11	aluminum  56,14	uranium   53,16

	wine      50, 5	furs      22, 7	dyes      48,30	incense   46,11

	spices    30,30	ivory     25,14	silks      4, 3	gems      40,27

	whales    56,15	game      61, 7	fish      56, 5	cattle    46, 7

	wheat     43, 7	gold      47, 9

Silks is the only resource which is extremely clustered.

How exactly to give information on distribution is difficult, you would need a graph per resource, just a few numbers is really not enough. To keep it simple I only give these two numbers. Mainly handy to quickly check if any resources have different values. When you as a map designer can judge if that was the intention.

[BigFurryMonster]

I get a "missing DLL file" error when trying to open the program.

I'm using W2k - is that compatible with it ..?

[Unconquered]

This doesn't seem to work with any maps created with the new editor that comes with the patch (1.29f). This was a good utility for map makers... Please update Tventano, I can't live without this utility!!!!

[BigFurryMonster]

Tventano - any chance you'll change the utility to work for PTW files??