Custom Reports

[HercChief]

Does CTP2 store the data for its reports anywhere accessable? I want to create some custom reports, and perform some actual annalysis of the raw data that the game gives.

[HuangShang]

?

[Pedrunn]

Do you mean the info_str.txt where most of the messages are located?

Or do you mean the messages that appear during the game in the message tab?

I cant figure out what you mean

[HercChief]

I'm talking about the stats that are shown on the National Report Dialog (Listing City stats), or the Civilization Report/Control window.

Maybee there is a query function which will allow me to get the info?

I'd like to be able to manipulate the numbers (ex: Rate the production of cities with regard to their sizes -- [City_Size/City_Prod]). If it can't be done within the game, maybee a comma or tab separated list can be created, in order to use with another program (though I doubt that).

Does that make more sense?

[HercChief]

This would be thin in-game info that apears when you look in the City Manager, or National Manager, or Civ Manager.

It wouldn't be in one of the string files (and isn't, I looked). It would probably be resident in memory or part of the save game file. I just don't know how I might get a hold of it.

[HuangShang]

beats me

[J Bytheway]

The structure for the tables is stored in the various *.ldl files but the data is stored only in memory, I'm fairly sure. The only way I can concieve of extracting it is to take screenshots and OCR them.

I don't know how much you could alter the structure through modification of the ldl files - the only such modification I've ever seen was in CTP1 when someone made the city window larger so that it showed more cities, but you may be able to do more.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Ah, a man after my own heart! I've been internally grumbling about the lack of reports in games since roughly Railroad Tycoon (I). I want to print the info rather than having to copy it off the screen (or having to wing it). What info? Well, different things at different times, of course, but basically the F2 info (both tabs), the F3 info (especially the specialists and the growth info), and F4 (actual and available trade routes). In theory maybe even the F7 and F8 screens (though not the detailed unit info; even *I* am not *that* anal).

Screen captures don't work well because so little fits on one screen (too few cities in F2 when I want the full list of 40+, and F3 only shows 1 city at a time, etc.

[HercChief]

A-men to that! Being able to print would be a nice feature in any strategy game. But more than that, it would be nice if the reports gave more than just raw data.

For instance, in the National Manager report I can easily see which city has the most or least production, but I have no easy way of seeing which cities are better developed. So what I did was copy the stats on to paper, and then entered them on an Excel spreadsheet and started to do some statistical annalysis there (how's that for anal).

Even being able to cut and paste the info would be great.

Thought-- Is it concieveable to pull the information out of memory using another program? That would obviously involve a lot of time reading through hexcode, but is there a program that might do that?

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by HercChief
Thought-- Is it concieveable to pull the information out of memory using another program? That would obviously involve a lot of time reading through hexcode, but is there a program that might do that?

I suppose it's concievable, but I wouldn't know how, and I don't think it's doable without the source code. And with the source code you could do it in a much better way, obviously.

If you can write a program to scan memory and figure out what's what then go ahead .