Tweet
Upon a question from techumseh I started working on a utility that can add or remove tile improvements on a savegame or scenario map. The idea was basically a program to add fortresses to all squares to prevent "stack deaths"... The working title of this marvellous new tool is "CivEngineer"... After a little work on it, it looks like it's going to be rather more complicated than I anticipated (as always), and it won't get any special priority, which means it probably won't become public anytime soon, if at all... But still, if you have any requests for any features, now is the time!
Aside from that, for the interested, I found out how goody huts are removed after being tripped. The pattern of goody huts is fixed, but like the possibility to hide resources, it's also possible to "hide" individual goody huts:
Anyway, while testing something out, I thought I'd try and find out where the information about goody huts is saved (after all, there must be somewhere in the savegame that says for each hut whether it has been tripped or not)... And I found out. The information is part of the ownership bits in the map section, being the first half of the 6th byte in the 6 byte tile sequence of the second map data block (see here for detailed information: http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/guides/mapstruct.htm ). An ownership of F (hexadecimal) means no-one "owns" it (ownership = the last civilization to visit that square), which is how most of the map starts out (except for the squares occupied by the initial settlers). An ownership of 0 means the barbarians "own" it... Since goody huts only exist until the first unit has entered the square, the result is actually quite plausible: The goody hut pattern is fixed, but goody huts can only appear in squares with an ownership F. If you click the "wipe all goody huts" option in the scenario parameters, all F's are changed to 0, which means the barbarians own all squares, and thus goody huts can no longer exist.
Aside from that, for the interested, I found out how goody huts are removed after being tripped. The pattern of goody huts is fixed, but like the possibility to hide resources, it's also possible to "hide" individual goody huts:
Anyway, while testing something out, I thought I'd try and find out where the information about goody huts is saved (after all, there must be somewhere in the savegame that says for each hut whether it has been tripped or not)... And I found out. The information is part of the ownership bits in the map section, being the first half of the 6th byte in the 6 byte tile sequence of the second map data block (see here for detailed information: http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/guides/mapstruct.htm ). An ownership of F (hexadecimal) means no-one "owns" it (ownership = the last civilization to visit that square), which is how most of the map starts out (except for the squares occupied by the initial settlers). An ownership of 0 means the barbarians "own" it... Since goody huts only exist until the first unit has entered the square, the result is actually quite plausible: The goody hut pattern is fixed, but goody huts can only appear in squares with an ownership F. If you click the "wipe all goody huts" option in the scenario parameters, all F's are changed to 0, which means the barbarians own all squares, and thus goody huts can no longer exist.
I might add the possibility to this utility as well, though. That way you can start a game, save, remove them with "CivEngineer" reload and continue. The only advantage there is that you won't have to treate it as a scenario.
(OK, OK, I'll think about adding it, eventually)
Well, it's certainly going to take me quite a while (think months) to do this... Not because it's so difficult, but simply because I'll be busy with other things the rest of the year... I might even disappear from Apolyton (for a while)! (it's THAT serious 
)
Comment