I have made my first map. The editor worked pretty well, but....
1, The cities have no demand for end products, that is food, manufactured goods, automobiles.
2, I have tried to edit the "Cities" XML file, using good old Notepad.
The file is one long line, a mile long. It is practically impossible to find the right entry. So mistakes are being made and the game crashes.
It woul be nice to have some breaks like in the original game files.
3. In the editor's submenu (Terrain map editor, + some others) icons there is an icon called "Guide", looks like a Tic-tac-toe. What is it for? It does not do anything. Supposed to be a locator??
4, Also in the Menu icons, Edit Entities submenu, there is a "Fix World"
icon. (Looks like a wrench) What does it supposed to do. Mine was not doing anything.
J.B.
Map editor guestions.
Re: Map editor guestions.
Use an XML editor like XMLSpy which allows you to view the XML file as a node tree. This will also help you ensure that you are writing a valid XML file.Jancsika wrote: 2, I have tried to edit the "Cities" XML file, using good old Notepad.
The file is one long line, a mile long. It is practically impossible to find the right entry. So mistakes are being made and the game crashes.
It woul be nice to have some breaks like in the original game files.
Raise/Lower your terrain around/under a town and you could end up with a town floating in mid air or under ground. Clicking this button will find and fix these type of errors (and probably other errors, but this is the one of the issues it does fix).Jancsika wrote: 4, Also in the Menu icons, Edit Entities submenu, there is a "Fix World"
icon. (Looks like a wrench) What does it supposed to do. Mine was not doing anything.
Mike
4, Also in the Menu icons, Edit Entities submenu, there is a "Fix World"
icon. (Looks like a wrench) What does it supposed to do. Mine was not doing anything.
J.B.
Also if you place an industry and it doesn't draw in right this will also fix the ground for it or draw it in properly. This is an option I do every map before I close my editor.
That option has never worked from the early days of me using the editor, I think its suppose to draw like a grid across the map like some other game editors do but I never pressed Dan about what it was for. The early editor had a lot of useless commands in it that were removed because they did nothing or very little to be there.
As for number two I have voiced my complaints about that before. I have PXE editor and use the tree mode in it a lot but for all the other xmls (retail ones) I use notepad cause I am just as fast at use that as I am using PXE.
icon. (Looks like a wrench) What does it supposed to do. Mine was not doing anything.
J.B.
Also if you place an industry and it doesn't draw in right this will also fix the ground for it or draw it in properly. This is an option I do every map before I close my editor.
That option has never worked from the early days of me using the editor, I think its suppose to draw like a grid across the map like some other game editors do but I never pressed Dan about what it was for. The early editor had a lot of useless commands in it that were removed because they did nothing or very little to be there.
As for number two I have voiced my complaints about that before. I have PXE editor and use the tree mode in it a lot but for all the other xmls (retail ones) I use notepad cause I am just as fast at use that as I am using PXE.
The guide button should have been removed in one or two tool menus, but I just forgot in the holiday rush 
Fix World basically updates the graphics for most of the world entities after you've modified them. It's a very CPU expensive job to re-build all these things that normally don't move once they're generated, which is why we don't do it in real-time as you move or modify things.
For example, wheat fields won't move on the screen when you move or rotate a grain farm, but when you Fix World, it will rebuild all the wheat fields in the world and make sure they are in the correct place.
If you are interested in quickly setting positions and don't care about everything looking like it will in-game, you can just move/rotate things, save, and exit, and not even bother with Fix World.
Fix World basically updates the graphics for most of the world entities after you've modified them. It's a very CPU expensive job to re-build all these things that normally don't move once they're generated, which is why we don't do it in real-time as you move or modify things.
For example, wheat fields won't move on the screen when you move or rotate a grain farm, but when you Fix World, it will rebuild all the wheat fields in the world and make sure they are in the correct place.
If you are interested in quickly setting positions and don't care about everything looking like it will in-game, you can just move/rotate things, save, and exit, and not even bother with Fix World.
As for the linefeeds in the generated XML, that's one of those things that is actually more of a pain than you would think, and since there are plenty of freeware and commercial XML editors that can read those files in and write them out with the linefeeds and tab indentation, we didn't focus on that.
Thanks.
Thanks for the quick replies. They were all very helpful.
I have downloaded the XML Notepad, and I suppose will have to edit the food,automobiles and manufactured goods into the XML files.
Now we can open the Christmas presents and enjoy the holiday.
Merry Christmas to all.
J.B.
I have downloaded the XML Notepad, and I suppose will have to edit the food,automobiles and manufactured goods into the XML files.
Now we can open the Christmas presents and enjoy the holiday.
Merry Christmas to all.
J.B.
Actually Dan the easiest way I found around that is using the Windows XP XML Editor which is more like a veiwer than anything. Anyways I load them in that and press Crtl A to select all then Crtl C to Copy then paste them over the XML and then just remove all the _ symbols in front of them. Takes me like 1 min to clean the XMLs up to look easier and nicer to read.Gackbeard wrote:As for the linefeeds in the generated XML, that's one of those things that is actually more of a pain than you would think, and since there are plenty of freeware and commercial XML editors that can read those files in and write them out with the linefeeds and tab indentation, we didn't focus on that.
Daryl