#start and #specstart under 3.17

[Ballbarian]

I am at my wits end. (Not a long trip. )

I tried to start up a game on a map adjusted with my RanDom project (fixed for 3.17) and kept getting strange start placements with the #start province set aside for me (the human player) being ignored and finding myself placed next to AI home provinces. Spent a couple of days deciphering my own code (note to self: more comments and less hacking!). Finally I adjusted the code to add a no start value (512) to the neighboring provinces. Never had to do this before as long as every player had a preassigned start location. Now I find my nation using one of the #specstart locations reserved for another nation and the other nation swiping the start of yet a third nation. The result is a jumbled mess with only a few nations taking their assigned locations.

I have attached the map image and the map file to this post and trimmed out the GAN map code which only added defenders, sites, etc. since it should have absolutely no effect on start locations in this situation. Should make it a little easier to browse the file.

If someone else could confirm this unexpected behavior I would really appreciate it. I am hoping that I just have introduced an error in my code or something simple and not found a bug with the 317 patch. I found no mention of dom3's start placement code being changed in the logs, but maybe their were some unexpected effects caused by some other changes?

My sanity thanks you in advance!

[NTJedi]

There's more annoyances to be discovered using mapedit commands... such as #fort . After a few discussions I found out from Illwinter that notepad from Windows isn't exactly supported for using mapedit commands. It works for the most part, but does have some issues such as what you're experiencing.

An updated mapedit PDF should be provided which includes advising what txt editors are supported.

Another note is that #god only works for the capital of its province... lost an hour of testing to find this fun piece of knowledge.

[Edratman]

I use 2 text editors that work fine, that I downloaded for free. They are "cream" and "PS Pad". When I opened your notebook file with PS PAd it looked okay to me (quick scan only). I saved it with PS pad and later on I'll see if it works.

[Edratman]

I converted your file to text file. Works fine and both Ulm and Ermor start where you want, 17 and 67. That's are far as I took it.

Your trouble must be something funky with notepad. Who knows?

I give you credit for doing it correctly in notepad. You have a lot more patience than I. I can't even read a map file in notepad.

[Edi]

Notepad uses nonstandard (for Unix/Linux) endlines. On top of that, it does not even recognize the normal endlines, so if you open up a text file that uses those, it's all mashed together in one big row of text and probably contains errors too. Notepad is crapware.

So anything that uses the standard endline will work just fine. Personally, I recommend Crimson Editor. It's free for personal use and absolutely kickass for all kinds of things, including coding.

[Edratman]

There is something even worse. Once you download a text editor and see what the map and dm files look like on an editor, you will be dope slapping yourself for weeks.

Edi, if you don't like notepad, just come out and say it.

[Ballbarian]

Sorry for the confusion. As my initial post shows, I was frustrated and rather impatient.

I am not using notepad. As a matter of fact, I use VIM to view and edit the files normally. But this map file was originally generated by Dominions via the map editor and then modified by SemiRandom which is written in yabasic. Regardless, the point is that the start code worked fine previous versions of Dom3. I will have to do more testing however as it could be some weirdness introduced by Vista. I have not generated any SemiRandom maps since changing from XP.

@Edratman
Thanks for trying that out for me. I too found Ermor where it should be, but I hadn't found Ulm yet so I cannot confirm them. If you start the game as Hinnom, you should begin in province #126. If not then a preassigned AI nation start is being overridden.

It should be:
Code:

---

HUMAN (only #start <prov#> placed)

player 20     HINNOM      126



AI (using #specstart <nation#> <prov#>)

player 68     LANKA        13

player 2      ULM          17

player 1      ERMOR        67

player 14     FOMORIA      77

player 13     TIR NA N'OG  88

player 10     CTIS        111

---

[Edratman]

Hinnom starts in 126.

I can play every nation from the setup screen because the last entries in the file are "#allowedplayer <> <>". Your post and the map program itself seems to indicate that you want make Hinnom the Human and the other 7 computer controlled.

In the nation setup section you make these nations computer players using "#computerplayer <> <>" which is then followed by the lines that allow them to be open to chosen. I wonder if having both notations in there is a problem?


I also have VIM, but prefer the 2 I mentioned, for no reason that I can think of.

[Ballbarian]

I am still extremely confused since I had no problem before the patch, but I think I have found a simple solution. I will change SemiRandom to write #specstart instead of #start for the human players.

I do not want to leave out the #allowedplayer lines, because without them the user can select any era and any number of players which can crash the game due to insufficient starting locations available. In an ideal implementation, a nation with a #computerplayer command would not even be available for selection in the game setup screen. It would just be locked and grayed out. But that is not the case.

The obvious fix is to use #specstart for Hinnom (the human player) instead of just #start. The reason for wanting to just use #start was for games with more than one human so that any of the existing #starts would be valid and chosen randomly by the game. This was really not necessary since the hard coded #specstarts are assigned randomly by SemiRandom anyhow and only the server need have the map file.

Thanks again for allowing me use you good folks as a sounding board, and a special thank you Edratman for testing it for me. It boggles my simple mind that you achieved a good start! I tried at least 4 games and never had Hinnom start where it should have.

[Edratman]

The only thing I did was to open the scenario wih my text editor and resave it using that editor. Then I transferred it to the mod file.

The reason that I thought you were editing with notepad is that my text editor did not recognize your attachment and automatically open it. Notepad kicked in as the default. I believe that is the only Dom3 download that has done that to me. I would look there. I can't explain the conflict with 3.17. But I ran the scenario with 3.17, so once again I lean towards your editor.

I understand what you are trying to do, but for for some reason the way you are doing it doesn't seem quite right. On one hand it doesn't seem wrong, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I cannot identify anything exactly, because I don't make scenarios, nor do I have an alternative. It just seems to have some logical shortcoming. You need someone much better than me to evaluate it. That list of candidates is quite long.