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Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 11:08:39 AM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Hi all,

yesterday i purchased the game and i like it a lot. Difficulties with the WP forces keeps me hungry to try and win. As an avid scenario designer for Combat Mission, TacOps and Harpoon i began immediately to check this advanced editor out.

Only minor problems for now:

1. Training Levels: For one you can change them at force parameters and the same option is there at unit paramters. Where is the difference? Big problem here is that the editor doesnt allow me to accept changes made in the unit parameters screen. Error code is "Sir, subunit type MARD is not recognized" Its not working with the subunits names already displayed :(

2. How can i do the setup of the units i just added to the scenario? I saw that when i played it for the first time as NATO i have to make the setup, but its not saved.

3. I wanted to play the scenario again, saw some errors in my thinking as scen designer and wanted to go straight to the editor. So i ended the game, started a new and selected the editor tab - alas i could hover over the buttons for the two editors but pressing it was to no avail. I had to restart the game.

4. I found no AAA units for the NATO. Where did you hide them :)

Any insights on these?
Post #: 1
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 3:22:22 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Another small wish:

At the victory points tab it would be very comfortable if one could see the real map with the setup zones and the zones numbered 1-12. That way its easier to not make a mistake.

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 2
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 4:20:06 PM   
IronManBeta


Posts: 4132
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Burlington, Ontario
Status: offline 		I'm glad to see you are experimenting with the scenario editor.

My suggestion is that you print out the two reports "FPG Units.pdf" and "FPG Platforms.pdf" and keep them for handy reference.

"MARD" - this is a valid platform tag if you look it up in the platforms list so I am not quite sure why it is objecting. Which type of unit in particular are you trying to edit? I'll have a look at it.

Training levels - the force level is just to let you set it quickly and conveniently. You might want to set the level for a Soviet 1st bn at a higher level than for a 3rd bn for instance. The second one lets you vary training unit by unit to tweek it a little if you like.

Unit setup / Saving a scenario - when you first create a scenario all the units are just lined up in the top left corner of the setup area. To position them you immediately start the scenario (don't reload it as a 'prebuild scenario'!) and you will be taken to the pre-game setup phase. Position the units as you like and save it again as a scn file with the new menu item that appears under the file menu. I don't have it handy at this moment but it is called something like "Save as Scenario". That will do the trick.

Re-edit / buttons not active. Let me have a look. For now just restart the game and you will be fine.

AAA units. NATO is surprisingly weak in this category for front line forces. There are a certain number of platforms you can add in on your own though - just look them up in the Platforms List and add the tags as desired to the existing units.

VP tab / map / show sector numbers. I'll add this to the list. This list is getting pretty long though so it might take a while!

Enjoy, cheers, Rob.

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 3
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 4:46:51 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Ah :) Thanks for the fast reply. I got a bit farther on, too. The behaviour that the program doesn't recognize its own unit tags has vanished. But its a point on my lookout list. Things that are not repeatable seem funny to me and i will have an eye on it.

Ok. Difference noted and tested - worked.

I did the mistake to actually load the scenario and not proceeding. Now i got it right. Is there a way to setup both units at the same time? I did it by reloading it in the scen editor and then choose WP instead of NATO for human player.

Can i add new / other weapons to the platforms?

(in reply to IronManBeta)
Post #: 4
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 6:12:23 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		And another one:

How is it possible to do the unstructured "campaign game" ? Do i have to write scenarios for the same units on the same map? Is the game taking the surviving units from the first scenario and i can refit them?

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 5
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 6:54:55 PM   
IronManBeta


Posts: 4132
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Burlington, Ontario
Status: offline 		Setup both sides at one time. As a scenario designer I remember to set the player to Head to Head and this let me edit both sides in succession. I probably never wrote that down though!

Add new weapons to the platforms. Not yet, but I have an idea in mind. Please be patient for now.

Unstructured campaign game. It is possible to fight a scenario and then extract your surviving forces from it and inject them into a new scenario. You can edit them to fix up battle damage and increase skill levels for the survivors, etc. It is not a proper campaign game but will be the start of one some day.

I'm highly interested in seeing what some user generated stand-alone scenarios look like before we start getting fancy with campaign games. We have to crawl before we can walk and run....


Cheers, Rob.

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 6
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 7:07:03 PM   
Tbird3

 

Posts: 21
Joined: 3/19/2002
From: Oklahoma
Status: offline 		Sargen, I had the same problem. I would make a change, then the game wouldn't accept it. What I did was jump out of that unit, go back to it, insert the change between the current displayed units and it worked. Can't say why but tends not to be to user friendly.

Tbird3

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 7
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/8/2005 10:06:06 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Thanks for the info Tbird3, at least i am not mad and start to "see" things :)

I find it interesting that the NATO-AI is attacking into zones which are "to clear" zones for the WP. Shouldnt they stay in the occupy zones and wait for me - the WP - to attack? I think the AI is far too easy lured into attacks. But i have to play with the two scoring methods - either clearing or occupying.

Any advice for that? Why the AI keeps attacking when they perfectly stay in a must have zone with points? It seems to me that the AI knows what zones the human has to clear and starts to deploy into these zones.

(in reply to Tbird3)
Post #: 8
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/9/2005 12:18:37 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Another question: How can i add the units (especially the platoons) listed in the Standard Units List ? Is there an easy way?

It would be good to select platoons and companies and then manually add a HQ for the units. Is that possible?

edit: When i change an existing unit, for example from M109 SP to Gepard the unit icons on the right side in game stay for the M109 SP. Is this correct? How do i change this to Gepard icons? And the NATO icons stay for mech. infantry and not for AA.

< Message edited by sarjen -- 2/9/2005 10:32:47 AM >

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 9
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/9/2005 12:43:06 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		A small strange beahviour. I wanted to add some more units from the prebuilt database. I wanted to append them to my existsing units. The warning message popped up that there is a naming conflict (?) and i renamed the units. Result is shown in screenshot - the HQ of the MRR 255 is now below the HQ of 247 MRR. I dont think that this is the way you wanted it. Wouldn't it be easier to just generate new names when appending same types of bats and regs?




Attachment (1)

< Message edited by sarjen -- 2/9/2005 10:43:50 AM >

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 10
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/9/2005 6:09:40 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Here i am again :)

When i select the EW intensity at scenario creation it seems as this option is not recognized when starting the game. One can always check at the realism tab the amount of EW while the default setting is low. Shouldn't it reflect the scenario setup? Or am i mixing two different things togeteher?

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 11
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/9/2005 11:20:02 PM   
Catgh_MatrixForum


Posts: 665
Joined: 3/13/2002
From: Durango, CO
Status: offline 		A quick note for the scenario designers...

When I worked on putting the scenarios together I actually used MS Excel to do the main work. Basically I would set up the initial levels of what the scenario design team wanted, export it out to a .csv file and import into Excel. Within Excel I then edited the labels, icons, TOE and the subunits to my heart's content. Once I had the OOB/TOE lined out in Excel, I would export out a .csv file and use the scenario editor to import the OOB/TOE. It might sound a bit cumbersome, but in reality it was quite very slick way to work on scenarios. I could even put the file to my PocketPC and work on scenarios during my real-life work meetings.

When I needed a particular platoon I would just quickly send out another csv file from the scenario editor, cut and past what I needed into the master csv file and edit what I needed.

Sarjen,
The EW intensity during scenario creation can be over-written by the player using the slider. If you are not seeing the EW slider in the proper place during the loading of your game, that could be a problem. I say could be a problem because Robert and I had this same conversation a long time ago and I don't quite remember the answer. Anyhow, let me know if the player slider is not reflecting your setting from the scenario file. If this is the case, I will file a report in the beta test forum for Robert to work on.

Regarding your post about renaming, I will pass it into the Beta Test Forum.

The AI is being tweaked and I believe Robert is looking at bringing out some of the values it uses to determine "aggression" to the scenario creator. I don't know if or when this will come to day light though.

Regarding your post about adding single platoons and the icon... Once again I control all this using Excel spreadsheets. Within those spreadsheets. The only way I was able to do it before the spreadsheets was to insert a bigger force and delete the ones I didn't need from that force leaving what I needed. It was very cumbersome and pushed me to the Excel.

Ron

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 12
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 10:13:15 AM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Catgh

A quick note for the scenario designers...

When I worked on putting the scenarios together I actually used MS Excel to do the main work. Basically I would set up the initial levels of what the scenario design team wanted, export it out to a .csv file and import into Excel. Within Excel I then edited the labels, icons, TOE and the subunits to my heart's content. Once I had the OOB/TOE lined out in Excel, I would export out a .csv file and use the scenario editor to import the OOB/TOE. It might sound a bit cumbersome, but in reality it was quite very slick way to work on scenarios. I could even put the file to my PocketPC and work on scenarios during my real-life work meetings.

....snip


Err ... i searched around and found no button to export a force composition from the scenario editor as a .csv file.

And the scenario setup for EW intensity is not matching the realism option if you load the scenario.

< Message edited by sarjen -- 2/10/2005 8:14:49 AM >

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 13
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 11:01:45 AM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Ok. So i messed a bit with the only .csv file i could find. It was tutorial2.csv. I saved it under another name as a .csv. Sadly the scenario editor didn't import any units. I opened both files (new and tut2) and saw that they were different in format. The tut2 was everything in one cell and the new file was very messed up.

Any hints? When i saved it there was a warning of excel that i might loose format and so on. I think this is ok since i wanted it to have as a .csv .

I am using Excel2000.

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 14
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 5:29:27 PM   
Catgh_MatrixForum


Posts: 665
Joined: 3/13/2002
From: Durango, CO
Status: offline 		Here you go... Kicking out to .csv




Attachment (1)

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 15
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 5:31:06 PM   
Catgh_MatrixForum


Posts: 665
Joined: 3/13/2002
From: Durango, CO
Status: offline 		Bringing in from .csv.. When using this, the file list below the radio buttons will show all the .csv files sitting in the scenario subdirectory. When using this it only brings in the units that are appliciable to force selection window you are on.

Hope that helps...




Attachment (1)

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 16
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 5:36:15 PM   
Catgh_MatrixForum


Posts: 665
Joined: 3/13/2002
From: Durango, CO
Status: offline 		Oh, don't worry about the excel error when saving as .csv file. Basically if you had fancy formating and such in your excel spreadsheet it is lost.

Also watch out for Excel and how it treats "1/46" type labels. It has a tendency to convert it to a date. All the sudden you will have units will labels like Jan-46. LOL.

Also make sure you don't keep the file open in excel when trying to import into the scenario editor. You will get an error within the scenario editor. What I did was do the save as .csv and then turn around and did a save as Excel format. That way I still had my spreadsheet open and could edit it as needed.

The other little step I always did was after positioning the units on the map and doing the save as a scenario file, I would reopen the scenario file in the editor and send out a new .csv file. This way I would have the locations of the units reflected in the .csv/excel file. If you don't and decide to use the csv file later, it will overright all the locations of the units.

I will try to watch this forum a bit to help out as much as possible, but I am going out of town today and will be limited with my internet access.

I will post a bug report in the beta tester forum about the EW slider.

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 17
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 7:15:16 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Ai Carramba ... i knew i was overlooking something. Thank you very much

I will test it out.

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 18
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/10/2005 9:06:44 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: Catgh

Oh, don't worry about the excel error when saving as .csv file. Basically if you had fancy formating and such in your excel spreadsheet it is lost.

Also watch out for Excel and how it treats "1/46" type labels. It has a tendency to convert it to a date. All the sudden you will have units will labels like Jan-46. LOL.

...snip


The only workaround i know if is to rename the .csv to .txt and then importing it with marking the tabs as text ... anybody out there with a better solution?

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 19
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/11/2005 4:04:45 PM   
Catgh_MatrixForum


Posts: 665
Joined: 3/13/2002
From: Durango, CO
Status: offline 		I would import the .csv file and then format the cells with the date conversion to text. I hope that helps.

PS. WiFi in the hotel for free!!!!!

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 20
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/11/2005 11:25:00 PM   
Tbird3

 

Posts: 21
Joined: 3/19/2002
From: Oklahoma
Status: offline 		This is an awesome thread! Catgh and sarjen thanks! The CSV/spreadsheet technique makes life sooooo much easier and better! I am currently working a scenario that better fits my concept of how the WP would deploy and fight. If and when I get it done maybe we can hang it on here somehow. I hope that we are all able to access player scenarios. Thanks again.

Regards,

Tbird3

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 21
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/11/2005 11:51:15 PM   
sarjen

 

Posts: 111
Joined: 7/14/2004
Status: offline 		Yes please. Do it as an attachment as i will with mine when i finish it. Currently i am in the last playtesting stages for one and if you play NATO its really fun.

The things that are now to learn are the briefings

(in reply to Tbird3)
Post #: 22
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/11/2005 11:57:56 PM   
Catgh_MatrixForum


Posts: 665
Joined: 3/13/2002
From: Durango, CO
Status: offline 		Briefings...

Pure HTML... :) Create away with some HTML editor. Marc S. from Matrix really gave a lot of guidance from the art side for the stock scenarios.

Basically what I did (reaching into memory banks here) was have two seperate subdirectories for each side... PACT and NATO. The main root of the subdirectory held the magic index.html file. All other files need to live within that subdirectory or a subdirectory of that directory.

The ones in the stock game are pretty simple HTML, but you can get as fancy as you want I think.

Ron

(in reply to sarjen)
Post #: 23
RE: Scenario Editor question - 2/12/2005 4:54:53 AM   
IronManBeta


Posts: 4132
Joined: 2/25/2002
From: Burlington, Ontario
Status: offline 		Yes, the Mission Briefing html engine is a full blown HTML rendering engine. It is not IE or FireFox but it is pretty capable. You can create an entire multi-megabyte web site with as much depth and detail as you like and make that the mission briefing for a scenario. This was deliberate but obviously requires a lot of work to make happen.

Catgh did all the non-tutorial mission breifings and did a terrific job!

Rob

(in reply to Catgh_MatrixForum)
Post #: 24
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