akbrown
Posts: 43
Joined: 9/6/2000 From: Melbourne, Australia Status: offline
|
I have a question for the game designers. It is a real favour that I ask for and I know that it is probably asking for the impossible, but I thought that there would be no harm in asking, so here goes: Is it possible to recode the way that the map data is stored? What I mean by map data is the hex terrain types and communication path locations and types (road/track/rail). I am no programmer, but I am guessing that this data, which is all static, must be inbuilt into one of the game files somewhere as some type of data constant. It is presumably read once during game startup (or program startup?) and then never needs to be used again since it is static data. I assume that the location of this data is not easy to find and it would be in some type of binary (i.e. not easily readable) format. I am hoping that consideration could be given to 'breaking out' this static data and relocating it into a separate file, in a readable format. Functionally the program would not have to change by very much - it would get to the same point in the code where it has to read in this map data, but the code would be modified to read it from the file instead of the current data location, wherever that may be. So although this would be a big change in design concept, it should not need to involve large or difficult changes in the game code (again I am guessing - I am no programmer). Although recoding the game to do this should not be a big job (I hope), the benifits would be huge. People like me who are interested in making changes to the game map (I have proposed changing the map of Australia to make it more accurate - see the 'Can the map of Australia be improved?' thread for details) would then have the ability to modify the map data themselves. We could then spend as much time as we like on correcting the maps and trying to come up with the best possible version, both from the historical accuracy and the gameplay perspectives. We would no longer need to plead with Matrix/2by3 to do the time consuming modifications themselves. We could do it ourselves by modifying the data in the file using a simple text file editor, and making our own map graphics to match. In fact I believe it is possible that the code modification I am requesting would take less time and effort to implement than making a new version of the map, so this could be of benifit in terms of time and effort for the game designers as well (assuming that they agree that a map modification is a good idea). If the map is moddable in this way, then it would be in line with the excellent modding abilities already provided with the game editors. Those editors allow the fanbase to apply their considerable expertise to tweaking and improving the OOB databases, which I believe will, in time, result in the OOBs being continually improved, even after official patches are no longer released. I believe that the base locations are already modifiable in the database editor, and that new bases can already be added using the current editor, although I have never tried to do this - hopefully it is already possible. I would still love to see the designers revisit the map itself to see whether it can be changed to make it more accurate, but I make this request as an alternative in case they decide not to do that, for whatever reason. Of course my 'wishlist' preference would be for both things to be done, but if a map change is not contemplated, or considered to be too much work, then this proposed change would allow us fans to do some modding of our own as an alternative. Regards, akbrown
|