Keith Bennett (kanezor@gmail.com) has done something that many of us had feared was impossible: he’s created an Imp2 map editor. This effort should get him a knighthood or something. This [...]]]> We have an Imp2 Map Editor! It’s early days, but Keith Bennett has put together the first ever editor for Imp 2.
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Keith Bennett (kanezor@gmail.com) has done something that many of us had feared was impossible: he’s created an Imp2 map editor. This effort should get him a knighthood or something. This is a very early version, and Keith is interested in your feedback, bug reports, and suggestions.

To download: got to the FILES section of the Implist Yahoo Group, and look for the file named Imp2Edit_v073r2.zip

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The following are some notes from Keith:

* Maps containing out-of-bounds country, province, terrain, material, river data will likely cause Imp2 to crash.

* Provinces have a hard limit of 32 tiles total (including the town). Anything more than this will eventually cause Imp2 to crash.

* Major Powers whose capital rivers are not sovereign (that is, the river remains in that country’s tiles for its entirety) *could* cause Imp2 to crash. I’ve received inconsistent results with this, so it might not be the case. Minor Powers rivers do *NOT* have to be sovereign. I haven’t tested whether or not multiple powers can share a capital river, so your mileage may vary there too.

* The left-half of the map *should* be empty ocean with all data being “255 – undefined” so that Imp2 can randomly generate the New World data. Having non-empty tiles there could cause Imp2 to crash. It would be wise to give yourself a few columns of space as well.

* There is probably another upper boundary hard limit of *total* number of non-ocean tiles, but I haven’t determined what it is. I
would guess it’s approximately 2048. Again, your mileage may vary.

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and more notes from Keith:

Imp2edit works with a point and click interface. Just as there are 5 different map files (Terrain, Countries, Provinces, Minerals, and Rivers), there are 5 different things you can edit. You select which one you are currently editing by using the palette window.

I have, for the most part, tried to make some of the more obvious things get displayed in the Warnings window.

Ocean tiles must have no associated country (so set each ocean’s country to 255 – Ocean), no associated province (again, 255 -
Undefined), no associated mineral (again, 255 – Ocean) and either a river tile or no associated river (0 – River or 255 – Undefined).

You can edit both the Country and the Province data simultaneously by editing the Countries: the countries will be listed in the middle drop-down menu, while that country’s valid provinces will be listed in the bottom drop-down menu. You can manually set provinces to an invalid (eg, it will almost surely make Imperialism II crash) combination by selecting the Provinces from the editing drop-down menu.

You can also edit the Terran and the Minerals data simultaneously by editing the Terrain: the terrain will be listed in the middle
drop-down menu, while the selected terrain’s valid mineral combinations will be listed in the bottom drop-down menu. You can
manually set minerals to an invalid (again, crash) combination by selecting the Minerals from the editing drop-down menu.

For the most part, you should ignore _NewWorldHills, _NewWorldMountains, and Capital. I haven’t found any situation where
they would crash. In fact, they aren’t even used in the “default” Euro1500 scenario.

If you want to place a capital city, you should simply place a Town (#13) and then make sure that the province in which the town resides is 0. All countries’ province with a 0 value is their “capital” province.

The game WILL crash under the following situations:
* If ANY province has more than 32 tiles
* If ANY tile has an invalid country / province combination
* Having one riversource lead to another riversource can and usually does crash the game.
* A province with multiple town tiles will crash the game.
* A province with NO town tiles will crash the game.
* A capital town with no adjacent ocean tile and no river will crash the game.

The game MAY crash under the following situations, your mileage may vary:
* If any “capital” river is not sovereign (that is, the province-0r town to which it is attached has no adjacent ocean square and the
river runs through foreign tiles).
* If any province is not contiguous (that is, multiple islands belonging to a single province)
* Having tight ocean spaces can sometimes lead to crashes.
* Lakes might crash the game (probably something to do with the pathfinding AI for ships)
* While having an isolated capital port (a capital port that goes into a lake) might be unique, it might also crash your game.
* A river not ending in an ocean square could crash.
* Forked rivers are NOT SUPPORTED. They could crash the game. At the very least, I’m not sure which fork the game will render!
* I have never tried assigning any New World countries on any map. That might crash the game.

There’s probably a lot more different circumstances that can make your game crash.

FYI: having New World terrain and minerals in the Old World will NOT crash your game. You simply won’t be able to set up level 1 camps at them until you’ve scouted them out in the New World. For example, you can place a Desert with Diamonds in the Old World. Since the Old World is automagically scouted for you at the start of the game, you will know where it is, who has it, and how to get it. However, once your country owns the tile, you still will not be able to construct a Diamond Mine on it until you have scouted a Desert with Diamonds or a Mountains with Gems in the New World.

I suggest you back up your default Euro1500 folder and then mess around with that scenario first. Once you’ve gotten the hang of what will, what might, and what won’t crash the game… then a foray into the unknown has a better chance of being solved.