Positions Editor

[MichaelM]

At Hive's request, I've been working for the last week or so on porting my EU3 positions editor to EU2. I think it's time to release an initial version so people can discover lots of bugs that I didn't find.

You can download it here (page also has the source code).

I do not have any custom maps installed, so I'd like to know how (and if) it works with any of those. It expects 2020 provinces, but if you know Java, it's trivial to change it to 1615 and recompile; it doesn't require any other libraries.

So, what do you think?

[Hive]

Thanks a lot for your effort.

Unfortunately, I got a bunch of errors when opening it (perhaps because it was the standard vanilla map and not with 2020 provinces?). Maybe it was just me who made an error. Either way, I don't have time to fiddle around with it untill next week. But this tool will definately make modding a whole lot easier.

[MichaelM]

Thanks a lot for your effort.

Unfortunately, I got a bunch of errors when opening it (perhaps because it was the standard vanilla map and not with 2020 provinces?). Maybe it was just me who made an error. Either way, I don't have time to fiddle around with it untill next week. But this tool will definately make modding a whole lot easier.

I did some checking and found two possibilities:

1. If you're running Java 1.6, then you just need to add "-Xmx256m" to the .bat file (like: "java -Xmx256m -jar ..."). This should fix the problem. I've updated the batch file on my site to do the same thing.

2. If you're running Java 1.5, then there's some trouble. I could not get it to run with 1.5 at all; it always gave an OutOfMemoryError, even when I increased the maximum memory to 768 megabytes. I'm not sure what causes this yet.

[YodaMaster]

Very interesting. Thanks!

[MichaelM]

Very interesting. Thanks!

If this helps the AGCEEP map appear sooner, it's worth it!

[YodaMaster]

If this helps the AGCEEP map appear sooner, it's worth it!

Yes, it could when tbl files will be ready.

[Hive]

So uhm... any chance of your EU3 scenario editor for EU2 as well?

[MichaelM]

So uhm... any chance of your EU3 scenario editor for EU2 as well?

Well... EU2's scenarios are so different from EU3's that I might have to recode most of it. And since school just started, I'm going to be short on time very soon.

I actually thought Paradox's editor was pretty good except for all the bugs; it might be rather time-consuming to re-create all those forms from the side bar. Plus, I don't use the lightmaps, so mine would be a lot uglier. But I guess ugly still beats unusable, so maybe I'll give it a try.

So in conclusion, that's a resounding "Maybe".

[Hive]

So in conclusion, that's a resounding "Maybe".

Good enough for me.

About the Paradox editor, it doesn't work on maps with 2020 provinces...

[Third Angel]

[...]

I do not have any custom maps installed, so I'd like to know how (and if) it works with any of those. It expects 2020 provinces, but if you know Java, it's trivial to change it to 1615 and recompile; it doesn't require any other libraries.

So, what do you think?

Hi, I am quite interested in your positions' editor since I am working on a scenario for MWATK.

I can run your program just fine with the vanilla map.
It does load but gives weird results with WATK, the map is there but there are many black strips here and there.
It does not load at all with MWATK, giving only a list of errors in the DOS dialog box.

Hope you keep working on this.

[MichaelM]

Hmm... Refresh my memory: do custom maps have to be the same size as the Paradox map? If not, that's probably the issue.

[cool-toxic]

Great job Michael!


Maps have to be the same size: 18944x7296 px.

[MichaelM]

In that case, I'd have to actually see what shows up to have any idea of what's wrong.

Third Angel, can you post the errors you get with MWATK?

[Hive]

Couldn't the problem be solved by just using an extracted ID map as source instead of the tbl files?

[MichaelM]

What do you mean by an extracted ID map? Like what shows now, but saved as such instead of read from id.tbl?

[Third Angel]

In that case, I'd have to actually see what shows up to have any idea of what's wrong.

Third Angel, can you post the errors you get with MWATK?

Sorry I did not get back to you earlier. Here's what I get:

WATK

MWATK

[MichaelM]

All right, I finally tracked it down (I had WATK lying around after all). It turns out Inferis's description of id.tbl is wrong. I'm going to assume that was just an oversight on his part, since it was his program that produced the map for WATK.

inferis.org says that the id.tbl file is a series of 6-byte blocks, formatted as <start-x><province id><end-x>. This is incorrect; it's actually a series of 4-byte blocks, with the end x of one block becoming the start x for the next.

Now, I got around this with the vanilla map because there is always a 1-pixel bit of province 0 between provinces; I had just assumed that it was padding and skipped it. But WATK's map does not have this. This meant that I was skipping valid map data, leading to wild inaccuracies.

This has now been fixed for the second alpha, which is now online. Download it from the same place (here). Enjoy!

Third Angel, can you check if by chance this solves the MWATK errors as well?

[Hive]

What do you mean by an extracted ID map? Like what shows now, but saved as such instead of read from id.tbl?

I just meant that an extracted ID map from EU2 is just like the map in EU3 - so I just figured it would be easier for you, since you have the EU3 editor so well worked out.

[MichaelM]

I just meant that an extracted ID map from EU2 is just like the map in EU3 - so I just figured it would be easier for you, since you have the EU3 editor so well worked out.

Ah, I see. If this version still doesn't work, I might try that approach.

By the way, if anyone downloaded the new version already, please download it again; I had forgotten to update the .jar file in the compiled version.

[Basileios II]

Whenever I´m saving any changes tp province.csv the game will not load anymore. The error message says something about "Unable to open gfx\interface\piw\.txt".