Hacking the TBL files

[DSYoungEsq]

I would like to add a brief note before everyone totally loses sight of something quite important that happened today.

If it wasn't for the persistent efforts of Inferis and WiSK, we would not have had the game's main designer make the change he did.

This effort started years ago. It has at times dragged. But because it was not given up on, because people have jumped in and encouraged the lads, because you can't stop a steamroller once it starts downhill, we now have something that has been dreamed of and written about for some time now.

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

 

[Owen]

I would like to add a brief note before everyone totally loses sight of something quite important that happened today.

If it wasn't for the persistent efforts of Inferis and WiSK, we would not have had the game's main designer make the change he did.

This effort started years ago. It has at times dragged. But because it was not given up on, because people have jumped in and encouraged the lads, because you can't stop a steamroller once it starts downhill, we now have something that has been dreamed of and written about for some time now.

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

Indeed

 

[Inferis]

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

No sweat... o
I enjoyed "hacking the TBL files" quite a lot (although not so much at times), and don't forget that it was also Johan allowing me to see some of the EU2 code that helped us forward at a critical stage.

 

[WiSK]

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

Cheers mate It's satisfying when a mod-community comes together like this. Johan is certainly the beesknees in terms of good customer relations

 

[Captain Frakas]

There are no other gods than Johan
And Inferis is its prophet.

 

[Inferis]

I]EDIT: Answer (occurred to me while driving my son to his drumming lesson) is to load whole file in, count how many quadwords contain 0xCDCDCDCD and that number should be the value of the last offset.[/I]

Yeps, that's how I did it too.

 

[Underhand]

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

Hear hear! You two have done a fine job. Now get back to work

And the first province WiSK destroyed was my home town! *bursts with pride*

 

[Inferis]

The betas have a new version now which supports the 2020 limit. Haven't tested much (little time, busy day)...

 

[James Fox]

The betas have a new version now which supports the 2020 limit. Haven't tested much (little time, busy day)...

The link on your page doesn't seem to work...

 

[Summoner]

I didn't think it could be that easily done... thanks a bunch!!!

Johan used a #define to set MAX_PROVINCES. Which meant that the compiler simply plugged the value into the code every time it was encountered. The result was dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of locations it'd need changed in the exe to mod it, but only one location in the source code.

RE extending the editors to other pdox games, I tried changing the province count from the EU2 value to the Vicky one and got enough screwyness that I think the .tbls use somewhat different internal structures. Probably similar but it wasn't something I wanted try figuring out at the time. Something was wrong since the output tbls from a load/save with no change caused a crash.

 

[AndrewT]

Move the Po, in northern Italy. It would need to split Lombardia in two, and have the river ride north-west/south-east, then either cut the Mantua province, or somehow rearrange the borders to have it run normal.

The Somme, running through Picardy, from Artois.

The Tiber, cutting Roma in two, and turning north along Marche.

The Escaut (= Schelde ) between Flandern and Brabant, then Flandern/Zeeland, and make the Meuse an arm of the Rhine (to save a 'slot').

The Douro (across Oporto) and the Guadalquivir (across Andalusia).

I don't believe it is possible to run rivers across provinces, only between. You could put a visual effect of one by judicious editing, but it could not have any combat or movement effect.

 

[Mad King James]

the actual rivers as provinces are largely cosmetic, the actual river effects, IIRC, are set in the province adjascency settings.

 

[Owen]

the actual rivers as provinces are largely cosmetic, the actual river effects, IIRC, are set in the province adjascency settings.

True, but it's extremely confusing to have one without the other.

 

[WiSK]

Johan used a #define to set MAX_PROVINCES. Which meant that the compiler simply plugged the value into the code every time it was encountered. The result was dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of locations it'd need changed in the exe to mod it, but only one location in the source code.

I'm not sure it was just one #define, because the dummy province is still #1614 and he also had a brief bug with saving.

Maybe he also had to change his code for reading adjacent.tbl and/or province.csv but I guess he already made that flexible during the original alpha testing of EU2. Looking at the province ids there are clearly some later additions, so I figure he had already done that work.

What I need to do now is rewrite my code that reads the province.csv file because it made too many presumptions. For instance, that there will always be MAX_PROVINCES provinces and that they will always be in order.

 

[Hive]

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

You are most certainly right, doing such an editor is long and hard work.

RE extending the editors to other pdox games, I tried changing the province count from the EU2 value to the Vicky one and got enough screwyness that I think the .tbls use somewhat different internal structures. Probably similar but it wasn't something I wanted try figuring out at the time. Something was wrong since the output tbls from a load/save with no change caused a crash.

How about HoI? The maps are almost the same size and stuff there... and no tiles.bmp like in CK or Victoria, the EU2 and HoI maps are more alike...

I don't believe it is possible to run rivers across provinces, only between. You could put a visual effect of one by judicious editing, but it could not have any combat or movement effect.

Actually, I tested this the other day... running a river through a provinces does indeed seem to work, although it naturally appeared have no effect on movement.

 

[unmerged(25696)]

I don't believe it is possible to run rivers across provinces, only between. You could put a visual effect of one by judicious editing, but it could not have any combat or movement effect.

Yes, I know, but I meant to "split the provinces and have a river running between", like I developped for Lombardia. I was unclear. o

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I would like to add a brief note before everyone totally loses sight of something quite important that happened today.

If it wasn't for the persistent efforts of Inferis and WiSK, we would not have had the game's main designer make the change he did.

This effort started years ago. It has at times dragged. But because it was not given up on, because people have jumped in and encouraged the lads, because you can't stop a steamroller once it starts downhill, we now have something that has been dreamed of and written about for some time now.

So I say "Thank-you!" to both Inferis and WiSK, and to the many who have helped them make the possibility of totally new maps possible.

Heh, well said.

I think Inferis and WiSK need to be knighted.

 

[Inferis]

I'm not sure it was just one #define, because the dummy province is still #1614 and he also had a brief bug with saving.

No. I had confirmation from Johan that 1614 = 2019 now and 1615 = 2020...
The 1614/2019 province is the one used to draw the borders, btw. 1615/2020 is used in the original id.tbl where PTI is. I decided to keep my generated version very much alike the original, except the black borders (id 0).

 

[WiSK]

No. I had confirmation from Johan that 1614 = 2019 now and 1615 = 2020...
The 1614/2019 province is the one used to draw the borders, btw.

So the dummy province in province.csv doesn't actually need to have the correct id number? It's just a placeholder?

 

[Inferis]

So the dummy province in province.csv doesn't actually need to have the correct id number? It's just a placeholder?

I certainly don't depend on it in any way.