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MapEdit Readme

• Contents
• Introduction
• Revision History
• Installation and Uninstalling
• Overview
• Removing Resources
• Credits
• Final Notes

MapEdit 2.1 by Mercator

Last Changed: 17 November 2002

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Revision History
   1. Version 2.1
   2. Version 2.0
      1. Bugfixes
      2. Changes
      3. Additions
3. Installation and Uninstalling
   1. Installation
      1. Full Installation
      2. Updating MapEdit
   2. Uninstalling
4. Overview
   1. Menus
   2. Toolbar
   3. Frames
   4. Windows
5. Removing Resources
6. Credits
7. Final Notes

Introduction

MapEdit is a Civilization II map editing tool I started coding in March 2000. It first saw the light in October 2000 as version 1.00. After a long silence it reached its second release in July 2002 as version 2.0. It's currently at version 2.1. Here's a quick overview of MapEdit's most important features:

• Convert Civilization II maps to 256 color (8-bit) uncompressed Windows bitmaps and vice versa
• Create and edit maps with a surface up to 32,767
• Import maps from Civilization II savegames and scenarios
• Export maps to The Civ Evolution, an open-source Civilization-type game comparable to Civilization II.
• Preview your map changes
• Replace or swap terrain types
• Add or change civilization starting locations
• Resize and reposition maps
• Flip or invert maps
• Remove resources from a map
• Count the number of squares on a map for each terrain type

All of its features are explained in detail in the Overview chapter. For those of you familiar with earlier versions, you can read about the changes, additions and bugfixes in the Revision History section below.

I will gladly receive any comments, questions, suggestions, bug reports etc.

Revision History

Version 2.1

• If you close a map, the focus will change to the tab before it, rather than the first tab, as was previously the case.
• Thanks to St. Leo I have added a new Export... item to the File menu. This allows you to save a copy of the selected map to "foreign" game map formats. Currently, only Civ Evolution is supported, but I'm open to suggestions.
• Some of the standard Test of Time maps seem to use an extra flag for terrains, although it is not clear to me what exactly this flag is supposed to represent. In version 2.0 I treated this flag as "erroneous" terrain, and generally ignored it. Version 2.1 ignores it a little less, so if it does turn out to be something meaningful I will be prepared. This means that such terrain will no longer be counted as "erroneous" in the square count, and it will only show up in the map preview (still as black squares) if you select to show the river and resource information.

Version 2.0

Bugfixes

• For some people there was a major bug that would crash MapEdit when trying to save files. This issue has been solved thanks to Gothmog and Winterfritz.
• A bug that crashed MapEdit when you changed the preview a lot has been fixed.
• The preview image used to look very slightly distorted. Moreover, in some Windows configurations the preview image wouldn't fit correctly in the preview window. Both issues have been fixed.
• The maximum gigantic map surface has been changed from 32,768 to 32,767 since 32,767 is really the maximum, not 32,768.

Changes

• Bitmaps are now evaluated a bit more leniently. Different image editors seem to have their own way of saving bitmaps, MapEdit should now be able to load most 256 color bitmaps. Many thanks to Mirko Pontrelli for pointing this out to me.
• Reverting files is now only impossible for newly created, unsaved maps. This makes it possible to reload a map at any time and immediately import new changes made by another application.
• The "official" map width and height limits were a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 250. For MapEdit, I've now set those limits to 16 and 512, respectively.
• I've split the View menu into two separate menus: View and Tools. More about this in the Additions.
• The Close button on the file tab has moved to the toolbar (between the familiar Open... and Revert... buttons).
• The Map Placement frame has been revamped and is now named Map Alignment. To reduce any unnecessary confusion here, I've reduced the amount of input boxes from 4 to 2. These are called Horizontal and Vertical.
• The background image has changed to a rather plain MapEdit logo, instead of the fancy solar eclipse thing. Why? I guess I'm just boring.

Additions

• MapEdit can now take command-line arguments. So if you make MapEdit the default program to open .mp files, it will automatically open them up in MapEdit. Just one small problem, if you open multiple maps at a time, each map will be opened in a separate instance of MapEdit. If anyone can help me solve that problem, by all means, because I haven't a clue.
• It is now also possible to import maps from any Civilization II savegame or scenario.
• You can now navigate through the tabs using Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab.
• You can now close the Preview window more easily by right-clicking on it.
• In addition to the changes to the Map Alignment frame, two new checkboxes have been added. These heckboxes allow you to horizontall or vertically wrap around your map. For instnce, if you move a map 5 lines down, the rows that "fall off" at the bottom will re-appear at the top.
• A new Always On Top feature has been added to the View menu, as well as an item called Starting Locations, which highlights starting locations on the map preview. The items not related to the map preview have been moved to the Tools menu.
• This Tools menu holds 4 new features: Count Squares, Starting Locations..., Replace Terrain... and Palette Editor... With these items you can, respectively, count how many squares of each terrain type there are on a map, assign or change civilization starting locations, replace or swap terrain types, and edit the MapEdit palette.
• I added an extra menu, called Window. This menu will only show up when you have some maps open. It has a Close All option, as well as a window list. This should make navigation between maps easier for those of you who like to have a lot of maps open.

Installation and Uninstalling

Installation

There are two ways to install MapEdit:

1. If you don't have MapEdit yet, or you have the old MapEdit 1.00 installed you must do a full installation.
2. If you already have a previous version of MapEdit 2.x installed, you can get away with simply updating MapEdit.

Let's get to it...

Full Installation

A few important notes before you start:

• If you have MapEdit 1.00 you must uninstall it first! Removing its registry settings is not necessary.
• MapEdit may have trouble running under Windows95. Installing DCOM95 should solve any problems.
• For a full installation, you must have the Full Installation file.

MapEdit comes in a Zip archive. To install, extract the files anywhere and run the setup program to launch the installer. If you have WinZip you can choose its Install action and have WinZip do it for you. The installer will guide you through the rest of the process. MapEdit will be installed in the directory you specified and a program group called MapEdit will be created in the Start menu.

In contrast with MapEdit's first release, the required Visual Basic 6.0 run time files are NOT included in the MapEdit installation package. If you have a more recent Windows version (i.e. anything after Windows 98) you will most likely already have these files, people who previously installed MapEdit will also already have these files.

If you get Missing File error messages when starting up MapEdit you will need to download them. They're available right here in the downloads section and at the Microsoft website.

Updating Mapedit

To update your version of MapEdit 2.x to the latest version you will need the Update package. In contrast with the Full Installation it doesn't contain a setup program.

Extract all files from the update's Zip archive into your MapEdit directory, overwriting any existing files. Done!

Uninstalling

Uninstalling MapEdit requires two steps:

1. Start MapEdit, choose Options... in MapEdit's View menu and click the Clear Registry Settings button (click the button again if you change your mind and want to keep MapEdit after all). Click OK and close MapEdit.

   TIP: You can skip this step if you intend to re-install or upgrade MapEdit at a later date, and want to keep your MapEdit settings (such as the recently opened files).

2. (a) Go to the MapEdit program group in the Start menu and click on Uninstall MapEdit. (b) Alternatively, you can start the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel, find MapEdit in the list of programs and click the Add/Remove... button.

Overview

Menus

• File: Many of the items in the File menu speak for themselves. Only two items might need a little explanation:

  1. Revert.... - The revert item is a rather primitive kind of undo function. It will simply reload the (bit)map for you and thus undo all changes you made to the file you were working on after your last save. There is one special way you can take advantage of this option: you can update changes you've made to a map in another application (i.e. the Civilization II MapEditor, or an image editor) to MapEdit by reverting the file.
  2. Export.... - This option allows you to save a copy of the selected map in alternative game map formats. The map open in MapEdit will not be affected. Currently only Civ Evolution is available.

• View: This menu contains four items, only the first (Always On Top) will be available when you start up MapEdit for the first time. Here's a description of each of the items:

  1. Always On Top - Check his option to always let MapEdit stay on top of any other open windows or applications. Uncheck it to go back to normal.
  2. Map Preview - Opens a small preview window. This window looks very much like the small world view window in Civilization II except that every terrain has its own color code (using the MapEdit palette). This window will help you in making the changes to the map you want. Only one map can be previewed at the same time. The preview window does not update automatically, but everytime you want to see the changes you've made you can just click this item again.
  3. Rivers & Resources - This option, initially cleared, can be checked or unchecked. When this option is checked, the map preview shows river and resource information.
  4. Starting Locations - Check this item to highlight the civilization starting locations on the map preview. Note that it only highlights in the map preview. Starting location information can not be saved to bitmaps.

• Tools: This menu contains several additional tools. The first three items are grayed out if there aren't any maps open. The Civilization II and Map Editor items are only available if the Civilization II path has been specified:

  1. Count Squares - Click this item to count the total amount of squares for each terrain type in the currently selected map.
  2. Starting Locations... - This will open up a new window in which you can change, add or remove civilization starting locations for the selected map.
  3. Replace Terrain... - Click this to open a dialog in which you can replace one terrain type by another, or swap two terrain types.
  4. Palette Editor... - Open up the MapEdit palette editor to change the colors used in the preview and when saving bitmaps.
  5. Civilization II - This will run Sid Meier's Civilization II for you.
  6. Map Editor - Runs the Civilization II Map Editor. If there's an unchanged map open in the Map Editor, clicking this item will load the selected map from MapEdit into the Map Editor. If the map open in the Map Editor has unsaved changes, nothing will happen. If you don't have any maps open in MapEdit, the Select Map to Load dialog will open up in the Civilization II Map Editor.
  7. Options... - Clicking this item will bring up a window where you can specify the Civilization II path and version, and clear MapEdit's registry settings.

• Window: First of all, this menu only shows up when there are one or more files open. The first item is Close All. This option will close all open files. If there are any new or changed files open, you will be asked if you want to save them.

  Below this you will find a list of at most the first 10 maps you have opened. A check in front of the filename indicates that that file is currently selected. Click on any of those filenames to change focus to one of the other maps.

  In case you have more than 10 maps open, the bottom-most item, called Window List..., will come in handy. If you choose this item, a new window will pop up with a list of all open files. Double-click on the map you want to see, or select the map and click OK.

• Help: There are three items in this window:

  1. Read Me - Clicking this item will open this readme in your browser. The readme is basically MapEdit's help system, so look here first if you run into problems. But since you're reading this, you probably know already.
  2. MapEdit Website - Launches the MapEdit Website in your browser.
  3. About MapEdit... - This will show a small pop-up window with some technical details, contact information and brief credits.

Toolbar

All of the buttons on the toolbar are shortcuts to items on the menus. From left to right those are:

New..., Open..., Close, Revert... and Save from the File menu, and Map Preview, Rivers & Resources and Starting Locations from the View menu. Finally Replace Terrains..., Palette Editor..., Civilization II, Map Editor and Options... from the Tools menu. Their functionality is further described in the Menus section above.

Frames

When opening your first Civilization II map, savegame, scenario or 256-color (uncompressed) bitmap a tab with all map data and the possible changes you can make will fill the empty MapEdit window. Here I will describe the six different frames on this tab:

• Map Details: This frame shows some information about the last saved state of the current (bit)map. Since the world shape and resource seed aren't saved in a bitmap those default to Flat and 1, respectively, when opening a bitmap.

• Map Operations: Check these boxes when you want to flip, mirror or invert a map. Inverting a map causes all land to become ocean and all ocean to become desert; all starting points, if any, will be lost. When flipping or mirroring a map starting points will be relocated accordingly.

  Due to the diamond shaped tiles and their alternating pattern, flipping and mirroring may give slightly deformed results.

  These operations are applied to the original map data and not on the resized and repositioned map data.

• Map Dimensions: Adjust the values here to change the size of the map. Keep in mind the minimum (1,000) and maximum (10,922 or 32,767 depending on your Civ2 version) map surface, as well as the minimum (16) and maximum (512) width and height.
• Map Alignment: With these values you can reposition your map. Entering a negative value in the Horizontal input box will move the map to the left, a positive value will move it to the right. Similarly, a negative value in the Vertical box will move your map up, a positive value will move it down. Check the Wrap checkboxes to let the map wrap around horizontally or vertically (the part of the map that "falls off" on one end of the map wil re-appear at the other end).
• Map Characteristics: Change the resource seed and world shape of the map. A resource seed of 1 indicates a random seed.

• Terrain Characteristics: Select which terrain you want to use for the borders, added through the Map Alignment or Map Dimensions frames, with the Filler Terrain drop-down box. Add rivers to and/or remove resources form either all squares or only the filler squares.

  Experiment with this and the map preview to see what I mean (don't forget to check the Rivers & Resources option).

Windows

Several items on the toolbar and in the menus will open up a new window. Let me explain the more interesting, non-standard ones. The menu item that opens the new window is marked in italics, after that follows the window title that is opened in bold:

• New... - Create Blank Map: This is the window that pops up when you select to create a new map. It contains three frames called Map Dimensions, Map Characterististics and Terrain Characteristics, and they are very similar to the frames with the same name in the main window.
• Map Preview - Preview: This window shows you what a map looks like. Left-click to zoom in to 200%, click again to zoom back to 100%. Right-clicking on it will close the preview. The preview doesn't automatically update after each change, but you can update it with Ctrl+P or by clicking the Map Preview menu item or toolbar button.

• Starting Locations... - Starting Locations: You can choose a civilization from the drop-down box. X and Y will show the coordinates (in the Map Editor coordinate system, coordinates start at zero) on the map of this civilization's starting location. Check or uncheck the No starting location for this tribe checkbox to remove or add the starting location, respectively. Use the Starting Locations item in the View menu to highlight the starting locations on the map preview. The map preview will be updated automatically when you click OK.

  Starting locations will NOT be checked for adjacency or overlap, so you can create several starting locations on the same coordinates (e.g. let all white civilizations start on the same spot), adjacent starting locations, or even starting locations on water. It's up to you to deal with the consequences.

  NOTE: If you click OK, the changes made to the map in the main MapEdit window will be applied internally (i.e. if applicable, the map will be resized, repositioned, flipped, mirrored and inverted, the Map Operations checkboxes and Map Placement textboxes will be reset etc.). You will only be able to undo this by reverting the map!

• Replace Terrain... - Replace Terrain: This will simply replace all terrain of the top terrain type with the bottom terrain type. If you check the Swap terrains checkbox, the two terrain types will be swapped, instead of one replacing the other. When clicking OK, the map preview will be updated.

  NOTE: Same as with the Starting Locations..., the changes made in the main MapEdit window will be applied internally.

• Palette Editor... - Palette Editor: Change the colors used for the preview and saving bitmaps to whichever you desire. Hold your mouse over a color box to see the terrain type and RGB value. Double-click a color box to change a color. The starting location highlight color is only used for the preview, it has no meaning for bitmaps.

  Click the Default button to reload the default MapEdit values.

  Click the Open... button to load a custom 256 color Microsoft palette.

  NOTE: The palette MapEdit uses is always saved in the MapEdit program directory as MapEdit.pal after cicking OK. If you want to use multiple palettes make copies of MapEdit.pal and load them when desired.

• Options... - Options: This window shows two frames. In the Civilization II Executable frame, you should specify the location and version of your Civilization II executable. Specifying the Civilization II path is only used for enabling the Civilization II and MapEditor items on the Tools menu and the toolbar. The version of your Civilization II executable is used to determine what the maximum map surface is for you.

  The maximum surface for Civilization II versions up to Fantastic Worlds (2.7.81) is 10,922. The maximum surface after Fantastic Worlds (i.e. the multiplayer versions (MGE/UCC etc.) as well as Civilization II: Test of Time) is 32,767.

  The Prepare Uninstallation (Remove Registry Settings) frame allows you to remove the settings MapEdit stores in the Windows registry. Those settings are: the recent file list, the Civilization II path and version, the Create Blank Map settings and the Replace Terrain settings. Click the Clear Registry Settings button and follow the instructions to clear the registry settings.

Removing Resources

I discovered, first implied by Harlan Thompson, that resources can be removed. This method is used in Civilization II only to hide resources in the middle of oceans. However, it can be used anywhere, making it possible to customize the resource patterns a little more than with just the resource seeds.

MapEdit only allows you to remove resources from an entire map, or the filler terrain (the terrain used to fill the borders that appeared through the resizing and repositioning of a map). The standard Civilization II MapEditor, however, doesn't support removing resources at all. So, when you redraw a square without resources in the Civilization II MapEditor the no-resource information is lost. This problem can be used to your advantage. After creating a map with the MapEditor you can remove all its resources with MapEdit and re-open the map again with the MapEditor and redraw all squares again that you do want to have resources.

I admit this is't exactly the quickest and most economical way of removing resources, but for now you'll have to do with it. But, of course, a little easier way of dealing with resources is by converting your maps to bitmaps and editing them with your favourite image editor.

Credits

Thanks to GigantiByte for his ancient but inspiring BMP-2-MAP application. Special thanks to Harlan Thompson for his idea about the removing of resources, his European Map Maker and for beta-testing. Thanks to Julius Brenzaida for his discovery of gigantic maps.

Many thanks to the brave testers (in alphabetical order of last name/nickname): The ANZAC, Captain Nemo, Bart Coppens, Carl "Gothmog" Fritz, Allard Höfelt, Jan "Winterfritz" Jarosinski, Brian "Techumseh" Mason, Leons "St. Leo" Petrazickis, Mirko Pontrelli, Angelo Scotto, Juan González Villa and WarVoid.

And not to forget, thanks to Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, Mick Uhl, John Possidente and friends for creating Sid Meier's Civilization II. Finally, thanks to Microsoft for providing me with a free copy of Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0.

Final Notes

Any distribution is strongly encouraged as long as the original package remains intact and no money is involved. I would appreciate being notified though, partly because I can then notify you of new versions.

I can't be held responsible for any damage that MapEdit may inflict on you, your family, your computer or who or whatever else.

You can contact me when you have any comments, questions, suggestions, bug reports or Civilization II maps.