Hello again!

[Grandma Ruth]

I thought I'd say hello in the Newbie Neighbourhood, as I've come back after quite a few years. I've been playing RT3 again for a while now, since I discovered it will work with Windows 10. I've had a lot of fun working through the original campaign and now started again on the scenarios. Got absolutely stuck on "Alternate USA" and looked up the old Hawkdawg site for tips - quite surreal to find a long post from my younger self walking through it. So here I am again!

[Gumboots]

You made it. Cool.
I figured it was probably a password thing. Everyone forgets their passwords after a while.

[Grandma Ruth]

Thank you for your help!

[RulerofRails]

Not sure, but I think you weren't around when I joined. So, hi! Glad to hear you are enjoying the game again.

There has been some slow process to understand the game a bit better. Something that might be useful for you: when you start the game and then start a scenario, the random generation is actually broken. There are only 2 possibilities. In order to make it work you need to exit from the first load to the main menu and do another. The "first load" doesn't need to be the same map. You can even load a saved game first, and then go back to the Main Menu and start a scenario. There was some old information that indicated that reloading a map might cause more resoruces to spawn, but I believe this is not the case (boring particulars of some tests here).

[Sugus]

Great that you're back! Maybe you'll create another nice map like Quest?

[Grandma Ruth]

Hi both of you - thanks for your information @RulerofRails. It will be useful as I get more into it again, I'm sure.
@Sugus, so glad you're still here! As a matter of fact, I want to upload a European map that I started, believe it or not, when the accession countries were coming into the EU and now Britain itself is out! So that's how out of date this map will be. I can't work out how to do it though. It's saved as a .MAP file for some reason I can't remember and I don't know how to open it. At the moment I'm reworking "Alternate USA" because it has so many flaws, as we all know. Hopefully I'm making it work a bit better than it did.

[Gumboots]

Have you tried just renaming the extension to .gmp? If necessary, it should be possible to open it in a hex editor and then save with the correct extension.

[Grandma Ruth]

Have you tried just renaming the extension to .gmp? If necessary, it should be possible to open it in a hex editor and then save with the correct extension.

Yes, I did and it didn't work. I'm sure there must be a way. I also started to look at an old map of Europe by Cristoph Meinel - who sends his regards to anyone that remembers him from Molse's forum - so I might use that to reproduce it.

[Gumboots]

When you say "didn't work" I assume you mean that the file renamed with the new extension, and that part worked, but it wouldn't work as a scenario map inside RT3. In that case I suspect it may not ever have been a .gmp, unless the hex code definitely shows that it was (in which case it's odd that it wouldn't work).

Anyway, making new maps isn't hard as far as terrain goes, and city placement is easy with a spreadsheet, and we've even sorted how to apply satellite imagery to game map so that's easy too. Even rivers are easy now, albeit a little tedious if you have lots of them. The only real work is events and economy.

[Hawk]

Hey Ruth!!!!

Good to see you back and still alive and kicking.

[Grandma Ruth]

Hey Ruth!!!!

Good to see you back and still alive and kicking.

You too Hawk! ❤ ❤ ❤