Monkey Business (beta available for testing)

[edbangor]

Please note I've spun this thread out so I can ask things in relation to a new scenario I'm working on, from the Birth of a Nation - TM Pre-Beta thread in the General section viewtopic.php?f=70&t=2183

I really do hope you make a map for TM. The campaigns are based on centuries, and there is plenty of open campaign slots. You need only pick a year. :)

I would also suggest looking at things from a cargo chain perspective. For example, pursue the food industry as an idea. The Iran map I am working on is pursuing the nuclear industry as part of its goals. I am also doing a similar campaign map that will pursue the military industrial complex. Just an idea.

I've got an idea of what I'm going to do, which to save time in the map building stage, will be based around the base map I made for "TheHub" (it's a clean map with just the landscape, cities, and territories mapped out nothing else). but I'm going to modify the landscape to expand the industrial areas and possibly combine the Island Nations into central territory to make a larger start area.

With this is mind, and given the way the map was designed, I will probably do a food based scenarios, with touches of military and industrial thrown in but, as is my usual style, will be a fantasy map with help and hindrance, from the leader of the land/s.

As for the start date I'll need to have a good read of the PDF files to see what, and when will work best but already having glanced through them, there would appear to be a lot of scope for creating, and destorying the supply chain, especially if industrial/food bases are some distance from the main population centres (the original idea behind 'thehub' layout). I would imagine that I'll take something in the 1900s,

BTW: Is there a decade that would be best do you think.

I'll post any issues I have, and no doubt a load of questions that will come up in here, but others - other than nedfumpkin of course - feel free to make suggestions or solutions if they wish.

[edbangor]

Okay, looks like importing a map from RRT3 (1.06) doesn't work as it crashes Trainmaster (and if in full screen locks it).
Running in windowed mode the error appears to be with Customs house which can't be found so, I opened the map in RRT3 and disabled all Industries, and removed customs house in special conditions. This still doesn't work though.

So I copied the Customs House.bty and Customs House.bca files from my RT3 instullation to the Trainmaster one, and was able to load the map.

The question is, are the customs house meant to be there? ( I don't seem them listed in the TM data files PDF files!)
And, if now, how do I now totally disable them in the map, so that anyone else doesn't have to do the same.

Edit: I've loaded some of the preinstalled CoC & original RRT3 maps into the TM editor and see that Customs House has been removed from their available industry list (but remains in the SPECIAL CONDITIONS list) so clearly there's a way to do this, so clearly I'll just wait for Ned to tell me how to do it. (this will be important for anyone else reusing an existing RRT3 map for TM!)

[edbangor]

Another question.

In the Industries Available list I see that the industries are listed in three colours.
Am I assuming the reason for this is:

White - Can be built or spawned
Yellow - Spawned only
Grey - placed in the editor only.

[edbangor]

Yet another question (Hope Ned isn't wishing he hadn't wished I'd do a scenario yet)

This has to do with the co-operatives, in particular the European Farmstead Co-op which, according to the PDF file, should be placed in the editor rather than being allowed to spawn.
The problem with this is that they aren't appearing in the Editors "Place non station building" list (which they do in the the other TM scenarios), despite appearing in the Overal industry list (meaning I can spawn them but not pre-build them.

This I can only assume is down to importing the basemap from RRT3 and yet, as with the Customs House issue above, it appears to wortk with other maps that have been transfered from the original game so do I need to do something to my map to make it more compatable with TM?

PS: And yes, I'm starting to think it would have been quicker to make the map from scratch.

[nedfumpkin]

I'll try to answer all your questions, but if I muiss something, point it out.

The Customs House (CH) is something I have been thinking about since I switched to the 1.06 exe. In RT2, the CH reduces the amount of time that your train spends clearing customs when the shipment crosses a border. Same job as a customs broker does today by completing the paperwork etc for the shipments.

This doesn't seem to be the case in Rt2, which is why I think they left it out. Milo made it active in 1.06, but I'm still not sure what it does in RT3.

Here's the problem with TM....The station buildings are in 5 categories. By default it is restaurant(0) hotel(1) saloon(2) post(3) customs(4). This affects how the buildings operate, as well as the messages in the language file.

In TM, there have been a lot of station buildings added such as the hopper yard, silos, etc. These were all put under the cutoms house. So the way it works for TM is : restaurant(0) hotel(1) saloon(2) Railroad Office(3) Station amenities(4)

The Railroad office works the same as the post office by holding mail, but it also acts as a transit point for gold and isotopes.

So without a clear reason as to why the CH should be included, I see no reason to do it. I am also wondering how it will effect the station amenities when they are used. If at all.

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My experience has been that 1.06 maps won't load in the TM editor. Not sure why that is, maybe it is different in some cases with the 1.06 exe in use now. Most 1.05 maps will load, unless they have something saved in them that won't load.

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The agricultural communities were renamed when I was creating the Alpha 2. I made some other changes as well, and I should probably expand more on the topic. I'll type something out as soon as I can. (Note....I will be selling poppies this weekend so I won't have as much time to work on things)...I'll post it in its own thread.


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[nedfumpkin]

Forgot to answer this...the list of planned campaign maps can be found here. viewtopic.php?f=72&t=2047

Anything in the 1920s era, or the 1960s era would be ideal. It's whatever you decide.

Also, not sure about the colours since this is new to the current exe.

[edbangor]

Thanks for the answers Ned.

From what I've found out from my own playing around. The Customs House is the reason maps created for 1.06 won't load in TM. I would assume that it is hard wired into them and can't be removed at the user level (at least I can't find a way to do it.)
However, as I stated above if you copy the two files from RT3 into TM then these will load but only if those files remain in the TM set up.
The irony is that, personally, I don't think I've ever used a Custom house whilst playing RRT3 so won't miss them but this information might be useful should others wish to upgrade 1.06 scenarios to TM.

Anyway, I've since stopped work on the new version of TheHub and have started on a brand new scenario currently called MonkeyWorld (although that will probably change). Again it's a fantasy map the storyline of which you can probably guess from the title and the 'extra' chairmen you added to TM.

I've already created the (unpainted) base map, have set the territories, and regions and am now placing cities - copying the set up patterns from Birth of a Nation and from the included PDF's (although I've convered these to .TXT so I can have them all open at once) to get me started

No doubt once I get into the events and test plays stages I'll have more questions for you but, before that, can I just give you congrates on the fine work you've done on TM... You, sir, are the TRAINMASTER..

[nedfumpkin]

My advice is to remove the customs house files and forget them entirely. If I can find a way to include 1.06 maps, then I will post it, but for now, we have to accept that they are not compatible.

Something I should mention is that although I posted that agricultural communities should be associated with a town or village, that's just a suggestion, and I am doing the opposite on the Iran map I am working on. On that map I am using the commune, traditionalist, ranches, and rice paddies, but I am not associating them with towns (at least I haven't yet). Part of the reason is that I am putting houses all over the map with the regions, and partly because I am too lazy. :) Actually, I am working on the dichotomy that is that Iran is a modern stone-aged country. Its cities could pass for any European or North American city, but its rural areas are right out of Darius' time.

The most importan thing with setting up a map is following the cargo chain all the way through so you don't get into a circular problem, or a gap in the chain.

Some industries require inputs that are made from the former's product. Usually this can be overcome because those types of comodities will likely come from two sources. The more cargo you have, the more complicated it gets, so simple maps are more difficult than complicated maps are. :)

I do have the docs as a text file, which is what Wolvy made the pdfs from after cleaning them up, but you may find it easier to print them and work from there. Eventually there will be a printable handbook put together. Even I need to refer to things despite having been working on this for over a year, but I forget some of the changes that I made, so printed docs help.

[edbangor]

I've reached the stage on my new map, where I need to do a test play to see how the initial layout works and to ensure that all the base materials are there and then, if not, to add in those missing via ports, or whatever. Once that is done, I'll decide which industry model to follow and from there, what the final goals are going to be.

I was thinking of setting up some 'secret' towns which would be, I guess, like you are doing in your Iran scenario, although I wasn't going to name them so that although they will be the usual benifits of placing a station there (houses, and a community) they won't be a 'city' in game (and editor) terms.

The reason I convered the PDF's into txt was so I could have them all open in NoteTab beside TM (when in windowed view) which I also did when I built my previous maps only then it was my own notes, and plot / time-line of the scenario. Although there may come a time when I print them out instead but, so far it's working.

Mind you, I've also got RRT3 running in another window, in editor mode, so I can check how the events are set up.

Speaking of that I've not got the main plot line of the scenario worked out - now titled "Monkey Business" - and set the start date for 1960 although, given it's a fantasy map that can easily be changed if someone else has a historical scenario that needs that slot.

BTW: Following Hawk's advice I'm going to leave painting the map until it's finished to prevent degrading in the many saves and reloads in between. But have to say working on an all green (blue for water of course) map is really weird. So weird that I've had to place labels on the map so I remember where the 'desert', 'swamp' and other different land is going to be.

[Hawk]

To the best of my knowledge and experience, as long as you save your map every time with a new name the painting degradation doesn't come into play.
What I mean is; Changing names such has: Monkey Business 1, Monkey Business 1b, Monkey Business 2, etc.
I generally use Roman Numerals instead of numbers. To my limited mind, it is more different to the game.
Once you've got the map complete you can then save it as the original title, IE: Monkey Business, and you should be good to go.

[Wolverine@MSU]

My advice is to remove the customs house files and forget them entirely. If I can find a way to include 1.06 maps, then I will post it, but for now, we have to accept that they are not compatible.

Sombody made a little applet that would make 1.06 scenarios be 1.05-openable. I think it might be the answer to getting 1.06 scenarios to open in TM.

[edbangor]

To the best of my knowledge and experience, as long as you save your map every time with a new name the painting degradation doesn't come into play.
What I mean is; Changing names such has: Monkey Business 1, Monkey Business 1b, Monkey Business 2, etc.
I generally use Roman Numerals instead of numbers. To my limited mind, it is more different to the game.
Once you've got the map complete you can then save it as the original title, IE: Monkey Business, and you should be good to go.

I do that a fair bit anyway, although not to stop the painting from going dodgy, but in order that I can roll back should I totally mess something up.
Mind you I don't do it every time I save or I'd already be up to Monkey Business 234.8d

[Hawk]

What I used to do, when I had time to play around with RT3, was once I got up to 10 to 15 saves, if I was comfortable with where I was at, I would delete the older saves (in Windows Explorer) and start with the numbering sequence again.

[nedfumpkin]

My interpretation is that the image file for the map is a jpeg, and it is multiple saves of the same map that causes degradation due to compression of the image. It also seems to affect the mottled paint more than solid colours....but I'm not sure.

I leave paint until the very end, but I do sort of put preliminary paint on the map while I am working on it. So for the Iran map, I have deserts painted, water, and the mountains. But until it's is finally done, I won't do the final paint.

In the Iran scenario I am putting the town and cities that appear on the rr map I have, and some of them are agricultural communities, but since I am also putting in communes and traditional communities, not all of them will have a city placed on the map. I wouldn't call them secret so much, as hicktowns. :)

Really, the agricultural stuff is designed to be as versatile as I could make it. By mixing and matching it will be possible to pretty much do anything that could be thought of. Or so I hope.

[edbangor]

Just to keep you informed - and becuase I won't be able to work on the scenario this weekend for memorial reasons - here's where I've got to with Monkey Business.

The main plot line is now set, starting in 1960, on a land basically split into three sections, with the player starting in Chimptopia and the AI/s in either Gorilaville or Orangaland. There are also a few other islands that I might use for diversions later on in the game too.
I'm about half way through the planning the time line and a third of the way through Eventing (is that a word?) it.
Hopefully I have done enough to prevent the AI companies from going bust in the first three years (as they did on my first test run.)

I've also worked out a way to bring in an extra AI player part way through the game as detailed in another RRT3 thread.

So far, I've only gone for a generalised industry model in that Chimps are more into thinking than the other primates so they have no industry at all despite having loads of coal, iron, logs etc - so that's what the player has to do at first, before you can expand. It took a while to get this balanced out but think I have it now. Naturally, while you are doing that, you will have to build up the supply chain yourself in the process. [sneaky eh!]
Meanwhile the AI's in the other territories get industries ready made (well spawned mostly) to feed and make their money (given as the AI is too stupid to do this themselves!)

The Yardswitcher goal is worked out, but still have to establish what the other two are going to be but they will, almost certainly be based on either/both military units or the more complex industrial cargos (machines, cars, electronics etc)

[edbangor]

Here's the next update.

All three goals are now worked out which will be industry for Stationmaster and then bonus military for Trainmaster.
Both the entrie plot and timeline are worked out. Nearly all the events are written other than those which will be used to keep the AI strong.
I'm now in the final stage of test playing the map, to ensure things keep balanced and, of course, that it's actually winable. (anyway want to volunteer to help with this!)
Once that is done, then, I'll do the painting and it's done.

[nedfumpkin]

Sure post the map and I'll check it out.

I'm almost finished the Persian scenario...working on the trees and paint is all that's left. But I'm also making a custom pak, and so far I only have the mosques completed...gotta do skins and some other things so it will be a while.

[edbangor]

Okay, I'll put up the map in a day or two as I'm now glad I didn't put it up before as I discovered a slight error in the events that made winning anything but yardswitcher impossible.... and by impossible I don't just been tricky but, actually impossible.

So I'm going to have to revise the timeline slightly but should be able to do that today, and then run through it again later as I'm not sure I've allowed enough time to complete all the tasks now that you can't go for each of the medals (are we still calling them medals?) until the previous one is completed.

Still, despite being a long term failure, the test play has given me an idea of the way the AI is going to behave, and what I need to do to prevent it being totally stupid. (slightly stupid I could live with but some of it's choice have been suicidal!)

I also noticed a possible error with the gold cars, but I'll put that in the bug thread so you don't miss it.

[edbangor]

Okay here's the first public release of "Monkey Business".
The map is fully playerable and should [fingers crossed] be winnable but it's not easy and have to admit that I've not completed it yet (I would have but the test games I was using didn't have Uranium on the map (that's now fixed) which made it impossible.

There are a couple of known 'bugs'
The first being that the Yardswitcher and Stationmaster triggers are set to 45 years instead of 35 (the game limit) so I can see just how long it does take to complete.
The other is that it is, possible to win TRAINMASTER, without bothering with most of Stationmaster requirements, but I'm working on that one.

Anything else wrong, I don't know about, so please let me know.

PS: The map isn't painted, at all, so everything is green (even some of the water!), so watch where you're putting your tracks as you won't see some of the traps I've set, (these will be more obvious once the map is painted).

EDIT: A newer version of the map is posted further down the thread.

[nedfumpkin]

I'll have a look at it in the morning and let you know.