disappearing scenarios

[mikeg1218]

Hope this is the right place. It is a scenario's design.

I'm just starting out with WITP. I've managed to capture Siapan and in the interest of furthering my education I wanted to expand that scenario to include some production and resource elements so I can play with them in a scenario I am already familiar with.

With some help I got in replies to a general question I got in the main forum I can now add some ship repair, A base at Pearl, bring in the Seattle location for some.... Well, anyway I can muddle through that ok.

I load the tutorial scenario into the editors then save them to slot #26 where I work on them, saving them as I go and running the scenario to see how things were working. At some point in the process, which I haven't pinned down yet and not on every save, ALL the other scenarios disappear and I am only left with the #26 scenario.

I've gone the usual route of uninstalling and reinstalling the program etc... I've been diddling it for two days now and I'm still loosing the scenarios. About the only thing I haven't tried is purging the registry.

The game patched to the latest verison as is the database editor. it is running on the Vista OS.

I'm pretty certain it's not the program or Vista but something I am inadvertently doing when I do a save. HELP

One more thing. As reference material I am using the 04 Excel spreadsheet with the #15 scenario loaded. It is open while I work but other then initially loading #15 I do nothing else with it other then searching for units and such to get their numbers to use in the editors IE looking up Satawal so I can add use it's reference data in the editor.

Thanks in advance
MikeG

[el cid again]

I was literally offended by stock WITP - I could not even look at the map - and other issues were insurmountable for me. So I never messed with any but the campaign scenario - and found it absolutely intolerable (I could sail KB to the US West Coast after PH - hang out for a month - return to Japan to rebuild airgroups and repair system damage - but still not have run out of fuel in the tankers - the ships were "practically nuclear powered"). It was Andrew Brown's map system and CHS that brought me back to Matrix - having formerly been a fan of UV.

But I note that many aspects of the basic design were not working. If you set Russians active, fundamental problems happened - and it still does not work if you properly code locations and some units. If you set "score points for damaged ships - it works for Japan - but the Allies always have zero for damage - no matter how many ships are damaged. There is a whole system of AI which is associated with less than whole map scenarios - these "modules" are not used by campaign games - and it may be there are issues with them. One possibility is that - even if the modules work - they are not able to migrate to other places in the scenario list and still work - a function of the decision not to test a wide range of what users would do - and need to do - if the program were to work as designed. The scenarios that most attention - and are the foundation for mods - are the campaign scenarios. Clearly THEY can be used in higher slots of the scenario tree for user designed scenarios.

Why one would want to use stock is a mystery beyond my ken? But if one thinks that is a foundation worthy of work - try scenario 15 or 16 as the basis - and then just remove what you don't want. Better still - take some known working mod that is close - Nikmod - CHS - anything - and is known to migrate anywhere - and you won't have as much to change - and you will benefit from vastly improved OB research as well. WITP is a complex, almost wholly undocumented system, the third generation of a very old code system with too many cooks doing things to different standards, and it was not tested in any broad professional sense (except that users ended up testing it). Many problems exist in the as released system - and daring to use parts of it that are not widely used or understood risks running into unpredictable dysfunctional aspects of the design. Stay with what we know works - and we can help you modify that until it is where you want it to be - inside the constraints of the system itself. Somethings are never going to work well: something not based on WITP itself is doomed to undocumented hard code issues - the number of slots affected being huge - one programmer thinks a majority. The closer you stay to the widely used scenarios - the more likely you will avoid any such matters.

[mikeg1218]

I have been looking at the CHS mod and maps but have held off on doing anything about it for a couple of reasons.

The basic game is complex enough that I wanted to get a feel for how it all hangs together before attempting the conversion. What do I want,  a new maps or extended maps then there is scenarios that work with one but not the other. At this particular time and place I'm still not actually sure just what is involved in applying the mod nor what map is preferable and how the whole thing meshes with the stock game. Right now it isn't so much stratagy and tactics as it is how doing x or y effects things. (hopefully that will make some sense)

Another reason for not exploring the mod in detail is that, with the Admarils edition in the offing, by the time I am happy with my grasp of the mechanics of the game that add on may be released negating the need for the CHS mod. 

As for the particular problem I am having with dissapearing scenarios, it seems to be caused more by something I am inadvertantly doing with the editors since the funtion is pretty a basic computer function of modifying specific files and then saving them rather then something within the game itself.

I appreciate the response and will keep the CHS mod in mind. I'm sure that with the time and effort put into creating a mod as complex as the CHS  it was needed but I'm pretty much the poke and prod kind of person who likes to understand how things tick before I start taking them apart.

Take care
MikeG

[JeffroK]

From Sid,

I was literally offended by stock WITP

What an arrogant prat!!!

Its as good as RHS considering its failings.

[JeffroK]

Mikeg,

I have done the same as you with varios CHS based scenario, not with the Tutorial.

This sort of disaster has never happened so I wonder if the tutorial has a glich.

It wouldbe worth posting your problem in the Support thread, the more knowlegable inhabit those spaces.

[bradfordkay]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

From Sid,

I was literally offended by stock WITP

What an arrogant prat!!!

Its as good as RHS considering its failings.

Jeff... I too was turned off by the original map in WITP. It was beautiful, but it was so inaccurate that I quit the game until AB released his map mod. There are people out there who require accuracy in their game maps - the stock was so far from reality that I couldn't take it. I don't consider it to be arrogance, but rather a different set of values...

[mikeg1218]

Thank you Jeff. I'll post the problem there. I had hesitated to do so because some similar boards frown on douple posting and I'm not familiar with the proper etiquette with this one.

I'm pretty sure it is not a glitch in any program since I see nothing in a search of the various WITP boards. I'm leaning toward Murphy's law and me doing unintentionally finding just the wrong way to save scenarios. Murphy and I are long time friends.

Thanks again
Mike

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

From Sid,

I was literally offended by stock WITP

What an arrogant prat!!!

Its as good as RHS considering its failings.

At least I am an honorable pratt - who does not violate my own word about terms of use of the board. Deliberately insult anyone again and I will formally report you.

I thought you had an attitude problem - given your previous language. Now I realize you have a data problem: if you like stock - you really have no idea what either the map or the unit data should be. I should not have known when you failed to honor the CHS/RHS standards of reporting - even when advised what they were. Now we all know. The scale of the problems with stock are well and widely reported in the Forum - and I am hardly the only one to say Andrew and CHS saved the game.

What Matrix did is solve a big problem - get something out there for use to work with. It is difficult to tackle this subject in reasonable detail and not spend more money than is available. Getting it done in steps was a reasonable solution. When WITP was officially abandoned by Matrix (and it was so announced in this Forum) - I proposed continuing on in steps - and that is the AE/WITP II concept which was adopted. I am not hostile to Matrix - and I am glad they gave us the platform - to such an extent I objected when they decided to abandon it. That does not mean the stock map was any good: but someone who has no clue about where railroads run, mountains exist, etc wouldn't notice. It also does not mean the data set was diligently researched. It isn't arrogant to say that, no matter what part you look at, the problems are amazing in scale and consistent only in being inconsistent.

RHS probably only has one failing: it is an experimental attempt to solve problems with WITP better than stock - and experimental means risks are taken - not all of which pay off. By now virtually all problems have been identified and either corrected or mitigated, but it isn't possible abolutely all have been - according to information thoery. What remains that one might not like is a matter of personal taste - and while it is unreasonable to believe that offering players more options than any other mod does might not reduce failings to the lowest rate in the entire family of mods - yet it remains that Joe Wilkerson said long ago: "you cannot please everyone, even if you want to, even if you really try to." There is no accounting for taste, and there is also no objective way to make compromises that results in everything being perfect. The truth is my list of failings is probably longer than yours is. Yet when Mac writes "once you go RHS you can never go back" I understand what means: the great detail, and the solutions to several issues large and small, hardly permit an objective user to say anything else. Yet nothing requires users be objective - and those who never actually look at the files in action have no real idea why those who do "can never go back"??? I must conclude you are one of those who has not seen uber bombing, uber bombardment, uber CAP - the list is practically endless - solved and in action. If you have - and still don't like RHS - I doubt there is anything that could be done to redeem it in your eyes. I regret only wasting days of time because you seemed to genuinely be intereste in making it better - only to be abandoned by you on top of insulted by you.

Remember - however - when you resort to being deliberately insulting - you are bringing dishonor on yourself by breaking the agreement of terms to use the board - and at the same time you make all reasonable people wonder if any other view you hold is worthy of respect? It really is a no win road - and for that reason - not one that causes me any distress. There used to be several Forum members who were like that - and I have outlived them all - and most have become occasional contributors to RHS. I won't respond in kind - and I will always consider any suggestion or critisism if framed in a civil way and presented to standard. In general, a better attitude and better methods lead to better product. Being deliberately insulting isn't a path to anything constructive - and may get ones words theselves removed from the board.

[JWE]

Sorry for all the smoke and nonsense mikeg1218. Sid says much, but knows little. After a while, you will figure out who to really ask questions of.

Main question is where do you see the disappearing scenarios;

1) do you see them disappear from your matrix "scen" folder?
2) do you see them disappear from the scenario select screen when you run the game?
3) do you see them disappear from the Editor "open scenario" selections?

Each of these has a different, but fixable, solution. Let me know which, and I think I can help you get back to nominal.

RHS has nothing to do with anything. Sid claims much, but don't believe any of it. RHS uses exactly the same executable file as WiTP. Sid does not understand the WiTP executable. So anything Sid has to say about how it works is nonsense. I can help. pm messages work wonders.

[JWE]

Hi Mike,

got your pm's, woof!! Anyway, responses sent.

btw, yes pompous works. I avoid all that by using the green button. You know about the green button?