Scenario Design Tips part 2

[YankeeAirRat]

Okay, So in my http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1199614, I talked about the need for having a rough idea about what your scenario will look like. So now we are going to enter the scenario editor and play around with some portions of it. However, before we do that I would make the following recommendations. In your game directory create a directory where you have your scenarios that are being built. For example mine looks like this: C:\Matrix Games\Harpoon 3 Advanced Naval Warfare\Databases\ANWDB\Scenarios\builds. That way I can keep seperated completed scenarios from the ones that you are building. The other recommendation I would say is to hit up either AGSI's wiki manual (http://mediawiki.advancedgaming.biz/ind ... n_3_manual) or go to Dr Who's Harpoon pages (http://www.harpoonpages.com/) and download the manual for the scenario editor. At Dr. Who's Harpoon he has a word document that is the complete scenario editor that use to be out for Harpoon II AE (of which H3 was built from). That can really give you a half way decent idea of how certain items are supposed to work with in H3's Scenario Editor. On top of that they also include a number of key commands in that word document that will make things easier to do and handle. Okay so now lets go to the game and have some tips for thing to do.

To start with when you fire up the game the first screen you are going to see is the main background screen and then on top of that will be a dialog box asking to open a scenario file. A scenario file will always be X.scn, where X is the short name of the file. A saved game file will be X.sav. In the scenario editor you can open either, but you can only perment changes to scn files.
So if you don't have a scenario to start with just click the cancel button and it will close that dialog box. If you look at the top where the drop down menus are located you should see a new one when compared to the game window. This is called "Edit". If you click on that you will see some of the things that you can change with a scenario. The one that we are going to worry about right now is the item called "New Scenario".
If you click that a new dialog box will open up that talks about the scenario duration, start date, start time, geographic box for the map, and what sort of map projection you want to use. The difference between the 4 is that the Miller project works best from about the 60th Latitude North down to the 60th Latitude South and the depending on whether you are going to use the Greenwich Mean latitude (0) and the equator (0)as the center point of the world or if you are going to use the International Date line (180) and the equator (0). The two Cassini projections best work for projections of the polar regions since it will cause the least amount of land mass distoration.
Building a map is the best and most interesting part of the scenario editor in my honest opinion. Simply because if you mess up your lat and long some times you will end up in different parts of the world. If you do so, don't trash that map right away, save it as a scenario and the label you attach to the filename for the geographic area of the world. For example, say you are trying to build a map of Northern Canada and Hudson Bay but instead get the area off of the River Plate. Save the map and label it as "river plate" never know you might think of a scenario for that region. Now you don't need to try and rebuild the map.
When building a map know these rules of thumbs. For your latitudes everything north of the equator is postive. South of the equator it will be a negative number. If you select the 0,0 as the center of the world then everything to the East of London will be a postive number and everything to the West will be a negative number for your longitude.
Building a map is something that you should really play around with a few times to get it down. I also tend to build my maps about 1 to 2 degrees in lat and long larger then I need that gives me room to play with in placement of units.

Date and time are very important with this scenario editor to. Because the AI is fully capable of building the right amount of nasty or nice weather. I have built a couple of maps for the Bearing Sea around december time frame and seen via the weather display seeing units trying to operate in sea states 3+. Which is almost typical of that region during that time frame. The same was true when I created a scenario for the summer time in the Carribean, I had a hurricane come through the map. So those are extra little things that you can do to tweak your scenario.

Okay, so now you have your map and time done. Now it is time to add sides and start to build that side. The best tip that I can offer about this is to completely add a side and add all the units that you want for that side. Build the task forces etc and out line some of the basic missions that you want that side to do. You don't know how annoying it can be to completely build a number of bases and task forces and realize that you did it for the wrong side. So pay attention to which side you are build for.

Another big tip is this SAVE OFTEN. As you build a side save it that will prevent you from screaming in pain when after working for a couple of hours, screw something up and then have to start and realize that the last time you saved was when you created the map. Please repeat this after me and say it out loud, SAVE OFTEN! Lets try this 3 times, Save Often, Save Often, and oh Save Often. I usually save after I build a base or a task force per side. I also save once I complete the basics of a side.

That is about all I can think of for this installment. Like I said there are a number of other good resources out there both on the net at various webpages but also over at a number of forums. THey can help you fill in holes on how certain things in the scenario editior work. Also, start small and get a handle on building small scenarios with a small number of units for yourself. Then work your way up to building large massive fleet actions.

[hermanhum]

ORIGINAL:  YankeeAirRat

Another big tip is this SAVE OFTEN. As you build a side save it that will prevent you from screaming in pain when after working for a couple of hours, screw something up and then have to start and realize that the last time you saved was when you created the map. Please repeat this after me and say it out loud, SAVE OFTEN! Lets try this 3 times, Save Often, Save Often, and oh Save Often. I usually save after I build a base or a task force per side. I also save once I complete the basics of a side.

Excellent point.  I'll add just a small suggestion.
[blockquote]Save under a different name whenever possible
[/blockquote] Sometimes, when you are saving, the process is corrupted and ScenEdit crashes.  When this happens, the file you are in the midst of saving may be corrupted, too, and you lose the file as it is only partially saved.

I often use a reverse counting order when making names.  i.e. 99Scen, the 98Scen, 97Scen, .... because this ensures that the lowest number shows up in my Load window and I don't have to scroll around.

Some scens have nearly 100 different save files in case I need to go back to an earlier phase.