Calling all programmers

[GaryChildress]

At times like this I wish I knew programming. I think it would be really helpful, at least to me, to create a GUI editor for PC. It would be so much nicer to be able to edit the campaign and equipment files without having to name and rename, copy and paste data. I'm wondering, are there any talented programmers out there in PC land who might know how to create such an editor?

I wonder if a person could us MS Access to create such an editor?

[Dumnorix]

Hi Gary,
First you can bring up your nice WW2 and modern units without blue civ colour into PC !

Thank you

[GaryChildress]

I had considered creating some units similar to People's General, just one soldier representing an infantry unit. Or maybe units with two soldiers representing them. Here's a sample of what I was working on. Haven't figured out how PC handles the shadows yet though.

[GaryChildress]

Here's an in game shot. As I say, I haven't figured out the shadow part yet:

[Dumnorix]

Hi Gary
Looks very nice ! I hope you can spend hunderts of your nice infantry units here. 3 soldiers looking better - like the original, but wit hdifferent poses and clothing - possible one officer and 2 solfiers.

Let me known if you need help with the shadows:

Here are 2 of my new 12 units:
http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26566

Best wishes !
Send me mail please - than we can discuss some things !

H.Balck

[mgarnett]

Hi Gary,

I'm a programmer and I'm happy to help, what sort of editor were you thinking about?

Cheers

Mark

[VPaulus]

To be able to load, edit and save the "equipment.pzeqp", "campaign.pzdat" and "efx.pzdat", in a user friendly way.
I think that's what Gary wants, and well, I would end up use it also.[:'(]

[dazoline II]

Opening up the equipment.pzeqp file it looks like a tab delimited values file. Something Excel should be able to handle.

Edit: Renamed it .tsv in the screenie.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: mgarnett

Hi Gary,

I'm a programmer and I'm happy to help, what sort of editor were you thinking about?

Cheers

Mark

Hi Mark, what I was thinking of is a GUI program that could directly open the "equipment.pzeqp" and "campaign.pzdat" files and then easily manipulate the data, sort, filter, edit values and then save back directly into the "equipment.pzeqp" and "campaign.pzdat" formats. I know you can do that with Excel but I for one would like to see a more friendly interface.

Here is a pic of a fan made editor for Cid Meier's Civilization III sort of along the lines of what I was thinking of:

[GaryChildress]

Or here's a pic of the interface for the official War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition Editor...a bit similar:

[Razz1]

the editor is simple enough in excel

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Razz

the editor is simple enough in excel

Then use excel. I'd rather use something simpler.

[Rood]

What you want is certainly possible but maybe a lot of work [:)].
I program in Access and VB, would choose VB over Access since people need Access to use it.

I'll give it a shot to see how much work it would really be, but don't expect anything soon, I need my weekend's for some much needed [>:].

PS I suck at designing interfaces, I use these tools (and SQL Server) a lot to do data analysis and not so much for full fledged programs.

[mgarnett]

Hi Gary,

I'll put together a quick protoype GUI this weekend. The files are tab separated values, so loading them up in a user friendly way shouldn't be difficult. The most time consuming part will be the GUI. I'll put something together and post it for you to have a look at.

Cheers

Mark

[mgarnett]

Hi Gary,

Here's a rough GUI that I've just put together. Can you have a look and see if this is what you're looking for. Also, if there's anything in particular you want added let me know. In relation to the unit graphics, I will add an option so that you can choose for the editor to look in the game directory for the graphic or in another location of your choice.

I also thought you'd want some way of organising your unit graphics but I wasn't sure what you would need.

Cheers

Mark

[mgarnett]

One more thing, I wasn't sure if you wanted to be able to filter your list, for example show tanks only, or just infantry. It's easy enough to add, so let me know.

Thanks

Mark

[GaryChildress]

ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL! PERFECT! That's exactly what I had in mind!

Yes, if you would make it able to filter by almost any stat, that would be great! And then when a person clicks the save button it would save to a particular folder the user chooses as [filename].pzeqp and be instantly compatible with the game.

Wow! I'm excited now! Thank you for your generous help! [&o]

EDIT: Example: let's say I want to compare all units with a soft attack of 5. Maybe I want to compare and contrast the units to determine if they all look like they should have the same soft attack. Then I could use your editor to do the comparison easily. That would be IDEAL!

[VPaulus]

Great job.
Mark, could you do the same for "efx.pzdat"?
It has less fields.
Thanks

[mgarnett]

Hi Gary,

No problems, I'll set to work on an initial version today but it will most likely take me a week or to complete fitting it in between work/family etc.

I'll also have a think about a query/comparison function. Probably something like a small query window you access from the editor where you can select what unit attributes to use in the query and then have it pop up with a list of results.

Cheers

Mark

[mgarnett]

Hi VPaulus,

No worries, I'll have a look at that as well. I'll try and implement it into the same editor so you only need one aditor for both files.

Cheers

Mark