TOAWxml Editor

[76mm]

Well you and Larry are the ones making the scenarios, so I will take your word for it; I've put this feature on the list, but as mentioned, it is not very close to the top and it will be at least several months before I get to it.

In the meantime, I have some suggestions for the scenarios that you describe:

ORIGINAL: Lobster
If there are a multitude of border guards and a multitude of armies each with border guards assigned wouldn't it be easier to select a border guard unit from a file and insert it each time you need one rather than try to copy, scroll down 20 armies and the insert it?

Currently, you can copy a unit in one army, and then drag and drop it to another. On my screen, I can see 28 units in the OOB tree (for the D21 scenario) without scrolling at all, and moreover, you can drag and drop from the bottom-most formation with the unit rather than the topmost. If I have to scroll, I can use the scroll bar to scroll from the very top of the D21 OOB to the very bottom in less than a second. To be frank, it is not immediately obvious to me that inserting a unit from a file would be easier than this, but you're the one building scenarios so I'll take your word for it.[;)]

ORIGINAL: Lobster
TOAW does not have Save unit as and Open unit functions just because...Can you imagine having to copy a unit in the force editor, scroll down and then paste then scroll up again and doing it all over again a thousand times or more?

I can see how this would be a useful feature in the TOAW editor, because indeed you would have to scroll up and down again through individual formations. But you don't have to do that in TOAWxml...you can open a formation to see its units, copy the relevant unit, and drag and drop it to another formation, with no scrolling involved at all. Once you've moved the unit to the proper formation, copy it again if you need more of them... The main drawback to the current setup in TOAWxml is that you can't drag and drop to formations which are not shown in the OOB tree (ie, you can't use the scrollbar while dragging-and-dropping), so you might not be able to drag from the top-most formation to the bottom-most (but I'm not sure how often you'd have to do that--if you are inserting a unit 1000 times, you could probably just copy it from the army just above it in the tree...).

ORIGINAL: Lobster
If you are going to make a tool to make building an OOB easier then you have to make it so building an OOB is easier.

I'm working on it! But in my opinion at this point there are a lot more important functions than this one...

ORIGINAL: Lobster
BTW, thanks for taking the time you've taken to get as far as you have. Well done. [;)]

Thanks!

[76mm]

Hey guys, I know it's been awhile but I am still working on this. Currently I'm working on dividing/re-merging units, and frankly it has been harder than I expected. I figured out dividing units a while ago, but since then have been distracted by lots of real life stuff and so have been stuck on how to merge units for the last month or so...

I have to go on a trip in the next week or so but when I come back will get things figured out. Sorry for the delay, just wanted to keep you all in the loop.

[76mm]

Haha, shortly after writing my last post, I sat down at my computer and figured out what had been holding me up. I've posted v1.13 in a link in the first post in this thread.

Here are the main things I've added since version 1.12:
-Dividing and Re-uniting units: Should be much easier than with the in-game editor, where IIRC for some reason you have to re-unite all units before editing an OOB. I don't think that is an issue with TOAWxml, but please play around and let me know what you find. Take a look at the revised manual in the download for more detail.

--Color-coding. I've added color-coding to show divided units, subunits, reinforcments, and locked formations in the Treeview--should make it easier to deal with large numbers of units.

--Max units in Treeview: At Lobster's request, I've updated the Treeview so that it shows not only the current quantity of equipment, but also the max quantity (in brackets).

As usual, I've done limited testing but cannot test against every situation, especially in existing scenarios, so let me know if you encounter any problems, including what error message, which scenario, and what you were doing which triggered the error.

[76mm]

Screenshot showing the color-coding:

[larryfulkerson]

Brother Tom: I really appreciate your efforts to make this magnificant tool even better. Good on you.

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Screenshot showing the "Lobster Revision", showing max equipment (in square brackets) for each line item:

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ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
Brother Tom: I really appreciate your efforts to make this magnificant tool even better. Good on you.

Well, thank you for all of your contributions to the game.

I'm just getting started...next set of tasks will be to allow the creation of new formations and units. Don't think it will be too hard, but we'll see...

[Lobster]

Whoa, there's no stopping you. You da man. [&o]

[76mm]

Guys, I wanted to add a word of warning about editing divided units: DO NOT add or delete equipment line items from divided units or their subunits...while you can edit the qty or max number of particular types of equipment, do not add whole new types of equipment, or delete existing types of equipment (while you can't currently add equipment, it is possible to drag and drop equipment line items from unit to another, but DO NOT DO THIS with divided units or subunits). I also would not reorder equipment within divided units or subunits, although I'm not sure if this would cause any problems.

Basically for the unit division/reunification process to work, the parent and all of the subunits need to have the same number and type of equipment line items (and maybe in the same order, not sure).

In the next version I'll have some safeguards built in to make it harder to break things like this, but even then it will probably be possible if you try hard enough!

[76mm]

So far so good on adding new formations and units--I've finished both of those, now need to add the ability to add equipment to units. Part of the process has been adding the ability to edit unit icons and colors.

Adding the ability to edit these with graphics is still a bit above my pay grade, at least the icon names are a bit more organized and I think it may be easier than hunting and pecking around the icon screen in the in-game editor. Here are screen shots of the status so far:

[76mm]

Here is the Color editor. Unfortunately you will still need to go into the game to get the number code for the initial color scheme(s), but after that you can set the color codes using TOAWxml.



I've got to leave town for a while this weekend, so probably no further progress for a couple of weeks.

[76mm]

Ooops, I forgot to reduce subunits' proficiency when units are divided, and increase it again when they are recombined. I'll fix this in the next version.

[mussey]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

Whoa, there's no stopping you. You da man. [&o]

U more dan a man, u da beast!!!

Someday soon, with advanced confidence in my editor abilities, I will use this. Don't stop.

[sPzAbt653]

ORIGINAL: fulcrum28
ok, i could drag "units" to formations, it works perfectly. The problem is that if I want to drag a division, which is defined as formation, inside an Army which is also a formation.

maybe changing unit name such as 276th Div -> 267th Div 8th Amy could work to give OOB flavour rather than actually redefining formation, what do yu think?

Hey guys, I wouldn't recommend changing unit names or formation names or moving units around within the oob. Both of these operations can cause various problems not only within the editor but also with the way a scenario functions. It is much safer to have an OOB Chart of your own, on actual paper, sitting in front of you as a reference. If you don't have any, I might have what you need, just ask. If not, it is easy to go to Wiki and find the OOB for just about any battle. C/P it to a text file and print it out. That way you can see the whole thing right in front of you and you don't need to mess with the scenario [:)]

[76mm]

Hey guys, making good progress on adding equipment to OOBs, so I wanted to post a few screenies. Here is a shot showing the category filter; this filter extracts the data from the eqp file, so should work with any of them (I've tested with 4-5, so far all good):

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Here is one showing the results of the category filter:

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You can sort the results by either column:

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Or filter results by country:

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And by unit characteristics/flags. Here filtering for German tanks with composite armor. You can also see all of the equipment's special characteristics:

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Generally I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out--let me know if you have any suggestions based on what you've seen so far...

I need to deal with a few other things before releasing this version (see my other thread on unit characteristics), but hopefully soon...