Matrix Games Forums

I am just wondering - will it be possible to edit some of the game's features, to permit customisation? If so, what will a user be able to customise? Thanks.

The quick answer is - yes the game can be somewhat customized. Most iof the discussion on editable portions is spread over many different topics. The search function is your friend.[;)] Perhaps Steve or Patrice could give us a quick summary of what can be customized so far?

ORIGINAL: abj9562

The quick answer is - yes the game can be somewhat customized. Most iof the discussion on editable portions is spread over many different topics. The search function is your friend.[;)] Perhaps Steve or Patrice could give us a quick summary of what can be customized so far?

Normaly those can be customized :
The units data, very easily.
The units graphics should be, quite easily.
The map data (labels, positions of labels, railways, icons and positions of icons -- city, ports, resources, factories --, borders, sea area borders, weather zones), but the rivers & coastlines won't be.

On the rules & charts part, I suppose nothing will be.

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: abj9562

The quick answer is - yes the game can be somewhat customized. Most iof the discussion on editable portions is spread over many different topics. The search function is your friend.[;)] Perhaps Steve or Patrice could give us a quick summary of what can be customized so far?

Normaly those can be customized :
The units data, very easily.
The units graphics should be, quite easily.
The map data (labels, positions of labels, railways, icons and positions of icons -- city, ports, resources, factories --, borders, sea area borders, weather zones), but the rivers & coastlines won't be.

On the rules & charts part, I suppose nothing will be.

Yes.
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The unit graphics are done without bitmaps for land units and with bitmaps for all other unit types (including special units such as pilots, factories, etc.). If you want to change a country's base color, it will be a lot of work. You can edit the color for land units easily but in order to get it to match the bitmapped units, you will have to change each of the bitmaps. And the bitmapped unit images are anti-aliased, so simply using paint-fill isn't going to work.

Similarly, the coastal hexes, lakes, and rivers are bitmapped, so while changing the base terrain bitmaps (e.g., for clear, forest, swamp) is pretty easy, none of the coastal hexes will match, since those bitmaps are generated using a preprocessing prgram. I am also going to (today or tomorrow) compress the coastal hex bitmaps into one or two massive file(s) which will be done using a utility program. I already did that for the river/lake bitmapped images.

I think of MWIF product 1 as a game to play, not a game to edit. Any features I provide along those lines is purely because I needed the programs myself during development and I'll make them available. But there is no attempt on my part to make them easy to use (e.g., with a special user interface) nor provide extensive documentation. At best, a WIF game edit kit would be a future product.

Changing the scenario details or modifying the rules is not going to be possilbe. However, there are 11 scenarios and 81 optional rules - the game is certainly not a single static gaming situation.