Matrix Games Forums

Is it possible for example with Fred's editors to modify the description of terrain that appears in the hex info boxes ?
I'd like to use rocks with maybe different characteristics to simulate buildings rubbles in cities and call them rubbles.
Does somebody know if it is possible and how it can be done ?
Thanks in advance for help.

Originally posted by Fradar
Is it possible for example with Fred's editors to modify the description of terrain that appears in the hex info boxes ?
I'd like to use rocks with maybe different characteristics to simulate buildings rubbles in cities and call them rubbles.
Does somebody know if it is possible and how it can be done ?
Thanks in advance for help.

Terrain description/name is hard coded and buried in the SPWAW mech.exe file I think. No editing with Freds Editors possible.
You could make a search for "Rocks" in the mech.exe with some hex editor though, but I doubt that you could rename things without messing up the code!

I don´t think that it´s really necessary to change names if you for example want to simulate rubble with rocks or rough terrain IMO. If I see a destroyed building on the map and read "Rough" or "Rocks" then I assume that the looks of the hex combined with the effect of "Rocks/rough" terrain is meant to be rubble!
But....if for example "Boulders" is used to make certain terrain impassable to vehicles then it could be confusing to some players and I think the usage of such hybrid terrains should be mentioned in the scenario description or readme file.

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Harry

You can always overlay the terrain with text, describing the variation. I've seen this done a time or two, not often. Using this method gets you away from messing with rewriting the mech.exe, which is certainly possible. Also possible to edn up with weird and unpredictable results, as I found out.

Still don't know what I did wrong ..... think it was the palette or something like that. At any rate, icons did not display properly until I went back to the Feb 5th 7.1 mech.exe.

Bing

Bing, were you, I assume, using Spilc? Or modifying names or something in a hex editor? You can only edit within existing names, etc, NOT exceed the existing bytes, it will mess things up!

Two part answer here:

1) My unsuccessful attempt at editing the mech.exe was with Spilc - it was merely a question of associating a helo body with a rotor that was appropriate, nothing more. I botched it. Colors and icon rendering were off, I still don't know what I did wrong.

2) The reference to text is to use the exisiting feature in the Editor to insert text wherever we want on the map - i.e., use the terrain tile but don't mess with titles, which as you say can lead to a lot of problems. The nominal readout will be "incorrect" but most of us can live with that.

WAW gets fussy about this sort of thing, but I've found there is almost always a workaround - well, there is a four rotor chopper that really ought to be five blade, but who except a true fanatic will notice?

Bing

Bing, maybe a silly question, but did you make sure you checked the 'use full palette' button, and select the correct palette?!

Yes, I always check the palette and load steel.pal as the very first step - who knows about it having slipped out of sync, though. However that applies to ShpEdit. Not so sure the palette question relates directly to Spilc when entering from the command line (???).

I'm not particularly concerned at this point about rewriting the mech.exe file - most of what I want to do can be accomplished by substituting tiles, flip-flopping and so on. Once I get more experience under my belt I may take another fling at the mech.exe.

Bing

Eh?

Bing

No, the palette doesn't come into play with Spilc. HOWEVER, you should always delete the steel.pref file after editing the mech.exe, it is like a new patch, you know!!:)

That was done many times. New steel.prf to start every new PBEM or Hotseat game, it wasn't that, believe me it wasn't - how would steel.prf affect palette anyway? Don't understand.

The point was, I did something to the mech.exe when I made a new"turret" assignment for a helo body - the turret being the rotor, natch. I know I did the right procedure for that, including palette and all the rest. It just bolixed up the colors somehow - my guess is, and it is strictly a guess, is that I somehow cut the number of colors available. They weren't showing the way they should, once I reinstalled the standard issue mech.exe, the full range of colors came back.

There is another factor, which I haven't mentioned because it just came back to me: The test scenario had been heavily edited. Got to the point it wouldn't "take" much of anything. This might have been the reason, it didn't occur to me because I keep the modern variant in a separate installation of WAW and play just the one test scenario. Greg had the same problem IIRC, but his copy got back to the correct palette. It was a strange one, tell ya that.

Bing

For the less technically talented, such as me, I simply use the text writer in the map editor for special things on the map. Of course to label a bunch of hexes it would not work. You couldn't see the map (G).

But for special locations such as ammo dumps, airfields, key positions, HQs, etc, and maybe even some terrain anomalies, it might do the job...

Wild Bill

Since there really isn't ay other way to change body/rotor associations in the game, I am going to try a mech.exe rewrite again. Will report back when I get around to it.

Right now we are trying to get a Chinese Farm battle going - not much detailed info on this highly important armor battle of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Egyptians lost 86 of 96 of their T-62's in the battle - in less than one hour. If anyone has a detailed OOB for both sides, please let me know. More important, we need a detailed map of the Chinese Farm. (The farm was run by Japanese, of course, you expected otherwise?)

Bing

Maybe to the Arabs and the Jews they all "look alike." DOn't quote me on that

WB