[DRG]

Houses/ buildings are hard coded. When the game wants a "wooden" house it goes to a set series of images representing wooden houses and selects one. When it needs a "stone" house it goes to another set series of images representing stone type buildings and picks one from the existing list of stone buildings.

That's for single hex buildings only. Large, multihex buildings have the exact "footprint" of the building recorded in the code. If the building is "L" shaped the exact sequence of hexes that the building sits on is recorded so the game knows when you go around the corner of that building whether your on clear space or crashing into a wall. Needless to say the placement of the buildings in the SHP file itself is critical.

As well, buildings are "terrain" and unlike vehicles that are reduced or enlarged by the code as the different zoom levels are changed the terrain types need each tile in ever terrain set pre-reduced for use when players zoom in or out( or pre-enlarged . Both WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT are unique in the SP series for having an additional "zoom in" set of SHP files giving both games 6 different tile sizes ) So every time you zoom in or out the game accesses an entirely new set of terrain SHP files and each and every one of them has to work together not just at the "standard" size but the reduced sizes as well. That is true for all terrain types and houses are a terrain type

So that's the long answer. NO, you cannot simply add more houses onto the end of a file and expect the game to use them because the game only knows about the ones that are there already. And if that doesn't discourage "fiddling about" with those terrain files consider this ( and this is the "black art" part ) the game is designed to take the "standard" terrain set ( the "z4" sets ) and automatically create the correct zoom in ( and out ) sets if it finds them missing. If it finds those files the routine to create the missing levels will not initiate. However, the windows version of the game creates an imperfect set. Not only will it create lines and other weirdness in the SHP file that will appear in the game it will create a SHP file that SHPEDIT cannot read. The only way to create the sets is with a special DOS copy of the game that was built to produce all six zoom levels and that's staying in my HD.

Don