Has any one been able to create any thing with the map editor?

[Lion of High Park]

I have found that resaving the map after each edit, or closing down the editor and reloading after an error message kicks in gets rid of all those pesky range check errors. Oh, and as someone here has mentioned before, if you want to edit the names of the planets in a system, you also need to keep the roman numeral after the name to avoid range check errors.

All I have done so far with the editor is to build a fairly accurate Sol system on a random map.

[Jourin]

I used a random map and then edited it, but I only got a RCE once which crashed the entire map. Maybe the cause was the same problem with the saved game bug, reloading another map without firt quiting the editor. Or maybe you have a corrupted patch - that happened to me once. Maybe downloading a new patch Version and doing a complete reinstall will help. I hope you figure out the bug, I KNOW how frustrating it is to want to play and can't because of an unexplained bug that nobody else seems to have.

[Suicide Junkie]

For those who want a B5 style "Hyperspace" or any type of FTL drives, try adding one more system, called Hyperspace. Fill it with a nebula, and build a grid of warp points inside it that correspond to the locations of systems on the galaxy map.

For most maps, chain together a few hyperspace systems by pasting the connected walls together with a line of WPs.

Thus, you get a map where it takes 1 movement to enter FTL hyperspace, plus one movement per galaxy map square, plus one movement to return to normal space. If you disable Wormhole manipulation technology, then your FTL system will be stable.

You can have a ring of warp points at the edge of each system which go directly to one square in hyperspace, which gives a "No FTL near a gravity well" rule.

The lev 5 cloaking nebula in hyperspace prevents combat while FTL, and if you place a 1-square-pull black hole effect, you can have the occasional ship drift off and be lost in hyperspace while at the same time, prevent players from building bases in Hyperspace.

This works with normal, system-to-system warppoints, since you could spend a turn to travel 5 squares through hyperspace, or use a WP to go directly to the system. With WPs, FTL is just a "back-door" way to sneak past minefields & skip past dangerous systems (eg. black hole or nasty aliens).

[dmm]

Cool idea, SJ.

[capnq]

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it never, EVER occured to me that anyone would be crazy enough to want to build an entire map from scratch with the editor!

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I've started working on a map that way. First I just placed all the empty systems I wanted on the galaxy map; now I'm filling in details for a few systems at a sitting and "connecting the dots" with warplines as I go. Playing with the Map Editor is something I can do when I'm a little too fried to think clearly enough to play the game. I roll dice to make a lot of the decisions on individual placements and attributes.

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Just generate a random map and use the editing function to tweak it a bit.

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That was what I did for this first map. I generated a random map, then moved a few systems, added a couple more, erased some warp lines, and added some random start points. One of the first three players will start off isolated "in the hole". I haven't actually tested this map by playing a game on it yet, but I decided to post it anyway since you asked.


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Cap'n Q

[This message has been edited by capnq (edited 03 May 2001).]

[Dr Strangelove]

I've run into the "access violation" error a couple of times, but it didn't shut me down, so I just bypassed the system where I was having the problem and worked on other systems. After saving the map I went back to that system and didn't have a problem.

[Puke]

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:

For most maps, chain together a few hyperspace systems by pasting the connected walls together with a line of WPs.

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good idea, but it would work best with small quads. 10 WP limit per system. figure a single WP per border instead of a line, that leave 6 connections per hyperspace system. still a good idea.