#start and #specstart under 3.17

[Edratman]

Hinnom starts in 126.

I can play every nation from the setup screen because the last entries in the file are "#allowedplayer <> <>". Your post and the map program itself seems to indicate that you want make Hinnom the Human and the other 7 computer controlled.

In the nation setup section you make these nations computer players using "#computerplayer <> <>" which is then followed by the lines that allow them to be open to chosen. I wonder if having both notations in there is a problem?


I also have VIM, but prefer the 2 I mentioned, for no reason that I can think of.

[Ballbarian]

I am still extremely confused since I had no problem before the patch, but I think I have found a simple solution. I will change SemiRandom to write #specstart instead of #start for the human players.

I do not want to leave out the #allowedplayer lines, because without them the user can select any era and any number of players which can crash the game due to insufficient starting locations available. In an ideal implementation, a nation with a #computerplayer command would not even be available for selection in the game setup screen. It would just be locked and grayed out. But that is not the case.

The obvious fix is to use #specstart for Hinnom (the human player) instead of just #start. The reason for wanting to just use #start was for games with more than one human so that any of the existing #starts would be valid and chosen randomly by the game. This was really not necessary since the hard coded #specstarts are assigned randomly by SemiRandom anyhow and only the server need have the map file.

Thanks again for allowing me use you good folks as a sounding board, and a special thank you Edratman for testing it for me. It boggles my simple mind that you achieved a good start! I tried at least 4 games and never had Hinnom start where it should have.

[Edratman]

The only thing I did was to open the scenario wih my text editor and resave it using that editor. Then I transferred it to the mod file.

The reason that I thought you were editing with notepad is that my text editor did not recognize your attachment and automatically open it. Notepad kicked in as the default. I believe that is the only Dom3 download that has done that to me. I would look there. I can't explain the conflict with 3.17. But I ran the scenario with 3.17, so once again I lean towards your editor.

I understand what you are trying to do, but for for some reason the way you are doing it doesn't seem quite right. On one hand it doesn't seem wrong, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I cannot identify anything exactly, because I don't make scenarios, nor do I have an alternative. It just seems to have some logical shortcoming. You need someone much better than me to evaluate it. That list of candidates is quite long.