Utility: RanDom v2.03 - Map gen & Semirandomizer... Updated

[Coldshard]

Sorry if this was answered somewhere in the thread and I missed it.. but I'm having the, 'component TABCTL32.OCX or one of its dependencies not correctly registered' error. I found the file in this thread but putting a copy in the dominions folder doesnt help nor does putting it in the system32 folder.

Where should I put this file to make it work? Or do I need to change some other setting somewhere?

[Ballbarian]

Coldshard,
See this post:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...&postcount=117

Just replace references to comdlg32.ocx with tabctl32.ocx.

[Gandalf Parker]

I should try and figure out what our grand total is now,
and maybe chart out what we have to try and spot holes that could use some filling.
(I SHOULD, and might, but I will mention it just in case someone else wants to take a stab at it also as a community service)

[Ballbarian]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

I should try and figure out what our grand total is now,
and maybe chart out what we have to try and spot holes that could use some filling.
(I SHOULD, and might, but I will mention it just in case someone else wants to take a stab at it also as a community service)

Please do Gandalf. I am curious as well.

[das123]

Is there a help file or tutorial on using SemiRandom? I have never been able to get this to work for me. Usually throws exceptions on line 1695: 'Index 1 (=-1) out of range' if that is a help.

[Ballbarian]

There is a help file included with SemiRandom, but it is very out of date. Some new options exist in the configuration files that were not available when the docs were written. It might help you understand how the program works though. Some day I hope to be motivated enough to take a stab at either an extensive tutorial OR a complete rewrite with a simpler set of options, a cleaner UI and more extensive error checking. Neither sounds like much fun right now as my job has been more demanding as of late.

Here is kind of the stock request:
It would be a great help if you could send me the file "TESTDUMP.txt" located in your SemiRandom directory to ballbarian-AT-gmail.com. This only records data from the last run of SemiRandom, so if you have run subsequent maps through it without an error, it won't do any good to send it.

If I had to guess, I would say that your problem is likely tied to AI nation selection. Until recently, there had only been god files for EA, so check the "AI Gods" tab and confirm which Era is selected and hit the "Show Nation Configuration" button and make sure that any nations which have no god files are disabled or set to human.

The following helped Stryke11 when he was having trouble:
To let Dom3 handle start locations and AI gods:
1. Go to the 'Starts' tab
2. Uncheck 'Lock Player Counts to Nat Cfg'
3. Set 'Desired Num Players' to 0 (zero)

To use the custom start placements without using the custom AI gods:
1. Go to the 'Starts' tab
2. Uncheck 'Lock Player Counts to Nat Cfg'
3. Set 'Desired Num Players' to your desired number of players.
4. Go to the 'AI Gods' tab
5. Set 'AI Land Players' & 'AI Sea Players' to 0 (zero)

[Gandalf Parker]

I will put in this pitch.

I have never found documentation written by the developer to be great documentation. By the time a programmer gets a program working, they are already too deeply into it to start trying to think like a newbie. They take too much for granted, and spend too much time explaining deep subjects instead of the basic how-to

Being deeply involved in the project from before its beginning Im not sure if I could write them either. (altho with my horrible lack of decent memory maybe I could do it like a newb)

IMHO the best thing for the entire community is for someone who is tackling the program for the first time to take good notes. What questions came up, what answers they got, what steps were required. That would not only be helpful to Ballbarian in smoothing any bumps but to all of us. If you are at all interested in the SemiRandom map improver and you feel you take good notes then this would be a chance to offer something to the community.

[VedalkenBear]

GP: Maybe I'll try this, because I redownloaded this either last night or this morning, and I'm struggling to work through it again.

At least I'm getting no outright errors now.

[das123]

Thanks for your response, I found your earlier post and when I selected one of the gods as 'human' it worked for me.

As I've recently struggled through using the generator, I would be happy to help write a tutorial for it as well. I think it is a great idea to get relative newbies to start writing a guide because there is nothing 'taken for granted'.

[das123]

Attached is a draft version. A lot of holes but may help.

Inside the zip file is an HTML file.