updating old Scenario maps

[bvanevery]

I've been fooling around with the North American map. A couple of quirks: I've noticed it displays incorrectly in my client because it doesn't have a code for its topography. The map is using "old school" topography codes. Currently it is "0" but it should be "4", equivalent to the modern ISO code. When I try to set modern codes for all kinds of things, they typically don't work. I'm imagining there's some kind of on-the-fly conversion from old to new .sav formats. The problem is, there's no way to save such converted files until one starts a game and enters the in-game editor. By that time, the .sav file has lots of extra garbage in it, and AI units will start moving too if you're not careful. Also the in-game editor doesn't let you easily edit various things, like changing a nation's starting position, reassigning starting positions, etc. so it's back to hand tweaking the .sav file. Also there's no coordinate readout for tiles, so if I want to make a new start position, I make it in the editor, save a garbage game, open the garbage game file to read the coordinates, then paste those coordinates into the original scenario .sav file I'm actually working on. Which is in a different format that modern maps.

Ok I worked around all of that. But what I haven't solved yet, is how to set modern start units. In the old school method, one sets settlers=4 explorer=2 and that's all you can set. I want workers in there, because I'm trying to set up a US Civil War era demo and the AIs are too dumb to build appropriate roads and rails on their own. I haven't looked at whether the AIs can be induced to have different priorities; I sure hope so because they're just terrible at nation building. I give them techlevel=60 and they don't even build factories!

So, again, how do I get workers into an old school Scenario file? Or convert the old school file to a modern file without a lot of extraneous save junk added to it?

[cazfi]

Sorry for not noticing this post until now.

I'm currently updating all the scenario files in freeciv tree to 2.5 savegame format in S2_5 and TRUNK development versions. Most of them are in version control already. I've been doing that with new scensave -command of 2.5 (when built with --enable-debug). It allows one to save a scenario game in server before starting it with the client. Basically: load old scenario and save it. Server converts old file to format it understands while loading, and saves in current format. There's some minor tweaking required after that - "scensave" still needs to be improved, such as removing settings you don't want to be saved as part of the scenario (scensave saves all the settings).

I've been fooling around with the North American map. A couple of quirks: I've noticed it displays incorrectly in my client because it doesn't have a code for its topography. The map is using "old school" topography codes. Currently it is "0" but it should be "4", equivalent to the modern ISO code. When I try to set modern codes for all kinds of things, they typically don't work.

You shouldn't use "magic numbers" any more: instead of "4" you should write "ISO" (see values with "/explain topology").

I'm imagining there's some kind of on-the-fly conversion from old to new .sav formats. The problem is, there's no way to save such converted files until one starts a game and enters the in-game editor. By that time, the .sav file has lots of extra garbage in it, and AI units will start moving too if you're not careful. Also the in-game editor doesn't let you easily edit various things, like changing a nation's starting position, reassigning starting positions, etc. so it's back to hand tweaking the .sav file.

That's why scensave was added.

Also the in-game editor doesn't let you easily edit various things, like changing a nation's starting position, reassigning starting positions, etc.

There's serious limitations on editor, but you can edit start positions with it. Middle-click a tile to open its property editor, and see "Starting position" tab.

But what I haven't solved yet, is how to set modern start units. In the old school method, one sets settlers=4 explorer=2 and that's all you can set.

Modern setting is startunits. For 4 city founders and 2 explorers you would set startunits="ccccxx". See /explain startunits on the server.