GameStar 2003 May/Gamestar_51_2003-05_cd2.bin/GSSpecial/Tropico/tedit103.exe/EDITOR.TXT

Text File | 2001-07-17 | 19KB | 484 lines

*********************
*                   *
*     Tropico       *
*   Editor Notes    *
*                   *
*********************

**DISCLAIMER**

The map editor is NOT considered a standard part of the game.  It is
completely unsupported by PopTop, Take 2, the tech support team, etc.
- please do not ask them any questions about it, they won't know the
answers.

We make no guarantees whatsoever that all the editor tools will work
in the way that you want or that they'll work at all.  Basically, we
are exposing our internal editing tools, used to make the scenarios
in the game, but those tools do not have much polish and have not
been deeply tested.  The editor tools support some features that
were not used in any of the scenarios we shipped with Tropico -
those features in particular are untested and may or may not work as
intended.

Also, the descriptions below assume you have some familiarity with
how to copy and rename files, and perform other basic Windows tasks.
If you are a Windows novice, then map-editing is probably not for
you...

That said, we assume that mapmakers will tend to congregate around
the main Tropico message boards on the internet, and that these will
be a wealth of information for would-be mapmakers.

As of this date, the biggest Tropico message board on the internet
is at www.cafetropico.com (Click on 'Discussion Forum').  This
message board even has a sub-board for the editor.

You MAY NOT sell or commercially use maps, scenarios, and saved games
created with these tools or in any other way prepared for use with
Tropico.  You MAY exchange such maps freely and non-commercially over
the internet or via other means (excluding CD-ROM or other physical
media)

***************

-----------------------------------
Version 1.03 - 17 July 2001
-----------------------------------
There's so many changes in the 1.03 version that we've broken out a
separate file listing them all 'Editor Changes in v1.03.txt' - check it
out.


-----------------------------------
GENERAL

Version 1.02 - 9 May 2001
-----------------------------------
You'll need the 1.02 version or higher of TROPICO.EXE to use this
stuff.  Version number can be seen in the lower left corner of the
main intro screen (the ruler's office).

Editor mode cheat codes - to use these, hold down the <CTRL> key and
type them in (in the main game world):

EDITOR - Enables the editor (typing it again toggles editor mode off)
RAPIDO - Enables instant building (typing it again toggles it off)
MUERTE - Instant death for selected unit
REMOVEPEOPLE - Removes all people from map (useful for getting a
         fresh start)
EXACTO - Allows setting national treasury to an exact value
POLITICALDIFFICULTY - Allows you to change the political difficulty
         of a map (basically altering the choice you make during the
         random map setup screen)
ECONOMICDIFFICULTY - Allows you to change the economic difficulty of
         a map (basically altering
         the choice you make during the random map setup screen)
RATEDDIFFICULTY - Allows you to change what's shown in the map setup
         screen as the map's difficulty (i.e. 'ridiculously
         hard', 'moderate')
IMPORTMAP - Allows you to import map geography from an external image.
         For this process, the map must be in PCX format, residing in
         the main tropico directory (the same one that has
         TROPICO.EXE).  The map should ideally be gray-scale and
         square in shape, with black values being ocean and gray and
         white values being land of progressively higher heights.


Creating scenarios in Tropico consists of 2 separate parts - creating
the map and adding scripted events.  Scripted events are not
absolutely necessary, though they certainly provide flavor and make
things more interesting.

The actual map creation is done entirely inside of the game.
Basically, go in as if you're creating a random map.  Your choices
for character, special circumstance, etc. are not changeable
(difficulty IS changeable) once you're in the game, so be careful as
you set things up.  In the game, use the cheats above ('EDITOR' and
'RAPIDO'), to enable map editing commands.

When you've got your map set up to your satisfaction, save it as an
ordinary saved game file.  The save will take longer than usual, as
Tropico recomputes weather patterns and other data when the map is
saved.

By default, the file will be saved into \program files\tropico\games.
Change the extension from .GM2 to .MP2.  Move the file into
\program files\tropico\maps.  Voila! it's there as an available
map.  You'll probably want to add some events - see the scripting
section further down in this file.

The following hot-keys are enabled in map editor mode:

R - Enables Raise/Lower Ground tool.  A useful hint - for the middle
    tool (smoothing), if you hold down <SHIFT> while smoothing, it
    creates a plateau...

V - Vegetation tool.  To rapidly add or remove trees and such.  When
    cutting down trees, if you hold down <SHIFT>, they'll go to
    stumps rather than disappearing altogether...

Z - Bulldozer tool.

F - Fill terrain tool.

P - Paint terrain tool.  Fill and paint aren't quite as useful as
    they seem, as the various levels of grasses tend to revert back
    to their 'natural' level once people walk on them.  These
    tools ARE useful for creating beaches, oceans, etc.

    If you hold down <SHIFT> or <CTRL> when using the paint tool
    (not the fill tool), then instead of painting terrain type,
    you'll be painting ocean depth (there's no effect for land).
    Deeper water is darker blue and has more fish (though the fish
    aren't recomputed until you save the map).  Holding down <SHIFT>
    and painting makes the water deeper, <CTRL> is for shallower.
    The effect is subtle - you may have to paint an area multiple
    times to have the effect you want.

M - Paint minerals tool.  Useful for adding/removing gold mines and
    such.  You'll want to lock in the info mode - mineral view before
    you enable this tool, otherwise you'll be working blind.

U - Add unit mode.  For adding people.  Adding tourists, vehicles
    and animals is feasible, but not advised - these things require
    additional setup that this tool doesn't perform.  Use this tool
    to add regular Tropican people.

<SHIFT> O - Add buildings via list.  In general, you are strongly
    encouraged to use the conventional building adding tool - this
    was our placeholder tool from before we had the main building
    interface created.  Some of the stuff in this tool works, some
    doesn't.  One useful thing you can do here (and it works fine)
    that you can't do conventionally is to add shacks.  Also, you
    can reposition the palace (bulldoze the old one first, then
    use this interface to place a new one...)

A general precaution - many of the editor tools don't necessarily
interact very well with the peoples' actions in the game world.
If a farmer is in the middle of planting a field, a laborer is
building a house, etc., and you bulldoze or otherwise alter what
they're working on, strange side-effects could occur, including
crashes.  When creating maps, it's best to freeze the action up
front and make your changes - don't let the people start building
the world first.

Also, keep your maps conforming to the general shape and feel of
Tropico random maps.  Keep a large band of water around the island.
Don't create maze-like obstructions and/or lakes in the map interior
(this will confuse the unit pathing).  Compact layouts tend to play
better than sprawling layouts...


-------------------------------------
SCRIPTING

Version 1.02 - 9 May 2001
-------------------------------------
Events in Tropico scenarios are set up using a scripting system.
Basically, each scenario has a series of stand-alone ASCII text
files with the .EVT extension on them, containing instructions
about how each event should work.  The events can be created,
viewed and edited using any standard text-editing tool (Notepad
works fine).  Then these events are attached to a map using the
program EVENTADD.EXE.  Events can be fairly sophisticated, and
can interact with each other.

The following is the suggested way to get started with events.
Create shortcuts to the programs EVENTADD.EXE and EVENTGET.EXE,
and put those shortcuts on your desktop.  Now open up Windows
Explorer, and go to the \program files\tropico\maps directory.
Drag the file fruitas.mp2 and drop it onto the EVENTGET.EXE
shortcut.  If you've done this successfully, you'll see a DOS
box open briefly, showing a message that a number of events have
been found.  Select the Windows Explorer again and press <F5>
to refresh the display - you should see that a \fruitas directory
has been created.  Explore it, and you'll see a number of files
with .EVT and .OTH extensions.  Open them in a text editor (i.e.
Notepad), and you're looking at the events for this scenario.

For a simple test, open the desc.oth file, and change the
description to something different.  Save and close the file.
Now drag the fruitas.mp2 file from the \maps directory onto the
shortcut to EVENTADD.EXE.  All the events will be re-added to
fruitas.mp2, incorporating any changes you've made (including
the description).  If you launch the game now and go look at the
description for the Fruitas scenario, it should reflect your change.

You can also modify the .EVT files, or create new ones.  Once you've
made changes, repeat the procedure shown above (drag FRUITAS.MP2
onto the shortcut to EVENTADD.EXE), to test them.


The best way to figure out how events (.EVT files) work is to look
at the events for the existing scenarios.  We strongly suggest you
start by using existing events as a template and experiment
incrementally, rather than trying to create a large number of
complex events your first time out...

Here's a quick overview

To construct an event, you have to tell the game one or more of the
following -all of these are optional EXCEPT the first one (frequency)

1) The frequency at which the event should be checked for
2) Whether the event should only occur once
3) Whether the event should loop through and evaluate for all
   buildings and/or units
4) Conditions required for the event to occur
5) A message type and text to show
6) Up to 5 choices for the message, plus their effects if chosen
7) Any general effects from the event

The key elements are the conditions causing the event to occur and
the choices/effects presented by the event.

In more detail

>>>>>> 1) Frequency
Must be one of the following:

CheckFrequencyDayBegin
CheckFrequencyDayEnd
CheckFrequencyWeekBegin
CheckFrequencyWeekEnd
CheckFrequencyMonthBegin
CheckFrequencyMonthEnd
CheckFrequencyYearBegin
CheckFrequencyYearEnd
CheckFrequencyBriefing
CheckFrequencyOnlyWhenCalled
CheckFrequencyAlmanacScore

For instance, if the you have the line CheckFrequencyWeekBegin in
an event, it will be checked at the beginning of each game week.
CheckFrequencyBriefing is always the first event to show up when a
scenario is started.  CheckFrequencyOnlyWhenCalled, is, as
indicated, only checked if called (by another event - more on that
later).  CheckFrequencyAlmanacScore is for the event that shows up
on the scores text of the almanac.

There should be no more than one briefing event and one almanac
score event for a scenario...


>>>>>> 2) Whether the event should only occur once
If the following line is in an event

ExecuteOnlyOnce

then after the event has occured once, it will never occur again.
Note - the event may be EVALUATED many times, but the first time
its conditions are true and the event is actually EXECUTED, it
will not be evaluated or executed thereafter...


>>>>>> 3) Whether the event should loop through and evaluate for
all buildings and/or units Tropico has the ability to evaluate
events at a per-unit or per-building level.  However, none of
the scenarios included with Tropico utilized this feature.  While
this was tested at one time, there are no guarantees that it will
work correctly now.  However, if you're bold enough to experiment,
here's how this stuff is used...

(Remember, both of these are optional, and are in fact not used in
any of the events in the scenarios included with the game)

LoopThroughAllBuildings
LoopThroughAllUnits

(Units means people)

You'll probably want to use some unit or building specific
conditions to narrow things down so the event doesn't execute for
every single unit or building.  You can also use non-unit/building
specific conditions with these commands (i.e. with a base condition
of the year being greater than 1960, loop through all units, and
execute this event for any units whose type is banker.

>>>>>> 4) Conditions required for the event to occur

You can list a series of conditions necessary for the event to
execute.  A common one is certain date must have been reached

Condition Year>=1952

If you list multiple conditions, ALL of them must be true for
the event to occur

Condition (LTDGSExportValueCigars + LTDGSExportValueMachineCigars) > 100000
Condition Money > 5000
Condition Month<=3

In the above case, the sum total of the players Lifetime-to-Date
exports of both regular and machine cigars must be greater than
100000, the player must have more than 5000 in the national
treasury, and the month must be January, February, or March.

Complex boolean conditions (AND, OR) are allowable - they must be
part of a single line

Condition (Money > 5000) OR (Year>1960)

In the above case, the player must have at least 5000, or the game
year must be 1960 or later.

When putting numbers in, don't format them with commas, dollar
signs, etc.

The full list of expressions that the game understands as part of
conditions is listed separately, in the file edcondit.txt.  You can
put LTD ahead of any 'GS' expression to get the lifetime total for
that condition, otherwise it's assumed to refer to the current year
total only.

One more tip - you can force an event to always evaluate to be TRUE
by including the line

AlwaysTrue

(Don't precede this with the 'Condition' keyword - just put it on
its own line as shown)

This can be useful if you want to use the result of the Condition
as replacement text in the event's message (described below).  One
thing you can do is have an event with a fairly complex condition,
that, if evaluated to TRUE, calls a second event that has the
AlwaysTrue flag enabled and uses its condition to compute a number
shown in its message.  (This technique is used in the warning
messages for the Mother of All Cigars scenario)


>>>>>> 5) A message type and text to show

An event can occur without a message to the user (silent events),
but if you want to display a message, you'll first have to specify
the message type, from the following

MessageTypeBottomRight - It displays in the bottom right circle
                         (assuming something else isn't
                         already there - use only for low priority
                         stuff)
MessageTypeDossier     - It shows using the conventional dossier
                         (letter) format
MessageTypeSpecial     - Special case to be used in conjunction
                         with CheckFrequencyAlmanacScore
                         to display text on the score page of the
                         almanac.


If you've specified a message type, you'll also need to specify
MessageText, as follows

MessageText "Hello world,\n\nThe player currently has [MONEY] in
their bank account"

The \n indicates a carriage return.  [MONEY] will be replaced by
the game with the amount of money the player has.  Other text
replacement possibilities are:

[TRIGGER]       (Whatever the condition of this event evaluated to,
                 formatted as 123,456)
[TRIGGER_FLOAT] (Whatever the condition of this event evaluated to,
                 formatted as 123,456.78)
[TRIGGER_MONEY] (Whatever the condition of this event evaluated to,
                 formatted as $123,456)
[TRIGGER_TF]    ('True' if the condition of this event evaluated to
                 a non-zero value, false otherwise)
[UNIT_NAME]
[PLAYER_NAME]
[YEAR]
[MONTH_YEAR]
[DAY_MONTH_YEAR]
[POPULATION]
[MONEY]
[SWISS_MONEY]

[TRIGGER_EVENT_VARIABLE_1]
[TRIGGER_EVENT_VARIABLE_2]
[TRIGGER_EVENT_VARIABLE_3]
[TRIGGER_EVENT_VARIABLE_4]

[TRIGGER_GROUP_VARIABLE_1]
[TRIGGER_GROUP_VARIABLE_2]
[TRIGGER_GROUP_VARIABLE_3]
[TRIGGER_GROUP_VARIABLE_4]

[TRIGGER_MONEY_EVENT_VARIABLE_1]
[TRIGGER_MONEY_EVENT_VARIABLE_2]
[TRIGGER_MONEY_EVENT_VARIABLE_3]
[TRIGGER_MONEY_EVENT_VARIABLE_4]

[TRIGGER_MONEY_GROUP_VARIABLE_1]
[TRIGGER_MONEY_GROUP_VARIABLE_2]
[TRIGGER_MONEY_GROUP_VARIABLE_3]
[TRIGGER_MONEY_GROUP_VARIABLE_4]


>>>>> 6) Up to 5 choices for the message, plus their effects if chosen
If an event shows a message in the dossier format, it can also present
choices to the player.  Choices are done as follows  (From the Mother
of all Cigars magazine event)

Choice1Text   "Hmmm... I think I like the idea of this fertilizer.
               Yes, please to start using it immediately"
Choice1Effect CallEvent fe_buyit

Choice2Text   "This thing you ask.  It is not to my liking.  I say
               no to it."


There are 2 possible choices for this event, with the text as shown.
If the players chooses the first choice, then a different event is
called to execute that choice, though it's also possible to have
the choices effects in-lined - an alternative would have been...

Choice1Text   "Hmmm... I think I like the idea of this fertilizer.
               Yes, please to start using it immediately"
Choice1Effect AddTo FarmingRate 50
Choice1Effect AddTo FarmingPollution 800
Choice1Effect AddTo FarmingMaintenance 200

Choice2Text   "This thing you ask.  It is not to my liking.  I say
               no to it."


Effects of choices work like general effects, which are discussed
in the next section...


>>>>>> 7) Any general effects from the event
The following is an example of an event effect that would take
$5000 from the players national bank account if the event was
executed

GeneralEffect AddTo Money -5000

The following are the broad categories of effects

SetTo
AddTo
MultiplyBy
CallEvent
GameWon
GameLost

The full list of things that can be modified is in the
file edeffect.txt

Of the first 3 numeric modifiers (SetTo, AddTo, and MultiplyBy)
- only AddTo works in most cases, SetTo and MultiplyBy only work
for the group and event variables, plus money, swiss bank and game
score.

CallEvent is used as follows

Choice1Effect CallEvent fe_buyit

In this case there must be another event, at the same directory
level, named "fe_buyit.evt"

GameWon and GameLost, quite simply, trigger the win and lose game
situations