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

[Ballbarian]

Gandalf,
That was such an absolutely fantastic post that it deserves to be repeated with a full quote.

On the subject of Documentation...
As I often said (and was finally proven out with the manual for the 3rd version of Dominions) waiting for the programmer to document is not the best idea. By the time a programmer (or mapper, or modder, scripter, etc) gets their love-child to work they tend to be beyond writing for a brand-new user. They dont think like a newbie and dont come up with newbie questions. And any answers tend to not be newbie answers. They are too deep into the subject. And we dont really WANT them to back out of that deep spot since they are hopefully thinking on the next version. (a very general stereotype of course and not true of every programmer)

The BEST documentation IMHO is when a new user, with abit of writing skill, takes good notes while they are learning the program. Write down the questions that came up and the answers you got. Translate the programmers short answers into new-user full english. Maybe even add charts and screenshots. Etc, etc, etc. Not only is it great for the community but its a nice way to thank a developer by offering them "just a quick little thing I did that you can use for documentation". Most of them will appreciate it.

I know that I would appreciate someone taking something like that upon themselves.

Not that I am begging or anything.

(Please, oh please won't somebody save me!!!)

...uh...I mean, well, yeah.

[Panpiper]

Ballbarian said:
I know that I would appreciate someone taking something like that upon themselves.

Not that I am begging or anything.

(Please, oh please won't somebody save me!!!)

Heh, not just save you, but save the rest of us as well. (Ok, maybe just me.)

I fear I remain utterly clueless. I have tried exactly the same as yourself, removing all changes made by the program then running it again.

"I suspect that you have 'Desired Num Players' value on the 'Starts' tab..."

Oh boy. Er... There's a tab? When I run SemiRandom I get a DOS sceen that requests that I input a filename. If I try to run the RanDom program, I get an error message saying it can't find SemiRandom.cfg even though it's sitting right where the extraction put it, in the SemiRandom folder right above the RanDom program. The documentation (which is for version 0.80 by the way) describes the first 8 or 9 entries in the .cfg file, but the rest are undefined, so I have no way of knowing what to hack. The SemiRandom.cfg file looks like this:

F:\Program Files (x86)\dominions3\SemiRandom
100
1
0
25
25
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
7
6
0
2
EA
-1
4
0
4
255 205 000 225
GANPLAINS

Or maybe I should just ask you to post that modified Faerun file? ;-)

[Ballbarian]

I will attach the modified Faerun file to this post.

For what it is worth, the following is from the SemiRandom 107 code and may give you a fair idea of what the additional values are associated with:
Code:

---

  line input #1 path$

  line input #1 fiddleXP  REM <=0 means block #xp lines to keep Hall of Fame clear of Independents. 1 to allow.

  line input #1 fiddlePercent

  line input #1 fiddleName

  line input #1 showNeed

  line input #1 hotPercent

  line input #1 colPercent

  line input #1 cldband1   REM -1 means realworld climate bands not defined

  line input #1 tmpband1   REM otherwise the values are prov# ranges.

  line input #1 hotband

  line input #1 tmpband2

  line input #1 cldband2

  line input #1 numPlayers    REM -1 means use DEFAULT_PROVPERPLAYER or provPerPlayer (0=NO START PLACEMENTS)

  line input #1 aiLandPlayers REM 0=NO AI LAND PLAYER PLACEMENTS

  line input #1 aiSeaPlayers  REM 0=NO AI SEA PLAYER PLACEMENTS

  line input #1 aiDifficulty  REM 1 to 5 (2=standard)

  line input #1 selectedEra$  REM values= EA, MA, LA

  line input #1 provPerPlayer REM -1 means use DEFAULT_PROVPERPLAYER or numPlayers

  line input #1 minNeighCount REM -1 means use DEFAULT_MINNEIGHCOUNT

  line input #1 maxSeaStarts  REM -1 means use default of 3.

  line input #1 enforcedSpace REM -1 means no space enforcement, otherwise value entered enforced.

  line input #1 mapTextColor$  REM -1 means don't set, otherwise = Red Green Blue Alpha (000-255)

  line input #1 map$

---

I will try figure out what is going on with your error message (with RanDom) after a good nights sleep!