Advanced Strategic Command

documentation

The Editors


Not all editors are available for each platform !
Important note for DOS and Windows users:
Make sure you call ALL programs from your game directory, NOT from your TOOLS directory although most editors reside there.
Type tools\makeveh from your game directory to start the hexagonal vehicle editor for example.

Under Windows you can create shortcuts for the editors and set the working directory to ASC's main directory. If you don't like neither of the above methods, just move all files from your TOOLS directory to your game directory.


During the development we never thought about proper names for everything that is in the game. This was not a problem until I started writing the documentation, when I realized that the most appropriate names where already used for other things. So there is some mess but I hope that it is clear what I'm trying to say :-)

The game is based upon a number of "categories":

Each category is associated with a certain file extension and has several items:

category file extension examples
terrain *.trr grassland, coast, water
vehicles *.veh transport plane, paratrooper, nuclear submarine
buildings *.bld vehicle factory, research facility, headquarter
technologies *.tec armor level 2, air cushion vehicles
objects *.obl wood, roads, pipelines

Each item is in its own file. All these files are loaded at startup of the game. So including a new building type is as simple as putting the appropriate file in the game directory.

A note for those who want to work with the source code: The classes representing these items are called *type, like Vehicletype or Buildingtype (except for the technologies).

Each item category has its own editor that is named after the fileextension, for example MAKEBLD.EXE is the editor for the buildings.

Documentation for the editors can be found here:

Walk throughs that describe the usage of these editors can be found here: Importing graphics from Battle Isle. Although we no longer use the Battle Isle graphics and the Battle Isle vehicle set has been completely implemented in ASC (but it is not part of the distribution), this text should still be a useful introduction and guide to the editors.

IDs

The items of every category are identified by an ID that has to be unique for each category. The assignment of these IDs is the only aspect of ASC that absolutely needs a central management. If you are just experimenting, you can use IDs from 100000 to 199999 , but you must never publish ASC items that uses these IDs. If you start building some items that you intend to publish, write a short mail to the mailinglist requesting your own set of IDs. There is no shortage of IDs with 2147483647 IDs being available, but it must be ensured that each ID is used only once, worldwide. Here's an example to illustrate the problem:
Person A builds a unitset UA and uses the IDs 1400 to 1499. These units are published, many maps are created that use these units and many mail games are being played on these maps. Without knowing that, person B creates their own unit set (lets call it UB) and also uses the IDs 1400 to 1499. As long as B doesn't install UA, there's no problem. Now UB is published, becomes quite successfull and people start playing it by mail. But nobody will be able to install both UA and UB because of the conflicting IDs. And neither person A nor person B will be able to change the IDs of their unitset, because then all existing maps, all running games and all savegames that are using these units will be lost. So by not coordinating the usage of IDs A and B have made two absolutely incompatible versions of ASC, one that has UA installed and one that has UB installed.
So if you build some ASC items and there is the slightest chance that these items will leave you PC (for example because you want to play against a friend using these items), please obtain your own unique set of IDs.

Some hints

The Editors (MAKE*.EXE) ask for the values of the properties one after another. With the key combinations <Ctrl-C> or <Ctrl break> they can be exited at any time if you entered wrong values and don't want them to be saved. Besides the first questions (make/load; picture; continue) the values can always be confirmed with <Enter> when editing an existing item. If for example only the first property shall be changed all further parameters can be confirmed simply by holding <Enter>. This does not seem to be correct on first sight for the classes of vehicle types but it really is.

The editor package contains additionally: