Ha! That's the stuff.

It works. Thanks, guys.

@Cernel what a nice guy! 😜

@sammysleeth
I used the one that is built into the Triplea program.

You find it here: Engine Preferences - Run the map creator - Step 2: Map Utilities - Run the Automatic Placement Picker.

If you need tips about how to use it, just ask ☺

@sammysleeth
I have learned that if you encounter that the map fails to load and there is no error pop-up, there is a big possibility of a graphical image name flaw. Double check your “flags” dir and see if all flags are present and that they have names that actually corresponds with the player list.

@sammysleeth
You should use the tool in the TripleA program. It works pretty well. But you will need to have an all black and white map image PNG, as well as your map’s polygons.txt file. When you got these two files ready, you can make a new placement file.

Do like this:
Open TripleA
Press Engine preferences
Press Run the Map Creator
Press Step 2: Map Utilities
Press Run the Placement picker
Read the text (or maybe take a screenshot so you remember all the instructions) and press OK
Follow the instructions.

Tips1: Remember to save your placement work often. You can always save your work, close down the program and hold a break, and then return to your placement work later by loading the placement file.

Tip2: You can play around with the three settings in the “Edit” menu of the window. At one point these options lead to errors and program freezing, but I don’t know if this is still the case. If you encounter an error that freezes the work you are doing, just don’t do the exact same thing again. Trial and error 😉

@sammysleeth The following line has an unnecessary space at the beginning of the unitattachment:
<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="militia" javaClass=" games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type=" unitType">

Should be:
<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="militia" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type=" unitType">

Great tips @Hepps & @Frostion! Since the maximum amount of units I could ever have in each territory is limited to 8 (Infantry, Hepp's Highlander, Artillery, Tank, Factory, AA, Fighter, Bomber) that would mean I should consider each territory to have room for 8 x 54 pixels each. I think that's workable. Like I said the other day I am still working redrawing and scaling the map properly. But perhaps I should be drawing the 3 conflict zones first (Ontario, Quebec & the Maritimes). Again, thanks for the help. I will get back to you guys when I've made some progress.

Yes, empty lines are a good way to make the XML more readable and do some small organizing inside the XML.

I just saw that on another post tgats a great place to start thank you for your input

@CrazyG gd stuff c

@Frostion said in Can someone make a video in which you create a map in github?:

@Cernel
I must say that I dont know 100% what this feature is and what it is for, but if I don't use that overwrite thing, then the files do not seem to upload and replace the old uploaded stuff. Instead an error just occurs and no upload happens.

I didn't use that setting for the latest world_at_war update and all seemed to work fine. Anyone knows better?

@Frostion @Cernel Alright, thanks for the input. I was just thinking when would someone disable a player vs use Does Nothing AI. I'm planning to leave this option as is for now.

@VonnVary It appears that you potentially started creating the map with an older version of TripleA as you need to make sure in the XML that its "attachment" instead of "attatchment". Here is a list of potentially changes you need to fix when upgrading to TripleA 1.9: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/wiki/Upgrade-Maps-Information

If you still see errors after fixing that then feel free to post your XML for us to look at.

@Cernel I was actually looking to use this as a control mechanism rather than as a method of up-grading a unit.

I have found the problem. These are new lines of code that need to be there:

<property name="Units Repair Hits Start Turn" value="true" editable="true">
<boolean/>
</property>
<property name="Units Repair Hits End Turn" value="false" editable="true">
<boolean/>
</property>

The old ones referring to battleships repairing at start or end don't hurt anything if they are there but they no longer work for units in 1.9.

I will elaborate in more detail:
My map has 9 levels of political relationship. All players start neutral to each other and each turn it is possible to either upgrade or downgrade a particular relationship. From neutral you can downgrade to uncooperative, then to unfriendly, then to hostile, and finally to war. Or you can upgrade from neutral to cooperative, friendly, aligned, and finally to allied.

Yes, I previously requested a feature whereby when you view political relationships these various stages could be color coded so that it is easier to see exactly where they stand. Right now they show in red when they are hostile or war, and in green when aligned or allied, but gray for everything else. This is because the color is hard set by the arch_relationship in the engine. I have looked at the code and think it would be fairly easy to change it but I'm not a java programmer so I don't know. In any event, that was an earlier thing but the subject of this thread is different:

I also have 18 players (countries). My game is a free-for-all, so often I am playing with a lot of AI players. Each turn the human players have to endure a lot of popup messages saying things like "Brazil is annoyed with Russia and has downgraded its relationship to uncooperative", or "Austria and India have improved their relationship to friendly". Unless the message concerns the nation I am playing I usually don't care about it. I realize it would be complicated to tailor it to individual players, so all I'm wanting (hoping is already possible) is at the player level to globally turn on or off all political messages. That way human players can decide if they want to see them or not as the game progresses.

@redrum said in Query about the Engine:

I went back and looked at the old forum. The 2 main threads I found talking about features/priorities/etc are:
http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Development-To-Do-list-tp7582044.html
http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Your-Wish-List-for-Top-Two-TripleA-Improvements-tp7588933.html

Some of those ideas are in the github issues list:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues

As partially said in the linked post, my first 3 items I wish some developers would do are:

Allow for deliberate retreating; in that when you win a battle you get asked how much units you want to consolidate and can somewhat retreat all the others (it is dumb that in dice you cannot retreat if you were "too" lucky or in LL you have to pile up exactly that power to get the "hit-all-but-one" result).

Having units that didn't move at all gaining a (settable and unit distinctive on board) defence bonus (related to the above, as it would be silly that if you attack and retreat then all your stack is just as ready to defend as if it stayed there on the ready).

Having ammunition consumption; in that you have a "suicide" unit that can actually attack only as long as there is another unit in the same battle, in a 1:1 or more ratio for suicide:suicidator (shells:artillery) units; this should also work that you may require such a "suicide" unit for AA attacks (like your AA guns fire only as long as they have a "shell" unit to use, that suicides).
I want to point out that in WW2 the cost of shells was normally much higher than the cost of the artilleries firing them (especially for AA guns) and in medieval times the cost of a warbow was about the same as 24 arrows, which you can loose in a couple minutes.

But having a way to deliberately surely strafe in great superiority, without having to play Low Luck in order to be safe to do so, is really almost a fix, as Low Luck basically already allows it, and dice should allow it too.

Also, another item would be fully supporting the ability to have units moving faster during non combat than combat move, as that is very important, for realism (already supported and possible, as you can give bonus movement in non combat, but there are a few issues).

@thephalanx1453 Np. FYI, most XML editing tools can be used to validate the XML against the "game.DTD" to ensure its valid before trying to start a game: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/blob/master/src/main/resources/games/strategy/engine/xml/game.dtd

This will often give you hints on what the issue is.