Hello everyone,
Here are some tools I used to make our new map Over the Top (see https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2495/over-the-top-new-wwi-mod), available now in the game.

https://github.com/jdimeo/triplea-map-tools

They're definitely a bit rough around the edges, since I only worked on them for what I needed them for, so please feel free to file issues with bugs or suggestions if you try using them.

Once cloned, you can run mvn package and it will create a .exe and an executable .sh (for Mac/Linux) with the following usage:

Usage: triplea-tools [COMMAND]
Commands:
  help            Displays help information about the specified command
  excel           Synchronizes the game file with an Excel spreadsheet to edit
                    the unit and territory attachments and initial placements
  cp-notes        Copy game notes into our out of the game file to a separate
                    HTML file for easier editing
  template        Plugin a matrix of values into a template
  connections     Automatically generate connections from polygons.txt
  railroads       For games that use canals through land as a railroad system,
                    this will automate much of the boilerplate
  vars            Create a few standard/convenience variables automatically
                    (like a all land territories) for use in triggers
  fix-file-names  Fix capitilzation of files in a folder, even on Windows
  tile-join       Joins image tile back into the full size original image
  tile-quantize   Quantize (standardize) the colors in an image to black
                    (borders), white (land) and blue (sea) for base tile images
  tile-split      Splits an image into equally sized square tile images

Some highlights:

• The Excel sync is a really powerful way to edit unit attachments, territories, and starting placements. You can run quick calculations for faction balancing or compare one attachment e.g. offense easily across all units and then sync it back in to the game file.
  Warning: I'm using JAXB to re-write the game file if you make a change the Excel and for awhile it was preserving comments and whitespace, but the JAXB runtime libraries that work with Java 11+ seem to have regressed in this area
• If the new-ish for-each ability doesn't work for you, you can create templates and inject any variables into them with any level of nesting
• The connection finder uses powerful polygon math from the JTS topology suite (https://github.com/locationtech/jts) and requires very little hand-correction (because it dilates each territory and then measures the area of overlap)
• For games that use railroads, this creates canals for every sea zone with a "RR" prefix (since you have to own the land territory to use the railroad)
• Can take an HTML game notes file with a <style> block at the top and copy the notes into the CDATA block and inline the style at the same time
• Can quantize a base tile image to force all pixels to one of 3 colors (since some modern software "helpfully" antialiases/smooths images, but that's bad for your base tiles)

I love building UIs and I love data interchange and would love to help with such a UI once I get some free time which might not be for awhile...

Not to bring up a topic that was essentially decided, but I would love to throw my vote behind sticking with XML.

I love XML. For one reason and one reason alone- XSD (namely, well supported schema). We would lose that with YAML. I see YAML as short term gains but long term losses. For example, I've written a tool that takes an Excel sheet with units, their attachments, territories, starting placements and bi-bidirectionally "syncs" it with the game file using JAXB and Apache POI. This is the general direction I would love to help go- using powerful map-making UIs (and how much more power can you get with Excel/LibreOffice/standard spreadsheet UIs?) built on top of the most powerful/structured data interchange format. XSD supports inheritance, inclusion, polymorphism, unions, enums, etc. etc. and can be edited by a human in a pinch, but I'm envisioning a future world where map tools edit and the game engine parses and humans touch the game files less and less.

@Schulz No, this is because of necessary changes I had to make because of the particular way the engine expects things to be named, so all of our previous testing games can no longer be loaded on the "real" version you download through the game now. We'll just have to start another game and we'll definitely share the file (or you and @GenerationKILL can play directly!)

@GenerationKILL @Schulz Heads up that you'll get an error when trying to open this file because the map is "over-the-top" in this game instead of "over_the_top"

@Hepps @Schulz Wow, that is unusual! @GenerationKILL , another tester, and I are on round 13 of our game and Central Powers are actually looking very good. They are always behind in TUV and income, but Allies have a very hard time mobilizing and gaining ground. I do think it's true that Central Powers has to be very careful the first two rounds so that has something to do with it.

As someone who was bitten by this recently, I 100% agree!
(I'm jdimeo btw from GitHub)

I love building UIs and I love data interchange and would love to help with such a UI once I get some free time which might not be for awhile...

Hello everyone,
Here are some tools I used to make our new map Over the Top (see https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2495/over-the-top-new-wwi-mod), available now in the game.

https://github.com/jdimeo/triplea-map-tools

They're definitely a bit rough around the edges, since I only worked on them for what I needed them for, so please feel free to file issues with bugs or suggestions if you try using them.

Once cloned, you can run mvn package and it will create a .exe and an executable .sh (for Mac/Linux) with the following usage:

Usage: triplea-tools [COMMAND]
Commands:
  help            Displays help information about the specified command
  excel           Synchronizes the game file with an Excel spreadsheet to edit
                    the unit and territory attachments and initial placements
  cp-notes        Copy game notes into our out of the game file to a separate
                    HTML file for easier editing
  template        Plugin a matrix of values into a template
  connections     Automatically generate connections from polygons.txt
  railroads       For games that use canals through land as a railroad system,
                    this will automate much of the boilerplate
  vars            Create a few standard/convenience variables automatically
                    (like a all land territories) for use in triggers
  fix-file-names  Fix capitilzation of files in a folder, even on Windows
  tile-join       Joins image tile back into the full size original image
  tile-quantize   Quantize (standardize) the colors in an image to black
                    (borders), white (land) and blue (sea) for base tile images
  tile-split      Splits an image into equally sized square tile images

Some highlights:

• The Excel sync is a really powerful way to edit unit attachments, territories, and starting placements. You can run quick calculations for faction balancing or compare one attachment e.g. offense easily across all units and then sync it back in to the game file.
  Warning: I'm using JAXB to re-write the game file if you make a change the Excel and for awhile it was preserving comments and whitespace, but the JAXB runtime libraries that work with Java 11+ seem to have regressed in this area
• If the new-ish for-each ability doesn't work for you, you can create templates and inject any variables into them with any level of nesting
• The connection finder uses powerful polygon math from the JTS topology suite (https://github.com/locationtech/jts) and requires very little hand-correction (because it dilates each territory and then measures the area of overlap)
• For games that use railroads, this creates canals for every sea zone with a "RR" prefix (since you have to own the land territory to use the railroad)
• Can take an HTML game notes file with a <style> block at the top and copy the notes into the CDATA block and inline the style at the same time
• Can quantize a base tile image to force all pixels to one of 3 colors (since some modern software "helpfully" antialiases/smooths images, but that's bad for your base tiles)

Not to bring up a topic that was essentially decided, but I would love to throw my vote behind sticking with XML.

I love XML. For one reason and one reason alone- XSD (namely, well supported schema). We would lose that with YAML. I see YAML as short term gains but long term losses. For example, I've written a tool that takes an Excel sheet with units, their attachments, territories, starting placements and bi-bidirectionally "syncs" it with the game file using JAXB and Apache POI. This is the general direction I would love to help go- using powerful map-making UIs (and how much more power can you get with Excel/LibreOffice/standard spreadsheet UIs?) built on top of the most powerful/structured data interchange format. XSD supports inheritance, inclusion, polymorphism, unions, enums, etc. etc. and can be edited by a human in a pinch, but I'm envisioning a future world where map tools edit and the game engine parses and humans touch the game files less and less.

@Schulz the way we implemented trenches is novel (as far as I know) and adds realism and fun by not having them "shoot" by themselves (with a non-zero defensive power) but just absorb hits. This means you have to have some unit in the trenches to have them be useful (and to not have them be easily captured). To achieve this, I had to use triggers to change their attributes between combat move (when they are able to be captured) and combat (when they should participate in battle). I'm dealing with the limitations of TripleA by putting one trench per faction at the top of the board near the "Over the Top" logo to ensure that it's always present in the battle calculator. Changing the 2HP and adding defensive fundamentally changes the battle simulation and the odds would no longer be accurate (changing hit points to defensive power makes the battle very different).