Recommend game editors

[Zygot]

Hey guys, what are the recommended tools for modifying maps and save games? Here's my motivation:

One of the biggest issues with Master of Orion is crummy AI start positions. I get frustrated with how often AIs are limited to single-colony empires because they're surrounded by hostile worlds or boxed into limiting positions. In these cases, it's like they aren't even a part of the game.

So I'm thinking, what if I made a bunch of vetted maps, that give all the players at least some room to grow and participate? This would obviously spoil me for playing them, but maybe some of us could return the favor and produce their own set of vetted maps, to create a sort of "library" of potentially interesting games.

What do you think? I'm even up for hosting these on a website I'd set up. (Have you guys heard of Squarespace? It's ridiculously easy to do that these days).

But first -- pretend I know nothing about Master of Orion editing tools. What do I use, where do I get them, and what are your tips?

[RefSteel]

Hey guys, what are the recommended tools for modifying maps and save games? Here's my motivation:

One of the biggest issues with Master of Orion is crummy AI start positions. I get frustrated with how often AIs are limited to single-colony empires because they're surrounded by hostile worlds or boxed into limiting positions. In these cases, it's like they aren't even a part of the game.

So I'm thinking, what if I made a bunch of vetted maps, that give all the players at least some room to grow and participate? This would obviously spoil me for playing them, but maybe some of us could return the favor and produce their own set of vetted maps, to create a sort of "library" of potentially interesting games.

What do you think? I'm even up for hosting these on a website I'd set up. (Have you guys heard of Squarespace? It's ridiculously easy to do that these days).

But first -- pretend I know nothing about Master of Orion editing tools. What do I use, where do I get them, and what are your tips?

I just use an r4 rexx editor on savefiles, in combination with Sargon's savefile mapping spreadsheet (see here). Catwalk has some other editors as well, I believe. The advantage of the rexx editor is that it allows me to change maps without acquiring any spoiler information. For instance, one (indeed, *I*, if I had time at least) could write a script that:
1) Searches a map for homeworlds
2) Searches all planets within 3 parsecs of each homeworld
3) IF no non-homeworld, non-Orion habitable planets exist within three parsecs of a given homeworld...
3a) Searches all planets NOT within 3 parsecs of ANY homeworld
3b) Swaps the locations of a habitable non-homeworld non-Orion star from 3a with a random star within 3 parsecs of the target homeworld.
4) Repeat for each homeworld until all have a habitable star in range.

[EDIT: I think the editors Catwalk uses are from Jon Sullivan's page. I don't remember where I originally downloaded my rexx editor; Sargon may have posted a link in the Civfanatics MoO forum at some point, or I may have just googled it after he explained the save editing process to me.]

[Zygot]

OK, so basically you are running Rexx scripts that burrow into the innards of the binary data of a save game and make programmatic changes to bits and bytes based on what Sargon has documented? Hoo boy, I glossed over those threads before but I downloaded your RingGalaxy script to see what it was all about, and now I think I have something to play with for a long time. Master of Orion, simple to learn, a lifetime to master! Gotta love it.

Question though: why Rexx? Is that a popular way to accomplish this kind of task, especially within the games community? Is there a collection of scripts somewhere? And why not something like Python, which I assume can do this too?

[RefSteel]

Question though: why Rexx? Is that a popular way to accomplish this kind of task, especially within the games community? Is there a collection of scripts somewhere? And why not something like Python, which I assume can do this too?

Honestly, the only reason is that it's the method Sargon was using when he introduced it to me. I'm not a professional programmer, nor even much of an amateur, and have never worked with Python yet ... but I'd never worked with Rexx either until Sargon mentioned it to me!

[Zygot]

Gotcha. I am not a professional programmer either, but I do a bit of FileMaker database development for my work, and have messed around with various languages over the years. Been meaning to learn Python, so I can do more sysadmin automation at work too. Seems like I can kill two birds with one stone, perhaps!