New Guy

[MikeC]

Greetings.  Borrowing from Dr. Johnny Fever, "Is anybody out there?"  Yes, I know that gives away my age (and then some).

Historian and former code-grinder (meaning I got paid for/made a living doing them both), but my tech skills have shriveled.  I blundered onto this site and was pleased to find recent postings, having played the game for twenty years (albeit in addition to some others as well).

Yesterday, I replied to a multi-player thread as a guest.  Will that show up eventually, or do I have to repeat it now that I have an account on this forum?

I plan to create a map (which in older days I'd have called a scenario) since it seems the chance of someone else playing it is not zero.  Therefore, I need to examine all the compiled material on modding.  I can do this the brute-force way, but time is always precious, and becomes more so each day that passes.  Can anyone point me to not only rich threads for modding information beyond the user-guide, but maybe some "watch out for XXX pitfalls" thread-types?

I know the standard social-media answer is "do it the hard way n00b."  Hoping not so here.  Thanks in advance for reading...

[Silverback]

Welcome. Sadly theres very little available on modding and map creation. As I've never made a map I'm not much help. There never was much multiplayer activity, and there's very little activity here nowadays. If you create a map someone else may play it. jeffryfisher     has some modding experience so searching his posts could be of use. There were several sites on modding but they went years ago alas. I can only suggest examining other peoples maps for tips. Somewhere on here there is a post listing links to useful resources  (try https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/23142-rrt2-strategy-guide-links/?tab=comments#comment-366383 ?) but many of the resources are dead (thread is almost 10 years old). Archive.org could be your friend. Good luck!    There may be some info over at http://hawkdawg.com but no active RTII community. The last RTII post there was June 2019! Here it's about a post a month!

[MikeC]

Sad.  Truly sad.  But thanks for your quick reply, Silverback.  I checked the mod links prior to posting but saw less than I had hoped for (hence the opening of this thread).  I also saw jeffryfisher's threads and will study those closely--if nothing else, I can play a patched-beyond-the-publisher's-support version of the game.  Still trying to get my head around the port-fixing thread, though...  At least I recall how to use a hex-editor, though. 

I think...  🙂

 

[kill723]

I used the hex editor to make a few changes myself, and Jeffry has created an excel file that serves as a rough map through the EXE file. What exactly were you hoping to change?

[jeffryfisher]

And I'm still here, checking daily.

Scan the forums since 2009 (sadly not as many threads as one might fear). Be careful to distinguish between scenario-building versus modding. The in-game editor enables scenario-building; hex-editors enable (soft-hack)modding.

[MikeC]

kill723, I mentioned hex editors only in the context that I could follow directions in using one to change something.  As for what I had hoped might be possible, I wanted to add buildings and other resources for an agribusiness map I've contemplated.  I have also wondered about such things as changing the passage of time (so that a map/scenario might have more playing time in a limited historical interval).  Both of these things can be done in the Civ games (I still play Civ III, mostly because I love the isometric view, odd though that may sound) and since Sid Meier is the brain behind both, I just wondered...

I have found the changed-footprint-for-stations thread, for example, and will read more closely (RL demands a lot of my attention right about now).  Fascinating stuff, but also for context, I am a retired history professor who is unafraid of hex editors (and possibly should be), as opposed to whatever the opposite of that is...  🙂  To borrow freely, a man has to know his limitations, and I know mine.  I'm looking forward to seeing if that thread is over my head.

jeffryfisher, I used to demand that my students use precise language, because (quoting myself) "word-choice matters," and also because my mentor demanded it of me.  I'm glad he didn't see me fail to do the same in this instance, and I should have done a better job describing what I was after.  Modding of course is a different matter than map-building.  Both intrigue me, though.