A question with map editor

Are you playing with planetary textures disabled?

not sure what you mean

where exatly do i enable those

It is on the options screen, graphics tab. Under "performance options" uncheck (or check) the box that says "disable planet surface textures"

Its unchecked so it can not be that. I dont know if it is something under edit planet in the editor but I tried everything and in there and it does not work. The uninhabited planets just show as brown. Do you have any other clues.

btw thanks for replying

So, it is just a blank brown ball, or does it have some sort of texture?

Map editor doesn't pull off textures in a similar way than a true game, which is why all planets will simply & always look different no matter how hard you try.

Unless you provide your own CP.xml where these textures are pre-defined for whatever race played from a mod folder that has home systems.

The only thing the map editor does if flip and/or gap the eventually loaded texture(s) IN a (TA) game.

BUT;

I suspect a DA vs TA situation, since all or most Uninhabitable planets DO have a "MarsLike" surface if your planet variety option (settings, performance, all the way down slider) is soooooo low (say, 1%) that all there is can't be anything other than one texture.

It may even be the Type selected for each in the editor and then, saved.

Ok

I'm playing TA game.

The uninhabitable planets have all mars like textures when I load my custom map in the game.

I have the slider for the for planet texture variety in options checked at 100% and I still get the unihabitable planets all loking martian like.

So I still dont undestand what I can do in the editor or in game options to get texture variety on planets when loaded as custom map in the game.

Thank you very much but I'm still without solutions here.

It's just an artefact of the mapeditor. Nothing you can do about it. Sorry.

 So in effect this map editor is nothing but a tease rather than a useful comprehensive feature. I wish they had released something more useful or nothing.

This editor is impractical, does not load any textures for planets nor does it load and texture original homeworld planets that the game generates. In addition, there is no way to place and determine mionor races either.

It is crap at this point and I doubt there will be any new patch and/or improvement releases for this.

I wouldn't go that far... it is minimally usable and provides a way for people to create something for sandbox mode where surfaces variety is strictly randomized (somehow) just as any others.

It's not crap cuz without anything of that sort you can't play with your favorite settings & situations besides the usual random factors.

I think SD devs know very well about this particular "flaw" and if the past is any indication, they will certainly upgrade the stuff to make the Map Editor more efficient and entirely compatible with DA, their own CustomPlanets.xml and whatever other features **we** all asked for over the last year or so.

I repeat; your Mars surfaces are the result of a clear choice UN-maded for every last planets created & present in the saved file. There is nothing else but a whole 7 TYPE possibilities to select... from left to right on the slider provided -- Uninhabitable, Habitable by All, and the five extremes. I should even insist that there IS a huge difference between DA & TA processing of textures.

Ok thanks zyxpsilon.

I still believe that the map editor should have been released in a far more usable condition than this.

Anyway I have finished my map. I have assigned all major races their homeworld with a couple of additional planets. In addition to that I have used scenario editor to create a scenario to be used with this map. And suppose what happens when I load the custom map with my custom scenario in the game?? It crashes. Why?? I am really at the end of my rope here.

I guess the only reason I can think of is that I have assigned all major races in the custom map and check them all in the custom scenario. Is this causing the crash? Does this game not support more than 9 major AI's even when using custom map??

Thanks for all your responses

Did you mess with the XMLs themselves? Also, although I have not played around in this area much myself, I believe that it is possible to create "invalid" maps and scenarios. If, for example, you set the scenario to have a win condition involving taking a planet, but don't have the planet name matching the planet on the map, you will crash the game.

Scoutdog

No I have not tinkered with win conditions. All I have done in the scenario is check all major civ and adjusted rules for example technology at very slow. The game does not crash when I take out two major civs out of the map so that there are me and 9 AI. A soon as I add two remain ing major AI to the map the game crashes upon loading.

I suppose that it is not possible playing with more than 9 AI opponents even if it is done through map and scenario editor.

Thanks

I'm curious too.  I've been reading through the various posts trying to learn as much about the map editor and map making as possible.  I want the ability to create a map (the Milky Way for instance) that I can use to play a variety of games with different choices regarding my opponents.  Except that they'll always start in a given location, and I'll always start in a given location (that being based on which race I chose).  I also want to include the minor races as well.

But what I'm beginning to gather is that it's not possible (at this time).  I'm guessing that I'll have to build a map (and perhaps even a scenario & campaign) for each of the choices.  In addition, it looks as if I'll have to modify the minor race(s of choice) such that they(/it) become(s) a major race.

That means switching from one to the other may be time consuming.

Or am I mistaken?

SK