# Advanced Strategic Command

documentation

## The Editors

The editors are only available for DOS.

Make sure you call ALL programs from your game directory, NOT from your TOOLS directory although most editors reside there.
Type `tools\makeveh` from your game directory to start the hexagonal vehicle editor for example. When using ASC under a modern operating system or Windows9x, you can create shortcuts and set the workingdirectory to your ASC directory there. If you don't like neither of the above methods, just move all files from your TOOLS directory to your game directory.

During the development we never thought about proper names for everything that is in the game. This was not a problem until I started writing the documentation, when I realized that the most appropriate names where already used for other things. So there is some mess but I hope that it is clear what I'm trying to say :-)

The game is based upon a number of "categories":

- terrain
- units
- buildings
- technologies
- objects

Each category is associated with a certain file extension and has several items:

category | file extension | examples
--- | --- | ---
terrain | *.trr | grassland, coast, water
vehicles | *.veh | transport plane, paratrooper, nuclear submarine
buildings | *.bld | vehicle factory, research facility, headquarter
technologies | *.tec | armor level 2, air cushion vehicles
objects | *.obl | wood, roads, pipelines

Each item is in its own file. All these files are loaded at startup of the game. So including a new building type is as simple as putting the appropriate file in the game directory.

A note for those who want to work with the source code: The classes representing these items are called `*type`, like `tvehicletype`, `tbuildingtype` etc, except for the technologies that are just `ttechnology`.

Each item category has its own editor that is named after the fileextension, for example `MAKEBLD.EXE` is the editor for the buildings.

Documentation for the editors can be found here:

- vehicle editor
- technology editor
- object editor

Walk throughs that describe the usage of these editors can be found here: Importing graphics from Battle Isle. Although we no longer use the Battle Isle graphics and the Battle Isle vehicle set has been completely implemented in ASC (but it is not part of the distribution), this text should still be a useful introduction and guide to the editors.

### IDs

The items of every category are identified by a ID that has to be unique for each category. When you're creating new items you should check which IDs are not used yet. This can be done using the programs `VIEWID.EXE`. (A note for those users who don't know how to work with a command line program: you can redirect the output to a file by starting `VIEWID.EXE > FILENAME`).

To experiment you can just use any ID that is not used up to now. But if someone else makes items using the same IDs and publishes these items you can get into trouble if you want to use them too. If you make only a few items and don't build any maps using these items you can change the IDs afterwards. But the best way to prevent all these problems is to contact us through the mailing lists and get your own set of IDs. The upper limit for some IDs is 2147483647 (signed 32 bit integer) and for others 65535 ( unsigned 16 bit) and there is no problem (or better there should not be problems....) using such large IDs. Some older versions of ASC had a problem with the memory requirements, but that is fixed now. IDs must be greater than 0.

Please do not use IDs below 100 for new objects !!

### Some hints

The Editors (`MAKE*.EXE`) ask for the values of the properties one after another. With the key combinations `<Ctrl-C>` or `<Ctrl break>` they can be exited at any time if you entered wrong values and don't want them to be saved. Besides the first questions (make/load; picture; continue) the values can always be confirmed with `<Enter>` when editing an existing item. If for example only the first property shall be changed all further parameters can be confirmed simply by holding `<Enter>`. This does not seem to be correct on first sight for the classes of vehicle types but it really is.

The editor package contains additionally:

- `EDHEX.EXE` map editor, which has recently been moved to the main package.
- `PRNTVEH.EXE` generates text files with list the parameters of the vehicle types.
- `MOUNT.EXE` builds container files.
- `DEMOUNT.EXE` extracts container files.