Tides of War

Hi all, sorry my first post here is a lame plea for help, but here it is anyway...

My Gold Ed. arrived last week (this is the first copy of the game I have owned). I have written a mission with timetraveller's (absolutely brilliant) mission builder and followed the manufacturer's directions (about a hundred times) for creating a cgn. file, placing the ems file etc., etc. But nothing. I don't even get a "CustomPatrols" tab below the "Training" "Combat" and "Tactical" tabs in the drop down "Patrols" list. Even worse, I can't start a retail campaign: I open the Campaign screen, but when I click to open any of them, there is no response.

Do I need to install a patch???

I am hoping it is something like that... I am on the verge of giving up on the whole game, which would be a real drag for me, because, with the mission builder and the new ability to edit textures etc., it looks like it could become my absolute favourite. If only I could get it to work...

Any help / suggestions hugely appreciated.

Hi Androo,

Nice to meet you.

No, you shouldn't need a patch. Gold should be all set up for mission building. You probably have a typo or other procedural thing wrong in how you did your setup of files and mission folder. I put together a little tutorial which might help.

Step#1

In the main Enigma game folder, look for a file called "localization.txt". Open it in a text editor and add the green highlighted line below the "Tactical" line. The word "Custom" will be what you see in the game dropdown box below "Tactical". Resave the file.

Those are not spaces you see in the line you just typed (like between the words TOGGLE and Custom). They are tabs. Be sure to tab between fields (1 tab), DO NOT use the spacebar or it won't work. Enigma uses the tab to delimit fields, so use the tab key always.

Step#2

In the game's \missions folder, open the "index.pkg" file into a text editor. Add the green highlighted line after the "RandomPatrols" line. It becomes our 4th player package. "CustomPatrols" will become our folder name where we will keep our missions. Note that they are numbered 0,1,2,3, etc. On the "Single Player Package" line at the top, change the 3 to a 4 since we now have 4 player packages. Resave the file.

Step#3

Now we will create the .CGN file from scratch. The .CGN file is like a mission directory. The picture example is my .CGN file, which has 9 missions in the directory. Open the text editor. Type the first line like is highlighted in green and red, except instead of the red 9, make it a 1 (one) since you will have one mission to start. On line 2 (the ML line), type your mission line, substituting your mission name in place of "Docking Practice". Note that in this case there is a single space (not a tab) between "Docking" and "Practice", since it is one field, the name field. In place of the word "Description", you can type a simple phrase describing your mission. Now, save the .CGN file into the \missions folder using the name "CustomPatrols.cgn".

Step#4 (no picture)

In the same \missions folder, create a new "CustomPatrols" subfolder. Open this CustomPatrols folder. Copy your missions (.EMS file(s)) there. Name them in order, mission-1.ems, mission-2.ems, etc.

You're ready to go!

In game, be sure when you click the dropdown list to look for "Custom" underneath "Tactical" missions, you scroll down with the scrollbar. The dropdown box only shows three lines at a time and it's easy to miss anything underneath the top three lines.

Have fun!

-timetraveller

timetraveller, thanks and thanks again for the tutorial and for your generosity to a newcomer! (Not to mention all the work which must have gone into the mission builder and enigma ripper. Honestly, that is the most self-explanatory and useful mb I have ever seen- much better than the one included with Combat Flight Simulator for instance. Thanks to that mb and ripper, the creative possibilites for ERT went from significant to approximately infinite. Simply awesome work!)

Just my first glance at the tutorial revealed one (killer) error I made: I thought those were spaces instead of tabs. I'm off to see if that was my only mistake...

Edit, a couple of hours later:

As Dana Carvey used to say when he did Johnny Carson on Saturday Night Live,

"Weird. That is some weird and wacky stuff..." The space-instead-of-a-line thing was the only mistake I had made. But here is the weirdness: when I tried to correct it, hitting Tab after "TOGGLE", it would go past the text above ("Tactical")!?! I know, I wouldn't believe it either, if I hadn't seen it. In every other text document (the cgn file, the index file) my Tab worked fine, lining up with the default text above and below it... I used Notepad for all of them.

I was going to take a screenshot of the misalignment a minute ago to demonstrate, but I had already restored the localization document to its original state. I have found a work-around and having spent all weekend on this, now that it is working, I don't want to touch anything. The work around is this: I write a mission in your mission builder and then using your enigma ripper (thanks to your excellent readme) I exchange it for one of the missions already in the game (I used the first training mission). Anyway, I am pretty damn excited to finally be setting sail in a mission I wrote! Now for some flags (Royal Navy; Royal Canadian Navy; full Rising Sun; France; Nationalist China; Tsarist Russia- I know, only three factions at a time). This is going to be fun!

None of this would be possible without your creations!

Thanks for you very nice comments, Androo.

I checked the localization.txt file, and you are right. Looks like my mistake here, as that is a space and not a tab between TOGGLE and Custom. However, everywhere else that I know of, they use a tab to seperate fields. So, try the space in the localization.txt field and see if it works. I'll ammend the tutorial.

By the way, what image editor program are you using?

TT

Timetraveller, I guess my problem with getting custom missions into the program in the usual (correct) way will remain a mystery for awhile. Before I read your tutorial, I just had a space between "Toggle" and "Custom" and it still was not working. For the time being I will keep using the exchange method I described above.

I haven't had a chance to try a flag yet; I was thinking about using just plain old MS Paint or possibly reactivating an expired trial of Paintshop Pro. (I hope those programs will work with the files in question- I should go back and read your readme's / tutorials more carefully.)

Edit: Yes, I just checked out your readme for Enigma ripper again: I will download that Martin Wright program and have a go using MS Paint.

This is fun stuff...

Sounds good, Androo. Wish we could figure out that problem.

Yes. MSPaint should work for a flag. PSP will work too. If you get into a bind for an image editor, let me know, we'll figure something out. Just e-mail me.

timetraveller@bellsouth.net

Ok, great, thank you!