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The major and perhaps
only criticism of Pacific General is that it does not have a map editor. This
oversight used to limit new scenario creation to only using existing Pacific General
maps. Bill Hearing helped to alleviate this problem by converting most of the Panzer
General and Allied General maps for Pacific General use. He also created
a non-graphical map editor which may be ok for the highly computer literate but not, I
suspect, for the rest of us who are still waiting for a more user friendly solution upon
which to release their designer creativity. Now Fred Chlanda's PacMap Version 4.4
directly addresses this problem.
From a technical standpoint Fred's
creation of a graphical map editor for Pacific General is quite a feat. The program
operates in two windows, one with the map and the other with the currently chosen tile
set. There are 16 tile sets in all which have to be generated with a program called
SetGen. This takes about 10-15 minutes depending on your processor. Some of these tiles
are very hard to see and I would suggest you having a look at the enhanced option in
SetGen to change the RGB scales for better viewing. Transferring tiles into the map is
done simply by clicking on the chosen tile and then clicking on the map. You can also set
up the right mouse key as an eraser using the clear hex.
CITY AND AIRPOT TILES.
Pacific General has a
series of operators which try to ease the tedium of map making mainly in semiautomatic
generation of coastlines, roads, and rivers. It uses a Bitmap approach to generating the
bare outlines of a map and uses a Spray Can of variable size and density to fill in large
areas with a selected tile. It also has a Strategic Map enabling you to check the overall
design and road connectivity.
Fred does provide good
instructions and two tutorials are included which are the best way to learn the ropes.
Broadly speaking you use the editor
in two stages. In the first stage you create a map, set up place names, save a .map file,
load it into battle generator and design your scenario. In the second stage you load the
scenario, edit the map, change place names, and alter the x, y co-ordinates of the place
name`s locations.
Stage 1. Creating a map from scratch for a new home made scenario
The first step is to create a
rough outline map with a standard paint program like PAINT. This requires you to use 6
standard colors to fill in clear terrain, ocean, mountain, forest areas, rivers, and
roads. The map scale can be from 3 to 7 pixels/hexes with a maximum size of 70 x 70 hexes.
So if you are using 4 pixels/hexes and you want a map that is 60 x 40 hexes your rough map
will be 240 x 160 pixels. Roads, normally being 1 hex wide, would be drawn with a 4 pixel
brush. The rough map is saved as a Bitmap file.
CHECKING ROAD CONNECTIVITY
PacMap Version 4.4 now
includes a Spray Can and a Strategic Map so you can, if you wish, completely ignore the
rough map phase and go directly to PacMap. Selecting the New Map Option under Edit would
allow you to create the map from scratch. This would give you greater control but possibly
result in more effort.
Load the bitmap file into PacMap,
convert it to a .MAP file, and then examine the result. The terrain will look blocky and
most likely the rivers and roads will not be correct with widths greater than 1 hex. The
error occurs because the original drawing was probably not sufficiently accurate. Clean up
the roads using any one of the road icons, it doesn`t matter which, and then use the Edit
Road Tool. This selects the correct tiles for road orientation and should result in a road
that is 90% correct. Repeat the process with the Edit River Tool. Use the Coast Tool to
generate the beaches if you have any ocean and then touch up the whole map further
correcting any remaining road/river errors directly, removing the blocky terrain
appearance and adding towns, airports etc. Roads across rivers are tricky and you need to
read the manual carefully to get this right. Finally use the Road Connectivity Tool to
ensure the road hexes are correctly connected. You can now save your .MAP file e.g.
Midway.map and its ready to load up into the Battle Generator.
If you want to have place names for
various locations you prepare an ASCI file, using NotePad, with one line per name (maximum
of 10) and save it with the convention Sfilename.tst e.g. SMidway.tst. Its a good idea to
put in more names than you will probably need as you cannot add anymore later on.
There is also a Cut and Paste
facility to combine sections of maps into a new map. Here you would use the Edit New Map
option to generate a clear, ocean, or desert hex map after choosing the tile first. Then
paste an ASCI copy of a smaller existing map into a chosen position and develop the
surrounding terrain.
Stage 2. Editing a home made scenario map
You load the whole home made
scenario (.SCN) file into PacMap to make the changes. You can edit all the major
features adding a road, airport etc. and changing, but not adding, any place names and
co-ordinates. You must save back directly to the same file
Comments
The Spray Can is a very neat
idea because it enables you to mix tiles of the same terrain type at various densities.
If you have added any Airports at
Stage 1 or 2 make sure you assign their ownership in the Battle Generator otherwise no
refueling will take place.
You can actually edit an original
Scenario but personally I don`t recommend this for the obvious reasons. A better, safer
approach is to use the Edit new map option, cut and paste the map file from that scenario,
edit it, save it with a new name, and then load the new map into the battle generator.
Many of us have downloaded Pacific
General home made scenarios which could of been improved with a better map. Improving
the maps can now be done without re-doing all of those carefully prepared Orders of
Battle. The new map could be made by making an ASCI copy of the map file from the home
made scenario. Then cut and paste into the new map, when you finish save the map with a
new name. Make and save an ASCI file (New Name) with places names. Bring up the Battle
Generator and load in your old scenario. Now load your new map which will replace the old
one. Of course unit placement will now be all wrong with for example the locations of
ships on land or tanks at sea. Just redeploy them, check ownership of any features, and
save (New Name). Return to PacMap loading in this new scenario. Editing the place
names and co-ordinates and resaving will complete the job.
Overall PacMap operates
reasonably well. The problems are mainly of time in selecting the correctly orientated
tile and in switching from the Tile Window to the Map Window when they overlap. Even so I
developed the first version of the Guadalcanal Naval Battle from scratch in two evenings
but then again I was creating a typical Pacific General map with lots of ocean, few
towns, and few roads. I suspect that a full European land map in an urban environment
would be much tougher going. However, I was using V4.0 without the Spray Can feature which
should speed up the process a lot. Full marks to Fred Chlanda! PacMap produces a
more than acceptable result for the cost of a few minutes download and you can't beat
that!
Download the Guadalcanal
Scenario that Edward created with PacMap.
All of the Pacific General
addons mentioned in this article can be found in the Wargamer's Pacific
General Section.
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