Tip on Finding Maps/PDT/OB filenames in Scenarios

[Sgt_Rock]

Back in 2009 Rich Hamilton put me on to using Ultra Edit and my game design work time was cut down by a large percentage (file editing, hunting for filenames, etc). With the ability to not only FIND key text strings (i.e. unit names, unit data, etc) but also to make global REPLACEMENT of that text with something else, I was able to quickly update incorrect data, change morale grades across the board, etc. Really a handy program. Buying a copy was a no-brainer.

If you have a need to find where a particular map file is used in scenarios (.scn file names) or you want to locate all instances of Hussars in the OB files (.oob file names) a high powered text editor is the way to go.

Several free programs are on the web that will do this. One of them is Notepad++. You can find this program at:

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Very helpful little program and it works well for C code editing too as you can set the command library. I have not checked to see if it can be set for the "Begin" and "End" statements that we have in the OB files but perhaps it would be a good OB editor too.

Thus if you are looking for all instances in all of the OB files of the 7th French Hussars you could do a "Find in Files" search for "7 Hussars" (in the Nap series games I worked on) and presto, all of the instances will show up. You could also search for all French dragoons by using the Units.bmp# and the 3D# that the dragoons use in the OB files. So in the case of Campaign Leipzig you could search for the text string "28 10" and this is what you might see:

Find '28 10' in 'D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob':
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(690): U 143 5 L S 28 10 1/7 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(691): U 143 5 L S 28 10 2/7 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(692): U 114 5 L S 28 10 1/23 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(693): U 114 5 L S 28 10 2/23 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(694): U 114 5 L S 28 10 3/23 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(695): U 167 5 L S 28 10 1/28 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(696): U 165 5 L S 28 10 2/28 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(697): U 178 5 L S 28 10 1/30 Dragoons
D:\John_Tiller_Software\Campaign Leipzig\Next_Leipzig_Update\Update1.04\Silesia_Campaign.oob(698): U 177 5 L S 28 10 2/30 Dragoons
Found '28 10' 9 time(s).
Search complete, found '28 10' 1051 time(s). (65 file(s)).

I was highly impressed with this ability and now am able to locate problem areas with Units.bmp/3D icon #s or incorrect spelling of names in the OB files.

What is kind of funny is that when I worked as an IT tech back in the late 90s I actually installed this program and many others like it on our client workstations. I just never explored it enough to find out what it did. Was always too busy running off to fight more fires (i.e. install more workstations or software on clients or fix issues with systems).

So if you like to make mods, find text in files, locate all instances of a unit in the OBs or just find a map file name where used in all scenarios in a game a text editor like Ultra Edit or Notepad++ will do the trick.

I also want to mention that without Ultra Edit I could never have linked the large campaign files in 1814 together into the large full campaign file. Wordpad adds in certain invisible characters to the file that are not viewable to the user. Notepad (that comes with Windows) will not open large files. UltraEdit does not add in extraneous characters so that the splicing of one campaign file text block into another campaign file works just fine.