I haven't looked at your saved game and I'm not a programmer - but the black holes sound as if some data were missing on the map. Did you delete or copy/paste anything in the text editor? That might explain for it.

Happy New Year, btw.

Ingo

I had no idea what I was doing when I got these black tiles but I was comparing a large blank grass map and a large black deepwater map and removing and changing some things. Anyway this seems to lots of map design potential, I'm working on a campaign in TC but I am planing on doing at lest one more campaign in AoE before I move on to EE. Here is an another screen and scenario. The first scenario would crash sometimes so I posted a savegame that seems to work better. You will have to copy the location of the screen shots and scenarios and paste them into your browser.

Hey Stephen,

I just clicked on the link, but it said "page not available". Anyhow, I'm not sure if the black holes are a good idea to use in a scenario - I bet other people will have crashes, too. You might spend a lot of time on a scenario that might not even run properly in the end.

I had a little black hole in two of my Age of Kings maps, and it ruined the maps for good. Whenever the screen view was on that black hole, my computer froze. I never figured out why it happened.

Ingo

[This message has been edited by Ingo van Thiel (edited 01-03-2002 @ 03:38 PM).]

I just e-mailed you the scenarios, let me know if they work for you. I think I have one of the scenarios working where it wont crash and the other one only did twice and that was in the editor, I am going to test it a lot more but they seem to be safe. I think that something could be done with these black holes, you can't paint them into a scenario like grass or water and they maybe too unstable to use in a scenario but I still think there maybe a use for them.

Do you still have the AoK scenarios? If yes could you send them to me? Thanks

Hi Stephen, thanks for sending the scenarios over. I had a look at them and had no crashes so far. However, I can’t think of any good ways to put those black tiles or lines to use. That’s also because of the weird unit behaviour when they cross that black line in the RoR scenario. Those square water tiles make it look as if some parts of the map were swapped for each other; that would explain why a unit who crosses that black line first appears a few squares away from the point where it started, then disappears again, and re-appears at the other side of the line where you would expect it to come out.

The version in the AoE scenario cannot be crossed at all and looks like a heap of black, water and grass jigsaw puzzle pieces.

I doubt that this will offer many possibilities for design tricks because the tiles look very hard and abrupt, and do not blend in with the landscape. This gave them a somewhat unnatural look and I just felt like I was looking at data chaos rather than a map. Even if you add stuff like cliffs and trees near it to cover the hard lines up (not sure if it's possible), the strange unit behaviour would still be there.

That being said, I still thought it was an interesting experiment.

Ingo

[This message has been edited by Ingo van Thiel (edited 01-05-2002 @ 05:01 AM).]

Oops, I'm sorry I forgot to answer one of your questions! No, I don't have those buggy AoK maps anymore. I'm afraid I deleted them more than a year ago.

Ingo

I forgot to say I think the black tiles have something to do with elevation when you click to paint some elevation on the map all the black tiles disapier and maybe that's why units disapier and reappear a few tiles away.

Anyway I cant think of any real use for the black holes, I'm going to keep the scenarios, if I ever think of an idea I'll use it, intill then it I think was a good idea.