I think I have decided to have another go at a CC2 save-editor. The CC2ME editor can work for simple maps but I really ran up against the limitations of tkinter, not to mention some low-level mistakes I made in assumptions for how different bits of the save.xml format are inter-linked.

So, I am going to start this new venture off as a new implementation (perhaps I will borrow useful bits of cc2me). I will use pygame as the GUI, as I pretty much want the user experience to be almost the same as using the vehicle control screens in CC2, so it’s much closer to an in-game interface than a normal desktop app.

I am aiming for:

• add/remove/move islands
  • pre-spawned islands will auto-generate new island-owned units and patrol paths when the server loads the map
• set island types
• set island difficulty
• set island inventory content
• set the number of teams
• set the loadout of player carriers
• set the inventory of player barges
• set the inventory of player carriers
• add/remove/move player carriers on the map
  • make carriers spawn with nothing in bays by default
  • might have a problem with the normal built-in lifeboat, it gets used by some mods for data storage
• place “extra” units on the map – units not directly owned by an island
  • allow simple loadout editing of basic units

Stretch goals:

• add/edit waypoints for map units
• alter existing saves without losing game state
  • this is quite difficult yo do reliably, it is very problematic for example to move an island in an already used save as all the spawned units on the island will need to be moved too and the new location may create units under terrain
  • might disable some features like this when editing an existing save

Wont-do:

• show island details and elevations – this is almost impossible without reverse engineering the game’s map PRNG and terrain generation

The old CC2ME editor will remain available as usual.