Hey all,

I want to create this thread to answer most of the question/problems with the challenge editor. Here is a list of what I found when scouring the forum:

Mission Editor has no Save button

It does have a Save button. It looks like a floppy disk (google it if you are too young).

Adding a deposit does not work

It works for all deposits except Land and Sea oil. This is a bug and will be investigated.

Depleting a deposit does not work

It almost works . You have to re-open the natural resource overlay and the number of resources is not updated properly. Also Mines that have their deposit disappearing in that way will not auto-collapse. Nevertheless, these are minor problems and will probably not be fixed.

Free placement occasionally makes the building free for the rest of the mission

This happens when you set a building with several models (Apartment, Tenement, etc...) to have free placement. This is a bug and it will be investigated.

Changing the upkeep of a building does not work

This is a bug and it is being investigated. We will also check the rest of the building properties.

Change light model fade time problems

I have absolutely no idea what the fade time means and does. Anyway, this is minor and will probably not be fixed.

I can't make a building private

Private property means something different than it did in Tropico 3. There are problems with allowing players to make any building private which is why we removed this functionality.

I can't check the profits from tourism or the profits from specific buildings

You can check the profits from tourism with Conditions->Check Value->Tourism Income. There is currently no way to check the profits from specific buildings.


If you have other questions, please put them in this thread and I will try to answer them when I have the time. Please note that this thread is meant as a question thread and I will not respond to feature requests.

Finally, the sequence of Mission 1 will be made available to you soon(-ish).

Cheers,

Lyubo

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You can download the mission1 sequence here:

http://haemimontgames.com/tropico4/mission1.hpk

Once you download it you need to put it where your local challenges are located (type %appdata% in the address bar of any normal window folder, open the Tropico 4 folder and then the Challenges folder and place the file there).

Then you can open it as if it is one of your own challenges and edit it to see the sequence.

Stickied for great justice.

Thanks Lyubo!

Thank you!

(21-09-2011 11:22 AM)Lyubo_Haemimont Wrote:  Mission Editor has no Save button

It does have a Save button. It looks like a floppy disk (google it if you are too young).

Yes, the Sequences Editor does have that save button. It is the Mission Description Editor that does not have the save button. This is likely why the majority of maps uploaded don't have descriptions - people don't know how to save them.


Thanks for addressing these and for the Mission 1 sequence!

(21-09-2011 11:22 AM)Lyubo_Haemimont Wrote:  Mission Editor has no Save button

It does have a Save button. It looks like a floppy disk (google it if you are too young).

I LOL'd.

Thanks for the updates Lyubo!

Can you give some more depth to the crop deposit functionality on the editor? When you click and select a certain crop, and place it, you also receive a "line" when you move your mouse. What is the function with that line? Line disappears when you release the mouse button.

(21-09-2011 02:08 PM)jtracy Wrote:  

(21-09-2011 11:22 AM)Lyubo_Haemimont Wrote:  Mission Editor has no Save button

It does have a Save button. It looks like a floppy disk (google it if you are too young).

Yes, the Sequences Editor does have that save button. It is the Mission Description Editor that does not have the save button.

Sorry, I misunderstood. This will be addressed. Still, when you click save on the challenge interface, the mission description will be saved.

(21-09-2011 11:22 AM)Lyubo_Haemimont Wrote:  ... I can't check the profits from tourism or the profits from specific buildings

You can check the profits from tourism with Conditions->Check Value->Tourism Income. There is currently no way to check the profits from specific buildings. ...

If I may be allowed to ask for the benefit of the accountants amongst us, could you please clarify the precise meaning of the "in-game" use of PROFITS? Is it not actually and simply "gross income" rather than income minus expenses?

Thanks - CK

Another bug - when you place a statue in the map editor, you cannot delete it. It can't be demolished and pressing undo does not get rid of it.

that mission 1 pack helped me a ton.. Is there any chance that later missions will get added? it is extremely helpfull to see how you did things.. I definatly need to get a printer hooked up so i can copy some of this stuff for reference when im building my own.

this is kind of a vauge question, But i was reading that you can have scripts running to check things. like how many of something is built, or faction members, or status of faction % and such.

I was wondering how many of these check scripts can you run with out worrying about getting some big performance hit? Is it like 5 or 10? or 50? just trying to get a rough ballpark of how many i should limit too

i could see scripts running from start to finish to spawn rebels, or counts or something like that. Ive seen on the screen a couple like tourists counts, or faction rating, but im wondering about all the ones that you dont see that go on behind the sceanes.

Hey does anyone know how to change the soil level to allow any crops to grow where you want when creating challenge? I still having flat land that is red for crops like corn, papaya, banana, and pineapple I been trying everything for the past week and can't find it. tropico 3 was easy you just changed a number in the description for sandbox mode but I don't see nothing like that here on tropico 4 to increase soil levels

well i dont know about reducing lvls.. (something i wish there was a way to do, perhaps a -flag)

But to increase, if you goto the map editor, at the top there is a crops button, click on that then you can post little flags to increase them.

If you take an island that has low quality, then test/play, look at it, then go back and place a flag, you will see how much it raises. Its not as exact as placing soil yourself, but it works semi decent.

Your best off putting all the levels at the lowest, then using the flags to raise where you want., same with ores, and even trees. It seams like a single flag covers a area enough for 3-4 farms or so. But i supose that all depends on the island and starting point.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm not doing something right.

I'm trying to set up a situation in my current challenge where El Presidente's soldiers are outnumbered by rebels, but they "easily" win the battle. So here's how I set it up.

I created two labels - one for Rebels and one for Soldiers. I then changed the skill of the rebels to 0 and the skill of the soldiers to 100. I then changed the Courage, Leadership, Learning, and Intelligence of the Rebels to 0 and the soldiers to 100. So, theoretically, the soldiers are now tons better than the Rebels. The problem is that when they go to battle, the Rebels do just as good as the soldiers, if not better. So if I have 12 Rebels attacking and 7 soldiers defending, the soldiers are wiped out. But with the settings I did, the soldiers should easily win even though they are outnumbered.

Am I missing something?

(19-10-2011 07:21 PM)jtracy Wrote:  I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I'm not doing something right.

I'm trying to set up a situation in my current challenge where El Presidente's soldiers are outnumbered by rebels, but they "easily" win the battle. So here's how I set it up.

I created two labels - one for Rebels and one for Soldiers. I then changed the skill of the rebels to 0 and the skill of the soldiers to 100. I then changed the Courage, Leadership, Learning, and Intelligence of the Rebels to 0 and the soldiers to 100. So, theoretically, the soldiers are now tons better than the Rebels. The problem is that when they go to battle, the Rebels do just as good as the soldiers, if not better. So if I have 12 Rebels attacking and 7 soldiers defending, the soldiers are wiped out. But with the settings I did, the soldiers should easily win even though they are outnumbered.

Am I missing something?

The Courage, Intelligence and Leadership do not have effect on performance in battle. The skill, however, should matter significantly. I am not 100% sure but you could try giving the soldiers 200 skill experience as that may be the maximum and not 100 (for reasons long forgotten).

Please tell me if this works.

(20-10-2011 11:39 AM)Lyubo_Haemimont Wrote:  The Courage, Intelligence and Leadership do not have effect on performance in battle. The skill, however, should matter significantly. I am not 100% sure but you could try giving the soldiers 200 skill experience as that may be the maximum and not 100 (for reasons long forgotten).

Please tell me if this works.

Thanks for your response - I greatly appreciate it. So I did the test and didn't have much success. Here's what I did:

> Changed skills of the soldiers to 200
> Changed skills of Rebels to 0.
> I forced an attack on the Palace.

10 Rebels attacked my Palace (with 4 Guards, showing 100% skill). So it was 10 Rebels vs. 4 Soldiers. The rebels quickly took out 3 soldiers and lost one - so then it was 10 vs. 1. At this point I paused the game and opened the Palace menu and it was still showing 4 Palace guards (which I found strange). The battle was lost 9-0.

The way I've been "working around" this so far is simply having Rebels "removed" every few seconds to make it look like the Palace is winning against a large group.

Ok, I THINK I figured out the problem. I thought that when you set a Label that was that. Apparently not. It appears I needed to also set it to "continuously update". I'm still a bit confused by that, but at the moment I think it is working a lot better with continuously update set. What I think was happening was this:

> I had a sequence where I'd just put all the set labels, etc. So I had a Soldiers label (using SET) created for my soldiers.
> In any particular new sequence, any Soldiers recruited didn't fit into that label anymore since the label had been created in a separate sequence without a Continuously Update command.
> So when I would change the Skill of my Label (Soldiers), it only changed the skill of those that were already in the game when the label was created, but not new ones.

That's my theory. Since there's no manual for the Challenge Editor, it takes a lot of trial and error. You'd know better than me if I'm on the right track now.

You are right. If you don't set the label to continuously update, it will only contain the soldiers that were in there when the set command was called. The label might even have been empty if the original soldiers have died.

The continuous update command works as follows - it calls the commands by which you defined the label (e.g. set, add, subtract, etc.) repeatedly so that the any new eligible members are automatically added to the label.

Thanks Lyubo for the excellent explanation. Just one more quick question - if I set the Continuous Update just at the beginning (in its own sequence with the label set just before it), will it update throughout the game regardless of when it moves on to different sequences?

(24-10-2011 04:14 PM)jtracy Wrote:  Thanks Lyubo for the excellent explanation. Just one more quick question - if I set the Continuous Update just at the beginning (in its own sequence with the label set just before it), will it update throughout the game regardless of when it moves on to different sequences?

It will continue to update until it has been stopped by a sequence command (setting the continuous update to off), I believe.

Please pardon the resurection of an old thread. I wish to address jtracy and Lyubo about a possible challenge story line, and I couldn't find a better thread.

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I posted the following today on The Cafe forum about an old idea:

Quote:I was thinking about trying to build a banking island. No need for fancy tourism, industry or natural resources, just plain offshore banking. Has anyone tried this already?

The thread answers are clear. The basic game design does not provide for what is actually suggested in the initial question. That is, the game contemplates ONLY the limited part of "Offshore Banking" that involves actual visits by tourists who carry large sums of cash in their luggage. It does NOT provide for wire or messenger interbank transactions.


That should not be the end of the idea! An expert script writer probably could simulate an environment of bank to bank transactions between Tropican Banks and banks located in other nations. No tourist visits would be required. The trick for the player would be to keep an ever increasing number of Bankers happy and employed. Meanwhile keeping a lid on the rest of the population to present the illusion of a happy, stable country with fiscal honesty. That's which brings the wealthy to hide invest their money in a Tropical Paradise.

It would be an interesting exercise for the scriptor to devise a 70 year long "Ponzi Scheme."

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I hope someone finds the idea interesting.

Hey, any way to delete one of your own challenges from the server? I submitted one that I made, and I thought it would work when I tested it, but I forgot to include the start year for the main method. I went back to correct that and uploaded version 2 of it.

Also, how do you get other people to play your challenges? Do you just advertise here or something?

Is there an easy way to make all workers go on strike?

I want to create a sequence where the player must give pay raises, or all workers go on strike at a given time.

There has to be a simplistic way to do this, but for the life of me I just can't figure it out.

And please, for the learning impaired (me), 'splain it sloooowly

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Sorry, didn't mean to scream.

In challenge mode, I cannot access the dlc building types (like bunker from junta) when placing buildings in the Challenge Editor - they are not listed. I can only place buildings/decor from the original game and modern times - not junta, quick dry or plantador.

How do I fix this? Please help.

Thank you.

Hey guys.

I seem to have a unique issue here. Or at least I think it's unique since I haven't found anyone else with this problem.

Anyways, I used the challenge editor for the first time about an hour ago. It was working perfectly fine until I tried to save. It crashed instantly to the desktop. I reloaded the game and the challenge menu looked very odd, only the letters appeared in blue. Regardless of this, I tried to load the editor and it just kept loading endlessly without every starting. Since then I haven't been able to start the challenge editor.

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Never mind, I reinstalled the game and its working fine xD

Hi Ozymandias,

The problem is caused by a corrupted challenge file, probably the very same file you was trying to save. Locate the file in %appdata%\Tropico 4\Challenges (or "Modern Times Challenges" if you have the expansion) and delete it, this will resolve the problem with the challenge editor. Unfortunately there is no way to restore your corrupted challenge.

El Capitan, the DLC buildings are not present in the challenge editor, because a user who does not have the DLCs could download a challenge with them and it wouldn't work correctly.

Having a ball with the challenge editor at the moment but one thing is causing me some serious grief and I suspect it's been the same for others.

HOW do I apply a register value to a task.

EG:

Suppose I want an ever-increasing "carbon footprint" register value to become part of a game-winning/losing carbon emissions task?

Currently, if I reward a player with an extra 10 "carbon emissions" (CE) I have to complete the previous task and reinstate the task with a new value. Given that you will start at 100 CE and be allowed to slowly increment by 10 (to a maximum of 250), I need at least 15 calls to complete and reinstate a task.

This could be done in a single line of code if I could simply attach a register to a task instead of a hardcoded value. Damnably frustrating.

Any ideas anyone?

(28-08-2012 12:26 AM)Fidel deBooks Wrote:  Having a ball with the challenge editor at the moment but one thing is causing me some serious grief and I suspect it's been the same for others.

HOW do I apply a register value to a task.

EG:

Suppose I want an ever-increasing "carbon footprint" register value to become part of a game-winning/losing carbon emissions task?

Currently, if I reward a player with an extra 10 "carbon emissions" (CE) I have to complete the previous task and reinstate the task with a new value. Given that you will start at 100 CE and be allowed to slowly increment by 10 (to a maximum of 250), I need at least 15 calls to complete and reinstate a task.

This could be done in a single line of code if I could simply attach a register to a task instead of a hardcoded value. Damnably frustrating.

Any ideas anyone?

I don't understand what you mean. You can make a new task with progress and set it to look for register changes or checks against a value.

I don't think you need to reinstate the task - I have never had to do such a thing so I'm sure there is an easier way to do that.