THE EDITOR OF CATAN Program Designer Jens Willibald (This is an assumption) Manual Writer David S. Raley Manual Version 1.1 INTRODUCTION If you don't find the included scenarios to be enough, then you can develop your own through the editor (named, appropriately enough, EDITOR.EXE). As with the main game, you start it in the same was as you would start any DOS program. The editor is in German, but isn't all that difficult for an English speaker to figure out. I have noticed two limitations for the editor: the maximum board size is smaller than most Seafarers scenarions, and the load utility only displays up to 45 scenarios. If there is a paging mechanism to find additional scenarios beyond 45, I haven't found it. The game itself supports more than 45 scenarios (I suspect its limit is 60). Since this game consumes less than a megabyte, you could try placing a copy the game in more than one directory, each with its own set of scenarios. The editor does provide a help screen, which you can see if you press F1. I was amazed I actually understood enough of it for it to be useful, as I do not speak German. EDITOR SCREEN The editor screen is divided into five areas, as shown below. To the left is the map area, which shows you the current status of the map. On the right are four smaller areas. The top area provides you with information on the current hex that is highlighted in the map area. The second area allows you to select the basic terrain type for the highlighted hex. The third area allows you to specify the scneario rules. The bottom area allows you to load or save a scenario. _________________________________ __________________ | | | | | | | Selected Terrain | | | |__________________| | | __________________ | | | | | Map Area | | Terrain Selector | | | |__________________| | | __________________ | | | | | | | Scenario Rules | | | |__________________| | | __________________ | | | | | | | File Box | |_________________________________| |__________________| The map area represents the game board. The map is nine hexes wide and seven hexes high (alternate rows are eight hexes high). The outermost hexes on the map can only be ocean hexes, while the interior hexes may be set to any terrain. Use the left mouse button in the map area to select a hex and the right mouse button to alternate between an ocean hex and a land hex. The Selected Terrain Area includes the attributes of the selected land. First it lists the terrain type. You can cycle through the terrain types by clicking on the type. The possible terrain types are listed below. Note that to avoid potential character set compatibility problems, I am spelling all German words without umlauts. Meer Ocean Land Generic Land (final type selected at start of game) Weideland Pasture Ackerland Farmland Wald Forest Hugelland Hill Gebirge Mountain Wuste Desert (or Waste) Goldfluss Gold Field Unbekannt Unexplored (land revealed when road or ship adjacent) Selected lands (Generic Land and Unexplored) will always be one of the five basic lands types: pasture, farmland, forest, hill, or mountain. They will never be replaced with deserts or gold fields. The game maintains a balance with Generic Lands and assigns them to their final type as evenly as possible. Assignments are made in the following order: pasture, farmland, forest, hill, and mountain. So, if a game includes 11 Generic Lands, then there will be three pastures and two of each other land type. Below the terrain type is a list of attributes. Ocean hexes have one attribute: does the hex contain a harbor? Set this to "Ja" (Yes), to place a harbor in the hex. You cannot set the hex to a specific harbor type (these will be assigned at the start of the game). If you include six or more harbors in a scenario, there will be one harbor of each resource type and the rest will be generic harbors. If you include less than six harbors, the harbor types will be selected at random (there will be no more than one of any harbor type). Other terrain types have three attribites: Zahlenchip (Production Chip), Position, and Region. The production chip may be set to either Zufall (Shuffled) or a number from 2-12 (excluding 7). Deserts get no value for this attribute, since they never have production chips. For shuffled production chips, assignments are made in the following order: 8, 6, 9, 5, 10, 4, 11, 3, 12, and 2. The Position attribute indicates whether the tile's position is fixed on the map or shuffled with other non-fixed land hexes. Shuffled hexes will be mixed with any other shuffled hex, even if they are in different regions. So if you want to force certain tiles to be in a particular region, you must fix them in a particular hex. The Region is a number from 0 to 9, which is used for setup and assignment of victory points. Whenever a player builds a settlement in a region where they do not currently have a settlement, the player gains a bonus victory point (this does not apply during setup). If the region number is 5 or higher, then the player may not place a settlement adjacent to that hex during setup. You may select a land type for a hex by clicking on one of the land types listed in the Terrain Selector. Just click on the land type you want and the hex will change to that type. Unfortunately, the five basic land types cannot be selected in this manner, so you'll have to cycle through those by clicking the terrain type in the Selected Terrain Area. The scenario rules stipulate how the scenario is to be played. There are three attributes here: Spielerzahl (Number of Players), Seigpunkte (Victory Points), and Regeln (Rule Set). The nubmer of players can be set from 3 to 8. The number of victory points can be set from 10 to 20. The rule set can be set to either Seidler (Settlers rules - without ships) or Seefahrer (Seafarers rules - with ships). The Filebox has four possible commands that can be activated by pressing the appropriate button. Laden (Load) is used to load an existing scenario. Neu (New) is used to create a blank sheet all ocean hexes. Speichern (Save) is used to save your scenario to disk. Beeden (Edit) is used to leave the editor and return to your operating system. When you choose the load command, you are presented with a list of all scenarios that are currently in your directory. This list can include up to 45 scenarios. I know of no way to gain access to the remaining scenarios if there are more than 45 present. Just click on the scenario you want to load, or click elsewhere to cancel. When you choose the Save command, you will be prompted to enter the name of the scenario. Just type in the name and press ENTER.