Patch broken maps on load

[Spikeone]

There are some maps that are broken or not as they were in the original:

AKARTE02.WLD
AKARTE03.WLD
AKARTE04.WLD
KARTE06.WLD
MISS200.WLD
MISS206.WLD
MISS208.WLD

The first 4 freeplay maps have different flaws, from missing harbors, wrongly set start positions are missing stone for one player. We currently ship theres 4 files as well (although we probably should not).

Also 3 Campaign maps are broken, either they have 7 players where should be only one, wrong starting positions or messed up terrain. We should patch those so people can enjoy the campaign.

Since 4/7 maps do not have a script, we maybe should patch those files on load. Although doing this using LUA would be great as well (so one could actually create a somewhat random campaign by changing certain terrain or open passages etc.), I think we should do it in code. Since we can't write into the original folder, it's maybe best to just always do it without the user even noticing. Maybe there are different better solutions, but I think running a script would be scary for most people and requires supporting those script files as well.

I diffed the files using:

fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\AKARTE02.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\AKARTE02.WLD" > AKARTE02.txt
fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\AKARTE03.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\AKARTE03-fix.swd" > AKARTE03.txt
fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\AKARTE04.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\AKARTE04.WLD" > AKARTE04.txt
fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\KARTE06.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\KARTE06-fix.swd" > KARTE06.txt
fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\MISS200.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\MISS200.WLD" > MISS200.txt
fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\MISS206.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\MISS206.WLD" > MISS206.txt
fc /b /t "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\ORIGINAL\MISS208.WLD" "E:\s25rttr_20251220\CHANGEDMAPS\RTTR\MISS208.WLD" > MISS208.txt

DIFF.zip

[Spikeone]

@Flow86 @Flamefire I think we should somehow fix this for the next release - since users will probably test the campaign and run into issues.

[Flamefire]

From the duplicate:

At least two of the LUA scripts included will not work correctly. On the first map 7 players are loaded by rttr but 6 have invalid positions, I think on the sixth map, one player position is invalid, thus the game doesn't start.

This sounds like #1683 will be enough to fix this?

I'm not sure how feasible and maintainable a "patch bytes in map stream" function is. So if we can go with only a few higher-level functions it might be better

[Spikeone]

It does solve some of the problems, but not all. Map 1 and 6 have broken HQs. Map 8 has a wrongly converted texture (if one compares the original where the world was split into multiple .DAT files and the .WLD file). We also currently ship 4 maps that have been broken where only one could be fixed by changing the HQ.

So there are these problems:

1. Wrongly placed HQ (3 of 7 maps, 2 of them campaign) - would be fixed by Lua: Allow setting number of players, and placing HQs. Then fix the mission on map "The snake" #1683
2. Missing harbors spots (3 of 7 maps, 1 of them campaign) - still broken
3. Missing granite (1 of 7 maps) - still broken
4. Wrong texture in use (3 of 7 maps, 1 of them campaign) - still broken

I agree, that fixing 1 would suffice for now, but it wouldn't fix all. I thought that just having some static override array as gamedata would be easier than providing functions to change all this, because it is only needed to fix broken maps. That said, being able to change HQ positions would allow one to create somewhat randomized campaigns which is also great.

Some of these problems appear on the same map.

So indeed, to fix the obvious problem, only fixing the HQ position would suffice, but we should also get rid of altered original maps we currently ship in my opinion. I mean we could go with higher level functions (thats LUA then I guess?) but then we should provide functions to change terrain, add resource objects (e.g. tree, granite) as well as HQ. We also should provide LUA files then for the 4 non mission maps to fix them, so we can get rid of them in the repository.

[Flamefire]

Map 8 has a wrongly converted texture
we should also get rid of altered original maps we currently ship
so we can get rid of them in the repository.

So we are shipping maps from S2 but those still have bugs? That should be easily fixed, shouldn't it?

having some static override array as gamedata

The diffs above look quite large. I'd expect only a few bytes being changed. How did that happen? Having such large binary blobs in the executable wouldn't be so great IMO

[Spikeone]

So we are shipping maps from S2 but those still have bugs? That should be easily fixed, shouldn't it?

No, those we ship (which are changed versions of AKARTE02.WLD, AKARTE03.WLD, AKARTE04.WLD, KARTE06.WLD) don't have bugs in the versions we ship. There is one map we need to fix, so the campaign runs without crashing on startup (MISS206.WLD), which we do not ship. Some of the campaign maps have nice to have fixes (MISS200.WLD, MISS208.WLD). We surely could also ship MISS200.WLD, MISS206.WLD, MISS208.WLD but as far as I'm concerned and probably @Flow86 as well, we should not ship altered original files at all (neither the maps for missions nor others).

The large diff is caused by the editor which replaced some buildable water with normal water (as far as I remember). I can double check the diff if you like, but that will take some time - maybe the diff is smaller when not fixing/changing the water texture.

[Flamefire]

If the maps are broken, what did S2 do with them?

And yes if the patches consist of a few bytes only to fix only that single issue then I'd be reluctantly OK with including them as "auto-fixes" based on map name and content at those positions if @Flow86 also agrees.

[Flow86]

as long as its only a few bytes here and there (and documented what bytes we change and why. Better would be to "load" the file in our format, fix the things and "save" it back? (I mean not patching them on start or so, but when we load it to play it, to fix those things with a hardcoded list for now)

[Flamefire]

@Spikeone Are all patches in the form of replacements? I.e. not deleting or adding bytes.

Could you compile a cleaned, minimal list of patches with descriptions/comments?

Better would be to "load" the file in our format, fix the things and "save" it back? (I mean not patching them on start or so, but when we load it to play it, to fix those things with a hardcoded list for now)

Not really. We do use the original format and only convert it as required into e.g. PlayerInfos and GameWorld.
What I'd do: In GameServer::Start check map.map_path and if the filename matches an entry in the patch-map create a temporary file with the patches applied, load that and remove the file.
It will be saved by the client in the PlayedMaps folder during the transfer

[Spikeone]

@Flamefire yes, only replacement (if I understand the question correctly, the file size is fixed if the mapsize is fixed). Will check what actually changed, but will take some time sadly.