The primary problem of People's General map management is that each map is designated by number. That made a lot of sense and was convenient back in 1998. It does not make sense today, but that is what we are stuck with. And this is why I am now making this request to agree to designate a block of map numbers for Panzer General II maps and thereby incorporate Panzer General II maps into PeG.
Years ago, Luis Guzman kindly made the tool to convert Panzer General II .s16 and .map files for use within People's General. What that tool does is blindly convert the .s16 into .shp without renaming the files (and change the references within the corresponding .map file) to avoid the stock .shp files in People's General. So, for example, the tool would convert map00XX.s16 into map00XX.shp, which corresponds to Prokhorovka. Guzman's tool would test to see if there is a stock .shp file to avoid overwriting the stock file, which in this case corresponds to Sakhalin, but any attempt to incorporate Prokhorovka from Panzer General II into People's General would require additional manual work. (That is, the converted .shp file would have to be renumbered and the .map file reference changed.)
Back in those days, none of us had multiple TB hard disks and no one thought we can repackage the games. So every attempt to incorporate Panzer General II maps into People's General were one-off efforts by each person.
However, that no longer makes sense in 2022. There are very few of us left to play the game. The game does not even run on modern Windows from the original CD. All of us practically have to rely on re-packaged versions of the game to even play it. And those of us on this forum are basically the "government" of what remains of the game. I am therefore writing to request if we can all agree to reserve and designate a set block within PeG for .shp files converted from Panzer General II. (Micha, you are practically "king" of this government, so this is practically your decision!)
There are 32 maps within Panzer General II, numbered from 00 to 31. Maybe we can agree that 100 to 131 within PeG should be reserved for these? 50 to 81? 300 to 331? Since People's General stock maps go from 00 to 22, we can also simply start the Panzer General II maps from 23 to 54? The key to whatever we agree to is that we avoid blocks within PeG that are already used by other modifications. (Micha, you are the best person to answer this! The PeG 3.0 downloaded from peoplesgeneral.de show that some "reservations" in the 500, 600, and 700 range, but nothing very systematic.)
If we can agree on a good number range and reserve a block for the Panzer General II maps, I am happy to do the work to make the necessary file renaming from converted .shp files and alter the references in the .map files. Then we can create a downloadable package for the .shp and .map files from Panzer General II maps for PeG and maybe even incorporate these files into the 3.0 release.
And when there is done, no one will ever again have issues installing Panzer General II maps into People's General again. And there will no longer be conflicts that require swapping of maps and so forth.
Thanks!
