                            THE EDITOR OF CATAN

This document written by David S. Raley
I'm not sure who wrote the editor, but I presume it was Jens Willibald

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 there 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.

