Stratlas Documentation

Latest version: (n/a)

Last updated: Nov 17, 2010 - Greg Kennedy

Table of Contents

• About
• Installing Stratlas
• Configuring
• Running Stratlas
• List of Supported Games
• Getting Help

About

Stratlas is a tool for rendering 2d maps of popular Real-Time Strategy games to standalone image files. It aims for pixel-perfect accuracy (that is, what is rendered is exactly what you would see in-game) and support for many different RTS games.

Stratlas is written using the wxWidgets toolkit, to provide cross-platform GUI support with little effort. The official project webpage is http://stratlas.sourceforge.net. There is no "official release" at this time, the latest version must be installed and compiled from SVN.

Installing Stratlas

There is no official release of Stratlas at this time. If you would like to try out the application, you must check out the code from SVN and build it yourself. Instructions for Linux follow:

• Get the wxWidgets development toolkit for your distribution. In many cases, it will be named something like "wxGTK-devel". 2.8 is the working version, though 2.6 may also work correctly.
• Get subversion, if you don't have it. If it is not present on your system, install a subversion package for your distro.
• Check out the code:
  

    svn co https://stratlas.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/stratlas/trunk stratlas

• Try to compile it with these commands:

    cd stratlas
    make

Configuring

One day, Stratlas will have a settings dialog within the application to make configuring easy. But until then, settings are stored in the local stratlas.ini file. Simply edit it with a text editor.

Lines with a # are comments. Blank lines are ignored. The format for settings is one of these, depending on if the value is a flag or if it takes a value:

  TAG
  TAG	VALUE

The settings are:

• Warcraft 1
  • WAR1_DIR [path]
    Folder containing the Wacraft 'DATA.WAR' file - e.g. C:\WARCRAFT\DATA
• Warcraft 2
  • WAR2_DIR [path]
    Folder containing the Wacraft II 'MAINDAT.WAR' or 'DATA.MPQ' file - e.g. C:\WAR2\DATA
  • WAR2_ISBNE
    If your copy of Warcraft II is the Battle.net edition, this switch must be enabled.
  • WAR2_DRAWPSTART
    Enables drawing player starts (X / O icons) on the produced image.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn
  • CNCTD_DIR [path]
    Folder containing the CNC:TD .MIX files - e.g. C:\CNC95

Running Stratlas

The main window of Stratlas should look something like the image above. The left panel is the Work List, which holds a list of files for processing. The right panel is a file browser.

Use the file browser on the right to locate your map files. When you have selected one (or more, using ctrl / shift + click), click the Add button in the center to append the files to the Work List. Files can be removed from the work list by highlighting and then clicking Remove.

Once you are satisfied with the list, click the Process button. Stratlas will travel down the work list, automatically detecting the file type of each map and rendering a .PNG image for the files. The output file name will be the original filename plus a .png extension. (For example, rendering "war8.pud" will produce a "war8.pud.png" file in the same folder).

Rendering progress can be monitored by watching the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen. This will update as each file is being worked on. When no processing is occurring, the status bar instead shows the current directory for the File Browser.

Special Notes:

• CNC_TD: these maps are distributed as a .ini and a .dat file. Add only the INI file in Stratlas - the .dat will be located automatically, assuming the files are stored in the same directory and similarly named.

List of Supported Games

• Warcraft 1 (.SAV, .NET)
  Fully supported.
• Warcraft 2 (.PUD)
  Fully supported, DOS version only (non-BNE).
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn
  Partially supported: terrain only.
• Total Annihilation
  Partially supported: terrain only.

Getting Help

If you are having problems with Stratlas, try these steps:

• Check the Frequently Asked Questions to see if your problem is answered there.
• Send the developer an email: kennedy.greg@gmail.com. Please be as specific as possible when reporting your problem.