http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student?skyline=true&s=i

A woman buys an apple from a local farmer. The woman now has an apple and the farmer has money. Both parties have made, what they believe, is an even trade.

Yet, time and time again we see people who feel entitled to something beyond the original trade. In this case, the woman buys an apple and now expects the farmer to help her out on something unrelated.

What amazes me is how quick the media is to sympathize with the one asking for something beyond what they paid for simply because the other party is a CEO.

We don't normally release a Friday update but given the significant improvements in 1.08 we didn't want them marred by a few oversights.

Here's what's new in Friday's update to v1.08 that should be live by 10pm EST.

Friday update:

****** 
* Gameplay / Balance * 

+ New Sovereign Ability: Wealthy +1 gildar per turn 
+ New Sovereign Ability: Green Thumb +2 food per turn 
+ Organized Sovereign Ability removed 
+ Shop Costs moved to be a formula (unless specified in the XML) 
+ Research costs increased 
+ More balancing of initial resource seeding 
+ Fertile land availability increased 
+ Long Bows now cost 40 gildar to construct 
+ Default shop values on weapons and armor removed from XML (you can overrride the formula still) 
+ Teleport/Blink mana cost increased from 5 to 15. 
+ Eliminated criminal adventurers (caused confusion amongst players) 
+ Pioneer Kit Gold cost reduced from 10 to 5, Materials cost increased from 1 to 10. 
+ Organized ability added to general special abilities 
+ Late game monster respawning reduced. 
+ Increased movement speed of units in tactical battles
+ Lots of spell damage tweaks. 

****** 
* Bug Fixes * 

+ Added logic to stop spells from dealing max damage every time. 
+ Restored old terrain/tile movement costs until that can be better addressed. 
+ Adjusted the combat speed from 2 to 3 for the base male/female sov units. 
+ Fixed bug where Karavox, Magnar, and Verga sovs only had 1.0 for combat speed. 
+ Fixed bug that made it not load any maps except mp maps 
+ Fixed bug resetting default map size to tiny 
+ Fixed bug where rapidly clicking the fortify action for a unit twice or more would cause the game to hang 
+ Fixed bug where, after unhiding the game lobby wnd once, human players would get assigned team 1 when joining a custom game, instead of an unused team ID 
+ Fixed crash when restarting new campaign after you load a saved campaign game 
+ Fixed bug where Cancel button would not show up on mutliplayer Join Game with Password screen 
+ Fixed an error where old saves with old data had logic conflicts with new code that made spells miss.

 

I'm putting up this thread as a way for us to just generally talk about the game, brain storm ideas for the future, etc.

So here's my stream of consciousness to get it started:

What I'd like to see happen is for Elemental: War of Magic to continue to be refined with its existing game mechanics largely intact other than the change to the mana system and UI update scheduled for v1.1.

Beyond that, the evolution of the Elemental TBS would be delivered via expansions, sequels, etc. like every other traditional game. This way, we can introduce pretty substantial gameplay changes without people feeling like the War of Magic version is some sort of test tube of game design experimentation.

For brevity, call these A, B, C where A is Elemental: War of Magic and B and C are some sort of future expansions.  B would be free to everyone and C would be free to those who own the game by September 30th.

So with A, the game mechanics revolve around exploring the world, exploiting world resources, expanding your control, and exterminating enemies. A will evolve as we go to 1.1 with more techs and improvements that let players convert 1 resource that they have a lot in to one they are lacking in. Spells will draw from a global mana pool and the UI will be cleaned up and content across the board expanded on. For good or bad, minus bugs, A is what we originally conceived of for War of Magic and it should rise or fall based on that.

B will be a new Elemental title (an expansion pack ala GalCiv II: Dark Avatar). It is important that B come out sooner rather than later. Users who like/enjoy A can stick with A but users who find the combat in Elemental too simplistic or are unsatsified with some other core game element will hopefully have much of this addressed in B.

C will also be a new Elemental title (ala GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor). C involves more wholesale gameplay changes and would take quite a bit longer to come out.  A and B would continue to be supported (just like we did with GalCiv and Sins) but I would picture C adding a great deal more depth to the overall game across the board.    

So as we move forward, when people say "I think something should be like this" we will think about those requests and put them either in the A, B, or C buckets.

So for example, a user commented today that the combat should support flanking and there should be taxes and that there should be easy ways to convert resources and such.  If we concluded that this is a direction we'd want to take the game into, it would go into the C bucket.  It's way too radical for A, not doable for B but would be doable for C.

On the other hand, having the tactical battles eliminate "action points" but instead go with initiative on a per unit basis is too much for A (that's not the system we had in mind for War of Magic) but is something we would do for B.

And so on.

So feel free to use this thread to talk about pretty much anything you want. It's just a back and forth with us.

V1.08 is up as well as v1.08B which turns on MP.  The MP version is only listed as "beta" because we want players to know that we're going to be adding AI players as an option in custom games which should be enabled in v1.09 (next week).

Here's a running tally of what we're tweaking for Friday's (today) update:

1. NPC Recruiting behavior change better communicated
2. Organized talent is being removed
3. New talent: Green Thumb: +2 food per turn
4. New talent: Wealthy: +1 gildar per turn
5. More consistent starting resources
6. Look at why custom made maps aren't showing up
7. See about the tiny maps always being the default (I think it's a MP thing)
8. Reduction of equipment costs in shops (the eco balance is the first step to having weapons and equipment more consistent in cost)
9. Tweak of monster spawning
10. Option for animation removal in tactical battles
11. Pathfinding/Terrain tweak/fix
12. Longbow costs 40 not 4 now.

 

---------------------------------------------------
----------- Elemental v1.08b Change Log -----------
---------------------------------------------------

We are on the process of putting up v1.08 of Elemental: War of Magic.

Here’s a change log over v1.07:

+ LOD optimizations across improvements and tile designs
+ Continued memory optimization
+ AI handles its sovereign more intelligently
+ AI more effective at going after targets of opportunity
+ AI sovereign is more careful about going into enemy territory
+ AI has new APIs for determining whether there are targets of opportunity in the area
+ Balance pass on resource distribution
+ Base tech cost changed from 4 to 5
+ Merchants/Money Changers now require 1 food to construct
+ Study/Archivist now require 1 gildar per turn to maintain
+ Gildar deposit now seeded near starting location
+ Tracker talent cost changed from 15 to 10
+ Organized talent cost changed from 10 to 20
+ Combat Rating calculation altered in an attempt to be a more accurate gauge of lethalness
+ Fewer resources spawned per 1000 tiles.
+ Fewer minor factions spawned.
+ Added scalars to attack and defence for units who are in home territory or foreign territory, modifiable in ElementalDefs.xml
+ Territory scalars now work as Empire v Fallen (e.g. Kingdom guy on Fallen territory gets penalty, etc).
+ Updated formula for gildar given when killing a given unit
+ Child essence is no longer modified by spawn rating, but is instead a value between 50% and 100% of the more powerful parent's essence.
+ Updated TerrainTypes.xml to make Forests and Swamps take 2 moves
+ Changing the “IncreaseMorale” modifier attribute to “AdjustMorale. It’s more clear for the modders.
-Revamp of the way offensive spells hit/miss and deal their damage
+HIT/MISS is deteremined by an attacker roll (minDamage – maxDamage) and by the defender roll (0-DEF)
+Values can now be specified as a MinValue and a MaxValue rather than just a Value (support for constant value spells is still supported)
+If a MinValue and a MaxValue is specified, the Value is defined by a rand roll between the two numbers based on the modifiers internal rand roll.
+Updated descriptions for all core spellbook spells to show bonus damage from INT and bonus damage from shards in the spell description.
+The SpellbookWnd has been updated to properly display the damage range if there is one, and the constant damage if there isn’t one.
+All core spells that were using stats to calculate the value but didn’t have a ValueOwner specified have been fixed.
+The elemental shards unit stats now default to 0 instead of 1. The calculations in the existing spells have been redone to reflect this.
+ Fixed BURNING BLADE spell to appropriately increase attack.
+ Fixed SHIELD OF FIRE spell to appropriately increase defense.
+ Fixed CRUSH SPIRIT spell to appropriately decrease morale.
+ Fixed BRAVERY spell to appropriately increase morale.
+ Fixed DRAIN LIFE spell to appropriately transfer HP from target to caster.
+ Changed the display code for the main UI bar to round attack and defense rather than truncate.
+ Hooked up the CTRL+ARROW and SHIFT-ARROW camera rotation and movement hotkeys to tactical.
+ Added save game descriptions
+ Fixed bug where dialogs from triggers in the campaign (like moving beyond where you should build a city) would pop up many times when a unit moved into that tile.
+ Fixed AI bug where it was doing deficit spending and creating units still
+ Removed the max spell points entry from the affected stats in the level up wnd, since it isn't affected by any unit stats anymore
+ Fixed bug where non-aggression pact wasn't being checked for when left-clicking on a unit in attack mode
+ Fixed modifier in Refined_Economics_Amarian_MP to modify A_Gold player ability instead of A_Wealth (which doesn't exist)
+ Fixed golem animation pack (commented out an animation that was missing and causing t-poses)
+ Fixed crash when making a mountain in map editor
+ Fixed trading your spouse (if she was a recruited NPC) in the regular unit trade
+ Perceived value stuff gets hidden when arranging marriages, instead of showing whatever was selected last
+ Entries for kids when arranging marriages now use a male and female icon to denote boy and girl, instead of the words in parentheses after the name
+ Fixed "..." from string overflowing for the divider title when trading or arranging a marriage
+ Fixed the divider title not ever changing from "And" once the arrange marriage screen was shown
+ Fixed display of tooltip text and color text on Customize Faction window
+ Tweaked SetToolTip to calculate the necessary size of the window more accurately, to fix bug where tooltips were sometimes being truncated
+ Fixed bug where clicking a new destination while the unit was moving would cause the unit to get a free move
+ You can no longer set a units destination while it is moving
+ Fixed Refined Housing and Refined Economics techs (and their fallen equivalents) so that they correctly provide the bonus they say they do
+ When a unit inside a city or an army is selected and asked to cast a spell, that is the unit that is used for spellcasting now, instead of having it just fail (in a city) or try to cast the spell from the leader of the army
+ Fixed bug where summoning a unit while in a city would cause that unit to be summoned in an army with you within that city (causing weird behavior), now just stations the unit in the city with you
+ Fixed bug where raise land spell would not work on all land category terrain types, like swamp or rugged terrain. Now, if a land tile is not hills, it raises that land to hills, instead of checking for only some terrain types
+ Fixed a bug where, in the faction editor, you could select ability bonus options for free by selecting and deselecting them, and then spinning the race spinner, caused by deselection not updating the faction config correctly
+ Fixed units that finished training on the same turn as an autosave not being there when the autosave was loaded
+ Fixed players not being able to select their city level up bonuses or tech breakthroughs on loading an autosave if they were earned that turn, by having the local player mark themselves as needing to get user input for these things instead of unhiding the windows to allow the choice right away during CWorld::EndTurn, and not letting the user choose until after the next turn starts and the autosave has been made. If one of thses autosaves is loaded, the local player will be allowed to choose their tech breakthroughs and city bonuses once the map is unhidden. This keeps us from having to delay an autosave and the start of the next turn by waiting for the user to choose their bonuses, instead making that choice part of the start turn logic after the autosave has been made and saving the mark saying the player will get to choose at the start of the next turn.
+ Fixed treaty turn counts not matching if an autosave was loaded
+ Based on confusion in the forums, removed ability to automatically unlock a spell in the learning queue if it makes it to the front of the queue when the player has enough research to buy it, so that users rearranging their spell learning queue don't have their spell points silently taken away while shuffling spells around, if they didn't intend to learn that spell next
+ Now it always takes at least one turn to learn any spell
+ Fixed bug where tile highlights in tactical battle would disappear after an ALT+TAB
+ Fixed bug where trees would not look correct in all cases after loading a gamesave.
+ Fixed an issue that was allowing counter attacks against units with abilities of type DoesNotProvokeCounterattacks.
+Fixed an issue that was causing modifiers applied in tactical battles to persist after the battle.
- This fixes the bug that causes XP and Gildar rewards after battles to be negatively skewed if the enemy unit combat rating was lowered due to debuffs.
+Fixed an issue with skipping turns in tactical battles that would cause a stuck turn if done when the unit being skipped was in motion. - Pressing spacebar now sets a tactical units moves to zero AND cancels their destination.

For those who want to play v1.08 in multiplayer mode, you will need to set Impulse to show Pre-release versions:

We designated multiplayer as “beta” because we disabled playing against AI until next week. I had written a lot of AI code this week that is in the single player version but had not been adequately tested for MP. We didn’t want to give players the impression that was considered the feature set in multiplayer as being all that’s coming.

Next week we anticipate releasing v1.09 which will continue to address issues that were not found in the initial release, improve computer AI further and provide it and other new MP features.  After that, we will begin focusing on v1.1 which will be the first post-release update that is designed specifically to extending game play.

Anyone who has performance or technical (stability) problems with this build please make sure you you let us know. At this stage, the technical issues that were present at launch should be fully addressed. If this isn’t the case for you, let us know as much as you can about your system as we will personalize our efforts as much as possible.

We are anxious to move forward to begin our traditional policy of extending the game to suit the desires of the gaming community. 

Other notes:

1. We have implemented an option for quick moves in tactical battles but it was not checked-in in time for this build.
2. We intend to provide an option for the amount of gildar that will be present in the world (both in terms of loot and the amount of gold that gold deposits provide). We dramatically reduced the amount of loot that monsters provide because it was not intended for players to run their economy "harvesting" wolves and other creatures but rather supplement. We recognize that others enjoy this and will address this as an option in future versions.

Version 1.08 is now available

Known issues:

1. If you are loading a saved game created with a previous version, there may be some anomalous behaviors in tactical battles with direct damage magical spells (we may release an update to address this).
2. Some outlaw adventurers are appearing as if they are recruitable, this is a UI issue that will be addresed in the next update.

 

Friday update:

******
* Gameplay / Balance *

+ New Sovereign Ability: Wealthy +1 gildar per turn
+ New Sovereign Ability: Green Thumb +2 food per turn
+ Organized Sovereign Ability removed
+ Shop Costs moved to be a formula (unless specified in the XML)
+ Research costs increased
+ More balancing of initial resource seeding
+ Fertile land availability increased
+ Long Bows now cost 40 gildar to construct
+ Default shop values on weapons and armor removed from XML (you can overrride the formula still)
+ Teleport/Blink mana cost increased from 5 to 15.
+ Eliminated criminal adventurers (caused confusion amongst players)
+ Pioneer Kit Gold cost reduced from 10 to 5, Materials cost increased from 1 to 10.
+ Organized ability added to general special abilities
+ Late game monster respawning reduced.
+ Increased movement speed of units in tactical battles
+ Lots of spell damage tweaks. 

******
* Bug Fixes *

+ Added logic to stop spells from dealing max damage every time.
+ Restored old terrain/tile movement costs until that can be better addressed.
+ Adjusted the combat speed from 2 to 3 for the base male/female sov units.
+ Fixed bug where Karavox, Magnar, and Verga sovs only had 1.0 for combat speed.
+ Fixed bug that made it not load any maps except mp maps
+ Fixed bug resetting default map size to tiny
+ Fixed bug where rapidly clicking the fortify action for a unit twice or more would cause the game to hang
+ Fixed bug where, after unhiding the game lobby wnd once, human players would get assigned team 1 when joining a custom game, instead of an unused team ID
+ Fixed crash when restarting new campaign after you load a saved campaign game
+ Fixed bug where Cancel button would not show up on mutliplayer Join Game with Password screen
+ Fixed an error where old saves with old data had logic conflicts with new code that made spells miss.

They’re staging v1.08 tonight with the hopes for a general release tomorrow (no promises).  The bulk of the team’s efforts have been on taking care of compatibility, performance, memory and stability both single player and multiplayer.

In the near term, multiplayer is on the box so this has to be delivered and we apologize for the delay. After the initial launch of Elemental: War of Magic, we went back and did a post-mortem on how things could be done better and through this has emerged an updated QA policy. This has in turn meant that the multiplayer launch, which was originally going to be just a flip of a switch has gone through considerable more QA (and will continue to go through more QA) to improve the general quality going forward.

That said, I want to emphasize that while Elemental supports multiplayer, it is not a game designed for it. It’s designed primarily to be played in a sandbox single player. We are interested in feedback though from the multiplayer community on things they’d like to see.

In terms of single player, we have made a number of changes to balance that should make things more enjoyable and make the computer players more challenging. The spells and such have gotten a work over to make sure they are behaving as we intend them to.

Also, we have a poll up for users based on what areas they’d like to see us enhance going into the future the most;

https://www.elementalgame.com/journals

We don’t have a specific time for v1.08 tomorrow other than “sometime tomorrow, EST”. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, I wrote the general outline of how to make a quest.

Today, we’ll get into the nitty gritty:

My QuestPackage has these objects in it:

1. The Quest Definition
2. The Quest Location
3. The Goodie Hut (Quest Destination)
4. Tile Design of the Location
5. Tile Design of the Destination (the goodie hut)

Items 4 and 5 are generated by the tile editor in the workshop, I just pasted them in.

The Quest Definition

I.                    Quest  Definition

a.       Display Name

b.      Repeatable (will it be spawned multiple times? 1 yes, 0 no)

c.       TriggerChance (% odds that it will be triggered when the trigger condition is met)

d.      Image (PNG of the image)

e.      QuestClass (Minor or Major. Completing a Major quest ends the game)

f.        TriggerType (What causes this quest to occur, we support the Location as well as other triggers such as population, turns, etc. This can be used to create random events which we’ll talk about in the future)

g.       TriggerOrigin (where does the event occur?)

h.      SpawnRating (how advances is the quest on a scale from 1 to 10)

i.         Description

j.        ShortTextAccept

k.       ShortTextDeny

l.         RewardText (dialog title for your reward)

m.    RewardImage (picture of what you’re getting)

n.      SuccessText (text that comes up when the quest is complete)

o.      GameModifier (message the game to do something)

                                                               i.      ModType  (with the corresponding Attribute options)

1.       GiveItem (attribute is name of item)

2.       Unit (StrVal provides the key and if necessary <Value> provides the amount)

a.       TransferUnitStat

b.      StealUnitStat

c.       Lifesteal

d.      IncreaseDecreaseUnitStats

e.      AdjustUnitStat

f.        AdjustCasterUnitStat

g.       UnlockUnitAbility

h.      CharmTarget

i.         CurHealth

j.        CurMana

k.       ManaBurn

l.         GiveExperience

m.    UnitJoinArmy

n.      TargetMovesBack

o.      SummonUnit (UnitClass provides class name, StrVal provides title)

3.       Player

a.       Treasury

b.      SpellPointBonus

c.       AbilityBonus

d.      EssenceBonusForAllChampions

e.      UnlockResource

f.        UnlockImprovement

g.       UnlockTech

h.      UnlockUnitAction

i.         UnlockCityAction

j.        UnlockSpellbook

k.       UnlockDiplomacyWndAbility

l.         RaiseResourceCap

m.    UpgradeCityWalls

n.      ExposeCity

o.      ExposeSovereign

p.      ExposeGoodieHut

q.      SpawnQuestLocations

r.        UpdateSpawnRating

                                                                                                                                       i.      NPC

                                                                                                                                     ii.      CREATURE

                                                                                                                                    iii.      QUEST

                                                                                                                                   iv.      GOODIEHUT

                                                                                                                                     v.      CRYSTAL

                                                                                                                                   vi.      FOOD

                                                                                                                                  vii.      METAL

                                                                                                                                viii.      SHARD

                                                                                                                                   ix.      GOLD

s.       UpdateRecruitables

                                                                                                                                       i.      SPIDERS

                                                                                                                                     ii.      SHRILLS

                                                                                                                                    iii.      DRATH

                                                                                                                                   iv.      DARKLINGS

                                                                                                                                     v.      UMBERDROTHS

                                                                                                                                   vi.      DROTA

                                                                                                                                  vii.      DRAGONS

                                                                                                                                viii.      DEMONS

t.        MarriageProposal

4.       Map

a.  TransportUnit

b.  PlaceEnvironment

c.  PlaceTerrain

d.  GreaterRaiseLand

e.  RaiseLand

f.  LowerLand

g.  SetEnvironment

h.      ReviveLand

i.         DestroyObjects

j.        RandomTerraform

k.       SummonUnit

l.         CreateGoodieHut

m.    CreateResourceHoard

n.      CreateWorldProp

o.      Reveal

p.      BlockTile

5.       City

a.       SummonRandomGuardian

b.      PlaceEnvironmentOnCity

p.      QuestObjectiveDef

                                                               i.      ObjectiveID (defining its numerical ID)

                                                             ii.      NextObjectiveID (telling it where to go next or -1 if this ends the quest)

                                                            iii.      Description

                                                           iv.      GameModifier

                                                             v.      QuestConditionDef (what determines whether this quest is complete?)

1.       Class (Success of Failure)

2.       Type (what type of condition is it)

a.       ClearGoodieHut (TextData then used to say which goodiehut)

b.      KillMonster (TextData used to identify which monster)

c.       UnitKilled

d.      BuildImprovement

e.      ReturnItemToCapital

f.        ReturnItemToQuestLocation

g.       CheckForItem

h.      ReturnItemToOriginCity

i.         UnitLevelUp

j.        UnitEntersOriginCity

3.       Faction (if applicable)

4.       Flag (AllConditionsMet forces all conditions to be met for it to be a successful quest, RevealTarget is useful for showing the player where the target is)

QuestLocationType

This is used to define the tile that will be used as the quest location. You can (and probably should) use existing quest location types.

GoodieHutType

This is used if you want your quest to spawn a goodie hut to send the player to. You could always just do the “bring me 5 wolf pelts back to me and I’ll give you gold” type quest instead and make sure you are spawning wolves that have the item WolfPelt as their treasure.

Download

To download the full quest here it is:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8051911/Quest_UrgentMessage.zip

You will need to unzip the XML file into your elemental\data\english\core quests directory

(in the future, I have put in the request that a packaged quest can just go into the user’s quest directory)

Other Notes

The hardest thing about making quests right now is the difficulty in testing them. One typo in a quest can make it just not work. This is why I’m lobbying internally (or externally) to get a quest editor made that eases this but will require more documentation. As you can see from above, the quest system is powerful but we’ve only scratched the surface so far.

The Windows "ecosystem" is complex these days. There's Windows XP users, Windows Vista users and Windows 7 users both in 32 and 64 bit versions which require their own versions believe it or not if you want to fully support it.

Our question to you, what would YOU like to see in the next major revision of Object Desktop?

If you don't have Object Desktop already, what are you waiting for?!

www.objectdesktop.com

 

The latest poll shows that people are very interested in us taking a new look at the combat system (https://www.elementalgame.com/journals)

One of the biggest complaints we have seen is that weapons are 1 D N where N is the max the weapon does.

While 1 D N is the same system GalCiv II uses, the difference is that in GalCiv, a ship might have many weapons which would tend to equalize the overall damage.

Simply put, there is too much luck involved in Elemental's combat.

The purpose of this post is to discuss other ways combat could be done.  What suggestions or preferences do you have AND how would you communicate (visually) to the player how such a system would work?

One of the requests from https://forums.elementalgame.com/396283 was to show how quests are done.

Let’s walk through making a simple quest.

Title: “An urgent message”

Objective: Bring Dennis’s Note to the Master of Hounds

Reward: Token of Man’s Best Friend

Step #1: The Quest Location

First, I load up the Builder’s Forge in the Workshop and make a suitable location. This is the home of Dennis Lacros. Dennis has been doing his part to help rid the area of wolves.  He does this by working with a series of Hound Masters who are supplying him and others like him with hounds bred to fend off wolves and make the countryside safer.

He has asked if you can deliver a message to Master Olof, the Master of Hounds, that he has need for another dozen hounds as soon as possible.

Step #2: The Quest Destination

So here I’ve created Master Olof’s place. 

Step 3: Define the Location and Destination

In XML, we have to tie our tile designs to a game object. In this case, a quest location and a quest destination. Quest destinations are just goodie huts (notable locations). The quest locations are objects that trigger the creation of other game objects.

 

 

Step #4: The Quest Definition

This is where I wish I had .NET skillz to whip up a simple quest editor. I’m the most familiar with how the quests work in terms of XML but my .NET skills are weak.  So let me walk you through the XML.

First, to make it easier to distribute to others, I made a new XML file called Quest_UrgentMessage.xml and created a root called <QuestPackage>.

Then I copied and pasted the two tiles I just made (they’re XML) into it.

Then I wrote up the quest definition.

 

Step #5: TESTING the quest

The easiest way I’ve found to actually test a quest is to create a map and put the quest on it and see if it works the way you think it should.

Here’s how I do it.

First, I create two islands. one for me and one for the AI player to keep them out of my way. I put starting point 1 (me) on one island and starting point 2 on the other:

Then I put the quest on the map:

 

Now I load the game and load up that test map I just made.

 

Now, normally at this point we’d toss out the tile because it clearly clashes with the background. This is why it’s so hard to make things that look nice. But anyway, here it is.

Next…

Will put this together and upload the actual source.

To be continued…