Cities and area borders on the world map

Not really that important issues, but here goes:

How many cities there will be on the map when the game comes out? I assume that there will be more than on the current build? Just seemed a bit weird that a place like Budapest is included, but not Berlin, Paris or Rome for example.

Also, I might the be the only one who cares about this, but are the borders between various areas final? Some of them seem a bit strange, like the border between Finland and Soviet Union, which seems closer to the pre-WW2 border or the "Greater Finland" border that some irredentists dreamed of during the war.

Might as well mention two typos I noticed in the game, "Dehli" and "Ukranian".

Ha ha good on ya for pointing this out. If I remember correctly, back in the early days on the old forum there was some talk about users being able to add cities around the world. Haven't heard about that in a while... Will wait to see if Sathra can remember more, or Chris can confirm/deny this

You should be able to add cities yourself already (in the file called cities.xml).

What I think Chris said about this before was that the team would be appreciative if testers would add cities and give location for stuff, since alot of it is best-guess.

but if people do that for their games, how do they get that information back to the team?

Yeah the cities will be updated. We'll look into the borders too, both of which will happen if we transition to the new GUI style because we'll have to redo the world graphics.

I thought I had the USSR borders reasonably accurate though?

But how can users add more cities to the game, and then give that info to you (and therefore more chance of a terror mission...)

Pm? New suggestion thread?

It never actually got asked lol.

no no i mean in a recognisable form. Rather than just saying 'i want this city in the game' they can do all the work (ie. the exact location etc) and then give that info to the devs...

It's easy - add it to Cities.xml and add a line for the city name / country (if the country is not already in the game) to strings.xml. The position is defined by the co-ordinates on the map, which are viewable on the topbar when you're viewing the Geoscape.

And then the testers send that Cities.xml file to you?

Or make a new thread full of names and co-ordinates somewhere?

Interesting, perhaps I'll try doing this when I have the time and energy for it.

And yeah, I think the USSR borders are reasonably accurate, just that being from Finland I noticed the weird border in that part of the world (looks like Murmansk is part of Finland etc. http://euroheritage.net/warsawpact.jpg).

Perhaps the straight line in eastern Europe also looks a bit strange, but as I said I'm probably the only one who even noticed and/or cares. Besides it would probably be too much extra work to make the borders more accurate.

If people want to do that, it's best to compile a list in the forums rather than sending them across and compiling them into single list at my end. If it's done in a public place then it should hopefully avoid a lot of duplication.

The only thing I hesitate about is whether the new GUI will lead to the cities moving. We'll have to see.

So maybe hold off on doing it for a little while longer?

The only thing I hesitate about is whether the new GUI will lead to the cities moving. We'll have to see.

A MORTAL ENGINES CAMEO! Xenonauts incorporates some ideas of municipal darwinism in order to beat the aliens!

hmmmm moving cities, we could hide them all in australia, they'd never look there =p

I think that the correct world map is one of the key features of this game. You have a feeling of reality.

That would be very cool if you had a terror mission in a town that you living. The game can find out yur position during update by ip address or smth to create a mission in your neiborhood with a certain probability. At least i have always liked a possibility of a terror mission in Moscow

This thread got me to look through the cities.xml stuff and so on and it occured to me that the USSR has Saint Petersburg listed. If the game takes place in the '70s then I'm 99% sure that it should still be Leningrad, didn't change back until the late '80s/early '90s IIRC.

Just something small I noticed, not sure if it's been mentioned before or changed internally.

Yeah, we should really create a thread specifically for cities and stuff.

Edit: Done. Find it here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php?295-Official-Geoscape-Map-Corrections-and-Additions.&p=3318&viewfull=1#post3318