Map Editor Update, Feb. 2022

I've just completed a big update to the map editor which I want to tell you a little bit about. In short:

- I've re-written a big portion of the code relating to how maps are saved.
- Solved a huge security vulnerability which I discovered related to map saving.
- There is now a significantly faster map saving process.
- Maximum file size for the map background has been increased from 20 to 32MB.
- Maximum file size for city/country/unit images has been increased from 1 to 10MB.
- Fixed a bunch of bugs throughout the Map & Scenario editors.

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The full story, if you want to know:

About one week ago I was passing the weekend working on atWar (because, apparently, that's what I do for "fun" on the weekends). I was digging into the Map Editor code to fix a couple things the Meta Team needed related to our forthcoming World Map 2.0. While doing that I happened to discover a horrible security vulnerability which I had never noticed before. It was so bad that I immediately took down the entire Map Editor to prevent anyone from exploiting it.

Even though the vulnerability had been there for years -- definitely from before I was around -- I just couldn't conscience leaving it up after I discovered it. It's one thing when you don't know it exists, but to knowingly leave something that bad there would have been unpardonable.

The problem was part of the code that handles the saving of maps. I had been wanting to replace the map saving code for a long time anyway, for other reasons -- mostly because it was so terribly slow and inefficient. So I set out to re-write the entire map-saving functionality.

At first I thought I could do it over the weekend, but that quickly proved too optimistic as one day turned into another. I ended up working on it non-stop (except for sleep breaks) for 6 days. I literally put every other thing I had to do on hold and worked on this exclusively. I also had to cut back my goal of replacing ALL the map saving code and settle for just the most important parts of it, or else it would have taken a month and I couldn't afford to neglect my other tasks that long.

In the end though, I did replace significant portions of the map-saving code, and I'm happy to say the end result is definitely faster and more efficient. According to Mobster, a big map that used to take him 10 minutes to save, now takes only 3 minutes. For me, cloning the World Map and then saving it used to take about 2 minutes -- now about 30 seconds.

While I also fixed several bugs along the way, please note, I have NOT fixed everything. Not by a long shot. There are still plenty of other bugs floating around in the map editor, and I will keep chipping away at them as time goes by. If you happen to find one, please let me know by opening a bug report here: https://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=39713. (I'm saying this now because I know there will be people who come along later and say "Dave, you said you fixed the map editor, so why am I still getting (insert bug here)??" -- I haven't "fixed the map editor", I only fixed a small part of it!)

I've also made progress on another project which I call the "Map Unbugging Project" (or the "Map Un-fucking Project", if you prefer)... I'll post separately about that soon, but suffice to say I've been going through and fixing a lot of broken maps that have been sitting around collecting dust. Keep an eye on the Map Unbugging Log for updates.

This sounds like a lot more work than removing event limit.

Also Death of Rome is an inaccessible map from an account that was either banned or deleted I don't even remember, don't know why you'd go out of your way to fix it.