I just wrapped up a Conquest victory, and it occurred to me: the Civ 4 victory movie seems slightly incongruous... Is there any way we could replace it with a victory text and images, or something?

Would it be possible to do something à la what they have in Alpha Centauri, a generic text but with triggers that replace the names of people, nations, religions, etc so that you get the correct ones every time?

A single screen should not be a problem and placing the text should not be too. The only qestion is the priority of a new victory screen ;) Meaning we need to assure that one can play the game to the end first ;)

It's really easy to change the video we only have to make a new bik video. I can do it but like Chalid said it's not a priority.

I guess the focus should be making the AI so smart that noone will ever get to see the Conquest victory movie, thus making it a non-issue:)

I consider it a victory to play 250 turns without a CTD. :) Can someone make a screen for that? ;)

Seriously, new screens are a great idea for down the road. I'd like Wonder screens personally. I hate completing a Wonder and not getting a pop-up full screen still of what I just finished.

I agree with you there. Wonder screens would be cool. But yeah, I guess that's all for down the road.

Going back to this...does anyone know the procedure for making screens? I'd love to start making some.

How about making small quotes for the wonders, like in Alpha Centauri?

How about making small quotes for the wonders, like in Alpha Centauri?

Yeah, but we need a screen to put them on. That's what I don't know how to do yet. A simple screen like the tech pop-up screen with a pic and quote would be perfect.

Speaking of quotes do we plan voice overs for the technologies when the tech tree is finished? I could do some texts for magical techs in Latin and Middle Egypt language.

Hmm how about simply using the Pedia texts (or shortened versions) for wonder screens? Or even Adapt part of the Wonder Pedia. That should be doable quite easily.

I do not remember how the wonders in Alpha Centari were. Were that voiceovers or just text quotes (most likely both), or videos?

Edit: Doing popups in phython should be simple. I think either talchas or Kael could do them in a minute. (I did never but so i think it would take me 10-20 minutes to do one ;) )

I think SMAC was video, but there was a still screen as well. I think.

I have no problem with anything being used as the Wonder screen so long as something pops up to remind me what I just built! I want to see if this Google SketchUp I d/led can make some pics to put onto screens.

We might want to use the Pedia Pics (the actual buildings, but not until later when they are nice... right now they just suck ;) )

We might want to use the Pedia Pics (the actual buildings, but not until later when they are nice... right now they just suck ;) )

Fine by me, but not to be more obtuse than normal.....how do you make the screens and have the game call them up?

What tools/programs do you need and is it XML, python, other?

python it is. youll have to trigger it on some onBuilt-event (Kael wil know which one.)

The screen itself consists only of some lines (i'd guess ~50 to 100) of phython code. Nothing esle needed (except eventually the pics and the quotes (which most probably would be the pedia entries as you otherwise would need an new XML tag for each wonder (meaning a SDK change) oh for the pics you need an XML addition too, or you customize the screens for each wonder (that would mean 50 to 100 lines + 2 lines per wonder) ))

Edit: no problem for the wounder as they already have a tag for pics/videos, so you need the pic the text and the screen template (phyton code)

It would be nice with some well-made art we nicked from somewhere else, where possible. Bigger versions of the buttons, perhaps?

I'm thinking of going hunting into CivIII. I played a lot of D&D:Mystara, Master of Myrror, and WH. There are a lot of nice static Wonder screens there.

Chalid - will something like this work? There are tons of nice pcx files...

Does anyone have Civ II: Test of Time? I seem to recall that there were some fairly nice pictures for the Fantasy playmode, but I do not have the cd anymore.

It would be nice with some well-made art we nicked from somewhere else, where possible. Bigger versions of the buttons, perhaps?

Missed this somehow. How good do buttons look when blown up big enough for a screen?

Not good :(

Not good :(

Was the not good for the button idea or for every idea we've had?

button ...

Whew. I'll stay quiet now and let you ponder making the Wonder screens work. It'll kill me, but I can stay quiet...

So i im well fed now and have a question for you Woodelf.

Were do you want the information box for the wonder to be placed?

Richt now i gve it to the upper left but bottom right may be better.

What do you think?

Bottom center or bottom right may be better. What if the screen itself were more rectangular, but had that star center stay the same (square), and then put the info box below it without overlapping the center graphic?

All in all that's a great start Chalid!

Im reusing the old wonder scrren at the moment (as this seemed the simplest solution, so id did not want to change the size of the img, as it allows to use Vanilla Videos as well. Rebuilding it from scratch would be possible, but maybe to big an effort. And most important the only interesting thing is that a picture is shown and that you get notifed for building a wonder. The information is rather unimportat as you usually already know it when you start the wonder, dont you ;)

http://img347.imageshack.us/img347/9748/bild29kz.th.jpg (http://img347.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bild29kz.jpg) http://img421.imageshack.us/img421/1169/bild33id.th.jpg (http://img421.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bild33id.jpg)

For the second one the problem might be that the text will be extremly hard to read if that part of the pic is bright. on the other hand as stated above you usually know what the wonder does anyway.

The star would of course be the wonder pic. i just choose the first dds i stumbled over, just in case you are wondering...

I think it might depend on the pic for which placement is best. The upper left placement text looks clearer in your screenies, but I think bottom anywhere is better since we can make the pics have less importance at the bottom of the screen.

Ok here you go
just drop it into phython/Screens

the respective dds have to be set in xml/art/CIV4WonderMovies.xml
And the right string in the <WonderMovie>-Tag of the CIV4Buildings.xml has to be set.

The size for the images is
width 720
Height 480
so best choose multiples of them. And when using gimp choose DXT1 compression for your dds.

We can adjust the placement of the info box later on without problems.

Wow, that was fast! Thanks Chalid. Of course now I have to work instead of play....

Slave driver! :p

I'm sure I'll have more noob questions. I can think of some already, but I'll try to solve them myself first.

It actually was not much of a change. the only thing was making sure that the info box appears (which did not in vanilla when you use static videos) and playing around with its placement ;)

Here goes....

I took a pic from a CivIII mod, converted it to dds, and set it up in XML.

I'll post a screenie if it works. ;)

Damn, no pop-up screen.

So I took the Civ4BuildingXML and added ART_DEF_MOVIE_CAT_LIB to the Catacomb Library.

In ArtDefinesMovie xml I created a ART_DEF_MOVIE_CAT_LIB and set the path to a folder with the library.dds

I also put your screen into the Python screens folder.

Okay, what blond noob thing did I forget?

did you set just the path or did you add that library.dds at the end, too?
Otehrwise i'll check if there is something else to be done. Have you enabled (or manually disabled) movies in your civ4 ini?

I created a folder Assets\art\movies\Wonders and put the dds there. In the ArtDefines I set the path to Assets/Art/Movies/Wonders/Library.dds.

I haven't ever touched my movie settings in civ4 ini.

How did you get your screenies?

just used vanilla CIV and changed the movie path of stonehenge. Ill look into int once more tomorrow. its late here already.

No hurry. I could have done something wrong as well.

Wonder movie are bik video. I have already did some video for Kael but we didn't use it. If we want i can do movie for the wonders.

Here an old bik movie (http://membres.lycos.fr/coteleger/main/video/Sound_veil2.bik)

If we wanted we could also use teh religios video scheme, tehrefor only a nif is needed. But i think we best try to get Woodlefst static Wonder screens running as they are cheap to produce.

Cheap is good!

Wonder are bik video and religions are just nif.

But if Woodelf find some image i can edit them and make a really small video (only an image transition and maybe add a soundtrack)

Here an example of what I can do. It's an animated gif so it not the same quality than a bik video and there no sound on the preview but i can add some sounds too.

http://membres.lycos.fr/coteleger/main/video/library.gif

Wow Roland! So that pic I uploaded worked? Very cool.

Chalid - I know the dragon is top priority, but any thoughts on these screens and their ease of making useful by you? :D