Requests for new components (and features) [Archive]

Roland Johansen

Sep 12, 2007, 06:14 PM

Here is another request which might be outside of the concept of this mod.

In BTS, Firaxis decided to add a list of bonuses when you hold the mouse over a trade route. This should make it possible to see how the value of a trade route is determined. However, the calculation often doesn't make sense.

It consists of a base trade route yield plus bonuses. The base trade route yield is (almost) always 1 or 2 and the bonuses can vary depending on whether you're trading with a foreign city or not and whether the city is oversees or not and whether you have a harbour or custom house or no such building.

The reason that the calculation often doesn't make sense is because the base trade route output is dependent on the distance and size of the other city and the value is often a number between 1 and 2. The ingame display rounds it to 1 or 2 which results in strange math.

You can take a look at this bug report (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=234397) for more detailed information.

Now, I know this mod isn't about bug fixing and maybe Firaxis will fix it themselves in the upcoming patch (supposedly arriving within one-two weeks). But on the other hand, you did add a calculation for the commerce production to the city screen and this is similar. However you will decide about this, it's probably best to wait and see what Firaxis does in its upcoming patch.

There is a War Academy article about the way trade route revenues are calculated. It was written before BTS arrived on the market and is thus based on Warlords code, but maybe it can still be useful for you guys when you wish to change this. The article is called Trade Routes (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/trade_routes.php). If the article is correct, then the way the city displays the trade route revenue calculation is incorrect because some bonuses seem to be multiplicative and not additive like the ingame breakdown of trade route revenue suggests.

EmperorFool

Sep 12, 2007, 10:21 PM

alerum68

Sep 13, 2007, 02:38 AM

More and more things I want to do seem to be tied to the DLL. I'm starting to think we'll have to do it to go to the next level.

ruff_hi

Sep 13, 2007, 05:46 AM

Request Feature optional change: An option to change the Reminder mod to not get a pop up during the start of the turn but only an entry in the event log (and mentioned as one of the events during the start of the turn).You have just described its original format ... a message in the log and that was it. The problem I found was that I put in these reminders and then I missed them. Hence, I created the popup up that forces you to act. I think it also writes to the log.

Elandal

Sep 13, 2007, 06:51 AM

My problem with reminders is that the pop up in the beginning of the turn and block other actions so I can do nothing but close it. Then I get whatever other popups there are and promptly forget about the reminders while handling those...
My most common reminder is "whip city x", so what I'd want to do when the popup is up is to go to city X, check whipping situation and either whip or set a new reminder for probably next turn (miscalculations).

EmperorFool

Sep 13, 2007, 11:45 AM

My most common reminder is "whip city x", so what I'd want to do when the popup is up is to go to city X, check whipping situation and either whip or set a new reminder for probably next turn (miscalculations).

I had been toying earlier with the idea of reminder-setting buttons in various places. This is a perfect example. You'd have a button near the production bar on the city screen that, when clicked, only asked you for the number of turns to wait. The reminder message would be set automatically to "Whip <City>" and put an icon over the city (like when a building is completed).

I wonder if there's a way to set popup-style alerts like when you learn a tech that opens a new civic or a new religion spreads to one of your cities. It would popup at the end of the turn so you don't forget. Do any mods you guys play do this?

Roland Johansen

Sep 13, 2007, 07:11 PM

Those are some great ideas, Roland. I tried implementing a new alert (when civs will sign OB) the other night without success. This one is hard to test, but I needed it because I got the strange "almost everyone cancels OB and most trades with you" bug(?) in my game. Killed my tech rate and sent many cities into disarray. Everyone was willing to start up trades immediately, but everyone wanted to "wait and see" about OB. Whatever.

Everyone was either Pleased or Cautious with me, so this makes no sense. It happened the turn that someone was elected as SG of the UN, but I voted for the leader and he was pleased with me. Bizarro-world I guess.

I've also had that one turn when 2 civilisations suddenly stopped their trades with me and closed the borders. I could immediately restart the trades, but the borders needed to stay closed. In my case however, the civilisations weren't that pleased with me and thus I guessed that closing borders somehow also temporarily stopped the trades (which would be a bug, but still). I've seen this reported earlier. I hope it might be fixed in the upcoming patch.
A reminder for open borders could be very useful as sometimes it just takes some random amount of turns before a civilisation will consider (re)opening borders with you.

Regarding the trade routes, the problem with this is that the popup is generated in C++. Our plans don't include modding the DLL at this time, but I'd recommend suggestion this same thing (perhaps just display initial 1/2 value to two decimal places like :gold: and :science:) in the World of Civilization mod or Solver's Unofficial Patch threads.

I'm not familiar with the World of Civilisation mod and I believe that Solver isn't planning to do any more changes until the patch arrives.

Still, I don't expect you to fix everything that I would like to see different in this game. ;)

You have just described its original format ... a message in the log and that was it. The problem I found was that I put in these reminders and then I missed them. Hence, I created the popup up that forces you to act. I think it also writes to the log.

My problem with reminders is that the pop up in the beginning of the turn and block other actions so I can do nothing but close it. Then I get whatever other popups there are and promptly forget about the reminders while handling those...
My most common reminder is "whip city x", so what I'd want to do when the popup is up is to go to city X, check whipping situation and either whip or set a new reminder for probably next turn (miscalculations).

I'm playing in a similar style as Elandal, so I would prefer to see it mentioned in the start of turn event + in the event log. I always check the event log before I end my turn. But I expected that there could be many who would prefer the stronger, more obvious pop-up reminder. So that's why I suggested a best of two worlds: an option to change the Reminder mod to your own preference whether that is a pop-up or a start of turn event + event log or both. The options menu (CTRL Alt O) is one of the strongest points of this mod as it allows you to customise every aspect of this mod to your own preferences. Maybe I wasn't that clear that I just wanted an option and not a change.

It's nice to hear that you like some of my suggestions.

EmperorFool

Sep 13, 2007, 09:42 PM

I definitely like the option to have the reminder appear in two places (each optionally).

I was going through the available events and found "endTurnReady" that looks promising for some serious changes to the alerts. I assume it triggers when the "End Turn" button turns red. This would be a good time to alert you to city growth/starvation, trades, etc.

This is far off in the future stuff since there are high priority items still, but it'd be good to start a discussion on this. The alerts are a very powerful aid to the user, and I think they could be improved (and errors fixed) to great effect.

NikNaks

Sep 16, 2007, 07:17 AM

Just a thought, but would this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=243477) be a good addition?

alerum68

Sep 16, 2007, 10:05 AM

Would be a perfect addition NikNaks.:)

EmperorFool

Sep 17, 2007, 04:04 AM

Request Feature optional change: An option to change the Reminder mod to not get a pop up during the start of the turn but only an entry in the event log (and mentioned as one of the events during the start of the turn).

How's this for a compromise: When the reminder pops up, it also goes into the chat log (I thought it already did this). Also, it asks you if you'd like to show the reminder again next turn.

Note that I tried something far better at first but was denied by Civ4. I had it ask if you wanted to show the reminder again at the end of the turn. If you did, you'd then get to choose to show it again next turn as well. The problem is that Civ4 defines an event called endTurnReady but doesn't fire the event. :mad: Such a tease! I have the code written and committed, but it's commented out since it doesn't work. We're left with the suboptimal solution above. Is this at least helpful?

Before posting this, I reread your suggestion see that I forgot about making the popup optional. I suppose that's possible, but then you'd lose the ability to have the reminder fire again the next turn. Thoughts?

EmperorFool

Sep 17, 2007, 04:14 AM

I tried implementing a new alert (when civs will sign OB) the other night without success.

I must have been really tired or something because the reason it was failing was utterly obvious (and in the error log): a cut-n-paste error. Once I pasted the right function name, voila! I have committed the change.

Let me know of any trouble with this one. If none, I'll add DP, PA and Vassal State as well.

And a variation on this idea. I had created the faded OB/DP icons for the scoreboard but ended up not using them. How about showing the faded version if the civ is willing to trade that item? This way if you miss or forget about the alert, you can always just look at the scoreboard to see who's willing to sign OB or DP. PA makes you a team so there's no icon for that, though.

This might be trickier, but I'd also like a message "Catherine is willing to go to war against Montezuma."

Who wants to learn Python? :D

Roland Johansen

Sep 17, 2007, 07:06 AM

How's this for a compromise: When the reminder pops up, it also goes into the chat log (I thought it already did this). Also, it asks you if you'd like to show the reminder again next turn.

Note that I tried something far better at first but was denied by Civ4. I had it ask if you wanted to show the reminder again at the end of the turn. If you did, you'd then get to choose to show it again next turn as well. The problem is that Civ4 defines an event called endTurnReady but doesn't fire the event. :mad: Such a tease! I have the code written and committed, but it's commented out since it doesn't work. We're left with the suboptimal solution above. Is this at least helpful?

Before posting this, I reread your suggestion see that I forgot about making the popup optional. I suppose that's possible, but then you'd lose the ability to have the reminder fire again the next turn. Thoughts?

I see that you want to improve the reminders in a different direction. It all depends on the way you play. I like to play in the following way:
1) I get the city pop ups to build new stuff in my cities
2) I get top of screen messages while moving my units and giving my workers new orders.
3) I go into the event log (Ctrl Tab) to see what else needs to be done.

In step 3, I'll read about the reminders (which have been logged) and react to them. It doesn't really help me to have to click on them at the start of the turn before step 1; the pop up doesn't help me and just slows me down a little bit. But other players like that as it is a more active form of reminding than the event log. Because there are many types of players with many different preferences, your settings/options menu (CTRL ALT O) is very useful. It could be used to allow different reminder settings for different players. I would like a setting without pop ups and just a log entry in the event log.

It's a pity that a 'remind me again next turn' option is only available with the active pop up reminder. On the other hand, I don't see me using it that often. It doesn't really fit in my play style. This mod adds lots and lots of features but a single player will probable use only a third of them. However, another player will use a different third of the features and is not troubled by the features he/she doesn't use. This mod allows you to customise the game to your needs. Thank you for that. :goodjob:

I must have been really tired or something because the reason it was failing was utterly obvious (and in the error log): a cut-n-paste error. Once I pasted the right function name, voila! I have committed the change.

Let me know of any trouble with this one. If none, I'll add DP, PA and Vassal State as well.

And a variation on this idea. I had created the faded OB/DP icons for the scoreboard but ended up not using them. How about showing the faded version if the civ is willing to trade that item? This way if you miss or forget about the alert, you can always just look at the scoreboard to see who's willing to sign OB or DP. PA makes you a team so there's no icon for that, though.

This might be trickier, but I'd also like a message "Catherine is willing to go to war against Montezuma."

This sounds great. The alerts section of this mod is one of my favourites as I use it very much during playing the game. Such additions will only make it more useful. Will these be added to the next version of your mod?

The scoreboard addition could also be useful. Sometimes, it is nice to know that someone is willing to sign open border with you, but you don't wish to do so directly. You want to settle that city in the back of your empire first before opening your borders. You won't get an alert anymore about the willingness to open borders because the AI was willing to do that several turns ago, but you can still observe this willingness by one look at the scoreboard. It would be a very useful addition.

EmperorFool

Sep 17, 2007, 11:35 AM

@Roland - If you are grabbing this mod from the SVN repository, sync up and enjoy! :)

Roland Johansen

Sep 17, 2007, 12:52 PM

@Roland - If you are grabbing this mod from the SVN repository, sync up and enjoy! :)

Ok, did that. The version number is still the same, but I guess it was updated nonetheless. Is there a way to tell?

EmperorFool

Sep 17, 2007, 01:18 PM

Roland Johansen

Sep 17, 2007, 06:01 PM

Open the options screen (Ctrl-Alt-O) and select the "Alerts" tab. If you see a dropdown next to the Reminders checkbox with 3 options (Message, Popup, Both), you have the new version.

I'm not talking about a new ZIP or EXE installer, btw. I'm talking about getting the files directly from Subversion on SF.net. Each file matches up to a "version" but it's not the 0.16 version we publish but the individual chaingelist revision # (308 most recently, IIRC).

Ok, I guess I found the necessary files from Subversion. I was totally unfamiliar with how sourceforge worked, so I had to look around a bit before I understood the system (seems like a good way to work with a team of modders). I didn't find a way to simply get all of the newest files, I had to download them all individually. I just downloaded all the python and xml files which I might need and stuck them in the right place (I created a regular mod out of it, not a customassets mod) and everything seems to work, so I guess I did it the right way.

Now the open borders alert and the options to change the reminder mod are active. I changed the reminder mod towards my preferences and it all seems to work ok, no errors here.

There is one weird thing though: now whenever I activate the reminder I get the word 'whip' already entered as if I will want to create a reminder to whip something which is only one of the many things I create reminders for. I also noticed that the timer was already at 1 and not 0 which is ok as you will never create a reminder for this turn.

By the way, reminders never seem to be saved in the savegame. Whenever I load a game, the game has forgotten about the reminders that I created for the next turn(s). Is that the way it is supposed to work? It would be very useful if reminders could work after you had loaded the game the next day because that's the moment that you will have really forgotten about what you were planning to do during the next turn.

Good job with updating the reminder section of this mod. :goodjob:

Cammagno

Sep 17, 2007, 06:13 PM

Ok, I guess I found the necessary files from Subversion. I was totally unfamiliar with how sourceforge worked, so I had to look around a bit before I understood the system (seems like a good way to work with a team of modders). I didn't find a way to simply get all of the newest files, I had to download them all individually. I just downloaded all the python and xml files which I might need and stuck them in the right place (I created a regular mod out of it, not a customassets mod) and everything seems to work, so I guess I did it the right way.

You can download files manually as you did, but if you want to use the power of SV, you need to download from the SF website Tortoise SVN a simple client which allows you to create a local repository in one folder of your choice and to keep it always updated with the online repo. When you have created it, a simple right-click and selecting update your folder will be synchronized. Then from there you can export the files directly into BtS folder. Of course it is much more useful for modders who also have to upload files from local repos to the online one.

Roland Johansen

Sep 17, 2007, 06:43 PM

You can download files manually as you did, but if you want to use the power of SV, you need to download from the SF website Tortoise SVN a simple client which allows you to create a local repository in one folder of your choice and to keep it always updated with the online repo. When you have created it, a simple right-click and selecting update your folder will be synchronized. Then from there you can export the files directly into BtS folder. Of course it is much more useful for modders who also have to upload files from local repos to the online one.

Ah, I see. I knew there had to be a better, more efficient way to do this. If I want to get some intermediate version in between official versions again, then I guess I will do it that way. Thanks for the information.

OneBinary

Sep 17, 2007, 07:28 PM

The HOF Mod has a nice feature that automatically saves your game when you exit to desktop. I really liked that feature and it would be cool to see it in this Mod (as this is now the de-facto Mod I use). It also used a very good naming convention on those auto-saves (I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but it would be cool to steal the naming convention).

EmperorFool

Sep 17, 2007, 07:52 PM

I had to download them all individually.

Ouch, ya that's the hard way. I'm glad it worked for you, but if you want to update in the future, definitely grab TortoiseSVN. I wrote up instructions in our old development thread that were short and sweet. It sounds complicated but it's pretty straightforward. I'll see if I can find them tonight or just write up new ones.

There is one weird thing though: now whenever I activate the reminder I get the word 'whip' already entered as if I will want to create a reminder to whip something which is only one of the many things I create reminders for. I also noticed that the timer was already at 1 and not 0 which is ok as you will never create a reminder for this turn.

Oops, I didn't mean to leave that testing code in. I purposely defaulted the spinner to 1 for the reason you specified. I will remove "whip" though.

By the way, reminders never seem to be saved in the savegame.

Yet another item on my wish list. I put a comment in the code, but I haven't made it save reminders yet. It shouldn't be too hard, though.

@OneBinary - That's a good idea. Others have mentioned some good things to snag from HoF as well, so maybe I'll tackle that after the first release. I've already punted PLE
to the next version, and I'm bummed about it as PLE is very nice. We'll see...

Cammagno

Sep 18, 2007, 12:20 AM

Yet another item on my wish list. I put a comment in the code, but I haven't made it save reminders yet. It shouldn't be too hard, though.
@OneBinary - That's a good idea. Others have mentioned some good things to snag from HoF as well, so maybe I'll tackle that after the first release. I've already punted PLE
to the next version, and I'm bummed about it as PLE is very nice. We'll see...

Well... we have to leave something for 2.0 release, don't we? ;)

Elandal

Sep 18, 2007, 04:29 AM

I would recommend focusing on 1.0 instead of new features, then proceed towards next release :) Release early, release often - any feature can be pushed to the next release that way.

Regarding saving reminders - is that possible while maintaining savegame compatibility? That's essential for BUG IMO - this is unaltered in all ways including savegame compatibility.

FeedBack

Sep 18, 2007, 08:55 AM

Regarding saving reminders - is that possible while maintaining savegame compatibility? That's essential for BUG IMO - this is unaltered in all ways including savegame compatibility.

I know EF may have some way better ideas than this, but here it goes anyway.

Blake's BetterAI for warlords had something to savegame writing that wouldn't break with games without it. But it messes with the DLL, of course.

A simple way to do this is to save the reminders in an auxiliary file, say like the CDA.txt file, for each savegame. It can be buggy, as the reminder file would have to be shipped with the savegame, but I think it's the easiest way to do it.

Cammagno

Sep 18, 2007, 09:46 AM

A simple way to do this is to save the reminders in an auxiliary file, say like the CDA.txt file, for each savegame. It can be buggy, as the reminder file would have to be shipped with the savegame, but I think it's the easiest way to do it.

Not a bad solution, IMO. If the auxiliary file will not be shipped, the savegame will work anyway, only without recorded reminders... I like tihis compromise.

ruff_hi

Sep 18, 2007, 07:34 PM

A simple way to do this is to save the reminders in an auxiliary file, say like the CDA.txt file, for each savegame. It can be buggy, as the reminder file would have to be shipped with the savegame, but I think it's the easiest way to do it.No, don't do that. You can save information in the save, no problems. In fact, the unit naming code does just that. Look at how I've saved the counter information in the save and the do the same with the reminders.

EmperorFool

Sep 18, 2007, 09:59 PM

What Ruff said. Many objects (City, Player, Unit, Plot) can have an arbitrary "data" string attached to them. The savedgame reader/writer knows how to handle this. You as a modder are free to write any information you want to that slot.

Doing this feature won't be difficult, but I want to do it right which means using SdToolkit so if we add other mods that write to the same object they won't overwrite each other. Ruff has already started using SdToolkit for the unit naming, so this should be pretty straight-forward.

Cammagno

Sep 19, 2007, 12:23 AM

What Ruff said. Many objects (City, Player, Unit, Plot) can have an arbitrary "data" string attached to them. The savedgame reader/writer knows how to handle this. You as a modder are free to write any information you want to that slot.

WOW, it seems that Firaxis this time really tried to make the things easy as possible for modders. Or if not easy, at least doable.

EmperorFool

Sep 19, 2007, 02:11 AM

FeedBack

Sep 19, 2007, 07:54 AM

Wow! I mean.. Wow! That's what you get for being used to use so many workarounds at work... :blush: Those guys made it right this time! And EF... Your speed is amazing too! Thanks! :goodjob:

Btw.. Ruff, the unit naming convention is amazing! There's only one problem I see... A friend of mine :mischief: is too lazy to fool around with it too much... Y'know... What about creating some pre-defined patterns, like those in your Warlords mod, for people like this, uh, friend of mine? I see Cammagno already did the "default" for CDA, with a lot of options...

No rushing, of course.

ruff_hi

Sep 19, 2007, 09:11 AM

Btw.. Ruff, the unit naming convention is amazing! There's only one problem I see... A friend of mine :mischief: is too lazy to fool around with it too much... Y'know... What about creating some pre-defined patterns, like those in your Warlords mod, for people like this, uh, friend of mine?Well, you can tell your 'friend' that the bug.ini file that is in the repository has some already set up.

Roland Johansen

Sep 19, 2007, 02:38 PM

I removed the default (testing) text for the reminder.

There was some other change I made . . . .

Shoot, what was it . . . ?

Oh yeah, reminders are now saved. Enjoy! Or just set a reminder to enjoy it later. :D

Ok, I installed the TortoiseSVN client and found out how it works and downloaded the newest version of all of these files (I did a checkout in a seperate directory). That took a while since the download process was pretty slow (60 KB/s) for some reason. Now I combined the files from the Bug mod folder and the flavor mod folder and combined them with my own minor xml-modifications into a BTS-mod and it all seems to work. Thank you. :goodjob:

I noticed that all these files kept some sort of link with the TortoiseSVN client and have an extra tab when you ask about their properties. Does this make them somehow different than other files? Did copying them from their original download folder to the combined mod folder change something about this link with the online version of these files?

I noticed that there is a cache file in the system memory after installing the TortoiseSVN client (TSVNCache.exe). It's there every time, even after a fresh system start so I guess that it is needed for this program and can't be loaded when the program activates. I try to keep my system as clean as possible and don't like additional programs that I don't plan to use often to use system memory. Since I don't plan to use this very often as I will normally download finished mods, I don't think that I want to keep it installed. Are there some consequences to uninstalling this client? What will happen to the files that have additional TortoiseSVN properties?

By the way, I do appreciate that you allow me to download an intermediate version of this mod to experience just added features. Thanks for the help.

Cammagno

Sep 19, 2007, 03:07 PM

I noticed that all these files kept some sort of link with the TortoiseSVN client and have an extra tab when you ask about their properties. Does this make them somehow different than other files? Did copying them from their original download folder to the combined mod folder change something about this link with the online version of these files?

Into each folder and subfolder of the SVN local repository, there is a hidden folder called ".svn", with several subfolders and files; these are responsable for the "some sort of link" you spoke about :) So if you copy folders from the local repository to the BtS folder, you also copy a lot of useless stuff.
The thing that you have to do is not to copy them, but to use the Export command. Right-click on the folder that you have chosen as local repo, choose TortoiseSVN and then Export, then select the BtS folder as destination folder. (pay attention that the checkbox about the unversioned files is not checked). Doing this, only the "true" files will go to the BtS folder (you will see that they won't have the SVN mark over the normal icon).

Roland Johansen

Sep 19, 2007, 05:42 PM

Into each folder and subfolder of the SVN local repository, there is a hidden folder called ".svn", with several subfolders and files; these are responsable for the "some sort of link" you spoke about :) So if you copy folders from the local repository to the BtS folder, you also copy a lot of useless stuff.
The thing that you have to do is not to copy them, but to use the Export command. Right-click on the folder that you have chosen as local repo, choose TortoiseSVN and then Export, then select the BtS folder as destination folder. (pay attention that the checkbox about the unversioned files is not checked). Doing this, only the "true" files will go to the BtS folder (you will see that they won't have the SVN mark over the normal icon).

Hah, I never noticed the hidden folder because I had 'show hidden files and folders' switched off. Ok, I did the export thing and now the files don't have the SVN mark over the normal icon anymore and I recreated the mod folder with these 'new' files. Thanks again for the help Cammagno.

EmperorFool

Sep 19, 2007, 10:08 PM

Roland Johansen

Sep 20, 2007, 07:44 AM

Those ".svn" folders maintain all of the information about the files you have pulled from SVN. You could uninstall* TortoiseSVN, leaving the ".svn" folders on your hard drive, and at some later point reinstall Tortoise and sync to the latest version of the repo.

The only downside to keeping the ".svn" folders is the small space they take up. You can always just grab the full repo later rather than just the changed files. The ".svn" folders allow you to grab just what has changed.

*Or simply disahle it from running using msconfig I think. I'm not sure since it's an extension to Windows Explorer rather than a separate program, but I suspect that'd work.

The hard disk space is no problem. I just don't like to have programs that automatically take up system memory without me asking them to start. This program is not one of the items in the startup tab of the System Configuration Utility (I had already checked that), so I can't disable it that way. It's not a real problem though. I'll keep it running in system memory for now, it's not that big. I might uninstall it in a few weeks. For now, it might be useful if I want to use the newest improvements created by this great team.

Thanks for the help. :goodjob:

alerum68

Sep 20, 2007, 09:58 PM

If you want to disable it, there is a small utility called StartUpRun, IIRC. You may want to take a look at that. You can disable it, but SVN won't work unless you reactivate it... I don't think you have to reboot though.

Elandal

Sep 23, 2007, 07:44 PM

The worst enemy of any civ can be found by repeatedly opening the dialogue. Sometimes they warn about their worst enemies (sometimes brag about their best units, sometimes tell bad jokes, and so on). This is very annoying... Maybe it would fit in the Glance page or Info page of EFA?

CellKu

Sep 26, 2007, 03:05 PM

Thanks for endeavouring to improve BTS in this way. :goodjob: I do like your project a lot.

As I haven't seen the following mods on any of your lists, I would like to point you to the Unit Statistics mod, see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=162977, and/or the Kill List mod, see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=160977.

It would be nice to have them (more statistics :) ), at least as an optional feature. These mods do not seem to change the gameplay, as they provide only information of past events. So, I hope they meet your criteria for being added to your project. :)

CellKu

alerum68

Sep 26, 2007, 03:16 PM

The Unit Stats Mod alters the SDK, which we've decided not to do. The Kill List Mod does not, and I think it'd be a good addition. I'll take a look at it as soon as I finish some things I need to do for things already currently in the works.

Thanks for the suggestion!:)

NikNaks

Sep 26, 2007, 03:31 PM

I don't remember deciding not to alter the SDK, but it's a 'we want to let other people run SDK mods' thing, right?

alerum68

Sep 26, 2007, 03:44 PM

We decided not to alter the SDK before you were on the team. And that is the main reason, and also the fact that the files can't be viewed was another reason, for me at least.

NikNaks

Sep 30, 2007, 07:59 AM

Would it be feasible to have something like the screenie here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=245317) (without the extra coding)?

alerum68

Sep 30, 2007, 12:42 PM

You mean to have resources display next to the gold?

NikNaks

Sep 30, 2007, 12:44 PM

Yeah, maybe only for ones like Bronze, Iron and Horses?

EmperorFool

Sep 30, 2007, 03:03 PM

The problem with that suggestion is the mod is geared toward having a national stockpile. Even if we do away with the idea of a stockpile, which city's resource access would we display at the top? The capital?

Does it really add information you don't normally know? In other words, do you often find yourself thinking, "I wonder if I have iron?" But otherwise it should be a doable mod; it would probably require getting rid of the Era display.

CellKu

Sep 30, 2007, 03:16 PM

it would probably require getting rid of the Era display.

The Era display is nice, though... I would miss it.
CellKu

OneBinary

Sep 30, 2007, 03:44 PM

The Era display is nice, though... I would miss it.
I would miss the Era display as well, and I agree that I don't often ask myself if I have Iron/Horses/etc.

NikNaks

Sep 30, 2007, 03:50 PM

Fair enough. I'd forgotten the era display sat there. ;)

FeedBack

Oct 04, 2007, 02:50 PM

Hey, guys!
I was just reading yet another 3.13 patch thread and caught up into this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6011516&postcount=28

I'll paste here for easier reference.

1. some display of how much of a stationary bonus spies have
and/or
2. a 'Infiltrate' function for spies, like the 'Heal' ability for units... basically the spy skips turns until it has reached maximum stationary bonus.

I don't know how difficult it is to implement (that's why I'm posting here. EF knows better! ;)), but the first one would certainly fit into the "unaltered gameplay" philosophy. The second one is handy (and surely it would be welcome), but it affects gameplay.
Can you guys help me taking a look at it?

:cheers:

jray

Oct 05, 2007, 07:51 AM

Please get the "ugly Glance screen" back into the foreign advisor :).

jkp1187

Oct 05, 2007, 08:14 AM

Please get the "ugly Glance screen" back into the foreign advisor :).

I wholeheartedly agree!

ruff_hi

Oct 05, 2007, 10:43 AM

You can get most of the information from the Relations screen, but it's tedious. The thing Glance was really good for was figuring out who was worst enemies with whom. Perhaps that could be incorporated into Relations (the worst enemy gets a fatter line, or clicking on a leader would highlight everyone who considered him their worst enemy, or some such). That info really should be easily available.

peace,
lilnev

Now that is a good idea. One question I have (and have always had) is how do you decide who is worse? The person with the most negative numbers? I've seen -10 showing 'cautious' and -9 showing 'angry'. Is there a way to ask "Who is your worse enemy?"

So - we are putting it back but with an option to 'not display' ... right? have to have the option so that it is similar to all of our other BUG changes.

yes, and if you want to placate the marketing men, use pretty smilie icons! (along with the numbers below in brackets!)

Another good idea. I might even break out the ol' python and take a stab at that myself.

Edit: errrr ... does anyone have the pre 3.13 BtS foreign adviser screen python file?
Edit2: Don't worry ... it is still there, they just put a '#' on 1 line.

ruff_hi

Oct 05, 2007, 10:54 PM

yes, and if you want to placate the marketing men, use pretty smilie icons! (along with the numbers below in brackets!)

Another good idea. I might even break out the ol' python and take a stab at that myself.

Edit: errrr ... does anyone have the pre 3.13 BtS foreign adviser screen python file?
Edit2: Don't worry ... it is still there, they just put a '#' on 1 line.
Done. Please have a look at let me know if it looks a little better.

EmperorFool

Oct 05, 2007, 11:27 PM

One question I have (and have always had) is how do you decide who is worse? The person with the most negative numbers? I've seen -10 showing 'cautious' and -9 showing 'angry'. Is there a way to ask "Who is your worse enemy?"

Along with the modifiers you can see, each AI has hidden modifiers that affect their attitude but are not visible to the player. This is why two AIs that seem to have the same attitude score will have different actual attitudes.

That's another reason Firaxis may have axed the Glance page -- it gives the impression that attitudes are random when in fact they are entirely deterministic. It's just that some of the information isn't shown to the player.

I looked through the API a while ago trying to figure out how to tell which players are the AIs' worst enemies, but I didn't find anything. :(

Roland Johansen

Oct 07, 2007, 09:42 AM

ruff_hi

Oct 07, 2007, 10:25 AM

I have heard about these other modifiers too. Some have to do with personality traits (warmonger or not) and some have to do with the relative power rating. Would it be possible to add these modifiers to the list of modifiers that are visible to the player? It wouldn't really help you with playing or give you extra information, but it would give a more meaningful number that actually determines the attitude of the various civilisations.We would could add this but first, you have to provide a screenshot (or similar) of where in the vanilla game this info is available. We are trying to provide an unaltered mod. So, short answer (because I don't think this info is available) ... NO. Sorry Roland Johansen :D

EmperorFool

Oct 07, 2007, 12:42 PM

I'm with Ruff on this one. If you knew all their hidden modifiers, you'd know their final attitude number, and this would tell you for sure whether gifting them a tech would raise their actual attitude (e.g. from furious to annoyed).

The game doesn't let you see this, and therefore neither will we.

That being said, I haven't found a way in the API to get the individual modifiers from Python. If you do, please let us know as I'd like to be able to get the visible modifiers for some new Civ4lerts.

Grave

Oct 07, 2007, 02:49 PM

I have a small request:

In the City Screen, on the right were it shows the Religions/Corporations... could you make it so that it only shows the Religions/Corporations that are in that particular city, instead of showing all the Religions/Corporations in the game?

Grave

Oct 07, 2007, 02:49 PM

EDIT:

Double-post... sorry.

ruff_hi

Oct 07, 2007, 04:51 PM

In the City Screen, on the right were it shows the Religions/Corporations... could you make it so that it only shows the Religions/Corporations that are in that particular city, instead of showing all the Religions/Corporations in the game?I can do that without even touching the code ... start a game, open a city, look at the top right ... if the religion is transparent, the city doesn't have it ... if the religion is solid, the city has it, if the religion has a box around it - the city is the religious holy city. IE - this feature is already in the game.

PS - careful of the signature length police! limited to 7 lines- depending on font size.

Grave

Oct 07, 2007, 04:57 PM

I can do that without even touching the code ... start a game, open a city, look at the top right ... if the religion is transparent, the city doesn't have it ... if the religion is solid, the city has it, if the religion has a box around it - the city is the religious holy city. IE - this feature is already in the game.

Sorry, what I mean was... if the religion wasn't in the city, then there would be an empty space. The only reason I bring it up is because say you merge this with another mod, that has added extra religions/corporations. The way they're set up now, you won't be able to see any extra religions/corporations.

I know this is mod is meant to be "Unaltered" gameplay, but if I wanted to add a few religions to the game, they all won't show on the city screen.

Or maybe perhaps making the icons smaller?

PS - careful of the signature length police! limited to 7 lines- depending on font size.

:satan: :shifty:

Roland Johansen

Oct 07, 2007, 05:22 PM

We would could add this but first, you have to provide a screenshot (or similar) of where in the vanilla game this info is available. We are trying to provide an unaltered mod. So, short answer (because I don't think this info is available) ... NO. Sorry Roland Johansen :D

I'm with Ruff on this one. If you knew all their hidden modifiers, you'd know their final attitude number, and this would tell you for sure whether gifting them a tech would raise their actual attitude (e.g. from furious to annoyed).

The game doesn't let you see this, and therefore neither will we.

That being said, I haven't found a way in the API to get the individual modifiers from Python. If you do, please let us know as I'd like to be able to get the visible modifiers for some new Civ4lerts.

Yes, I know it is an unaltered gameplay mod. :D

The reason why I would like to see the hidden modifiers is because they can be calculated by a player who wants to spend the effort to do so.

In this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=191436) (post 7 and 1) all the relevant data to do so can be found. Of course, it might be tedious to calculate some of these modifiers (some are easy to calculate, for some you need to look in some excel personality data sheet), but all the needed data can be found in the excel personality data sheet and in-game rankings.

By the way, I've never really understood why Firaxis added a numeric diplomacy modifier system if in the end, the numbers aren't that meaningful as the final relations are dependent on hidden modifiers. It's quite misleading especially for players who don't read a lot of stuff on this forum and I still often find people asking questions about why one civilisation is pleased at +3 and another cautious. It makes players wonder what is more important, the modifier or the name of the relation. I know it is the name of the relation (furious, annoyed, cautious, pleased, friendly), but it is confusing for new players.
They could have left out all the numbers, that would have been less confusing:
Pleased: You shared resources with us, we enjoy the open borders, we're brothers of the faith (strongly positive), you shared your technological advances with us.

Ok, I should stop this complaint. It has nothing to do with this mod. :p

Oh, and I'll accept that it won't be added if that is the decision. You'll have to draw the line somewhere. You can find out the worst enemy of a civilisation by repeatedly entering diplomacy with them and asking them about every leader (also tedious though), so that can be added to the mod. The excel sheet diplomacy info comes from xml-files and thus might be considered differently. Still many players (over 22000 downloads) use the Civ4 BTS reference sheets which are available for download from this site and they contain lots of leaderhead diplomacy information which cannot be found in-game.

Psyringe

Oct 10, 2007, 01:43 PM

Hi BUG team - here are some feature suggestions from someone who can't play without your mod anymore. :goodjob:

1. scrollable mini map

In my current game, my homeland is right on the "seam" of the map. So on the minimap, one half of my country appears on the left edge of the map, and one half on the right edge. Apart from looking ugly, this also makes it more difficult for me to estimate distances. For such situations, it would be great to have some functionality to move the center of the mini-map (for example, right-clicking somewhere on the mini-map centers it on the spot you clicked on. Or, alternatively: switch between "regular map center" and "center on latitude of player capital".

2. Better usability of "reduced UI" for players who mostly use the mouse for input. Reduced UI works very well without the keyboard already, most of the important functions can still be accessed without the keyboard. But this makes it even more annoying that some can't:
- the "Main Menu" and "Civilopedia" buttons disappear in reduced UI. I don't see a good reason for that since they don't need much space, and the space that's freed by removing them doesn't even increase the visibility of the map, because the view in the upper right corner of the screen is still obstructed by the advisor buttons. It would be great to have these two important buttons active in reduced UI.
- There is no "End Turn" button in reduced UI, which is a bit silly for a functionality that is used undreds of times in a single game.
- "Switch Interface" button: Currently you need the keyboard to switch to and from reduced interface. It would be great to have a way to do this with the mouse, because sometimes UI switches are inevitable.

These three additions would make "reduced UI" just perfect for me. :)

3. Add a "wait" button to unit orders.

4. Don't display techs of our enemies in the "will trade" column. When you'r eat war with someone, all his techs that you could theoretically trade for are displayed as "will trade", which makes no sense as most of the time they *won't* trade them to you (even when you reach a peace agreement). I think these techs should better be displayed in the "won't trade" column.

5. Notify the player when the Apostolic Palace Resident has changed (witj Civ4lerts). When you aren't a member of the AP, then you don't get a notice when a new resident is elected. But this information *is* always available under "members" in the victory screen. Hence turning it into an alert should be okay. (Sometimes it's good for strategic planning to know when your enemy suddenly becomes - or ceases to be - head of the AP). The same goes for membership changes, i.e. alerts like "Civ X has been demoted from full member to voting member", "X has been promoted to full member", "X is now member of the AP", "X has lost AP membership".

6. Add an alert for "10 turn grace period will run out next turn".

Any chances of adding some of these to BUG? Who do I have to bribe? :D

EmperorFool

Oct 10, 2007, 08:45 PM

@Roland - You make some very good points, but the sad truth is that I haven't found a way to access any of the modifiers from Python. If you can find an API that gives that information, we can talk. :)

@Psyringe - You've got some good ones there. Let's see...

1. Part of the EXE core engine -- not moddable, sorry. I agree this is L A M E that the map doesn't stay centered horizontally on your capital. Zero Longitude is a completely human-invented concept (unlike zero latitude which can be measured against magnetic or spin poles) which should show up as a possibility only with map trading, and then only if you want it.

2. This could be done, and I'll add it to the list, but I gotta be honest it's lower on the priority list right now. If you can find someone to create a nice button for switching modes (2c) and point out where to put it, it'd make it more likely to get coded up.

Having the two menu/pedia buttons remain visible is probably pretty trivial. I've mucked around in that code recently, so I think it's just a matter of moving a couple lines. No promises, but much more likely to be done since it'd be quick.

3. Would rock. I need a graphic for it and I'll need to see if it's possible. The thing is that Ctrl-W doesn't actually issue an order -- it tells the interface to cycle units. Same with keys like / and \. The game gives you less control in this area.

4. I agree. I've actually thought of this before but never got around to it. In fact, I think you shouldn't get to see any information about techs for enemies that you can't speak with. How would you know what techs they know? I'd make that latter part extra optional since our aim is not to remove information already present in the game.

5. These are good ideas as long as you really can see this without being a member.

6. I have no idea if this information is available, though it displays in the Foreign Advisor ACTIVE tab, and that's built by Python, so it probably is.

Kudos! :goodjob:

Roland Johansen

Oct 10, 2007, 09:42 PM

@Roland - You make some very good points, but the sad truth is that I haven't found a way to access any of the modifiers from Python. If you can find an API that gives that information, we can talk. :)

Sorry, I'm not a real modder myself (only some xml-modifications and never needed more than that for my personal modifications). I looked around a bit and found out that Fall From Heaven created its own set of new diplomacy modifiers from scratch. I guess the modifications which are needed for this unaltered gameplay mod are only a section of that work since the modifiers themselves exist, only the text links are left out. It does seem to be SDK-work though...

Kael wrote down an entire case study of how to do this and maybe it could be useful to modding some of this stuff. It's a bit hard for me to judge how much work it would be. I can imagine that you think there are more important things to change. You can find his case study here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166935&highlight=diplomacy).

Psyringe

Oct 12, 2007, 08:55 PM

5. These are good ideas as long as you really can see this without being a member.
I just made a test savegame to check which information is available to the player at which point. I'll attach the save to to this post in case you want to use it for checking / testing.

In the test game, you're Mansa Musa, the only Islam country in the world, surrounded by four Christian nations, of which only Bismarck (east of you) is known to you.

Hit "End Turn". The Apostolic Palace will be built. The game does not tell you who built it (it's Caesar, but you haven't met him yet, and the victory screen says "built by an unknown civilization"). The game does tell you (in the alert as well as on the "Victory -> Members" screen) that the AP religion is Christianity. You'll also see Bismarck (the one Christian nation you already know) listed as a full member in the Members screen.

Hit "End Turn" again. The Christian nations will now elect the AP resident. Caesar will win the vote. The game doesn't give you an alert about it, but the information is available on the "Victory -> Resolutions" screen as soon as the resident is elected.

Now, move the ships you have straight north, west, and east. Check the "Victory -> Members" page after each move. You'll see that every civ gets listed on this page (with their membership status) as soon as you nake contact with them.

Now, reload the game, activate the Christian missionary I put in Timbuktu, and spread Christianity to the city. Hit "End Turn". Again, Caesar will build the AP. This immediately gives you contact with every other Christian civ, even before the vote starts.

In conclusion:
- You can always look up who the current resident is (on "Victory -> Resolutions"), even if you haven't met him.
- You can always look up to which religion the AP belongs (on "Victory -> Members")
- You can always look up the membership status of every civ you have contact with (on "Victory -> Members")
- As soon as you become a member yourself, you automatically make contact with all other civs oin the AP.

This means that alerts about "Leader X has been elected resident of the AP" does only offer information that is already available elsewhere (as long as the alert only tells you about the leader name and not about the civ he/she rules). As long as you already have contact with a leader, the same goes for alerts like "Leader X has entered the Apostolic Community", "Leader X has left the Apostolic Community", "Leader X has been promoted to Full Member of the the Apostolic Palace", and "Leader X has been demoted to Voting Member of the Apostolic Palace".

Hope this helps. :)

EmperorFool

Oct 12, 2007, 09:13 PM

Hope this helps. :)

Um, it helps about as much as it possibly could help without actually writing the code for me! :goodjob: Are you a QA engineer IRL, as that was very well thought-out and from what I can tell quite thorough.

BTW, how did you create the test game? I can't imagine you could do it all with WorldBuilder as it's rather limited I think (can't set partial builds). Again, nice job.

Wanna learn Python. :)

Psyringe

Oct 12, 2007, 09:47 PM

Are you a QA engineer IRL, as that was very well thought-out and from what I can tell quite thorough.
I'm not a QA engineer, I just really enjoy doing thorough analyses ... I do have some experience with beta testing though. Thanks for the compliment. :)

BTW, how did you create the test game? I can't imagine you could do it all with WorldBuilder as it's rather limited I think (can't set partial builds).
I gave Caesar Theology and a couple of Great Engineers and then advanced some turns, checking in the worldbuilder what Caesar was doing with them, and saved the game when he was one turn from completing the AP. But yes, the worldbuilder can be pretty unwieldy. Editing the WBS save opens up more possibilities than the rather spartanic worldbuilder interface, but doesn't remove the limitations of the format (like, no partial build information saved).

Wanna learn Python. :)
I actually thought about it after buying Civ4, but haven't gotten around to it. I might try to at some point, but won't have much time for anything in the next months. But thanks for the encouragement. :)

jray

Oct 15, 2007, 10:21 AM

It would be cool to move all the Privateer blockade messages to the beginning of the log. As it is now, they're always occurring last, and when I have lots of blockading Privateers I need to go check the event log and scroll waaaaay down to see Civ4lerts, spy notifications, etc. Thanks!

EmperorFool

Oct 15, 2007, 12:05 PM

@jray - Yes, great idea. Unfortunately, it's yet another thing we have no control over. Well, that's not entirely true. It's possible this could be addressed in the DLL, but I'm just guessing.

jray

Oct 15, 2007, 12:12 PM

@jray - Yes, great idea. Unfortunately, it's yet another thing we have no control over. Well, that's not entirely true. It's possible this could be addressed in the DLL, but I'm just guessing.

Ah, I see. I'll try tempting Bhruic then :).

OneBinary

Oct 15, 2007, 05:05 PM

Thought I'd throw this out there for BAT since it was revived recently:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=241821

alerum68

Oct 15, 2007, 05:23 PM

We just added a new road mod that connects deadend roads. I'll see if the two play nice together, and if they do I'll add them... if not, I'll beg the creators of both mods to work together and see if we can get one that does both.

Minor Annoyance

Oct 16, 2007, 12:36 PM

Here's something that is the very definition of a superficial complaint. In a library the alphabetical list of titles disregards the word "the", because if it didn't the T section would be huge. The wonders section of the civilopedia looks just like that. This seems like the kind of thing that could be fixed very well. I doubt it could be made to dissregard the word "the" and the only other way would be to change everything to be like "Pyramids, The" and that would look just as bad. Of course it seems trivial to complain about the loss of at most ten seconds every few weeks but... well I can't really think of a defense.

EmperorFool

Oct 16, 2007, 12:43 PM

It's a valid quibble. Unfortunately, the only way to fix it would be a) English only but more importantly b) yield "Pyramids, The". The table widget does the sorting, so we have to give it a string that will sort how we want.

Okay, of course we could rename everything "1. Apostolic Palace" ... "23. The Pyramids", but that's just as bad.

Oh wait ... maybe I can add a zero-width sort column! I'll check into it.

ruff_hi

Oct 16, 2007, 01:12 PM

Suggestion: Does python know how long until the whip / draft anger leaves a city? If so, how about we put little numbers on the city screen just near the whip (or near the angry total middle top) that display that number. As the turns go by, that number would count down from 10 (normal speed) to 1 and then disappear.

I will take a look at this to see if we can gather the required info ... will look at (highlighted the most likely candidates:

cycity.
32. VOID changeConscriptAngerTimer(INT iChange)
43. VOID changeHurryAngerTimer(INT iChange)
72. INT flatConscriptAngerLength()
73. INT flatHurryAngerLength()
117. INT getConscriptAngerTimer() <-- int () - returns the amount of time left on the conscript anger timer
122. INT getCulturePercentAnger()
168. INT getHurryAngerModifier()
169. INT getHurryAngerTimer() <-- int () - Anger caused by Hurrying timer (why the different description?)
185. INT getNoMilitaryPercentAnger()
197. INT getOvercrowdingPercentAnger(INT iExtra)
228. INT getReligionPercentAnger()
251. INT getWarWearinessPercentAnger()
266. INT hurryAngerLength(HurryType iHurry)

OneBinary

Oct 16, 2007, 01:16 PM

alerum68

Oct 16, 2007, 02:46 PM

MA, I'm sorry but it would be a MAJOR rebuilding of the 'Pedia to do that. It seems like alot of work for something somewhat trival.

ruff_hi

Oct 16, 2007, 09:11 PM

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1599/civ4screenshot0027hs9.jpgre anger countdown in city ... easy!!! I'll add the ability to turn it off and on via our ini file. However, any comments re style, colour, etc?

screen.setLabel( "ProductionInputText", "Background", szBuffer, CvUtil.FONT_RIGHT_JUSTIFY, iCityCenterRow1X - 6, iCityCenterRow2Y, -0.3, FontTypes.GAME_FONT, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_PRODUCTION_MOD_HELP, -1, -1 )
screen.show( "ProductionInputText" )

if ((pHeadSelectedCity.happyLevel() >= 0) or (pHeadSelectedCity.unhappyLevel(0) > 0)):
if (pHeadSelectedCity.isDisorder()):
szBuffer = u"%d%c" %(pHeadSelectedCity.angryPopulation(0), CyGame().getSymbolID(FontSymbols.ANGRY_POP_CHAR))
elif (pHeadSelectedCity.angryPopulation(0) > 0):
szBuffer = localText.getText("INTERFACE_CITY_UNHAPPY", (pHeadSelectedCity.happyLevel(), pHeadSelectedCity.unhappyLevel(0), pHeadSelectedCity.angryPopulation(0)))
elif (pHeadSelectedCity.unhappyLevel(0) > 0):
szBuffer = localText.getText("INTERFACE_CITY_HAPPY", (pHeadSelectedCity.happyLevel(), pHeadSelectedCity.unhappyLevel(0)))

# BUG - Anger Display - start
izAngerTimer = pHeadSelectedCity.getHurryAngerTimer()
if izAngerTimer < pHeadSelectedCity.getConscriptAngerTimer():
izAngerTimer = pHeadSelectedCity.getConscriptAngerTimer()

if izAngerTimer != 0:
zsAnger = u"[%i]" %(izAngerTimer)
else:
zsAnger = ""

szBuffer = u"%s %s" %(szBuffer, zsAnger)
# BUG - Anger Display - end

else:
szBuffer = localText.getText("INTERFACE_CITY_HAPPY_NO_UNHAPPY", (pHeadSelectedCity.happyLevel(), ))

screen.setLabel( "HappinessText", "Background", szBuffer, CvUtil.FONT_LEFT_JUSTIFY, xResolution - iCityCenterRow1X + 6, iCityCenterRow2Y, -0.3, FontTypes.GAME_FONT, WidgetTypes.WIDGET_HELP_HAPPINESS, -1, -1 )
screen.show( "HappinessText" )

Roland Johansen

Oct 16, 2007, 09:21 PM

You can see the whipping anger when you hold the mouse pointer over the whipping button. It tells you how long it would take for the whipping anger to disappear when you'd whip again. However, this version is much nicer.

My preference would be to do it in red as it is a bad thing and bad things are in red. :p

What happens when you've whipped twice in quick succession? Would it show something like [18] ? (at normal speed with 10 turns of unhappiness)

Could there be an alert to remind you once the whipping anger has decreased by 1 point? That might be useful as some players tend to continuously use the whip in some high food cities. You can use the reminder function for this, but an alert might be even easier.

ruff_hi

Oct 16, 2007, 09:26 PM

@Roland ... yes, I know that you can see the whipping anger, but you see "for 19 turns" if you whipped last turn and have to deduct the 10 to get the counter (assuming normal speed). I haven't tested the double whip thing but I would assume "[18]" would be the display. I thought about red but it is a little hard to read sometimes ... will test.

Re reminder / alert ... good idea. We are toying iwth the option of adding a bunch of auto-reminder buttons around the place and this would be one of them. Maybe an alert when it got to 1 would be the go ... alert saying "City X is ready to whip next turn" or "City X is over its whip anger next turn".

Edit: ini file anger counter control added

EmperorFool

Oct 16, 2007, 10:15 PM

Looks great, Ruff. Only comments would be

zsAnger -> szAnger
izAnger -> iAnger
Maybe change it to "(x Turns)" if that fits to match other places that show # of turns left.*The prefix "sz" means "zero-terminated string" and "i" means "integer".

I think I remember looking at the C++ code and seeing that it does indeed add the timers up, just like when you hover over the whip button.

For example, whip and wait 5 turns. You have 5 turns left on the timer. All agree.

Whip again, the timer will say 15, but actually you'll have 2 angry for 5 followed by 1 angry for 5. I don't think that Python can get these actual individual values.

However, as Roland suggests, we could have an alert when the # of angry people from whipping/conscription changes, but only if the # of people is exposed to Python. I don't see it in the list Ruff posted.

BTW, what is flatHurryAngerLength()?

* You can copy the code to use the text translator to get the right text. I think you're familiar with this, but if not ask and I'll find the best place to copy. There are a few places in MainInterface, but I think some of them include more than just "(x Turns)".

Roland Johansen

Oct 17, 2007, 04:48 AM

However, as Roland suggests, we could have an alert when the # of angry people from whipping/conscription changes, but only if the # of people is exposed to Python. I don't see it in the list Ruff posted.

Couldn't you calculate the number of unhappy people from the whipping unhappiness counter? (if the number is not directly available)

ruff_hi

Oct 17, 2007, 05:40 AM

The prefix "sz" means "zero-terminated string" and "i" means "integer".:lol: I took the 'z' to mean temp, so 'zs' means temp string. Will fix.BTW, what is flatHurryAngerLength()?how do I know? I would assume it holds the '10' (normal speed). Will check.You can copy the code to use the text translator to get the right text. I think you're familiar with this, but if not ask and I'll find the best place to copy. There are a few places in MainInterface, but I think some of them include more than just "(x Turns)".errr ... what? Assuming you mean that we moved the 'turns' part to xml so we can use if for multilanguage. I think I should be able to track it down.

EmperorFool

Oct 17, 2007, 12:08 PM

@Roland - I don't know if that works. Say you whip on turn 1 and again on turn 2. You'll have 2 angry for 9 turns and 1 angry for 1 more turn (10 turns total). I think the flat counter will say "19". So it's clear you have 2 angry.

Now wait 7 turns. You've burned off 8 of the first whip and 7 of the second, leaving 2 and 3 for a total of 5 in the flat counter. But you still have 2 angry. So you can't really tell I don't think.

@Ruff - I would have started by dumping those values to the screen and played around with a few cities. That's why I asked you in case you had done the same.

IIRC I created a localized XML text containing just the "(x Turns)" without anything in front. If not, it's easy to copy an existing one.

Minor Annoyance

Oct 17, 2007, 12:34 PM

MA, I'm sorry but it would be a MAJOR rebuilding of the 'Pedia to do that. It seems like alot of work for something somewhat trival.

I assumed as much.

ruff_hi

Oct 17, 2007, 12:40 PM

@Roland - I don't know if that works. Say you whip on turn 1 and again on turn 2. You'll have 2 angry for 9 turns and 1 angry for 1 more turn (10 turns total). I think the flat counter will say "19". So it's clear you have 2 angry.Is that the way it works? I always thought it was 1 angry for 10 turns from the whip on turn 1 and 1 angry for 19 turns from the whip on turn 2. So you have 1 angry turn 1, 2 angry for turns 2 thru 10, 1 angry for turns 11 thru 19.

@Ruff - I would have started by dumping those values to the screen and played around with a few cities. That's why I asked you in case you had done the same.Nope, I just went straight for the variable I thought it was and it was exactly what I was looking for. I didn't check the others.

I'm not sold on the 'turns' part, consider the city in revolt, it just says "(2)". The player is able to affect all of the situation where it does say 'turns' but turning things up or down.

Roland Johansen

Oct 17, 2007, 12:42 PM

@Roland - I don't know if that works. Say you whip on turn 1 and again on turn 2. You'll have 2 angry for 9 turns and 1 angry for 1 more turn (10 turns total). I think the flat counter will say "19". So it's clear you have 2 angry.

Now wait 7 turns. You've burned off 8 of the first whip and 7 of the second, leaving 2 and 3 for a total of 5 in the flat counter. But you still have 2 angry. So you can't really tell I don't think.

Whipping unhappiness doesn't work that way, it works a lot simpler.

If you whip on turn 1 and again on turn 2, then the counter says 19 and you'll have 9 turns of 2 unhappiness and 10 additional turns of 1 unhappiness. After 7 turns, the counter says 12 and you'll have 2 turns of 2 unhappiness left and the 10 additional turns of 1 unhappiness. It's an extremely simple formula.

The warning that whipping unhappiness has decreased should occur when the counter reaches a multiple of 10 (on normal speed).

Elandal

Oct 17, 2007, 12:45 PM

@EF ref whip
Whip angries are counted by a single counter. The other bit of info needed is how many turns per whip. Number of angries is simply one divided by the other, rounded up.
In case the above is correct, it's likely from VoU's article. If it's wrong, it's probably just my imagination..

What this means is that if you crack the whip, play a turn, then crack it again, then play seven turns, you will have 12 left in the counter indicating (12/10 = 1.2) two angries. Play two more turns, and counter will be at 10 indicating one angry.

ruff_hi

Oct 17, 2007, 01:28 PM

well - there you go, 3 posts within 5 mins of each other all containing very similar info. I suggest an alert along the lines as Roland suggested.

EmperorFool

Oct 18, 2007, 01:19 AM

Wow, I guess it must be right then. :) I think it's actually more complicated and unfair, but it makes calculating the # of angries easy as pie.

I always thought that each time you whipped, you increased the # of unhappy people for ten turns. Whip four times on a single turn and you have 4 unhappy for 10 turns. What you're saying is that you'd have 4 for 10, 3 for 10, 2 for 10, and finally 1 for 10 ... 40 turns of unhappy people. Bogus!

Thanks for clarifying. So if a city has a non-zero angry timer, we fire an alert if it is evenly divisible by hurryAngerLength(HurryType.POPULATION). Actually, we also fire it if it hit zero on this turn, meaning we'd still have to keep track of all the cities that had non-zero timers last turn.

# untested psuedo-code
angryCities = set()
hurryLength = gc.getInfoTypeForString("HURRY_POPULATION").hurryPopulationLength() # look up actual method

def trackAngryCities:
angryCities = set()
pPlayer = gc.getActivePlayer()
for i in pPlayer.numCities():
pCity = pPlayer.city(i)
if pCity.getHurryAngerTimer() > 0:
angryCities.add(i)

def alertAngryCities:
pPlayer = gc.getActivePlayer()
for i in angryCities:
pCity = pPlayer.city(i)
iAngerTimer = pCity.getHurryAngerTimer()
if iAngerTimer % hurryLength == 0:
alert!!!

Call alertAngryCities() in onBeginPlayerTurn(). Call trackAngryCities() on game load and after calling alertAngryCities(). That's a rough outline that needs some work no doubt.

pholkhero

Oct 21, 2007, 10:20 AM

speaking of whipping ~ i mentioned this to ruff, but i think he put me on his ignore list ~

would it be possible to have an alert come up when it's possible to whip something? e.g., i'm waiting and waiting to whip a settler as soon as it is ready, but b/c i'm lazy, i don't want to check the city screen each turn. If an alert could come up saying something like: "The Settler in Rome can now be whipped for x pop" or even "bought for y gold" w/uhhh....emancipation?? i forget, i never use that function.

ruff_hi

Oct 21, 2007, 10:29 AM

Shigga

Oct 22, 2007, 02:43 AM

There's one feature I would kill for- it would make the life of every SE player so much easier: An additional +/- for every kind of specs in city view that removes all specs of a certain kind and puts them into the citizen category/puts as many specs as possible in a certain category. Uber, that would be. :)

EmperorFool

Oct 22, 2007, 03:10 AM

An additional +/- for every kind of specs in city view that removes all specs of a certain kind and puts them into the citizen category/puts as many specs as possible in a certain category.

I looked briefly into this one, but it's not performed by Python. In fact, it doesn't seem to be performed by the DLL either, but it's a little unclear. All Python does is create the buttons with keys that tell the DLL to tell the game to add/subtract a specialist.

That being said, it's possible new buttons could be added (I would prefer ctrl-click the existing buttons, but oh well) that would try to do the same thing in Python as you described. I'll have to check the API for CyCity more, but it doesn't look very promising.

Shigga

Oct 22, 2007, 04:28 AM

I would be totally satisfied with Ctrl+click, in fact that's the better solution- the city view is cluttered enough as it is. *keeps fingers crossed* I do SO hope that you find a solution to this one!

EDIT: A Killer Feature for your mod if I've ever seen one.

Derbus

Oct 23, 2007, 04:09 PM

Request Feature addition: Alert when the AI has new resources for trade. This can be handy in the time period when the AI has researched a technology like calendar and is placing plantations on the map but you don't want to check each turn whether one of the AI's has connected a resource for trading.

Is it possible to filter out gold for trade notifications ??? It's great having an alert for when a civ has a new resource to trade, but the alert "xxx has 50gold to trade" comes up too often.

OneBinary

Oct 23, 2007, 04:22 PM

Is it possible to filter out gold for trade notifications ??? It's great having an alert for when a civ has a new resource to trade, but the alert "xxx has 50gold to trade" comes up too often.

Control-Alt-o (the letter 'o')

ruff_hi

Oct 23, 2007, 07:22 PM

i love it - users have started answering questions!! way to go OneBinary!

EmperorFool

Oct 23, 2007, 09:59 PM

i love it - users have started answering questions!! way to go OneBinary!

:goodjob: :goodjob: :goodjob:

Elandal

Oct 24, 2007, 12:49 AM

And in the next phase CFC becomes subforum of BUG website? Then it'll be just a small step before cIV becomes a mod of BUG :)

EmperorFool

Oct 24, 2007, 02:21 AM

@Elandal - :lol: That made my night! Thatnks for helping alleviate much of the frustration cIV dealt me the past weekend. :goodjob:

ruff_hi

Oct 25, 2007, 09:59 PM

I looked briefly into this one, but it's not performed by Python. In fact, it doesn't seem to be performed by the DLL either, but it's a little unclear. All Python does is create the buttons with keys that tell the DLL to tell the game to add/subtract a specialist.

That being said, it's possible new buttons could be added (I would prefer ctrl-click the existing buttons, but oh well) that would try to do the same thing in Python as you described. I'll have to check the API for CyCity more, but it doesn't look very promising.I saw a mod that displayed transparent GPs (max GPs per type) and solid GPs (ones selected). If you want 4 scientists, click on the 4th transparent GS and there you go. Found it here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5777936&postcount=8).

EmperorFool

Oct 25, 2007, 10:06 PM

@Ruff - That's precisely the Spec Stacker I want to put into BUG, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I also think the elongated and lowered GP/Nationality/Culture bars are a good idea. Both of these are in Nevermind's MainScreenMod I think, but I don't know if he updated to 3.13 (I forget if 3.13 had changes to CvMainInterface.py).

ruff_hi

Oct 25, 2007, 10:10 PM

well, great minds think alike (http://www.goenglish.com/GreatMindsThinkAlike.asp) ... and the flip side ... fools never differ.

alerum68

Oct 25, 2007, 10:19 PM

Ruff, tell me you're using some extension to link to famous sayings on forums, and didn't actually take the time to do that.:p Anyway, I thought this was already put in, or I would have said something LONG ago.:p

alerum68

Oct 25, 2007, 11:14 PM

You know, just fors hits and giggles, we should add an option to Sevopedia to have Leaderhead Zoom. Have 3 or 4 levels, and each level gets further away, showing more of the background.

Also EF you were suggesting making an option to put the Research and GP bar side by side for wide screen views... I agree completely. I thinkit would look very clean.

pholkhero

Oct 26, 2007, 12:24 PM

d'oh after reading the forums, I forgot what I wanted to suggest!

Oh yeah, WFYABTA limits ~ any way that can be displayed somehow? either a notification when someone goes WFYABTA, but also displaying how many techs left available to trade at the AIs current happiness limit? This is a stretch, and I think might be difficult to pull off into the mod, but teh WFYABTA, iirc, is calculated for your civ counting ALL trades w/ALL civs, and then that is weighed against each individual AI's relationship w/you and their own cut-off.

Perhaps the tech trade screen could show total techs traded for, and an overlay there could say when they hit the limit at their current relationship?

example, screen says: 25 trades made.

[roll-over Mansa, who is at Pleased]Limit: 50 (just a guess, i don't know the actual number)
[roll-over Alex, who is at Cautious]Limit: 24 WFYABTA!

just more in my continuing quest to annoy you

EmperorFool

Oct 26, 2007, 12:31 PM

WFYABTA is on our list of Civ4lerts to add. That won't be a problem. However, the rest is either impossible to get via Python or spoiler information you can't get through the game.

Here's how I understand it from memory of reading a strategy article about it:

When you get a tech from an AI (trade or gift or peace), every AI that knows both you and the AI in the deal increases their "you got a tech" counter.
Every turn, each AI has a 5% chance or so of decreasing its counter.
If the counter is higher than the AI's individual threshold, no techs for you!

That counter is the spoiler information, and without revealing it, no other information makes sense except telling you when you hit the threshold and when it decays away past the threshold.

ruff_hi

Oct 26, 2007, 12:37 PM

Perhaps the tech trade screen could show total techs traded for, and an overlay there could say when they hit the limit at their current relationship?

example, screen says: 25 trades made.This part of your suggestion I like and is def not spoilish. It is just a counter showing how many techs you have acquired via trade. It will not be 100% accurate re WFYABTA as it will be total techs and not techs that affect an AIs counter.

That said, how do you increment this counter? I don't think there is an event re 'tech acquired thru trade'. DUH!

Roland Johansen

Oct 26, 2007, 07:20 PM

This part of your suggestion I like and is def not spoilish. It is just a counter showing how many techs you have acquired via trade. It will not be 100% accurate re WFYABTA as it will be total techs and not techs that affect an AIs counter.

That said, how do you increment this counter? I don't think there is an event re 'tech acquired thru trade'. DUH!

While it isn't spoiler information, it might be pretty confusing for those that don't exactly know how the counter works. Many players don't even know what the WFYABTA message means. It's pretty weird that the counter for traded technologies can be higher than the maximum level and you can still trade.

For instance: We have a civilisation that has a maximum WFYABTA counter of 10 at the difficulty level that we're playing at (the maximum value at which players are willing to trade is difficulty level dependent).

So we start trading technologies with several players and the WFYABTA counter goes up: 1,2,3,4,5,6 (after trading for 6 technologies) and at that point it goes down one time unknown to the player to 5. It starts going up again: 6,7,8 (after trading for another 3 technologies) and then again it goes down one time unknown to the player to 7. Then it goes up again to 8 after another trade. However, the counter that was programmed to count the number of traded technologies should now be at 10, since it should not show the 2 downward shifts. But we can still trade, so the actual counter is below 10 and the player knows this and he can record this on a piece of paper if he's willing to do so. He doesn't know, it is actually 8, but he knows it is below 10. After trading for another technology, the counter programmed to count the number of traded technologies will be at 11, but we can still trade, so we know the actual counter is below 10. It's actually at 9, but the player doesn't know this.

You could improve the counter that simply counts the number of traded technologies to do the following:
If counter >= max level counter and we can still trade, then set counter at max level -1.
But you need a counter for each civilisation, because each civilisation has a random chance that its counter will go down by 1 (if I understood the mechanism correctly).

In this case, the counter would show the possible maximum level of the WFYABTA counter as far as the player knows. The actual level of the counter could be lower than the shown number, but it can't be higher.

Elandal

Oct 26, 2007, 08:09 PM

iirc WFYABTA is counted for all civs separatelly so that they have counter for tech trades they know you have done and their own memory setting which causes them to decrement their counters.

So assume I know civs A and B and do three trades. Now A and B both have counters at maximum of three (I can't know if they've forgotten some already).
Now I meet civ C - it has counter at zero, because it does not know of the trades I've done with A and B before I met it. Assume C has met A but not B yet.
I do trade with C, which increments counters of C and A, but B who doesn't know C doesn't know of the trade and thus counter isn't incremented, even if I know B.

So while counters would be nice, have to remember that they are incremented when a civ knows of a trade, and I don't have information about their memory. Still this could be good information to have.

OneBinary

Oct 26, 2007, 08:43 PM

I assume all of this will be toggleable?

a notification when someone goes WFYABTA
I don't consider this spoilerish and I would like to see this.

displaying how many techs left available to trade at the AIs current happiness limit
I consider this spoilerish and I would not enable it in my games. It tells you who you should trade for cheaper techs and who you should wait and trade more expensive techs. I think EF touched on this:
That counter is the spoiler information, and without revealing it, no other information makes sense except telling you when you hit the threshold and when it decays away past the threshold.

So I would be in favor of an alert to let us know when a Civ WFYABTA, but I'm not in favor of any further information, such as counter. $0.02 :goodjob:

EmperorFool

Oct 26, 2007, 10:12 PM

Putting aside the counter idea and just looking at the alert for now...

I've started to code this and have a question: What is the difference between WFYABTA and "We don't want to trade away this tech just yet" and all the other reasons for declining a tech?

You already get an alert when an AI will trade at least one tech with you this turn but wouldn't last turn. And they have to have at least one tech you don't to figure out WFYABTA.

You'll get this alert whenever:

They just learned a tech that they will trade you.
They had a tech that they wouldn't trade last turn for reason X, but now they will trade it to you.

Why does it matter what reason X is?

That wasn't very clear. What I mean is that when an AI has a tech that you don't and their counter drops below the threshold, you're going to see this

New Techs to Trade: Saladin

Does a second alert

Saladin no longer feels you are too advanced

add any value? Obviously you are now under his threshold, otherwise he wouldn't be willing to trade techs.

I can see the use of an alert when you go over the threshold. An AI has two techs on you, you trade one of them, and suddenly hit WFYABTA. The alert will tell you that you hit the limit without you having to try trading the second tech. Of course, you won't see the alert until you close the diplomacy window.

ruff_hi

Oct 27, 2007, 12:48 AM

Actually - what you say, EF, makes a lot of sense. But then on second thoughts, do we have an alert that CivY just acquired a tech (trade or not). I would like to see that so I know where they are in certain tech races (liberalism, some wonders, etc).

I think the biggest request I am seeing now is the 'can hurry' one. I had a brief look at the alert code today and was glad that you are looking after it.

EmperorFool

Oct 27, 2007, 01:05 AM

Do we have an alert that CivY just acquired a tech (trade or not)?

Not yet, but I'll add that with the other alerts for tech trading.

I think the biggest request I am seeing now is the 'can hurry' one.

I've chained myself to my desk and queued up a bunch of good music . . . let's see how many alerts I can create. :)

alerum68

Oct 28, 2007, 02:56 AM

Cam, please change your first post to request feature request to be sent here:

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=add&group_id=202755&atid=982857

robuck

Oct 29, 2007, 09:24 PM

Not sure if this has been suggested, or if it would fit under "unaltered gameplay", but I've always hated the rally points in Civ 4. It would be great if they could be improved to be easier to set, easier to see, and easier to remove. Multiple advanced rally points would be great, such as "All marines go to rallypoint X" and/or "All Armored Units from Washington go to rallypoint Y". and also, I wish workers and other civilian units wouldn't run out to the front line! :mad:

Also I just want to say when an enhanced military advisor is completed, I will be very very happy. The original one is awful! :(

Thanks everyone who spent time on this great mod. :goodjob:

alerum68

Oct 29, 2007, 09:38 PM

I'm not the coding guru, but I'm pretty sure the rally points are controlled within the C++ code, not Python or XML. I could be wrong though.

Totally agree on the Enhanced Military Adviser... I just think the one that's out there now, both the MA and EMA, are slow, and with the EMA you cannot access known enemy units. I'm going to start a thread on what should be included in a BUG version of the EMA. If you want, help contribute at this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6101109#post6101109

jray

Oct 30, 2007, 11:23 AM

Not yet, but I'll add that with the other alerts for tech trading.

I've chained myself to my desk and queued up a bunch of good music . . . let's see how many alerts I can create. :)

I'm still seeing tech trade alerts firing one turn late when a rival gets a new tech. (BTS 3.13, BUG 2.10, Bhruic 1.105). Sorry I don't have a savegame file, but I'll try to re-create the situation. Basically all you need to do though is crank up your espionage so you can see what the AI's researching, then check their diplo screen when you see they've finished. You'll see they will actually trade the tech, but the alert doesn't fire until the next turn.

Note that the alert fires correctly when it's a matter of an AI being suddenly willing to trade a tech it's had for a while.

BTW, totally awesome Hurrying alerts and new GP bar!! Those are so cool.

EmperorFool

Oct 30, 2007, 12:37 PM

pholkhero

Oct 30, 2007, 04:32 PM

that would be great, actually, EP . . . er, F :lol:

though it may be cumbersome to try and read all them if there are several new techs for several different AIs.

Cammagno

Oct 30, 2007, 06:03 PM

BTW, does anyone want the list of techs an AI will trade spelled out in the message, one message per AI? It seems odd to tell you how much gold they have, but not which new tech they'll trade.

:clap: :clap: :clap:

EmperorFool

Oct 30, 2007, 11:24 PM

I would have just done it this way without asking, except the original code gets all that info and then drops the actual new techs in favor of just displaying the AI names. I figured maybe Dr. Jiggles had a good reason.

Hmm, dare I say, option?

jray

Oct 31, 2007, 02:21 PM

I'll look into that. The trade alerts should fire at the correct times now. They are checked after all AIs have moved and just before you move. The only time this will not work is if you are playing a scenario with a fixed set of civs and aren't playing the first civ (civ 0).

Thanks, and I'll try to remember to save a savegame file next time I encounter it. I'm just playing a standard single-player game, no scenarios.

BTW, does anyone want the list of techs an AI will trade spelled out in the message, one message per AI? It seems odd to tell you how much gold they have, but not which new tech they'll trade.

That would be awesome! FYI this functionality is already done in the ShowInfo mod, which I think is in the BUG Future Enhancements list. The ShowInfo mod also shows which specific resources each civ will trade to you, which technologies and resources they are interested in buying from you, civs ready to make peace, etc. It's quite a stellar mod. There are options to enable and disable all the varieties of alerts. I did a bunch of work to update it to Warlords here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204958), and I'd be thrilled to see it reincarnated for BtS :). It would be an excellent supplement to your already kick-ass alert system.

EmperorFool

Oct 31, 2007, 11:38 PM

The ShowInfo mod also shows which specific resources each civ will trade to you, which technologies and resources they are interested in buying from you, civs ready to make peace, etc.

Yes, ShowInfo is on our todo list.

Would Civ4lerts still be useful if we included ShowInfo? Can you give me an executive summary of what Civ4lerts has that ShowInfo doesn't? Nothing fancy, as I'll read over the docs soon enough, but just to give me an idea of the overlap.

Cammagno

Nov 01, 2007, 01:20 AM

jray

Nov 01, 2007, 10:01 AM

Yes, ShowInfo is on our todo list.

Would Civ4lerts still be useful if we included ShowInfo? Can you give me an executive summary of what Civ4lerts has that ShowInfo doesn't? Nothing fancy, as I'll read over the docs soon enough, but just to give me an idea of the overlap.

My memory might be a bit fuzzy since it's been a while since I used it myself, but the paradigms are quite different in that Civ4lerts is based on turn-to-turn changes, and ShowInfo is based on current turn information only. For example, Civ4lerts will tell you only the first time (or a turn after the first time, until the bug is fixed ;)) that "New Techs to Trade: Mansa," but ShowInfo will display every turn from then on "Mansa: Economics" until you get Economics yourself or Mansa becomes unwilling to trade it. What would be really cool is to add an option to toggle between paradigms. Sometimes I feel like a reminder each turn of all the things I could buy, and sometimes I don't want the spam. It would be especially cool to have ShowInfo's alerts for resources, because often you have a 1-turn window to snag a newly available resource trade before someone else does.

FYI, ShowInfo suffers from the exact same problem of certain alerts being a turn late. But it comes with a hotkey (Shift-I, I think) that displays it on demand. So once you begin your turn, you can hit Shift-I and see correct info.

EmperorFool

Nov 01, 2007, 10:16 PM

Eunomiac

Nov 13, 2007, 09:43 AM

I have some ideas for the Alt-M reminders function, which is an absolute godsend. I posted a thread awhile back expounding on the virtues of this little-known function, when I thought it was part of the game itself and not the BUG Mod, and a lot of people were very excited about it. Definitely one of the lesser-known treasures of the BUG Mod! I think it could be made even better with reasonably little work. Specifically:

1) Could you add a recurring reminders function? That way you can set things up at the beginning to make sure you aren't neglecting elements of your empire (i.e. every thirty turns, I have a "check Espionage ratios" reminder pop up - but I have to manually recur them by setting multiple ones at 30 turns, 60 turns, 90 turns, etc.)

2) Would it be possible to have it work as a single string? So you could define some simple syntax form such as "[# of Turns]@[Reminder text]" for a normal reminder, and "[# of Turns]*@[Reminder Text]" for a recurring reminder. That way you could Alt-M-->type-->ENTER, instead of having to fumble for the mouse to move the cursor to the number field. Also, it would be easy to save a list of reminders to load up each game in a simple text file with each reminder on a new line:

10*@Stop, take a breath, review your plan!
20@Dotmap likely 2nd city locations
30*@Check Espionage sliders
70@Getting too late to neglect Barbarian defenses...

I'm trying to be conscious of amount of effort, and hope I've suggested ideas that aren't too onerous. We all appreciate the work you guys are putting into this!

walbeek

Nov 14, 2007, 04:56 AM

Instead of an option that showed all trades every turn (it looks like it only shows the top X civs sorted by various columns you can change), how about just adding the hotkey?

Well, okay, I can see the value of the alert every turn I've been trying to think of other ways to display the data. For one, I really like the use of icons to shrink the volume of information displayed. They provide the same amount of information in less space.

One big difference between the two mods is that Civ4lerts is geared around the item to trade (showing all tech trade messages, then all DP messages, then all gold trade, etc) whereas ShowInfo shows all information for a single civ in a single message. I see the value of both and can't decide if one trumps the other. Sure, the more options the better in most cases, but more options come at the cost of fewer options for something else (and complexity). I can only code so fast.

Ooh, and a new alert possibility: showing when AIs learn techs that you already know. This would help you track their progress and know when you lost a sale opportunity (less important since it's lost after all).

Anyway, lots to think about...

Don't you think you could be providing TOO MUCH info's? This could info could influence the game. E.g. the AI's learn techs that you already know: that way you don't have to use the espionage anymore or diplomacy to see what techs you can offer (thus they don't have). Now you have to keep track of their research yourselve, providing you allocate enough recources towards espionage, and keep looking in the scoreboard who is researching what to get a general idea where "they" are in technological tree or contact your "neighbours" once in a while to check up on them. And of course that way you'll never get a complete picture, 'cause you'll always miss some... If you were really a leader of a great civ, you don't know everything the other knows or has either. And the "getting to know" is part of the game.

The recources (and what recource) "will trade" info could be usefull though. (EF: I agree on the using on Icons part! much clearer I would asume):) . I'm less enthousiastic about the tech trading part.

EmperorFool

Nov 14, 2007, 12:01 PM

My motivation for the BUG mod is that I enjoy playing the game and micromanaging my empire, but it gets old going through all the UI screens and counting. I learned to count when I was a toddler -- I don't need any more practice.

You can always figure out what techs the AIs have to trade using the trade screen, as you said. Sure, you won't do that every turn but you could. And sometimes I used to, but that got old fast.

I have limited time to play the game, so I look for ways to make my games quicker so I can play more instead of monitoring the UI. This may not be your motivation, and if it isn't, just turn off those features you find egregious. :)

·Imhotep·

Nov 14, 2007, 12:17 PM

@EF:

You're right. And therefore go coding that PA turncounter :D

ecc

Nov 14, 2007, 04:54 PM

The features request page(on sourceforge) has some very good suggestions. Although I don't understand the priority value. Does the administrator assign this after it has been reviewed? Is there a way to have a better idea on if/when it might be implemented?

Thanks

EmperorFool

Nov 14, 2007, 09:38 PM

When I assigned a priority, I tried to reflect the impact the feature would have on the mod, not so much how likely I am to implement it. Sometimes I have just a little time that I can try to fix/add something and end up hitting a low-priority item (better than nothing I say).

Right now I'm the only one coding, and I've been letting the 2.11 version bake a little while so I can take a little rest. Plus I have a day job that takes a lot of time away from the mod. Hopefully I'll get to put some time into some features and bugs over Thanksgiving next week.

ecc

Nov 17, 2007, 11:55 PM

Well thats great. Take your time. I can't wait to see BATTy

ImperialGuard

Nov 23, 2007, 03:03 PM

I do not see this in CivAlerts .... before I logged as a suggested enchancement, wanted to see if this was there...or planned etc...

From a micromanagement perspective, it would be great to have an alert that let me know that I'm about to achieve the tech I am researching ...

e.g. I research Hunting (it will take 8 turns) on turn 6 or 7 or x (user configuarable would be ideal), an alert would be given indicating that tech research about to be achieved ...

thanks in advance

Sam_Yeager

Nov 23, 2007, 04:24 PM

be great to have an alert that let me know that I'm about to achieve the tech I am researching ...

e.g. I research Hunting (it will take 8 turns) on turn 6 or 7 or x (user configuarable would be ideal), an alert would be given indicating that tech research about to be achieved ...

Why not set a reminder instead?

EmperorFool

Nov 23, 2007, 04:58 PM

Roland Johansen

Nov 23, 2007, 05:23 PM

@ImperialGuard - That seems like a reasonable feature request. Can you please post it to the feature request tracker on SF.net?

@Sam_Yeager - Using a reminder would force you to a) set the reminder each time you started a new tech and b) not take into account cases where you change your research rate or anything else that changes the number of turns it will take.

Isn't the research bar in the centre of the main screen a good reminder? ;)

I don't see me using it, but of course, if someone thinks it would be useful, then I won't mind such an optional reminder.

Derbus

Nov 25, 2007, 08:55 AM

Would it be possible to write a mod, to put a sign down where an enemy destroys one of your improvements??

Sometimes I don't notice when an improvement has been pillaged, or somethings it comes up while a number of my cities has the build popup so I can't check which improvement has been pillaged.... which means I gotta mouseover each and every damn one to check

Roland Johansen

Nov 25, 2007, 02:35 PM

Sam_Yeager

Nov 25, 2007, 02:42 PM

Would it be possible to log the results of AP & UN resolutions? Even better would be if the voting details of the civs participating could also be logged. Naturally AP resolutions should only be logged if your civ is actually a member.

Derbus

Nov 25, 2007, 08:23 PM

Doesn't the event log tell you which tiles have been pillaged? Every event pop up is stored in there.

Hi Roland, i'm pretty new to the game still.... I think I know where your talking about (top left ?? one of the tabs where the combat log/chat is??)

Hmmm, I think I know what your talking about, the log only says what got pillaged but I've never tried clicking on the actual event, I'm guessing it'll take me to the exact tile that got messed up :)

thanks

EmperorFool

Nov 25, 2007, 09:38 PM

@Derbus - Yes, ctrl-tab is the shortcut key to toggle the log window, and clicking an item with a location will go to it, like pillaging, builds, culture growth, combat, spy activity, etc.

All of the city-related Civ4lerts work like this, too. That's why we have them all show up instantly without the on-screen indicators and sounds. I was thinking of making it optional, so you could make those alerts come up slowly like normal game events with the arrows and sounds. As the game progresses and you get a lot of alerts, it would take a while for them to show, however.

·Imhotep·

Nov 26, 2007, 05:20 AM

jray

Nov 27, 2007, 10:48 AM

@EF:

Speaking of Alerts - could you code an alert for willing to make peace (and the price for it) as well as for willing to capitulate ? I guess it would work similar to the Permanent Alliance or Open Borders thing...

Imhotep

FYI, the ShowInfo mod already has a peace alert built in. I don't know how easy it would be to borrow from it though. I don't think it has a capitulate alert though.

DrJambo

Jan 16, 2008, 10:20 AM

ruff_hi

Jan 16, 2008, 11:52 AM

"What would be a really useful addition to BUG?"

Why, it's obvious - a button to wake all units of the highlighted type!

Picture the situation where you've 30+ bombers. During peace it's a right royal pain in the ass to have to skip through every one of these each turn. So the temptation is to sleep them. Fine. However, if one enters a war it's also a right royal pain in the ass having to find and awaken each and every bomber, since at the moment all we can do is awaken all of a unit type per city.

So the solution - a key command or icon that will wake all bombers on a global scale. (Or any other unit kind that's selected for that matter).I think that is already built into the game. Using the situation mentioned above, locate 1 sleeping bomber, select it, hold down the ALT key and click on 'wake up'. The ALT key should issue that order to all similar units - well, I know it does when I have automatic workers that I want regain control of (select one, Alt-Cancel Orders and bingo, my workers are back).

DrJambo

Jan 16, 2008, 01:37 PM

I'm sure that just works on a city to city basis, not globally across all cities...

It's those bombers I put to sleep over in those obscure island cities that I don't want to forget about.

ruff_hi

Jan 16, 2008, 02:40 PM

Holding the the ALT key issues orders to all workers, regardless of location. I haven't tested it with other units but it shouldn't be too hard to test. I expect it will work.

Shigga

Jan 17, 2008, 02:15 AM

Any news on the feature discussed in #100 to #102? :)

Ekmek

Jan 17, 2008, 11:49 AM

This may sound like too much but maybe an apolostolic palace and UN button on the foreign advisor screen. that way you can initiate the resolutions instead of seeing what the game pop-ups. I guess the AI control can function as it does now, but if the human has it would be nice to click that button and have a list of resolutions to put forward.

alerum68

Jan 17, 2008, 03:16 PM

That's a great idea Ekmek, but it'll altered the gameplay, by giving the user a feature they have no way to access without it. I'm sorry.

ecc

Jan 18, 2008, 02:56 PM

Yes please don't go down that route. Even the most minor of gameplay changes can introduce an imbalance which would take hours and hours of play testing to figure out the advantages and disadvantages. I think there are plenty of ideas on the sourceforge page to go from yet.

Ekmek

Jan 21, 2008, 02:51 PM

That's a great idea Ekmek, but it'll altered the gameplay, by giving the user a feature they have no way to access without it. I'm sorry.

thanks, it was worth a shot ;)

One thing I'd like is to have the corporation screen show how much money the corporation hq is generating and just a number of how many franchises (cities with the corporation) are out there. the bottom city list has zero value.

I think I found the code in the mainscreen for gettin the hq gold but I haven't messed with python before so I'm not sure where to add it or do the loop for the number of cities

Ekmek

Mar 21, 2008, 03:27 PM

how about this for unaltered gameplay. Splitting the traits to one bonus per xml entry. you'll still have the leaders have all the traits you have but modders adding stuff to BUG could mix and match trait. i.e. separating imperialist into imperialist I (100& GG appearance) & II (2x settler production). Or you could just rename the trait to what it does. This would open the door to several new traits for modders without altering or adding to the current traits.

ruff_hi

Mar 22, 2008, 05:08 PM

why is everything assigned to me??

items that I will look at ...
Star next to GG Unit Icon
GP Bar: Show %s for selected city
Specialist Buttons
Specialist Stacker
Keep GG name with UnitRename
Alter display of \"Turns to Growth\" when \"No Grow\" is set

items that I will NOT look at ...
'Enhanced Reminder'
Resource Alerts
Allow player to assign attitudes to AIs
Add more icons to Glance tab
Reminder Buttons
Apostolic Palace notification
More PLE stuff
More alerts
Popup dialog for new naming format
Logging of Spaceship parts
Whip Assitant in City Screen

alerum68

Mar 22, 2008, 06:10 PM

Because you are the only one who knows Python, and not everything was assigned to you, maybe 60%.

ruff_hi

Apr 01, 2008, 08:52 AM

·Imhotep·

Apr 04, 2008, 12:00 PM

@ruff:

I'd be interested in just one alert: The techs that are available for trade from a specific AI. Right know the situation is that you get the alert the Civ XX has a new tech to trade, but you don't know which one. Therefore you have to check it in the Advisor Screen. If the alert said at once which tech it is you could decide whether to check the screen for further investigation or leave it alone. Would minimize MMing this way I'd think.

Imhotep

oldsaxon

Apr 27, 2008, 04:00 AM

Just a small tweak, would hopefully be simple.

- My city's borders are about to expand. BUG helpfully warns me, in nice easy-to-spot purple.
- Next turn, my city's borders actually expand. I get the standard Civ message, in easy-to-miss white.

Is it possible to change things so that both messages are in purple?

EmperorFool

Apr 27, 2008, 11:45 AM

Is it possible to change things so that both messages are in purple?

If it's possible, it'll be easy to do. I've been thinking a bit about the other Civ4lert messages as well. For example, when a city is about to become unhappy, the whole message is orange.

Amsterdam will become unhappy next turn.

The problem for me (I have poor vision) is that with several orange messages, the only way to know which message it is and to which city it applies, I have to read the whole message.

I like the standard Civ messages that mix colors, using green for technologies and blue for cities, IIRC. This makes the important part of the message stand out, improving scannability.

So I'd change the above message to this:

Amsterdam will become unhappy next turn.

Similarly for "has become":

Amsterdam has become unhappy.

This would extend to the other messages.

Mansa Musa will trade Horseback Riding.
Catherine will trade 240 :gold:.

What do you all think?

BTW, I think I have the color for leader names wrong, and city names may actually be white, but I'm not at my home PC. Obviously, I'd try to match these up to the existing messages where possible.

If city names are white, what color would you recommend to use instead?

alerum68

Apr 27, 2008, 12:08 PM

I like that idea... would make it much easier to scan, like you said...

EF you're going to kill me, literally, for suggesting this... But how about a second Options tab that has Advisor Colors, with drop downs for the alerts where you can select the color you want.

ruff_hi

Apr 27, 2008, 01:20 PM

hmmn ... killing alerum68 - should I run a poll? :D:D

alerum68

Apr 27, 2008, 01:39 PM

run the pole up where Ruff?:) Oh, you mean poll?:p:p

Don't forget the 'nanners in it!

ruff_hi

Apr 27, 2008, 01:45 PM

pole - what are you talking about? (don't you just love the power of edit :D)

Mylon

Apr 27, 2008, 02:01 PM

Does this mod change how city building works any? I would love to see a mod that allows one to collapse the list of military units and collapse the list of missionaries down to make going through the list in late-game much easier.

alerum68

Apr 27, 2008, 02:27 PM

Not in the city, but PLE used to have a way to group units in stacks....

Roland Johansen

Apr 27, 2008, 03:21 PM

If it's possible, it'll be easy to do. I've been thinking a bit about the other Civ4lert messages as well. For example, when a city is about to become unhappy, the whole message is orange.

Amsterdam will become unhappy next turn.

The problem for me (I have poor vision) is that with several orange messages, the only way to know which message it is and to which city it applies, I have to read the whole message.

I like the standard Civ messages that mix colors, using green for technologies and blue for cities, IIRC. This makes the important part of the message stand out, improving scannability.

So I'd change the above message to this:

Amsterdam will become unhappy next turn.

Similarly for "has become":

Amsterdam has become unhappy.

This would extend to the other messages.

Mansa Musa will trade Horseback Riding.
Catherine will trade 240 :gold:.

What do you all think?

BTW, I think I have the color for leader names wrong, and city names may actually be white, but I'm not at my home PC. Obviously, I'd try to match these up to the existing messages where possible.

If city names are white, what color would you recommend to use instead?

I personally never read the messages at the start of the turn. I first start moving my units (workers when at peace, lots of units when at war). After that part of the turn, I enter the message log and just click the messages to go to the spot on the map where the event occurred. In the message log, things are usually very easy to read because the background is darker than the main screen. I don't think I'd personally like it when the messages start becoming a mix of 5-7 colours. That would be a bit ugly to read to be honest. It might stand out more on the main screen for quick scans, but that's just not important to me. I would even disable the main screen messages and just have the message log if that option were possible.

The reason that I play that way is because I play on huge maps and in the late game the list of messages becomes so large that you've already forgotten the first message halfway through the list of messages. And if you have more than 30-40 cities, it is also not that informative if something happened in city no. 27 because sometimes I can't even remember the exact location of city 27. I just click the message in the message log and the game screen moves to the relevant location.

So I would rather have fewer colours than more colours...

Yes, we customers are hard to please... (which is why this is the mod with a very detailed and extensive options screen).

alerum68

Apr 27, 2008, 03:38 PM

Roland Johansen

Apr 27, 2008, 04:54 PM

RJ, you can pick and choose, or completely turn off the alerts. You may even want to do that without the color changes, if your play style doesn't use them and you find them to be a burden. Personally I reduce the alerts I get as I go through the game.

I do use quite a lot of the alerts (not all of them, some are disabled), but I only use them in the message log (the one opened with CTRL TAB). The ingame alerts which appear on the main screen are directly linked to the ones in the message log. You can't disable the messages on the main screen without disabling the ones in the message log.

EmperorFool

Apr 27, 2008, 05:55 PM

@RJ - Point taken, and I'll consider that. Keep in mind that at most a message would contain 3 colors: white for the normal text and 1 or 2 colors based on the message. Civ4 does this already.

You have found a deposit of Iron.
You have discovered Archery.

Of course, the game isn't entirely consistent.

You have completed The Great Library.

It shouldn't be too hard to make it configurable (single- versus multi-color messages).

@Alerum - Yes, I was already thinking that, but I'm not quite sure how to configure it. Should you choose colors for "good", "bad", "gold", "techs" or choose a color for each message?

In the game messages, colors are specified like "COLOR_TECH", and then Civ defines those elsewhere. This makes it easier for the game designers to remain consistent. I'd prefer to follow those so BUG looks like an extension to Civ4 without clashing.

Roland Johansen

Apr 27, 2008, 07:16 PM

It shouldn't be too hard to make it configurable (single- versus multi-color messages).

Heh, the options screen of this mod is maybe its biggest miracle. Although, I can imagine that the number of options that need to be configurable to satisfy all of our (the customers of this mod) needs must become quite a nuisance to program.

Since the rest of the mod is high quality, I trust that I'll be satisfied with at least one of the options. In the message log, it might be nice to have a single colour per type of message as it would allow you to check the messages by type each turn.

ruff_hi

Apr 27, 2008, 08:18 PM

I would even disable the main screen messages and just have the message log if that option were possible.I think that you can do that with the standard un-modded game in the ini file ...

; Set to 1 for no on-screen event messages
;NoEventMessages = 1
NoEventMessages = 0

Not sure if this also turns off the messages to the log.

EmperorFool

Apr 27, 2008, 11:27 PM

Heh, the options screen of this mod is maybe its biggest miracle.

Thanks. I highly value configurability in software I use, so I made it a priority to take Ruff's original options screen code and make it easily extensible. Adding new options takes very little code (a few lines now), and I am thinking this might be a nice chunk to rip out and make a separate piece for other mod developers.

It might be nice to have a single colour per type of message as it would allow you to check the messages by type each turn.

My thought is to have one overall option that determines whether each message has multiple colors as I described above or a single color. Then each alert will have a configurable base color.

ruff_hi

Apr 28, 2008, 05:28 AM

Thanks. I highly value configurability in software I use, so I made it a priority to take Ruff's original options screen code and make it easily extensible. Adding new options takes very little code (a few lines now), and I am thinking this might be a nice chunk to rip out and make a separate piece for other mod developers.That would be a nice addition to the community. I certainly value the ease of adding an option. If (when) you do this, be sure to post an alert in the mod thread so that it is posted on the first page of CFC.

Roland Johansen

Apr 28, 2008, 07:41 AM

I think that you can do that with the standard un-modded game in the ini file ...

; Set to 1 for no on-screen event messages
;NoEventMessages = 1
NoEventMessages = 0

Not sure if this also turns off the messages to the log.

Thanks, that worked. I never noticed that they added this option to the ini-file in BTS.

However, when a new turn starts, you still get the auditory cues that something happened which is a bit too weird for me as the sounds aren't clearly related to an on-screen events anymore. So I guess that I stay with the on-screen event messages. But still thanks for the help.

Thanks. I highly value configurability in software I use, so I made it a priority to take Ruff's original options screen code and make it easily extensible. Adding new options takes very little code (a few lines now), and I am thinking this might be a nice chunk to rip out and make a separate piece for other mod developers.

I could imagine that some modders would like that. Maybe a mod like Dale's combat mod could benefit from that. Although I haven't actually used it, I know that you can change some elements of that mod. But I don't really know that mod, so maybe those options have to be chosen before you start a game.

My thought is to have one overall option that determines whether each message has multiple colors as I described above or a single color. Then each alert will have a configurable base color.

That sounds like 2 well-chosen options.

ripple01

Apr 29, 2008, 11:21 AM

Would it be doable to update the Sevopedia to include the "Replaced by" line for buildings?

In BtS, Firaxis added a feature to the civilopedia for unique units, when you click on the normal unit "e.g. Musketman", it says replaced by Musketeer, Janissary, and Oromo Warrior"

However, they did not carry this feature through to the unique buildings. Could this be easily added? I think it would come in handy.

Also, lest I come off as an ingrate, thank you BUG team for your hard work put into this mod, it is one of my favorites and I'm glad to see it in active development again.

Cheers,
ripple01

EmperorFool

Apr 29, 2008, 04:01 PM

I've added it to the feature tracker and will check it out tonight.

Mylon

Apr 29, 2008, 09:47 PM

Not in the city, but PLE used to have a way to group units in stacks....

What's PLE?

EmperorFool

Apr 29, 2008, 10:35 PM

What's PLE?

PLE is the Plot List Enhancements mod. The Plot List is the group of unit icons that appears on the map (bottom center) when you have one or more units selected. The full version of PLE adds small icons between the list and the action buttons (Disband, Hold, Go To, Upgrade, etc) that allow you to filter the Plot List by various criteria.

For example, click the "LAND" button to remove all land-based units from the view. Click the "CAN MOVE" button to remove units with movement points left. The buttons are icons rather than names, and they work as a negative (filter out), causing confusion for some people.

PLE also provided multiple organization styles to the Plot List. It would allow you to specify ways of grouping the buttons, e.g. one unit type per column or row.

Balderstrom

Apr 30, 2008, 02:31 PM

I wonder if its possible to add a few more religious options to the CDA?
[TEMPLE_TOTAL]
[MONASTARY_TOTAL]
[SHRINE_TOTAL] the building that adds +50% Culture
[HOLY_GOLD_TOTAL] the prophets building

I find when making my own screens in the CDA it would be much more useful to know how many of a "type" of religious building a city has, than which specific religious building it has built.

I wish Firaxis had done this internally, and defined the 4 types, with the various religions just getting their own Art/Custom Name. Would of made the Civlopaedia much cleaerer.

Also, while on religions, add [<RELIGION_NAME>_HOLY_CITY], which - if you can see that city in world view then you can see the info in the CDA. Would enable you to have a list of which city/civ is the holy city of that religion.

Also I vote for increasing the ICON size used for the buildings etc in the CDA to the size you see in the City Screen... if a particular CDA window has more icons than can fit horizontally - then a scroll bar could be used.
I find the Icons to be almost too small to be of any use. Or if that could be an option to set.

EmperorFool

Apr 30, 2008, 03:17 PM

Adding columns for the number of Temples, Cathedrals, Monasteries and Holy Shrines a city has, regardless of religion, is a reasonable suggestion.

BTW, please add feature requests to the tracker as well as posting them for discussion. We love suggestions, and we're more likely to do the ones listed in the tracker. :)

Add [<RELIGION_NAME>_HOLY_CITY], which - if you can see that city in world view then you can see the info in the CDA. Would enable you to have a list of which city/civ is the holy city of that religion.

I don't think I understand. The list of each religion along with their holy cities (when you know them) is already on the Religion Advisor. How would this fit into the CDA? Do you mean you should have all the info the CDA shows for all holy cities, even foreign-owned?

If a particular CDA window has more icons than can fit horizontally - then a scroll bar could be used.

Sadly, Civ4's list control doesn't support horizontal scrolling. :(

Balderstrom

Apr 30, 2008, 03:51 PM

ReligionNAME_HOLY_CITY...
I guess when I think about it more, all I'm really interested in - would be to add the number of cities a religion has spread to beside it's percentage.

Horizontal Scrolling...
Does the Civlopaedia use different controls? It uses horizontal bars for displaying Religious Buildings and a few others.

(Requests added to Sourceforge) :-)

EmperorFool

Apr 30, 2008, 04:52 PM

The scrolling box on the Civilopedia is not a table control with rows and columns. Instead, it's just a scrolling canvas with buttons in it. It may seem like a trivial distinction, but that's how Firaxis coded the game engine. There are ways to simulate scrolling, but it's just easier to group the columns into pages like "Military Buildings" and "Religious Buildings".

I think the number of cities each religion has would make sense on the Religion Advisor screen, but I'm not sure we can get good info. The game code would let me determine exactly how many cities each religion is in, but I don't think it will let me know how many cities the player would know about. For example, if you see a city doesn't have Taoism, but then move away so the city enters your fog of war, unless Taoism is your state religion, you won't know it spreads to the city later.

I'll update the tracker item once I've checked out the API. Thanks for entering them into the tracker.

Balderstrom

Apr 30, 2008, 05:15 PM

No, not what cities the religion has spread to, just the number of cities...
ie, if there are 50 cities in game, and Taoism is 18%
We'd seeTaoism Confucianism
9 cities (18%) 3 cities (6%)
The advisor already tells us the percentage, but it is very abstract when looking at say 28% and 18% what that 10% difference actually means.

EmperorFool

Apr 30, 2008, 05:38 PM

I understand that you want the # of cities and not which individual cities. My point is that AFAIK the only way to know now how many cities Taoism has spread to is to scan the whole map by sight and count the cities with Taoism. But since your view of the map is partially obscured by the fog of war, it's not fair to report the actual number of cities.

The same argument applies using the percentage. Without seeing the whole map, you don't know the total number of cities world-wide. And thus, it leaks hidden information to report the value.

Now, I'm not very familiar with this part of the game, so please point out if I'm wrong about something not being provided by the basic game and where I can find that info.

Balderstrom

Apr 30, 2008, 06:44 PM

Well if you count your cities, divide that number by your percentage you now know how many cities are in the game ;)
In my Warlords game I have 15 cities, 14 have Taoism (19%); has spread to 7 other cities, for 21. 21/0.19 = 110.5, manual count of cities is only 77 (62+15)
Which doesn't add up; percentage apparently is not calculated how I thought.
Apparently since I am the only Civ that has Taoism as a state religion only my cities count towards the percentage. 14/0.19 = 73...
Cyrus has Christianity (14%) in 9 of his 10 cities; 9/77 is 12%... (it has spread to 9 other cities incl 2 of mine; 18/77 = 23%, no dice.
Wang Kun founded Buddism (12%), in 8 of his cities + 2 others, 10/77 = 12%
Wang Kun professes Buddism, no one else does. He also has Islam in 2 cities, which has 2% ...
So I guess the percentages are actually meaningless. They don't even match up with number of cities that profess the religion out of the world. Nor do they match up with the number of cities that the religion has spread to in the world.

So I suppose, technically it is "game information", I just don't see how that is relevant.
The game blatantly tells you what tech's the other civs have and what resources. Just by clicking on a CIV in the normal Foreign Advisor, the Resources/Techs you have - that they have, are removed from your trade list. Then it also shows you what they 'wont trade' and what they will trade - that you don't have.

It might as well just show each CIV and the tech's they have in the tech tree ;)

That is all "abusable" information that you shouldn't know at all.

Religion spread to X cities would just be "fun" to know.

alerum68

Apr 30, 2008, 06:44 PM

I'm pretty sure you don't have to have contact with a civ with a religion, to know about that religion, and how much of the world it has. The problem I see with it though is that the percentage that is shown is actually based on population, not cities, so like EF said, it would give hiden information to pull the number of cities. as opposed to just how much of the world population, which for some reason you always know, is that religion.

EmperorFool

Apr 30, 2008, 09:20 PM

The problem I see with it though is that the percentage.

That's my guess as well. It could be the reason that the percentages don't quite align with the number of cities.

Regarding your tech example, the game gives you this information, so BUG isn't revealing anything new. It makes sense that the game tells you which techs the AIs can trade to you, otherwise trying to guess trade deals would get old fast.

BTW, it doesn't show you all techs the AIs have. Any techs that the AI has that you cannot research yourself are hidden from the screen. For example, if an AI has Iron Working but you don't yet have Bronze Working, you won't see that they have IW because you cannot research it.

Balderstrom

May 01, 2008, 02:28 AM

Ahh population based. Now that you mention that I recall reading that at some point. I don't know why I started thinking it was city spread.
Ah well good debate. Brief. I hate being wrong :satan:

EmperorFool

May 01, 2008, 09:08 AM

Good indeed. It does get me thinking though that some way to help owners of a Holy Shrine would be nice. When you get a lot of cities and religions, it can be annoying checking F7 to make sure you've hit all your cities. It's even worse trying to hit all AI cities.

If you can think of a way that doesn't give away information, I'm all ears. Keep in mind that you can actually see how many cities each known AI has via the trade interface, even when you've never seen that city or where it is on the map.

Balderstrom

May 01, 2008, 09:21 AM

I'll ponder. I have one ongoing game I'll be getting back to in BTS, where I have more cities than will fit in the Religious Advisor page (I get a vertical scroll bar). Was offered a quest to found 14 (12-14...) island cities. Wow they grow slow :-) Had to keep whipping them to build anything heh.

I spammed my religion like crazy after getting Saladin to capitulate (nothing quite like airlifting in missionaries hehe). There was something oddly pleasing about making him switch religion after he kept going on holy wars against me :king:

·Imhotep·

May 01, 2008, 09:39 AM

@EF:

I know I'm pestering you... :) but ... how long will it take to code the techs into the Civ4lerts alerts ? Please do it... :)

ruff_hi

May 01, 2008, 09:49 AM

Can we have it as an option because I don't have any problem pressing F4 when I get the 'new techs' alert. However, one thing that I think I did notice is that I get this alert if he drops a tech from the 'will trade' group.

EmperorFool

May 01, 2008, 11:37 AM

Not only did you prove that your God is better than his god, you made him believe it. :lol:

EmperorFool

May 02, 2008, 05:01 AM

@Imhotep:

The current tech alert is pretty slim on details:

New tech(s) to trade: Saladin, Montezuma, Bozo the Clown

Here's the opposite end of the spectrum:

Stalin will trade Bicycling, Mockery
Isabella won't trade Gambling
Yogi Bear has acquired Park Ranger Evasion

The second one is a new alert, telling you that Isabella is no longer willing to trade a tech that she was willing to trade earlier.

The third one isn't even related to trading, but it is information readily available by hitting F4 every turn. ;) Of course you won't be told about techs that you cannot research yourself, same as on the trade screen. I'm not actually in favor of this -- it's rarely that important save for a few key military techs, and in the one in a billion chance they'll trade it immediately, you'll be told about it anyway. I put it here just to be complete.

I for one like that each AI gets a separate alert rather than grouping them all together. As well, the point of the alerts is to alleviate the need to open the screens.

@Ruff: While it can be made optional, there is a point where we can have too many options. We don't want the options screen to become unusable. I don't know if this crosses that line, though.

Also, I'll take a look at the bug you mentioned.

If we can arrive at a consensus, I'll gladly add this feature.

·Imhotep·

May 02, 2008, 06:42 AM

@EF:

I'd be totally happy with options 1 and 2. Just as you said it spares opening the tech screen if you know it's a junk tech you don't want anyway. Would be great if you could put it in. On the matter of options: You could always just make it optional in the ini-file and leave it out in the Ctrl-Alt-O overview. I know that's not the intention of the overview, but I guess most of the people would turn the enhanced tech alert on anyway.

Imhotep

Balderstrom

May 02, 2008, 08:15 AM

Might as well make a script to manage yer cities based off of the alerts. And not "play" at all.

·Imhotep·

May 02, 2008, 08:38 AM

Now that would be cool. Can you code one ?

EmperorFool

May 02, 2008, 09:40 AM

Might as well make a script to manage yer cities based off of the alerts. And not "play" at all.

Don't tempt me! You know, the best sign that someone is a great coder is being very, very lazy. Soooo lazy, in fact, that they'll go to great lengths to avoid doing the same thing twice. I'll often spend far longer to automate a repetitive task than it takes to do that task 20 or 30 times . . . and then use that automated method four times. :)

Seriously, the fun I get in playing Civ comes from making the decisions and planning -- not opening screens over and over, checking for some condition to be right or performing rudimentary mathematics to calculate the optimal time to whip. BUG is there to do the things that computers do well: processing information. I do the parts that humans do well (and this one enjoys): analyzing that information and making decisions based on many factors at once.

Do you think good world leaders spend their time calling up foreign powers to see if they've learned the secrets of Telekinesis? No, they have spies and ministers for that. :D

Amra

May 02, 2008, 07:31 PM

Hi Guys,

Since BtS now has a Favorite Religion tag for each leader I was playing around with the Sevopedia Leader screen and managed to add the Leader's Favorite Religion with a link. See the image below for an example.

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/9366/sevopediafavoritereligihc6.th.jpg (http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sevopediafavoritereligihc6.jpg)

I've never done anything like that in python before, so this is quite a (small) accomplishment for me :mischief: and I thought I would see if it was something you might want to add to BUG.

If so, the modified Sevopedia file is attached. Obviously, you guys are the python experts so I'm sure you can improve upon it if desired.

ruff_hi

May 02, 2008, 07:34 PM

Nice - I'll leave it to our code fiend EmperorFool to fold this one in.

alerum68

May 02, 2008, 11:17 PM

How was it playing with the Pedia Amra? I tried and gave up.:p

Cammagno

May 03, 2008, 02:01 AM

If we can arrive at a consensus, I'll gladly add this feature.

My vote is YES for the first two, NO for the last :)

Balderstrom

May 03, 2008, 03:47 AM

Now that would be cool. Can you code one ?I could :) But logic exceptions are a PITA. And most times I'd rather deal with CMD Batch than the mess that is AutoHotKey.

I really don't see how alerts should proactively tell you information that you should have to consult the relevant ADVISOR for.

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 04:32 AM

I really don't see how alerts should proactively tell you information that you should have to consult the relevant ADVISOR for.

That's quite a pile of should you've got there. :p That's why we added options for everything, so you can turn all these new fangled alerts off.

BTW, the game already tells you when wars are declared, peace is signed, wonders are built, religions are founded, some religions are spread, etc. All of this information is available via an advisor, so should those alerts be removed?

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 04:35 AM

My vote is YES for the first two, NO for the last :)

I was kidding about #3, btw. :rolleyes: I've committed the changes to SVN, so please keep an eye on those alerts in your games over the next few days. I did some testing, and all seems to work, but we're trying to get out a release, so test away!

Amra

May 03, 2008, 05:29 AM

How was it playing with the Pedia Amra? I tried and gave up.:pI'm sure Ruff & EF will laugh but that seemingly simple change took me at least 2 hours of trial & error, I'm embarrassed to say. :crazyeye: :lol:

·Imhotep·

May 03, 2008, 08:13 AM

@EF:

It works great, thanks for the effort ! :goodjob: :)

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 12:33 PM

I'm sure Ruff & EF will laugh but that seemingly simple change took me at least 2 hours of trial & error, I'm embarrassed to say. :crazyeye: :lol:

Without any sort of documented API, I'm surprised anyone makes any of the mods that are out there. The only reason I was able to do what I've done is by looking at what others did first. There are quite a few features I'd like to add where I simply have no clue how to approach them or if they're at all doable.

In any case, I'll merge in your changes today. If I get the gumption and you don't mind, I'd like to change the text to icons and split the area into two since there's enough horizontal space.

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 01:01 PM

I was thinking about Raw Commerce and how with Raw Production now it seems a little odd not to have Raw Food. With the introduction of corporations, there are now sources of food other than the worked tiles and the Supermarket and settled Great Merchant bonuses.

Also, it would probably be nice to split the "toggle" button out into three buttons so you can click directly on the view you want to see. I'd shift the values back to the left where they were before and put the three "buttons" vertically in the space to the right of the values.

Any thoughts on this? This is low priority on my end since I just don't use it and it isn't even useful until fairly late into the game, but I'm putting this out there in case anyone has a burning desire to see it added. :)

The Doc

May 03, 2008, 01:12 PM

Sounds good. Food can be added for the sake of completeness, imho. But the new button placement would be really nice. I don't like it how it is right now, like in the middle of nowhere. :D

alerum68

May 03, 2008, 01:22 PM

I like that idea. My gameing style is to grow large cities with specialist, and knowing my base food would help with that alot.

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 01:34 PM

The reason I didn't add it at the same time I added production is that there are no food multipliers in the game, though it's certainly possible to create a building to do so. I half expected the Supermarket to do +25% :food: or something, but I guess that would cause an explosion in cities, and that's not really what supermarkets do (though they maybe improve the efficiency and decrease the spoilage of food, maximizing its use?)

Now, however, there are enough sources of food other than worked tiles that I feel it deserves to be there . . . and for completeness as The Doc said. I guess it'll be called Raw Yields now. ;)

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 01:38 PM

Since BtS now has a Favorite Religion tag for each leader I was playing around with the Sevopedia Leader screen and managed to add the Leader's Favorite Religion with a link.

Thanks again, this is now in SVN. :goodjob:

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 01:56 PM

Here's a quick MSPAINT mockup of the new button placement for Raw Yields:

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd275/EmperorFool/New%20Features/Mockups/RawYieldsMockup.png

It seems a little cluttered, but I'd like to get some feedback before I do this. I'll add the :food: view anyway, but I may leave the buttons as they are now. The only real issue -- other than being in the middle of the view -- is that there's less room in the foreign language views.

The Doc

May 03, 2008, 02:07 PM

Is it possible to visually separate the switching icons? Maybe with a vertical line? That would make clear that they are buttons to actually click on. Or just put them on the left side of the box. :dunno:

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 02:20 PM

How does this look?

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd275/EmperorFool/New%20Features/Mockups/RawYieldsMockup-1.png

The only thing I don't like is that the values and their icons don't line up with those in the trade table below or the commerce table above, so it looks a little weird. They could be shifted to the left, but when you have bonus multipliers, it would get a little squished:

Total 24:hammers: + 6:hammers: = 30:hammers:

I could drop the "Total" label to make room. Is it implied enough by the different color? Also, I could drop the yield icons for the subtotals:

Total 24 + 6 = 30:hammers:

I do, however, like the buttons on the left side like this, so I'm leaning this way.

alerum68

May 03, 2008, 02:35 PM

How does this look?

Total 24 + 6 = 30:hammers:

I do, however, like the buttons on the left side like this, so I'm leaning this way.

I like the buttons on the left as well. And the option above, with only 1 icon at the end of total.

Cammagno

May 03, 2008, 04:17 PM

I like the buttons on the left as well. And the option above, with only 1 icon at the end of total.

I'm also for this option, much better than before :)
If it is possible to highline in some way the "pressed" botton, it's even better; but it's ok anyway.

EmperorFool

May 03, 2008, 04:43 PM

Because the icons are actually font glyphs, there's no way to highlight them. Currently, the selected view's icon is larger than normal, but this will likely be impossible to notice when they are vertical. Hopefully all the :hammers: icons on the right will be enough for you to realize that you're looking at the :hammers: view.

I could probably draw a little box around the selected view, but I'm not as familiar with this in the code.

Balderstrom

May 04, 2008, 09:49 AM

If I'm reading that right, it would "change" the display to show a breakdown of your FOOD/Production/Commerce based on CITY natural income and possible Trade/Corporations?

Why not have the Toggles listed on top then ?
=================
...( C )...[ F ]...\ T /...
=================
Worked Tiles ............. 22 T
Specialists ............ 04 T
Trade Routes ............ 00 T
Buildings .................. 08 T
Corporations ............ 10 T
=====================

EmperorFool

May 04, 2008, 10:03 AM

Why not have the Toggles listed on top then ?

Because then the city screen could only display two buildings. :(

Balderstrom

May 04, 2008, 10:53 AM

Why not rename
Buildings: Buildings/Specialists
and
Trade Routes: Trade/Corporations
?

EmperorFool

May 04, 2008, 11:00 AM

For which view?

In the case of :commerce:, only ones with non-zero values are plots and trade. So it doesn't really matter where buildings or specialists go, does it?

For :hammers:, tiles, buildings, specialists, corporations.

For :food:, tiles, buildings, specialists, corporations.

The reason I split buildings and specialists is because in the case of :hammers:, corporations don't show up until late in the game. This allows each line to have a single input for much of the game.

ruff_hi

May 04, 2008, 01:13 PM

Lets make some room. Firstly, put a triangle icon on the top right of 'trade routes' bar so that it looks like there is a page behind it. If you click on the triangle, then the triangle goes to the bottom left and the trade route panel is completely replaced by the raw production / food / commerce panel. Click on the triangle again, and the trade route panel comes back.

The selected raw production icon can have a little * near it to signify it is selected (or put in in [ ])s.

Finally - about time we added food as you can also get food from specialists and some UUs.

Oh - do these amounts show the base items assuming all tiles worked or just the worked tiles?

Can we have (another) toggle to also show what they would be if all tiles were worked? That would really help for city planning.
Edit: I take this back. Instead ... can we have ANOTHER panel that shows the base food, production and commerce for all tiles that currently belong to a city. This would help me determine if I need a farm to work all the mines or I can put down a cottage. Now, don't complain about the space, just make it another page using the triangle method above.

ruff_hi

May 04, 2008, 01:24 PM

No idea what I am talking about ... look at this (and forget about the triangles - stupid idea) ...
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/8950/rawyieldsmockup2wk8.png

Click on TL and the two yellow text become TR and BC and the panel turns into a Tiles Worked / Production panel. Click on BC and the yellow text becomes TR and TL and the panel turns into a Base City panel.

EmperorFool

May 04, 2008, 06:15 PM

Okay, I like taking over the Trade Routes table. How about this (sorry no screenshot): Change the header "Trade Table" to the :traderoute: icon, and then add the yield icons as well, so the gray bar you see above would have four icons in it, each one being a different view.

What I really like about this is that a) it expands the buildings list back to its original size and b) allows me to split out combined values since :food: and :hammers: have four contributing sources.

Since :commerce: has only two sources, I could split apart trade into "Domestic" and "Foreign", maybe even add "Intercontinental" to bring it to four.

As for switching between "worked" and "all" tiles, one simple but obscure way would be to make the "Worked Tiles" label a toggle, "Worked / All Tiles" and have it color (or underline) "Worked" or "All" depending on which is shown.

ruff_hi

May 04, 2008, 08:55 PM

Great. How about a third ... "All", "Worked" and "Owned".

EmperorFool

May 04, 2008, 09:09 PM

Great. How about a third ... "All", "Worked" and "Owned".

By "Owned" do you mean those available to the city rather than all inside your cultural borders and the city radius? And "All" would include all inside cultural borders and city radius, but not those set aside for other cities?

To clarify, nothing outside your cultural borders would be consider for any of the 3 groups. "Owned" would remove from consideration any tiles earmarked for other cities (fogged in this city's view). "Worked" would be as expected, only the ones currently being worked by a citizen in this city.

Sounds fine, but I fear this is getting cluttered again. And overloading a label like that a) probably will be too long for non-English and b) is highly non-obvious.

ruff_hi

May 04, 2008, 09:14 PM

All = all within city's Big Fat Cross (BFC)
Owned = tiles currently owned by the city
Worked = worked

I was thinking regardless of cultural issues as it is pretty easy to change that :D. Happy if you exclude because of culture - up to you.

EmperorFool

May 04, 2008, 09:54 PM

Bah, not as easy as I thought it was going to be. The current code calculates the plot yield total by subtracting the other values from the total base city yield -- it doesn't add all the plots. It's doable, but now I have to actually think about it. :lol:

In any case, I think it's important to consider culture. I guess that's another option: "All for realz". :)

Balderstrom

May 04, 2008, 10:38 PM

If what Ruff was talking about is possible, with the "hidden pages", thats pretty much what I was referring to initially.
Might also be worthwhile to consider reclaiming the space taken up by BUG's current Commerce break down.
The "hidden pages" would overlay in the Trade Routes space, depending on which of the 4-5 icon's was selected ( Trade, Commerce, Food, Production, Culture...)
Trade: Current Trade Routes info.
Commerce: BUG's current Commerce break down.
Food/etc: The proposed new information.

Which would give the cities back space in the buildings list.

EmperorFool

May 04, 2008, 10:44 PM

That's the plan.

JujuLautre

May 08, 2008, 09:56 PM

I took a look at this mod last night. The good news is that it is all python so we could add it to BUG if we wanted to. The bad news is that it does reveal hidden data (worst enemy!) and doesn't actually add anything that is not in the alert system or the foreign advisor. Here is a screenshot of what it does generate ...

Now, if we were to fold this into BUG, I would totally change the display method but I am actually thinking that is isn't really worth it. Oh - and it caused a crash to desktop when I tried to bring up the in-game log (and that was with Civ4 in error logging mode!).

If you want this in BUG - tell me now (and why it should be included).

Searching a little bit, I found this post (not so old it appears). At first I would like to point that worst enemy is not hidden: We can know it by repetitively opening the diplo screen of each leader. Quite tedious.
All that to say that, if that info was to be included into the already great bug, you would have my deeper thanks for it. I'm trying to improve my diplo skills now, and knowing who is who's worst enemy is really unvaluable.

However, In the screen the information was included in the log, which contains already lots of informations. If it was to be included, I would better see a change in the glance tab with a new color for "worst ennemy".

That said, thanks again for your already great work, it's more than appreciated :)

Roland Johansen

May 09, 2008, 01:33 AM

Searching a little bit, I found this post (not so old it appears). At first I would like to point that worst enemy is not hidden: We can know it by repetitively opening the diplo screen of each leader. Quite tedious.
All that to say that, if that info was to be included into the already great bug, you would have my deeper thanks for it. I'm trying to improve my diplo skills now, and knowing who is who's worst enemy is really unvaluable.

However, In the screen the information was included in the log, which contains already lots of informations. If it was to be included, I would better see a change in the glance tab with a new color for "worst ennemy".

That said, thanks again for your already great work, it's more than appreciated :)

It would be very nice to see the worst enemy data a bit more easily accessible. If the information were to be added, then a reminder when it changes would also be very nice (Ragnar's worst enemy has changed from Mansa Musa to Montezuma).

ruff_hi

May 09, 2008, 05:25 AM

An explicit Worse Enemy comment is being added to the next patch and will be incorporated in various areas of BUG when that patch is released.

JujuLautre

May 09, 2008, 05:30 AM

An explicit Worse Enemy comment is being added to the next patch and will be incorporated in various areas of BUG when that patch is released.

Soooooo nice, terrific, thanks a lot ! :goodjob:

I'm sure I thought of something else one day but cant' remember what it was ;(

Roland Johansen

May 09, 2008, 06:03 AM

An explicit Worse Enemy comment is being added to the next patch and will be incorporated in various areas of BUG when that patch is released.

Sounds good. :goodjob:

Balderstrom

May 09, 2008, 08:31 AM

Do we need a list of phrases?
* I can't stand the bloody English.
* We absolutely despise the French.
* Those goddamn motherf'n Egyptians!

JujuLautre

May 09, 2008, 08:56 PM

I just looked at the stuff in the military advisor post... looks awesome :goodjob:

It also reminded me the thing I was thinking about: do you intend to let appear the information "we have enough on our hands" elsewhere than in this new military advisor? It's also some important diplo information.

Also, I thought again about all those people reclaiming old civ versions stuff, like the throne room in civII or the like... and thought that in the end, the messages in the BUG mod (the part displayed in the log, not the other stuff) is exactly what the "minister council" should be like. In CivII we had 5 ministers telling us things about the world, in CivIII they were tellig us things in their respective advisor's screen, and in the end, all those messages about trade opportunities, religion spreading, combat, is exactly what I would like to see if I could open a screen "listen to my advisors", sorted by advisor of course. I think this would be the ultimate BUG experience :D

ruff_hi

May 09, 2008, 09:08 PM

Also, I thought again about all those people reclaiming old civ versions stuff, like the throne room in civII or the like... and thought that in the end, the messages in the BUG mod (the part displayed in the log, not the other stuff) is exactly what the "minister council" should be like. In CivII we had 5 ministers telling us things about the world, in CivIII they were tellig us things in their respective advisor's screen, and in the end, all those messages about trade opportunities, religion spreading, combat, is exactly what I would like to see if I could open a screen "listen to my advisors", sorted by advisor of course. I think this would be the ultimate BUG experience :DThat is an interesting suggestion. I have added it to our feature request in SVN.