Yes my friends, it CAN all be done! And I've even figured how to keep the game from crashing if you right-click in the wrong/right place after making such additions!

I'm thoroughly happy with my progess in whipping Civ3 into shape, even if I am rather mad at whoever the boneheaded Firaxian was that managed to think it was a good idea to hard-code the amount of tech tree icons...but I digress.

It's best to teach by example, so if you follow this tutorial by the end you will have learned how to add the Coracle naval unit, the Chichen Itza Great Wonder, the Kama Sutra Small Wonder (sure, I agree it should be a great wonder, but it's just a joke...unless you really want to be able to build a +10 happyness in all citys wonder :naughty: ), the Guild Hall improvement, and finally the technology Fascism (you can figure out how to add governments on your own. that worked before now anyway)

Terrain is not addable without a patch at this time to my knowledge, so I'm afraid you'll just have to replace/change the current ones to make any such cases.

Note: When you do the overhead zoomed in view of the city the new building (improvement or wonder) will still not show because I have NO idea where they hid those darn graphics, but few people look there anyway.

Also when adding Luxury Resources they will not have their tiny little icon in the city view. The file has no room for additions and Incense is there twice, so I have no idea how that file works. Only known bug in this whole process so far. The file can be stretched out and be given room for additions, but I don't feel like playing around till I figure out how it works right now. No real point in doing such work for such little effect at this time. Too much else to do first.




First a note for anyone at Firaxis who reads this: When you add a new technology to the game the technology with the highest number tech tree icon will crash the game if it is viewed in the civilopedia. This is do to some index which is tucked somewhere in the executable or in a currently unidentified portion of the .bic file. If the game would only use tech tree icons (found in Art\tech chooser\Icons) like it handles all the other icons then this would work without flaw.




Ok, first things first. You will need to already be somewhat familiar with the Scenario Editor (you can learn how to use it by using the helpfile that comes with it), and you will need any kind of word processor that will open, edit, and save .txt files. You will also need the Civ3CopyTool by Gramphos, which is available in the Files section of this very site. While not required I reccommend you go ahead and get the hacked scenario editor while you're at it, but it's not totally neccessary.


Now, open up your C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III directory and backup your civ3mod.bic file. This way you can go back to the way the game was before without hassle.

Now right-click your civ3mod.bic file (this is the file which contains all the default rules for civ3 games) and choose "Create Shortcut". Put this shortcut on your desktop. Makes things a lot easier as you can now just double-click it and the editor will open and go right into it. Very convenient.

You'll also need to open your C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Text directory. You will be editing the Civilopedia.txt file and the PediaIcons.txt file.


Now open the CopyTool, choose the aforementioned civ3mod.bic file, and choose to add 1 Unit, copy the Galley unit, flag the Rename option, and type in the name Coracle into the provided box. Now press the big Copy button and perhaps after a few OKs we're done with that.

Now open the Editor (the editor should be closed when using the CopyTool because it occassionally trys to put a file lock on some .bics) and go into the Units tab. Scroll the drop down box allll the way to the bottom and you should see the Coracle listed vei down der'.

Change it's Prerequisite to None, it's shield cost to 2, it's move to 2, it's transport capacity to 1, have it Upgrade To the Galley, and finally change it's Civilopedia Entry field to PRTO_Coracle.

Shwew! That wasn't all that hard now was it? Now comes the fun part!

Close the Rules editor and save your changes to the .bic, and close the Editor. Open the Civilopedia.txt file and search for a "galley" (case doesn't matter).

When you see something like this:

; _______________________________________________NAV AL UNITS_____________________________________________


#PRTO_Galley
^
^
^The [galley] is the first naval unit you can build. These tiny, primitive ships must end each turn in a
$LINK<coastal=TERR_Coast>
square -- they are in danger of sinking if they end their turn in a $LINK<sea=TERR_Sea> or $LINK<ocean=TERR_Ocean> square.
If $LINK<The Great Lighthouse=BLDG_Lighthouse> is built, galleys may safely end turns at sea, but never ocean squares.
#DESC_PRTO_Galley
^
^
^The galley was the first ship designed for war. Introduced by the Greeks, galleys were powered by banks
of oars on each side, manned by well-trained oarsmen. These oarsmen were highly paid professionals or
patriotic citizens, not slaves and prisoners as depicted in fiction. A huge, bronze "beak" mounted at the
bow of the ship was used to ram and sink enemy ships. Because of its long, narrow hull, the galley was very
unstable in all but the calmest waters, and as a consequence its crew rarely ventured out of sight of land
for long periods of time, lest the ship be caught in a storm and sunk.

...then you're in the right place!

Right above that paste in the following:

#PRTO_Coracle
^
^
^The Coracle is first naval unit you can build. These tiny, primitive round ships must end each turn in a
$LINK<coastal=TERR_Coast>
square -- they are in danger of sinking if they end their turn in a $LINK<sea=TERR_Sea> or $LINK<ocean=TERR_Ocean> square.
If $LINK<The Great Lighthouse=BLDG_Lighthouse> is built, Coracles may safely end turns at sea, but never ocean squares. They are slow and carry only one footsoldier unit.
#DESC_PRTO_Coracle
^
^
^The Coracle is a small, rounded boat made of waterproof material stretched over a wicker or wooden frame. One of the earliest known ships that were more than just canoes, they weren't too terribly much better than canoes. But they could hold a small amount of cargo and were sufficient for water travel so long as they didn't stray too far from shore.


Leave two blank lines in between the top of the Coracle and the section marker above it, and two lines between the entry for the next unit. It's good form to comply with the pre-existing form of the file you're editing. Now save your changes. You can close it if you want, but you'll need this file again later.

Now open PediaIcons.txt. Search for Galley again. It should look like this: #ICON_PRTO_Galley
art\civilopedia\icons\units\29galley(trireme)large .pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\units\29galley(trireme)small .pcx

The next section is for the Caravel, so ignore that. Copy the full entry for the Galley. Now jump down to the bottom of the units section (line 792 approx.) and paste it in right before the #End Units marker. Make sure it starts on it's own line, so it should look something like this: #ICON_PRTO_Privateer
art\civilopedia\icons\units\65privateerlarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\units\65privateersmall.pcx
#ICON_PRTO_Galley
art\civilopedia\icons\units\29galley(trireme)large .pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\units\29galley(trireme)small .pcx
#End Units

Now on the line #ICON_PRTO_Galley, change it to read #ICON_PRTO_Coracle. Now save your changes.

All done! Wasn't that just swell? Start up a New Game if you so choose and you'll find the Coracle waiting for you as soon as you build a city than can build naval units.

Was it as good for you as it was for me?


Next item up for bid: the Chichen Itza Great Wonder. This is almost the exact same procedure as before, so this should be simple.

Open the CopyTool and copy The Pyramids wonder (choose to add 1) and complete the Copy like last time.

Open the Editor and go to your new Chichen Itza entry at the bottom of the Improvements and Wonders tab. Make the Prerequisite Code of Laws, unflag the Industrious attribute but keep Religious flagged, change the Gain in Every City on Continent from Granary to Courthouse, and change the Culture it produces to 2 from 4. And finally change the Civilopedia to BLDG_Chichen_Itza. Save and close the editor.

Go to Civilopedia and search for Pyramid. Above the entry add the following:

#BLDG_Chichen_Itza
^
^
^Puts a $LINK<Courthouse=BLDG_Courthouse> in every city on the same continent.
^
^
^
^
^
^
^May trigger $LINK<Golden Age=GCON_Golden_Age> for Religious civilizations.

You can add a description if you like, but I'll leave that to you for now.

Go to PediaIcons.txt and do the same kind of search. Copy out the section and go to the bottom of the section right before "#End Civilopedia Art". Change the name as before. The finished product should look like this:

#ICON_BLDG_Chichen_Itza
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\pyramidlarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\pyramidsmall.pcx

Viola! Yes that's right, Viola! A stringed instrument of the violin family, slightly larger than a violin, tuned a fifth lower, and having a deeper, more sonorous tone.


How to get the city view working: Go into your C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Art\City Screen directory and take note of 2 files: buildings-large.pcx, and buildings-small.pcx. Open one of them up (they are both pretty much the same, but you have to change both in the same way).


CONTINUED...

Go down to the bottom and note the open set of squares. The squares from left to right control what the building looks like in each age, and top to bottom is each building in the order of it's appearance in the .bic. In the Editor check the tab Wonders and Improvements. The order the buildings appear there must be the order the buildings appear in these two graphics files.

Just use a line-drawing tool in a graphics editor and connect the green lines into grids, and then use a selection and copy tool to select one whole empty row and just paste it again in the empty pink space below. You will need to increase the canvas size to fit more in, but you need to already be minorly proficient with a graphics editor. So you can figure out if you play with it.

In the future I may release these files with more spaces for extra units, but if anyone else wants to do it first be my guest.


Now I'll leave the Kama Sutra to you, nyuk nyuk nyuk ;)

Same goes with the Guild Hall. Or you could just download my LWC mod when I put out the new version with all manner of such additions :D


Now something that requires some extra finesse. This is one that had me cursing grand profanitys, but I finally narrowed down the scope of causation like a good little hacker and discovered the work around.

Go through previous steps just like before to create the technology, but it has no PediaIcons.txt entry. Here's the real key though.

When you add a technology the game will crash whenever you view the technology in the civilopedia with the highest number icon. It just so happens to go in alphabetical order (though the alphabet has nothing to do with it) leaving Writing to be the one that will lock up the game if viewed.

The way you fix this is edit Writing in the Editor and change the icon down by at least one. Simple, isn't it? But this will allow you to add techs flawlessly, but you cannot currently add new icons. You will need to do this for each tech you add, I believe, so that limits the maximum number of techs that can be added to 82. Screwy that multiple techs have to use the same icons, but at least you can add them now!




How to add new resources to the game:

In the Editor go to the Natural Resources tab. You may need the hacked editor (I'm not sure if you do or not), but click the Add button and name your new resource "Cotton".

Set it to a Bonus Resource, give it 2 commerce, and the civilopedia entry should be GOOD_Cotton.

Notice the Icon number field? Type in the number 22 (gold is number 21, and it's the last used resource icon). Click the up arrow once. Notice how now it's just a pink square? We'll we're going to change that later, but one more thing to do first. Go to the Terrain tab and select Plains. Hold down your Ctrl key and click on the Cotton resource listed at the bottom of the Possible Resources pane. We can go ahead and save our changes and close the Editor.

Now you'll need to be able to use a graphics program, but I won't be teaching that skill. But I'll show you what needs to be changed should you know how.

Go to your C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Art directory. Now if you have a graphics editor capable of viewing .pcx files open the "resource.pcx" file, not "resources.pcx".

Notice all those nifty looking icons? Zoom in to see them better. Well those look just perfect for resource icons, don't they? Too bad this file seems to be totally unused by Civ3, so we're just going to have to manually rip out the image we want and paste it into another file. But first, look at the 6th icon on the top row, next to the sheep. Looks perfect for Cotton, doesn't it?

Now open the resources.pcx file. This is the file the game uses for resource icons. It also uses resources_shadows.pcx, but it's not neccessary to add resources. The last resource is gold, but lucky for us there is plenty of unused squares. The place next to gold is where we'd paste in the image if we had it, but it should be noted that you have to do some editing to get it to look right (ie, to remove the backround color) and it needs to be resized to fit in the little square and look right.

But I've already done this whole thing for you, so we'll get to that now.

Download the addcotton.zip file at the end of this post, and unzip the file into the C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\Art where we are working. You'll want to backup your current art first, just to be safe.


Now once you've done that you can open the editor again and look at the Cotton resource again. Notice it's nifty new icon? Kinda cool, huh?

You'll want to add the appropriate entrys in Civilopedia.txt and PediaIcons.txt as needed, but you know the drill by now.



Anyhow, this means you won't have to wait anymore to add the things that are so needed in the game. You'll just need to re-use the animations for other units for now, but who really cares? You can still edit the normal unit graphics.

Everyone enjoy your new found powers of modification!

bump

I have now figured out why some mods crash when they delete a wonder, and why the game is crashing when you create a new wonder. :b:

Not only that, but you can now change the way buildings look in the city view...but I'm still not sure about adding new buildings to the City View. I'm not 100% sure it's possible, but you never know.


So here it is:


The problem with Wonders (great and small) was that I forgot one aspect: the wonder splash screen. I searched around and finally found out where the game figures out what picture to use for what wonder.

Open the PediaIcons.txt file and jump down to the very bottom. Right above the era splash listings are the wonder splash listings.

However here is where it gets a bit hairy. All the wonder splashes go by number, so when you delete a wonder all the numbers that come after it must be reduced by one. However when you add a new wonder you have to figure out what number it should have.

Open your .bic with the editor and go to the Improvement and Wonders tab in the rules. Scroll down to nearly the bottom and select Battlefield Medicine.

The wonders are numbered by the position they appear in this list. However, you must begin counting at 0! It's a computer programming thing, so just remember that.

But we'll save ourselves some effort. According to PediaIcons.txt's last entry, Battlefield Medicine is in the 63rd slot. There are 10 spaceship parts, which are counted, so that means the very first item you create is in the 74th position. Because I created Guild Hall first my Chichen Itza is in number 75.

So since I just copied the Pyramid's entrys everywhere else, I just went ahead and did it again. So my entry is this:

#WON_SPLASH_75
art\wonder splash\pyramid.pcx


When Firaxis said the editor didn't do much error checking, they MEANT it! But what they should have said is Civilization 3 itself does nearly no error checking. If you build a wonder with no splash entry or an invalid one the game will crash, not even leaving a sensible error message.

The game does that in multiple places...bad programmers! Bad! No twinkies for you!


Anyhow, the reason why deleting a wonder causes the game to crash is all the wonder splash numbers in PediaIcons.txt end up being wrong, not to mention the fact that the building art gets screwed up, so deleting things is a heck of a lot harder than adding them. Go figure...

Now as for the City View, this happens to be in the City View folder. :cute: How I didn't notice that before I'll never figure out.

Just choose the Buildings folder in there and all the graphics are there. Figuring how to add new buildings to this goes into the "too much trouble for too little payoff" department for me, so I'll just end this lesson here.


I have to go now, but I believe this should clear up all the problems so far.

If anyone else has a problem be sure to post it and I'll try to answer it.

Superb work! Plutarck, I haven't read all of your tutorial, but I plan to as soon as I get into modifying civ3 and making scenarios for it in the future. :)

Why not send it to Thunderfall, so he can put it up permanently in the database of reference documents?

It would prevent it from drowning in the heap of threads in here.

Keep up the good work!

I might open a reference section later today. :)

Can someome write a modpack installation tutorial for newbies? I have received several emails from newbies about modpack installation. It'll be good to have a simple document on that so I can just point them to the page. :)

superb work! haven´t read through it yet, but it looks great.:goodjob:

I'll be willing to make mod installation batch files for newbies, including an restore batch file to go back to the original... I did the same for the latest version of my Dutch Modpack.
Mod developers who don't know how to this can send their modpack to me and I write an install.bat and restore.bat for it.

email: gerards@netrexgp.nl
http://www.netrexgp.nl/civ3/

You know guys, you don't have to save over the file civ3mod.bic. You can name the file anything you want and as long as it has the extension .bic, Civ3 will recognize it and load it. I highly suggest that you tell people to rename those .bic files very descriptively and uniquely and never name a mod file 'civ3mod.bic'. Make's them a lot easier to keep track of and lessens any danger of overwriting the default file.

Thanks Plutarck! I was afraid to touch that editor. Now, I'll have to try something interesting like I've always wanted to in a Civ game.:goodjob:

If the problem with the Science Advisor to which you're referring is the way the tech tree is displayed, I don't think there's anything that can be done about it until/unless Firaxis releases a patch.

Whether the bitmapped backgrounds for the tech tree are displayed or the game generates the tech links on the fly is determined by the name of the bic file in use, so the code that makes the choice must be hardcoded into the game's executable.

I don't know why they didn't just put the filenames for the tech tree background images inside the bic file itself, so we could make our own background images when we alter the tech tree. Maybe Firaxis can be convinced to do this in the upcoming patch.

Asterisk: Actually the problem I meant was with the individual technology icons. The icon number for advances is hard-coded somewhere as is the editor (the editor won't let you select an icon number greater than 82), which causes all kinds of oddness. It kind of screws up the icon pictures in the civilopedia, but it doesn't mess anything else up so I just ignore it.


The other problem (I'm not sure which you were refering to), is with the Science Advisor. Somehow the auto-linedrawing function got screwed up and it makes it totally impossible to click any technologys, not to mention the arrows still don't draw right.

The arrows won't draw right if you move techs around or add them, but that's because the arrows are pre-drawn and hard-coded into the game so they won't move no matter what.

Very screwy.



Flak: Actually you must overwrite civ3mod.bic, because otherwise you must choose Load Scenario. And when you do that the Science Advisor will get completely screwed up, and basically makes the game very unstable, easy to lock up, and you can't change what's being researched once you select a tech. You have to wait for it to finish researching.


The only nearly bug-free way of doing it is to overwrite the default .bic file and just use the New Game option instead. Hopefully the patch will fix that.

Great work on the tutorial! It will really help.

I have been playing around with the editors with the thought of turning some of my research on the 19th century into a scenario. Civ2 was not able to support what I wanted to do. However, I have not been able to discover how to place cities (not starting locations) on the map, as well as units for each country. Any ideas would be appreciated, sorry if the answer is really obvious - I'm new to scenario creation.

Thanks,

Khan

Is there any way I can add (or change) a Civilization Ability (like adding a "Diplomatic" or "Entertain" ability or increasing even more the chance of having a Great Leader when "Militaristic")?

Henrique: Nope, afraid not. Even trying to add a small wonder that increases the chance of a leader appearing doesn't work, and I've heard that trying to make it possible to build an army before a leader appears also isn't possible.

I've yet to try it much, but it seems the rules for armys/leaders are hard-coded into the game itself.


Khan: While it is rather stunning (or it was when I first found out), there is no way to place citys, units, or even civilization-specific starting points on the world map!

In other words, building a real scenario is totally impossible. There is also no script language, ensuring it's impossibility. There may be a patch sometime in the future, but it seems the first true Civ3 scenario could be multiple months away.

Ouch! Thanks anyway, Plutarck. And here I thought I was the idiot for missing it....

Thanks for your time writing this stuff, but I REALLY HOPE we start hearing from Firaxis real soon concerning the problems mentioned in this thread. I was hoping to start writing some fun scenarios with Civ3 to play against my brothers, and now I'm left without cities, player startup positions, triggers, and no Multiplayer mode, MAJOR dissapointment (and I purchased CIV3 as my B-Day present.

I've added a new special unit that is a variation of the Chinese rider using the tweaked editing tool (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=7802) rather than the copy app app (it creates files I can't open, for some reason). Following all the steps listed here, in terms up updating the civolopeda and pedials pages, it seems to go smoothly. It'll show up in the civolopedia, and in my civ's pick list, but the moment I add it to the build queue, the game locks up.

Are the some "gotchas" to this process? Might there be a problem with reusing a graphic, or something like that?

Any help would be appreciated.

I found the answer to my problem in another thread. Anyone else who has had similar problems with homemade units should make sure they check the 'Art/Units' folder and make a folder for their unit, copied from whatever is being used for the base art. Then, open that folder and rename the ini file after the new unit.

Thanks to "Skidiwili (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9495) ". Works like a charm.

Plutarck, do you know why it crashes if you change a civ color?

Rhye: I believe it's basically bad/no error checking in the game.

Other than trying to use the same color twice, I believe the colors are restriced by all kinds of different requirements such as fitting pallete colors, possible unique unit conflicts, etc etc.

In short: I think they'll have to be the ones that fix this screw up.

If we were actually able to move the colors around someone could put out a color-blind patch without having to wait for them to do it.

You know for a company that claimed to understand the importance of the mod community, the only evidence I see is the few good people like Magaha and others who's name I can't remember that are in the forums occassionally. But as for support in the game itself...I don't see it.

Obviously they just don't get the fact that so many people are willing to improve the game in hundreds of different ways, and all they have to do is make it possible without a hex-edit.

thx for the tip, i immedeately made cotton, hardwood (required for all ancient and middle age ships ) and titanium (required for most spaceship parts, extremely rare

Kloepoek, it seems that currently, you can only add 2 resources. The problem is this: Civ III does not display the last two (empty) lines of resources. I think these were provided for the graphics design team, but not used in the game. I added several resources, but anything after the first two was not displayed on the screen. The game will allow you to play with more, but this means the computer will know where everything is and you will not unless you right-click all your terrain looking for the 3rd, 4th, etc. resource you added.

I think those boxes are similar to the last line of unit boxes in Civ II, where you could put unit graphics in them, but not use them in game play. A later version of civ II allowed you to do this. I hope we won't have to wait for a later version of civ III to get more resources, but it looks a little grim right now. I have been beating my brains trying to get more resources. I put colored blobs in each boxes and made up a resource to correspond to each of them. Nothing.

When you edit pcx files, what program do you use? I tried using photoshop 6.0 and received errors whenever I try to open a city file.

All,

These tips are great! I'm working on a custom CIV right now (the Scots). I just replaced the English for the time being, and I was wondering...

Is there a known way to change the image on the Foreign Advisor screen? It still shows Elizabeth.

What about the AI Text for the diplomacy screens? I know there's a text file with all that stuff in there, but I'd like to keep the standard stuff and not harm it if someone wants to play a regular game without my customizations.

Anyone out there a graphic artist with some time on their hands and want to draw a new unit?

I'll post the custom stuff after it's done and playtested. Then you too can be Robert the Bruce!

Garret

Originally posted by Thunderfall

Can someome write a modpack installation tutorial for newbies? I have received several emails from 'newbies' about modpack installation.

Funny but true....

Anyway good work Plutarck, now if you could just write one of these on women ; )

Bob

can I post this as a tutorial at my site? http://www.trakoria.f2s.com

I have a problem similar to RagnarDs.

I tried to create a Halftruck to carry units.
Every time I put it in the production my system crashes.
I created an extra folder, but it still crashes.

So please help me.

Is it because I tried to have some own Graphics?

May I not do it this way?

Can someone point me in the right direction or give me some suggestion as to how to add new units to the game?

I followed Plutarck's tutorial (and I don't think I missed anything)

Here is my problem. I created the units. They seem to be there, are in the cyclopedia and show up on the build menu, but the program crashes when I try to build them!

I used the new 'hacked editor' to add these items (was that wrong? should I have used that copy tool program?) and used an existing icon (or should I say re-used).

Is it possible to set certain values too high (such as movement) or is it not allowed to create a unit which is a worker and a settler combined?

Please let me know if you have any suggestions, thanks!

Problem: Crash

If I add one small wonder, it works fine.
If I add more than 1* the same (and rename it) all works fine until I build the 2nd and it's ready.

(I added 5* Forbiden Palace, renamed all so that they had all their own name, corrected txt files. The curious point is, that I had such done already 2 weeks ago and it worked without problems.
The only difference now is that I stored the rules in the bic without map and called an empty map without rules when I started it. The 1st try I made successful I load both in editor and
then I saved a new bic that I played.
Don't see why it now crashes.

CIVILIZATION3 verursachte einen Fehler durch eine ungültige Seite
in Modul CIVILIZATION3.EXE bei 017f:0054bf50.
Register:
EAX=00870d0c CS=017f EIP=0054bf50 EFLGS=00010216
EBX=00870a98 SS=0187 ESP=00abf01c EBP=00870d0c
ECX=00000000 DS=0187 ESI=008725e8 FS=1197
EDX=0000006d ES=0187 EDI=00871098 GS=0000
Bytes bei CS:EIP:
8b 41 08 56 85 c0 74 09 b8 18 00 00 00 5e c2 18
Stapelwerte:
0052f4b7 00870d0c 0000015f 0000006d 00000000 00000000 00000000 00871098 00870a98 00000000 00871000 00000000 0055885e 00871098 00870a98 00871014

did you make an animated unit for your Halftruck? The unit_32 image looks great. :goodjob:

Mhm, I don´t think that I will continue my work, because Dark Sheer also made an very good animation of an army truck.

Dark Sheers Army Truck (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13712)

But if some people are interested :confused: I will see...

What happens if you build a building B with prerequisite A, and then A is somehow removed? Does B still exist? Does it function? I'm curious if it matters how A is removed, also; I can see the case for destruction (bombardment, nuke), sale, or even using that "remove anything else with this flag set" setup.

Let's make the unlikely case that someone makes a building dependant on a *particular* type of power plant - say, for Solar Power, something called Extension Grid, which increases the Solar Plant's effectiveness.

Let's say that they then installed a Nuclear Plant, which removes Solar Plant. Does Extension Grid still exist? Does it function?

It would be nice if there were a tag number alongside the "remove anything else with this flag set", so that you could specify a different tag and make different exclusive sets of replacable city improvements. But I digress. Besides, we'd need a tech browser capable of handling *Way* bigger trees for something like that, anyway.

I don't know what is going wrong. I have added the great wonder "Sphinx". It works fine if I use the pyramids wonder_splash, but if I try to use the one I made it crashes.

I am using Photoshop. Should that matter? Like I said, it works if I use a splash that came with the game, but not with a homemade one. :confused: Please help. Here is the splash image.

Figured out what the problem was. The images were in an RGB format instead of an index format. Don't really know what that means but when I was able to change it it worked.

Sorry for the false alarm.

i'm confused. where's this copytool.
:confused:

never mind i found it:goodjob:

Is it just luxury resources that have a limit of two additional icons or is it all resoruces (bonus and strategic?).

I'd like to add a number of strategic resources as well as a few bonus ones, but am concerned that i won't be able to actually 'see' them anywhere!

i followed all the steps, but how do i get the new graphics for units to work? also all my saved games wont load....

Originally posted by tpasmall
i followed all the steps, but how do i get the new graphics for units to work? also all my saved games wont load....

To get any new units to work, you must make sure a few things:

1) There is a folder with the same name as the new unit under Civiliztion III\Art\units (ie for Corssbowman, there must be a folder called Crossbowman)
2) There must be an ini file in that folder which has the same name as the folder (in the above example there must be a Crossbowman.ini)
3) The lines inside the ini file must point to an existing flc file (ie if the ini point to CrossbowmanDefault.flc then this file MUST be in the folder).

And lastly, once you add new units to your Civ3mod.bic file then you can no longer load any savegames as Civ3 detect a major change in rules and will not allow you to load the files.

Hope that helps :king:

yeah i spelled the folder name wrong and it was crossbowman that i was adding ;)

great unit, i made the new tech bolt making and the new city improvement bolt shop which adds 1 to city production

:egypt: i am a newbie where is the copy icon and why does it crash on the first turn when i edit it

what prorgam do u use to edit this file??

:egypt: :scan: just a map and civ3 mod

I used it to create a lot of new improvements including the wonder Olympics, which doubles the effect of colliseums, the improvement particle accelerator which continues the library-university-research lab link. I have yet to try it in a game.

Originally posted by Rhye
Plutarck, do you know why it crashes if you change a civ color?

I know and test this with success about civ colors changing:

- Only use the 17 first colors rows (Black and above in the editor).
- For a given civ, put the same first and secondary colors.
- Make sure the civs all have a different color (basically, 16 civs + the barbarians = 17 colors).

It seems too that if you add a civ, the color row just after Black become available, if you add two civ, the two color rows after Black become available, and so on... But I haven't tested it yet.

Edhaym

there are missing palettes in the civ3\art\units\palettes\ directory. see this thread http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43563 for a fix.

LordRasp,

I experienced the same thing... I wonder, is anyone knows a workaround?

Anyone know if it's possible to have civ-specific improvements?

For example if I have an Ottoman civ and want them to build mosques instead of cathedrals (and i still want all the others to keep building cathedrals)

What is copytool?

I think the copy tool would be Gramphos' Multitool - you can find it here:

Multitool Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7787)

I want to know if someone have listened to something about adding an era. Is it possible?

How to add a fourth tech tree part?

With the 1.21 civeditor we lose the ability to add an era. So i want to know before loosing my old tools of civeditor 1.16 (where i can add an era and convert it later into 1.21 bic file but revert is not possible).

How do i convert the purple backround in the resource.pcx file to the pink in the resources.pcx???

just change your active color to 255/0/255 = civ pink and then fill in the purple.

How do I do that? and what program should i use?

what program have you been using?

I use Photoshop. with that program the easiest way would be to use eyedropper tool and grab a bit of the pink from the background of an original resource and then fill the background of your new resource.

another option would be to open up the palette and manually change the purple color to the pink. I think this is how you would have to do it if you are using PSP. But I am not sure. I don't really use PSP for very much so I am not that familiar with it.

i was using PSP7 and couldn't figure it out. do you know where i can find a trial of photoshop? if ther is one.

I don't think there is one.

Its pretty easy to change the palette though. Just go to the menu bar color edit palette find the purple/blue color in the palette and switch it to civ pink 255/0/255

there isn't a selection for 255/0/255:(

255 red 0 green 255 blue

i know what it stands for but there isn't a color with those stats.

what do you mean? 255/0/255 is civ pink. it is believe me. email me at dickjensen@hotmail.com so we don't take over this thread.

okay, i have to go anyway. so your saying i have to go to colors and edit pallete? wait i think i figured something out.....

Hi!

As we are currently discussin in the Ancient Mediterranean MOD (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23420&perpage=20&pagenumber=3) thread, it seems like the city view only supports 9 luxury resources, or the game exits. Has anybody experienced this problem or even knows a solution to it?

Plutarck! I BOW TO YOU! Form months I've been trying to make a mod for myself with custom technology and wonders and now, thanks to you, I have done it! Thank you!:D :D :D :D

To Quote Plutarch

Now open the CopyTool, choose the aforementioned civ3mod.bic file, and choose to add 1 Unit, copy the Galley unit, flag the Rename option, and type in the name Coracle into the provided box. Now press the big Copy button and perhaps after a few OKs we're done with that.

WHAT IS COPY TOOL?????????

Otherwise, this looks awesome :D
Great Job! :goodjob:

ok, this file is a little screwey, and I'm wondering if anybody has figured it out yet.....

like, the top row is for the trade advisor, and the bottom row is for the city view screen, and for soem reason they are in a screwey order on the bottom row.....

I am having a helluva time with this because I was dumb, and deleted a luxury resource, now the trade advisor works fine, but the city screen icons are out of whack.....

Anybody figure this one out yet?

from my experience in adding 6 new luxury resources, the top row is all that matters.

the top row needs to be in the order that you find the resources in the bic. but it starts reading the bic at the 9th spot, so don't put any luxury resources in the first eight slots.

Then you have to leave blank slots for any resources that come inbetween. So if you just add the lux to the end of the bic after the bonus resources the first extra lux will be in spot 23, so leave 6 blank boxes between the last lux in the top row and your lux icon.

I see now that the trade advisor actually uses resources.pcx....




edit: Thanks for the help Kal-el.... got it :D

A picture being worth a thousand words:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/luxuryicons_small.gif

From this image you can see that I added 8 new luxury resources. (The reason I said 6 above was because I changed Ivory and Incense to Strategic Resources.)

So back to the image:
Gems is the 16th resource in the bic and that is followed by 6 bonus resources. Cotton was my first additional resource, followed by Coffee, Olive Oil, Sugar, Tea, Tobacco, Tropical Fruit, and Wool.

As you can see I did not adjust the bottom row of the image, except for the letters that were used to tell me if those images were actually used anywere in the game. I did not see them appear, whereas the numbers 23 through 30 did show up, therefore I assume the lower row is just to annoy and confuse us. :)

I am looking for some advice on units modification....

I have created some simple units, but seem to be having a problem. The game runs flawlessly with these new units: I can build them, I can fight with them, everything appears to be perfect. However (there's always a "however"), when I try to load a saved game, I get an error in the "civIII\art\units" path.

Has anyone else experienced this problem?!? I'd love do something more than just start a new game--it's a bit much to expect to play a game from beginning to end in one sitting, even for a civfanatic like myself!

Any advice or suggestions (I would even welcome a refrence to another forum) would be most welcome.

post the entire error message and it will be alot easier to diagnose. :)

Hi, all!
I've been trying to get a mod with added wonders/improvements to work.
I have the latest patch to the game, and i've been using the regular civ3edit program to edit.
And two thumbs up to ya Plutarck for the help in your posts. Alas, i have tried everything you mentioned with regard to the wonders/improvements, but still get that "Error: Invalid or missing line entry in PediaIcon.txt file ICON_" message when i try to load the scenario .bic file, and the game crashes to the desktop.
Here's what I added to the pediaicon.txt file with a few lines before and after so all can see where I've placed this stuff:

#
art\civilopedia\icons\terrain\riverslarge.pcx
#
art\civilopedia\icons\terrain\riverssmall.pcx
#ICON_BLDG_Laurel_of_Faith
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\laurellarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\laurelsmall.pcx
#ICON_BLDG_Racial_Mythos
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\Mythoslarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\Mythossmall.pcx
#ICON_BLDG_Hollywood
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\hollywoodlarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\hollywoodsmall.pcx
#ICON_BLDG_Movie_Theater
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\movielarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\moviesmall.pcx
#ICON_BLDG_The_Internet
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\internetlarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\internetsmall.pcx
#ICON_BLDG_Digital_Cafe
SINGLE
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\digitallarge.pcx
art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\digitalsmall.pcx
#END CIVILOPEDIA ART

################################################## ####################

Notice how I put all this after the weird:

"art\civilopedia\icons\buildings\wealthsmall.pcx
#HomelessIcons
#
art\civilopedia\icons\terrain\borderslarge.pcx
#
art\civilopedia\icons\terrain\borderssmall.pcx
#
art\civilopedia\icons\terrain\riverslarge.pcx
#
art\civilopedia\icons\terrain\riverssmall.pcx"

part? (no quotation marks in file) Should I have placed this info before the #HomelessIcons
section instead?

Then, further down a bit in that file I also added:

art\wonder splash\Battlefield Medicine.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_74
art\wonder splash\laurel of faith.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_75
art\wonder splash\racial mythos.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_76
art\wonder splash\hollywood.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_78
art\wonder splash\the internet.pcx

################################################## ##############

The reason The Internet wonder is listed as #78 is because in the bic file i'm trying to get working WITH wonders/improvements added, i have a city improvement, Digital Cafe, listed.

I copied a bunch of pcx files already with the game and renamed them to those listed in the pediaicon.txt file, so all those entries I added for the wonders/improvements are real files that exist in the right directory.
Alas, still won't work!

I have tried this modified .bic file without the wonders/improvements added, and everything works fine, but only if the wonders/improvements are not added.
I added five new governments: Theocracy, Totalitarianism, Technocracy, Secular Theocracy (creepy dumb, eh?), and Ethnofascism (ah! even creepier dumber!). I changed explorers to "Black Ops": land units with a 5 ATT, 6 DEF, 3 BOMB, 1 MOVE, no nationality (like privateer), invisible except to other Black Ops (like subs), and fairly expensive little buggers to train and equip. Adds a whole new dimension of "silent warfare" when you sneak across other's borders, manage to take a city from them, and they didn't even see you coming...hehe, can't even declare a war on you or take the city back without starting a war. Of course, the computer player can do exactly the same thing... ;> I didn't bother renaming the explorer unit though, i just replaced it and use its graphics/animations.

Anyway, i'd really like to get this thing to work, but I have no idea what else to try. Oh yea, BTW, i didn;t add any civilopedia entries, cuz I'm having enough problems with pediaicons.txt. But could that be the problem? I don't see any references in pediaicons.txt to the civilopedia.txt file that might be mising or "invalid" as that evil error message keeps saying whenever I try to load this .bic.

Please help, anyone! I will sign over one-third of my immortal soul to thee.

You can also reach me at DariusManard28$^$hotmail.com

make sure that anything you added in the editor also has an BLDG_ entry.... if it is blank, the game will cash. This goes for anything you make when you use the "add" button on the editor. If you dont want to manually add anything, but you just want it to be stable, put in like bldg_palace, or if it's a resource good_gold.

Hope this helped. :)

Upon loading a saved game, after about 95% completion, a window pops up stating:

DataIO operation system error: UNIT

The next window displayed is titled "Load Error", and simply displays the path of the saved game file.
Does that shed any light this?

Originally posted by Neomega
make sure that anything you added in the editor also has an BLDG_ entry.... if it is blank, the game will cash. This goes for anything you make when you use the "add" button on the editor. If you dont want to manually add anything, but you just want it to be stable, put in like bldg_palace, or if it's a resource good_gold.

Hope this helped. :)

Thanks for your reply! :)
Yep, I added a #ICON_BLDG_ entry in pediaicon.txt for every new wonder and improvement. Still no go. Like I said, this mod does work when i load it with the improvements and wonders not included -- (I have a copy of the .bic file with the wonder/improvements added, and an exact duplicate without them.) I checked and double checked and it doesn't seem to be a syntax problem (see mine original post for copy-and-paste of the file entries.) Maybe I should just write over improvements and wonders all ready in the game, like sacrifice the Sistine Chapel for one of my wonders? But I love making things go "Vrooom!" when they refuse to go "Vrooom!", so I guess I'll be banging away at the keyboard (and my forehead) until it works.

But still, the more help the better, folks! Keep it coming! :)

try this,

in the editor copy the pedia entry from an existing building and place it in the blank for your new building.

Originally posted by Kal-el
try this,

in the editor copy the pedia entry from an existing building and place it in the blank for your new building.

That's one-third of my immortal soul to you, Kal-el, and one-third to Neomega, as per the promise to any who would help me with the problem explained in my original post. Enjoy this soul essence! :)

Seriously, thanks to you both! Neomega, I misunderstood what you were saying to do in your reply, but I get it now. :>

Now....on to conquering the civilapedia.txt! (muhahaha)

glad to be of help.

I always wanted to own somebody else's soul. Neomega, I'll buy your shares from you. :D

Originally posted by Kal-el
glad to be of help.

I always wanted to own somebody else's soul. Neomega, I'll buy your shares from you. :D

No way! I hear Lucifer has quite lucritive offers in the soul markets..... :flamedevi

I've been following willow's problem with interest because I've tried to add my own wonder. One question I do have is: how does the game determine when you get a wonder if there is no entry under pre-req tech?

I wanted to test my wonder at the very beginning of the game just to see if it would work, and even though I had no pre-reqs for the wonder, I couldn't build it. Well, all it is is a copy of Forbidden City for effects. Hmmm . . .

Oh, yeah, one more question: how do you get the game to know what icons to use for the city build queue? When I test my wonder, it's just a blank. The name's there, but no picture.

Thanks for your help guys!

Colonel Kraken:

The Forbidden City uses the flag "Reduces Corruption" in the Small Wonders section. This flag has the side effect of making the Small Wonder require you to have 8 cities, before the Small Wonder becomes available.

So you won't be able to build it, before you have established 8 cities, I'm afraid.

As for the Building List Icons, you need to add in rows to the files Buildings_large.pcx and Buildings_small.pcx, in the "Art\City Screen" directory, and then insert your picture in the first column of the new row. Buildings_large.pcx is used for the Build List Button and Buildings_small.pcx is used for the actual build list and the list of improvements already built (bottom-left of the City Screen)

Thanks, Isak! Can't you get the game to just use an icon that's already available? I don't have the tools (or know-how) to cut and paste or make new icons.

Thanks everyone for being so helpful. :D

Hello all,

I'm still hoping someone can give me a little help in diagnosing my unit/mod problem....

Traveller: If the mod works when starting a new game, but not when you load a save game, the most likely cause is that something was changed in your Civ3 directory which means that the savegame is now holding "old" info.

With a unit loading error, I guess it could be because after you started the game that now won't load, you may have renamed a unit (and thus a unit folder) so the savegame now looks for a folder that doesn't exist anymore.

If that's not it, try starting up a new game - let one turn pass and then save the game. What happens if you then load up that savegame?

Worshipwillow: Note that with the fix Kal-El gave you, your added buildings will be sharing civilopedia entries, images and wondersplashes. I am sure there was just some dumb little missing underscore or other comma somewhere ;)

Hi, folks!
Well, i got all wonders/city improvements to work, added the civilepedia (sp) entries without having a major stroke, and all seems to work fine, so.......I've been trying some new things out and found some brick walls.
1) Well, first, did you know that when you make the relatively worthless paratrooper unit into a mobile, invisible tacticle nuke he becomes really scary? But he can be loaded on nuke subs, because of the tact. nuke flag, but if you make him a foot unit, he should only be able to board regular ships.
2) Anyway, those railroads are just way too fast. Maybe three times as fast as regular roads would be better. Is there any way to change the movement value of railroads, or to add a new worker terrain improvement that you can assign a move value to?
I've upped the move vaue for roads to 5 from default 3, and made railroads require uranium and aluminum, take 20 turns to build/square and the last tech in the game, intergrated defence. That way, railroads may have teleport speeds, but shure not gonna be many of them around. :)
Also, I've been trying to get the warfare in the game less city-based, and throttle each other with as many modern armor and mech. infantry as you can stack up, and make the combat more strategic. I've tried this by making most units NOT upgradable (I mean, c'mon, you can transform a decrepit old spearman into mech. infantry for 120 or 160 gold?? not realistic), made the more advanced units much more expensive, (like would training and equipping an infantry unit really be only 20% or whatever cheaper than building a modern armor with radar, etc, etc? If infantry costs 120 shields, than modern armor should at least be 240). Not being able to upgrade many units (okay, okay, you can upgrade the freakin' musketman to a rifleman, just give him a better gun! :) ) should help to keep units from being outdated because of fast tech research and the time it takes to build them. Finally, very few railroads, and only late in the game, should keep the wartimes more real...you find 30 enemy units stacked and heading towards your westernmost cities, then you had better get a move on and send your troops there ahead of time; no more of this "this tank defends this city this turn, then next turn appears in battle halfway across the continent."
3) any other thoughts on making land battles more, uhm, engaging to the chessmaster in us all?
4) Oh yeah, and those battleships need to be able to carry at least cruise missiles, think what they were able to do during the Gulf War, for instance. Likewise, if nuke subs can carry tact. nukes, why not cruise missiles too? A bit of a waste that is, but you may as well have the option.
5) Finally, for now, I've been offline too long, helicoptors traditionally have been good for both insertion AND extractions, that's their primary functions in a war. Being able to pick up the wounded or blokes who need a lift outta Heck is possible in Civ3, and so I offer this suggestion:
In civ3edit make these changes to helicoptors:
its still an Air Unit,
give it all Stardard orders,
NO air missions should be checked unless you want a mega-helicoptor,
check Special Actions: Unload and Airdrop only,
AI Strategy should be: Air Transport,
suggested values: Moves: 5, Operation Range: 5, Attk: 4, Defence: 12 (see below), HP Bonus: +2,
finally, check the following Unit Abilities in the oh-so-annoying check box that erases all abilities already checked if you click it and forget to have the CTRL key pressed: Radar, Transprt only Foot Units, and UNCHECK Immobile.
The gameplay with this unit will be a mobile air unit that land units can kill if given the chance. Upping the HP Bonus and giving an ATT/DEF of 4/12 will help somewhat keep the bird up in the air if you are unable to get it out of enemy-swarming territory, but they will go down sometimes. They will be able to "land" on the square where the foot units are to be extracted, the foot units then Load on to the helicoptor, and then your off. Yea, unlimited fuel, true, not like in Civilization II, but then when was the last time you had to dock your battleships for refueling?
Take care, all! Hope to be back online again soon :)

Willow...know Her, love Her, WORSHIP HER!

What?? Did I kill this topic? Oh, I know! You all went and bought that Play The World game, leaving the rest of us (me) behind. Hmmph! Just wait till I get a consistant ISP...I'll Monty Zooma all your butts! :P

How do you add Luxuries to the game and have them show up in the Luixury Item box in the city view screen. The ones I add always show up as #32. Any help would be great.

Ninja

wow- u r fast... :)

Originally posted by flyingninja57
How do you add Luxuries to the game and have them show up in the Luxury Item box in the city view screen. The ones I add always show up as #32. Any help would be great.

Ninja

Take a look at this.
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads2/luxuryicons_small1.gif

From this image you can see that I added 8 new Luxury Resources to the DyP mod, cotton, coffee, olive oil, sugar, tea, tobacco, tropical fruit, and wool. The key is in placement in the luxuryicons_small file which you can find in the ...\Civilization III\Art\City Screen folder.

Since I added the luxury resources immediately after the last resource in the standard bic, my 8 new luxury resources take up slots 23-30 in the luxuryicons_small image.* You can also see from the image that the I left the bottom row empty. After several games have been played with the Mod I have yet to hear anyone indicate that the letters i through P are showing up anywhere. This leads me to the conclusion that the images in the bottom row are not actually necessary.

*note: the original luxuryicons_small image does not have the extra boxes so I recommend copying this one.

Funny, I forgot that I had already answered this question only one page back.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=529362#post529362

Even funnier is that the language is very similar.

WINTER and Kal-El,

Thanks for the insight. If I copy this to my ...\Civilization III\Art\City Screen folder and then add the luxury it should work. That sounds easy enough. I will try that.

Ninja

I just recently added resources to my mod and they show up on map, but I haven't playtested it to see if they show up in the city screen. I notice (as you mentioned) there is a luxury icon file for the city screen.

My question is whether or not there is a file you need to change in order to display new strategic resources in the city screen.

Thanks,

Colonel

just the resources.pcx file in the art directory.

I am making my own mod and noticed when I try ot add more than 8 luxeries the game will just remove one to make 8. I know how to add the graphics for more luxuries but how do I get the game to handle more than 8?

I am using the newest version of PTW.

Cities can only take advantage of 8 luxuries at a time, however, you will still be able to trade your additional luxuries to other civs.

So I can add more than 8 to the game, but any one city can only have 8 at once?

How do I get the little icons to match up then?

Neorowen, Read Posts 70 and 90 of this thread.

Remember way back in Civ2 when we could offer/trade military units to other civs? Is there any way to get non-workers units to appear as tradable? I see no "trade" flag in units section of civ3editor. Maybe the game recognizes only workers as being tradable because only they have terraform AI strategy? Anyone tried making maybe a new unit, a more advanced modern worker, that also has terraform AI strat, and been able to trade them with other civs?
If a unit must have terraform, that is, if the game determines if a unit can be traded thru diplomacy by whether or not it has terraform checked in civ3edit, I guess it might be a little steep price to have ravaging units of tanks and rabid infantry who also do really nice gardening work, but at least we can trade or sell military units like in Civ2. It's true to life, after all, selling planes and tanks and so forth.
Any thoughts or help on this, folks?

Hey. I just found this board. You guys rule.... I've been fooling around with the editor for a while now. I managed to figure out a lot of stuff on my own, but this sure answered some questions for me.

Has anyone figured out how to get it so you can have your created buildings in the city overview screen?

Thanks.

BTW, if anyone wants any new improvement/wonder/unit ideas, these are some that I have incorporated...

Improvements
Hockey Arena
Fast Food Restaurant
Night Club
Brothel

Unit
Suicide Bomber

Wonders
Temple of Batu the Goat God
Expo

Sounds too cool not to try...er...as soon as I find a job!:mad:

Originally posted by Deerhoof
Has anyone figured out how to get it so you can have your created buildings in the city overview screen?

Thanks.

Hello, Deerhoof,
pesoloco started a thread about adding new buildings to the city aerial view. The thread is in this Tutorials forum, and it's name is self-explanatory. However, I believe the method involves using existing buildings in aerial view with new links to your modded improvements/wonders. Meaning, if you add a new wonder, you'd have to use a pre-existing building, removing the improvement/wonder linked to that graphic, then replacing the old improvement/wonder with your own.
Check out the thread, I might be wrong about this.

welcome to civfanatics.com! :)

How come nobody ever has a tutorial on adding new goverments to the game. I don't mean typing a name of a new government into the editor and not having a history, or a picture of the government flag. I want to know how to add a complete new government to the whole game. A government with a whole new flag, new cyclopedia entry, and a tech advance to achieve the new government. Can anyone help please.:confused:

Finally. Adding a wonder is as simple as updating the image file.

!:egypt:

Thanks

i know this sounds simple, but im green to these things. im wanting to use some of the resources ive downloaded in a scenario im making, and i need to know what program to open up the resources.pcx with. any help you could give me would be lovely!

Most people do all the graphic editing in Paint shop pro 7, or Photoshop7.

You can get a demo of PSP7 here : http://www.jasc.com/download_4.asp?

It lasts thirty days as far as I know.
You can open up the .pcx files in these programs, do your editing, and they will allow you to resave the file as a .pcx.

Don't know if this was what you were looking for.

I have added the luxury icons file to the city view folder so as to have the icons show up in the luxury box in the city view. I am off on something though as the new luxury item I added to the game shows a different icon in the city view. That is I added sugar to the mod I'm working on.. it displays on the map just fine but when roads are built and sugar is added to the luxury box of the city view screen it displays the cofee icon.

I used a resorces .pcx from Teturkhan's mods and the city resouce .pcx from Kal-el, both of which sre great..thanks for the work.

I'm confused from what I read in the threads, is this just the way it is or is there something else I can edit to get the sugar icon to show up in the city view screen.

Any thoughts and ideas would be appreciated.

@Jim:

You also need to edit the 'luxuryicons_small.pcx' which is found in the Art\City Screen folder.

That file has two rows of luxury icons - note that the second row doesn't seem to have any effect.

The icons are supposed to be in the order they appear in the BIX/BIC file, starting with the first luxury icons, as far as I know.

Kal-el is the real hot-shot with this file though - he can probably elaborate when he gets to a computer this weekend :)

I had put the luxuryicons_small.pcx in the city screen folder. I have done some testing this morning, the original luxiry icons appear correctly. The sugar luxury was the first luxury I added to the mod.. I have added copper as a strategic resource.

Isak I do not understand what you mean by "the order they appear" in the bic/bix file. Is that the file that one is changing when you open the editor? If so then do I need to "add" the new items to the natural resource page in the order they appear in the luxuryicons_small.pcx?

thanks for the reply. I'm going to keep tinkering and see if I swerve into doing this right:D

Yep, the BIC (for regular Civ3) or BIX (for Play The World) is the file you tinker with when you open the editor.

About the order: When the game looks for an icon for a luxury, it starts the search from the first luxury in the BIC/BIX file, and then starts counting all resources afterwards. So if the next luxury resource in your BIX file is 6 places after the first, you will need a gap of 5 blank squares horizontally and then add in the next luxury icon in the 6th square.

Take a look at the Luxuryicons_small file from the DyP mod. Kal-el numbered the first row when he was figuring out how this works. (the second row has letters, but that was just to test if the game used the 2nd row at all)

Our first luxury is Wine, so the Grapes icon is the first in the PCX file. Then, in the order they appear in the Double Your Pleasure BIC file we have:

Furs (Lux)
Dyes (Lux)
Incense (Not lux, but we have been too lazy to remove the icon)
Spices (Lux)
Elephants (Not lux, same reason as Incense)
Silks (Lux)
Gems (Lux)
Whales (Not lux - would be using the square numbered 17 if it was a luxury)
Game (Not Lux, would be #18)
Fish (Not Lux, #19)
Cattle (Not Lux, #20)
Wheat (Not Lux, #21)
Gold (Not Lux, #22)
Cotton (Luxury, so there is an icon in that spot)
.. and luxuries all the way to Wool (Sheep Icon) and then we don't have anymore luxuries in the file.

I hope that helps a bit more :)

I made most of the changes yesterday. Finished the text files today and did several test runs.

You are correct about the placement of those icons in the resources.pcx file in relation to their set up location in the .BIX file. Once I deleted the strat resources I had set up and began putting in the 8 luxury resources right after the original game resources( gold I think it is at 21) they began showing up in the city view screen correctly.
One thing I did notice during testing is that since the game is coded for 8 luxury resources only, once you collect over 8 resources it will show the original 8 in preference to the added 8 resources. That is if you collect all 16 luxury resources lets say, and no matter what order you collect them in, the game will always display the the original 8 in the city view screen. No biggie really just an interesting bit of info.
All 16 do show up in the trade advisor screen and are available for trade when you enter into diplomatic negotiations, which I think is a good thing.

Thank you much for the input and help it is much appreciated.

No problem :)

And yes, the game does have some problems displaying the icons. That also happens with strategic resources, if you add too many. They begin cluttering up the info box at the top of the city screen :D

But heck, who ever said modding was supposed to be easy as peach. I guess without these little quirks, we would get bored with modding very soon. As long as it's only cosmetic quirks, I can live with them too. :cool:

well, i wanted to make a new tech: Armor. I put it instead of Gunpowder. I changed it in the editor & adjusted the pedialcons.

Since the editor askes for a civilopedia entry (i typed TECH_Armor), i added this to the civilopedia.txt (under advances):

#TECH_Armor
^
^
^
#DESC_TECH_Armor
^
^
^New weaponry emerged during the Middle Ages. Essential for the soldiers was the thick armor that had to protect them from the blows of the enemy. Not everyone could afford these expensive armors, it was mainly reserved for the wealthy.


But the problem is: i can't save it. The compu always says that the access to civilopedia.txt is denied. So, what am i doing wrong? Do i need to delete another advance first (if theirs a max# advances)? Do i need to alter the civilopedia at all? Maybe i should just write in the editor: TECH_Gunpowder & just change the name in the editor to Armor & then alter the pcx's?

@Ossric:

I assume you're using regular Civ3 v.1.29f.

The civilopedia.txt file was just write protected by mistake in that patch. All you need to do is right-click it in Windows Explorer, select properties, and remove the check in "Write-protected". Then you should be able to modify it all you want.

Thanks Isak, the little bastard was indeed checked

I need some explanation on what the correct way to proper way to write in the scenario properties to tell the scenario to look in another folder for units, etc. in a scenario sub-folder. There is a blank in the "Search for...." line, but what is the format to assure proper compliance?

I'm not sure if it's the better place to put it, but I'd like to mod PTW the way only workers can cross Mountains untill they build roads. Does anyone know how to do that ? The better I could get was change Mountains to "impassable", but no way to make workers go there and build roads... Any suggestions ?

Mountains are currently impassable to wheeled units, so make everybody else wheeled except workers.

So the "wheeled" information is just to be used by "impassable to wheeled" terrains ?? Hasn't it any other function ??

Tks !

not really

Is there a guide/thread that deals with this topic?

I keep gettin' an error message saying "missing entry in"text/PediaIcons.text": ANIMNAME_" when I try to build an added unit.. :confused:

..has it become more complicated rather than simpler with PTW as far as adding units is concerned?

Thanx

No, just different :)

Open your Pediaicons.txt, and scroll down to the #Animname_ section (almost at the bottom). There you'll see pairs of entries, like

#ANIMNAME_PRTO_Warrior
Warrior

The first line tells PtW that for the unit with the Civilopedia entry name 'PRTO_Warrior', it should use the Animation found in the folder called 'Warrior'.

So if you add a new unit, you will also have to add an entry like this, and make sure that the Civilopedia Entry name corresponds to the one in the BIX file, and that there is a folder called whatever you name it, somewhere in the directory structure.

If you want to do extensive modding, I think it's probably better to go through some of the tutorials that are scattered about this place and other sites. :)

Thank U - the big Q is now: How do I avoid having the added units' icons show up on the science advisor screen? If U add a lot of units their icons completely mess up the appearence of that interface - I have tried to just give the new units the same icon (number), but it will then appear in the duplicates, or as many instances as added units, on the screen.

Any ideas...?

Excuse me, I'm a newbie, so forgive me if I'm being obtuse here, but I have been going over all this mod stuff for Civ3 for about 9 hours straight and my head is swimming. :crazyeye: I noticed someone mentioned that it's impossible to assign civ starting locations on the world map. I found something in FAQ section about assigning starting locations...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=52360

...in the "scenario questions" section. However, I could be misunderstanding you...maybe you're referring to something else, like permanent assignments? Or a specific map?
Let me know if I'm wrong, and if so, how I'm wrong. I don't mind being wrong cuz I learn faster that way :)

It's not impossible,I've done it many times.Just click overlays (if i remember correctly) and choose "new starting location" or something like that.I'm also new to all this modding stuff so if i remember incorrectly don't judge me.

:confused: How to create a land mine and naval mine?

WHAT COPY TOOL?????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????? WHERE IS IT???????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????? :confused: :confused

The Copy Tool is now the Multi-Tool, is made by Gramphos, and is in the Utilities forum.

thanks zulu9812!

A problem...


When i enter the science advisor, it shows Ancient Era... but when i change to Medieval, it crashes...how come? i used this tutorial for modification...


plz help



Talph

Originally posted by Ralph_Jones
When i enter the science advisor, it shows Ancient Era... but when i change to Medieval, it crashes...how come? i used this tutorial for modification...

Sounds like some techs are missing references to a small and large icon. That's in the #TECH section of the Pediaicons.txt.

The easiest way to figure out which ones are causing the error, is to go into the Tech Advances section of the Civilopedia (in the game) and just go through the techs until you find ones that are missing graphics.

i searched and... nothing is missing... what can it be?



plz help




Ralph

I guess it could actually be any icon that is missing, not necessarily just tech icons.

Are you using Civ3 or PtW?

If you use PtW, and you're not getting an error message, it could also be that one icon isn't a 256 color pcx file in the correct size - that should also show as a corrupted image in the Civilopedia, but it doesn't crash.

If you can't find the problem, is there anyway you could zip up the mod, and email it? I'll PM you my email, if you can.

DONT WORRY!!!


the problem: i cant add new citizens... how can i add them?



Thanks in advance




Ralph

You just follow this tutorial (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50341) by Buckets :)

Originally posted by gael
Most people do all the graphic editing in Paint shop pro 7, or Photoshop7.

It lasts thirty days as far as I know.
You can open up the .pcx files in these programs, do your editing, and they will allow you to resave the file as a .pcx.

Don't know if this was what you were looking for.

Paint Shop Pro 8 has a free demo now, and it lasts 60 days. I used it to place a lot of the resource icons in the civilopedia. But one problem I had: any icon from the resource sheet that was greater than 32 x 32 pixels, did not show up in the civilopedia. Didn't cause the game to crash or anything, but it looks odd when it says 'stone' but has a picture of coal. The stone icon in the resource sheet is pretty big. What is the best way to reduce its size so it will fit in the slot for the small icons?

hey how do you get it so the mod for government types don't crash the game.

hey how do you get it so the mod for government types don't crash the game. i included fundamentalism in my game and it works except i can't access my advisors. then the game crashes.

I have read the discussion on luxury resources here, and found it pretty informative, but it leaves me with 3 questions:

1. Can a city use a 9th luxury at all - meaning if the 9th lux is a prereq to building an improvement, will the city be able to build that improvement or not? I understand there is no happiness bonus on the 9th.

2. Has any of this changed with C3C?

3. What, if any, limitations are on Strategic Resources?

The Optimator mod I am working on is going to have well over 100 resources, and several different "unit trees" based on available resources. I need to know just how feasible this is, and would like to find out without putting months more work into it.

TIA

Does anyone know how to add an extra era for tech? I have like 300 units for a mod and not enough tech eras to go with them. I read a lot of posts here with lots of usful information but havent come accross anything about adding eras. Im sure that info is here somewhere..mabye I missed a page when I was reading through the posts.....I would appreciate any help or a point in the right direction. Thanks :)

Originally posted by Sleepy Eyes
Does anyone know how to add an extra era for tech? I have like 300 units for a mod and not enough tech eras to go with them. I read a lot of posts here with lots of usful information but havent come accross anything about adding eras. Im sure that info is here somewhere..mabye I missed a page when I was reading through the posts.....I would appreciate any help or a point in the right direction. Thanks :)

Unfortunately you cannot have more than 4 eras. You can either expand the current eras or eliminate on and add another (Eliminate ancient and add future or something along those lines).

Hi, folks!
Is there a nice neat tutorial/guide for taking an old vanilla Civ3 mod with lotsa new units, governments, resources, improvements/wonders, civilopedia entries (ack!), rules, etc and safely converting/pasting it all to play in C3C with all the various files, directories, and .txt entries working properly?

OR...would anyone care to write up a nice neat (or sloppy too is fine at this point, I don't care) post about this subject which is so very critical for those of us who've spent decades making the mod of our dreams only to buy C3C and find it much better than vanilla civ3, (especially those cool new editor options)?

I'm not much interested in keeping the C3C basic game compatible with the new files, but would like to be able to play the conquests scenarios without conflicts. So if, for instance, the tech tree arrows are now wrong in the default C3C game because they've been edited to accomadate the new tech tree in the old civ3 mod being converted to C3C, that's fine with me, but if there's a way to avoid more serious conflicts like not being able to play the conquests scenarios, I'd love some insight into "how-to".

Thanks for reading my post! Hope someone replies to it! :)

OOPS!

Forgot to mention that I'd like to also include all the new C3C units, improvements, etc in the old vanilla Civ3 mod I mentioned in my last post when I convert it, in theory, to play with C3C. :)
How does one place them all in the newly converted (mymodname).biq file without pulling all one's hair out from error messages from Hades?

thanks!

Alright, that's f--kin' it.

I've been following this f--kin' thing for the better part of the f--king day and the f--king thing just don't seem to work.

How the f--k are you supposed to get the the resources to show up as an icon option?

I've followed this as best I could with no f--king sucsess, I've done the same f--king steps for f--k how f--king long with no-f--king-thing to show for it except an extreme urge to drive my f--king fist through the f--king screen.

There is only one resource option, that's resources.

I've put all kinds of extra icons in those blank pink squares just to have them not show up when I need to use them, just to have them stay f--king pink and empty.

Hell, I've only used the icons that are in the program itself, stone is the one I'm working on right now.

I have the same problem. There is no icon for my new resource on the map or the advsior screen but it is there if i look at the terane info and it is there on my advisor just w/o an icon. I have added icon to <Art\resources.pcx>. The resource are in the civilopedia. ~thax for an help

Great work on the tutorial! It will really help.

I have been playing around with the editors with the thought of turning some of my research on the 19th century into a scenario. Civ2 was not able to support what I wanted to do. However, I have not been able to discover how to place cities (not starting locations) on the map, as well as units for each country. Any ideas would be appreciated, sorry if the answer is really obvious - I'm new to scenario creation.

Thanks,

Khan

I think you can only do that on :c3c:.

I'm getting a strange (but serious) crash on the mod I'm working on. I had originally mod-ed warrior to require warrior code. So that meant that civs without warrior code couldnt begin the game with a warrior in their build queue. So when you built your first city there was nothing in the queue. If I built settler the game was fine. If I chose temple, the game crashed when the temple was built. Hmmm????? Since I was play testing the mod I simply avoided the problem and built settler first.

After a few more refinements I'm starting a game on emperor. Now I need to build temple because of the unhappiness but cant cos the game crashes.

I thought it was a problem with the pediaicons since I've used temple icons as 'placeholders' for a couple of other buildings. I've checked and double checked for errors, but I still get the crash.

I thought maybe the game needed a warrior with no requirements. So I added an improved unit to come in with warrior code allowing me to re-set warrior back to default settings. Religious civs can build warrior but the build queue is empty with first city, if I choose to build temple the game still crashes but if I build a unit I can then build a temple. Civs with warrior code can build the better unit so no problems with that.

After that experiment I thought the problem was something to do with the build queue itself. So I added build defensive and offensive units to the egyptians build preferences for the governor. When I build my first city the queue shows warrior and I can build temple first without a crash.

I'm at a loss to understand this. I dont want to change the build preferences for the non-militaristic civs. I dont see why I should need to, since I've re-established warrior back to default settings.

I found the answer. At the start of the game there must be a unit (other than settler and worker) present for the default build queue. You dont have to build it, you can change the queue once in the city screen, but it must be there for the first city screen. In addition, the unit must be marked 'offense'. I had labelled the 'default' warrior (that required no tech) that I had replaced as 'explorer'. When I changed that to offense the build queue worked perfectly.

Now I can test an emperor level game to see how the AI handles the changes. The monarch level game worked fine that way except that the AI doesnt use ship to ship naval bombardment and so is at a disadvantage.

Okay, I posted a question on the C3C faq forum and they suggested I post my question here instead. If I had a clue as to how to make a link direct to my post I'd do so, but I don't have a clue, so here's the cliff notes version.

I have a Black Ops unit in my little mod. It's a land unit with no nationality markings and it's invisible. In vanilla Civ3 it worked fine. You could do anything with it against friend or enemy without instigating a war, since it has no nationality markings. Now in C3C I noticed that you no longer can attack foreign cities or units in foreign cities with the Black Op. You can do everything else, though.

I thought this would be fine, since taking over a city with a small band of specialized soldiers seemed a little far fetched anyway. BUT, I was playing a game (C3C, v.1.20) and the satanistic AI players apparently figured out how to use the Black Ops during peacetime to attack and take over my cities, even while I still cannot return the favor.

My question is, "Why??" I mean, everything is the same in the C3C editor for Black Ops no matter what civ is using the unit. Is there perhaps some kinda hotkey command I'm missing that the AI players don't need to use cuz they don't use keyboards, usually? All I know is when I move the Black Ops to attack a foreign city during peacetime in the normal "attack" manner, (click and drag to the adjacent tile with the big juicy city on it), no popup window comes up saying, "Are you sure? This will start a war with the ::civname::!" Nothing at all happens, like when you try to move a land unit onto a sea tile, or a sea unit on to a land tile...nuthin!

Any help or ideas?

Did I say this was going to be the "cliff notes version"? Silly me...

@Worshipwillow:

Good news and bad news. Good news is, you're not doing anything wrong or missing a hotkey.
Bad news is, it's a bug.

It was reported here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72842) for the Sengoku scenario, but it's the same bug you're experiencing. Sorry. :(

I got a question I am trying to add a strategic resource from one mod to my scenario. I opened the file that shows the resources used resources.pcx. Lots of pink boxes with the resources in them. How do I copy them into my scenario???!!! I cant copy and paste it so i dont know what else to do.

Isak, thank you much for the answer! Now I can at least keep some of my hair, as I've pulled out quite a bit already. Bummer that one is. Well, maybe I'll give the black op unit a real weak attack, so they can kill units without guns, like pikemen, but not much chance of attacking a city successfully (especially the way the AI uses them.)


@Worshipwillow:

Good news and bad news. Good news is, you're not doing anything wrong or missing a hotkey.
Bad news is, it's a bug.

cool :goodjob: