A New Hope

[PatriotNorwood]

UPDATE: A New Hope is still planned! Don't go away! We are going to finish the 2071 mod first, so that the A New Hope mod will have a good base to work off. So for now I am part of the 2071 team. Of course feel free to leave any comments or suggest for the mod on the thread. As soon as work really begins, then I will open a thread under "mods and files". There are so many things that can be done with this idea so don't be bashful, and speak your mind...

Well, I now have plans underway to begin work on a Star Wars mod for Colonization, titled "A New Hope" it will be a complete redo of the game to a Star Wars feel, hopefully with lots of added features. I have opened this thread to begin discussing the mod, and some of the features we would like to see in it and to recruit some help maybe. Nightinggale and Kailric have kindly allowed me to use their shared code, and have opened a branch for me on Sourceforge.com, so work can begin right away if necessary. So my current ideas are to have the major powers like the Empire, CIS, Republic, and the Rebel Alliance be the colonies being led by famous people like Luke, Darth Vader, etc. and then the Kings will be replaced by leaders like the Emperor and Mon Motha. The Natives will be replaced by species such as the Wookies and Gungans. (Got to love those gungans) So any ideas or suggestions? It may be awhile before I really get down to work, but we can start with the fun ideas now...

And Kailric or Nightinggale if I forgot anything...

 

[Commander Bello]

May the Force be with you

 

[Kailric]

I'm excited about this mod

Civ4Col is actually an excellent backdrop for a Star Wars mod. I had to brush up on some Star Wars lore, but the whole Rebel Alliance started because of disgruntled Senators who were concern about the direction the Republic was heading. Then when Supreme Chancellor Palpatine declares himself Emperor, dissolving the Old Republic forming the Empire, the war was on.

You could start out as Colonists of the Galactic Republic, or perhaps other organizations as well as I am not familiar with them all yet, trying to appease the Supreme Chancellor. As the Supreme Chancellor's grip ever tightens so grows the rebel sentiment. Its perfect

We could set it up so that you are actually trying to get other Native Civs to join your Alliance, and the more you get, the more help you have during Rebellion, or war to restore the Old Republic.

Perhaps even if the AI declares Independence, forming the CIS, you can either side with them and attempt to win an Allied Victory, or fulfill the Supreme Chancellor's bidding and help quell the Rebellious Separatists, or Secretly plot against them both to declare yourself Emperor

The main "Europe" could be Coruscant, and of course there can be multiple Trade Screens added with the M:C mod additions, to make trading more interesting.

Just some my initial thoughts. I've been watching the animated Clone War serious here recently, its pretty cool.

 

[orlanth]

yes its good to see more interest in scifi total conversion modding in Civ4Col. Live long and prosper!
oops wrong universe

You're welcome to use anything in 2071 (or any of my graphics packs) that you find helpful. Particularly the Planets mapscript would be good for autogenerating Planets of a variety like those found in the Star Wars universe (Ice Planet of Hoth, Desert Planet of Tatooine, etc etc). I think Kailrics ideas are good concepts for this, would be cool to have battles raging across several planets while Star Destroyers try to crush the rebellion.

 

[PatriotNorwood]

Wow! I am glad to see some interest in this , but to do all that I am going to need some serious help. I still have thousands of unanswered questions that I still need to get to, but I am working on it... I don't even know how to access my own mod yet. (what with Git and Sourceforge and all) Anyways keep the ideas rolling, I like your ideas a lot Kailric, hopefully I can make some of those things work. Is there a way to add a new class to "Space" units (Ocean) I think fighters (non-cargo) units would be a neat addition to the game, as a separate unit type with their own promotions, they could be used to hunt down enemy cargo ships, etc.

 

[Kailric]

Wow! I am glad to see some interest in this , but to do all that I am going to need some serious help. I still have thousands of unanswered questions that I still need to get to, but I am working on it... I don't even know how to access my own mod yet. (what with Git and Sourceforge and all) Anyways keep the ideas rolling, I like your ideas a lot Kailric, hopefully I can make some of those things work. Is there a way to add a new class to "Space" units (Ocean) I think fighters (non-cargo) units would be a neat addition to the game, as a separate unit type with their own promotions, they could be used to hunt down enemy cargo ships, etc.

Yes there is a way and it is pretty simple. They would be like the Frigates in Colonization that have no Cargo space. If you wanted to have their own Promotions you would add a new combat type to CIV4UnitCombatInfos.xml, like UNITCOMAT_FIGHTER. Then create the Unit with this type of Combat, then add Promotions that only go to this Type of UnitCombat

I wonder if we could add the Civ4 Flight model. Don't they just fly out to certain ranges, do missions, then fly back again? Perhaps Fighters could perform "missions" like Disable certain Capitol ship systems and such, or be set to Defend a Capitol Ship.

 

[PatriotNorwood]

Yes there is a way and it is pretty simple. They would be like the Frigates in Colonization that have no Cargo space. If you wanted to have their own Promotions you would add a new combat type to CIV4UnitCombatInfos.xml, like UNITCOMAT_FIGHTER. Then create the Unit with this type of Combat, then add Promotions that only go to this Type of UnitCombat

About as easy as adding a new leaderhead? Well we shall see, many things have escaped me, I seem to be missing an XML Text Defines file or something, when I rename current leaders all I get is TXT_LEADER_ETC, not sure about that one...

I wonder if we could add the Civ4 Flight model. Don't they just fly out to certain ranges, do missions, then fly back again? Perhaps Fighters could perform "missions" like Disable certain Capitol ship systems and such, or be set to Defend a Capitol Ship.

I don't know much about that but surely it must be possible some how... I do like that idea though reminds me of this mods namesake movie... "What is that short range fighter doing way out here?" "Hey look it is flying to that small moon" "That is no moon..." I know not quite right but close enough.

 

[Kailric]

About as easy as adding a new leaderhead? Well we shall see, many things have escaped me, I seem to be missing an XML Text Defines file or something, when I rename current leaders all I get is TXT_LEADER_ETC, not sure about that one...

What are you renaming them too? I generally just use text and fill in the XML later if need be like...

<LeaderHeadInfo>
	<Type>LEADER_CHARLEMAGNE</Type>
	<Description>[COLOR="Red"]Charlemagne[/COLOR]</Description>

The TXT_LEADER_ETC points to a tag in the Text files, if there is no reference there it will just say TXT_LEADER_ETC instead.

 

[PatriotNorwood]

Hey it worked, I figured it out...

 

[Kailric]

Hey it worked, I figured it out...

Wow, good job. And almost the spitting image of him too

BTW what are you using to edit your files. Some use notepad++ I use Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express, they are both free. You can create a search path to the Col Assets directory and your Mod directory and it will search the code for things you need. Like if want to know what tag uses "King of France" search for "King of France" and you'll be able to find where that info is stored in XML. If you want to find what unit is "Expert Farmer" you can search for the term Expert Farmer, find the XML key, search for that name Key and you'll find the Farmer Unit. That example isn't of much use but there are some things you can find that are not so easy to find.

 

[Nightinggale]

Live long and prosper!
oops wrong universe

That is sure to cause a lot of anger with such poor judgement. However anger is like all other emotions illogical and our work will not be affected.

You're welcome to use anything in 2071 (or any of my graphics packs) that you find helpful.

I'm quite happy that you didn't deny access to your work as I already cloned the col2071 git module as a starting point. I figured that the module with planets and stuff would be the right one to start with.

Now that we have two scifi mods and one is currently a clone of the other, will we get a clone war?

Some use notepad++ I use Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express, they are both free.

Depending on experience with XML, dedicated tools for XML could also be useful. There is this one designed for civ4: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270586
Generally it's quite nice, but it isn't perfect. You can't add optional tags if they aren't already present as you can only modify tags. I have tried to script adding missing tags with default values, but that's far from complete, mainly because I haven't put much effort into that task.

Speaking of scripting, there are plenty of references to "the scripts", which are also on git (in a folder creativity called "scripts"). Those are written in perl and to use them you have to install perl first. While there are some options, I generally recommend strawberry perl.

 

[orlanth]

That is sure to cause a lot of anger with such poor judgement. However anger is like all other emotions illogical and our work will not be affected.

Yess, good, I can feel your anger... Now strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!


Link to video.

 

[PatriotNorwood]

Okay lets try to stay on subject here...

Sorry for not explain the screenshot earlier...
First I want to point out that the screenshot has nothing to do with the mod it is just part of a "test mod" I am using to practice my XML skills, I don't yet know how to edit my own mod. (Being on Sourceforge and all)

BTW what are you using to edit your files. Some use notepad++ I use Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express, they are both free. You can create a search path to the Col Assets directory and your Mod directory and it will search the code for things you need. Like if want to know what tag uses "King of France" search for "King of France" and you'll be able to find where that info is stored in XML. If you want to find what unit is "Expert Farmer" you can search for the term Expert Farmer, find the XML key, search for that name Key and you'll find the Farmer Unit. That example isn't of much use but there are some things you can find that are not so easy to find.

Well currently I am just using notepad. (yes the one that comes with the computer...) If that is a problem then I will try a version of C++ probably the one you suggest. I like the idea of searching that could come in handy.

Now that we have two scifi mods and one is currently a clone of the other, will we get a clone war?

Good one! I shall try, I shall try... I do like the original trilogy a lot, but the clone wars are almost as awesome...

Depending on experience with XML, dedicated tools for XML could also be useful. There is this one designed for civ4: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270586
Generally it's quite nice, but it isn't perfect. You can't add optional tags if they aren't already present as you can only modify tags. I have tried to script adding missing tags with default values, but that's far from complete, mainly because I haven't put much effort into that task.

Speaking of scripting, there are plenty of references to "the scripts", which are also on git (in a folder creativity called "scripts"). Those are written in perl and to use them you have to install perl first. While there are some options, I generally recommend strawberry perl.

I will have a look at this in the morning I am tired now from working...

 

[PatriotNorwood]

I have a question, are static leaderheads from Civ4 "vanilla" compatible with Colonization? I tried adding some static leaderheads, when I load the mod I can see the buttons, but when I try to click on one it crashes the game (CTD I guess?), and windows starts looking for a problem, Is there something I need to do to make them work?

 

[Kailric]

I have a question, are static leaderheads from Civ4 "vanilla" compatible with Colonization? I tried adding some static leaderheads, when I load the mod I can see the buttons, but when I try to click on one it crashes the game (CTD I guess?), and windows starts looking for a problem, Is there something I need to do to make them work?

I don't recall having issues myself, but it was actually years ago that I added a leader head.

drjest2000 had some issues and in this thread he solved them so that may help..

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=498566

 

[Nightinggale]

I have no idea about leaderheads as I have never done anything in that area.

However generally speaking (goes for both civ4 and civ4colo) while the game is a 32 bit application, it runs more stable on 64 bit systems. In theory it will crash if the game uses 4 GB on 64 bit systems and on 32 bit systems it is 4 GB for everything running at the same time (6 with extended memory, 3 for winXP). However experience tells that the game can crash even before hitting these limits. To my knowledge nobody knows why.

General rule: if you use a 32 bit system and the game crashes, thy closing applications and try again.

 

[PatriotNorwood]

I guess what I should have asked is this is a DDS only leaderhead compatible with Colonization, or do I need to edit something like Civ4_Art_Defines_Schema? I do have a 64 bit system so that should not be as much of an issue... I think is has something to do with being in a DDS format with no animations, etc.

Attached is a picture of an experimental opening screen for A New Hope, but as you can see I can't get rid of the animated portions of the screen. Is this an XML thing? I tried replacing the files with blanks, etc. It only gets worse...

 

[Nightinggale]

Kailric and orlanth made menu screens for M:C and col2071 respectively. I assume they know how to do something like that. I'm actually impressed that you have come this far already. I get the feeling that this mod really is a new hope for a SW mod

 

[Kailric]

I guess what I should have asked is this is a DDS only leaderhead compatible with Colonization, or do I need to edit something like Civ4_Art_Defines_Schema? I do have a 64 bit system so that should not be as much of an issue... I think is has something to do with being in a DDS format with no animations, etc.

Attached is a picture of an experimental opening screen for A New Hope, but as you can see I can't get rid of the animated portions of the screen. Is this an XML thing? I tried replacing the files with blanks, etc. It only gets worse...

The opening menus are 3D Nifs that have several objects imbedded into a 3D scene. If you just want a Single Background picture I can make a special Nif for you that only has that part in it. But, I can probably help you put together a really cool Opening Menu scene when one is needed. Anyway, the Civ4 forums are loaded with info on opening and editing Nifs. That is where I learned all my stuff.

Yes, you can make simple DDS leader heads. I haven't ever done it, but I know the Westward Ho mod has it so you can look there to see exactly what they did. I bet its simple.

 

[raystuttgart]

@PatriotNorwood:

Wouldn't it make sense for you to first team up with orlanth to get Colonization:2071 to a stable / playable / balanced version ?

1) You could build up your Civ4:Col modding knowledge a lot faster by working with a more experienced modder.
2) Once Colonization:2071 has achieved a playable status, you might be able to relatively easily convert it to A New Hope by simply exchanging graphics and texts.