Feedback and Suggestions

raystuttgart · Jun 18, 2014

Nightinggale said:
My plan is to make one GameFont.tna to contain everything.

Sorry, but I believe that is impossible.
(Unless you magically get access to the exe.)

1) A lot of the Fonts and Icons in the Gamefonts is hardcoded considering position (inside the EXE) and thus can't be modified by DLL or XML.
2) Changing Gamefonts is not as simple as you might believe. Some rows are really tricky if you add or remove something.

You will most likely need to maintain 2 versions of Gamefonts as well.

I strongly suggest:

1) Before investing too much energy on things like Cyrillic XML for Texts, try to figure out, if your ideas will work at all.
2) Try to get in contact with some Russian Modders to find out about other potential problems.

Edit:

I don't want to sound critical.
I am just trying to save you guys a lot of wasted effort.

But of course I might be completely wrong. :dunno:

Maybe creating one single mod for US / European version, Russian Localization, Japanese Localization, ... can be done.
(Although I really can't believe it is, when those versions use so different character sets.)

But most likely having different versions of the mod would be the only or at least the much much easier solution.
Thus of course also having (lots of) additional effort to develop and later on maintain those different version.

Daw · Jun 18, 2014

Ray is right. I run US/EU version. Now I've downloaded and installed the "Rusifier" I gave link to. Vanilla got Russian right away. However neither M:C, nor RaR were able to start with that. Uninstalling the "Rusifier" reversed the trick as expected: no more Russian, but all mods are welcome to run.

raystuttgart · Jun 18, 2014

Daw said:
Ray is right.

Well thank you, that you believe me.

After so many years of intensively modding this game I better should have gathered some experience and knowledge about it.
(I never tried to play mods on Russian localization myself. But there were bug reports and I was in contact with Russian modders in the past.)

Sorry though, that this will not be as easy as you might have thought.
Would have been nice for Russian community.

The good news is:

You haven't yet invested too much time into the translation to Cyrillic / Russian.
Just imagine you would have worked for 100 hours on translation already ...

The other good news is:

Nightinggale's idea for adding further languages might still generally work.
However those languages would be languages that also use Latin Fonts and thus can be integrated properly in US/EU version.

Edit:
Of course you could also try to rebuild M:C for Russian Localization.
But that would really be a lot of effort and you would have to develop and maintain 2 mods ...

Kailric · Jun 18, 2014

Daw said:
Could you check if you see it?
How do I add files there? As, like I said, I am creating '...-RUS.xml' files instead of editing old ones for "safety" reasons.

You will have to open an account on sourceforge before you can write or push (upload) data. When you do that Night can give you write access.

When you created a new branch you made a new copy of all the mod files. You simply add your new files were they should go in the mods directory. For text it would be Assets/XML/Text.

To upload your files to sourceforge you need to "commit" them locally first. Night has split the mod into 3 separate commits, I can't remember the exact reason why, but it is suppose to help. In SmartGit the Commits will have the branch name next to the folder name such as Medieval_Conquest (develop), Python (develop), and sourceDLL (develop). You will be working with the Medeval_Conquest (your branch name) folder so you will need to commit your work there. Click this folder when you are ready to Commit. Commiting is pretty much just saving your work locally, so if you switch Branches your worked is saved, then when you switch back your progress is still the same. This way you can work on several different branches at once, then when you are ready you can merge them all together.

Anyway, all you need to know is just to commit your work when you have made changes. When you click commit the window pops up which shows a list of changed files with a check mark on each one. If you are adding new files you must click the check box. You then need to add a commit message to tell what your changes are for or do. Then commit. This only saves the changes on your computer.

To upload your changes to sourceforge, you click Push. Use the default settings in the popup window and click Push. If all went well you will see a green check mark in the Output window at the bottom right. Now everyone else can see your work and download.

SmartGit is quite powerful with lots of features such as comparing files to see differences and just all kinds of stuff really. I myself only know the basics, mostly just what I told you

Nightinggale · Jun 18, 2014

Daw said:
Ray is right. I run US/EU version. Now I've downloaded and installed the "Rusifier" I gave link to. Vanilla got Russian right away. However neither M:C, nor RaR were able to start with that. Uninstalling the "Rusifier" reversed the trick as expected: no more Russian, but all mods are welcome to run.

Could I get Assets\res\Fonts\GameFont.tga and GameFont_75.tga from the Russian version? It could be really helpful to at least get the image of the letters. I might actually be able to just copy the M:C icons into that file (depending on how it's made) and then M:C will work in Russian.

Still I'm researching how to make one font fits all GameFont. It doesn't look like it is as impossible as Ray makes it out to be. dbkblk is working hard on this task and possibly with a bit of help, it looks like the solution is within reach. Still Ray is right that it would likely be a good idea not to invest too much time in a translation until we can actually display it ingame.

raystuttgart · Jun 18, 2014

Nightinggale said:
M:C will work in Russian.

Well, we will see.
It is your time and effort.

When messing with the Gamefonts, you should always check afterwards if all icons are still displayed correctly ingame.
(Trust me with that, I have been working a lot with Gamefonts.)

I am out of this discussion now.
Good luck. :thumbsup:

Nightinggale said:
Still Ray is right that it would likely be a good idea not to invest too much time in a translation until we can actually display it ingame.

At least I could prevent lots of wasted effort for translations.

Daw · Jun 18, 2014

raystuttgart said:
Sorry though, that this will not be as easy as you might have thought.

Of course you could also try to rebuild M:C for Russian Localization.
But that would really be a lot of effort and you would have to develop and maintain 2 mods ...

Sounds like not worthy even if possible. But, you see, that's a way of how people learn: trial and error.

It's easy to be skeptical for you with all your experience and skills :old:

(I mean, in a good way, nothing offensive). But to me, due to my ignorance in this aspect of life, most things Nightinggale talks of and does are sort of magic

Well, knowing your modesty, I really imagine you are an even stronger "magician", but I wish you agree that Nightinggale does what he does in a much more spectacular manner, and it's a really good thing

After all, if people never tried anything considered impossible, we'd probably still remain cavemen.

I hope no offense taken, because none was meant. I really adore you all, even though you might not care. No sarcasm.

raystuttgart said:
Nightinggale's idea for adding further languages might still generally work.
However those languages would be languages that also use Latin Fonts and thus can be integrated properly in US/EU version.

@Kailric:

Now you realize why I don't want to see Vladimir the Red Sun of the Kievan Rus in the game?

It was he who baptized what would later become my poor country into Orthodox Christianity, which resulted in adoption Greek based writing, which would later become modern Cyrillics, and thus now I cannot translate this great mod into Russian, all because of the bloody bastard! This is outrageous! :mad:

Kailric said:
You will have to ...

Will sort it out. Hopefully :crazyeye:

Nightinggale said:
Could I get Assets\res\Fonts\GameFont.tga and GameFont_75.tga from the Russian version?

Sure. Check your private messages. Link should be there. But, as Ray had warned, I fear the game EXE file was altered so that it does not use these fonts any longer, and thus made incompatible with the rest of the world. So I sent you a link to the complete installer for you to try and see for yourself. When launched, it will create an 'unistall' file as well to safely reverse all the changes it makes.

raystuttgart said:
Well, we will see.

At least I could prevent lots of wasted effort for translations.

I'd consider it 'postponed' until we actually see rather than 'prevented'. Anyway, even if the translation idea will have to be abandoned, there's still a lot of work on filling the medieval-o-pedia ahead of me.

orlanth · Jun 18, 2014

Privyet Daw and welcome to the mod! :cool:

Well regardless if we can get Cyrillic characters into M:C or not, here is a Russian review of the 2071 mod that I was pleased and surprised to discover awhile back. Daw, do you think there are still many active Russian players or modders of Civ4Col? Because the modding community is so small we would always be glad to find and involve more people. :assimilate:

(I think I could get the basic gist from google translate, though there are some odd bits with the google translation such as the mod being called "Cheeky" and declaring "Let's plunge into the world of fashion!" :crazyeye:

)
For now I am proud to have the cheekiest and most fashion-forward mod around

Nightinggale · Jun 18, 2014

Daw said:
most things Nightinggale talks of and does are sort of magic

Abra cadabra, one unit of работник coming up.

I'm still missing big fonts though and getting the big font to use the same index as the small font might be an issue. I didn't think of this until after I had added all the letters.

The good thing is that I didn't remove anything. It is purely an addon.

Daw · Jun 18, 2014

orlanth said:
Daw, do you think there are still many active Russian players or modders of Civ4Col?

Because the modding community is so small we would always be glad to find and involve more people.

Frankly, no idea. There is a society similar to yours here - http://www.civfanatics.ru/forum.php. But I discovered it just the other day when I was searching for the 'Rusifier'. One of their current news is that they've ported CivIII to Android. And no new messages have been posted in CivIVCol subforum since March-2014. So it's kind of 'quiet to boring' there. Although, since I had to register there to get the 'Rusifier' anyway, I plan to inspect what else they have when I have time.

orlanth said:
Well regardless if we can get Cyrillic characters into M:C or not, here is a Russian review of the 2071 mod that I was pleased and surprised to discover awhile back. (I think I could get the basic gist from google translate, though there are some odd bits with the google translation such as the mod being called "Cheeky" and declaring "Let's plunge into the world of fashion!" )
For now I am proud to have the cheekiest and most fashion-forward mod around

The review is very positive overall, the only thing it complains about is founding fathers art left from Vanilla being sort of atmosphere killer as everything else was changed to match the mod timeframe. But, again, the rest of the text is really very positive. They like you :clap:

Sorry.

Nightinggale said:
Abra cadabra

WOAH!!!

Daw · Jul 15, 2014

"Search this thread" for "river" keyword gave out no matches, so there is probably no such suggestion here (maybe somewhere elsewhere). The suggestion to consider is navigable rivers for smaller vessels to move along relocating cargo and passengers.

It is suggested by the fact that Naval units can enter land tiles if there is a coastal settlement there. They don't go further in land than 1 tile though, but that's already enough to have a 2 tiles long version of Panama Canal in a convenient site.

Spoiler :

So I figured, let's go crazy

Nightinggale · Jul 15, 2014

The main problem with rivers is that they are not ON the plots, they are BETWEEN the plots. This makes it impossible in game engine terms to make a boat unit on place it on the river.
Having said that, we could cheat and say that a boat unit can move on plots where there is a river to north or east. This will (sort of) give the same effect and there is a well defined river to travel on. The question is if we want it to work like that.

As for the canal concept. We have talked about this before and there is a bool in improvements, which makes them act as cities. The idea is that you can place such improvements on land and your ships can cross your canal. It might need some improvements and might even need a change in XML to make the feature available, but as a concept, it is more or less there.

We may also consider how to implement something like this (goto 37:28)

Link to video.

Kailric · Jul 15, 2014

Are we able to detect if several plots are connected by a River? I think this was in Civ4 and I remember Night mentioning something about River networks when he implemented the PlotGroups code. Perhaps something about it currently can't be done?

We could simulate river movement with a new Command. Where you click the command and it works like the Goto command but only allows you to go up to a set limit of tiles along rivers. Like 6 tiles in one turn as long as you can move through the territory and there are no enemies present.

Nightinggale · Jul 15, 2014

Kailric said:
Are we able to detect if several plots are connected by a River? I think this was in Civ4 and I remember Night mentioning something about River networks when he implemented the PlotGroups code. Perhaps something about it currently can't be done?

Plotgroups are simplified to only use roads (well route types). Terrain and rivers are also usable in CIV4, but it relies in an exe function, which appears to be missing in colo.

Kailric said:
We could simulate river movement with a new Command. Where you click the command and it works like the Goto command but only allows you to go up to a set limit of tiles along rivers. Like 6 tiles in one turn as long as you can move through the territory and there are no enemies present.

When we have a specific unit we want to move (unlike plotgroup spread), we can use CvUnit::canMoveInto(). It shouldn't be difficult to add rules to travel on rivers in that function. However this function is called quite a lot of time, both by humans and AI players, which mean it is one of the places where performance has to be considered for every line changed.

Looking at the function, I found this:

Code:

switch (getDomainType())
{
case DOMAIN_SEA:
	if (!pPlot->isWater() && !m_pUnitInfo->isCanMoveAllTerrain())

The content of this if is only reached when the plot isn't water and the unit is of DOMAIN_SEA. Adding additional checks for rivers and possibly unit abilities here should make the checks be called rarely enough not to impact performance noteworthy.

Daw · Jul 16, 2014

Nightinggale said:
We may also consider how to implement something like this (goto 37:28)

... and they invented

on their way downhill then :lol:

mastrude · Jul 29, 2014

You can be cut off from all major markets for a long by saracen raider ships. This ******s your ability to open a market, because you can't buy cloth. I suggest you should be able to buy cloth at some (very few? all?) villages.

mastrude · Jul 29, 2014

I know some of you are medievalists; I was a grad student in medieval history forty(!) years ago. (When I left grad school that time, my classmates sent a delegate to demand I turn over my medieval latin dictionary. No kidding.) Anyway, am I the only one who thinks the name of the historical event known as the Diet of Worms is hysterically funny?

mastrude · Jul 29, 2014

It would be nice if you could transfer goods to wagons or peddlers in a foreign village. When your ports are blockaded, you need a way to ship.

mastrude · Jul 29, 2014

In the German mod Perfect Colonization or whatever it's called allows you an "oops": to drag outgoing ships back to the dock. This is nice, for slow-witted people like me.

Nightinggale · Jul 29, 2014

mastrude said:
It would be nice if you could transfer goods to wagons or peddlers in a foreign village. When your ports are blockaded, you need a way to ship.

You are not the first to mention this. It would be nice, but coding it isn't trivial. We need to consider if the foreign civ should have a fee for allowing it and how it should be affected by civics and other XML setup. The goal is to make one DLL fit all MODS without recompiling, which mean behavior like this really should be controlled by XML.

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