Requests for new components (and features)

[AFS]

Originally Posted by EmperorFool

That requires a change to the DLL, and BULL (the BUG DLL) has the excess happiness and health plus a whole lot more in the hover text for the city bar. I rarely open the city screen anymore.

Oh, thank you, I had the feeling that this has already been done

Much appreciated

[Netich]

Having played 4 or 5 Civ5 games, i'm back to Civ4. One of the (many) reasons is your great work. Being used to BUG&BULL, i cant stand the lack of information in the interface of Civ5.
So the question is, are you going to further devolop it?

If yes, i have two small requests:

- Clickable buildings list in city screen (to civilopedia). And maybe some visual information that the building is obsolete (in the pop up, or with the name in other color maybe)

- Some visual hint in the map that a city has the 'avoid population growth' activated, and a message when a city can grow but has the limit on (happines>0). It is very annoying when you forget it, and discover that a city could have grow for some turns.

And again thanks for your work. Civ 4 is one or two steps closer to perfection becouse of you!

[Lemon Merchant]

You know, I was playing the other night and had an idea. It would be nice if there was an icon on the city bar that showed when a city could whip something. That way you wouldn't have to go into the city screen to see when the city was ready. I often miss the CivAlerts in all of the excitement when I'm playing.

I could probably do this myself, but I've become quite lazy busy of late...

[EmperorFool]

Originally Posted by Netich

Being used to BUG&BULL, i cant stand the lack of information in the interface of Civ5.

You and me both.

Originally Posted by Netich

So the question is, are you going to further devolop it?

At some point, yes. I've been meaning to address this more formally lately as it's been a long time since I added any features, but I do want to keep working on it. Real life just has other designs on my time at the moment.

Originally Posted by Netich

Clickable buildings list in city screen (to civilopedia). And maybe some visual information that the building is obsolete (in the pop up, or with the name in other color maybe)

Great idea and should be easy to do.

Originally Posted by Netich

Some visual hint in the map that a city has the 'avoid population growth' activated, and a message when a city can grow but has the limit on (happines>0).

The city bar icon should be fairly easy. I'd just need a suitable icon. The alert is a little tougher only because I am halfway through rewriting Civ4lerts (again).

Originally Posted by Lemon Merchant

It would be nice if there was an icon on the city bar that showed when a city could whip something.

This should also be pretty simple. Again, I'd need an icon for it.

These are all great suggestions! I wish I had the time to work on it right now.

[Yaotlatoani]

So far I haven't seen any changes on Scouts and Explorers. They should automatically have the sentry promotion so they can scout quicker and avoid danger.

[EmperorFool]

Originally Posted by Yaotlatoani

So far I haven't seen any changes on Scouts and Explorers. They should automatically have the sentry promotion so they can scout quicker and avoid danger.

That would involve altering the gameplay rules which BUG does not do.

[kossin]

How feasible would it be to add a feature that would also add the turn number (as well as the current dates that are already included) to manual and automatic saves?

Or is there already a way to do this that I'm unaware of?

[ruff_hi]

Originally Posted by kossin

How feasible would it be to add a feature that would also add the turn number (as well as the current dates that are already included) to manual and automatic saves?

That should be dead simple. The HOF mapfinder creates a save name in python and then creates the save. The only hiccup might be that the 'default' is created in the exe and we cannot get at it via python.

[EmperorFool]

I doubt we can affect the regular autosave, but it should be doable by changing AutoSave.py in CustomAssets/Python/BUG.

[AFS]

Hello. I think it would be a good idea if there is an option (or button, whatever that works best) to automate the city governor to stop growth when hittin the happy cap. It is really tedious to press/unpress the button for each city each time the happy cap changes. Just an idea.

[Worldsinger]

Hi all. First, I want to say "Kudos!!!" to the hard-working modders who have made BUG, BULL & BAT such great mods to use!

I've been playing Civ IV for a long while and only recently added those mods and have found them really useful for my games - don't know how I lived without them before! With that said, I'd like to suggest something that would make BUG & BULL much easier to use. The reason I say that is that sometimes it's a little hard to figure out what something does or what an icon means, and the help files aren't always clear on what something does. An example is the colored circles in the BFC that show up when I left-click on the city bar. I had to dig around a bit here to find out what the colors meant & why they were there.

Those hover tool tips in the BUG Options screen do help in some cases, but it didn't in the colored circles, nor explained how to get those circles, which I only found by accident. So my suggestion is as follows:

Add screenshots showing the various screens that have had new info/changes and have hover tool tips over each icon/button/section explaining what it does/means and where to set it in the Options screens. For example, the main game interface would show every possible item, and if you wanted to know what one little icon in the advanced scoreboard means, hovering over it gives you the tool tip about it. Similar screenshots could be done for other screens, such as the Domestic Advisor, Espionage, the colored circles in the BFC, etc.

Perhaps these could be added as a separate Tutorial file which could be called up if needed. Or maybe a section of a screenshot could be added to each part of the BUG options screen showing what screen the option affects & with its own tool tips (perhaps as a clickable button to bring up that screenshot portion)?

These are just my ideas right off the bat as a fairly new user to BUG & BULL, but I do think that having something like this would make them much easier to use & understand without having to dig around for some of the info like I've had to with those colored circles. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know all that much about whether it would be too hard to do this, but it seems to me something worth considering. Thanks for reading this far & keep up the great job, modders!

[EmperorFool]

We tried this early on by including a help file with BUG by hitting ALT + SHIFT + F1 if I recall correctly. This became quickly out of date as we added new features.

The problem is that many of the features required several hours to several days to build: discussion, code, configuration, options screen juggling, text, translations, etc. Creating a screen shot, updating the help file, etc. adds more time to it, meaning fewer features. Plus it's not so fun doing the help file.

I do agree though that those color circles in the BFC on the map are quite cryptic. One simple solution would be to include a description of why it is colored so in the hover text for the plot. When there is a build available, I believe I added the text for it. But the others such as needing a road for a resource or that the tile isn't worked but is improved, etc. aren't mentioned.

I'll keep this in mind if I return to Civ4 modding which I would really like to do.

Edit: That being said, if anyone wants to try their hand at being a technical writer, we'd gladly accept some help. You'd gain some valuable experience learning a well-paying skill you could put to use in your career.

[Handel]

What I find useful to have is when unhappy face expire (from the whip, draft etc) so I can release the growth again. Or maybe put in other way - there should be a message when city with stopped growth gets more happy then unhappy faces.

[K.Murx]

Inspired by this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=449451

Basically, unit selection, especially late-game sucks. It's slow and inconsistent. Can it be fixed? And would that be a subject for BUG/BULL?

I happen to have a bit of free time in January, and would offer to look into it myself - some C++/python practice never hurts. Anyone here knows what would be required, and where I should start looking?

[ruff_hi]

Originally Posted by K.Murx

Inspired by this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=449451

Basically, unit selection, especially late-game sucks. It's slow and inconsistent. Can it be fixed? And would that be a subject for BUG/BULL?

I happen to have a bit of free time in January, and would offer to look into it myself - some C++/python practice never hurts. Anyone here knows what would be required, and where I should start looking?

Which part of that thread in particular? We added a BUG unit interface with significantly speeds up the game when dealing with large number of units.

[K.Murx]

Originally Posted by ruff_hi

Which part of that thread in particular? We added a BUG unit interface with significantly speeds up the game when dealing with large number of units.

My post, then issues are mentioned by ahcos and vicawoo. And is that feature in the "stable" version (or rather, what was stable roughly dive months ago)? Because on my system, it still takes about a second to select, e.g., 30 infantry during the late ages.

[ruff_hi]

Originally Posted by K.Murx

And is that feature in the "stable" version (or rather, what was stable roughly dive months ago)? Because on my system, it still takes about a second to select, e.g., 30 infantry during the late ages.

Yes, it is in the stable version. Open the BUG options, then the 'Plot List' tab and change 'Draw Method' to BUG.

It is slow because it redraws the entire unit plot list after every click ... unit icon, select highlight, promo highlight, can upgrade, current action, GG star, etc. We changed the code so that it keeps track of what is currently on the screen and only draws / hides the things that change.

[·Imhotep·]

A counter for the upcoming resolution/secretary votes displayed in the main interface would be nice. I know Cybah has done it for his BASE mod...

[anticommunist]

For the BULL mod, I think having an option that will toggle between the city bar display colours from indicator of the growth status of the city (which it is now) and the civilisation colour would be nice.

[Handel]

Is it possible a reminder to be set and a message to be shown when AI civ acquire a certain tech? I can see through espionage when an AI research the tech I am interested in, but I need to check the tech adviser to look if it disappeared from the list of the techs the AI would buy (which means it already bought or exchanged it)?

Edit: Also when I choose a civic on the civic screen it shows how much the upkeep will cost; is it possible to show the main numbers from the financial adviser screen too? Will it increase the beakers/commerce/hammers/units upkeep etc. You can count them manually so this should not be a game changer.