TerraForm -- a map editor for CIV dos

[octobertiger]

This thread never dies.

Once again, great thanks to the man himself, who has done a Crick and Watson-job. Even though I must have asked him for about seven billion keys, he's never complained once.

I might have used some hyperbole, but what the heck, I'm extremely grateful.

[Horscht]

Thank you very much Dack for the key!
Gotta play immediately^^

[morbidel]

Hello Dack, congratulations for this great app and thanks for the registration key.
I want to ask you how can I make put special resources on the map? For example, I want to surround a city with desert and oasis.
Thank you again!

[Dack]

Originally Posted by morbidel

I want to ask you how can I make put special resources on the map?

On the TerraForm menu under select Special Resources & Huts

The two sliders control the five bits that determine the placement of the Special Resources and the Huts. The Special Resources location is calculated using the low order 4 bits controlled by the slider on the right. This formula limits the placement of the Special Resources to sixteen different patterns. The left slider controls the high order bit of the five bits that control the Huts placement. The Huts have thirty two different patterns. The two Special Resources and Huts are locked together by the value of these five bits. There is no way of controlling the placement of an individual Special Resource or Hut map square.

[morbidel]

Thank you!

[cholonge]

Hello and congrats to still playing this game

I was fan of Civilization in the year 1991.
Last week no idea why i was missing this game but with all my house move (17 years;p) couldn't find them. So i dled it
...

Well Now i have 3 versions of Civilization: Have a problem with all 3

1-CIVdos (looking to play it from windows xp, at a normal speed how could i do and what should i DL (link) to make Civdos and Map editor to run well?)
2-CIVwin (Version 1.02) (Looking for a Map Editor, did someone manage to create 1 and where to DL it if it exists pls? That would be by far the BEST Option for me)
3-CIVnet (Looking for CIV1 Graphics to run on it, i don't plan to play online tho)

As you understood i want to play this game under CIVwin if i can find a map Editor for it. Otherwise i will listen how to play CIVdos at a normal speed... or CIVnet if someone knows how to play it with the Civ1 (civdos) graphics.

Thank you in advance for all the Hard work and kind answers ;p: crazyeye:

[Whelkman]

Originally Posted by cholonge

1-CIVdos (looking to play it from windows xp, at a normal speed

You have two options:

1. Run Civilization from DOSBox (preferred)

2. Select "IBM Sounds" from the initialization menu. For some reason this works around the lag issue, but you'll need to deal with the PC speaker sound effects.

[cholonge]

Tx you Whelkman Trying it right Now



a) I installed Dosbox 0.73, and launched it well arrived on Z:
b) Mounted d:\.......\CIVdos
c) did :"d:"
d) exec civ.exe

And i'm game ;p

Tx you
(if it's not too much asking , wich Editing Map would you sugest? TerraForm0074.zip ? or another one?)

[Whelkman]

Nothing's better than TerraForm. You'll need to send a key request to Dack in order to save changes.

[cholonge]

Oki tx again Whelkman, did sent a request for cd key to Dack via the E-mail thing but i installed and so asked key for the previus version lol

The game is turning verry well now

[Dandenoth]

I own Civ 1, Civ 2, Civ 3, and Civ 4, each with any relevant expansions, and yet I always come back to Civ 1 for a taste of what started it all, and to revel in it's simplicity. I think what stoked my awe with the series, from the original to the latest, is being able to imagine "What-If" scenarios. Having a map editor, such as the built in one for the latest Civ 4, or now this one for the original, keeps me coming back for more...

[Dack]

The working being done as of this writing by hannurabi on the generating of maps for CIV DOS is very interesting. See Map Generator for Terraform

The following is the format used by the Read Map Gen function of TerraForm

1) Standard text file, with fifty (50) lines of Eighty (80) characters. Each line terminated by a carriage return and linefeed. Each character represent a terrain square.

This would represent a CIV DOS world.
80 columns wide numbered 0 to 49. y axis
50 rows tall numbered 0 to 79. x axis

2) Each line will be made up of the following characters.
o - ocean
f - forest
s - swamp
p - plain
t - tundra
r - river
g - grassland
j - jungle
h - hill
m - mountain
d - desert
a - arctic

3) In a normal CIV DOS game rows 0,1,2 and 47,48,49 make up the Arctic and Antarctic. Rows 2 and 47 are always ocean. Rows 0 and 49 are always land (tundra or arctic). Rows 2 and 48 are a mixture land and sea.

Note: The game cannot handle cities whose area of control (the 21 squares that make up a cities area) hangs over the edge of the world. Given this restriction no land square that the game uses to build cities on (river, plain, grassland) can be closer than 2 squares from the edge. The game protects itself by not allowing cities to be built in the Artic and Antarctic. So one could produce a map that uses any type of terrain in rows 0, 1, 48 and 49.
So in theory one could use rows 2 and 47 for islands with any terrain type in the Artic and Antarctic.
In game created worlds columns 0,1 and 78,79 are always oceans for the same reason. For some reason column 2 is always an ocean also, but I think column 2 could be used for islands.



4) The Islands are numbered 1 to 15 in order of their size. All islands after number 15 are numbered 15. The Arctic and Antarctic are set to number 1 along with the largest island.

5) Seas are also numbered 1 to 15 in the same way as islands. Non-human players cannot build ships in cities built next to seas that are not numbered 1. Non-human players do not use large inland seas the way one would expect.

[Gadinaaa]

I forget my old e-mail account pasword and register new mailbox, then changed my e-mail adress at this forum account, but key file sends to old mailbox. How can I fix this problem?

[Gadinaaa]

Very thank you =)

[olpaj]

What do those houses with grey rooves mean? I've never come across anything like that in the game, seen it for the first time in your editor:

[Dack]

Originally Posted by olpaj

What do those houses with grey rooves mean? I've never come across anything like that in the game, seen it for the first time in your editor:

Minor Tribes or as commonly known Huts.

In TerraForm the huts will be displayed with either with a yellow or gray roof. The yellow roof indicates that the hut is active and visible on the map. Also note that no huts are ever visible in CIV on water, but TerraForm shows where they would be if the square were not an ocean square. The gray roof indicates huts that have been entered or on water.

In Special Resources & Huts mode you are give three options:
Show Active – only yellow on land are shown
Show All – all locations where a hut would be if the square was land are shown.
None- just that.
The options and check box for huts are saved between TerraForm sessions.

[olpaj]

Originally Posted by Dack

Minor Tribes or as commonly known Huts.

In TerraForm the huts will be displayed with either with a yellow or gray roof. The yellow roof indicates that the hut is active and visible on the map. Also note that no huts are ever visible in CIV on water, but TerraForm shows where they would be if the square were not an ocean square. The gray roof indicates huts that have been entered or on water.

In Special Resources & Huts mode you are give three options:
Show Active – only yellow on land are shown
Show All – all locations where a hut would be if the square was land are shown.
None- just that.
The options and check box for huts are saved between TerraForm sessions.

So when editing the map or creating a new one, placing gray roof houses is pointless, am I right?

Anyway thanks a lot for the app and for the quick support! Long live Civ1 ;D

[Dack]

Originally Posted by olpaj

So when editing the map or creating a new one, placing gray roof houses is pointless, am I right?

“Pointless” ? If one wanted a world without huts they could be set to gray.

Huts are not placed they exists as a result of a pattern determined by the contents of the “TerrainMasterWord” see Post 117

[civpotty]

Ive been trying to send Dack a registration email but i cant, it wont let send the email. it says i dont have privelidges or something to that effect. just wondering if you have any answers? im really keen to try TF out!!!

[Dack]

For years I wanted to require TerraForm user to be active members of CivFanatics but enforcing such a rule myself would have taken to much time to research if a person had some minimum amount of posts, and I did not want to be charged with engaging in elitism. To quote from the first post in this thread:

1) Request for TKF (TerraForm Key File) sent via the private messages function are ignored.
2) The delay in returning a TFK to you is inversely proportional to your activity on this form.
3) Gratuitous post to this thread are not counted. Be an active member. Have you posted a results to a GOTH thread? Do you have some insight into features of the game?
4) TerraForm exists for active members of the Civfantics forum


Although I never enforced the above my desire was for TerraForm to stimulate GOTM activity and general interest in CIV DOS within the forum.

Always being anti spam and always reporting incidences of it. I guess I now have to be grateful that the spamers forced the powers to be to include the following rule in the forum rules

New Member Restrictions
Newly registered members may not use signatures, e-mail forum members, post visitor messages, use the private messaging system or join or create social groups, until they have been members for 5 days AND have at least 5 posts.

Over the last few years the majority of key requests have come from people who registered and requested a key on the same day and never post, I assume that era is over.

To new members I can only suggest that perhaps you could make an entry in a thread “How I came to CIV DOS at such a late date”. It always amazes me that a person interested in CIV DOS had not found this forum years ago. With the tricks sometimes needed to get it run on a modern machine. Why anyone would delve into a dos game for the first time is beyond me.

Anyway welcome to Civfantics and I hope you remain for a long time.