Fallout: Tame The Wastes

Burgoyne said:

Can't you make it so it launches automatically from my desktop?

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Check the RaRE link in my signature. It has a full guide on how to do that. It's for colonization, but it should work just fine with any version of civ4 as long as you pick the right exe and mod name.

Randomness said:

I've tried other games now, and it's just on one map that they get stuck (Map 2 I think).

Also, I've thrown together a more realistic post apocalyptic map, with ruins in clusters with fallout instead of placed everywhere. I just want to balance the civ placements a little more before posting it.

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Nice one!

Yeah the current maps have had no real work done to them, they are just place holders with 'fixed' starting locations for the factions that need vaults. Eventually I want to make proper maps (or better yet covince someone else to do it for me) I have a bunch of america maps from the forums that I need to transform.

Well, here's the map. It's at least kinda balanced. It is not supposed to resemble any real place, though I used the west coast of North America as inspiration (hence the name).

Ok Some good news, thanks to some work by Masaykh some more bugs have been fixed, including the one that was causing some of our new art to not work, so there should be another release version coming soon with some visual goodies!

ALPHA2 Released!

Check First Post for details!

hello freind,
good to see your progress.

say - have you updated your code with red key newest super forts 1.20?

if so ill merge your code to mine, i also added a few more things that you may find usefull for you.

No I haven't yet It was all AI stuff, and the AI scares me

I am waiting for his (hopefully) next version that will contain tech prereqs for upgrading improvements, so for example a village won;t upgrade to a town until TECH_X is researched.

I have recently attracted a new member to the team who actually understands what he is doing (unlike me! ) and he has been able to work out a lot of the bugs from the SDK that have been causing crashes, so the next update (coming soon) will be the most stable yet!

As well as it opening up a lot of potential for new features to be added, because like I said he actually knows what he is doing

So the mod is entering a new exciting phase!

what other things have you been adding?

After a few 200+ turns games I can definitely say there is one thing that I have an issue with - things give way too many, too big bonuses.

Especially buildings break the whole balance. I kind of get effect you are trying to achieve but every single building giving bonuses to several stats while being modified by other buildings and civics is just too much I feel. Even early buildings like, for example, Wooden Shack (+1 +1 +1 +2) or Mayor Office (+1 +4 +5 +5) - not even world wonders in vanilla give that much. That adds to the cities having monstrous production/expansion rates and spitting three units per turn (and constructing other bonus-giving buildings in 2-3 turns).

Same goes for improvements: Scavenger Camp on Advanced Munitions gives +2 +8 and +12 and Mine that you can build before turn 50, gives +8 without any resources.

Buildings vs resources balance is also off because of that - why should I rush to claim Geckos that give me +1 if I can build Outhouse (in 1-2 turns) that gives me +2 +2 ?

Also, are civics supposed to affect everything? The list, in civilopedia, of things that Wealth changes does not fit on my screen

So much of different stuff is not only balance issue (after all you can simply rise prices) but is overcomplicated and make it really hard to keep track of things and control your economy, especially for new players.

Yeah their is a lot to do balance wise, the basic 'aim' that I am going for is that everything is 'bigger' in a smaller way. Their is obviously a lot still to do balance wise and also display wise. I intend to do a lot more work with resources to make them more important, but that is a good point about geckoes.

At this point civics are just 'conceptual' I was experimenting with what everything actually does, but the plan I am going for is to make civics very 'specifically' purposed, so that you will need to keep changing them to fit with your current situation,war,cash, etc. The wealth one is mega long One of my intetentions as the game is developed is to make a lot of 'user friendly' pedia entries, so for example with the civics the historical/description part will give an overview of what the civic will actually impact and what to think about before choosing it. So something like "Wealth will focus your people on making money, making merchants highly productive as well as helping to increase the emergence of great people, but beware! Your soldiers will want a slice of the bottlecap pie and military expenses will go sky high, along with a reduction of skilled generals. etc. etc." So that when you go to pedia you can get a sense/feel or what a specific doctrine will do, then you can dig into the 'stats' to get a more detailed understanding.

In terms of display it has been a one step forward two steps back kind of battle...

It was a problem that right before proper testing began all my testers got busy, so play feel and balance and all that are being discovered more slowly and also getting the numbers 'right' is a trial and error, I also tend to play on marathon and long speeds so at first the starting game felt really empty and slow so I think I might have 'over compensated'

I wanted to make everything about the 'scale' of things feel more literal, so like a size 13 town is actually only about 130 people (In my head) It is now just getting all the numbers and mechanics to line up right, but like a mine (which does need to take longer to build, again still experimenting with the numbers) would represent a fairly major productivity boost and a major boon for a town. (I am also thinking of moving the mine along the tech tree to a later point, as it represents a fairly sophisticated undertaking.) I also want to introduce a lot of 'levels' to improvements, but I am waiting for red keys future version of his superforts mod that (hopefully) add tech checks to upgrading improvements so that the improvement won't upgrade until you get the right tech. (Like in some other mods out there)

Then there is things like the time scale, because the game is weekly rather than multi-yearly, I wanted to get the numbers to feel right, so like a guy with a crowbar wouldn't take all that long to pump out, like a week (1 turn), but a more professional soldier would take about 3 months of basic training (12 turns) I also want to add in a -1 pop. per unit system (I have the code, I just need to work out how to rewrite and adapt it to what I need) so that every unit that is built reduces town size, thereby off setting the growth situation (again those health/consumption numbers need to be looked at, same with upgrading costs)

In terms of what things do, I do want to increase that across the whole game, especially in regards to bonuses/resources and wonders, the map will change a lot to support this as well, so that 'viable' tiles are much rarer and a lot of land will be unusable until the necessary research and improvements are unlocked, basically a lot more wasteland, so getting a town next to that gecko will feel much more important, rather than just going anywhere and being fine right off the bat as large amounts of land will be desert 'oceans' with islands of usefulness. Then as your tech/infrastructure/economy develops, you will be able to go back and 'fill in' the wasteland as towns become more interdependent and supportive of each other. It may well be a personal preference kind of thing, but I love seeing the 'big' output icons on the city screen, so I just love the big numbers I just need to balance the impact more. In terms of wonders, when I get them in I really want them to feel mega! so that when you build them and get the boost you can really go 'PHWOAR!!! check me out!!' hehe.

I also intend to add a lot more 'Negativity' to the world, lots of unhealth and unhappiness to make those buildings and such 'not all that amazing' and then increasing the impact of resources. (at this moment I don't know if it is possible to increase and change the 'tradeable' bonus from resources, and what options there are, I have had a few ideas in my head about how to make resources more valuable, at the moment it is mostly just the 'military' resources that have a big impact) So as a possible example, geckoes would give access to 'gecko trappers' which would in turn give access to 'gecko skin tailors' which would then give a health/happy boost and people can look snazzy and keep warm when it's cold as well as giving access to better cuisine options for the people giving access to other food based buildings giving more access to growth and health and happiness, so geckoes would give a much larger bonus overall compared to the 'poop shack', with a fully developed economy it could be something in the realms of +10 happy/health per town which would be enough (at the moment) to offset the negative impacts of a human testing program!

I also lost a lot of momentum and 'line of thinking' because of long periods of unsuccessful bug hunting interspersed with being ill, so I am also having to 'get back' into the thinking of what needs changing (which is why feedback like yours is great) I also now have some good guys on board helping with bug fixes and generally knowing what they are doing (unlike me!), so I can get back to the task of design/development (YAY I hate coding!!)

I want to make the players decisions to feel much more rewarding/damaging, especially with civics(doctrines) so choosing human testing before you have the muscle to back it up could see your whole empire crumble into anarchy and rebellion! But at the right moment could see you sore through the tech tree like a bat out'a hell!

I also really want to make the game 'different' from how BtS works and plays, from everything from making the civilizations much more diverse and unique, to the impact of resources/buildings and wonders, the dream would be to make anyone who tries to beat the game with tried and tested BtS strategies are left weeping as it all goes wrong MUAHAHAHAHA!!

But that is a big goal that will take time

So in summary, Great feedback! I hope that the Future Plans I have, as I implement them, will reduce and devour your current concerns

I don't know if I am installing this right, but I have followed the instructions correctly. When I load the mod, the game closes normally, but then it does not load your mod. I very much want to play it and I created an account on this site just so I could ask for help. Is it a faulty mod or am I missing something?

There have been one or two others who have said this has happened, I have never experienced this problem, so i am not sure what to say or do... I presume other mods you try work fine.. We are working towards the next release of the mod, which has a lot of stability fixes, and one of these may some how fix this rare bug...If it is a bug..Normally if it is a bug, you would get some kind of explodey warning message type event, rather than simply nothing happening, so it is hard to say..

The 'art' and 'sound' folders have definately gone in the mods 'assets' folder? and the whole thing is definately in your bts mods folder and not in my documents? and it hasn't 'unpacked' with an extra level of folder such as K-fallout with another K-fallout inside that then inside that you find the assets, etc.?

and you downloaded all three parts from the site, and they all unpacked ok?

If you really have followed all the instructions correctly then it should work, you may have maybe accidentally done something wrong?

The only other thing I could suggest is trying this solution Here: Follow First Signiture Link To see if running it straight from the desktop without loading bts first would work.

If none of this works, just be patient, we will be releasing the Next version of the mod, hopefully before the end of the month.

With luck the new version will work fine for you.

It will also be a really awesome release, I haven't had a CTD for AGES!!!

Hi there your mod is very entertaining and addictive! Cant wait for next version.

However when I play as Raiders for some reason I get a "icon size mismatch: 64 size is only allowed by the city indicator compositor!" error after some time playing and several turns later the game crashes, so basically I cant continue. Any thoughts?

Also: anyone else finding the BOS too weak? Every game they are always the least powerful.

In my games the bos generally come out in the top 3. But it is still really early days for all the factions.

Thanks fir the feedback crashing should be fixed with the next version

Lib.Spi't said:

In my games the bos generally come out in the top 3. But it is still really early days for all the factions.

Thanks fir the feedback crashing should be fixed with the next version

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Glad to be of help! If I find anything else Ill be sure to let you know.

FrankCastle- said:

Glad to be of help! If I find anything else Ill be sure to let you know.

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I thought more about your BoS weakness and wanted to ask, are you using the premade scenarios? or are you playing a 'new game'? If it is the second option, then are you fixing your maps when you start? If you do not know what I mean by that it would probably explain the BoS problem, as there is no guarantee that BoS, Enclave and Super M's will found their first city, thus rendering them essentially inoperable and also there will be no barbs. If you read the notes on version post at the beginning of the thread it will tell you what you need to do to fix your maps.

Lib.Spi't said:

I thought more about your BoS weakness and wanted to ask, are you using the premade scenarios? or are you playing a 'new game'? If it is the second option, then are you fixing your maps when you start? If you do not know what I mean by that it would probably explain the BoS problem, as there is no guarantee that BoS, Enclave and Super M's will found their first city, thus rendering them essentially inoperable and also there will be no barbs. If you read the notes on version post at the beginning of the thread it will tell you what you need to do to fix your maps.

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I was playing a custom game>great_plains I guess. The supermutants were in the game and active (they built several cities/bunkers).

yeah basically what happens is there is a random chance that the 3 Strong Civs (as I call them) The B, E, and SM will work fine, but it basically involves the mathmatical chance that all three civ settlers will start standing on top of a Vault, I have seen it happen a couple of times, and when I first implemented the feature, it took forever to figure out why sometimes barbs would not appear, sometimes they would (barbs only appear after every faction has it's first city) Sometimes the strong three would have big developed civs and sometimes they would just die or achieve nothing and I could not figure out what was going wrong, and it turns out for some reason the first settler cannot 'see' a place to found unless there is a vault right underneath it. My guess is that there must be some kind of ai code that says found on starting plot, but the 3 strong cannot found on anything other than a Vault so I think the ai assumes that it cannot found cities and just kind of freaks out. Once it has it's first city it is fine and can find the Vaults and build an empire.

So what ya gotta do (until we find a way to map script it, or make more scenarios we do have 3 at the moment as useable palce holders) is when you start the game, enter world builder and place a vault under the B, E, and SM Settler (Unless they already have one) then your game will play out 'properly' (at least as properly as it plays for now)

We are getting close to our next release, which SHOULD have all the CTD crashes sorted (provided we haven't added any new ones, but now I have a guy on team who actually knows what he is doing, compared to me who just kind of stares at it and goes 'WHY!!!!!!!' So that is nice ) So everyone will soon be able to enjoy a much less frustating wasteland experience which we are really excited about!

Sounds like there could be two solutions for this.

1: Add the condition that a civ needing vaults will only see plots with vaults as valid starting plots. This might be slow as it keeps on trying random plots until it finds a valid one.

2: after the starting plot is picked, but before turn 1, modify the map to add a vault at the starting plot if the civ needs one.

Both involves finding the code to pick a valid starting plot. I'm not really sure where to look for it, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out.

Yeah I have looked at the python mapscripts before, and made a few minor changes, but writing something like that is beyond me. if I got someone to make a custom map script, what i would really want is like a reverse old world pangea map. So one large land mass (like north america) where all civs start in the west and have to expand eastwood, as this fits the fallout scenario.

All that is beyonfd my abilities though, so until I get a volunteer to make it for me there is not much I can do, other than eventually make some more 'fixed' scenario maps for people to try on top of the existing 3.

I was thinking of finding a DLL solution. That way it would work on all map scripts right away. I think CvPlayer::findStartingPlot() might be the right spot. Towards the end it says
Change it to
I think that should do the trick. The question now is how to detect the need for vaults, the presence of a vault and how to add one. I didn't look for code to handle any of that, but it all sounds like it shouldn't be tricky to add if you know how vaults are implemented.