[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

Greizer85 said:

... A warning about Civil Disorder the turn *before* it erupts? (No, I don't want to think about how many times I've reloaded for this! )

Click to expand...

Yeah, me too, but I looked into it a long time ago, and IIRC it was quite tough to predict.

Timoleon said:

Hello. New here. First, I'd like to thank TheNamelessOne for all his effort and amazing work, especially for custom resources.

Click to expand...

Cheers.

Timoleon said:

I have a few questions though:

A) Is it possible somehow to show all hidden flags of the game? Like "Free maintenance under x civic", "+% on Food/Prod/Trade" etc?

I want to, say, create a new Wonder/City improv, or alter the current ones. e.g. The Colossus should be able to be build only in coastal cities, much like the Harbor, or add a new one, for example "The Internet", that acts as a library in every city.

Click to expand...

Not possible without rewriting the game, I'm afraid.

Timoleon said:

B) Can I change the numbers that one city changes size? The "metropolis" icon hits when the city becomes a 6. I want to get it to 30 or something.

Click to expand...

This is much more feasible. I'll put it on the list.

la raven said:

- Defense Bonus Multipliers in Cosmics2 kill the Game. [...] I would reduce these Multipliers from 0/100, to 1/110 til 11/200, easy going Multipliers.

Click to expand...

The game already does that 50% increment thing per point for terrain defense, so we're stuck with it atm.

la raven said:

- and/or Events Orders.
- More possible Coordinates in Events.txt than, 10 or 12 i think.
- O yes and since that Events.txt could be endless
- An Events.txt Order like Defender only / Humanplayer only or AI only
- A Yes or No Option to ask in Events.txt.
- That the Events.txt could load a Batch File automatically.

Click to expand...

A better event language is in my future plans already.

la raven said:

- More Veterans, just an Upgrade System, of Veterans, or upgrade Units,
or just like in Civ3, to upgrade by Money, manually - if possible.

Click to expand...

An upgrade system would be tricky interface-wise, keeping track of experience / multiple levels of veterancy should now be possible with the new save extensions.

la raven said:

- Troopers for Resources like in Civ3, Resources for Tecs - if possible.

Click to expand...

You mean like strategic resources? There are no real 'borders' in this game, so that would make it somewhat difficult. But in theory it is possible to make available units in a city based on what resources are available in the working tiles of the tribe's cities.

Catfish said:

What about another parameter?

MovementMultipliers
0 = Default, max movement = signed byte, behaviour as vanilla game, RailroadMultiplier and RiverMultiplier, if present, are ignored.
1 = Enables RailroadMultiplier and RiverMultiplier, max movement = unsigned byte.

RailroadMultiplier
RiverMultiplier
0 = Same as underlying terrain, ie, no effect. (Solves Techumseh's problem.)

Click to expand...

Sounds good to me.

Greizer85 said:

@la raven: If I understood correctly, we actually agree, for the most part. We mostly disagree on the time-table. Imo, user friendliness can wait until later in the project. You think it should be done RIGHT NOW. It remains to be seen how TheNamelessOne sees the issue.

Then there is the issue of making some of the fixes core parts of ToTPP, disabling their check-boxes to avoid clutter (99 % of people would check the check-box anyway, so why even have it?). I do support this, in principle; but it should be done *very* carefully, to avoid compatibility issues. If some mandatory (no checkbox available) fix causes the game to crash on someone's computer, they no longer have the option of getting it to work by disabling that particular fix. This also leads to dozens of 'can you HELP me! my game CRASHED!' posts in this thread (assuming the project gets some publicity, leading to more downloads and players). These will then get buried in the deluge of fix suggestions that clogs the thread so far... And vice versa. We're kind of being beta-testers here, so maybe it's good that the project stays very modular and low-profile for now, and mostly people who (at least sort of ) know what they're doing download it. Once it's ready, polished and shiny, months or years down the road, we shall parade it out in all its glory (I'll need at least 6 months for my world map, looks like it... What better way to illustrate the various fixes and new features than a full-length 'demonstration' game on it, complete with pictures and flavor-text? ).

Click to expand...

This mostly reflects my point of view on the matter. Ideally, enabling a patch in the launcher doesn't have any effect on gameplay without making changes in the rules as well (with maybe a couple of exceptions atm), so ordinarily everything can be enabled. However, because this is beta-software at best, every new release will have bugs. Disabling individual patches not only provides a way of being able to keep using the remaining patches, but also allows pinpointing the patch causing the bug.

Still, I do agree that it's tedious work to enable all patches after a fresh install. Either I'll add something to the interface to enable all of them at once, or maybe I'll distribute TOTPP.ini with the release. Probably the former.

Metro Polis said:

Something came to my mind, when I thought about my event.txt file for the last scenario I had created: If there's a mistake, it should show the wrong line or something. I had to read through it several times or get close to it by copy & paste.

Click to expand...

There's @DEBUG for that, see macro.txt.

Greizer85 said:

Due to the constraints of the resource system, as of now some 'resources' are terrain types, and vice versa. Most of my problems would go away if any resource could be placed on any type of terrain, but I suppose that's on the 'über-core h4ck!!1' level, even with your skills, TNO?

Click to expand...

Easier to rewrite the game (keep saying that a lot, gonna need a shortcut for that ).

Greizer85 said:

Although technically I could make my own thread, there won't be that many posts and I'll also post suggestions etc., so I presume it's ok if I talk about my map in this thread?

Click to expand...

Knock yourself out. Let's try for largest thread on the forum.

Re Civil Disorder Notifier:

Classic and MGE have an "Attitude Advisor" menu (sometimes you have to change the luxury rate to force a recalculation). Does TOT not have that also? If it is too burdensome to check that every turn, you might still be able to take advantage of the fact that the game already calculates attitude upon demand.

Here's another suggestion: let the game take inputs from places other than the keyboard and mouse. For example, a player might have highly repeated actions (for example, a busy railroad), and it would be convenient to be able to give the game a script for such a highly repeated action, and activate with a hotkey or user interface button.

For another, more elaborate example, consider city management. Rather than manually moving workers around to check different production stats, the game could export city information to an external program to perform calculations and then import a worker arrangement (and maybe production order). (I would recommend the open source OCTAVE as a specific program to communicate with.) This could save players lots of time micromanaging without simply removing the game mechanics that force micromanagement.

If this idea sounds feasible (and you are interested in implementing), I can say more about it.

You mean like strategic resources? There are no real 'borders' in this game, so that would make it somewhat difficult. But in theory it is possible to make available units in a city based on what resources are available in the working tiles of the tribe's cities.

Click to expand...

Yes, that i meant. For Example, Horse Riding. You need the Tec to build a Rider.
But only if you have Horses within your City Squares producing, you can build in that City Riders.
Or for Example War Elephants. Longbowmen. Camels. Or Ships by Wood.

Much more interesting in Industry Age with Oil, Steel, and MUCH more interesting
in Fantasy or SciFi Scenarios with whole new Mech/Robot/just anything Troopers.

I meant with that Multiplier, to reduce that incredibly high Amount of a 50 % Multiplier per Point,
to a 10 % Multiplier per Point. That i wrote in my PM, plus in my Comment.
That a 50 % Multiplier kills the Game by an AI Retreat or an AI Suicidal Attack.

A better Events Language would be awesome.

That you agree to Greizer, makes at least my Interests obsolete.
As i told, and you may not have read - i wont ever install a fresh Test of Time from CD to my
c: Drive, patch 1.1 and then ToTPP works for that single .exe, plus Check Boxes to get less
of these Compatibility Issues - i said all my Points to that Solution, and i wont install that
this Way... thats a huge KO Barrier to me, to not provide a working No-CD Crack .exe,
working as one and only for ToTPP on any Drive without CD and without fresh OS Install,
on both Systems 32 and 64 bit, without Compatibility Issues... i appreciate your awesome Works!

But i am out again.

O yeah, that, from five Postings ago:

It would be good, to have a Carrier Units Limit... dont know if suggested already...
that a Transport Ship has a Units Limit written into the Unit Values, and right at the
same Place, a Carrier could get a Units Carry Maximum.

I think to remember, that you can put into a Carrier, just limitless Flying Units...
thats highly annoying! I would prefer a Units Limit within Carriers too, and, perhaps,
see... today, we have Carriers and some Kind of Frigates with Rocketry...
i would prefer some Carriers with Fighters and Bombers, and some Frigates with Missiles,
and some Submarines with Nuclear Missiles, that in the Rules.txt Units Parameters,
from 0 - 2 Ground, Air, Sea, or whatever, 0 - 5 Ground, Air, Sea, Special, Special, Special,
for another Usage to provide more tactical Options.

So that only a 2 Ship can carry a 2 Fighter = Carrier, a 3 Ship can carry a 3 Missiles = Frigate,
a 4 Ship can carry a 4 Nuclear Missiles = Submarine, plus Carry Limit.

I should just write my Suggestions in a few short Points and not talk endlessly...



Perhaps to change that Ground Air Sea 0 1 2 Thing into a 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Thing,
3 for Ground 3 for Air 3 for Sea, so that for Example a Landing Boat in the Normandy,
would be a 6 Ship / Transport to carry a 0 Infantry, and a huge Container Ship would be a
7 Ship / Transport to carry a 1 Tank, so that either Transports or Carriers would be able,
just to carry their Units Limit in their Classes, a Transport only Ground 0 1 2,
a Carrier only Air 3 4 5... got it?

0 1 2 = Ground Light, Middle, Heavy
3 4 5 = Air Fighter/Bomber, Missiles, Nuclear Missiles
6 7 8 = Sea Light, Middle, Heavy

Thanks for clarifing this, NamelessOne.

A) I'd like to know if it's possible to create more city styles. Default 4 is awfully low.

B) Can we adjust Barbarian parameters? Like, vs. strength, attack frequency, targeting only human players etc?

TNO: First off, thanks for making ToT more enjoyable! The NoStackKills patch is really nice. This leads me to a question about air cover.

The presence of air units (bombers) with a range greater than 1 introduces a notorious problem on stackable terrain. A single bomber occupying the same tile as a strong defensive ground unit (and dozens of other units, say, howitzers) can make the stack essentially invincible to enemy attack. I really think the civ2 idea of "air cover" is fatally flawed. Is there a way to override air cover? Obviously, ground units (without the fighter flag) should be unable to attack air units. However, there should be an option to allow ground units to attack an "air covered" ground unit as long as the latter has the highest defensive value in the stack (i.e., higher than any air unit).

Whoa, I take it it's not very often that this thread goes for a week without activity?

Hi everybody,

Just new to this forum. TheNamelessOne did a great work! Wow! With TOTPP I am back in Civ fever...

One question: I tested V0.10 with multiplayer and found an old bug back: crash during world setup when the CPU fix was enabled. Normally that should have been solved with V0.3. Can anybody confirm that?

Marty

I will retire from Cfc for ~6 months. Personal reasons. I might return in the Spring with a finished map (Europe, or a new world map). If not, then it ain't finished. In the meantime TheNamelessOne, I think you should work with Yagoda to make his world map the best it can be. It's a phenomenal map, one of the best I've seen for any game, let alone our beloved 'blocky' Civ II. You may check the thread 'Regarding Gigaworld maps' on this forum to dl it; I think you'll agree with me. So if there's any problems with the adding of new resources, etc, just work it out together. It will be the best Civ II map for sure, and the best way to 'advertize' this mod once it's (near) finished.

Farewell for now.

Greizer

Dear all,

Just wondering. No reply on my post from Nov 18th?

Best regards
Martin

TheNamelessOne, please check your PMs. Thanks.

I take it interest in this project has waned? I know me, Catfish, and until recently Greizer, were big contributers in posting our bug reports and feature requests. I know I focused my attention elsewhere when I got a new gaming laptop in September, for some of my other gaming addictions. I can always help out and focus on ToT playing and playtesting for a while, if requested.

tecumseh said:

TheNamelessOne, please check your PMs. Thanks.

Click to expand...

Don't worry, I'm not abandoning the project. Just taking a little downtime for the holidays, it's been pretty quiet here anyway. I even wrote a patch for extra city styles (per tribe & per map), so there will be new versions in the future.

This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

marty651 said:

One question: I tested V0.10 with multiplayer and found an old bug back: crash during world setup when the CPU fix was enabled. Normally that should have been solved with V0.3. Can anybody confirm that?

Click to expand...

If you could post crash details, that would help immensely (Win7: Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Viewer, then "Windows Logs" -> "Application", and look for relevant entries). I'll look into it then.

Hmmm. I think I found a bug, for when TNO comes back from downtime.

Not sure if someone reported it yet. I was attempting to pillage a transport site on a particular tile on map 2 because its destination tile on map 0 seemed to be gone, when the AI built a fort over it. My intent was to build a replacement transport site to connect to map 1. When I pillaged it and the replacement was finished, the site on map 1 correctly took me to map 2, but the site on map 2 still took me to map 0.

The tile coordinate in question is (78, 56).

TheNamelessOne said:

Don't worry, I'm not abandoning the project. Just taking a little downtime for the holidays, it's been pretty quiet here anyway. I even wrote a patch for extra city styles (per tribe & per map), so there will be new versions in the future.

This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Click to expand...

Never before in the field of human conflict simulation, has so much been owed to one guy by a small group!

Just wondering if it could be possible to have a "zero movement" unit selected for another special action (like parachute or fortify, launched from a ship). I think of a mine to protect or block a coastal town or important sea gate. It's clear it should be able to parachute on water - with a submarine advantage, so it can't be seen, I think this could be useful (even as a landmine).

Another idea is to have a mine (sea unit) with a finite movement rate or even finite rounds it can move. When they expire the thing remains motionless.

Of course it shouldn't increase the unrest level in such a case.


And a completely other thing: I'd like to see a combination between a plane and a helicopter, one that loses hitpoints every round (and so gets weaker round by round) and finally crashes, if it doesn't get fuel in time. I thought of a kind of probe for a sci-fi scenario. But that doesn't have much of a priority. Maybe it would be great to use the helicopter's hitpoint loses (but at a lower rate) on land units instead. The further they get without resting in a city or fortification, the weaker they would get.

Well, just as I said... only some ideas.

Happy New Year everyone! Now let's get back to work, shall we? I've found that when I use @COSMIC2 to change the movement multipliers, river movement remains the same as the number for roads, irrespective of the river setting on the @RULES. Rail multipliers work as intended.

Here's another request, based on a scenario in progress. Is it possible to modify the ToT program to allow paratroop units to launch from a unit with the carrier flag? It would solve a difficult problem I'm grappling with.

^^ That reminds me; would it be possible to set individual paradrop ranges for different individual paradropping unit? This way, average Joe paratroops could paradrop within 10 tiles while space troopers meant for global orbital insertion could paradrop anywhere? I suspect this might be useful for games that don't utilize the "orbital" style of secondary maps or don't utilize secondary maps to begin with.

1) Suggestion: I would love to be able to change city styles (for specific individual civs) in a game in progress. I find it annoying that if I set up a simple scenario to enable playing on a premade map in a multiplayer game that the city style for all the civs must be the one picked for the first civ. (If there is some way of changing it easily while in the cheat menu setting up the scenario, I haven't discovered it.)

2) Apparent bug when using TOTPP and Catfish's Original_Graphics modpack in multiplayer game: When viewing opponent or AI moves, the unit changes from whatever unit it actually is (eg., a warrior) to a barbarian settler. I can't get a screenshot of this since it happens during the move and the unit automatically reverts to its normal self once it stops moving. I only noticed this at the beginning of the game, so either it was a weird thing that "fixed itself" permanently for some reason, or I just got so used to it that I don't notice it anymore, or it only happens at the beginning of the game and not later (though that doesn't seem to make much sense).

3) Not really a bug, but an annoying oddity with navigable rivers: If one of my ships is on a river (I tweaked the rules.txt for all transport units from trireme through transport ship, plus submarines), and it enters a rival civ's city perimeter, when it is automatically sent to the nearest city, it can end up in a land-locked city. This means that the option is either to end the peace treaty so the ship can move or to disband the ship if it ends up in a land-locked city. I suppose this could just be the gamble we take if we decide to go up rivers!

4) CPU-Fix Bug: I also got the bug with the CPU fix when trying to connect a multiplayer game. The crash occurred for the joining player as soon as the game started -- they were able to join, pick a civ, etc., but as soon as the game began, it crashed. I didn't save any bug report, I'm sorry to say. If I think of it, the next time we start a fresh multiplayer game, I will set up debug view on both computers first. (Or is there an easier way to see what error is generated by the crash?)

5) Enable Throne Room bug (or not?): I enabled the throne room through the TOTPP and added the appropriate text to the @gameoptions section of the game.txt. When I did that, the checkboxes all vanished into unclickable black squares. I couldn't figure out what went wrong, and even after removing the extra line from the game.txt file, the black boxes remained. I ended up reinstalling everything from scratch. I am also using Catfish's skin that changes the appearance of the dialogues, pop-ups, etc., so maybe there was some funny interaction there. The other possibility is that when I added the line, I inadvertently did something wonky somewhere else in the text file that I didn't intend to do. I probably should have run a debug on it, but I was frustrated and in the middle of a game, so I just did the brute-force fix of uninstalling and reinstalling.

I must say I really enjoy playing Civ2 with the TOTPP added on. I've also tried out Civ3 and Civ4 (I got both the Chronicles edition and a dvd with the complete III and complete IV on it), and although I think I'll play a bit of Civ4 BTS with some of the scenarios and modpacks available, there's something really satisfying about playing a straightforward game of Civ2, and the TOTPP makes TOT even more fun than MGE. Of course, part of my preference may just come from the fact that I originally played Civ and Civ2 when they first came out and I like the familiarity.

Happy new year to all!

Sorry if my question is dumb (I'm a zero knower of modding and such).

I'm mainly interested in Sci-Fi mode of ToT. Is it possible to make factions more different (at least human factions)? As for now, they differ only in names of all sort (faction, leader, leader title, city names). So what if Sciolists would have some bonuses in Research or specific techs, Star Officers would have bonuses on Orbit map, Observers would have unit vision radius increased or something, and so on (you catch the idea)?

Thanks in advance. And of course, thanks for fantastic patch/mod for the fantastic game!