Reseed!

I just made a simplified Chinese translation using en localization file.

It does not seem to work in game...anyway, I leave the task to your capable hands...View attachment RSD_ZH_CN.rar

Hello yche2990.
Thank you very much, I appreciate that and I would really love to see Reseed being translated.

Unfortunately, this mod is still under heavy changes, about one quarter of the text keys have been modified, renamed or deleted since the latest beta, while many others have been added. As a result if I were to add your translation right now, many text keys would be missing or would match incorrect entries, or would display informations that are no longer correct. Because of that I had to delete the partial localizations available so far.

So although it pains me to have to refuse it right now, I have to. Would you mind to wait two to four weeks (the time to release a new version and get enough feedback so that I know whether I still need to make drastic changes), see if things have settled down and, if they did, carefully check and update your translation?

I will be certainly grateful to update as soon as a public version is to be released.

I look forward to your release.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Here is the 6th and hopefully last beta for the v5. A small glance a what changed:

• There is a now a "preview map" button that will display a strategic view of the map
• There is now a "<reset current map>" item in the maps list, that allows you to keep the current map and restart with it after some clean up.
• There is now an option to see unrevealed resources when "glancing" at the current map or previewing a new map.
• Static maps are now listed. When selecting a static or DLC map, an error message will be show, along with an option to learn how to make the DLC maps work.
• The mod will now check for things that cannot be reset and will display them to you (3 wars are raging, 15 diplomatic contacts have been set, etc)
• The regeneration process will trim the notifications that arise during this step.
• More keyboard shortcuts (not as much as I wanted, though: the strange include bug prevented me to add them for "preview" and "restart"). Hit Ctrl+Shift+R to open Reseed.
• All the partial localizations have been removed, they were no longer relevant. I hope to be able to accept translations for v7, provided the development becomes stable enough (I hope so).

As usual, I am very interested about your comments on the UI: it's hard to get some distance after you worked for a long time on something. Is it clear and understandable? Did something surprised you? Is it convenient? Do you have suggestions?

I am so looking forward to testing this at my earliest convenience!

I've tested now, do you want the bad critics or the good critics first?

Ok, better start with the bad, I like a happy ending.

* There is no Fog of War at all on the new strategic map.

Before edited I wrote this here:


And the good things:

* This is an extremely fast way of getting the spot you're looking for.

* Very nice that maps that will not work have an icon for it.

* Interface looks very userfriendly.

* An extra line of goodness for doing all this work!

Edit: Hardware malfunction caused error. /Edit

Thank you for your feedback Xngen.

Regarding the lack of fog of war (fow) on the map preview, it is actually intentional: I thought there was no point since the user invokes this feature when he *wants* to see the map. Now maybe some users just want to see their future starting location, I don't know whether it could interest someone or not. Is it what you was thinking about and would it interest you? That would be quite troublesome to implement though, because fog visibility rules around the starting location seem to be unique and partially random, producing strange areas shapes, so it may be impossible to predict them.

No, after playing around with it some more I find this very satisfying. You only see a few more hexes if you dont actively zoom out, and that's without moving any unit which is even better when I think about it.

And wow... the speed! Huge maps takes like 2 seconds at most!

A Fog of War feature you actually could implement is only showing hexes up to 3 hexes from starting point, for those that dont want to cheat but now that they lack the discipline to avoid viewing too far away. No, I'm not talking about me.. well.. ehm..

Edit *again*: Oh, and yes, "Restart" maybe should be called "Load this map" after preview if you want it even more intuitive. The tooltip for it is fine as it is. /Edit

Edit 2: Changed 4 to 3 hexes after loading several civs and seeing that noone saw longer than 3 hexes from settler at start. Still a quite a few more hexes will be seen but it's a good compromise. /Edit2

Edit 3: Washington can in open circumstances see 4 hexes from settler in one direction, but I still believe its a good compromise, people that want to see everything can turn off fog after all. /Edit3

xngen said:

And wow... the speed! Huge maps takes like 2 seconds at most!

Click to expand...

Yeah!
And the interesting point is that the only difference between the two-seconds map preview and the one-minute map generation or one-minute game starting is that in the first case the commands are not sent to the civ5 engine! It seems like there is a very ineffective system behind it.

A Fog of War feature you actually could implement is only showing hexes up to 3 hexes from starting point, for those that dont want to cheat but now that they lack the discipline to avoid viewing too far away. No, I'm not talking about me.. well.. ehm..

Click to expand...

I was afraid that too many people who want the "starting location only" would still be unhappy with a simple round area but I guess I was wrong. I will implement that, it's not a big change anyway (more than I would like but...).

Edit *again*: Oh, and yes, "Restart" maybe should be called "Load this map" after preview if you want it even more intuitive.

Click to expand...

Ah ah! I changed that damn label about ten times, then I hesitated, then I resorted a simple "Restart". "Load this map" may be a good choice actually. One of the alternatives I considered for some time was: "restart (new map)", "restart (previewed map") and "restart (current map)" (when selecting the "Reset current map" map type).

DonQuiche said:

I will implement that

Click to expand...

You rock! =)

New minor "bug" found:

* Yields are not updated when pressing preview, but instead still shows the old yields, toggling yields after reseed fixes this.

Nice catch and thank you Xngen.
I just fixed it. I also removed the river glitches by the way.

I updated Reseed in order to include the changes we discussed. I also prevented Reseed to delete older "__reseed" files: this may cause redundant files with the same name on most computers but it will prevent random crashes on some others.

I am now waiting for details on a report in the IGE thread about a problem with the new strategic map on the vanilla version. Since IGE and Reseed use similar codes for this map, it may also affect Reseed. Aside of that, both mods are ready for a public release.

hi,

forgive me if this is already understood, but here is my feedback:

the menu itself is too large, and its "background" elements are not translucent enough. overall, it should be a lot more narrow. move side descriptions to above their dropboxes. eliminate more "dead space"

functionally, i do find it not to be intuitive. i would put the map criteria last in a collapsable sub menu, and put the important functions at the top. also, the "restore fog" button doesn't seem to work and the map goes into the "game board" view. also, i'd rather not see the mini-map revealed at all by default; and even when "show unknown resources" is unchecked (when you can't see em), ...IF you hover the mouse over a tile it will still say "Iron 2" etc if its going to be there.

having said all this, i get super quick map previews made every time i hit "preview new map" but i don't like the names of these buttons. i would name them "Generate new map" and "Use this map" ...if i click "use this map," it should should close and reload, why a separate button for that?

as always, this is just my feedback and not to suggest i don't like this great mod. but you seem to encourage feedback so thats it. i can be more specific about any of it if you'd like.

Hello Sinatra and thank you for this detailled feedback.

• The window size must stay as it is: it is already 640px tall when fully expanded, if I were to move labels as you advise, I would reach 790px tall, this would invalidate 1024*768 and 800*600 resolutions. Even on higher resolutions the panel would partially cover the minimap. Besides on modern screens people have more horizontal space while the vertical space is scarce. And dead space is required because it adds clarity to the UI and makes it more readable, civ5 offers few options for that (no groupbox - and they waste space too anyway in a less efficient way -, few working color variations because of the dark theme, etc).
• Opacity, again, is troublesome and I won't change it: it quickly makes the text hard to read, especially for people who play in high resolutions (civ5 ignores your DPI settings). Let's not mention the players with poor visions: aging players are more and more frequent, especially for games like civ. And civ is also one of the few games playable by people with visual handicaps. Finally, the less a text is readable, the less people read it.
• Switching the second and third groups: this may be a good idea actually, I will have to try that.
• It's not that I want to reveal the mini-map by default, but I have to in order to allow you to move over the map preview (you cannot move beyond the fog limits and since the previewed starting plot is not at the same location than the current one...).
• The "restore fog" button was indeed disabled during the preview since this one was always full screen. As I discussed earlier with Xngen, it requires special steps to artificially simulate a fog around the starting spot on the previewed map. Something I implemented since the last beta you tried, though, so the restore fog is no longer disabled during preview.
• The "unknown resources on tool tips" is indeed a bug, I am going to fix that, thank you.
• "Restart" does reset your game. "Close and reload" does not reset it, it just save and reload to fix the minimap bug. Well, I guess I should rename "Close and reload" to just "Fix the minimap."
• "Use this map" does not convey the idea that everything will be reseted and "this" is ambiguous. On my working version the "restart" label is either "restart (new map)", "restart (previewed map)", or "restart (current map)". I don't like those but I guess they are the less confusing ones.

No worries, I appreciate your feedback, it helps make this mod better.


EDIT: And here is a beta7 implementing the changes I discussed with you and Xnview.

v5 has been released.
A whole new engine, a far better quality and a map preview feature.

New features

• You can now see a preview of the future map. Generating new map previews is very fast.
• It is now possible to restart past the very first turn. Some options will have to be changed, though, so "Reseed!" will ask for confirmation before it proceeds.
• You will be warned if there are items that cannot be reset, such as founded religions, ongoing wars, etc.
• A great work has been done on the overall UI consistency and user feedback.
• Added shortcut keys: ctrl+shift+R to open Reseed and such.

Bugfixes

• The whole regeneration process has been rewritten to use something far more complex but less hackish. It should get rid of most crashes, freezes and instant game over.
• It now correctly deals with edge cases such as the DLC maps, the Earth map, the static maps, etc. Maps impossible to regenerate are listed but signaled by a lock icon. When selecting them a proper explanation will be provided.
• There is now a "speed" option to let you specify the balance between speed and stability, in order to prevent crashes on some computers.

PS: Big thanks to you, Blkbird, Sinatra, Xnview and the others. This version owes you a lot.

Been too busy to play Civ these few days, but I can't wait to give the new version a try. Thx for the hard work!

Since map preview and UI improvement are the main feature of the new version, you should replace the screenshot in the main post with an up-to-date one.

Great work DonQuiche!

Now it's so easy to reseed a new spot that I never can decide upon one. =)

@Blkbird
Indeed, I should do that... Someday... ^^

@Xngen
Hey, it's surely more incentive than the one-minute long regeneration times you experience.