[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

The truly invisible units will make the German U-Boat Wolfpacks much more effective in my Fortress Europe scenario. The ability to prevent cities decreasing in size and being destroyed when captured solves a pet peeve of mine. The extra cities are really appreciated. No more having to make compromises due to the 255 limit. In fact there are at least a dozen features that I can see will make a big difference in scenarios I have under development. Thanks again TheNamelessOne!

The Pièce de résistance has to be the practically unlimited events space. Now the AI can really do some damage without painstaking compromises, finally I will be able to make proper use of delayed events!!! The only thing that frightens me is when will I be satisfied with an events file when I could add just one or two more things.

I've been able to get it to work. Strangely, by right clicking on the file and selecting "properties", then changing the resolution to 640X480, I got it to run. Then, of course, I had to go the control panel and re-adjust the display in order to get everything to fit on my screen again. So might there be some compatability bug depending on your screen resolution? Anyway, I'm now as happy as a pig in sh*t. Thanks to TheNamelessOne for all of your work on this and to Catfish for your suggestions to fix my problem.

I spoke too soon. The patch says it was installed properly, but it has no effect on the game at all. No extra features that I can find, anyway. Shouldn't there be a new Rules file, with a @Cosmic2 field, among other things?

I just said on the very previous page that that has to be added manually...

McMonkey said:

Would it be possible, within the city screen, to have similar scroller buttons in the units in city and supported units boxes or are these hard wired into the game?

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These things are all hard-coded. That's what the ToTPP is all about.

McMonkey said:

I did try adding @COSMIC2 to the rules file of one of my scenarios and did a quick test but didn't work.

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Do you have a TOTPP.ini file in your main ToT folder? It should be created automatically when you launch the game from the ToTPP launcher for the first time. It should contain all the options you checked in the launcher's 'Select patches' listbox.

techumseh said:

I've been able to get it to work. Strangely, by right clicking on the file and selecting "properties", then changing the resolution to 640X480, I got it to run.

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Well, I'd never have picked that one.

techumseh said:

Shouldn't there be a new Rules file, with a @Cosmic2 field, among other things?

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No, because the 'Extra cosmic parameters' are completely optional. If you enable these parameters in the launcher, games will use default values globally until you decide to add your own values under @COSMIC2 for any given rules file.

PlutonianEmpire said:

Yes, all changes to rules.txt require a saved game reload, with or without ToTPP.

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Cool. I'm home from work and raring to go at testing ToTPP! The test I did yesterday was very brief and barely scratched the surface.

Catfish said:

These things are all hard-coded. That's what the ToTPP is all about.

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I'm afraid I'm not clear what you mean. Is that a YES they can be changed, that's what ToTPP is all about or NO they cannot be changed as they are hard-coded? I apologise for my ignorance in these matters

I have just been testing the City Population Loss Attack / Capture feature (as well as the other @COSMIC2 stuff). Cities being wiped out has long been a pet hate of mine and to see it eradicated is just amazing. It opens up so many new possibilities. Size 1 cities are no longer fragile settlements clinging to the map by a thread. The city walls improvement can once again take its place as a valuable bonus improvement for rich cities instead of an essential for every two bit village. Along with the stackable terrain freeing up fortresses and airbases the amount of new ideas I can try out is very exciting!

Quick question, can I use semicolons after the @COSMIC2 values to add annotations or will this mess with the blank line? I have just run a little test and it seems OK but I thought I best ask.

As NoStackKills renders the old method of stackable terrain obsolete I'm now looking for a quick and easy way to remove all of the airbases on every land square from my Aeterna Civitas III scenario. I'm pretty sure the utility for adding stackable terrain (CivStack) only allowed adding and not removing of fortresses or airbases. Any ideas guys? Could the ability to remove all 'old style' stackable terrain be a possible feature of ToTPP? I know a lot of my projects would benefit from this as well as for people trying to modify existing scenarios. Just an idea.

PlutonianEmpire said:

In a similar vein, would it be possible to add options for modders to be able to lock out/disable certain options during the world-building phase? An example would be the greyed out "Bloodlust" option during the custom rules set up in the "Extended Original" game, preventing players from disabling the AC Space Race.

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I'll keep that in mind for the patch. Or I'll put it in COSMIC2.

techumseh said:

Strangely, by right clicking on the file and selecting "properties", then changing the resolution to 640X480, I got it to run. Then, of course, I had to go the control panel and re-adjust the display in order to get everything to fit on my screen again. So might there be some compatability bug depending on your screen resolution?

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The launcher is not multi-monitor or custom-DPI (other than 96) aware (in both cases the screen resolution reported to the launcher may be wrong). Any of these apply to you?

McMonkey said:

Had I found this thread sooner I would have been cheering you on all the way TheNamelessOne! Catfish and the other guys have have come up with loads of great ideas and I'm truly gobsmacked that someone has finally arrived who has the ability and more importantly the enthusiasm to implement the changes the community has craved for so long.

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Good to have the League on board. Been wondering what took you guys.
But seriously, it's good to see some more use of the project.

McMonkey said:

I love the feature that allows you to scroll through units in a shack and I can see this can be used on the main map to scroll through large numbers of units within a city. Would it be possible, within the city screen, to have similar scroller buttons in the units in city and supported units boxes or are these hard wired into the game?

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Which buttons are you referring to?

McMonkey said:

The truly invisible units will make the German U-Boat Wolfpacks much more effective in my Fortress Europe scenario.

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This feature is not implemented yet, though.

McMonkey said:

Quick question, can I use semicolons after the @COSMIC2 values to add annotations or will this mess with the blank line? I have just run a little test and it seems OK but I thought I best ask.

Click to expand...

Shouldn't be a problem.

As NoStackKills renders the old method of stackable terrain obsolete I'm now looking for a quick and easy way to remove all of the airbases on every land square from my Aeterna Civitas III scenario. I'm pretty sure the utility for adding stackable terrain (CivStack) only allowed adding and not removing of fortresses or airbases. Any ideas guys? Could the ability to remove all 'old style' stackable terrain be a possible feature of ToTPP? I know a lot of my projects would benefit from this as well as for people trying to modify existing scenarios. Just an idea.

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I think I can fit something in to do just that.

McMonkey said:

I'm afraid I'm not clear what you mean. Is that a YES they can be changed, that's what ToTPP is all about or NO they cannot be changed as they are hard-coded? I apologise for my ignorance in these matters

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I mean that all of the features implemented in the ToTPP are modifications to hard-coded components of the game. Otherwise, it wouldn't require someone with TheNamelessOne's skill set to reverse engineer them; regular modders could make the changes themselves. So yes, things like scroll bars are possible, and from the looks of things, practical. So on that note...

Feature Requests

• Vertical scroll bar on the 'Select Unit to Activate' window (the one that appears when you click a unit stack). There's currently a maximum number of 9 units displayed.

TheNamelessOne said:

Good to have the League on board. Been wondering what took you guys.

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They're very insular.

It looks like the patch did install after all. I was unaware that changes to the Rules txt. and Terrain1.bmp had to be made manually. I'll go back and re-read the thread more carefully, but may I suggest this information be added to the Readme? Thanks.

Catfish said:

They're very insular.

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"They" include "you", O secretive one.

TheNamelessOne said:

I'm planning to move the MountainHeight patch into the more general terrain overlays patch anyway...

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Oh, I meant to ask, will all of the overlay dimensions be configurable like those of the current mountain slot? I have a use for both green-based snow-capped and dark mountains in the one scenario.

techumseh said:

I'll go back and re-read the thread more carefully, but may I suggest this information be added to the Readme? Thanks.

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Most of the info you're looking for is in the launcher itself. Click on the item in the 'Select patches' list and it'll display the relevant info in the 'Patch description' box.

techumseh said:

"They" include "you", O secretive one.

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I retired myself. Then I saw this thread.

@TheNamelessOne
I haven't been that involved with Civ2 in the past year or so and mostly just check in on the Scenario League. I think ToTPP will change that! I have needed an enthusiasm boost to help me get back into scenario design and finish off some of my advanced projects. Unlimited events will make that task a LOT easier!!!

I have made a mock up of what I'm asking for in the city screen. The panel labelled A is from the main map and shows the units located in Rome. However, in the city screen panel B only displays 22 of the 85 units in the city and the support box only displays 10. It would be great to have scroll bars for both boxes (+ on this mock up) and if possible allow the 'Units In CIty' box to be filled up.



With regards to the invisible U-Boats. If I make the AI U-Boats graphic blank (IE no graphic in the units.bmp) and hide its shield the AI will know it is there and move it about but it will be invisible to the player unless one of their Escort ships or Maritime Bombers happens into it. This in itself would make the Battle of the Atlantic a lot tougher. If there are other levels of invisibility that can be added then great, but I could work with just this.

As I'm a greedy so and so I would like to second a few existing ideas that I would consider a priority:

Catfish: Extend unit type limit beyond 80.

This would be one of the most popular additions for scenario designers. There are so many beautifully rendered units available and it's heartbreaking having to leave many out of a scenario due to the current limit. As well as aesthetics extra units would be a godsend in scenarios with a longer time frame and would make the tech tree development more important.

Catfish: Eliminate incremental rush buying.

Catfish: Multiple levels of veterancy.

That would be amazing. IE Green > Regular > Veteran > Elite!

Catfish: Leonardo's Workshop unit upgrade causes a loss of veterancy.

I would also consider this a bug.

Greizer85: What about the Coastal Fortress defence modifier?

Catfish: Shared vision option for allies.

PlutonianEmpire: A global flag for improvements.

This would open up all sorts of opportunities.

PlutonianEmpire: When using the create unit cheat, defaulting to NONE for the home city would make scenario building a lot less burdensome.

Catfish: Set a maximum number of attacks per turn, either globally or for individual units, to limit units with high movement rates.

Catfish: Give wonders objective multipliers.

The x3 objective flag is brilliant. This would be the cherry on top!

Catfish: Allow 15/16-bit (or 24-bit, see previous) colour Title pages.

Catfish: The ability to limit the playable tribe options in the menu when starting a new scenario or mod.

Most of the scenarios I have designed are playable only as one Civ (and the documentation is clear on this) but over the years people have insisted on playing as an AI intended nation and then posted that the scenario is unbalanced. This would be a neat way of eliminating that!


Nothing new there, but I thought I would second some great suggestions that I know I would find extremely useful myself

First, I want to thank you, TheNamelessOne, for all the work and skill you've put in to this project. It is amazing indeed to see an old game transformed, and reborn, really. I was beginning to accept that Civ2 and SL were finally coming to an end, as more and more of my friends drifted away. Now, they're back! (Curt, where are you?)


Also to Catfish, PlutonianEmpire and others for their excellent suggestions (they took the words right out of my mouth) and playtesting/debugging. I am a complete techno-klutz. If it can be installed wrong or misunderstood, I will find a way. Anyway, with a little help, I'm getting there, and I plan to use TOTPP to make my next scenario, Stalingrad.

Here are my 3 suggestions:

1) Allow railways to have a movement multiplier, like roads, but set independently. The unlimited movement they now have would make many scenarios unplayable, since they give a huge, and very unrealistic advantage to the human player. If they are used in scenarios at all these days, it's for things like "suburbs" next to major cities.

A related problem is that rivers automatically provide the same movement advantage as roads. I often use roads as railways, with higher movement advantages, eg. X5 or X6. To prevent rivers from being used as alternative railways, I have to replace them with one of the terrains from Terrain2, eg. forest. So it would be good if we could adjust the movement multipliers for railways, roads, and rivers separately.

2) Years ago, I taught myself to hex-edit cities so that they could exist next to each other, to create large cities for scenarios. I've since forgotten how, and don't wish to repeat that painful learning experience. So, how about a feature that allows multi-tile cities?

3) Is it possible to allow air units to carry ground units, or missiles? Or ships to carry both ground and air units?

Like EZRhino says, "This changes everything." Thanks again.

techumseh,

The railway idea is an excellent one! I can't believe nobody has forwarded it yet. I would imagine that would be possible in an age when ships have been seen sailing up rivers! I have always thought it was a shame there wasn't a multiplier option for RR as there is for roads as the current unlimited movement (teleporting) makes them practically unusable in all but the rarest occasions when it comes to scenario building. If there were roads and railroads with, for example, x3 and x6 movement I think I would make use of them in every modern scenario I designed to represent major and minor transport links. Fingers and toes crossed on this one!


Regarding veteran units. In many of my scenarios I either restrict on eliminate barracks as I feel it is much better for units to earn their veteran status in combat. If there were multiple levels then a unit produced in a city with no barracks would be normal, one with barracks would be regular (trained) and only through combat could they gain their veteran status. That would allow me to re-introduce another improvement/feature that I currently omit from scenarios.

McMonkey said:

Catfish: Leonardo's Workshop unit upgrade causes a loss of veterancy.

I would also consider this a bug.

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Yeah, but as TheNamelessOne stated earlier in the thread, it's explicitly removed by the game. I can see why. Most of the upgrades in the vanilla game are substantial, so even with the loss of veterancy, there's generally a significant improvement. You could argue that new technology requires retraining. The unit upgrade progression in scenarios can be more subtle (less than 50% strength per step), in effect producing Workshop downgrades. So a flag would be nice.

McMonkey said:

Catfish: The ability to limit the playable tribe options in the menu when starting a new scenario or mod.

Most of the scenarios I have designed are playable only as one Civ (and the documentation is clear on this) but over the years people have insisted on playing as an AI intended nation and then posted that the scenario is unbalanced.

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A surefire way to piss off a scenario designer.

Edit: An idea related to the above suggestion: a file naming regime that would allow the designer to link specific game files (eg, [TribeName]_Events.txt, [TribeName]_Rules.txt, Multiplayer_Events.txt) to the tribe menu choices. This would replace batch files.

McMonkey said:

The railway idea is an excellent one! I can't believe nobody has forwarded it yet.

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I guess I forgot, because it's been in my list of gripes in the past as well.

Catfish said:

Yeah, but as TheNamelessOne stated earlier in the thread, it's explicitly removed by the game. I can see why. Most of the upgrades in the vanilla game are substantial, so even with the loss of veterancy, there's generally a significant improvement. You could argue that new technology requires retraining. The unit upgrade progression in scenarios can be more subtle (less than 50% strength per step), in effect producing Workshop downgrades. So a flag would be nice.

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I agree.

A surefire way to piss off a scenario designer.

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I REALLY agree.

I guess I forgot, because it's been in my list of gripes in the past as well.

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You agree.

Catfish said:

Oh, I meant to ask, will all of the overlay dimensions be configurable like those of the current mountain slot? I have a use for both green-based snow-capped and dark mountains in the one scenario.

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Yes, definitely. Apart from the 16-tile overlays, I've also added an option for a 3-tile overlay (corresponding to the tiles in Terrain1), to prevent rendering glitches related to dithering:


Here's another screenshot with 2 different 16-tile forest overlays:

techumseh said:

1) Allow railways to have a movement multiplier, like roads, but set independently.

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As long as the multipliers don't become too high it might possible. Normally, movement allowance from @UNITS is multiplied by just the road multiplier, but with multiple multipliers p) we would need to use their least common multiple (lcm), since we cannot use fractions. The lcm has the potential to be large even for small numbers, with multipliers of x3 and x8 the lcm would already be 24, and since the maximum movement allowance is 255, the maximum number of moves in @UNITS would be 10, before overflowing.

techumseh said:

2) Years ago, I taught myself to hex-edit cities so that they could exist next to each other, to create large cities for scenarios. I've since forgotten how, and don't wish to repeat that painful learning experience. So, how about a feature that allows multi-tile cities?

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As in, having the game allow you to build adjacent cities?

techumseh said:

3) Is it possible to allow air units to carry ground units, or missiles? Or ships to carry both ground and air units?

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Carrying mechanics are quite convoluted in the game, for whatever reason. It would require some restructuring first.

Did I mention I'd release 0.9 today?

Here's the changelog:

• Disabled button rendering: Fixes graphical rendering of disabled buttons.
• Diplomacy screen crash: Fixes a potential crash (buffer overflow) in the diplomacy screen.
• End player turn: Updates remaining units when using "End player turn" (Ctrl-N).
• Incremental rush buying: The option to disable incremental rush buying. When enabled, city production is locked for the remainder of the turn after using the buy button.
• Active unit indicators: Configurable active unit indicators through the TOTPP Configuration menu.
• Combat animations: Enables the 8-frame combat animation from Icons.bmp when animated units are disabled.
• Terrain overlays: Custom overlays from TERRAIN2.bmp for arbitrary terrain types. See the patch description in the launcher for configuration and examples. This patch replaces the Mountain height patch.
• The TOTPP configuration menu can now be brought up in-game by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T.

Fixes:

• The mini-map didn't use correct colors for the five new terrain types. This has been fixed in the Extra terrain types patch.

As always, detailed information about the patches is available in the launcher. For an overview of all patches, see the included README.txt. Happy gaming!

Outstanding work TheNamelessOne. I look forward to trying out these new features after work tomorrow

So long incremental rush buying. How many hours of my life have I 'wasted' using this tiresome exploit in multiplayer games?!