Alien Worlds graphics request

cazfi · Feb 19, 2011

I have an short-term proposition. I'm asking opinion from you before I spend too much time with this. If result is still unusable for you, there's no point in wasting time on this.

I said myself that full-fledged scripting language for scenario scripting might be too much, but that's what we've got. You would be quite happy with just the subset of its functionality - same functionality that civ2 macro language has to offer. Some way to map from civ2 macro language to freeciv scripting language is needed. I already mentioned wrapper layer as one possibility, but that's quite complicated solution and even if we decide to eventually do it, it's not short-term solution.
What I propose as short term solution, is simply example code. For each civ2 action I would write an example script fragment. I don't think this could be taken to the level where you would only need to copypaste fragments to your scenario without understanding how they work, but we should get close to that situation.

Ingvar VII · Feb 19, 2011

@Mcmonkey: This is certainly not the case. I installed it no problem and started playing, just as any commercial game would install.

@cazfi: That sounds good.
I guess I may have sounded as I am demanding a lot of things to be some other way than they are. I did not intend to sound as such.

I simply want to know how to get things done.
I still do not understand how FreeCivs file structure works, and I see this as the one breaking obstacle. I understand the tech/terrain/unit adding method, and it seems simple enough.

Again the only thing I see as a major obstacle is the file structure.

I have begun editing the terrain I would use for my MOO2 scenario, and this is straightforward enough.

My problem is what I will do when I have edited the files in such a way as I want.

Will I release them all in an archive with a text file explaining into which folder each file goes? This would probably mean there would be very few people willing to go through playing the scenario.

Ingvar VII · Feb 19, 2011

Hm, I'm an idiot, it's mostly explained in the RuleSet example text!

cazfi · Feb 19, 2011

Ingvar VII said:
I guess I may have sounded as I am demanding a lot of things to be some other way than they are. I did not intend to sound as such.

Oh, I didn't took them as demands. I wouldn't answer kindly to one - or maybe I would answer by telling how much it costs to hire me, as high rank SW professional, to do the changes.

Will I release them all in an archive with a text file explaining into which folder each file goes? This would probably mean there would be very few people willing to go through playing the scenario.

I think you can have complete directory structure of your mod stored to archive with any archiver, so it would be just matter of unpacking archive to correct place (whatever that is in Windows). I can also repeat once more that I'm working on freeciv-modpack utility that makes installing side of the things much easier - in case of select packages you just choose it from a list and freeciv-modpack downloads and installs it, for other packages you have to type in URL from which it will be downloaded.

cazfi · Feb 19, 2011

Strelok22 said:
Here you go mate.Alien terrain inbound

Now I'm almost inclined to add more terrain types just to use more of these

I have one problem regarding terrain. Alien ruleset has two types of oceans: "Ocean" and "Boiling Ocean". Quite complicated set of sprites is needed to correctly draw all possible borderlines and even corners of different terrain types: ocean-land, ocean-boiling, boiling-land, ocean-boiling-land. I don't think ocean gfx made for civ2 can be used as is in case of multiple ocean types. Please prove me wrong!

Ingvar VII · Feb 19, 2011

If I understand your question correctly it will be very difficult to prove you wrong.
Sorry!

cazfi · Feb 20, 2011

McMonkey said:
I would be less put off downloading FreeCiv if it was packaged as a traditional game that I could just run a installation launcher and everything just happened. When I have looked at FreeCiv in the past it looked a bit to much effort to get into for the layman.

Then freeciv.net (http://www.freeciv.net/) might be for you. No installation needed, play on web.
I really don't know about how good installer there is in current Windows packaging. What version you have looked at?

If I could do anything I wanted I don't think I would ever finish anything as there would always be something else I would want to add.

Yes, that's a real problem if you are a kind of person who has to get things to final. I myself am happy to improve same thing forever, just releasing snapshots for public consumption. Actually I always feel disappointed when I'm in a situation where further improvement is not possible.

cazfi · Feb 20, 2011

CurtSibling said:
SL is for CIV2, not just related to it.

Hey, is there any similar community for civ1 modders

Back in the days I reverse engineered data structures from civ1 game binary, and for a while felt exited to modify unit properties with hex editor.
This also reminds my how during that reverse engineering I noticed that some features were disabled from civ1 release. There were traces of better diplomacy model at least.

cazfi · Feb 20, 2011

Ingvar VII said:
perhaps on FreeCiv.

Pros:
More Civs.
More unit slots.(Makes balancing even harder I guess....)
More technologies.
Larger map.

Cons:
Overall almost everything seems more complicated.

I would summarize pros and cons in general (not only in case of your scenario)

Pros:
- More flexible and powerful, more customizable
- Actively maintained, and you can actually request features you need to be added

Cons:
- More complex
- Actively maintained, leading to compatibility problems between versions. Scenario you today create for "current" freeciv probably needs some porting to "current" freeciv of 2012.

cazfi · Feb 21, 2011

To get some perspective, I'd like to know a couple of things about typical scenario you create.

How many events there is in typical scenario? Is there just one event for each key point of the scenarion, or zillions of events creating minor details? Is scenario more likely to have 10, 100 or 1000 events?

Do you somehow restrict establishing of new cities so that there will be only those cities you have put to scenario? I'm asking mainly because there seems to be restriction in freeciv that ruleset must contain at least one unit capable of establishing cities. I guess you can work around that by making it to require impossible-to-get tech or something, but unit would still appear in help listings and such. I'll start work to remove that restriction later today anyway, but would like to know if that's important or not.

JPetroski · Feb 21, 2011

cazfi said:
Do you somehow restrict establishing of new cities so that there will be only those cities you have put to scenario? I'm asking mainly because there seems to be restriction in freeciv that ruleset must contain at least one unit capable of establishing cities. I guess you can work around that by making it to require impossible-to-get tech or something, but unit would still appear in help listings and such. I'll start work to remove that restriction later today anyway, but would like to know if that's important or not.

I'll let someone else handle the events question.

The vast majority of scenarios tend to either not allow any city creation, or restrict settler-type units to the human player with a house rule saying not to found new ones. There are exceptions of course (any scenario where colonization is desired, for example).

Freeciv seems to offer some interesting possibilities, but those two cons you listed (especially the second one) are very major indeed. The best thing about Civ2 is that absolutely any idiot can mod it

It's also fun reinventing the game despite its significant limitations, or getting those limitations to work for you instead of against you.

If you could at least find a way to make the game easily forward/backward compatible then I'd imagine more people would give it a shot. Please understand that some of these scenarios can take 6 months or more to build. Why build something that runs the risk of being instantly obsolete?

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about freeciv

cazfi · Feb 21, 2011

JPetroski said:
If you could at least find a way to make the game easily forward/backward compatible then I'd imagine more people would give it a shot. Please understand that some of these scenarios can take 6 months or more to build. Why build something that runs the risk of being instantly obsolete?

I don't think situation is so bad that use of word "obsolete" is justified. Rather scenario author needs to check scenario for needed changes when new feature (=ruleset incompatible) version of freeciv is released, once every 1-2 years. Assuming proper migration guide documentation to help this process it would take something like half an hour of your time.
Still, we need to think how to make this as easy as possible. Writing those migration guides is one thing we have to do for future versions.

JPetroski · Feb 21, 2011

cazfi said:
I don't think situation is so bad that use of word "obsolete" is justified. Rather scenario author needs to check scenario for needed changes when new feature (=ruleset incompatible) version of freeciv is released, once every 1-2 years. Assuming proper migration guide documentation to help this process it would take something like half an hour of your time.
Still, we need to think how to make this as easy as possible. Writing those migration guides is one thing we have to do for future versions.

Fair enough, but I think (since authors come and go) you may want to aim for something so simple that the scenario downloader (rather than the scenario author) can easily and quickly update what they wish. This might require an even simpler process (assuming the average player is not as big of a tinkerer as the average author).

I have no idea how programming works so I might be asking for the moon, but I'm just throwing that out there.

cazfi · Feb 21, 2011

I think my modpack tutorial at http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/RulesetExample.txt now covers all the subjects it's going to in short term.

I have also updated my stub-ruleset to be compatible with freeciv 2.3. This ruleset is meant to be used as starting point for new rulesets written from scratch. It has only absolute minimal functionality so that freeciv still starts. Download from http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/rulesets.html#stub

cazfi · Feb 21, 2011

Ingvar VII said:
One question: Can I create "wormholes"? Simply a square that moves the ship entering to another pre-determined square.

It turned out that no, you can't at the moment. I'm already looking at the issue, but that will not be possible in freeciv 2.3.

How quickly you would want to get your scenario available for average freeciv users? I wonder if we could develop scenario in parallel with freeciv 2.4.

cazfi · Feb 23, 2011

cazfi said:
Even this "initial version" of freeciv scripting, while not strictly superset of civ2 language (there are things you can do in civ2 you cannot do in freeciv), provides much more.

After more investigation I need to rephrase this a bit. Any use of word "superset" is promising too much for those wanting to port civ2 style scenario to freeciv. Freeciv set of actions is quite different from civ2 set. We might add most of the civ2 style actions in near future so it would be more like superset of civ2. We (freeciv devs) just need to organize our work in scripting area carefully so we don't do duplicate or conflicting work.

Freeciv set is listed on http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Events_Reference_Manual, but only listed. Explanations of what they actually do are yet to be added.

cazfi · Mar 2, 2011

As freeciv's default tileset, amplio2, has bigger tiles (96x48), I couldn't use just some new terrain sprites and fallback to amplio2 for the rest. Luckily suitable fallback tileset exist, isotrident. I've now got at least some kind of sprites for all the basic terrains in my own tileset, named as "SLalien" since I assume that practically all gfx for it comes from here. Rest of the gfx is fallbacks from isotrident.

Screenshot: http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/alien/screenshots/alien_terrain_03Mar11.png Note at both Ocean and Boiling Ocean have same alien fish resource. I decided to apply some semi-transparency to it so it has a bit of "local color" on it depending where it is.

Next I would be after gfx for bases (base is something like fortress or airbase in civ2) and city gfx. I think to put in just one land city style and one ocean city style.

In other news that support for properly working unit teleporting from one tile to another has now been several days in development version of freeciv.

Ingvar VII · Mar 3, 2011

Wow, that's amazing.
I have decided to put my project on ice until May 9th exactly, when my last exam takes place.
Trying to do a project such as this and handling my education is not going to go together.

cazfi · Mar 4, 2011

cazfi said:
Next I would be after gfx for bases (base is something like fortress or airbase in civ2) and city gfx. I think to put in just one land city style and one ocean city style.

Situation with cities is satisfactory. I use some cities gfx from Curt's sets. Though excellent quality, they are not exactly what I had in mind ("cities" should be more like bases protecting inhabitants against hostile environment of alien planet, not peaceful settlements) Oh well, I were prepared for worse situation.

Regarding bases it seems that there's no thread here with such gfx. Still missing after the move? These would be something you have used as fortress gfx in civ2, I guess. Here is list of the bases I'm searching gfx for:
- Force Fortress - fortress with force field
- Tower - more powerful version of the Force Fortress
- Burrow Tube - these are tubes on oceanic tiles. I don't think it's even possible to have good gfx for this at the moment taking freeciv limitations in to account
- Antigrav Base - base for antigravity units (flying saucers)

cazfi · Mar 6, 2011

New development snapshot of alien ruleset for freeciv-2.3 available from http://www.cazfi.net/freeciv/alien/. Documentation updated and improved - now there's also techtree picture with links to technology documentation.

Tileset I'm working at is not included to this version. You are still expected to use some standard tileset even if that means gfx not to match unit descriptions too well (Legion gfx used for amphibious transport unit...)

I've set up public server for this new version of alien ruleset. You don't need to install alien ruleset in order to use that server - just connect your client to it.
"Connect to Network Game" -> Host: "cazfi.net", Port: "5557", Login: what username you want to use (either existing cazfi.net account or new one) -> "Connect". If username you selected is already taken in cazfi.net, you will be prompted for "Password". If username is free (=you are just registering), you will be prompted new password twice "Password" & "Confirm Password".

Alien Worlds graphics request

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Deity

Chieftain

Deity

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Chieftain

Similar threads