So, what's been going on since my last update?
Well, nothing much on the technical side. I do want to check how multiplayer compatible my Lua code will be (my main concern is the placement of Grand Stars) but otherwise I haven't really touched it. Grand Stars, however, will not spawn within five tiles of each other, unless there isn't any room left on the map (unlikely).
I'm also still a bit stuck on what to do for her unique bonuses. As I've discussed previously, I wanted to make the bonuses for each Grand Star level correspond with the dome on the Comet Observatory that would become active in Super Mario Galaxy. Of course, though, they're kind of tricky to link to what can be done in CiV, so I might dispense with that somewhat.
Here's what I've been brainstorming with. Most of the effects are in the capital only since the capital is the Comet Observatory and where the domes would be - each city in the empire will still get +10%
Production for each Grand Star, though.
- 1 Grand Star: Terrace - +5 Happiness, 1 Scientist slot. (the Terrace looks like an observatory inside, hence the Scientist slot. Happiness since it's the first dome you get)
- 2 Grand Stars: Fountain - +1 Culture for every regular building and great work/artifact in the capital. (one of the effects I considered was making the capital's tile count as fresh water, but that's a bit too situational in my opinion)
- 3 Grand Stars: Kitchen - +1 Food for every worked non-Strategic resource in the capital. 20% of the Food in the capital is carried over when a new citizen is born. (Kitchen > Food, obviously )
- 4 Grand Stars: Bedroom - Great Person generation increased by +25% in the capital, 1 Writer slot. (Rosalina wrote her own storybook, so writing > Writer slot > Great People. Not much else I think would make sense for the Bedroom...)
- 5 Grand Stars: Engine Room - Increases the Movement of all units in Luma territory by +2, +50% range for Trade Routes originating from the capital. (another one it's easy to find something that can be done)
- 6 Grand Stars: Garden - Increases Production of spaceship parts in this city by 100%, +100 HP. (to be fair, spaceship parts could make sense for the Engine Room in more ways than one, but I thought getting a boost towards a Science Victory would be best for the last Grand Star. 100 extra HP to help you keep the Grand Stars if the enemy's knocking at your door)
Yes, a bit over the place, I know.
Of course, this means that I'll have to change the second unique since I don't want the Kitchen twice. But I still would like the Star Bits luxury resource to be present. Since I think it would be a bit odd for them to come from a UB based on the Library or Garage, perhaps I could make a UB or even a UI that could be related to stargazing (outside of the vanilla Observatory building). If it was an UI it would supply Star Bits based upon how many were worked (like Holo's Apple Orchard).
However, I have been working on some of the visuals. First, here's the icons I made to signify the levels you can have your Beacon at, from 0 to 6:
I actually went out of my way to measure the size differences between each of the centre spheres, use the correct colours, and make sure the ring and top/bottom cones were close to the actual ones in the in-game model (I based it on
this picture). A bit overly anal for something that will rarely be seen (and in the end might only be shown as a small icon in MCIS), but I'm happy with the result - simple, but striking, at least in my opinion.
Some other things I've been working on are these original models as well. First is the Grand Star resource model, a basic model made from scratch by me and graciously imported by bouncymischa:
Because it would be pain to do all the possible models, the model will only appear if there's no improvement on the tile. You'll have to check by the icon if something ends up on top of it.
Secondly, after using
this great tutorial to convert Civ 4 units to CiV, I went ahead and made my very own model and texture of the Starshroom from scratch. Even for a simple few hours work, I'm very pleased with the result:
Finally, if you're playing with ViceVirtuoso's WWTW, you'll get a special icon for Magical Girl Rosalina (I'll include an option for using it as the leader icon as well):
Honestly, even though Rosalina's one of my favourite characters in fiction, and I do want to ensure I do a quality job on her, I'll be happy to get her done as well, since there's plenty of other things I want to make civilizations of too. I didn't expect when I started out that I'd make her this complicated...