Player How To Documentation

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Koshling said:

Reason is that the building display consumes a rather large amount of memory, and is a significant factors towards late game memory allocation failures, so we felt removing all but the most visually significant ones was a better balance than being unable to play games on any but small maps, or being unable to continue into later eras.

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I understand and makes perfect sense. Like i said is no huge deal i was more curious than anything else as to why that feature was disabled. And again fantastic job to all involved in creating this wonderful mod. Cheers and thanks for your response.

So how does removing modules (like the cyberpunk stuff) actually work? Do I just delete their folders, or do I have to edit some files. And if so, which ones?

Mod seems really cool so far, but I really kind of dont want steampunk battle zepellins or whatever appearing in my game right now

You turn them off by editing the file MLF_CIV4ModularLoadingControls.XML in the folder Assets/Modules/Alt_Timelines. Find the section for steampunk and change the 1 to a zero. Report it if it does not work. We have been moving stuff around a bit and may have made it not modular by accident. It is usually easy enough for us to fix.

Huh, that seems to result in the game crashing on startup.
apparently it doesnt like me changing the numbers.

What did you try and remove? I forgot that some bits are not optional. Anything in the Alt_Timeline folder should be able to be turned off without problems.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

What did you try and remove? I forgot that some bits are not optional. Anything in the Alt_Timeline folder should be able to be turned off without problems.

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He probably did, the "compatibility" does NOT work anymore at all, Unless you use the exact same set-up as when you STARTED.

Which means if he started with Alt T on, it must be that way through the WHIOLE game now.

Some "F'd it up and the compat is not longer working .

strategyonly said:

He probably did, the "compatibility" does NOT work anymore at all, Unless you use the exact same set-up as when you STARTED.

Which means if he started with Alt T on, it must be that way through the WHIOLE game now.

Some "F'd it up and the compat is not longer working .

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I've not seen this problem with compatibility so much as some modules cannot be removed safely due to interconnected reliance on the objects in those modules.

The civilization issue was a matter of civ definitions being re-introduced when they shouldn't have been even though they were removed - again thanks to an interconnected reliance on that civ from somewhere else in the xml.

Thunderbrd said:

I've not seen this problem with compatibility so much as some modules cannot be removed safely due to interconnected reliance on the objects in those modules.

The civilization issue was a matter of civ definitions being re-introduced when they shouldn't have been even though they were removed - again thanks to an interconnected reliance on that civ from somewhere else in the xml.

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Thats what i am talking about, before you could take out "ANY" part of "ANY" thing and it would work, not it does NOT.

strategyonly said:

Thats what i am talking about, before you could take out "ANY" part of "ANY" thing and it would work, not it does NOT.

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Not true you would get XML errors. Try removing/turning off the folder Hydro and see how far you get

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Not true you would get XML errors. Try removing/turning off the folder Hydro and see how far you get

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DUH, you got me there, but OK besides Hydro folder (Which does NOT really belong in the modules area).

Any core files that reference modular objects are subject to making that module a problem if it's disabled... and that's just to start. Inter-modular dependancy can cause just as much problem. There's ways around this but it's one of the reasons I'm reluctant to modularize too much.

The short answer is this is not a compatibility issue but a normal xml limitation that's never been overcome (not to say it couldn't be... it would be something beyond my level to do it though.)

Thunderbrd said:

The short answer is this is not a compatibility issue but a normal xml limitation that's never been overcome (not to say it couldn't be... it would be something beyond my level to do it though.)

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Thats what i am saying, it was either You or alberts2 that changed this.

Thats why NOW we get those Art Info's errors and Error message CTD's. Something was changed AFTER Koshling left, so no offense to either of you, but it HAD to be one of you'll. again no offense.

strategyonly said:

Thats what i am saying, it was either You or alberts2 that changed this.

Thats why NOW we get those Art Info's errors and Error message CTD's. Something was changed AFTER Koshling left, so no offense to either of you, but it HAD to be one of you'll. again no offense.

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About those those Art Info's errors and Error message CTD's.

The Debug dll always displayed this message but if you where playing with the Release dll the game just CTD.
To make it easier to identify the cause of the CTD i also added this message in case of a missing Artinfo while playing with the Release dll.
This means before my change the game just crashed without you knowing why.

strategyonly said:

Thats what i am saying, it was either You or alberts2 that changed this.

Thats why NOW we get those Art Info's errors and Error message CTD's. Something was changed AFTER Koshling left, so no offense to either of you, but it HAD to be one of you'll. again no offense.

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alberts2 said:

About those those Art Info's errors and Error message CTD's.

The Debug dll always displayed this message but if you where playing with the Release dll the game just CTD.
To make it easier to identify the cause of the CTD i also added this message in case of a missing Artinfo while playing with the Release dll.
This means before my change the game just crashed without you knowing why.

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That's right... we're violating rules in the xml that Koshling's compatibility mechanisms never could overcome in the first place. It seems like it's a problem in the code because you're seeing it happen because a civ was removed but the real issue is a missing art reference - not to the original civ but to a civ that is being called for still in the xml that doesn't exist. It's about unclean xml changes, not a problem in the code.

Thunderbrd said:

That's right... we're violating rules in the xml that Koshling's compatibility mechanisms never could overcome in the first place. It seems like it's a problem in the code because you're seeing it happen because a civ was removed but the real issue is a missing art reference - not to the original civ but to a civ that is being called for still in the xml that doesn't exist. It's about unclean xml changes, not a problem in the code.

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Again, BEFORE it just changed the "civ" (because i believe thats all we are really talking about) it REPLACED it "automatically" with another one, period.

strategyonly said:

Again, BEFORE it just changed the "civ" (because i believe thats all we are really talking about) it REPLACED it "automatically" with another one, period.

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Why should it replace something existing?
There is no way that compat code can know that something must be replaced if it still exists because of some leftover xml.

It did you know. If a civ was not there it would replace it with one that does exist. However that is if the whole civ is missing. If it was not cleaned out properly you will get art and XML errors and no replacement.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

It did you know. If a civ was not there it would replace it with one that does exist. However that is if the whole civ is missing. If it was not cleaned out properly you will get art and XML errors and no replacement.

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There ya go, exactly what i am talking about, PHEW I thought I was going MORE crazy.

I remember because when i changed the Civ from America to United States, it changed the "Complete" civ to another civ BUT let you still play the game.

Ok, here's what was happening:
1) Civ was removed and the game would recognize that it was removed and attempt to replace it with another valid civ, as it should.

2) The Civ it was trying to replace the first one with was a screwed up civ with nothing but a name for reference.

3) The reason it thought the civ it was trying to replace the first with was there was because of a reference to a civ that didn't exist being somewhere in the xml where it shouldn't have been. This reference to a civ that was otherwise undefined had by default GENERATED the beginning of a valid civilization definition in the code.

4) Since the civilization that was attempting to replace the removed civ didn't have anything more than the name, such as the FLAG art reference, the game's compatibility replacement mechanism would find an invalid missing art reference to the replacing civ's flag and crash.

The moral of this story is that the compatibility system still works great... but no attempt to find a defined civ's art where that art is missing will avoid a crash. The problem, again, is that there had remained (and still may now that more civs have been removed) some references to removed civs in the core xml that need to be hunted down and removed. At that point, you will restore compatibility, peace and harmony to the kingdom (even if it's a totally different kingdom now than it was before! )

You will be pleased o know that when I loaded someone else's save it replaced all the civs and leaders OK. It also explained why I could no longer build a wonder I used to - it is in one of the removed civs.