Requests for new components (and features)

Thank you.

I have a suggestion: In the different Domestic Advisor screens, such as in "Military Buildings" and "Economic Buildings", when you click on a building (say Barracks or Market) you are sent to the Sevopedia. Wouldn't it be better you could sort by cities with that building instead when you click on it?

Caboose said:

In the different Domestic Advisor screens, such as in "Military Buildings" and "Economic Buildings", when you click on a building (say Barracks or Market) you are sent to the Sevopedia. Wouldn't it be better you could sort by cities with that building instead when you click on it?

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Yes, that would be better, but I believe again Civ4's GUI toolkit is going to fail us. IIRC those building icons are added on top of the table headers instead of "inside" the table itself. Since only clicking on the actual headers will sort the table (there is no way to do it via Python), and the icons cover the headers, we're stuck.

Possible work-arounds:

1. Make the icons click-through so they ignore the mouse entirely. You wouldn't get popup information on the building, but clicking would go to the header. I don't know if this is possible for images, but it is possible for text.
2. Place the icons in the headers. This may already be the case; I just don't remember off the top of my head.
3. Sort the table data in Python and repopulate the table. This would take longer than normal sorting but would go partway to implementing default sorting per page.

I was wondering if it was possible to add a sentry option to privateers parked in your city (but I suppose it could also be useful for when they're blockading as well).

Having units performing a blockade mission wake on danger would be nice, yes. About having Privateers perform sentry in your cities, doesn't this work already?

Didn't we talk about this a long time ago? An improved enemy stack display so we can completely see the contents of a massive SOD? At some point the current display cannot accommodate over a certain amount of enemy units.

EmperorFool said:

Having units performing a blockade mission wake on danger would be nice, yes. About having Privateers perform sentry in your cities, doesn't this work already?

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I don't think that you can sentry ships in your cities. So, in the case of privateers, they won't automatically wake up when their prey (i.e. caravels, galleys, or galleons) are nearby. You have to be continually monitor your coastline for opportunities to strike (which is a bit of a hassle).

I've a request, don't know if its been repeatedly requested....but...

is there any way to increase the window of the F1 Screen to Fully encompass the computer screen.

i.e. As the game will take up the window, can F1 be increased to at least spread from Left screen side to Right screen side. This obviously would have to be a system dependent change, ie screen size. 14" up to 42" , heh heh heh, I could even set up a 100"..lolol....

IPEX-731BA5DD06 said:

is there any way to increase the window of the F1 Screen to Fully encompass the computer screen.

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Hit CTRL + ALT + O. Select the Advisor tab. Set the dropdowns under Domestic.

Manually triggering events via pop-up: How do you manually trigger BtS Random Events (#7) looks like a nice feature to test events without having to use the python console.

I have a request for a new feature as follows:

• 
  I think it would be great to have an option in BUG such that when your cities have temporary happiness in them (eg from an event), that the happiness icon in the city display changes to green.

• 
  Secondly, I would like the "Avoid angry citizens" button to disregard temporary happiness when determining whether a city should grow that turn or not.

In the above example (photoshopped of course) we have a city with 21 permanent happiness and 1 temporary happiness. If we get 1 more happiness from any source, the city will not grow any further because of the temporary happiness. If the city gains 2 more permanent happiness (giving it 23 permanent) then it would grow as normal.

This would be especially useful for when you get empire wide happiness boosts temporarily, but don't want your cities growing into unhappiness, then the boost wears off, leading to cities having unhappiness throughout your empire.

Edit: Please note that "In Our Religion We Trust" is normally a permanent boost. I just added the (5 turns) for illustrative purposes.
Edit2: The total happiness in the list should also be green. Just didn't think to photoshop it in.

I'm not sure if this has been covered, but I'd love to see an option for more event log options displayed. It would even be awesome to have a tab you can define yourself.

In mid to late games, I get so many events that I can't see them all. I end up just seeing which cities are going to be happy/unhappy/etc and miss all the other details. The event log doesn't seem to list that many items either.

-=Mark=-

If you open the turn event log (CTRL + TAB) you should see the last two turns' worth of BUG events mixed in with the normal events. They disappear after two turns, but they should all be there for the current turn and the turn before.

I agree it's not idea, though. I'd like a panel where you can filter by event type, but I just don't have the time for something that ambitious at the moment.

Here's an idea for a (hopefully) minor change. I'm not sure what others think about it, so I'm throwing it into the fray:

I usually play with music switched off (some of the songs, especially the Christian choruses, get on my nerves after a while). But if I switch music off in the game options, then this mutes not only the background music, but also the diplomacy tunes and all sounds of the wonder movies. However, I like the flavor of the diplomacy music, and watching muted wonder movies is frankly silly.

So I'd like to suggest (if it's technically possible) two options:

( ) Activate movie sounds when "Sound Effects" are activated
( ) Activate diplomacy sounds when "Sound Effects" are activated

Then, if before diplomacy is entered (or a movie displayed), check if "Sound Effects" is activated and "Music" is muted. If yes, then activate music for the duration of diplomacy / the movie, and mute it again afterwards.

The reason I suggest tying this option to "Sound Effects" is that ideally there should be only one place where players change their sound options. When people want to change their sound options mid-game, they shouldn't have to think about where to go to do that. Therefore, the options above are designed as "set once and forget"-type options. You set them once, and if you don't want to hear diplo music or wonder sounds anymore, you can do this from the regular audio menu by disabling sound effects (chances are that if you don't want to hear wonder movies, you want a very quiet game anyways).

I do have a hunch that the functionality required for such an option rests somewhere in the exe though and is not available for modders.

What do you think? Would such options enhance the playing experience (I really think that muted movies are a bit silly)? Would it be possible to implement such an option?

Music sounds like something that is hidden deep inside the exe ..
If I'm wrong, I second this request, I play without music all the time and I can confirm that it would still be really nice to have audio to go with wonder movies. Diplo too probably but it doesn't strike me as missing as much as the music for movies.

I am not sure if we can do this. Would it be possible to locate the music files and move them so that civ cannot find them. Then play with music turned on and only get the sounds you want?

ruff_hi said:

I am not sure if we can do this. Would it be possible to locate the music files and move them so that civ cannot find them. Then play with music turned on and only get the sounds you want?

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My bet is that this clever solution is the only one available.

It seems to me that there is a good chance that for the wonder movies you could turn on the sound if the new option is checked but the relevant sound type is turned off and then turn it back off when it is done, both in CvWonderMovieScreen.py (in the playMovie method for turning it on and in the handleInput method for turning it off again). Everything you need for determining and changing the settings appears to be present in CyUserProfile. If the program crashed while the setting was changed it would presumably leave the setting changed in the actual profile data, but aside from that there might be no side effects from doing this.

As for the diplomacy music, it doesn't look like that screen is actually controlled via Python so there is no obvious single place to manipulate it there - I didn't check the SDK too closely but it looks like the actual screen is handled in the EXE, however entering the screen looks like it might always go through one function in the DLL (CvPlayer::contact). I saw no way to detect the exit from the diplomacy screen, but if there is then this could probably be done in BULL rather than BUG.

I'm currently testing a different approach which, if it worked, would make it unnecessary for BUG to implement this feature. The idea is to use the "Custom music folder" option and specify an empty folder, so that the games doesn't find the regular music tracks anymore, while it should hopefully still find the diplo music and play the videos with sound. However, so far I can't get the "Custom music folder" option to work at all. Either the folder I specify gets forgotten, or the game still plays regular music even though I specified a different folder. Am I missing something? Does the custom music folder need to have specific contents to work (in that case, "silent" tracks might work)? (Also, I'm playing the rather huge RoM/AND mod right now, so perhaps something in this mod broke that functionality.)

I would bet $5 that the Custom Music Folder feature adds whatever music it finds there to its own list, but of course I haven't tried it yet.

@GE - That might work but seems a little overkill if removing the original music files is an option. As for the diplomacy screen, the user responses below the leaderhead are added and IIRC tracked by the CvDiplomacy Python module. BUG creates events based on the user's responses, but I don't recall if Exit is caught in that file.

Boys,

Ever mindful of the wear and tear on the psyche of the average Civ player, Lemon Labs has been working feverishly on this very issue.

(Actually, you gave ame a great idea.)

I have found a way to accommodate your musical request with some crafty XML editing. The file CIV4EraInfos.XML has the names of the background music selections in it. I have set them all to <NONE>, thus removing the BG music, but leaving the diplo and movie music intact. Simply unzip this file:

View attachment CIV4EraInfos-LM.zip

Into your favorite mod's Assets\XML\Gameinfo folder, or into Custom Assets\XML\GameInfo, and enjoy!

Tres simple!