Download Thread

Requires Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword patch 3.19

DOWNLOAD HERE - both the main file and the latest patch

Optional: the SMAC sound files and the SMAC movie files in four parts: #1, #2, #3 and #4 OR in one big download HERE.
See the FAQ in the next post on where to place them. THANKS to WarKirby for providing the sound files, and to sylandro for providing the movies.

***

Earth, 2060. A small group of colonists leaves the ravages of Earth for a distant planet orbiting Alpha Centauri's primary star. Their ship, the United Nations Starship Unity, carries them on their journey to a new world and a new hope for humankind. Along the way a reactor malfunction damages the Unity, precipitating a crisis among the ship's seven most powerful leaders. As they enter the Alpha Centauri system, the crew splits into seven distinct factions, divided not by nationality, but by ideology, and their vision for the new world. After the ship breaks apart, the seven leaders guide their chosen crew down to the surface of Planet, seeking their destiny beneath an alien sky.

Planetfall is a mod for Sid Meier's Civilization 4 that uses the storyline and characters from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, combined with gameplay that takes the best from SMAC, Civilization, and the modding community.

Planetfall will not be a clone of SMAC using the Civ4 engine, but rather will incorporate the Factions, general storyline and Characters combined with the newest gameplay modifications to allow for more strategic gameplay.

***

Design & Programming: Maniac
Graphics Lead: Lord Tirian
And many other contributors. See Readme.

Besides in this thread, you can also discuss Planetfall in this forum.



Moderator Action: Broken download updated - Blake00

Q: Planetfall crashes right away when I try to start the game. What's up?

A: There are two common causes that prevent people from getting Planetfall to work:

1) they don't have patch 3.19
2) when using Windows Vista, they haven't disabled User Account Control (UAC)


1) they don't have patch 3.19

There are many people who swear they have the latest official Firaxis patch 3.19, but then it turns out they haven't. A big reason is the automatic updater inside the game doesn't work correctly. If that's how you believe you got the latest patch, download the patch "again" from here and install it manually to be sure.

2) when using Windows Vista, they haven't disabled User Account Control (UAC)

"What is UAC and how do I disable it?"
This is answered here:
For Windows Vista
For Windows 7

Q: Where do I need to place and extract the BIK movie files I just downloaded?

A: You need to place them in Beyond the Sword/Mods/Planetfall v1x/Assets/Art/Movies. The files have been archived into .rar format, so you'll probably need WinRAR to extract them.

Q: Is it possible to hear the original SMAC voice quotes in Planetfall?

A: Yes it is, or at least some of the tech quotes are used. This will be expanded further into the future.

To enable the tech quotes, you should copy the SMAC fx and voices folder into the Planetfall Sounds folder, as indicated on the screenshot. If you do not do this, you'll just hear a 'ping' upon researching a technology.



Q: But I don't own SMAC, and I want to hear SMAC sounds!

A: You may be able to purchase it here. But do hurry. Good things never last.

Q: Are there recommended settings, when playing Planetfall?

A: Yes.

Map Size: Standard (bigger maps cause performance issues and are a lot less useful for me to hunt for bugs)
Era: Use Arrival for playing the original seven factions. You need to choose the Expansion Era to play the four SMAX factions.
Settings:

• Advanced start (the one which allows to purchase stuff): Not recommended, as no AI code has been added to make the AI consider a Hybrid strategy right from the start.
• No Barbarians Not recommended, as it disables a key element of the mod.
• Raging Barbarians Only recommended, if an extra challenge is desired.
• Unrestricted leaders Not recommended as leaders and their factions are designed as a complete package.
• Choose religions Not recommended - PF's religions carry special effects and have their fitting place in the tech tree; also causes interface issues.
• No technology trading Not Recommended - interferes with the following, default setting.
• No technology brokering Should be activated, because Zakharovs trait depends partly on this setting.
• Scattered landing pods Can be activated to enhance AI performance in exchange for less early conflicts, but the mod is desiged for having this disabled.

Q: How can I best help playtest for bugs and crashes?

Often the source of a crash happens a couple turns before the game actually crashes. So only posting the turn the game crashes sometimes is not enough. May I therefore ask to open CivilizationIV.ini - which with me is located in My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword - and change to the following values:

; The maximum number of autosaves kept in the directory before being deleted.
MaxAutoSaves = 150

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 1

Click to expand...

Having MaxAutoSaves at 20 or so should also suffice.

If you suffer a crash, please immediately copy all your autosaves - located with me in My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single\auto - into some other folder, before you start a new game (because starting a new game deletes all autosaves). I may request to send me the latest couple autosaves if I can't find the problem in the turn of the crash itself.

Q: Help! I can't see any fungus on land!

A: Your computer probably has an older graphics card. Fortunately there's a solution to make all features visible. It won't look as pretty, but at least you'll be able to see where there's fungus.

The solution is like this. In Planetfall\Assets\XML\Art there's a file called CIV4ArtDefines_FeatureLoGfx.xml - rename it to CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml, overwriting the file currently named like that, and problem solved.

Q: Will Planetfall include a Unit Workshop?

A: No it won't.

Q: Will Planetfall include elevation terraforming and planet buster creating big craters?

A: No, Planetfall will not include these features.

Q: Will Planetfall include Blind Research?

A: Personally I feel picking your tech strategy is one of the biggest decisions you make in a civ game. I therefore do not see the attraction in Blind Research at all, and do not wish to spend any time on coding that myself. If someone else would code a Blind Research system, I would of course add it to Planetfall.

Barring that, you could just follow the recommendations you are given when you need to pick a new tech: there are always two techs recommended.

New version uploaded.

HI Mania, can you point us to a place where we can see whats changed in the update?

I haven't really been keeping up a fluently written changelog until now. I figured since we are still adding whole new features and sometimes redesigning a whole aspect, and not making minor tweaks, a changelog of every minor thing changed might not have much point.

Here are my own personal notes for the current patch a though:



If you want, I could starting writing in full sentences from now on.

Patch b for Planetfall version 3 is ready. Download link:

http://planetfall.apolyton.net/Planetfall_v3b.exe

Version 3 Patch b:

1. Chopping Forests only provides 10 minerals.
2. Forest can be planted.
3. Gold and Silver can be connected to the trade network.
4. It's possible to trade over Coast and Ocean with Doctrine: Initiative and Ocean Colonization.
5. Fort provides 3 nutrients. Let's assume it comes coupled with a Greenhouse to survive long sieges. Build time increased to ten turns.
6. Archeological Dig and Genetics Lab removed. The Field Lab can now connect Monoliths, Artifacts, Rare DNA and Uranium to the trade network provided the required TechCityTrade is researched.
7. Planet Buster added - just a nuke with a bigger effect.
8. ECM, Nanometal Armour and Photon Wall special abilities added which provide a +25% combat bonus against respectively Missile, Kinetic and Beam weapons.
9. Silksteel Armour special ability added which heals the unit 10% per turn.
10. Wild native life gets a combat bonus equal to 50% of the Flowering Counter.
11. Flanking promotions re-added.
12. Unity Foil now only has two movement points and one cargo space.
13. Activated previously made unit models (which I didn't know yet how to do when they were made). Updated former and CP graphics.
14. New DLL, enabling stuff mentioned above. Haven't got a complete overview.

That link doesn't seem to work.

Yeah I know. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon. In the meanwhile you can use this link for patch d:

http://rapidshare.com/files/95763987/Planetfall_v3d.exe.html

Nice work Maniac,

Please let us know if you need help. Create a good to do list. and people will adopt various items.

Keep up the great work.

The mod could very much use:

• SDKers
• a graphics coordinator who understands how Afterworld unit graphics work
• a mapscripter

A list of stuff that can be done is in the first posts of the Planetfall thread in the Civ4 - Modpacks forum.

I made a freewebs if we want to put things on there one day.

login is planetfall

password is reckoning181

http://www.freewebs.com/planetfall/

I hooked it up to http://www.planetfall.tk/ too.

Do whatever with it, it might be a nice place to keep a link library alongside the forum, if nothing else.

There's planetfall.apolyton.net

Do you know how to make websites?

I have no idea

I have only ever made websites using free stuff like that, where all the coding is done behind-the-scenes, and you just choose things using a simple interface.

Can just makes something on freewebs and then copy the code.

I can make a website for planetfall.apolyton.net. It's one of the things I do in RL. Who defined that area, is there a pw (pm it to me), and can you point me to docs for apolyton specific requirements and languages permitted etc. Also, you will have to tell me what features you would want implemented.

Wodan

Planetfall v4


1. Perimeter Defense and Tachyon Field give +1 culture.
2. Automatic morale promotions scrapped again. Can be gotten through XP. Most promotions give +10% psi strength.
3. Faction leaders given a favourite civic.
4. Can't run the Terraformed Ecology civic under the Voice of Planet religion.
5. Under the Hybrid Ecology civic, Biology Labs are not required to produce native life units.
6. Great Doctor starts with Medic I & II promotions.
7. Organic Fuels allows irrigation to spread.
8. Environmental Economics increases minerals from chopping.
9. Bioadaptive Resonance increases Greenhouse yield with +1 energy instead of +1 nutrient.
10. Police State enabled by Factionalism.
11. Cooperative Economy civic removed. Autarky now reduces distance maintenance and is enabled by Environmental Economics.
12. New Values Civic added: Empathy.
13. Religious victory added.
14. Nuclear Missile removed.
15. Hive starts with Ultraponics instead of Defense Logistics.
16. Spore Launcher and Fungal Tower now should do ranged strikes.
17. Two soundtracks by The_Reckoning added.
18. Civic buttons by Rubin added.
19. Choppers and gravships can't capture bases.
20. Chopper can't reveal map.
21. Ascetic Virtues religion added.
22. Changes to naval unit movement speed.
23. Navigation promotions re-added.
24. Aerospace Complex increases Fort yield.
25. Planetary Council added.
26. Gatling Laser now strength 4.
27. Tech tree changes
28. Tech costs increased.

20. Chopper can't reveal map.

What does this exactly mean?

Well, yay for v4 anyway.

The Beard said:

20. Chopper can't reveal map.

What does this exactly mean?

Click to expand...

Choppers can't explore unexplored territory. Like spies.

A Chopper from a unity pod is a way too good explorer otherwise. Choppers have a balanced movement speed when comparing them to units moving over a road network. But choppers moving in the wilderness are just too fast IMO. Personally I'd prefer choppers to act something like in SMAC: they don't need to end their turn in a base, but neither can they stray too far - they still need to refuel sometimes. Unfortunately this is impossible in Civ4. An approximate Civ4 translation could be to let choppers move in friendly and enemy territory, but not in neutral (without any culture) territory. Or at least move at half speed in neutral territory. Unfortunately this isn't possible either. But at least for now they can be prevented from being overpowered explorers.

Ah, okay, that is a good change. This will also minimize the hilarious defeats of all of my foes nearly simultaneously with the gatling laser promotion to the chopper.

I'll reduce chopper movement to three, but give a free +2 moves bonus with Nanominiaturization.

Maniac said:

Personally I'd prefer choppers to act something like in SMAC: they don't need to end their turn in a base, but neither can they stray too far - they still need to refuel sometimes.

Click to expand...

Okay, registered to ask...

Any reason not to use this?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=269430

Okay, he said it's not fully implemented for flying units, but that seems a minor issue that can be fixed with a bit of coding.

...if the issue is "no one cares to", well, give me a month or so to be finished with thesis work and whatnot and I can probably do it myself. Seeing as the screenshot of the Planetfall terrain is pretty much what finally motivated me to pick up Civ4...