Planetfall

[Maniac]

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
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 is not a clone of SMAC using the Civ4 engine, but rather incorporates the Factions, general storyline and Characters combined with new 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.

[Maniac]

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 or 7-Zip to extract them.

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

A: Yes it is. Many of the tech and base facility quotes are used.

To enable the voice 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: Sorry to hear that. You may be able to purchase it here though. 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

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: Does Planetfall include a Unit Workshop?

A: No it doesn't, and it won't.

Q: Does Planetfall include elevation terraforming and planet busters creating big craters?

A: No, Planetfall does not include these features.

Q: Does 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.

[Maniac]

The following posts detail what you can do to help Planetfall if you want to.

Quick links:

Bug List
Gameplay Task List
Graphics Task List
Documentation
Discussion List

Bug and Gameplay Task List mostly outdated by now, but if you can help with SDK in general, do tell!

Task List For Those Without Any Modding Experience

The following stuff requires no special skills, or the how-to is fully explained:

* Make screenshots

Check this thread for which ones.

* Create buttons for all buildings and techs

The guide is here.

Bug List

Kinda outdated

Spoiler:

* Assert - cvunitai.cpp, line 16364, revision 623

Spoiler:

Due to the immobile fungal towers??

Assert Failed

File: g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvunitai.cpp
Line: 16364
Expression: false
Message:

Save:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...&postcount=164

* Assert when choosing a promotion which gives -1 moves

Spoiler:

In the up to date SDK files it's on line 10570.
In any case, this assert seems to be given needlessly. It's probably just that the game designers never expected someone to create a promotion which gives -1 movement points (the missile launcher in this case). However this promotion works just fine, and is causing no problems to the game.

Assert Failed

File:  g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvunit.cpp
Line:  10539
Expression:  getExtraMoves() >= 0
Message:

* Assert Failed - CvUnitAI.cpp, line 7119

Spoiler:

Assert Failed

File:  g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvunitai.cpp
Line:  7119
Expression:  canDefend()
Message:

* Assert - cvunitai.cpp, line 7121

Spoiler:

Assert Failed

File: g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvunitai.cpp
Line: 7121
Expression: getDomainType() == DOMAIN_LAND
Message:

Ellestar says: related to an Isle of the Deep somehow getting UNITAI_ATTACK.

Save:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...&postcount=275

* Assert Failed - CvUnitAI.cpp, line 16915

Spoiler:

Probably supply crawler-related

Assert Failed

File:  g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvunitai.cpp
Line:  16915
Expression:  false
Message:

* Assert Failed - cvcity.cpp, line 7974/7977

Spoiler:

Assert Failed

File:  g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvcity.cpp
Line:  7974
Expression:  ((iNewValue * 100) / 100) >= 0
Message:  ((iNewValue * 100) / 100) expected to be >= 0


Assert Failed

File:  g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\_pf bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvcity.cpp
Line:  7977
Expression:  getYieldRate(eIndex) >= 0
Message:

* Assert Failed - CvSelectionGroupAI.cpp, line 168

Spoiler:

Related to Spore Launcher? -- Ellestar IIRC
Edit: This one is not Planetfall-specific, but occurs in unmodded BtS as well.

Assert Failed

File:  g:\games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\mods\planetfall bts\tmp\sdk_bts\cvgamecoredll\cvselectiongroupai.cpp
Line:  168
Expression:  false
Message:

The attached save (link) is causing two of the "line 168" assert. Declare war on Morgan and click to end turn. I'm not sure, but it seems to be causing by Morgan capturing & razing one of my bases.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...&postcount=161

[Maniac]

SDK/Python/XML/Other Task List

* Create the Map of Planet

Spoiler:

Based on one of the maps found here. The first map looks the most promising, but some details were left out in the conversion. See the Mount of Planet area for instance. So the map needs to be retouched.

Only the land-ocean division needs to be done at the moment. I'd like to draw the rough lines for highlands and ridges myself, but hope that after that someone else with more of a map creation feel would be interesting in giving them a more natural look.

The attached map should be loaded in vanilla BtS. As long as no features and stuff are added, it can be easily converted to be Planetfall-compatible.

[Maniac]

Graphics Task List

* Help create recruitment posters for Planetfall!

See some examples and ideas in this thread.

* Flags for Angels, Drones, Pirates, Caretakers, Usurpers and Native Life/Barbarians

* New Textures and/or Models for the Believer cityset

Should explain more...

* Angel & Drone citysets

Should explain more...

* Improvement model of two smaller greenhouses

Spoiler:

Background:

The Algae resources are enabled by the Greenhouse improvement:

On the left you see the Greenhouse. On the right a White Algae resource.



The problem is the Algae resource is hardly visible anymore when placing a Greenhouse on it.



Therefore I'd like to create a seperate improvement for enabling Algae resources, with a different graphic. Namely two somewhat smaller greenhouses, one placed on each side of the algae resource.

* Supply Trawler unit model

A naval version of the Material Supplies unit. Could look like a transport foil with one of the cargo bays replaced by a burned unity landing pod as seen in the Material Supplies unit.

* Infantry unit models

No specific requirements here, as long as they look futuristic.
Currently there are a couple infantry models in Planetfall which don't fit IMO. The InVitro graphic comes foremost to mind. Also two flame/plasmathrower models for the Hyperian and Helion units would be useful.

* Sea Commune improvement model

Perhaps a retextured Sea Spawning Spot? Something like SMAC's Gaian sea base look?

* Sea Fungal "Tower" unit model

Spoiler:

The land model of the fungal tower looks kinda odd on water. A possible alternative: create a version without any stalk, with only the crown. And with the tentacles on the sides pointed more upwards, so they are not hanging into the water.

This is the old post for the fungal tower model:

As for possible animations, this may just be an wild dream, but I kinda imagined the fungal tower would have a couple tentacles attached to the sides of the top (as in Units.pcx) which would move randomly in the air while simply animated, and lash out at the target like a whip while being attacked or doing its ranged strike.

Other possibility (especially for a ranged attack animation) would be a little hole opening at the center of the top of the fungal tower, and a little orange cloud (see current spore launcher animations) - representing locusts - streaming out of it and doing an attack run on the target.

* Create buttons for all buildings and techs

The guide is here.

* Spartan HQ building model

Let's hope woodelf re-appears...

* Nif of a leafy tree

For use in the Believer cityset as a generic building

* Unity Observation Bay building model

Perhaps a slightly damaged disc as on the button for this project, together with a small side-building for control, and a windmill for energy.

* Battle Ogre unit model

Spoiler:

As per SMAC Battle Ogre Mk1.

* Spider unit model

Spoiler:

Something like the StarCraft Dragoon.

* Progenitor Scoutship unit model

Spoiler:

The Progenitor ship which appears in the SMAX intro movie and the Progenitor victory movie.

* Aircraft Carrier unit model

Spoiler:

A futuristic version though. I'm thinking it should be a submarine carrier. It would use mass drivers to launch aircraft. No strong idea myself on how it should look. This is an option:

* Sea Colony Pod unit model

Unfortunately the model currently in the game has no texture and has an excessive polygon count. A new model is needed.

* Drop Pod animation

Spoiler:

Something like the drop pods in Starship Troopers, or like this pic and video I found on Warhammer. (The interior shouldn't have any details of course.

The drop pod could land, open its pod doors and then fade away to be replaced by the unit that just dropped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf157ILqJQQ

* Empath Specialist button

Spoiler:

Button needed for the Empath



I'd suggest using the SMAC Empath graphic for Planetfall's similarly named specialist.

A big problem though which I'm not sure how to solve:

The SMAC source material is rectangle instead of square. This didn't cause a big problem for the other specialist button, as the SMAC source's background was black anyways (so could easily be turned transparent). But it does form a problem for the Empath. The background is an integral part of the button, and without adding stuff to the left and right, the hands would look cut off. Any method to create a good looking square button from the SMAC source material? If not, any other ideas for what the Empath button can look like?

* How to always make a building look centered in the city graphics

The Sea Base graphic should always be centered, even if other buildings like the Naval Yard are added.

* Fix or redo older models

Spoiler:

I have some bad news.

Since Lord Tirian told me how I can see how much triangles a model has, I had a look at how many polygons the graphics currently in Planetfall use. And I discovered a lot of the graphics have much more polygons than I'd expect from glancing at the wireframe of the model. This includes ALL of woodelf's graphics.

The cause of that is twofold:
1) Some models are made with TriStrips instead of TriShapes. A big no-no if the model gets to 1000+ polygons in complexity so I've been told.
2) Even when in TriShapes, these models have been made much too detailed than is necessary for Civ4. A lot could be done by improving the dds texture instead of having all those extra faces and triangles to the model.

The good news is that if these models were retouched or redone correctly, Planetfall would probably run much smoother, less lag when scrolling over the map etc. I realize fixing old stuff is probably much more boring than creating models for new stuff, but doing it would improve Planetfall a lot.

These are the things that stood out to me during my review of the files in the Pak0.fpk:

Some stuff I put between brackets because at first glance their # of triangles seems to match the model's complexity. But because they were made by the same author who made extremely high polygon models, I assume my first glance could be wrong, and their poly count could be significantly reduced as well.

Stuff from woodelf:

Buildings:

Alpha Prime
Assembly Hall
Sea Base/Pressure Dome
Sea Wall (currently found in the 'Pressure Dome' folder)

This list is not complete. There are a couple other simple buildings as well, with still a higher than expected poly count. But because the model is so simple the poly count still only is 100 or so. Eg the rec commons, rec tanks...

Citysets:

caretakers_cityset.nif
believers_cityset.nif

Units:

(Foil)
(Needlejet)
Rover (a model by keldath which uses woodelf's rover as base)
Unity Rover (in the 'Tank' folder)
Transport Foil
Unity Foil

Stuff from other creators, or the creators are unknown to me because GeoModder found the model

Buildings:

- Antimatter Reactor: Scene Viewer crashes when I try to open this one. Can someone tell me how much triangles this one has? (hold on - may remove this building)
- (Observation Bay)
- Skunkworks

Units

- Sea Colony Pod: The_Reckoning

No idea how the following should look like myself:

* Nif models, buttons and gamefont icons for the bonus resources which don't yet have any (precise list can be made if anyone is interested in doing this)
* Unit Model for the Ascetic
* Button for the Missionary unit
* Unit Models for Great Person units.
* Building models for the shrines of the Ascetic Virtues and Homo Superior religions

[Maniac]

Documentation

What do you guys want Documentation about?

[Maniac]

Discussion List

* How should the main screen look like?

* Terrain Improvement buttons

What should the Terrain Improvement buttons look like?

* Gold hurrying with Nanites

How does gold hurrying being enabled, instead of by some civics, by the Nanites technology sound? (Would require a new XML tag though)
Alternatively it could be enabled by a Nanoreplicator building enabled by the Nanites tech, but then I think enabling gold hurrying should only be a secondary effect of that building - so an idea for its most important effect would be needed.

[GeoModder]

Originally Posted by Maniac

* Gold hurrying with Nanites

How does gold hurrying being enabled, instead of by some civics, by the Nanites technology sound? (Would require a new XML tag though)
Alternatively it could be enabled by a Nanoreplicator building enabled by the Nanites tech, but then I think enabling gold hurrying should only be a secondary effect of that building - so an idea for its most important effect would be needed.

Well, IF certain buildings are required to construct certain stuff, a Nanoreplicator could abandon this approach and make the base be able to produce everything without the need of specific manufacturing facilities.
If this is not the case, an idea is that a Nanoreplicator disbands all previous mineral-enhancing facilities, or at least their negative effects (like for instance the extra drone from the GeneJack facility in SMAC.
A third option is that Nanites (which the Nanoreplicator provides so to speak) act as a sort of production decreaser like marble, stone and gold do for wonders in CIV.

Or a combination of the above of course.

[Panjandrum]

Originally Posted by Maniac

* Gold hurrying with Nanites

How does gold hurrying being enabled, instead of by some civics, by the Nanites technology sound? (Would require a new XML tag though)
Alternatively it could be enabled by a Nanoreplicator building enabled by the Nanites tech, but then I think enabling gold hurrying should only be a secondary effect of that building - so an idea for its most important effect would be needed.

I'd prefer the second option (enabled on a per-city basis by the Nanoreplicator), and I don't think the Nanoreplicator needs to have any other function to be worth building.

[onedreamer]

Superb, will test this weekend, I hope.

[TDGeorge]

Manic,
When i try to DL Planetfall and patch, I get a message on Rapidshare stating that the file has been deleted by the uploader. This certainly looks like a mod that could bring back the glory and fun of the Alpha Centauri series. I would be happy to test this for you as it progresses through production.
Cheers

[General_W]

Very Exciting! I'll try it out and pass on my thoughts!

Here's to the team that got it this far!

[General_W]

Hmm - I'm getting a "file deleted by uploader" error when I try to download.
Anyone else having that problem?
EDIT: looks like it's at least TDGeorge and me!

[mice]

Originally Posted by General_W

Hmm - I'm getting a "file deleted by uploader" error when I try to download.
Anyone else having that problem?
EDIT: looks like it's at least TDGeorge and me!

Me too. keen to try .

[Maniac]

WTF? Err, I'll hopefully have them reuploaded in a half hour or so. I guess I might have accidentally clicked the delete link while copy&pasting it into a file to remember the link.

Edit: does it work now?

[General_W]

It worked!

Took about 10 steps - and it's a slow download... but it works!

Any special instructions to install this mod?
And I assume I install the mod, and then patch it?

You'll have to excuse me, I mostly do PBEM – so this is the first Civ4 mod I'll have ever installed!

Thanks!

[General_W]

spoke a bit too soon - still getting the error on the patch file.

"Deleted by uploader"

But I DO have the Mod file

[Lord Tirian]

Originally Posted by GeoModder

A third option is that Nanites (which the Nanoreplicator provides so to speak) act as a sort of production decreaser like marble, stone and gold do for wonders in CIV.

Gut-reaction: Nanites could be a kind of "mineral replacement" - an universal resource allowing you to produce everything.

I one goes the "nanite as hurrying building" route, the main advantage could be repairing units faster - that would be very in line with the nano factory from the original game.

Originally Posted by Maniac

WTF? Err, I'll hopefully have them reuploaded in a half hour or so. I guess I might have accidentally clicked the delete link while copy&pasting it into a file to remember the link.

Edit: does it work now?

The reason was: The link for the patch in the first post included the delete code:
"http://rapidshare.com/files/72185546/Planetfall.exe?killcode=3003176066359522957"
Thus the first person who clicked that link has accidentally deleted the file - just to let you know what happened. I cannot wait to try this out!

Note: I haven't ever really touched the files of Civ4, so I know almost nothing about modding. But: If you could need a German translator... let me know. I own the original game in German, so I also have access to a genuine translation, helping me to keep the feel for newly introduced concepts/buildings/stuff.

Cheers, LT.

[TDGeorge]

Originally Posted by General_W

spoke a bit too soon - still getting the error on the patch file.

"Deleted by uploader"

But I DO have the Mod file

Same here. I was Finally able to DL the main file but not the patch .

TDG

[Maniac]

Originally Posted by General_W

Any special instructions to install this mod?

Just double-click the exe file and click Install, unless you want to install to a different folder.

And I assume I install the mod, and then patch it?

Woops forgot to tell. I made use of the occasion of reuploading the main mod to include the patch changes in the main file. So no patch needed for the moment.