Sea Lanes

tchristensen

tchristensen

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I took the graphics that were used in the Final Frontier Mod and used them to create a series of "Sea Lanes" in my new Civ IV mod. With some minor tweaking, the modifications look very nice.

As a background story, the Sea Lanes is like a road used in the water to facilitate better ocean movement. They cannot be pillaged because it is meant to be more of a learned process (in the sense of having knowledge of the trade winds and environment). Ships basically can move twice as far as they normally would be able to.

Everything works well except I notice for some strange reason that all the towns have a Sea Lane emanating from their center outwards in the various core directions. These should not be here. For one thing, the technology nor the medium in creating the sea lanes are not present (you need to have specific tech and a specific boat to build). Second, the graphic should not be visible on land, yet often is.

I am wondering if anyone has any idea why this bug is showing up.

If it would help, I could post some pictures of the Sea Lanes to better explain what is happening.

Troy
 
Moderator Action: -> Thread moved.
Only finished files belong to in the subforums (besides Python/SDK), questions belong to the main forum.

@topic: No, hasn't been done as a component yet.
In Affores Rise Of Mankind modmod A new Dawn are water streets integrated, it's an SDK solution.
I have water streets in my mod, but it's a really dirty python/XML solution.
Don't know about anything else :dunno:.
 
tchristensen said:
I took the graphics that were used in the Final Frontier Mod and used them to create a series of "Sea Lanes" in my new Civ IV mod. With some minor tweaking, the modifications look very nice.
Click to expand...

I'd love to see the graphics. Its an idea I toyed with a while back, but no one had graphics for.

tchristensen said:
Everything works well except I notice for some strange reason that all the towns have a Sea Lane emanating from their center outwards in the various core directions. These should not be here. For one thing, the technology nor the medium in creating the sea lanes are not present (you need to have specific tech and a specific boat to build).
Click to expand...

That requires some SDK changes, but would be really easy to fix.
tchristensen said:
Second, the graphic should not be visible on land, yet often is.
Click to expand...

I guess I'd need to see graphics for that one. Is it being built on land?
 


This is my idea for Sea Lanes. I got the idea after playing the Final Frontier mod, with the thought of using the graphic of the warp lanes in a traditional Civ Mod.

In my soon to be released mod, Extreme, civilizations have access to the oceans much sooner than Astronomy. As civilizations developed, they began to plot the Trade Winds and chart the often dangerous waters of foreign coasts. With the advent of advanced Sea Lanes, trans-oceanic commerce developed.

While traveling on the Sea Lanes, movement is 1/2 a point.

I changed the graphic to non-animated, although it is easy to change to the pulsating lines of the Final Frontier mod.

The one problem I am having is if you look close at the town, you can see the blue line of the Sea Lane on the land. This occurs even early on in the game, before the technologies enabling the Sea Lanes.

I first thought it was based on some pre-existing Route tag, but I don't believe it is the case now. Anyone have ideas of why the graphic is appearing?
 
tchristensen said:
The one problem I am having is if you look close at the town, you can see the blue line of the Sea Lane on the land. This occurs even early on in the game, before the technologies enabling the Sea Lanes.

I first thought it was based on some pre-existing Route tag, but I don't believe it is the case now. Anyone have ideas of why the graphic is appearing?
Click to expand...

Yes; I already said I knew why. If you are up to digging into the SDK; and I don't mind helping you; you can fix it.
 
I know I actually tested the idea, briefly, out myself a long time ago, so I will be following this indeed.
If anyone ever makes any specific art for it, something along the lines of trade routes ala ETW, or perhaps faded arrows or dotted lines, would look appropriate I think.

Would there be any way to perhaps elaborate on this? Ie, basic sea lanes can be 'built' only from cities with lighthouses/harbours, while more developed ones, ('railroads') could be built from cities with harbours later on?
 
You offer several ideas that I would like to expound and further study.

At some point I would like to swap out the weird blue linking modules with floating buoys or perhaps bronze sextants/compasses.

I am also looking into if they should be pillageable? Part of me think that it would be a good idea, but realistically Sea Lanes are not a physical path/object. I guess you could explain the pillaging as the knowledge of "pirates" in the area and that those lanes are no longer safe -- not sure.

I like your idea that you can only link the lanes between certain structures. At present I have them being built with a new unit I called a Carrack, not to be confused with the UU of the same name. Also to be able to build you need access to Gold, Silver, Sugar, or Tobacco -- several of the commodities that inspired oceanic trade to the New World.

Troy
 
I would almost suggest having all oceanic trade shifted to these things, though it may be rather limiting.
In that way, piracy would just be represented, as normal, by blockades, and it could be much more realistic regarding historical blockades and what not.

I don't know what would build them (Perhaps any type of warship or merchant), but if they are used for all trade I think requiring resources on top of the buildings would be too much, but that is just me.
I was thinking you could have basic trade routes and more major ones later. Perhaps even coastal ones with sailing, basic with, maybe compass, and major ones with astronomy.
 
You struck a good nerve with me by suggestion primary and secondary Sea Lanes. You could color coordinate the lanes with Blue being Primary Sea Lanes and Grey being Secondary.

Have 1 ship type have the ability to plot the lanes and then restrict all other ships (until the advent of RADAR or SATELLITES) to using the Sea Lanes. Forcing all ships to use the lanes would then open up great potential for Pirates to ply the lanes for fat merchant ships.

Adding another Sea Route should not be hard, simple copying the XML and changing the artwork.

Something to look into -- thanks!

-Troy-
 
I wouldn't actually limit ships to the routes, but I certainly think speeding up movement on routes (and slowing it down off of them) would work, and be the best idea as it would encourage movement along them without restricting anything.
I think though, that requiring these routes for over water trade would be an interesting concept to pursue, though if it is viable or not I am not sure.
 
tchristensen said:
I am your padawan Afforess, lead me down the paths of the Farce!
Click to expand...

Okay, the first step is to successful compile a BTS dll, with no modifications. Once you can do that, we can move forward. The Modiki (on the top bar of CFC) has an excellent tutorial on how to get the SDK compiled for the first time. I highly recommend you use that.
 
After all this time, I am still trying to find a way to get rid of the sealanes from the City/Land tile graphics.

I wouldn't even mind finding away to switch the road graphic to another type of route -- road?

I have tried a bunch of XML changes to lessen the sea lane effect on land, but have not found anything I like yet.

Found some stuff in the SDK that mentions the routes/roads but does not appear to be connected in any way to Sea Lanes?
 
Afforess said:
Okay, the first step is to successful compile a BTS dll, with no modifications. Once you can do that, we can move forward. The Modiki (on the top bar of CFC) has an excellent tutorial on how to get the SDK compiled for the first time. I highly recommend you use that.
Click to expand...

Afforess, just a note, he has a compiled DLL from me with my source changes... you might want that from him as a starting point.
 
After months of fiddling with settings, I think I finally got rid of the annoying graphic bug of the Sea Lanes emanating from towns.

It seems that the issue stemmed from a series of routes having pre-requisites. After I changed this, the graphic bug has disappeared.

Still needs testing.

ExtremeMod version 3.0 is on its way and its going to be great!
 
I put sea lanes long time ago (I called it Charted Waters), and experienced somehow the same. the problem has a very simple solution. its the priority of the route that determines the route the city has. make the sealanes the lowest priority and that should fix it. However since two routes cannot have same priority you need to change the others, but since the route should be in water, it doesnt matter. The AI seemed to build it, but only to "connect" ocean resources. It did however look nice when they connected a far away island.


edit : Remembered wrong. I called it Chart Sealanes, and used a sunken fishingboat as I thought the FF lanes looked to hightech.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325820



Code: 
		<RouteInfo>
			<Type>ROUTE_TRACK</Type>
			<Description>TXT_KEY_ROUTE_TRACK</Description>
[B]			<iValue>1</iValue>
[/B]			<iAdvancedStartCost>5</iAdvancedStartCost>
			<iAdvancedStartCostIncrease>0</iAdvancedStartCostIncrease>
			<iMovement>150</iMovement>
			<iFlatMovement>150</iFlatMovement>
			<BonusType>NONE</BonusType>
			<PrereqOrBonuses/>
			<Yields>
				<iYield>0</iYield>
				<iYield>0</iYield>
				<iYield>1</iYield>
			</Yields>
			<TechMovementChanges/>
			<Button>Art/Interface/Buttons/Builds/Path.dds</Button>
		</RouteInfo>
 
I think there is a minimum roadsystem in cities in the Globaldefines so it will not go below that level. I saw it once (and since Im a regular visitor of globaldefines) it might be in another file. That should eleminate the lanes in cities for good. Havent tried it though, but when I saw it I thought about it might come in handy later.
 
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