Palace and Throne Room

Version 1, first beta release! Version 2, still beta but hopefully pretty darn solid by now.

Version 3, PALACE!

Brings back the throne room from Civ II and the palace from Civ I.

Available under diplo menu.

Tested and works with BNW. Should also work in G&K and Vanilla. Let me know if you encounter any issues.

Steam download: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108480475

Original discussion thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=480274

Wow. Looks great. I miss immersion aspects like this that for some reason were cut.

Will try.

hmm. Does this work with G&K? It don`t seem to.

Yeah, it should work just fine with G&K.

It does NOT appear to be working in Vanilla, though - you get the option in the diplo menu, but you never get the upgrades. EDIT: I did get upgrades eventually, I just got really unlucky at the start and didn't get any from the first four policies.

I`ll try a new game then.

Hey Alexwebb2,

I've done some relatively extensive testing and have a few bugs and possible corrections for you.

Firstly though, what do you mean by 'diplo menu' because I've looked in all the diplomacy related menu things I can think of and the only place I see it is in the 'Additional Information' tab under Tech Tree and above Victory conditions.
Is it meant to be displaying elsewhere?

Secondly, you talked about moving onto the Palace from Civ 1, I was under the impression you were talking about the Civ 3 palace in the other thread (I might just comment in there instead as it seems a better place) - I think the Civ 3 palace would be more popular and just better in general, I think Civ 1 is a bit too far back for a lot of players

The Bug(s)
1. The main bug and probably the only true 'bug' is that the order of upgrades seems messed up and the mousing over them reveals uncertain results.

Basically, and this might be better explained with screenshots that I can provide if you want - when you mouse over say, the Throne itself (the rock thing at the start), it becomes the next upgrade, the chair. However should you click that, exit and come back in on that turn, it often appeared as something else, say the next upgrade along. A few turns on it is either still that 'level 3' throne instead of level 2 or it is now the level 2 chair.

Also when hovering over some objects at the start (the first time you enter the throne room) they simply appear black, to be nothing at all. You click them to upgrade and they still appear black. Exit the screen and come back in, it now shows as it should, or again, shows as a different level upgrade.

To complicate matters with this bug, and I'll try and simplify it since I'm not using screenshots right now: sometimes something leveled up reverts back to what it probably should have been if another aspect of the throne room is changed.

So for example:
I change the floor to lvl 2 (it turns black, exit menu, come back in, its now lvl 3)
I change the walls to lvl 2 (they appear as lvl 3 when moused over, clicked, exit out, back in, they now appear as lvl 2)
Move on a few turns: the throne and walls are now both lvl 2
Change the drapes to lvl 2 (now it just gets weird, some things moused over are either dark or lvl 3 or lvl 2, upon clicking it, it either changes the wall and throne back to lvl 3 or does it correctly.

That is the general idea of the bug, I'll post up screenshots if that'd be more helpful, after all I'm trying to help you debug it, not make it worse with misleading or confusing reports.

Potential Corrections/Improvements
1. The 'notification icon' for the throne room upgrade should be clickable, and upon being clicked, move you into the throne room window. Right now, clicking the notification does nothing - this would help it fit in more with the current notification setup.
2. 'Lock' the throne room screen, so that any keys/buttons pressed don't do anything to the game behind it. Currently if you press 'Enter' on the throne room screen it goes to the next turn (if at the end of your turn). At the same time, add in that the ESC key and ENTER key both exit the window. This would bring it in line with the current setup used by the game.
3. Make the Upgrade mandatory. You know how if you have a free tech to select or something to construct the 'Next Turn' button turns into a different colour and prompts you for that action? This would be perfect here for a couple of reasons; it looks better, plain and simple; it removes any confusion of 'stacked' upgrades, did I miss an upgrade? That kind of thing. It also reminds you to look at your shiney Throne Room.
4. New Icon Art for the notification Icon, I suggest black background, yellowish foreground, keeping it somewhat in line with the other icons of that ilk like Golden Age, Faith and so on. I'm probably willing to make said Icon if you'd like to be doing something else, depends on how much time I have and if you want the help etc.
5. Different sound for the notification, maybe the 'New Era' sound effect triggered when moving from one Era to the next. It's a nice dramatic sound, but not very common and so won't confuse players too much.
6. The icon at the top of the throne room is the US symbol, maybe best to pick something less Civ-specific, if you or I or whoever makes a throne room notification icon, this would do nicely. In the mean time I'd use something else just generic.
7. I would change the sound effect for clicking on an upgrade, make it sound more 'final' or dramatic or polished etc - I would use the 'buy plot' or 'buy unit/building' sound. It isn't clear at first you've 'purchased' the upgrade, it makes a very neutral clicking sound and that's it. Either that, or allow the person to click on the upgrade, see the throne room as it would look (no upgrades flashing on and off etc) and have a 'Confirm Upgrade' button on the lower right of the window opposite the 'back' button that makes the 'buy thing' sound and confirms your upgrade. I know it sounds like nitpicking it's just my opinion.

That's everything, I know it was only a beta release so I'm sure you didn't have time to implement everything you might have done for polish etc but I wanted to get my view in there first just in case you liked any of the ideas or wanted any help etc.

Other than that I enjoyed it, the suspense over 'potential' upgrades is very good. I don't know if you weighted them more in favour of likely upgrades with some things rather than others but if not I think Golden Ages and Era changes should have the most likelihood with Wonders next most likely, and lastly Social Policies.

You've implemented it really well, it looks very classy and generally fits in with the rest of the game seamlesslly. I like where you've placed it in the menu I think. Good work, I'd fix this stuff though before moving onto the Palace too much, and hey I hope it is the Civ 3 palace! Or at the least the Civ 3 palace could also be done

Anyway, hope the feedback helps.
-Mars

Wow, that's a lot of really good feedback. That's actually very valuable, so thanks! As for the individual issues/ideas, here goes:

• [DONE] I'm referring to the Throne Room option in the scroll-button menu in the upper right - in the code, it's called the "diplo corner menu", and I guess I just forgot that other people wouldn't know what the heck that was.
• People don't actually seem to remember the Civ III palace too fondly. Obviously it was graphically superior to all of the others, but I've seen quite a few people here say that they just disabled it altogether because they found it annoying. I'm not discounting the possibility of doing it, but I've already started on the Civ I palace, so maybe I'll revisit the one from III after that's done.
• [DONE] Are you double-clicking the objects? That was my first instinct when you said it was jumping up two levels, and a quick test in the game shows that it does in fact allow you to do that - spend the same upgrade point twice if you double-click.
• As for the black images, that sounds like an issue with insufficient memory. I've never seen that on my end, but that's what I'd expect to happen if the game was struggling to load the assets.
• The notifications definitely need a little bit more love. It's functional right now, but I'd certainly prefer a dedicated icon (I'm stealing the Golden Age icon right now) and for it to be clickable, but it's not really immediately obvious how to accomplish that. I know whoward69 has done a lot of work on the notification system, so pinging him for input on that is definitely on my list. If you're up for designing a new icon, I certainly wouldn't object - my first thought is some sort of stylized throne.
• [DONE] Agree that enter/esc should close the window.
• I specifically made upgrades optional because I didn't want it to get annoying. The upgrades do save up (the number is displayed in the window title, so long as it's not zero), so if you miss one you'll just have two the next time you open it up.
• I'm not sure how to do custom button sounds. Right now, it just uses the standard button click sound.
• [DONE] The code for the top icon was lifted wholesale from somewhere else in the code, and I never noticed it was the US symbol - I just assumed it was civ-dependent. Weird.
• [DONE] Changing the upgrade sound (even though I don't know how to do it yet) would probably be easier than putting in a confirmation button, so I'll explore that.
• [DONE] Everything's weighted equally for now, with the intention of tweaking it after more playtesting. I do think I'd like to weigh it more heavily for golden ages and eras, though.

Been playing a bit (worked with a new game). It`s a nice addition. Working ok so far for a beta.

1. I got no black screen at all. It was all perfectly presented.
2. The choices seemed ok to me and reminds me of the old Civ. So far I`ve chosen a better throne (than just a rock-lol) and better looking walls.
3. I like the fact that the throne room is Optional. A very good idea. One makes it when he has time and things have settled. I often make up my throne room when I feel I`ve deserved it.

Suggestions:

1. I`d love a larger screen, one that fills the while view.
2. Many more throne room variations would be nice. Extra curtains, walls-type, types of thrones and even sexy lady statues like the Romans and Egyptians have, etc, etc. Perhaps even the ability to have a very modern `Whitehouse` optional throne room`.
3. Regal music to accompany the throne room would also be nice.
4. Paintings on walls, from ancient to Renaiissance to modern. maybe even the ability to put own pictures in frames?
5. Flag choices depending on Civ hanging down? Is it possible.

I know I ask a lot, but these are just ideas. Your palace idea sounds good too.

Well done keep at it and thanks for allowing it to be downloadable from fanatics.

Socratatus said:

Been playing a bit (worked with a new game). It`s a nice addition. Working ok so far for a beta.

1. I got no black screen at all. It was all perfectly presented.
2. The choices seemed ok to me and reminds me of the old Civ. So far I`ve chosen a better throne (than just a rock-lol) and better looking walls.
3. I like the fact that the throne room is Optional. A very good idea. One makes it when he has time and things have settled. I often make up my throne room when I feel I`ve deserved it.

Suggestions:

1. I`d love a larger screen, one that fills the while view.
2. Many more throne room variations would be nice. Extra curtains, walls-type, types of thrones and even sexy lady statues like the Romans and Egyptians have, etc, etc. Perhaps even the ability to have a very modern `Whitehouse` optional throne room`.
3. Regal music to accompany the throne room would also be nice.
4. Paintings on walls, from ancient to Renaiissance to modern. maybe even the ability to put own pictures in frames?
5. Flag choices depending on Civ hanging down? Is it possible.

I know I ask a lot, but these are just ideas. Your palace idea sounds good too.

Well done keep at it and thanks for allowing it to be downloadable from fanatics.

Click to expand...

Glad to hear you're having fun with it!

It's pretty much exactly ported from Civ II. I figured that'd be the first step, but I did specifically code it to be easily extensible in terms of new graphics - you could quite easily drop in new levels to give it, say, 10 floors instead of the 3 or 4 that are in there. Same goes for having the flag be civ-dependent, which would be absolutely awesome, but would require a graphics guru to really go to town on it (and that is most certainly not my area of expertise!).

I like the music idea, I'll have to play around with that and see what's possible.

Wow, this has gotten a really awesome response so far. Up for a day and a half and it has nearly 500 downloads and is in the #2 spot!

After digging around a bit, it seems like at least two things are NOT possible:

• Playing a certain track only while the popup window is up
• Showing the popup when the notification is clicked (this is in the DLL)

Ah well. At least you know what`s not possible. That`s actually a plus.

Now on to the possible stuff!

Hey Alexwebb2,

Back with more reports etc, and you deserve the good response, credit where credit is due, it's a great mod.

So I'm not double-clicking btw, simple hover over, click once and back out. On the other hand I can't swear to it and will test it again, I might have clicked elsewhere on the image though so I'll double check that. If it is double clicking is there a way you can stop that? Might confuse some people plus it'd defeat the point if people figure it out

The black bits might be just my screen being very high-contrast and dark. So I'll double check that, especially if no one else is getting the error. My system is a beastie and she can handle almost anything I throw at her so probably isn't a lack of memory but who knows? I'll check.

I'll work on an icon, if you don't like it you can just make and use your own Funnily enough I also thought of a stylized throne funnily enough, resembling that of the current game upgrade/notification icons, that golden-ish colour on black background. I'll have a crack send you the image and you can decide what you think, I think the image size for a notification is 80x80.

Well if you can't figure out the button-click sound, that might be all the better for a 'Confirm Upgrade' button but it might actually just require too much work (since it'd require a 'frozen image' of the 'new' throne room and the confirmation etc) for the result and some people don't like confirm buttons. Perhaps just a 'Done' button would do, I just don't like clicking 'back' after I've finalized something lol, so maybe that's just me. Certainly something like a 'buy plot/unit/building' sound would be great though if you could do it, again just my opinion.

Other notes: I'm agreeing now about it not being mandatory for sure, I didn't notice the upgrade counter. I agree it feels nice to 'treat yourself' and upgrade the throne room at your convenience.


As for other user suggestions...
As for 'whitehouse' type upgrades for eras it wouldn't really work for a couple of reasons but the main one being that you'd look daft having a modern building in say the renaissance era or a ancient one if the modern - if the style of the palace is updated automatically to fit, then you'd only get a couple of upgrades before your whole place is abolished and rebuilt for the new era. The only solution would be to have multiple upgrades (say stages 1 to 4) for each era, but you work your way up a 'universal' upgrade system. So if you are on stage 3 of the floor in the Renaissance Era Throne Room, and it changes to the Industrial Era, you start off with the Stage 3 floor in the Industrial Throne Room. But that's for another day and personally, I like it is as it is! I think the era specific throne rooms would require a HUGE amount of graphical work especially to make it look up to quality.

I don't know about music for the throne room as you might 'hop in and hop out' and starting it up and ending it all the time might be annoying or conflict with Civ current music. Plus don't you need dlls to edit that and that would ruin compatibility. If it can be gotten from the game then something very royal sounding would be good. Just read what you wrote about it not being possible, so that's that then.

Also as for 'our own pictures' in frames as suggested by Socratatus I think that'd be either impossible or impractical - plus I'm not sure of the point of it? I think putting our own pics in wouldn't quite look right, and again not sure how that'd work in game. But famous hanging artwork sure sound interesting but again currently it looks good to me.

Flags specific to their Civs would indeed be good. Would just have to be implemented artwise. Good to hear you made it nice and easily editable if that's a word.

Glad to hear it was helpful feedback, I'll try and confirm a few of the bugs etc, and get back to you on an icon.

-Mars

EDIT: Shame about the notification clicking to bring up window thing, but it's not worth a DLL compatibility issue for etc. Glad you checked it out though.

To clarify - doing a custom sound when a feature is upgraded is indeed possible (it's done, actually - I'm using the gong sound, so no more out-of-place click noise).

My understanding of having custom portraits was that it would be the *leader* of that civ. So if you're playing as Washington, you get a portrait of Washington. That would go well with the custom flag. Again, that's just something that an artist would have to draw up the images for, because if I do it then it'll look hacked together.

Also, when I get a little deeper into the palace implementation, I'll obviously have to include a method for choosing between the various flavors of a given upgrade (classical, European, eastern). I'll probably do this via scrolling the mouse wheel while you're hovering over something. That would also apply to the throne room, which opens up the possibility of having multiple flavors of each upgrade level - for example, default flag vs. civ flag, default portrait vs. civ portrait, various colors of walls/floors/columns, different types of statues, etc.

I'm hoping to get it to the point that somebody who's considerably more talented than I am with graphics could just take it and run with it, and would only have to make minimal changes to the code (just adding filenames to a list, essentially).

Great mod idea, the game need just this kind of immersive mods.

And now, is there only me, or anyone else is thinking of custom 2D scene for the diploscreen ?

Just released the second version on Steam and updated the first post here with the zip.

Gedemon said:

Great mod idea, the game need just this kind of immersive mods.

And now, is there only me, or anyone else is thinking of custom 2D scene for the diploscreen ?

Click to expand...

Like what?

like locations/leaders changing with eras.

TheManFromMars said:

So I'm not double-clicking btw, simple hover over, click once and back out. On the other hand I can't swear to it and will test it again, I might have clicked elsewhere on the image though so I'll double check that. If it is double clicking is there a way you can stop that? Might confuse some people plus it'd defeat the point if people figure it out

Click to expand...

I figured out what this was, by the way (at least, I think I did, and I can't get it to happen anymore). Had to do with the way the local data was being repopulated when the window was closed and opened, and with the scene not being reset often enough. So, it probably wasn't caused by double-clicking at all, but that was one way to force the issue.

Gedemon said:

like locations/leaders changing with eras.

Click to expand...

Yeah that'd be cool. I have no idea how those backgrounds are set up though.

Hopefully somebody at Firaxis will look at some of these ideas, and at the kind of response that this mod is getting, and will think twice before cutting out the immersive aspects of the next game.

EDIT: That's not exactly fair - I don't mean to suggest that the game isn't immersive, because of course it is - but my point is just that they could make a lot of veteran players happier by NOT cutting out the things they loved about past games, when those things aren't intended as a future revenue source via expansions or DLC.

TheManFromMars said:

Hey Alexwebb2,




As for other user suggestions...
As for 'whitehouse' type upgrades for eras it wouldn't really work for a couple of reasons but the main one being that you'd look daft having a modern building in say the renaissance era or a ancient one if the modern - if the style of the palace is updated automatically to fit, then you'd only get a couple of upgrades before your whole place is abolished and rebuilt for the new era. The only solution would be to have multiple upgrades (say stages 1 to 4) for each era, but you work your way up a 'universal' upgrade system. So if you are on stage 3 of the floor in the Renaissance Era Throne Room, and it changes to the Industrial Era, you start off with the Stage 3 floor in the Industrial Throne Room. But that's for another day and personally, I like it is as it is! I think the era specific throne rooms would require a HUGE amount of graphical work especially to make it look up to quality.

Click to expand...

I was thinking it could be an era optional add on. When you reach the Renaissance or modern era, the more modern achitecture becomes available. I guess I should have said that.

TheManFromMars said:

Also as for 'our own pictures' in frames as suggested by Socratatus I think that'd be either impossible or impractical - plus I'm not sure of the point of it? I think putting our own pics in wouldn't quite look right, and again not sure how that'd work in game. But famous hanging artwork sure sound interesting but again currently it looks good to me.

Click to expand...

Depends on the pictures and of course choosing the right scale which would be up to the user. A few games allow this kind of thing and it is only taste that defines the point of it, as does all art. Most rulers and Monarchs love to have and collect personal works of Art to stick up.

As for the possibility, well it`s a suggestion. I`ve seen a lot done with Civs and mods.

I`m an artist myself, but have no idea how to implement stuff in PC Modding.
p.s. thanks for the update, alexwebb2. Keep up the multiple plans for the mods.