GRAPHICS: see through fog of war mod

short history of this mod
i and my brother found out that the civilization 3 engine has the entire map visible, it only draws the black squares from fogofwar.pcx over the map, so if you make the black a little less black (dark grey) then you can see the entire map from the beginning.

you can only see the raw terrain. the game still thinks that you don't see the area and treats you that way. try the right click terrain info and it will give you a black square, also the minimap will show the unexplored area as black. the only thing you will see which you shouldn't see are the cultural borders of every civilization in the world (but not in the minimap, only in the big map).

i will leave it to you to decide wether you see this as a cheat or not. when i start playing a map i will first explore the island or at least the nearby area (if big island) with my settler and worker. then i save that as a map save and load the original save to play with well planed cities. so i know the map and the starting positions of other civilizations anyway. this mod is just a shortcut...

all credits go to my brother (StormLogix) who made the edit using photopaint. i just assisted and posted in this forum because he is too lazy to create an account. ^_^;

before


after


i attached the zip. hope it sticks ^_^

i guess the ai is using this mod aswell

nice work though!

I hope everyone realises this mod it not allowed for the GOTM...

Anyway, nice indeed!

Uju... good work looks pretty good for the cheaters!

Thanks, this will be really useful. Many times (especially on harder levels) I retire just to get a look at the world map to see if I have a decent chance of expansion. This will save me from having to do that.

I'm finding this really useful for testing Mods.

Cheers.

I enjoyed this "preview"-mod in Civ3, but after installing PTW it doesn't work anymore.

Has Firaxis the FoW hardcoded in PTW?

Any idea??

KeeP CooL & FooL

Maverick


PS: The "C-through-FoW" still works in Civ3 but not in PTW!

Yes, Firaxis hardcoded this in PTW to keep people from cheating in MP games.

I discovered and posted this a LONG time ago on my cheat thread.
However, you can see the entrie map by just removing the Fogofwar.pcx altogether (rename, delete, or move to another folder), without having to get complicated with photoshop.
I wanted to mail this to the cheat section but I didn't know how. Now I do so I think I will send Thunderfall the idea.

I'm still playing 1.29 and this "mod" causes my game to immediately crash. Well, not immediately but as soon as I hit any F-keys or try to look inside of any of my cities.

So for me this is totally useless - plus it's definitely a cheat.

It sucks big style that this was hardcoded for PTW, makes modern scenarios next to impossible.

Kentonio

Originally posted by Kentonio
It sucks big style that this was hardcoded for PTW, makes modern scenarios next to impossible.

Click to expand...

This mod would have been an imperfect solution for that as well since the mini-map was not affected. What scenario makers really need is a darned "known map" checkbox like civ2 had. But I suppose editor gripes are off-topic in this thread

It was never a perfect solution but it beat the hell out of no solution at all. I agree though about the check box thing. Lets hope it gets added sooner rather than later.

Kentonio

Build outposts in the editor. Put them at strategic location.

We went over this at Poly though Warpstorm, it doesnt work when I do it, you end up with the minimap full of white dots and although the outposts DO disappear they leave many areas fully lit rather than fogged.

Kentonio

Not to mention you can only realistically do it for 1 of the civs due to the VAST number of outposts needed.

Obviously, Firaxis should allow the scenario creator to 'paint' int eh exposed areas in the editor. Unfortunately, unless there is another expansion coming out I don't see that happening.

Though this destroys the point of "exploring" though??? But if you "dont" like exploring then I guess this is good for you...

The diea was that its for scenarios and mods where you SHOULD see everything, otherwise you get situations like WW2 scenarios where the player doesnt see anything outside their own borders.

cool but i agree that it was abolished in ptw and c3c because of cheating in mp games