Simultaneous Move in Multiplayer

[Thunderfall]

[copied from the <a href="http://www.civfanatics.com/">main page news</a>]

Simultaneous Move in Multiplayer?

I received an interesting email from Tony Toon yesterday. Here it is:

<ul>I don't know if this'd qualify as news or not but.. I got Test of Time today at Wal-Mart, and was playing it with a friend, when we quickly got upset that we couldn't play in simultaneous mode like in Civnet. Anyways, I got tinkering about in the .EXE file, and figured out that if you add "Simultaneous=1" to the CIV.INI in your \WINDOWS directory, it allows you to choose the humans move simultaneously option. It seems it was removed from the game officially, but it so far has worked fine. Dunno if it'd work in Civ2MPG or not, but it might, since they look to be based on the same engine. I don't know if this is common knowledge or not, but if it isn't, just give me credit or whatever. Hope this is helpful.[/list]
This is definitely not common knowledge... Give this method a try and let me know whether it works for you or not by posting to the multiplayer forum. Thanks Tony for this potentially important discovery. <IMG SRC="http://forums.civfanatics.com/ubb/goodwork.gif" border=0>

[This message has been edited by Thunderfall (edited December 15, 2000).]

[CornMaster]

Holy Crap. This could change the whole face of gaming.

But it would be interesting to try. Never thought about Simultaneous Movement in Civ 2. I play Birth of the Federation and I like the simultaneous movement because it's a time saver but I don't like it because I have to keep chasing around the Ferengi in they 4 warships with my group of 9 until they fly into their space and then sign a peace treaty!!!!! GRRRRRRRRR.............. Anyway I will be nice to try.

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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If LESS is MORE just imagine how much MORE, MORE would be!!!"
I AM CANADIAN!
CornEmpire Index
My Civ 2 Scenario Page.

[DeepThaw]

This is the guy who figured it out.. It seems to work okay, it pops up a lot of notices when you finish your turn about waiting for the other player to finish (Don't have to hit anything, even though it displays an "OK" dialog box) and it seems a slight bit flickery in animating everything, but we played a while with no problems. This was 56K TCP/IP on the same ISP, so lag wasn't much of an issue, I don't know what issues it might get with higher pings.

Figuring it out was pretty simple, I noticed it mentioned we were in turn based mode, and I assumed there was a simultaneous mode. Couldn't find it, so I went to hex-editing the executable, and noticed the "Simultaneous" variable in it, so I decided to just try setting it in the CIV.INI, and it worked. Saves a lot of time in-game, that's for sure. Have no clue if it breaks down later in the game with more units to handle. Who knows why they took official support for it out..

[woke25]

this could give the bribe masters a pretty tough time

[General Maximus]

holy crap, thats kewl!!

[CornMaster]

Holy **** it works!!!!! Now i just got to test it!!!!

Holy ****!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a screen shot of the option in action. (Civ 2 Gold)

<IMG SRC="http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/CornMaster/s-mp-civ2.jpg" border=0>

The civ.ini file has a habit of returning to "Simultaneous= " if you don't use the option everytime. This disables the option. I can whip up a program that will set the option back without having to edit the file. It anyone is interested.


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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If LESS is MORE just imagine how much MORE, MORE would be!!!"
I AM CANADIAN!
Civ 2 Ladder
My Civ 2 Scenario Page.

[This message has been edited by CornMaster (edited December 15, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by CornMaster (edited December 15, 2000).]

[mike]

Hey, Im interested CornMaster, I asked a few people in a game earlier why when you look at game opinions?? why it always says "turn based" (thinking civ has always been well "turn based") but Ill try it if you wanna give your program a bug test. Let me know ICQ #97384149, e-mail archangel_23452@yahoo.com

[CornMaster]

Originally posted by mike:
Hey, Im interested CornMaster, I asked a few people in a game earlier why when you look at game opinions?? why it always says "turn based" (thinking civ has always been well "turn based") but Ill try it if you wanna give your program a bug test. Let me know ICQ #97384149, e-mail archangel_23452@yahoo.com

I was working on the program before I left for work this morning. I was taking the wrong approach. But I know how to do it when I get home and it should take all of 5 minutes of finish. The worst thing is that Civ 2 will change the option back to nothing everytime you quit the game. So I'm going to add 2 extra options. One will launch Civ 2 after fixing the file. And the other will be to change the civ.ini file to read only. This will stop Civ 2 from writing to it and keep the option on all the time. But after a few clear tests......I'm not sure if there may be any long term effects. Of course what really sucks is that the user will have to have VB6 runtime files on their computer. If not, my 24 KB quick fix program will turn into a 1.45MB mega download. But it will still be the same program. But anyway. It's still really nice. I may even add a third option. But it will make the download a little bigger. We will see.



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"I'm too out of shape for a long fight so I'll have to kill you fast"
"If LESS is MORE just imagine how much MORE, MORE would be!!!"
I AM CANADIAN!
Civ 2 Ladder
My Civ 2 Scenario Page.

[DeepThaw]

I hope this doesn't turn out real crummy and be a big letdown for everybody, but if nothing else, it'll help get the painful early game over more quickly.

[SunTzu]

Corn get online tonight and we'll play simul movement game tonight!!!!

[drake]

Call me a party pooper, but I think I'll stick with the ol' turn based Civ that I've always loved.

Nice option for games that are strictly war based though.

[mike]

Cornmaster and I played earlier, no troubles at all. but afterwards I went to the game zone and it seems to be quite popular there already.

[Thunderfall]

Originally posted by mike:
Cornmaster and I played earlier, no troubles at all. but afterwards I went to the game zone and it seems to be quite popular there already.

Sounds great! We all should thank DeepThaw for this amazing discovery!

[damunzy]

Well, count me in as one of the players that like the Simultaneous move! Don't understand why you would want to play it any other way.

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-PaleHorse76-
All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged.

[Rizzles]

Its silly playing any other way.

[HIEROPHANT]

i played this way when someone hosted it has advantages and disavatages to it.

[Az]

Simultaneous Move in Multiplayer is great and interesting but I still prefer the good old way...

[FLQ.Storm]

I like Simultaneous but only with people using high internet speed heh!
The game gets laggy and the animations are weird with modems

[NetScApE]

Its nothing new i'll new it few months ago !
[try to think faster Pal]
Polish Civ maniacs are very advanced in this **** !

[xApple]

There is no "civ.ini" file with the Civilzation II Gold v1.11 for Mac OS 9. Can the simultaneous trick work for us too ? maybe it's the "rules.txt" we have to modify... ?