C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 17

[Erlend Philip Wood]

Am I interpreting this correctly... If so, isn't your Red Light the same as the unit being greyed out right now?

Yes, you are correct Chalito. In fact, the differences between my original traffic light model and Civinator's proposal are not that great. We both agree on green for units that can attack (and the blue for fighters of course). The only 2 differences is that I reserved my red lamp for units that are "completely out of action" because they have spent their entire move, and instead assigned yellow to units that can move, thereby completing the green/yellow/red sequence of a traffic light.

EPW traffic light:
Red = Cannot move, and cannot attack.
Yellow = Cannot attack, but can move.
Green = Can attack, and thus can also move.

Civinator simplified traffic light:
No icon = Cannot move, and cannot attack.
Red = Cannot attack, but can move (since it would be in the first category if it could not move).
Green = Can attack, and thus can also move.

Flintlock white & red LED:
Dark = Cannot move, and cannot attack.
White (dimmed) = Some movement, cannot attack.
White = Full movement, cannot attack.
Red (dimmed) = Some movement, can attack.
Red = Full movement, can attack.

Flintlock movement LED with sword:
Red = No movement.
Yellow = Some movement.
Green = Full movement.
Sword (with any color) = Can attack.

 

[SG52]

What about also adding unit special abilities (Wheeled, Foot Unit, Blitz, ATAR, IMC: Hills, IMC: Mountains, IMC: Jungle,..., Radar, Amphibious, Invisible, Immobile, HN, Detect Invisible, LLB, LSB, King, etc.) to the end of the line in the form of special little images (15x15 max size?) loaded from a new PCX file that, like the expression of can attack (default green LED) or cannot attack (default red LED), would be user-editable to everyone's satisfaction. It would work simply, if a given unit has a given ability or multiple abilities, they would all be accurately displayed behind the ADM description without having to study the text in the civilopedia, which can be inaccurate. In my opinion, it would be useful to have these other unit abilities displayed in this way, and given the number and combinations of them, even "insert nation" railway signalling would not be enough to display them clearly.

 

[Flintlock]

The menu icons will be replaceable just like any other bit of game art. I'll even make it so the game can accept icons of any width. The icons don't really have to be 15x15. A height of 15 is good since if they're much taller then the game will have to make the menu entries taller to accommodate them, or in other words it'll space things out vertically on the menu. If the icons are shorter than 15 pixels high it wouldn't matter since the text forces the menu entries to be at least that high anyway. The width can be anything and the smaller the better since it wastes less space horizontally. We're going with the smaller icons so I'll make the standard ones 6x15 pixels.

Additional informations about used unit movement points in my eyes are not needed.

I agree that showing partial movement is not important.

It's easy to do so why not? The only reason I can think not to would be if that additional info were confusing or distracting. But if it's indicated by the brightness of the icons, it shouldn't be confusing and won't be distracting as long as the brightness levels are similar enough.

What about also adding unit special abilities (Wheeled, Foot Unit, Blitz, ATAR, IMC: Hills, IMC: Mountains, IMC: Jungle,..., Radar, Amphibious, Invisible, Immobile, HN, Detect Invisible, LLB, LSB, King, etc.) to the end of the line in the form of special little images (15x15 max size?)

That would require a lot more work. I'd have to dig into the menu drawing logic to figure out how to add something new, and then there are some other issues like I'd have to figure out how wide the text is. Adding images to the left of each menu entry is easy since the game already has a method to do just that. It's used to add the pictures onto the city production chooser menu that you can access with shift + right click.

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

It's easy to do so why not? The only reason I can think not to would be if that additional info were confusing or distracting. But if it's indicated by the brightness of the icons, it shouldn't be confusing and won't be distracting as long as the brightness levels are similar enough.

I am not strongly opposed to the idea of grading the LEDs according to movement ability. Not by any means. I was just worried that too many shades would add confusion, while not being strictly necessary. Some modders advocate simplicity, which also has its merits. But it would probably help in reading the right-click menu when units are grouped, since units of the same type are split according to movement left. If you can make it work graphically, it's just a plus in my book. I've already supported your red/white LED proposal, and I'll be fine if that ends up being the final solution. With or without dimming.

 

[Civinator]

It's easy to do so why not? The only reason I can think not to would be if that additional info were confusing or distracting. But if it's indicated by the brightness of the icons, it shouldn't be confusing and won't be distracting as long as the brightness levels are similar enough.

Not all that can be done easily makes sense, especially when the info is still there in the same window. The "LED-christmas tree" needs additional and otherwise not needed explanations in the mods and scenarios, that use the Flintlock mod. This concerns not only additional entries in the civilopedia of those mods, but also questions in the thread of those mods and scenarios and answering tons of questions of civers by pms, who don´t read those civilopedia entries.

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

Regarding attack/movement LEDs, I have looked closely at all the alternatives listed in my post #1981, and tried them out: EPW's traffic light, Civinator's simplified traffic light, Flintlock's red & white, and Flintlock's movement LED with sword.

This is my conclusion: I would probably choose Civinator's proposal in AnthonyBoscia's interpretation (no icon for spent units, and blue LED), because it is easier to take in the information at a glance due to its visual simplicity.

It contains just the bare minimum of information that you need, and it is the easiest to read.

Civinator simplified traffic light:
No icon (but the text is grey) = Cannot move
Red = Can move (originally: "cannot attack", but since it is neither green nor grey, logic dictates it can move, but not attack)
Green = Can attack
Blue = Air superiority


My original EPW traffic light model would make sense if all text was black, but it is not required to have a 4th LED color (red) for spent units when they have grey text.
I tried making a new and improved version of Flintlock's first proposal, movement LED with sword, and in many ways I like it (screenshot below), because it gives complete information in a way that is hard to misunderstand.

 

[Flintlock]

Alright, here's a newer version of the "Christmas lights" in game:

These colors look okay to me except for the blue which needs to be more intense. It looks almost gray unless you get up close to the screen. I can see how this would be confusing for a player who's seeing it for the first time, but keep in mind that most of the time all the colors won't be shown together like these examples. Players should be able to figure out what the colors mean from simpler cases, like at the start of any turn when all the units are either white or red, except the rare intercepting fighter. I still haven't decided if I like it better with or without the icon on units that have spent all their moves. On the one hand, omitting the icon makes it easier to see at a glance that those units can't move, but on the other hand it's more consistent for them all to have icons and more true to the LED metaphor.

By the way, I tried cutting the icons down to 6x15 pixels but found that the game puts them right up against the left edge of the menu so it looks better to instead include some transparent pixels on the left to form a margin. Also the game seems to cut off the rightmost column of pixels for some reason so it's necessary to pad the right edge too. The icons above are 12x15 pixels.

 

[Xythan]

Hey Flintlock!

As someone who has not stopped playing Civ3 since day one, finding your mod in 2024 is quite awesome! Thank you so much!

I have looked and looked but not found a solution, there was always one thing that bothered me, that Wake All and Fortify All appear at the bottom of the stack! If you have a massive stack (and I often do, as I love big maps and I cannot lie) you can't scroll all the way...this is painful, and even if you can, it was still a bad design choice. Could this be solved? Could it be moved to the top of the stack when right clicking?

Regards,

Xythan.

 

[Airutec]

Has anyone had their antivirus block the temp.exe file due to a Win32:Evo-gen(Trj)? I'm using AVG for reference.

 

[Civinator]

This is the last call for bugs in R17. If no one reports any more, I'll post it soon and we can all move on to R18 (at long last...).

I have a problem with giving civs different names during a game. Probably this is an error by me but at present I can not exclude completely, that it could be a bug.

In the next version of CCM I want to give the former civ Italy/Rome (now Rome) in era 1 the name Rome, in era 2 Italian city-states and in era 3 and 4 Italy. The adjective for that civ should be Roman in era 1 and in all other eras Italian.

The different eraspecific leadernames and titles for all 31 civs, after setting the commas correctly, work like charm. But the eraspecific names for the civs are not working. What am I doing wrong ?

Here is the setting of the Roman/Italian civ in the editor:

This is the setting of the config-file:

Here is the screenshot of era 2 of that civ:

The screenshot shows the correct name and title of the Leader, but the civ is still named Rome instead of Italian city-states.

During the start I received the following error message:

Interesting is that line 466 is the line about Greece. When looking at the config file with notepad++ it shows a space after the Roman entry. This space is not there when working with a normal text editor.

 

[tjs282]

If the tribe is still called Rome in the CCM .biq, then following Flintlock's example-entries, (I think?) the adjective-replacement section should read "Roman: Roman Italian Italian Italian" -- rather than simply "Italian: Roman".

I'm not saying that error(?) is what's causing the problem you're describing, but it probably won't help things, either.

 

[Civinator]

If the tribe is still called Rome in the CCM .biq, then following Flintlock's example-entries, (I think?) the adjective-replacement section should read "Roman: Roman Italian Italian Italian" -- rather than simply "Italian: Roman".

I'm not saying that error(?) is what's causing the problem you're describing, but it probably won't help things, either.

As you can see in the editor screenshot, the basic adjective entry for the civ Rome is Italian to reduce the number of adjective entries in the config file. It should work as in the example with Gaulic.

 

[Erlend Philip Wood]

I have a problem with giving civs different names during a game. Probably this is an error by me but at present I can not exclude completely, that it could be a bug.

In the next version of CCM I want to give the former civ Italy/Rome (now Rome) in era 1 the name Rome, in era 2 Italian city-states and in era 3 and 4 Italy. The adjective for that civ should be Roman in era 1 and in all other eras Italian.

The different eraspecific leadernames and titles for all 31 civs, after setting the commas correctly, work like charm. But the eraspecific names for the civs are not working. What am I doing wrong ?

Shouldn't line 466 end with: "Greek: Greek Byzantine]"? Without the comma?

 

[Civinator]

Shouldn't line 466 end with: "Greek: Greek Byzantine]"? Without the comma?

Yes, this is it! Thank you very much!

 

[Flintlock]

As someone who has not stopped playing Civ3 since day one, finding your mod in 2024 is quite awesome! Thank you so much!

I have looked and looked but not found a solution, there was always one thing that bothered me, that Wake All and Fortify All appear at the bottom of the stack! If you have a massive stack (and I often do, as I love big maps and I cannot lie) you can't scroll all the way...this is painful, and even if you can, it was still a bad design choice. Could this be solved? Could it be moved to the top of the stack when right clicking?

You're very welcome! I expect it would be possible to move the wake & fortify all options above the list of units. It would be nice if it were possible to rearrange the menu items after they've all been added but AFAIK know that's not possible, or at least there's no way to do that already in the game code. It would be necessary to add the wake/fortify all options before the first unit is added to the menu then block them from being added after all the units have been. That's a bit awkward but should be doable.

Has anyone had their antivirus block the temp.exe file due to a Win32:Evo-gen(Trj)? I'm using AVG for reference.

I hope antivirus doesn't become a problem again. A few years ago someone reported that their AV was triggering on temp.exe but I haven't gotten any reports since then. I took some measures to make that file less suspicious, for example it's now compiled with debug info included, which is something malware would never do as it makes it much easier to inspect what the program is doing. The problem seems to be that AVs consider editing an executable to be suspicious on its own and since that's the whole point of the mod, there's only so much I can do.

Yes, this is it! Thank you very much!

In retrospect, I shouldn't have used spaces to separate items in lists. The separating spaces is also why it's necessary to use quotation marks so often. Oh well, too late now.

 

[Civinator]

In retrospect, I shouldn't have used spaces to separate items in lists. The separating spaces is also why it's necessary to use quotation marks so often. Oh well, too late now.

One time I made a comma too less and one time I made a comma too much, so I need more discipline when writing into the config file, but when it is written correctly the result of your work is brilliant.

And the other lesson I have learnt here: The error was in the line where it was indicated by the error message in your mod. If such a message pops up, it is best to check intensively the indicated line and not looking first into the line where the result of the entries should appear first. Even the error message in your mod made a very good job!

 

[Airutec]

I hope antivirus doesn't become a problem again. A few years ago someone reported that their AV was triggering on temp.exe but I haven't gotten any reports since then. I took some measures to make that file less suspicious, for example it's now compiled with debug info included, which is something malware would never do as it makes it much easier to inspect what the program is doing. The problem seems to be that AVs consider editing an executable to be suspicious on its own and since that's the whole point of the mod, there's only so much I can do.

Good to know. Just wanted to ask before whitelisting it.

 

[Flintlock]

And the other lesson I have learnt here: The error was in the line where it was indicated by the error message in your mod. If such a message pops up, it is best to check intensively the indicated line and not looking first into the line where the result of the entries should appear first. Even the error message in your mod made a very good job!

Thanks for the praise, but honestly it was just a coincidence that the error message pointed to the correct line. Actually, when there's an error inside a bracketed block, the message will always point to the end of the block. It's because originally bracketed blocks had to be entirely on one line so there was no point in locating errors within them. I'll fix that for the future, though. It's important for error messages to be accurate. That'll be the last thing for R17, I swear, this time for sure...

 

[Civinator]

Here are some screenshots of the upcoming CCM 3 that I posted in the CCM 2 thread, showing the incredible options in naming civs and rulers that are now possible for C3C by the Flintlock mod for 8 civs in 3 eras (I had not the time to do an additional biq starting in era 4 and showing the different leaders and their names in era 4):

Era 1:



Era 2:



Era 3:

 

[Flintlock]

Flintlock updated C3X with a new update entry:

Release 17

New in this version:
- Optimize computation of trade networks
--- For details, see the info text file in the Trade Net X folder
- Civ and leader names can vary by era
- Option to measure turn times
- Zone of control changes
--- Allow land-to-sea and sea-to-land attacks, only using bombard stat
--- May be lethal
--- May be exerted by air units
--- Show attack animation even when attacker is not at the top of its stack
- Defensive bombard changes
--- May be lethal
--- May be performed by air...

Read the rest of this update entry...