Puppeteer
Emperor
Oh, by the way, I changed the license on GitHub to the MIT license for code and made attributions for a couple of included libraries I'm using.
Civ3 Show-And-Tell
- Thread starter Puppeteer
- Start date
PatriotNorwood
Howdy!
Yes, I know this is a Civ3 project, and yes I haven't done much in that section of the forums (yet). I do play Civilization 3, but to be honest I'm partial to Civ4. I am not sure if can be of much help right now so I will see how (and where) it goes, and if you do think of something I can help with let me know.
The PBEM tracker I was thinking of is here. An example of a game on it is here. I'm not sure if it actually supports Civ3 games? At any rate, the amount of info displayed is not great, and you have to be logged in to track games you don't have a direct link to. It's a promising idea, but to someone who's not already super-into PBEM, it's not great.
A Civ3 PBEM game that does make some attempt to show the status is this one (see the map in the first post). But it's really not enough to get any sense of the current situation - and that's with the benefit that it's an Earth map.
For me, as a lurker, the whole map would be most helpful. There would be issues of potential spoilerage, so it would have to be determined per-game to enable it. But, particularly with known maps like the Age of Imperialism one, and later-game PBEMs where the map is de facto known, I think it would make a big difference to lurker-friendliness. Although it'd probably be best to ask some of the people who actually play PBEMs to see whether they also think this would be good to have (or whether they wouldn't use it for fear of spoilers).
Puppeteer
Emperor
Ok, I've spent like 12 hours on this today. Wow. What did I accomplish? Online web app that can read arbitrary compressed or uncompressed C3C saves by URL to extract and display their maps.
Experimental web app where you can enter a URL to a save game
It's rudimentary. It's rough. It doesn't cache anything, and it won't restart itself if I lose power and the server reboots. But now you have some control over what it does.
Here are some URLs from this forum you can paste in there and then hit the button:
Edit: I see someone tried to paste a link to their local hard drive. This can't read from your PC unless you download it and run svg.py locally. The online version can only read URLs available on the Internet.
Experimental web app where you can enter a URL to a save game
It's rudimentary. It's rough. It doesn't cache anything, and it won't restart itself if I lose power and the server reboots. But now you have some control over what it does.
Here are some URLs from this forum you can paste in there and then hit the button:
- http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=361461&d=1379988203
- http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=347664&d=1365461213
- http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=365818&d=1386279052
- http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=361905&d=1380603894
- http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=373703&d=1397781891
- http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=320057&d=1335676329
Edit: I see someone tried to paste a link to their local hard drive. This can't read from your PC unless you download it and run svg.py locally. The online version can only read URLs available on the Internet.
warmwaffles
Programmer
Puppeteer
Emperor
Hmm. Perhaps they are using a different version of code on the tiger. I'll have to poke at it later.
Today I took a stab at the jungle tile. I'm not sure I like it, but it's better than "Jungle" spelled out on the map I suppose.
Evolution of the jungle tile colors in screenshots.
Today I took a stab at the jungle tile. I'm not sure I like it, but it's better than "Jungle" spelled out on the map I suppose.
Evolution of the jungle tile colors in screenshots.
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Puppeteer
Emperor
Marshes. I really didn't like these at first, but they might grow on me. I'll move on to flood plains rather than try to tweak these now.
Edit: No, I'm going to punt on flood plains. It looks to me like the game displays the same desert tile but adds greenery to the edge of the river. I'll hunt for rivers next and perhaps give flood plain treatments in the river logic of my program.
Edit: No, I'm going to punt on flood plains. It looks to me like the game displays the same desert tile but adds greenery to the edge of the river. I'll hunt for rivers next and perhaps give flood plain treatments in the river logic of my program.
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Puppeteer
Emperor
I updated the web app to draw the jungles and marshes, and instead of "Flood Plain" it now just puts "FP" on the flood plain tiles.
Another crazy idea occurred to me just now: an animated SVG replay viewer. It would require the sequence of save files; CivAssist can be made to collect them and can do this:
In theory I should be able to access those same save files and make the SVG map animated. I'm not exactly sure how yet, but I'm pretty sure it's doable. But that is still "crazy idea" phase. And even if I did it, you would have to have a series of save files saved to make it happen.
My current itches for this project are to find and add rivers, to find where it stores "is visible" masks for each civ, where to find the starting/home location for each civ, add more code to help me analyze the save data, and maybe identify some more of the available data.
I'm also thinking I might actually play the game today. Or maybe I could do some chores at home. Or maybe I could go outside and pretend like I have some sort of life away from the computer chair.
Oh, that was a good one!
Edit: Oh, sometime in the past couple of days I made a workaround for the tile gaps. I am trying oversized tile shapes. At 1px (at 128px size) outside the box at each corner the faint gridlines can show up on big maps if you zoom out, and when you zoom way in on a small map you may notice the overlap, but the overlap and antialiasing makes it much smoother overall. It's very subtle, but the slight 1px-2px blur (from antialiasing) at the tile edges makes the color transitions much less in-your-face. My first idea was to stroke the tiles with the same color, but I may yet go back and do something besides named-color solid fills for base terrain, so the oversized tiles are better future-proofed. I briefly tried 2px oversize (at 128px x 64px size); I forget how the transitions looked, but the jagged tile overlaps were too noticable.
Another crazy idea occurred to me just now: an animated SVG replay viewer. It would require the sequence of save files; CivAssist can be made to collect them and can do this:
In theory I should be able to access those same save files and make the SVG map animated. I'm not exactly sure how yet, but I'm pretty sure it's doable. But that is still "crazy idea" phase. And even if I did it, you would have to have a series of save files saved to make it happen.
My current itches for this project are to find and add rivers, to find where it stores "is visible" masks for each civ, where to find the starting/home location for each civ, add more code to help me analyze the save data, and maybe identify some more of the available data.
I'm also thinking I might actually play the game today. Or maybe I could do some chores at home. Or maybe I could go outside and pretend like I have some sort of life away from the computer chair.
Oh, that was a good one!Edit: Oh, sometime in the past couple of days I made a workaround for the tile gaps. I am trying oversized tile shapes. At 1px (at 128px size) outside the box at each corner the faint gridlines can show up on big maps if you zoom out, and when you zoom way in on a small map you may notice the overlap, but the overlap and antialiasing makes it much smoother overall. It's very subtle, but the slight 1px-2px blur (from antialiasing) at the tile edges makes the color transitions much less in-your-face. My first idea was to stroke the tiles with the same color, but I may yet go back and do something besides named-color solid fills for base terrain, so the oversized tiles are better future-proofed. I briefly tried 2px oversize (at 128px x 64px size); I forget how the transitions looked, but the jagged tile overlaps were too noticable.
Puppeteer
Emperor
PatriotNorwood
Howdy!
I like the right image of the "Jungle". 
Puppeteer
Emperor
A quick jungle tweak. Which is better? ("None of the above" is assumed; which is the least harmful of these two?) The only difference is whether or not the trunks are obscured by the "leaves".
I prefer the one on the left. I like the tiger one, too, but it probably would get old a lot more quickly than the other options.
Puppeteer
Emperor
Hmm, a split decision. I may try lowering where the trunks disappear into the leaves as a compromise between the two.
I discovered (and rediscovered) a bunch of stuff today while analyzing the save file. I found out where the non-spoiler improvements info for each civ is. i.e. I can choose to display the last-known improvement for known-but-not-currently-line-of-sight-visible tiles. Apparently forests appear and disappear in real time whether or not you have lin-of-sight. (Maybe I'll get around to game-test-verifying that someday.) I found where the actual improvements and all resources are. I found trade network IDs, tile visibility which oddly is divided into unit-visible *, culture-visible and colony-visible (?!). I found that there is a per-civ view of land trade networks. I found the world seed number. I found unit ids (presumably the top/showing unit ID for that tile), the city ID and the City ID indicating which city is actively working that tile. I found barb-associated info I haven't fully figured out yet but think it's related to the barb tribe. I found the player start locations.
You know what I didn't discover? Rivers. Which was my main hope. I did find a couple of spots of code I believe to be related to tile transitions/graphics. Unlike my map, the game map varies terrain graphics based on adjacent tiles, and I think I know where this is even if I don't understand it yet. Since rivers are on the edges, perhaps the river info is coded in these places. I'll go look at mod info for terrain graphics and maybe I can connect some dots as to what these numbers are.
* (I know barbs can spawn in sight of non-combat units but as far as I know not within sight of culture borders or combat units. Apparently there is some in-memory logic done that isn't represented in the save for that distinction.)
I think I'm about to burn out on this for a while. I have the info I need to add a bunch of stuff--except rivers
--to the map, but I don't feel like finding or making the graphics for it all right now. Maybe I'll get text labels for non-strategic (because spoiler) resources on there before I burn out completely; we'll see.
Info I (re-)discovered in the past 24 hours or so:
I discovered (and rediscovered) a bunch of stuff today while analyzing the save file. I found out where the non-spoiler improvements info for each civ is. i.e. I can choose to display the last-known improvement for known-but-not-currently-line-of-sight-visible tiles. Apparently forests appear and disappear in real time whether or not you have lin-of-sight. (Maybe I'll get around to game-test-verifying that someday.) I found where the actual improvements and all resources are. I found trade network IDs, tile visibility which oddly is divided into unit-visible *, culture-visible and colony-visible (?!). I found that there is a per-civ view of land trade networks. I found the world seed number. I found unit ids (presumably the top/showing unit ID for that tile), the city ID and the City ID indicating which city is actively working that tile. I found barb-associated info I haven't fully figured out yet but think it's related to the barb tribe. I found the player start locations.
You know what I didn't discover? Rivers. Which was my main hope. I did find a couple of spots of code I believe to be related to tile transitions/graphics. Unlike my map, the game map varies terrain graphics based on adjacent tiles, and I think I know where this is even if I don't understand it yet. Since rivers are on the edges, perhaps the river info is coded in these places. I'll go look at mod info for terrain graphics and maybe I can connect some dots as to what these numbers are.
* (I know barbs can spawn in sight of non-combat units but as far as I know not within sight of culture borders or combat units. Apparently there is some in-memory logic done that isn't represented in the save for that distinction.)
I think I'm about to burn out on this for a while. I have the info I need to add a bunch of stuff--except rivers
--to the map, but I don't feel like finding or making the graphics for it all right now. Maybe I'll get text labels for non-strategic (because spoiler) resources on there before I burn out completely; we'll see.Info I (re-)discovered in the past 24 hours or so:
Spoiler :
Puppeteer
Emperor
Ok, bonus and luxury resources are on the map as text. (Hmmm, what about bonus grasslands? I don't have those accounted for.) As are cities as generic "CITY" text.
I just realized that what I identified as "culture visibility" may be exactly equal to territory. Duh. I'll have to double-check that, but I may be able to color-shade territory, but since I currently don't have the ability to turn layers on and off I need to be careful about overlapping too much. It's already confusing with CITY on FP or a resource.
Sample map
The web app is also updated to show this info. I won't bother with a screenshot because it looks exactly like the earlier ones except it has additional text on it.
I noticed somebody got clever and put a save game on their Google drive to access it with my web app. Good thinking!
I'm really disappointed that I don't have rivers, but the map is currently pretty darn useful and doesn't look bad.
I just realized that what I identified as "culture visibility" may be exactly equal to territory. Duh. I'll have to double-check that, but I may be able to color-shade territory, but since I currently don't have the ability to turn layers on and off I need to be careful about overlapping too much. It's already confusing with CITY on FP or a resource.
Sample map
The web app is also updated to show this info. I won't bother with a screenshot because it looks exactly like the earlier ones except it has additional text on it.
I noticed somebody got clever and put a save game on their Google drive to access it with my web app. Good thinking!
I'm really disappointed that I don't have rivers, but the map is currently pretty darn useful and doesn't look bad.
Puppeteer
Emperor
I think I'm about to burn out on this for a while. I have the info I need to add a bunch of stuff--except rivers
Oh...on the other hand, apparently it's much easier to find a wide variety of freely-usable SVG images for common items like cows, deer, grapes and such than it was for marsh, jungle, and hills.
No, I am not kidding this time. This particular cow may stick.
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PatriotNorwood
Howdy!
Nice
Puppeteer
Emperor
Ok, the cow is staying. I started this project with a jumble of ideas for how this work but not really how it will look. For me that's secondary. But it is starting to accidentally pull together in a somewhat cartoon-ey cohesive feel. I'm liking it because it's becoming more and more recognizable as an iconized civ map.
I added three more icons and made myself a quick spreadsheet to give me a really good starting point for scale and positioning to avoid trial-and-error in adapting each icon into the map. I did have to trial-and-error city placement a bit, but that's because I don't want the icon centered based on its outer borders; the steeple should stick farther up, so I had to make adjustments.
It's amazing how much more readable the map is with icons instead of "CITY" and "Cow". Adding icons is much faster now, but it still does take time, so that's it for tonight.
I updated the web app, I'll push to GitHub shortly, and here are today's links:
Standard size map
Huge map
Edit: It really bugs me that I don't have rivers figured out yet. And bonus grassland. I think those two things plus adding icons makes this map genuinely useful in discussing game situations. Sure, there are no units, improvement or strategic resources, but you have a really good lay of the land.
I added three more icons and made myself a quick spreadsheet to give me a really good starting point for scale and positioning to avoid trial-and-error in adapting each icon into the map. I did have to trial-and-error city placement a bit, but that's because I don't want the icon centered based on its outer borders; the steeple should stick farther up, so I had to make adjustments.
It's amazing how much more readable the map is with icons instead of "CITY" and "Cow". Adding icons is much faster now, but it still does take time, so that's it for tonight.
I updated the web app, I'll push to GitHub shortly, and here are today's links:
Standard size map
Huge map
Edit: It really bugs me that I don't have rivers figured out yet. And bonus grassland. I think those two things plus adding icons makes this map genuinely useful in discussing game situations. Sure, there are no units, improvement or strategic resources, but you have a really good lay of the land.
Puppeteer
Emperor
No updated graphics today, but I did look for rivers. Didn't find them. I'm reading in the continent sections now, not that it's any use. I found the BG flag and I think the "forest already chopped" flag. I found another flag that seems to be in all the tundra, none of the jungle but spread out around all other land terrain. I'm not sure what that's about. I found mountain snow caps. Aren't there snowy trees? I don't see any, so maybe I'm imagining I saw them, or maybe it was the all-winter terrain. There is also a flag that marks the "fat x" around each city whether or not the culture borders encompass or exceed it. I wonder why that's there?
I got clever and did a bitwise AND against several river tiles on values I thought are probably the ones that choose which tile graphic to use, but apparently those aren't rivers.
Maybe tomorrow I'll make a custom map that's almost all grassland with a little bit of river and see where the variations are.
I got clever and did a bitwise AND against several river tiles on values I thought are probably the ones that choose which tile graphic to use, but apparently those aren't rivers.
Maybe tomorrow I'll make a custom map that's almost all grassland with a little bit of river and see where the variations are.
Puppeteer
Emperor
That helped. I think I found the rivers! It's the very first byte in the very first tile. I went past it quickly when I was picking out the easy stuff (e.g. "hey, 0x22 is always grass tile!") and didn't consider it again until I decided it had to be in one of the tile sections and found it via process of elimination and a big-ass all-grass map with some river in the middle.
But now I have to go pretend I have a life for a while.
Puppeteer
Emperor
Here's a peek at a little bit of what I did last night and what I may spend some time on now. The bonus grasslands are marked, some of the rivers are sort-of there and I have debug text on the tiles with the river "short" value. That may or may not be masked...I can apply bitmasks.
I haven't quite figured out what each bit means or if the bits even have a consistent meaning. I may end up with a series of "if it's this, this or that then river on NE edge."
There doesn't seem to be a single bit that says "this is a river tile that gets 1c bonus", at least that I've identified yet, although now I'm realizing my hand-drawn river on a test map may not be consistent with a generated river. (This screenshot is from a generated map.)
Edit: I just noticed I'm spoiling BGs under forests. I'll have to put a forest and/or overlay check in.
Edit 2: Got it. I made some wrong assumptions when looking at my hand-painted river map. If the river byte is nonzero then it's on a river. When I hand-drew the rivers the corners got bonuses and river values that wouldn't happen on a generated map, and that confused me.
I haven't quite figured out what each bit means or if the bits even have a consistent meaning. I may end up with a series of "if it's this, this or that then river on NE edge."
There doesn't seem to be a single bit that says "this is a river tile that gets 1c bonus", at least that I've identified yet, although now I'm realizing my hand-drawn river on a test map may not be consistent with a generated river. (This screenshot is from a generated map.)
Edit: I just noticed I'm spoiling BGs under forests. I'll have to put a forest and/or overlay check in.
Edit 2: Got it. I made some wrong assumptions when looking at my hand-painted river map. If the river byte is nonzero then it's on a river. When I hand-drew the rivers the corners got bonuses and river values that wouldn't happen on a generated map, and that confused me.
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