Was the problem that the codecs weren't registered? Years ago I remember some people saying that you could get the wonder movies to work by inserting the classic Civ2 disc or by copying the movies to the Test of Time\Video folder. Neither worked for me.
Is that Skyer's AI patch? It works on ToT? Mousep created one specifically for ToT.
As far as classic-style graphics go, the closest is likely a combination of this skin and these unit, terrain, city and icon graphics.
Well, I found the Intel Indeo codecs, but installed then un-installed them because I was experimenting with a .dll that apparently allowed videos needing the Intel Indeo codec to work (http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/266794-Indeo-5-x-problem-with-Vista). The .dll allowed the Test of Time videos to work, but not the regular Civilization 2 ones. Strangely, I could still play the videos using Windows Media Player off the CD. I decided to try MGE again, and got the same problem. At first I thought the problem was that the game was looking for the files in the wrong drive letter, because I had changed them so the music would play. I changed the CDPath in the registry, but they still didn't work. I finally realized that it wasn't just the wonder videos, but the high council ones as well, so I re-installed the codecs.
Yes, it is Skyer's AI patch. Thanks, I didn't find that one.
But besides graphics modding, there isn't any way to combine features from both, right?
I've never heard of anyone getting the High Council, throne room or city view working in ToT.
Really? I tested it out, and for me the wonder videos do play automatically if I re-install the codecs and use the Civilization 2 Vanilla disk. I'm using the codecs from here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Codec-Packs-Video-Codecs/Ligos-Indeo-Codec.shtml
Yes, I know you can, I changed it since the ToT one felt strange, but it looks awkward and bright compared with ToT's otherwise dark interface, and it's still missing the aerial view (though that was a fairly crappy feature anyways).
The codec isn't the problem. I can play those videos in ToT. The game doesn't attempt to play wonder videos probably because it can't locate them. Normally I use a no-CD crack, but even with a clean ToT 1.1 Civ2.exe the videos won't play when the classic disc is in the drive. I suspect it's the drive letter of my DVD-RW. It's Z. The game won't play music unless the CD-ROM is in drive D, so it probably won't play the wonders either. I can't find a registry entry for the CD path.
It may look less incongruous when used with the classic skin.
Graphics mods are possible in all versions, but I switched to ToT more than a decade ago so you won't find any from me. Check CFC's old Downloads section.
There's an 8-frame animation sequence in icons.gif which is used by versions MGE or less during combat. It appears over the unit taking damage. Because the official units for ToT were animated, this method was scrapped. The game does not default to the old method when custom static units are used, so in many mods and scenarios combat isn't as visible. It was a major issue for some players, so that's why it's in the comparison list.
I ended up solving the music issue by editing the batch file used for CPU throttle so that it disables my D: drive and substitutes my J: drive for it, and then re-enables it after I finish playing when I click OK on the "Ready to roll..." window. It's a horribly awkward method, involving the location of the batch file, the device console from Microsoft, and the hardware ID of the D: drive, as well as creating a shortcut so that it runs in administrator mode, but it works and is faster than changing drive letters in the Control Panel. I attached my CPU Throttle folder in a .zip archive at the bottom of the post if you want to test it out. You will have to edit it, though.
Oh, I thought it might have been that, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for clearing that up.
Thanks. I'll test it out later.
An odd bug. It should be impossible for 2 wonders of the same type to co-exist - at least for more than a turn. The reason is that there is a single list of the 28 wonders in the saved game file (and memory) that determines the presence of each wonder in the game. Each entry contains 3 possible states: not built, city ID or destroyed. A wonder can't have more than one city ID.
No. There are many tribe bitmasks that are stored as single bytes. That leaves room for only 8 (7 playable tribes + barbarians). Nothing short of reverse engineering the game will change that.
I believe it's a side effect of the CPU throttle patches (Timbatron's and Til's).
Not that I'm aware of.
Yeah, it ended up giving it to me, even though the Celts apparently built in between my turns. Either that or I misread the notification.
Well, my machine didn't like that at all. Ran the script as an administrator. Received a message that the machine would require a restart to disable the device. Black screen followed where I had to hit the reset button to restart. On return, Z drive (the DVD-RW) had disappeared, but D was still the 1 TB hard disk. My Catalyst video drivers and network adapter had also been disabled. I ran the line, "devcon enable *HardwareIDString*" in the command prompt (from the CPU-Throttle directory) to reverse the earlier command and restarted. DVD-RW is back on Z. Video seems OK now. Re-enabled the network adapter. I'm running Win7 64-bit. I'll predict that had it worked correctly, I would've achieved the same result as I did the other day when I performed essentially the same operation under Computer Management → Disk Management. I could get the game music to play, but not the wonder videos. It's not an issue for me as I almost exclusively play scenarios where I use neither wonder videos nor the music. I'm just experimenting.
I think the signing of pacts is an AI thing. The 'vendetta' treaty is produced by a sneak attack against an AI opponent.
Sorry, don't know. I have classic Civ2, but it's not installed.
If you saved a game with the cheat flag enabled, then naturally the cheat flag will be retained. However, there's a bug where the game sometimes fails to clear the cheat flag from memory (see here). If this is the case, quit the game, delete Civ2.dat (a new one will be created) and relaunch. I've still never had this happen to me using ToT.
I had that restart message once as well, apparently it doesn't like disabling when the drive is in use, but considering you could do it through the Disk Management utility it should work. Maybe you could attach your start.bat and the hardware ID of your D: drive.
That's a shame, I figured it might be like the Trade Embargoes in III or the Denouncements in V.
Hardware ID:
IDE\DISKST31000524AS____________________________JC45____\4&36887771&0&0.2.0: ST31000524AScd C:\Games\Test of Time\CPU-Throttle
devcon disable *ST31000524AS*
subst d: z:\
Inject.exe C:\Games\Test of Time\Civ2.exe
subst d: /D
devcon enable *ST31000524AS*No for the animated heralds. The GIFs in the DLLs have very limited palettes. AFAIK, no-one figured out how to edit those palettes. There are a few scenarios where the DLLs have been edited (retaining the original palettes), but I don't know of any mods that change the leaders for the Original game.
The ones in the Game menu? The Game, Graphic and City Report options are stored in Civ2.dat. Some of these, for example, the City Report options and 'Always wait at end of turn.' are also stored in the SAV file. If you load a saved game, its settings will override the ones from Civ2.dat.
Not that I know of. Obviously there's some identifier on the ToT disc that's not present on the classic Civ2 disc. If you sorted that out you'd also need to edit the @PICKMUSICTOT section in Game.txt (the one for the game type you're playing, eg, Original, Fantasy), because the track listing for the two versions is different.
You wouldn't have thought so, but that was the reason given by MicroProse.
Notable ones would be Elys' Civilization II Unlimited (download in post #40) and Skyer's 'No Stack Kills' patch, the latter, a subject of a recent discussion in a thread in the Scenario League sub-forum. Skyer released a number of experiments for MGE and ToT. They can be found in the same thread as the previous.
That's interesting, but for the sake of stability, I'll probably stick with the ToT version.
From the scenario design perspective, that's been the case since ToT was released. It took some Civ2 designers half a decade to figure that out.
Can't give you an answer to that, I haven't played classic Civ2 since last century.
Your guess is as good as mine. There are a number of what appear to be developmental files in the main ToT folder.
I suspect not. Occasionally Skyer posted the offsets for his patches, so it may be possible to combine them by hex editing the EXE - if you dig around a bit. IIRC, there are a couple more Skyer threads. He posted under about four different accounts.
I don't even have that much. I always play with the diplomacy screen switched off; it's better for scenarios.
Not really my area, but you'd be using a hex editor (Frhed is a free one) instead of Notepad. You'd probably also need some kind of memory hacker and a knowledge of assembly programming.
I might've known once, but I certainly don't now.
I think you're on to something, but I can't reproduce it. However, when I delete Civ2.dat, the game will play wonder videos from the Test of Time\Videos folder. Well, it attempts to play wonders. I'd assumed that the classic videos were the same as the ToT ones, but they're not. The ToT videos are encoded with Indeo 5.0; the classic videos, Indeo 4.1. I had 4.1 installed in the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder, but it wasn't registered. Until the codec was registered, I was presented with a black box.
