Command & Conquer and Red Alert Civ2 & ToT scenarios development

[Blake00]

Goes to show that one can almost never claim that they are the first to do something in Civ2 scenario making haha! I just found this old Roman Riots II scenario on the SLeague site by @St. Leo Leons Petrazickis that converts Civ2 into a city map like I have but also gives you destructible buildings like I do. Nearly all of these buildings are units so you can destroy them. Very cool! Although in my scenario you get a custom burning damaged building underneath whereas in this one it's just cement, but I guess that still counts as beating me to the idea of a city warzone with destructible buildings haha (you couldn't destroy buildings in the popular Mafia city scenarios). Love the look of it as I think the graphics are ripped from the old Caesar games.

 

[Metro Polis]

I took a quick glimpse at it. Like the graphics! And... it could be improved to even more awsomeness! He didn't use river tiles and wasted some others he could have made use of. But overall it has a lovely design. And it's not TOT, which ist great.

 

[axx]

The roads, shrines and gardens seem to be from C2, houses I think from C3.
I played Roman riots years ago, I remember it being a hard scenario.

 

[Metro Polis]

Maybe turning the buildings into not accessible terrain would help. Hm. Maybe a revamped version would bei cool.

 

[Blake00]

I wish I could figure out how to do something like this.. loaded up an old fan scenario called 'Carolus Gustavus Reagis' ( 3/4 down on the CivFinatics renaissance scenarios page) and on turn 1 up comes an event with a flag graphic in the corner and a option button at the bottom which ensures the event message doesn't time out (disappears too quick).

My statue of liberty destruction event turns off too quickly before the Romanov's 'see your liberty in ruins' speech wavefile has finished playing. Would also be cool to have a custom graphic in the top right corner there too.

I suck with event stuff and have very limited experience but it would be great to replicate what has been done in this scenario for mine. However the event is not in the events file where one would expect it.. it appears to be in the game.txt file under a @GoldenAge tag. I cannot see anything there that would trigger the graphic or the option button on the final line. Nor can I find any trigger in events for this Goldenage thing either.

From his game.txt

@GOLDENAGE
@width=620
@title=Invasion of the comonwealth.
10 July:
The Polish Parliament decides to start preparing for a Swedish invasion, the proclamation is obeyed very slowly, the treath isn't taken seriously by the polish nobles and King Jan Kazimierz himself said:
"The %STRING0 isn't as dangerous as the cowards try to make him seem".
Nobody expects a swedish invasion until atleast a year in the future.
The recruiting of soldiers didn't begin until the beginning of June and at the 11 June the polish nobles are called to arms (the "call to arms" was hardly more than an invitation to help, the weak polish state couldn't tell the nobles what to do).
If someone that day would visit the little village of Falkenberg in west Preussia, he would hear the sounds from trumpets and the rattling and creaking from thousands of wheels.
Should he dare to travel closer, a peculiar and frightening sight: A long, long winding row coming out of a nearby forest, a row of seemingly endless waving pikes and musket muzzles, and a large throng of flags and standards,
not to mention horses, horses and yet more horses...
And wagons: baggage carts, cannonball, armor, karett, pontoon and petard wagons, and artillery: light regiment pieces, heavy storm cannons, long necked kartovs and short necked mortars.
And people: footsoldiers, riders, servants, smiths, maids, merchants, cooks, cleaners, whores, babies sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and wives.
That was the Swedish Army crossing the Polish Border.
Meanwhile in %STRING1 the preparations for a support fleet is being made.

The swedish army is entering the Comonwealth!

Screenshot:


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[JPetroski]

I believe the golden age text refers to when the "philosophy" advance is first researched. The graphic is probably the icon used by that technology. I'd have to explore the button issue a bit.

 

[Blake00]

I believe the golden age text refers to when the "philosophy" advance is first researched. The graphic is probably the icon used by that technology. I'd have to explore the button issue a bit.

Ahh cheers.. so presumably (I'm at work so I can't check the files right now) he's gifted philosophy to all players in turn 1 and that triggers the message.

I think I may have worked out the button part. I notice in game.txt a lot of the option windows with choices have a line space between the message and the button options. Eg I've seen in some scenarios where modders wanted to disable cheat mode they took away the line space and yes no part leaving just the message text saying something like "sorry bro no cheating". Because I wanted cheat mode working to check out the map I put back in the line space plus the yes no and the cheat mode option window worked again. So judging by the the above code it's just that line space separating the message from the "The swedish army is entering the Comonwealth!" that's triggering the button.

Still got no idea about the custom flag image in the event. Perhaps a certain icon appears for the philosophy golden age event and the modder located it and changed it.. will have to see if I can find it. Cause that would be awesome to put in a little image of the statue of liberty collapsing from the V3 rockets.

Of course this being a game.txt event trick instead of a event.txt event means I may not be able to play a custom wav rendering this trick useless to me (as I really want players to hear Romanov's speach) but I'll have to experiment some more.

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[JPetroski]

Still got no idea about the custom flag image in the event. Perhaps a certain icon appears for the philosophy golden age event and the modder located it and changed it.. will have to see if I can find it. Cause that would be awesome to put in a little image of the statue of liberty collapsing from the V3 rockets.

I'm not 100% certain if it works when a tech is given by event or not. You'd have to test that. If this is happening on turn 1 on the scenario, he likely made it so that one of the civs would research it immediately (by maxing the tech research progress during the scenario creation process and prior to hitting "save as scenario.")

The flag image is just the icon. In the base game they look like this and can be found in the "icons.bmp" file.

Now, I always get these mixed up when I put these into my rules and have to redo them but if you go into rules:

Philosophy, 6, 1, Mys, Lit, 1, 2 ; Phi

The bolded section tells the game which Icon to use. Remember that the numbers start at "0" not "1."

So, "Row 1, Column 2"

If you want to replicate this event, then rename "Philosophy" what you want, and then make sure the corresponding icon is the picture that you want. Note that it doesn't have to be "1,2" and could be any of the icons. The rules and icon simply have to match.

 

[Metro Polis]

There were some techs that triggered text boxes and pictures: gunpowder, explosives, rairoad, too, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe a handful more.
Explosives would be cool if you don't use the unit in the engineer's slot. You could have some unique picture there.

Edit: Oh boy, this German auto-correction on the smartphone is a pain in the ass.

 

[Blake00]

Kane's temple themed city screen done. Also realised I'd been doing too many zoomed in shots of the C&C scenario and needed a nice zoomed out marketing shot.

Nearly got these bloody things ready for release. Just all my preservation work of other people's scenarios slowing me down on my own stuff lol.

 

[Stew Pid]

Kane's temple themed city screen done. Also realised I'd been doing too many zoomed in shots of the C&C scenario and needed a nice zoomed out marketing shot.

Nearly got these bloody things ready for release. Just all my preservation work of other people's scenarios slowing me down on my own stuff lol.

View attachment 600879
View attachment 600879

Thats quite the technology jump to have Tiberian Sun units mixed in the this first game based scenario.

 

[Blake00]

Thats quite the technology jump to have Tiberian Sun units mixed in the this first game based scenario.

Yeah that was something Wonx2150 did with the original scenario which at first I thought was a bit weird, so when I started the remaster I was going to change everything and go either pure C&C1 or C&C2 to fix that! However then I changed my mind and decided to honour his original vision of a sort of hybrid era game. Mainly becuase I found some great fan projects like Crystalized Doom and Twisted Insurrection who remade all of the C&C1 units in the C&C2 engine and they looked friggin awesome, so that allowed me to go mostly C&C1 era but if I saw a balance issue/gap in the unit line ups I then used a C&C2 unit to fill that gap. All just a bit of fun so if some story purists get angry at me I'll just say "It was Wonx2150's idea, not mine! I'm sweet and innocent, so go egg his house!"

 

[Stew Pid]

Yeah that was something Wonx2150 did with the original scenario which at first I thought was a bit weird, so when I started the remaster I was going to change everything and go either pure C&C1 or C&C2 to fix that! However then I changed my mind and decided to honour his original vision of a sort of hybrid era game. Mainly becuase I found some great fan projects like Crystalized Doom and Twisted Insurrection who remade all of the C&C1 units in the C&C2 engine and they looked friggin awesome, so that allowed me to go mostly C&C1 era but if I saw a balance issue/gap in the unit line ups I then used a C&C2 unit to fill that gap. All just a bit of fun so if some story purists get angry at me I'll just say "It was Wonx2150's idea, not mine! I'm sweet and innocent, so go egg his house!"

Also it looks like a hybrid of Red Alert 2 with the "Psychic sensor" and "cloning vats".

 

[Blake00]

Also it looks like a hybrid of Red Alert 2 with the "Psychic sensor" and "cloning vats".

Lol good spotting. Yeah that one is totally on me as Wonx didn't rename many buildings. I sat there for like 2 days staring at the C&C wiki sites getting Tiberian universe building equivalents for this scenario and Red Alert universe ones for my Red Alert 2 scenario. In the end I was left with a bunch of glaring gaps in the Civ2 building list that just didn't have equivalents in one universe or the other so there's a small amount of building crossover between both scenarios to fill those gaps. The vast majority are universe authentic though. I think the Red Alert 2 scenario has a pretty pure building lineup, it's just the Tiberian one that's suffered a bit.

 

[Blake00]

I seem to remember back in he day, i think it was Pablostuka who was working on a Red Alert scenario. Can't remember if it was ever finished.

Look what i found. Vintage 2004. From a scen that was never finished as far as i know.
View attachment 542224
The development thread may have been on CDG/evo-games forum back in the day.

Gotta love it when I log into the site and find that someone who hasn't been on CFC in many years has logged in and replied to a message I sent them that I never expected a reply to but sent it just in case haha. Always a nice surprise to wake up to! This time it's @Pablostuka who has returned and answered my question about his Red Alert units you mentioned Broken Erika. Sadly he's lost them however it doesn't matter so much now as obviously in the years since I went ahead in this project thread and made my own units using original RA2 graphics. Would have been nice to check out (and preserve) his work though but oh well!

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Anyway I posted this over in my & Metro's HoMM project thread and may as well post it here too for fans of this project. Unfortunately the final release of the Civ2 Command & Conquer Africa and Civ2 Red Alert 2 Siege of New York scenarios have been heavily delayed due to me spending the last year or so on all the scenario preservation projects ie 1 the scifi/fantasy scenario search & rescue project, 2 the Civ2 lost websites cataloging project, 3 the massive Civ2 scenario multi site backup preservation project, and 4 kicking off the huge Civ in HD video series that many of these rescued scenarios will feature in. These projects have blown out so bad that my original predictions of when I'd finish these C&C and RA scenario projects along with my & Metros Civ2 Heroes of Might & Magic Scenario and my other mod projects have not come true so I'm very sorry to everyone who's been waiting and wondering.

Totally my fault as I basically put rescuing 20 years worth of everyone else's scenarios in front of finishing my own ones as priority lol! However the good news is these projects are reaching their end ie the first 2 are as done as can be and people that are following the 3rd one (my multi site scenario preservation project) will have seen that I'm doing the final scenario uploads at the moment. Once they're done, that's it! I'll put together my Civ2 HD video and then start releasing all my scenarios and mods. So I'm projecting early 2022, but no one should bet the house on that as we know what my ETA date predictions are like haha.

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[Pablostuka]

Gotta love it when I log into the site and find that someone who hasn't been on CFC in many years has logged in and replied to a message I sent them that I never expected a reply to but sent it just in case haha. Always a nice surprise to wake up to! This time it's @Pablostuka who has returned and answered my question about his Red Alert units you mentioned Broken Erika. Sadly he's lost them however it doesn't matter so much now as obviously in the years since I went ahead in this project thread and made my own units using original RA2 graphics. Would have been nice to check out (and preserve) his work though but oh well!
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Hello all!!

Look what i found. Vintage 2004. From a scen that was never finished as far as i know.
View attachment 542224
The development thread may have been on CDG/evo-games forum back in the day.

Wow!!! I lost all these files back in the day. I remember doing these 3 tanks based on fairline's M1 Abrams and T-34. I also remember drawing a Tesla coil and a flame towers from scratch as static defense units. But thatr's more or less all I can remember, so it was not much. I had so many ideas back in the day....

Cheers,

Pablo

 

[Blake00]

With the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Mod finally released I've finally after several years started working on my C&C and Red Alert 2 scenarios again over the last few weeks with the intention of getting them both released this year! I'm putting together the finishing touches with some nice improvements based on things I learned from the HoMM2 mod (eg custom GUI backgrounds & font colours, tiny unit shields, a few custom videos, & more midi music) and I'll show you guys some of these changes soon.

At the moment I'm working on finishing off all the sound effects, which has been quite the challenge as while Blake from several years ago did his best to plan unit slots around MGE sound allocation limits he clearly could have done better resulting in me now having to move some unit slots around which in already built/finished scenarios filled with hundreds of units has been quite the challenge lol. I'm nearly there though and things are sounding really nice as I'm combining multiple extracted sound files from the C&C & RA2 mix files into fun merged Civ2 sounds (usually a fun voice line, then shooting sounds, then explosions and death sounds) kind of like what I did with HoMM2 mod but better.. eg I'll attach the big C&C nuke dropping sound to the bottom this post (I'm having way too much fun with all those old C&C death screams haha). EDIT: For RA fans I just made a Tesla Trooper sound I'll attach below too.

Anyway while doing all this sound stuff and working around MGE's unit grouping sound allocation limitations I'm doing my best to plan and work towards the eventual ToT conversion too which of course allows custom sounds for any individual unit slot thankfully. For that I'm creating sound files that won't be used in the MGE version but will be ready to go for the future ToT conversion. However I've just noticed a MGE vs ToT difference I wasn't aware of that I thought I better check with you guys about as I'm sure you're all aware of it and I could use some help understanding it so I can better prepare for the ToT versions...

In MGE the Cannon, Artillery & Howitzer units use a triple sound file system that has a beginning sound "Fire!!", a middle shooting sound that's repeated for the duration of the battle, and then a explosion sound to finish it. Ships use a similar system with 2 sounds, first a naval battle firing sound that repeats for duration, and then an explosion sound. Aircraft have 4 separated sounds 1st an air to air sound, 2nd an air to ground bombing sound, 3rd a crash sound, and 4th a run out of fuel sound. Is all that stuff gone in ToT and it's just one sound for every unit? As obviously ToT doesn't have the unit editor and all I can see in the Rules file is a one sound per unit system. If yes and it's 1 per unit how on earth do you convert MGE scenarios with separated unit sounds over @gapetit ? If no and ToT does still support multiple broken up sounds per some unit types then how do you allocate them? Need advice from one of our friendly gurus please! @Prof. Garfield @Knighttime @JPetroski

MGE:


ToT:


Sounds below:

 

[Dadais]

Are you definitive about a Tot version, or is a totpp version possible ?

Lua allows for more advanced custom sounds

 

[Blake00]

Nah I'm not a programmer mate and while I enjoying seeing all the Lua work you and others do I have no interest in doing that stuff myself. I'm just trying to get to the finish line on all my projects as quickly as possible after so many years going by, so the last thing I need is to make things even more complicated than I've already made them lol.

I just need to know the answer to the above question on whether the MGE 'multi sound system' got removed in ToT so I can prepare my sound files now accordingly to save myself the trouble later. If ToT only accepts 1 sound per unit then I can just merge the 3 sound files together into 1 file in my sound editor quite easily.
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[Dadais]

To check, I believe sound is similar to mge ones until file name in the rules section is different from none ?

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