Making a Clone of Civ II

[Blake00]

MGE & ToT both load so much from mod folders but they of course don't load custom dlls from there meaning modders like myself that want to make changes to the GUI backgrounds/city view/throne room/videos/spaceship etc have to write big guides telling players how to backup and replace all their core vanilla Civ2 dll files. A Civ2 engine without that limitation built to load videos and ALL those extra dll files from a custom mod folder would mean that the original Civ2 graphics could be easily loaded by fans who own Civ2, while big total conversion mods with custom dlls and videos etc like my & @Metro Polis 's big Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Civ2 project (which will hopefully be finished and released in the next few months if I can get my act together lol) could be simply placed in a mod folder and loaded without any hassle (eg NOT having to swap around core Civ2 files).

Quoting myself here lol.. but just thought I'd mention that TheNamelessOne has added full mod loading (eg dlls etc) from the mod folder support in ToTPP and (after I pestered him lol) is looking at custom video loading from the mod folder too. Cool to see something we were talking/dreaming about earlier in this thread become a reality (well for ToT at least). Also thought I'd let you guys know in case you want to see an example in action before trying to set such a thing up yourselves in your rebuild (if you do).

 

[Flygon]

Figured out how to log into this account after a decade. I love work like this, and have been seeing some amazing stuff from the Alpha Centauri scene on a similar decompilation project.

Keep up the amazing work!

 

[Blake00]

and have been seeing some amazing stuff from the Alpha Centauri scene on a similar decompilation project.

Welcome back! Can you help a fellow Aussie out and remind me what the name of that project is? I think I've seen it before but I can't remember. It's probably over on the SMAC2 forum isn't it.

 

[JPetroski]

You know, with lua and ToTPP so much is possible in Civ2. I keep going back to the thought of "why doesn't the rights owner just upload a download on steam and charge $5." Maybe we need a twitter campaign to convince them of as much. I would again refer to Matrix Games and the way they've turned over updates of "Gary Grigsby's Bombing the Reich" to a small group of modders on their forums. The modders were given some parameters such as "No B-29s" but basically left a free hand. It's simple profit for the company as I'm pretty sure the modders do it out of love.

It's just stupid that a game that can literally be copy and pasted from one machine to another isn't uploaded somewhere with a legitimate DL link so we can get others to play it. We're all here trying to figure out a way to build one from scratch to solve this issue (though fixing hard coded issues like the # of civs would be great too).

 

[Civoleon]

Where's this project at currently?

 

[JPetroski]

Just in the dreaming stage as far as I know.

 

[CurtSibling]

I think ToTPP and Lua are the only legit ways to transform CIV2 into the next stage of evolution.
If TNO can ever break the limit of civs in game, then ToT will be modded for the next millenia!

 

[Civinator]

If TNO can ever break the limit of civs in game, then ToT will be modded for the next millenia!

... in the case that ToT should be modded in the next millenia, too, it would be needed to also fix the combat graphics for animated units and the movement sounds.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Where's this project at currently?

The GitHub repository was updated a couple days ago, so it looks to be in development still. I haven't tried it lately, so I don't know the state that it is in. This post has a screenshot of the interface as it was a little over a year ago. I think more recent effort was to make it cross platform, so it may not have progressed too much.

 

[JPetroski]

... in the case that ToT should be modded in the next millenia, too, it would be needed to also fix the combat graphics for animated units and the movement sounds.

I wonder if movement sounds are already possible with Lua. I think it's possible to tell a unit is moving and one could add a sound to that as "music" and then have the default movement "sound" be silent.

 

[Rui_TNV]

I think ToTPP and Lua are the only legit ways to transform CIV2 into the next stage of evolution.
If TNO can ever break the limit of civs in game, then ToT will be modded for the next millenia!

Indeed, that would really be something...

 

[CurtSibling]

... in the case that ToT should be modded in the next millenia, too, it would be needed to also fix the combat graphics for animated units and the movement sounds.

Irrelevant in comparison to having more than 7 civs in game.

 

[CurtSibling]

The GitHub repository was updated a couple days ago, so it looks to be in development still. I haven't tried it lately, so I don't know the state that it is in. This post has a screenshot of the interface as it was a little over a year ago. I think more recent effort was to make it cross platform, so it may not have progressed too much.

These sort of projects always start off with a big boost of enthusiasm, but sometimes fizzle away as modders move to other things, or life gets in the way.

I hope the team keeps on it, as the idea is cool, but I have seen too many mods go into deep freeze over the years.

 

[Blake00]

Yup as pointed out by Prof Garfield there's been recent changes on the github page , so no sign of fatigue yet thankfully. I also spoke with @axx over PM just a month back and asked him how things were going with Civ2 clone and he said he was trying to conquer some UI issues due to limitations of Eto which he chose for its cross platform capabilities, and that we would have seen more progress by now had these issues not occurred. I haven't tried the builds myself (not a programmer and I hate trying to compile stuff haha) but I believe they can load scenarios and savegames now but I don't think there's much AI activity. So definitely well past "dreaming" stage now JP!

 

[axx]

Yes it's coming along nicely. Like all similar project the activity can be sporadic and comes in waves. I've been trying to figure out how the original implements dialogs in the past month and I've figured it out more or less.
I'm too lazy to post what's done and needs to be done, but just look at the commit history to get a feel where we're at.
@Blake00 you don't really need to be a programmer to compile it, just download Visual studio (you don't need all the unnecessary cabbage it comes along with, just c# stuff), open the project and press Run.

 

[JPetroski]

My apologies I was referring to the one Garfield and I were talking about. I haven't really been following axx's one. Too many projects to keep track of them all

 

[Prof. Garfield]

My apologies I was referring to the one Garfield and I were talking about. I haven't really been following axx's one. Too many projects to keep track of them all

I never did anything beyond suggest that maybe it could be done using Lua. I figured that @axx 's project was underway, and I don't have any experience with C#, let alone know how to change it to make it cross platform. Since there was a project, I wasn't going to duplicate effort either.

 

[Civoleon]

@axx's project looks pretty dang good. Can the 7-civ barrier be breached?

 

[Blake00]

ahh right.. sorry JP yeah I'm so used to this thread being about axx's Civ2 clone project these days so I forgot it was kind of hijacked from you & garfield's original project ideas haha.

I could be imagining things but I think I saw axx posting earlier in this thread last year that they'd already squeezed in a 8th civ in testing and that more could be added in the future. Then the next hard part will be somehow being able to load old scenarios and up the AIs in them. The scenarios themselves will likely need to be modified.

.

 

[reubene]

@axx's project looks pretty dang good. Can the 7-civ barrier be breached?

Yes, it can have as many civs as there are colors for. So in the original that's 8