Making impassable mountains passable

[Gingi]

Yeah, I posted this earlier today under the general Civ4 - Creation & Customization category; someone told me this was a SDK thing so I thought I would recieve more help for it in this category:

Alright, I'm making an Eragon mod (yeah, I know there are probably already Eragon mods out there already but I'm making one anyway ). I'm modding in the dwarves civilization who (for those who haven't read it or seen the movie) live inside the mountains (in tunnels and underground cities, etc.)

I'm thinking of allowing the dwarves to settle and move around in mountains, put resources in there (like gold and iron) and basically make the mountains passable.

So, yeah. ^^^

I was told I would need to edit the SDK which I downloaded but I do not know how to edit it (god I sound like such a noob!)

Thanks!

 

[phungus420]

Search for the mountains back in service modcomp, no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[Gingi]

lol

Someone told me about the mountains back thing so I downloaded it. It contains a dll which I don't know how to edit or look through. Then I saw this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166933 but I had trouble downloading the Platform SDK.

 

[phungus420]

Guide to using the SDK

User Refar's guide as your tutorial, and the 3.19 makefile in the link above. Also be sure to check out Xienwolf's idiots guide to the dll, also linked to from there.

 

[Gingi]

Wow, thanks! I can now finally go full speed on this mountain problem. Both guides (Refar's and Xienwolf's) are extremely helpful.

 

[davidlallen]

If you are not using any other mods yet, you do not need to recompile the mountains back in service modcomp. The download itself contains a "cvgamecoredll.dll". Just follow the instructions in the modcomp.

 

[Gingi]

If you are not using any other mods yet, you do not need to recompile the mountains back in service modcomp. The download itself contains a "cvgamecoredll.dll". Just follow the instructions in the modcomp.

Thanks, that's exactly what I was wondering.

 

[EmperorFool]

Keep in mind that you can only use the CvGameCoreDLL.dll file as-is. If you want to change any of its behavior you need the .cpp and .h files which were used to compile it.

Think of the DLL as a cookie and the .cpp and .h files as the recipe. You can't add more brown sugar to a cookie, but you can alter the recipe and use it to make a different cookie.

 

[Gingi]

Thanks.

Than why do some mods come with CvGameCoreDLL.dll that come with it? Aren't files in mods only the files that you change from the original game? (I mean, if you don't change CvGameCoreDLL.dll then why would it be included in the mod?)

Also now that I have downloaded the tools to edit the SDK how do I actually make another terrain?

I know I can make another terrain by adding an object to CIV4TerrainInfos.xml but don't you have to add some SDK stuff too? Or can I just make it straight from the XML?

 

[davidlallen]

Many changes, such as adding a terrain type, can be done just by changing the xml. Some changes, such as making mountains passable, also require changing the sdk. These are usually called "modcomps", module components. If you want to use one modcomp from somebody else, and it contains a cvgamecoredll.dll, that is fine.

If you want to use two different modcomps, both of which contain a cvgamecoredll.dll, then you must do a lot of work. You must take the C++ source files included in each modcomp, merge them together, and then use the C++ compiler to build a new cvgamecoredll.dll containing both features.

Does that help?

 

[EmperorFool]

When a mod contains its own CvGameCoreDLL.dll file, it means the creator used the .cpp and .h files from the game to build their own file. If they give you those files along with the mod (they should and most do), you can modify them further to make your own DLL. But you cannot make a new DLL using just a DLL as a start.

As for adding a new terrain, you can do that in XML and then modifying a Python map script to use that terrain. The normal map scripts don't know about your terrain, so they won't use it I don't think. I haven't done this myself, but it makes sense.