Summer Project

[techumseh]

This project is now in it's fourth year. I have had a number of activity spurts, but never got it to the point that it was ready for external play-testing. It's just the most difficult subject I've ever undertaken, and long breaks to restore enthusiasm have been needed. It's still not ready, but in the last 2 weeks I've made real progress.

I think I've solved the technical Hump/Lend-lease to China issues by dramatically simplifying the events, but much play-balance work remains. Otherwise, the human (British) player's job is made more interesting by basing reinforcements on researching technologies instead of having them arrive automatically on the historical turn. Each British division has its own tech. This provides incentive to build the research wonders available.

After a couple of run-throughs of the first few turns, there are many glitches already, so lots of fixing and tweaking is still ahead. But for the first time, my basic framework for the scenario is complete. But for those who are anxiously waiting, please don't hold your breath.

 

[Patine]

I do admit, trying to tie everything but movements and military engagements to historical dates is a recipe for madness in Civ2 scenarios, in my experience. I like to mix historical event dates with techs researched, trigger units destroyed, cities captured, and such. I believe it makes things more workable, and I fully approve of using techs for reinforcements instead of (or possibly mixed with) rigid historical dates. Note that I mixed the two in my Korean War scenario for UN reinforcements in Pusan.

 

[techumseh]

In my upgrade of the Burma events, I've discovered something new. Or something I once knew, but have forgotten.

The scenario has 5 civs: Britain, Japan, China, Thailand and one utility civ, Lend-Lease. But when I tried flag events for the two unused civs (yellow and purple), they worked! It has to be the right civs of the particular color, in this case the Egyptians and Sioux. Aztecs or Mongols don't work.

I don't know if this is news for anyone else, but it is for me. In this case, I'm running out of flags of the 5 existing civs in the Burma scenario. With ToPP's unlimited events, it may come in handy for others as well.

 

[techumseh]

With much regret and frustration, I have to let you know that I have abandoned work on the Burma Campaign scenario. Several weeks ago, I experienced a series of glitches with my events. They seem to fire randomly – not according to my events programming. The most common, and frustrating has been the premature arrival of the monsoon. The monsoon events are based on a specific technology given to the Japanese civ on a specific turn. Yet the technologies appear 7 or 8 turns early almost half the time. Other events also misfire from time to time, as in reinforcements in the wrong turn. Some events simply don’t trigger, and I can’t figure out why.


I have worked consistently over the last month to simplify this and other events in the hopes of fixing things. Nothing has worked. My theory is that it has something to do with the ToTPatch increase in events memory. When I debug the events, the Report file consistently indicates that my events take up 227,415 bytes, even though I have been steadily reducing the size of the events file. So something isn’t working there.


Anyway, I want to thank people for their comments and encouragement, and particularly thank Gareth for his excellent units, as usual. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them, but after 4 years, enough is enough.

 

[Tanelorn]

Sure you can do it. You are an ace. Take a breather, get back to it later. No rush.
Do what you like.

 

[CurtSibling]

Sad to hear of these problems, Tech. The ToTPP might contain untested elements and chaos we did not forsee. This is most unfortunate...Sorry to hear of your stress.
When a project melts the brain at this level, and this one seems to do so - I find switching to an unrelated scenario, and a much simpler one is a good tonic.
Hope you are not demoralised completely, old man.

 

[Patine]

This is indeed an unfortunate declaration. But, since you are a pioneer and tackle amongst the complex and detailed scenarios amongst us who still post here, pushing the boundaries of a 20-year-old game (if you date it from the first vanilla release in 1996), that is still very much to be admired. As much can be learned by the failed attempts of pioneers, innovators, experimenters, and tinkerers as their successes.

 

[techumseh]

Thanks guys. The community is what keeps us all going, as small as it has become. I haven't given up on Test of Time either. Thinking about it, there is a wealth of resources: a great community that shares knowledge freely, excellent how-to materials, a wealth of fabulous graphics and a library of dozens of excellent scenarios from all ages, not to mention the amazing new horizons of the Patch Project.

Even though I assume that ToTPP has something to do with the wrong events becoming embedded in the scn. file, I won't condemn it. It opens too many doors to the kind of scenario I've always wanted to build. I may try something else in the meantime, or I might just take a break for awhile. In the end, I've spent 4 years, on and off, on Burma, and I doubt I will leave it on the shelf forever. It may be necessary to start it almost from scratch, and rebuild the events piece by piece, simplifying them from the over-complex programming of the failed scenario version. But that will be down the road, if at all. Thanks again.