[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[Rui_TNV]

Hello.
There is a bug in the "Extended Original Game" mode.
When the "Colonist" unit uses the Teleport function from a Starport (even if I built several Starports in both worlds), the game shows the message below:

View attachment 654604

This works normally for any other units I've used.
I'm surprised no one has reported this issue so far.

For that case, I found a solution in the Rules.txt file (C:\Program Files\Microprose\Test of Time\ExtendedOriginal\Rules.txt).
For some reason, the Colonist's rule is different from the Settlers and Enginners.

Settlers / Enginners rule (line 943 and 944):
11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000, 0000000000000001, 0000000000000000, 00000000 ;Settlers
11111111, 00000000, 0, 0000000000000000, 0000000000000001, 0000000000000000, 00000000 ;Engineers

Colonist rule (line 995):
01111110, 00000010, 0, 0000000000000001, 0000000000000011, 0000000000000000, 00100000 ;Colonist

Changing the Colonist's binary numbers to the same as Settlers and Engineers fixes the problem.
I tested it and it works, the message does not appear and I can teleport normally.

Hello.

If you change it like that colonist can no longer transform terrain...

 

[Rui_TNV]

Hello.

If you change it like that colonist can no longer transform terrain...

And I also realIzed that changing it like that it allows for cities on the allien planet to produce colonists, which wasn't the case before...

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Bug report: ToT isn't notifying me when another tribe starts a wonder. I'm enabling Edit control + No CD + Save file extensions/Extra unit types. If I only enable Edit control + No CD I do get the notifications, so extra unit types seems the cause. I'm uploading a savegame and my config just in case.

Building on this, it seems different save extension options interfere with different wonder popups in Game.txt: as stated, 'Extra units types' blocks @STARTWONDER and @SWITCHWONDER, and 'Extra technologies' blocks @ALMOSTWONDER.

 

[techumseh]

Has anyone else noticed that AI-controlled civs don't build fighters in ToT? The reason I raise it here is because of the hope that someone with the skills of TNO might be able to provide a fix.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

There is a weird bug with civ.scen.onChooseDefender.

If I start the game and load a saved game file in a folder where the events call civ.scen.onChooseDefender, units carried by a ship will not be destroyed if the ship is destroyed. (At least, this is the case for the function specified by my Lua template.)

Re-loading and trying again will consistently produce this bug.

If I comment out the registration civ.scen.onChooseDefender, then the stack kill proceeds as normal.

If, after this point, I uncomment the civ.scen.onChoodeDefender command, stack kills still work as expected, until I close the entire Civ II program. (I haven't loaded games in multiple folders to see if/how the bug changes.) EDIT2: I should clarify this point. I saved and re-loaded so that the civ.scen.onChooseDefender registration would happen again.

This shouldn't be too hard to correct in events.lua, but it is weird, especially its inconsistent nature.

EDIT:
The command

civ.scen.onChooseDefender(function(defaultFn,tile,attacker,isCombat) return defaultFn(tile,attacker)  end)

does work properly, even on the first attempt.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

It appears that calling the default choice function resolves the issue for some reason. So, this seems to work as a fix.

civ.scen.onChooseDefender(function(defaultFn,tile,attacker,isCombat)
    defaultFn(tile,attacker)
    return combatSettings.onChooseDefender(defaultFn, tile, attacker, isCombat)  end)

 

[TestofTimeBKrzy]

Hi guys, having a little trouble getting this working. I followed the installation structions and applied the patcher - the buttons are green for ToT v1.1 and Patched. However whenever I try to Save and Launch the game opens for a second before simply dying. Is this a common problem? Sorry I couldn't see anyone talking about it!

*Edit* Changing the game to run in compatibility mode seemed to fix it! Leaving this up in case anyone has the same issue.

That being said - I'm now getting a strange flickering on my Computer task bar whilst playing that's quite distracting. Has anyone encountered that?

 

[AyCe]

Hi guys, having a little trouble getting this working. I followed the installation structions and applied the patcher - the buttons are green for ToT v1.1 and Patched. However whenever I try to Save and Launch the game opens for a second before simply dying. Is this a common problem? Sorry I couldn't see anyone talking about it!

*Edit* Changing the game to run in compatibility mode seemed to fix it! Leaving this up in case anyone has the same issue.

That being said - I'm now getting a strange flickering on my Computer task bar whilst playing that's quite distracting. Has anyone encountered that?

I think you need to disable fullscreen optimizations in the compatibility settings to fix that.

 

[Blake00]

Can't remember if I've already posted this ToTPP wishlist item before but it would be great if somehow the City sprite cells in Cities.bmp could be expanded in size from 64 x 48 pixels to the full 64 x 64 pixels like the units get. Would reduce some of the unit 'giantism' compared to cities and also allow for bigger and better city creations and pixel art.

 

[Dadais]

Gigamap size (32,767) has been available for many years now, thanks to Mercator's map edit 2. Of course I mean more than that, c'mon!

@Prof. Garfield , @TheNamelessOne

​

Met an issue using Totpp18.4, when creating a new game with a custom game-made map, we are offered the ability to choose its size.
Considering this limit of 32 767 tiles, it does refuse some sizes :
168x195 (=32760) works,
168x196 (=32928) doesn't work.
Yet both these maps would only hold 16380 and 16464 tiles ?
Is there a way to unlock/correct this restriction ?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Met an issue using Totpp18.4, when creating a new game with a custom game-made map, we are offered the ability to choose its size.
Considering this limit of 32 767 tiles, it does refuse some sizes :
168x195 (=32760) works,
168x196 (=32928) doesn't work.
Yet both these maps would only hold 16380 and 16464 tiles ?
Is there a way to unlock/correct this restriction ?

I think you just have to start on a pre-made map that is already larger, since the game just rejects building a new map that is larger. I don't know anything about map making, so you'll have to ask someone else, maybe @JPetroski ?

This is probably something that TNO could correct pretty easily the next time he gives us an update.

 

[Knighttime]

Considering this limit of 32 767 tiles, it does refuse some sizes :
168x195 (=32760) works,
168x196 (=32928) doesn't work.
Yet both these maps would only hold 16380 and 16464 tiles ?

Hi @Dadais, I have to disagree with your conclusion about the number of tiles on those maps. A 168x195 map really does have 32,760 tiles -- I confirmed this by starting a new game and specifying a new custom map of that size in the game setup menu, then using Lua to iterate over every tile on the resulting map and increment a counter. So a 168x196 map is indeed too large and it's correct for it not to be supported (unless TNO can somehow increase the actual limit in the future!)

There is some inconsistency, and therefore probably confusion, regarding how the game (and the map editor) report the X coordinates of maps. If you create a 168x195 map and look at it in the game, the highest X coordinate will actually be 335 (the values run from 0 through 335). So to find the number of tiles on a map you are looking at within the game itself, you take the greatest X coordinate value shown for any tile plus 1, multiplied by the greatest Y coordinate value shown for any tile plus 1, and divide by 2. But when you are creating a map, the dimensions you enter are accurate and no division by 2 is needed.

On the other hand, if you create a 168x195 map in the map editor, the highest X coordinate that is shown within that program will be 167. It's only when such a map is viewed in the game that the X coordinates are artificially doubled.

P.S. The Lua command civ.getAtlasDimensions() returns the "greatest X coordinate value shown for any tile plus 1" and "greatest Y coordinate value shown for any tile plus 1" respectively. So when I created a 168x195 map, that command returned "336, 195, 1". Thus when multiplying the numbers returned by that function, dividing by 2 is again necessary to determine the total count of map tiles.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I think you just have to start on a pre-made map that is already larger, since the game just rejects building a new map that is larger. I don't know anything about map making, so you'll have to ask someone else, maybe @JPetroski ?

This is probably something that TNO could correct pretty easily the next time he gives us an update.

Never mind. I misread Dadais' post. I thought it was problem of making maps larger than 10,000 tiles. But, apparently, that has either been fixed by TOTPP or was never a problem for TOT, but the wording of game.txt was never updated.

 

[Dadais]

There is some inconsistency, and therefore probably confusion, regarding how the game (and the map editor) report the X coordinates of maps. If you create a 168x195 map and look at it in the game, the highest X coordinate will actually be 335 (the values run from 0 through 335). So to find the number of tiles on a map you are looking at within the game itself, you take the greatest X coordinate value shown for any tile plus 1, multiplied by the greatest Y coordinate value shown for any tile plus 1, and divide by 2. But when you are creating a map, the dimensions you enter are accurate and no division by 2 is needed.

This is it indeed !
Many thanks Knighttime !

Never mind. I misread Dadais' post. I thought it was problem of making maps larger than 10,000 tiles. But, apparently, that has either been fixed by TOTPP or was never a problem for TOT, but the wording of game.txt was never updated.

Guess I failed checking ingame the resulting map !

 

[Dadais]

Working with sprites again, was thinking about a little stuff there :

Could there be the ability with Lua to access and alter in the unit object its direction (used on sprite choice purpose by the game per exemple).

Maybe could that open two areas of development :

-further unit graphic personalisation :
Have a unit displayed differently considering various factors : a single warrior unitType could then be displayed into a european one, a middleeastern one, an african one, an asian one, or native american one per exemple. Or a unit could be portrayed differently considering its health (somehow like civIV), and be treated differently on the lua side ("fight" giving different actions).
It would then allow one to save unit Types slot yet display more graphical features.

-Tactical feature with lua, needing enhanced AI (also doable with lua ?)
Not compatible with the graphic expansion, I guess some may whish to dwelve into it too despite the work involved with AI.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Have a unit displayed differently considering various factors : a single warrior unitType could then be displayed into a european one, a middleeastern one, an african one, an asian one, or native american one per exemple.

Given he hacked per-tribe city sprites, I've been wondering if something similar is possible with the Units file. It would be a godsend to scenarios that use up most of their slots on flavour variants.

 

[Regendur]

If you have the CD inserted (or ISO mounted), the game will crash unless you disable the "no cd" patch. That's the first thing to try.

Here's an installation guide, which might also be of some help.

Hi folks! Recently went on a spree, patching and downloading dozens upon dozens of scenarios - thank you for all the resources!

It does look like the TPG website, such a link quoted, has recently gone down. Does anyone know the site owner? It would be great to have that site back!

 

[Blake00]

Hi folks! Recently went on a spree, patching and downloading dozens upon dozens of scenarios - thank you for all the resources!

It does look like the TPG website, such a link quoted, has recently gone down. Does anyone know the site owner? It would be great to have that site back!

Welcome! I believe you're referring to @Catfish 's site. He's MIA these days however we noticed the site failure and FoxAhead made backup of it in this thread here:

Catfish site closed

I just noticed that Catfish's site has been closed by the service provider. It has many excellent resources for scenario making. Is anyone in touch with him? Or is there some way to retrieve the content? It would be a shame to lose such great resources.

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Regendur]

Thank you very much, indeed that's it! His installation guide helped round out some edges and link to yet more excellent scenarios.

I did try out Test of Time and played an Extended game through, but noticed my game would tend to graphically hang during turn cycles, particularly during combat, but sounds would still play through the cycle until my turn came around again, whereupon the game would resume normally. Is there a fix for this?

 

[Dadais]

Thank you very much, indeed that's it! His installation guide helped round out some edges and link to yet more excellent scenarios.

I did try out Test of Time and played an Extended game through, but noticed my game would tend to graphically hang during turn cycles, particularly during combat, but sounds would still play through the cycle until my turn came around again, whereupon the game would resume normally. Is there a fix for this?

Easy thing propably, I forgot experimenting this for quite some time.

"Launch in compatibility mode" may solve this issue.

Just tested on my win10 laptop :
-playing with compatibility settings* set as "windowsXp sp3" seems to solve this issue yet makes the game muuuuuch sloooooweeeeeer.
-playing with compatibility settings* set as "windows 8" seems to solve this issue and keep correct performances.

*right click on civ2.exe, "compatibility", then "run this program..."