Announcing BUFFY

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

Hall of Fame and Game of the Month Participants

The Hall of Fame and Game of the Month Staffers have heard your pleas and finally decided they don't have the time to continually improve the HOF mod. As such, they have enlisted (begged?) the BTS Unaltered Gameplay Team to help them. Soooo - we bring you ...

BUFFY :band:

Come and get it here.

(Moderator Action: Updated link --NZ )

All the unaltered gameplay awesomeness of BUG plus the cutting-edge time-savers in BULL rolled up in one HOF/GOTM compatible package.

For more information on BUG, you might want to consider the BUG Mod forum. Additional information about BUG can be found at BUG's sourceforge page and at the BUG wiki (sure - it is pretty thin at the moment, but it is getting better every day).

BULL is a separate add-on that works with both BUG and BAT. It consists of a new DLL that modifies some of the hovers and includes a few other mods (like BUG itself does) such as Advanced Combat Odds and Sentry Actions. It also contains most of the latest Unofficial Patch changes.

To be honest, we have had so much fun working on the mod and adding features that we don't really have a complete list of what we added. In all likelihood, we would miss some important feature and one of our coders would get the hump and leave. No one wants that so we aren't providing a feature list with the initial announcement. I'll just leave it as 'feature list? We are working on it'

Ok, ok, to be super honest, documentation is boring and none of us wanted to do it.

Anyway, some of the many features that BUFFY brings to you include ...

Strategy Layer
Whip Assist
Enhanced 'City bar' Hovers
Advanced Combat Odds
BUG Charts

Still want more? Gees - what a pain. Surf on over to our wiki that we are currently fleshing out.

Edit: BUFFY is BtS Only. It is not for Vanilla or Warlords.

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

Comprehensive (or as close as I can get) list of features ...

Main Interface mini-mods

Advanced Scoreboard
Cycle City Arrows
Event Signs
Field of View
Gold Rate Warning
Great Person Progress Bar (GPPB)
Great General Progress Bar (GGPB)
I Love Asphalt!
Min/Max Commerce Buttons
Movement Points
Not Just Another Game Clock (NJAGC)
Plot List Enhancement (PLE) including PLE Hover and PLE unit move highlighter
Strategy Layer
Tech Pop-up
Tick Marks on Progress Bars
Wide City Bars
Vanilla style unit plot list
Advanced Combat Odds *BULL*
Improved Hover *BULL*
Additional Unit Commands *BULL*

City Screen

Raw Yields
Culture and Great Person Turns (CGPT)
Whip Assistant
Progress Bar Tick Marks
Specialist Stacker
Specialist Chevrons
Whip Anger counter

Other Screens

Dawn of Man with HOF Warning
F1 - Customizable Domestic Advisor (CDA) and Cammagno's CDA Pages
F2 - BUG Finance Screen
F3 - WHAT! BUG hasn't changed this screen - unbelievable!
F4 - Exotic Foreign Advisor (EFA) featuring the Improved Glance Tab
F5 - BUG Military Advisor
F6 - Tech screen featuring Great Person Tech Preferences
F7 - enhanced religious screen
F8 - Enhanced Victory Screen (EVS), the BUG Diplomatic tab & HOF Warnings
F9 - Better Info Screen (BIS) featuring BUG Charts
Ctrl-E - Better Espionage Screen (BES)

Non Graphical Mods

Autolog
Civ4lerts & MoreCiv4lerts
Reminders
Unit Naming
Mapfinder

Other

BUG Hints at start up
Sevopedia
Global Warming Mod *HOF*

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

With the release of BUFFY, we have decided to run a little competition. As you know (or you should know) ...

BUG stands for BtS Unaltered Gameplay
BAT stands for BtS Artistic Tweaks
BULL stands BUg dLL (goofy looking, but we are code hackers, not word smiths)

While the BUG and HOF guys had lots of fun coming up with the name BUFFY, we wanted to share some of the fun with you ... so ... the competition is ...

What does BUFFY stand for?

The winner, or the person judged to get closest to the correct name will win a prize. I am trying to get the HOF guys to accept that the prize should be one of your rejected HOF games accepted but they keep coming back with an autographed copy of BUFFY. I'll keep working on them.

Spoiler :

Edit: The competition results have been announced.

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

This post will contain a list of all the questions that we are sure the masses will raise and our half hearted attempts at answering them

Q: I've installed BUFFY for Vanilla (or Warlords) and it has trashed civ4?
A: Why? Why did you do that? Don't do that! BUFFY is only for BtS.

Q: What does BUFFY stand for?
A: See post #3! The competition results have been announced.

Q: Are there any known bugs in BUFFY?
A: Yes. Currently, we know of 4 bugs.
1) Unit Plots are not being cleared if you swap from PLE Style to non-PLE Style. Restart the game clears the plots.
2) The members tab on the Victory Screen is borked. Don't use it.
3) Stack Attack is very broken (CTD) - turn that feature off - we are looking at it
4) BUFFY 3.19.001 doesn't like it when BUG is install in customassets - rename your customassets folder

Q: I load up BUFFY but I get no interface - what is going on?
A: No interface usually occurs when a python error occurs. Please enable python error logging (see Ozbenno's post, start the game and post the files (PythonDbg.log and PythonErr.log)

Q: I've got BUG installed under customassets. BUFFY is not loading correctly?
A: BUFFY is trying to use your BUG settings, rename customassets to customassets-old and try again

Q: I've got BUG installed as a mod. Will in cause any problems with BUFFY?
A: Nope - BUG (mod version) and BUFFY should get along fine.

Q: I get an error message about BUFFY not loading ... 'BugCore - mod BUFFY not initialized; removing' ... what do I do?
A: This is caused by you having BUG installed under customassets - rename customassets to customassets-old

Q: It seems that the customassets version of BUG and BUFFY don't like each other. What are you going to do about it?
A: Yeah - this is a bit of a problem. We'll look into it and get a fix for this for the next release. In the mean time, rename your customassets folder so that it doesn't contain BUG.

Q: I am seeing some strange unit icons when I swap between PLE style and non PLE style. It seems that both versions of the icons are being shown. Is this a bug?
A: Yep, it is. Restarting civ will clear this bug but it will reshow if you change your PLE style. We'll fix this for the next release.

Q: Wow - BUFFY is really good. It would be even better if it had XYZ. Can I make a request that this feature be added?
A: Sure can. Log your request in the 'feature request' thread.

Q: Can I use the Better AI DLL with BUFFY?
A: No. BUFFY has its own DLL so using the Better AI DLL would break BUFFY and invalidate any game for HOF or GOTM purposes.

Q: Why didn't you include BAT with BUFFY?
A: We did discuss the inclusion of BAT but that would swell the d/l dramatically (IIRC, 17mg d/l would balloon to over 200mg). We decided that was too big of a d/l for the HOF mod.

Q: How do I turn off the flashing "press <insert hotkeys> to see the options" text?
A: You can turn that off by opening the options and unchecking one of the options on the 'system' tab.

Q: Can I install BUFFY for Vanilla Civ4 and Warlords?
A: No, BUFFY is only for BtS.

Q: The pre-chop feature doesn't seem to be working?
A: Oops - we got ahead of our selves here and included the check box for the option but not the actual code. You can check or uncheck the option to your hearts content but it will not do anything!

Q: Are there any special keyboard shortcuts in BUFFY?
A: Yep ...

ALT + G: Regenerated Map

ALT + CTRL + G: Start / Stop MapFinder

ALT + X: Toggle DotMap (Strategy Layer) Edit Mode

CTRL + X: Toggle DotMap Visibility

ALT + M: Create a Reminder

Q: I get a dialog box showing HOF errors like this ...

Spoiler :

What do I do?
A: As far as the BUG team knows, that is a HOF asset checking error. There are chinese walls between that function and the BUG team so you will need to talk to the HOF guys. Post that error in their announcement thread.

Q: I am totally confused! What is all this BUG, BAT, BULL and BUFFY stuff?
A: Again?

BUG is Beyond the Sword Unaltered Game play. It is a mod that radically improves the civ4 user interface.

BAT is BUG plus a whole bunch of pretty graphics

BULL is BUg dLL. BUG does not use a DLL. BULL is an extension of BUG that requires its own DLL and allows us to do great stuff that we couldn't do before.

BUFFY is BUG+BULL+HOF stuff (game checking v HOF requirements, secret file stuff, etc)

Q: Will BUFFY work with 'insert different mod here'?
A: Why are you asking? BUFFY is a mod. Everyone knows that you cannot run two mods at once. What are you thinking!! The answer is NO.

That said, if you want to manually merge the BUFFY python and xml files and create a new DLL that is a merge of BUFFY and this other mod (you will not get access to the secret HOF stuff - we [the BUG team] didn't even get a copy of that), then go for it - you can create your own merged mod.

Q: Will BUFFY work with BlueMarble (BM)?
A: Sure thing - load BM up in the customassets folder and you are good to go.

Fire.Soul · Jul 25, 2009

I have BUG installed and I'm interested in replacing it with BUFFY. So what should I do? Simply install BUFFY or should I remove BUG in the first place? If so how do I do it?

Congrats on the fantastic mods. You made the impossible: make Civ 4 and even better game =)

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

Fire.Soul said:
I have BUG installed and I'm interested in replacing it with BUFFY. So what should I do? Simply install BUFFY or should I remove BUG in the first place? If so how do I do it?

Assuming you have BUG installed as a mod and not under your customassets folder, BUG and BUFFY will quite happily sit beside each other. You can have them both installed. If BUG is installed under customassets, then you will need to check 'locked assets' (which you have to do for HOF games anyway).

BUG and BUFFY might share configuration options if you have your BUG config files stored under customassets - I'm not sure about that.

shyuhe · Jul 25, 2009

I just installed the mod and tried booting the game up but it crashes

Any ideas why this happens? I don't get the screen showing the XML, python etc. being loaded into the game - it crashes before then.

edit: never mind. Figured out the problem.

Grifftavian · Jul 25, 2009

ruff_hi said:
Comprehensive (or as close as I can get) list of features ...

Main Interface mini-mods

Spoiler :

Advanced Scoreboard

Cycle City Arrows

Event Signs

Field of View

Gold Rate Warning

Great Person Progress Bar (GPPB)

Great General Progress Bar (GGPB)

I Love Asphalt!

Min/Max Commerce Buttons

Movement Points

Not Just Another Game Clock (NJAGC)

Plot List Enhancement (PLE) including PLE Hover and PLE unit move highlighter

Strategy Layer

Tech Pop-up

Tick Marks on Progress Bars

Wide City Bars

Vanilla style unit plot list

Advanced Combat Odds *BULL*

Improved Hover *BULL*

Additional Unit Commands *BULL*

City Screen

Spoiler :

Raw Yields

Culture and Great Person Turns (CGPT)

Whip Assistant

Progress Bar Tick Marks

Specialist Stacker

Specialist Chevrons

Whip Anger counter

Other Screens

Spoiler :

Dawn of Man with HOF Warning

F1 - Customizable Domestic Advisor (CDA) and Cammagno's CDA Pages

F2 - BUG Finance Screen

F3 - WHAT! BUG hasn't changed this screen - unbelievable!

F4 - Exotic Foreign Advisor (EFA) featuring the Improved Glance Tab

F5 - BUG Military Advisor

F6 - Tech screen featuring Great Person Tech Preferences

F7 - enhanced religious screen

F8 - Enhanced Victory Screen (EVS), the BUG Diplomatic tab & HOF Warnings

F9 - Better Info Screen (BIS) featuring BUG Charts

Ctrl-E - Better Espionage Screen (BES)

Non Graphical Mods

Spoiler :

Autolog

Civ4lerts & MoreCiv4lerts

Reminders

Unit Naming

Mapfinder

Other

Spoiler :

BUG Hints at start up

Sevopedia

Who says you can't have it all :bowdown:

Assuming that...
1. 3.19 will be the last patch for BtS, and
2. Civ 5 will not be released until sometime after the release of Alpha Centauri 2

then BUFFY = BtS Unlimited Fun For Years

For the GOTM Staff, HOF Staff, BUG Team, and everyone who worked on BUFFY...

:goodjob:

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

shyuhe said:
I just installed the mod and tried booting the game up but it crashes Any ideas why this happens? I don't get the screen showing the XML, python etc. being loaded into the game - it crashes before then.

edit: never mind. Figured out the problem.

share the solution so that we don't have to reinvent it

pholkhero · Jul 25, 2009

hey ruff ~ will be trying out BUFFY later tonight i think ~

BUFFY=
BtS
Unaltered
Fluffy
Friggin'
Yarbles

and of course ~ hey now ~ how ya been aussie?

PieceOfMind · Jul 25, 2009

Can't access the wiki you linked. A password is needed.

Also, were you guys gonna make the installer put a shortcut on the desktop or start menu automatically? I thought a mod of this importance might deserve one.

I have no idea what you've done with the name buffy. Maybe it's BUG Family Friendly. :lol:

shyuhe · Jul 25, 2009

ruff_hi said:
share the solution so that we don't have to reinvent it

Install 3.19 before playing with BUFFY :lol:

Although now I'm getting a different problem - the BUFFY interface doesn't load at all so I have a no game interface :eek:

CHEESE! · Jul 25, 2009

I have that same problem Shyuhe.

Grifftavian · Jul 25, 2009

I get the no interface problem using BUG with 3.17. Only happens when 'Lock Modified Assets' was checked; leave it unchecked and BUG Interface worked. :confused:

PieceOfMind · Jul 25, 2009

When I start a custom game, I can see an option for Rising Sea.

Is the Global Warming mod included in BUFFY? Or is this something wrong with my settings?

EDIT... Hmm I found it in the GameSetUpCheck and BULL revisions.txt in the mod so I guess it's meant to be there. I now wonder, is the GW mod small enough a change to gameplay to be considered for HOF? I don't think it's in the list of changes at the top of this thread.

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

PieceOfMind said:
Can't access the wiki you linked. A password is needed.

Fixed - link in first post should work now.

ruff_hi · Jul 25, 2009

shyuhe said:
Although now I'm getting a different problem - the BUFFY interface doesn't load at all so I have a no game interface

Hmm - looks like it is looking for the BUG ini (or config) files under customassets. It should be looking under BUFFY. Try renaming customassets to 'customassets-old' and restarting.

Ozbenno · Jul 25, 2009

Can those having problems, enable error logging in their civilizationIV.ini file as such and post the error logs here so we can see what is happening.

; Enable the logging system
LoggingEnabled = 1

; Overwrite old network and message logs
OverwriteLogs = 1

; Enable message logging
MessageLog = 1You can also allow Python errors to pop up:

; Set to 1 for no python exception popups
HidePythonExceptions = 0

Lemontree5544 · Jul 25, 2009

ruff_hi said:
Hmm - looks like it is looking for the BUG ini (or config) files under customassets. It should be looking under BUFFY. Try renaming customassets to 'customassets-old' and restarting.

Thanks, this worked!

EmperorFool · Jul 26, 2009

For anyone having trouble with BUFFY, the first thing to try is to disable the use of CustomAssets.

Go to your BTS installation folder
Navigate into Mods/BUFFY-3.19.001
Open BUFFY-3.19.001.ini in Notepad
Change NoCustomAssets from 0 to 1

This is necessary if you have BUG installed to CustomAssets (single-player install).

Announcing BUFFY

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Deviant Mind

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Deity

On a long nostalgia trip

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