BAT Feedback Thread

[klaidonis]

Isn't there a BAT page in the BUG options that the using can check a box under and bingo - no more effect?

There isn't in the releases up to 2.1.1a

Actually, the BAT part which is not the BUG doesn't have any control panel. It makes sense because there is nothing to set up. Or I'd better say "there were"; now there is at least one feature that could require a parameter: "blood on/off".

 

[EmperorFool]

Isn't there a BAT page in the BUG options that the using can check a box under and bingo - no more effect?

No, these settings are in the XML, and you cannot modify their settings after BTS has parsed those files. At best we could write code that would move the files out of the way so the originals would be used when the player checked a box on the options screen, and then they would restart to see the effect.

While that would be nice if it worked well, it would involve some OS-dependent code and suffer from all the permissions issues that have plagued mods since Vista. In the end many players would have to do it manually, and it's possible that our code would make that harder by having messed it up in some way. We'd then have to analyze each situation to tell the player how to fix it. Better to just give them a ZIP they can unpack in-place and a readme.

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

Yay! new bat mod. Thx Lemon . Trying it out on new game now and so far it looks nice but I have noticed one thing so far. Well actually two things. First:



I noticed all the filter choices for gruoping units thet used to be there (like showing only land units or only peaceful units or changing how the stacks look etc) are missing. And I also noticed this:



Same stack in the city which is a biggish stack doesnt have any scroll aroows for moving thro the stack so it just stops with what fits into window.

Not sure if this is a bug or a mistake for just turned off and need to turn em back on somehow (I looked but couldnt find anything) just wondering if anyone else noticed same thing or is it just me :/

Kaytie

 

[EmperorFool]

@KaytieKat - Go into the BUG Options screen and on the Plot List tab set the Draw Method (Style?) to PLE. Ruff is rewriting the plot list code, and it's currently in a funky state with the wrong default option.

 

[ruff_hi]

@KaytieKat - Go into the BUG Options screen and on the Plot List tab set the Draw Method (Style?) to PLE. Ruff is rewriting the plot list code, and it's currently in a funky state with the wrong default option.

I object! The correct option (ie anything other than PLE) is the default now. Actually, the default is 'vanilla' and ... ok, you got me, somehow, somewhere we (ok, I) broke the vanilla unit plot lists when it comes to those arrow thingos.

@KaytieKat - remind me not to play against you if that is the sort of stack you put together at that part of the game ... nasty!

 

[KaytieKat]

Hi

Yeah that worked the filters are showing up now ty and hey! no fair pickin on my stack

Kaytie

 

[ruff_hi]

hey! no fair pickin on my stack

oops - I had "to to" instead of "not to". Fixed it above.

 

[Finarfin]

If it isn't commented out, it should work. I'll check the art files tomorrow as it's quite late here and I'm sleepy. You aren't using quick combat are you? There is no blood that way at all...

Any update on this?

And, FWIW, I am also experiencing crashes when using Exit to Main Menu. I don't know if you guys tracked this bug down yet or not.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Hi

Yay! new bat mod. Thx Lemon .

You are most welcome, Sweetie. Enjoy.

Any update on this?

And, FWIW, I am also experiencing crashes when using Exit to Main Menu. I don't know if you guys tracked this bug down yet or not.

There is no update on the blood issue because there is no issue. The graphics files are correct and complete, and I have blood in my games. Note that the blood is not as bright as it was before, so look closely. It's easy to miss it if you aren't zoomed in a bit.

As for the CTD issue, we cannot replicate the problem, and therefore can't test for it. This has been discussed in a couple of threads already. I can't say why some of you are having this problem and some are not. If it helps, I used to have vanilla BTS do it occasionally when using Vista. I never found the cause, but it seemed to go away after the 3.19 patch. Unfortunately, I can't really be sure as I just chalked it up to OS weirdness.

All I can say is run the game as admin, and make sure all of your DX9 files are up to date, as well as your Windows updates and graphics drivers. Also, I don't run other programs (besides Winamp) in the background when I play Civ - no conflicts that way. Maybe that is the difference, I don't know, but for now there is no magic fix. There are so many variables, and the problem is not widespread enough, so there may never be one. As mentioned, we can't fix a (possible) error that we can't reproduce.

Sorry.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

... isn't there a better way to enable / disable effects? Isn't there a BAT page in the BUG options that the using can check a box under and bingo - no more effect?

Sorry for two in a row, but I almost forgot about this one...

Lemon Labs is working on a way to make some of the things that make up BAT a little more modular, and one of the things I would like to do is to make some of the features optional. It probably will never be a panel in the BUG menu, as EF says that won't work, but I would like to be able to turn things on/off using the mod's .ini file. I'm investigating what would need to be done this evening, in fact.

This probably won't happen prior to the next major release, and that is months away at this point.

 

[ruff_hi]

Sorry for two in a row, but I almost forgot about this one...

Lemon Labs is working on a way to make some of the things that make up BAT a little more modular, and one of the things I would like to do is to make some of the features optional. It probably will never be a panel in the BUG menu, as EF says that won't work, but I would like to be able to turn things on/off using the mod's .ini file. I'm investigating what would need to be done this evening, in fact.

This probably won't happen prior to the next major release, and that is months away at this point.

If you need any python support - let me know.

 

[ruff_hi]

Same stack in the city which is a biggish stack doesnt have any scroll aroows for moving thro the stack so it just stops with what fits into window.

somehow, somewhere we (ok, I) broke the vanilla unit plot lists when it comes to those arrow thingos.

You know what the problem was? The code to add the little arrows was commented out. The code that selectively shows (or not) the arrows was fine. Spent a good 30 minutes comparing the 'selective show' 3.19 patch code to latest BUG before actually checking if the BUG code even adds the graphics to the main interface .

Fixed in r2171

 

[klaidonis]

I saw a post on the forum and a question came to my mind. I hope it is a proper place to ask.

What should I do if I want to get some feedback for a game played with the BAT? Is it possible to tweak the saves so the players without the BAT mod could have them loaded?

The problem is: on one hand, the BAT doesn't change gameplay so it makes sense to post a saved game to a common strategy forum. On the other hand, the BAT itself is quite a big mod so it's hard to expect that somebody would download and install it just for one particular game.

I understand that the BAT should not be used for competitive, succession or comparative games; but what if I want to ask for some advice about a single-player game with the BAT?

 

[EmperorFool]

Unfortunately, the latest versions of BAT (starting with 2.1 IIRC) have several BULL features enabled that require extra assets and a modified DLL. This means that the game is tied to BAT or at least a similiarly-build BULL installation with these extra assets.

Whether or not to include new features that break saved-game compatibility was a tough decision for us. Most users seemed to want those extra features, and we listened. That means you can no longer create an empty "BAT Mod" folder to trick BTS but must install BAT itself.

 

[klaidonis]

This means that the game is tied to BAT or at least a similiarly-build BULL installation with these extra assets.

Is it possible to convert a BAT save to a BtS compatible one? To have some kind of an "export" tool to be able to post a save to the forum; this "exported" save would be incompatible with the BAT game but would allow forum experts to shadow it using vanilla BtS.

 

[EmperorFool]

Unfortunately, that's not possible at this time. If you can find someone to analyze the BTS saved game file format they might be able to write a program to do it, but it would be pretty complex.

If you don't use the new actions (Sentry While Healing, Land/Sea Sentry, etc), you may be able to get away with creating an empty BAT Mod folder that matches the mod folder where you installed BAT exactly, e.g. "BAT Mod 2.2".

Give it a try by renaming your BAT folder and creating an empty one with the same name. If you can open a saved game, tada. If not, c'est la vie. Just delete the empty folder and rename BAT back.

 

[klaidonis]

Sorry, but it seems I am more confused now than before.

As I understand, new actions are parts of the BUG/BULL mod, aren't they? In this case any player who installed the BUG/BULL could load the BAT save file. And as the BUG/BULL is a standard de facto then it's enough to hack the BAT save file to make it compatible with the BUG/BULL. Am I correct?

 

[EmperorFool]

That's not the whole picture. Most features in BULL are enabled by checking boxes in the BUG Options screen (or modifying an XML file if you don't use BUG), but there are a few that cannot be configured this way. They alter the DLL in such a way that requires me to recompile a new DLL with those features on for BAT.

This affects the data that's written to the saved game, breaking compatibility between BULL with those options on and BULL with those options off. BAT uses a BULL DLL with these options on. That's just how Civ4 works, and there's nothing I can do about it.

 

[klaidonis]

Thank you very much, EmperorFool. Could you please answer my last (I hope) question?

Is the saving/loading code available in the SDK and in the BUG sources? I could at least look at the sources and may be write something like an export tool, but if the load/save sources are unavailable then it is not worth it.

 

[EmperorFool]

I'm not very familiar with the code. The DLL does save all the game objects, but I believe that the EXE processes the saved data in some fashion, for example creating a CRC that allows it to validate the integrity of the data.

I do know that the mod name is near the front of the file, and I experimented with altering it with success--but only altering it in such a way as not to change its length. It's stored in some encoding of Unicode, but without that section of source it's tough to say.