Blue Marble V3.0

[Jecrell]

I just installed it, and let me just say I love the opening screen. Pericles, Gandhi, and Peter look better, although Darius' sudden mustache growth made me giggle, but if you're going for that look maybe you guys should give him some eyebrows as well. Also, I don't think any amount of work could save Suryavarman II -- ick.

Also, Hubble is awesome...

As always, good stuff, and thank you so much for putting this thing together. I prefer Blue Marble so much more to the vanilla style.

 

[ColdFever]

Darius' sudden mustache growth made me giggle.

Actually this was not my idea. When I presented Darius with a corrected skin color to a testing group a guy with knowledge of Persia's history contacted me, presenting historic material about the real Darius, showing a full beard, asking me if I could give him one. Others agreed, wanting to make him look "more human". So I used texture material from his chin beard to form a full beard. The testing group demanded 3 versions until people were satisfied, and on the end I was close to dream about this beard. I think it looks ok now, but I probably will never want modding a face again. I know now how extremely difficult it must me to develop a full leader head.

 

[Jecrell]

Actually this was not my idea. When I presented Darius with a corrected skin color to a testing group a guy with knowledge of Persia's history contacted me, presenting historic material about the real Darius, showing a full beard, asking me if I could give him one. Others agreed, wanting to make him look "more human". So I used texture material from his chin beard to form a full beard. The testing group demanded 3 versions until people were satisfied, and on the end I was close to dream about this beard. I think it looks ok now, but I probably will never want modding a face again. I know now how extremely difficult it must me to develop a full leader head.

Originally, I thought the original Darius looked alright, but I clearly didn't take the time to get a good look at the original Darius. No wonder why such a modification occured.

Here's a comparison of the two.

The one on the right is much, much better than the one on the left. It really does make a difference.

I also want to admit that I know very little about Darius or Persian history, but I'd like to make a proposal for further changes. I made an image concept (thumbnailed below) of the changes I'd like to try, that I'll be likely do myself now that I have the ideas in my mind, like making the eyes a shade darker and adding eyebrows. The eyebrow and eyeshade changes in this image were done in photoshop based on the previous image. It's not actually in-game work.

(removed concept thumbnail -- see edit below)

[EDIT] Alright then, I got my hands dirty. Here's some darker eyebrows for our Persian friend (works in-game). I'm not sure how to test the nonshader version, so I've just included the Dif.dds.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/63075/Darius_Dif.zip

 

[RAGreco]

I have the Steam Version of BtS, but the CD version of the original game, is there any way for me to get the Blue Marble add on with this configuration?

 

[RAGreco]

I also have the CD version of Warlords, which works fine with the mod, if that helps.

 

[ziut]

When I start game from "Play now" its works, but every time game crushes if I try start from "Custom game". It's a bug?

 

[ColdFever]

I got my hands dirty. Here's some darker eyebrows for our Persian friend (works in-game).

Good work! Thanks for the suggestion.
If I ever will do an update of Darius, I will consider such an approach.

I have the Steam Version of BtS, but the CD version of the original game, is there any way for me to get the Blue Marble add on with this configuration?

The problem in this configuration is that the directory "Beyond the Sword" is not a subdirectory of Civ4's program directory, what is the case with each CD/DVD installation. I heard somebody was able to install Blue Marble on this CD/Steam-configuration after copying Civilization4.exe from the CD installation directory into Steam's installation directory (Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword), so that it looks like a regular installation again to the Blue Marble installer. The BM installer then has to be started from this directory with the "dummy" Civilization4.exe , so that it knows where to install things. Please let me know if this works (I have no Steam for testing).

When I start game from "Play now" its works, but every time game crushes if I try start from "Custom game". It's a bug?

Certainly this would be a bug, but I never heard of it yet and I doubt it comes from Blue Marble. Please uninstall Blue Marble and see if this really helps. I rather think it might be a general bug under certain circumstances. Please try to find a reason for it (perhaps a particular combinations of options). If I could reproduce your bug on my system I could forward a proper bug report to Firaxis.

 

[ziut]

This bug occur only in BTS. In vanilla game is o'k .

 

[macrobot]

I get a CTD whenever I load a saved game or open a new game through custom game. I am successfully able to go to the play now screen and start a game. However, when I load that game I it works. It appears that loading or starting a custom game cause me to get a CTD but the "play now" option is successful. I uninstalled Blue Marble and the problem went away.

Here is the info from the report to Microsoft. If there are any other logs I can post please let me know where to find them. I had forgotten how beautiful this mod pack made the game until I installed BTS and had to look at their ugly terrain.

AppName: civ4beyondsword.exe AppVer: 3.0.2.94 ModName: cvgamecoredll.dll
ModVer: 1.0.0.1 Offset: 001cf37f

 

[RAGreco]

The work around for Steam users worked very well. Thank you very much for the help!

 

[Socratatus]

This looks very nice indeed. I`ll give it a go. I don`t do multiplayer so hopefully, it will be a flawless install. Cheers.

 

[ColdFever]

Important for people with low resolution displays: Blue Marble by default installs a slighty larger (size +1) font because of complaints that the tiny original fonts are hardly readable on modern displays with higher resolutions. Who has an older display with a low resolution (1024x768) or prefers fonts of the original size can use the optional CivScale tool of Blue Marble to choose from different font sizes and styles:
http://www.civfanatics.net/bluemarble

 

[Ashraaf]

Like many others I can't imagine playing Civ without BlueMarble and so I want to thank for this great improvement.

Now I'm actually creating a small mod for a friend of mine and we want to play it online (of course). But we both love BlueMarble and (because it doesn't work in multiplayer-games) I thought why shouldn't I copy the BlueMarble-content from the CustomAssets folder into my mod folder.
Then I've uninstalled BlueMarble. After that I've played one game online alone (because my friend hasn't got any time) and ... well, it works!

So for all those who can't wait till the second patch is released - just try it.

 

[CivAgamemnon]

Excellent! Thanks! It really does improve how this game looks.

 

[Kalimakhus]

I do like BM terrain. My problem is that I don't put anything in custom assets folder as it can make problems with other mods. Is there a version of the mod in some zip file so I can merge it into some mod? (This is the way I use any modcops).

 

[ColdFever]

I am not aware of problems with custom graphics in the CustomAssets folder. This is exactly the way it was designed by Firaxis, so that you can have your customs graphics with any mod (except mods that explicitly disable CustomAssets ). But if you want a zip version of only the terrain files, just create it yourself: install the terrain part of the mod regularly into a freshly created CustomAssets folder and then pack the contents into a zip file.

 

[Kalimakhus]

Well, I haven't installed any custom graphics into the custom assets folder before, so I can't confirm that it makes problems. However I like collecting my favorite modcomps into a mod for my personal use.

Thanks a lot for the tip. I just didn't think of this simple solution.

 

[Kalimakhus]

I've installed BM and been enjoying it for two days now. I like everything you did to the interface, terrain, and LHs. Great work indeed. I also tried up to three different MODs now without any problems at all. It seems that I was wrong or to be precise ill informed. So I guess I need no work around.

I am writing this in case any one was confused by my previous post.

 

[XserX]

When I start game from "Play now" its works, but every time game crushes if I try start from "Custom game". It's a bug?

I get a CTD whenever I load a saved game or open a new game through custom game. I am successfully able to go to the play now screen and start a game. However, when I load that game I it works. It appears that loading or starting a custom game cause me to get a CTD but the "play now" option is successful. I uninstalled Blue Marble and the problem went away.

Here is the info from the report to Microsoft. If there are any other logs I can post please let me know where to find them. I had forgotten how beautiful this mod pack made the game until I installed BTS and had to look at their ugly terrain.

AppName: civ4beyondsword.exe AppVer: 3.0.2.94 ModName: cvgamecoredll.dll
ModVer: 1.0.0.1 Offset: 001cf37f

This happens if you check the option "Lock modified assets" in your custom game. Obviously this happens only in BTS.
Take off that flag and your game should work fine with BM
I hope this can help.

Awesome mod,
Keep it up

 

[fpstream]

Nevermind, looks great by the way.