C3X: EXE Mod including Bug Fixes, Stack Bombard, and Much More Release 23

[Alekseyev_]

Had no problems whatsoever (W11 )

 

[Chalito]

Look at post #2775 where my saga started with the same problems, came down to the anti-virus running. You gotta find a way to bypass it.

 

[Nathiri]

Hey Flintlock, just curious if you have looked at all at the interface and whether big resolutions could space out a bit more functional rather than just zooming out? With bigger monitors, forcing the resolution down for the game can be a little frustrating and if KeepRes is left as normal, it's hard to navigate the interface. I know some of the stuff is based off the 1024x768 graphics, but the general map screen isnt.

 

[Flintlock]

Has anyone had problems installing R23? I didn't realize at first that the update had failed. On Linux nothing happens, even after purging and reinstalling the game. On Windows I get this error:

Could you have somehow mixed up the files from different mod versions? That's the only reason I can think the compilation would fail, especially with that error. It's as if C3X.h is from a version before cultural_ni_to_standard was added as as field.

Hey Flintlock, just curious if you have looked at all at the interface and whether big resolutions could space out a bit more functional rather than just zooming out?

Years ago I looked into making the city screen higher resolution by enlarging and rearranging its elements. Of course you'd also need a new, larger background image. In general it's doable but I gave up when I realized how much effort it would take. Some parts are easy, for example some city screen elements have their sizes and positions set in the CityForm object, so I could insert some code that runs after the object loads to move & resize them. IIRC that was true of all the icons like the shields, food box, etc. But other things like the buttons are specified differently and redundantly so they're awkward to edit. Expanding the advisor screens would be a similar challenge. I thought about expanding just the map interface, meaning the minimap and the box in the lower right, but never got around to trying it.

 

[Nathiri]

Could you have somehow mixed up the files from different mod versions? That's the only reason I can think the compilation would fail, especially with that error. It's as if C3X.h is from a version before cultural_ni_to_standard was added as as field.


Years ago I looked into making the city screen higher resolution by enlarging and rearranging its elements. Of course you'd also need a new, larger background image. In general it's doable but I gave up when I realized how much effort it would take. Some parts are easy, for example some city screen elements have their sizes and positions set in the CityForm object, so I could insert some code that runs after the object loads to move & resize them. IIRC that was true of all the icons like the shields, food box, etc. But other things like the buttons are specified differently and redundantly so they're awkward to edit. Expanding the advisor screens would be a similar challenge. I thought about expanding just the map interface, meaning the minimap and the box in the lower right, but never got around to trying it.

Yeah the minimap and the box on the right are the main things. There's also a few other things like the draft button in the city screen I hate the placement of. I often hit it accidentally when accessing the build queue.

 

[robotlincoln]

I'm sure it's possible with enough effort but I don't have a good idea of how much effort it would take. For example, the game has a method I've named Leader::initialize_at_game_start which sets up a player object. Of course, in the base game that's only called when setting up a new game, so calling it in the middle of an ongoing game might cause various problems that must be hunted down and fixed. Or maybe not, maybe it will just work. That's happened before. I'd have to try it and see what happens in this case.

Another way to simulate revolts might be to have cities defect to barbs under particular conditions, for example if civil disorder lasts for too many turns

 

[Alekseyev_]

Could the destruction chance for buildings on city capture be made configurable? Likewise for culture-producing buildings.

 

[WildWeazel]

I was able to run the installer on Linux (haven't debugged Windows yet) from the command line by manually setting Proton variables as described here. No idea what's different between that and the Steam UI, or what might have changed since last time.

 

[Virote_Considon]

as there is only one slot for the flag unit in the general settings of the Firaxis editor

IIRC, this only affects which unit spawns in the capital for each civ if in both a Capture the Unit game mode AND the "Auto Place Capture Units" option is selected in the scenario properties. It doesn't affect how the AI treats the unit, it just makes sure there's a "Princess" to be captured for each civ in the game.

 

[Flintlock]

Another way to simulate revolts might be to have cities defect to barbs under particular conditions, for example if civil disorder lasts for too many turns

It's an interesting idea to have cities defect to the barbs, although if the condition is tied to continuous disorder it would almost never trigger in practice. For human players, the disorder warning means that letting cities go into disorder is a choice. For the AI, I don't think I've ever seen it leave a city in disorder for multiple turns, except possibly once when it was struggling with extreme war weariness.

Could the destruction chance for buildings on city capture be made configurable? Likewise for culture-producing buildings.

Yes, there would be nothing complicated about this.

I was able to run the installer on Linux (haven't debugged Windows yet) from the command line by manually setting Proton variables as described here. No idea what's different between that and the Steam UI, or what might have changed since last time.

That is a mystery then. I have no idea why the compile would fail on Windows but not Linux. At least you could copy the modified EXE from Linux over to Windows, the patching process the same in both cases. Or at least it had ought to be, unless this mystery is somehow even deeper.

 

[Civinator]

IIRC, this only affects which unit spawns in the capital for each civ if in both a Capture the Unit game mode AND the "Auto Place Capture Units" option is selected in the scenario properties. It doesn't affect how the AI treats the unit, it just makes sure there's a "Princess" to be captured for each civ in the game.

It is great to learn always something new about Civ 3, even after decades.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

I am almost sure that I remember how in some version of the game (maybe it was some mod) my units (with 1 move) lost their next turn when entering a tile with forest and hills, and lost the next 2 turns on mountains, marshes, jungles, volcanoes and tundra.

I forget if this was answered in full, but in the original Civ1, rough terrain had a chance to block slower units, similar to trying to enter an off-road tile with partial MP. Civ2 ameliorated this so a unit was guaranteed "full" mobility at the start of its turn. I don't know if anyone ever calculated the exact formula, but I'm guessing the chance to advance was unit MP ÷ terrain cost. Later games "round up" so partial MP always advances.

I swung back into Civ1 a couple years ago and I totally forgot this was a thing; it took me a while to figure out what was going on.

 

[MARK V]

@Flintlock , If a specialist has two different abilities, for example it gives 1 happy face and 1 gold, then their pictures overlap. Will it be difficult to fix this?

Another question: the increasing of irrigation productivity after studying some tech is very lacking (the Biology like in Civ4 for example), how difficult will it be to make this?

 

[Jorsalfare]

@Flintlock , If a specialist has two different abilities, for example it gives 1 happy face and 1 gold, then their pictures overlap. Will it be difficult to fix this?

I had this "conflict" with a specialist providing one happy face, two gold and two research beakers. I solved it by editing the CityIcons.pcx and adjusted the happy face to the left and the beaker to the bottom right.

 

[Flintlock]

@Flintlock , If a specialist has two different abilities, for example it gives 1 happy face and 1 gold, then their pictures overlap. Will it be difficult to fix this?

Done! It was relatively simple matter of intercepting the function calls the game makes to draw each type of yield icon and modifying the X positions in each one. The new positions just step to the right at each call, like the original game does, except for all yield kinds together instead of each separately.

Another question: the increasing of irrigation productivity after studying some tech is very lacking (the Biology like in Civ4 for example), how difficult will it be to make this?

This would be relatively easy, too, since the game has a function that determines the food yield on any given tile that I could edit. Of course, there are others for shields and commerce. This is the sort of thing I'd like to do through Lua since I can easily imagine getting all sorts of requests to alter tile yields.

 

[Civinator]

This is the sort of thing I'd like to do through Lua

This triggers the question: Is there any progress in the monumental task to add Lua to C3C and how far are you now by estimating your way to reach this difficult goal ?

 

[WildWeazel]

Maybe we can race, who can deliver a Lua API first, C3X or C7?

 

[PhilB]

Welcome! Unfortunately it's not obvious in the AI's logic where this restriction is. There are a few points in the AI's city location evaluator where it checks bits on tiles surrounding the location that might be checking if the tiles are within any borders, but I don't actually know what those bits represent. I'd have to spend the time to completely decode the location evaluator to make this change, and actually, I've been thinking of replacing it entirely since there are a lot of changes I'd like to make.

Hi ! Just read the last default_config_ini in detail, and I thought that playing with the work_area_radius could help the AI make the best of it's loose city spacing...
Only problem here is the the player would benefit from the same "exploit"... But maybe it's not so disturbing, I haven't tried it yet.
What do you think ?

 

[PARTYRAISER]

Hi Everyone,
I noticed a weird issue while testing a mod (in progress), and not sure what this might be; I test my mod on C3X v19, but recently changed to v23, and what I see is that when a great leader appears, this cannot create an army; The create army button is there, but when clicked, the leader disappears and no army is created; changing back to v19, and the army gets created; That is a bit strange; Has anyone noticed a similar problem? / Thanks

 

[Flintlock]

This triggers the question: Is there any progress in the monumental task to add Lua to C3C and how far are you now by estimating your way to reach this difficult goal ?

I hope to make significant progress integrating Lua by the end of this year. So far all I have done is that proof of concept I showed a couple of years ago, where I reimplemented the disorder warning in Lua. My rough plan is: first, to finish R24 within a few weeks. Its big addition will be the option to share wonder effects among all human players in hotseat mode. Then, R25 by the end of the summer with a lifting of the city limit. I've already starting experimenting with that and am confident it's feasible but I'll share the details later after it's done. That leaves Lua for R26. I don't think I'll be able to integrate Lua into everything in one huge update, but I should be able to make the game rules mostly script-able by the end of the year.

Maybe we can race, who can deliver a Lua API first, C3X or C7?

Well that's one way to light a fire under my ass. Are you guys planning to start working on Lua soon? By the way, I've been thinking, is it worth it to try to coordinate to make the two Lua APIs similar? Matching the APIs exactly isn't really desirable since whatever API I patch in is going to have to follow the layout of the original game's internals, at least roughly, and you guys wouldn't want to be locked into that too. But, for example, I don't want to use getters for all variables in all game objects, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to do anything else given what I have to work with. If nothing else we ought to agree on similar names.

Hi ! Just read the last default_config_ini in detail, and I thought that playing with the work_area_radius could help the AI make the best of it's loose city spacing...
Only problem here is the the player would benefit from the same "exploit"... But maybe it's not so disturbing, I haven't tried it yet.
What do you think ?

One big way that an expanded work radius helps the AI is by making it so that there are fewer low quality, low food cities. The AI founds cities like that but doesn't handle them well since it tries to build expensive infrastructure like universities and colosseums there. The colosseums are particularly bad, I've seen many times the AI build them in cities that could never need the happiness because they're stuck at a small size due to lack of food. A larger work radius kind of averages out the quality of all cities.

On the other hand, the larger radius helps the human player since there are more opportunities to share tiles between cities. I've noticed granaries are less appealing when most cities have a few food resources they could work to grow. The AI is not able to juggle tiles between cities at all, as far as I know.