Moosezilla
Grognard Warlord
...One more turn... This is the true measure. "Doh!" -Homer Simpson
CCM (epic mod) preview thread
- Thread starter Civinator
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CCM Status report:
The fix of the freeze bug by removing the load option from the immobile units caused another severe problem. Testgames showed, that now the expansion of the AI was much slower than before. The removal of the load option also removed the former offensive attack-tactics for the AI-units that worked great for the advanced autoproduction concept. Tests showed, that now the AI frequently killed the immobile basic units that should upgrade to mobile flavored settlers, even when the disband-box for that unit was disabled.
Another AI tactic, that would work for immobile land-units, so that the AI doesn´t kill them before they could upgrade, would be to set the basic unit to a king unit tactic. But if a king unit is upgraded to another king unit, the name of that unit becomes the name of the leader of that civ what sounds very strange, especially if a multiple leaders system is used.
So at the moment different AI-tactics/ other option combinations are tested (btw. the Arty-AI-tactics doesn´t work to solve that problem, too), as all prebetatesters did like the autoproduced flavored settlers and to go back to let the palace only produce one single type of settler would be the last step for us if we find no other solution to solve that problem.
At present CCM isn´t ripe for a public betatest.
The fix of the freeze bug by removing the load option from the immobile units caused another severe problem. Testgames showed, that now the expansion of the AI was much slower than before. The removal of the load option also removed the former offensive attack-tactics for the AI-units that worked great for the advanced autoproduction concept. Tests showed, that now the AI frequently killed the immobile basic units that should upgrade to mobile flavored settlers, even when the disband-box for that unit was disabled.
Another AI tactic, that would work for immobile land-units, so that the AI doesn´t kill them before they could upgrade, would be to set the basic unit to a king unit tactic. But if a king unit is upgraded to another king unit, the name of that unit becomes the name of the leader of that civ what sounds very strange, especially if a multiple leaders system is used.
So at the moment different AI-tactics/ other option combinations are tested (btw. the Arty-AI-tactics doesn´t work to solve that problem, too), as all prebetatesters did like the autoproduced flavored settlers and to go back to let the palace only produce one single type of settler would be the last step for us if we find no other solution to solve that problem.
At present CCM isn´t ripe for a public betatest.
King Coltrane
King
i dont know if you already thought of this, but why not flag the immobile AI units as foot units and missile units, so no ship can carry them? i dont know if you are using a similar plan for ASW ships or anything else for that matter, but if they are flagged as both then, since they wont be able to load onto any ships, the AI wont try to load them onto any, and the problem is fixed! so yeah, let me know if you have already tried this so i can keep trying to think of possible fixes.
btw, i CANT wait for this to come out! good luck in fixing this issue, and again, let us know whats going on on your end whenever you can!
btw, i CANT wait for this to come out! good luck in fixing this issue, and again, let us know whats going on on your end whenever you can!
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King Coltrane, thank you for your kind words and of course for your suggestion, too. 
At present a lot of different settings are tested to solve this chain of problems, among them the setting you suggested, too. The problem with that freeze bug is, that it can appear at anytime in the game. We had freeze bugs in games that appeared the first time in 2030 AD. So you have always to play at least one (better more) full games until you can say this setting will stop the freeze bug, too - and this is very time consuming. If a setting don´t allows a special behavour for the AI, this doesn´t mean that the AI won´t do it nevertheless (in my last post per example I wrote about the killed settlers by the AI so the settler was set to be not disbandable).
At present a lot of different settings are tested to solve this chain of problems, among them the setting you suggested, too. The problem with that freeze bug is, that it can appear at anytime in the game. We had freeze bugs in games that appeared the first time in 2030 AD. So you have always to play at least one (better more) full games until you can say this setting will stop the freeze bug, too - and this is very time consuming. If a setting don´t allows a special behavour for the AI, this doesn´t mean that the AI won´t do it nevertheless (in my last post per example I wrote about the killed settlers by the AI so the settler was set to be not disbandable).
Moosezilla
Grognard Warlord
Sorry to interrupt, but ETA?... Also how is AI behaving and what are latest tweaks? (hope,hope,hope)
Moosezilla
Grognard Warlord
In this forum it has been a while for news on progress to beta. Please know that those out of the loop are still curious.
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Just downloaded the last freeze save files of today and will have a look on it. Of course there is a lot of progress for CCM, especially tons of great art of a well known modder. But I want to report about it, when we have a non freezing biq as I don´t want to make the mouths watery and than comes a freeze.
Moosezilla
Grognard Warlord
They told me not to hold my breath! *gasp*
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It´s time to say a big Tank You.
On the 24th March of 2009 I received the following message by Takeo:
Civinator,
I have read about the lock-ups you have been having with CCM and thought I'd message you about something odd that happened in testing my personal mod. I apparentley messed up a city list and left a blank line at the end of it. When testing in debug mode I was putting out some settlers and when one planted down(after all the city names had been used up) it came up with the city name of "new" with no name behind it. I went ahead and settled it with that name. The next city I tried to settle came up with "new" also and the game said I must pick a unique name and would not let me settle. If this happened to the AI in a real game it might cause a hang-up, cause the AI obviously couldn't come up with a new name. Sorry to bother you if you already knew this kind of thing could happen.
Takeo
Takeo, I didn´t know “this kind of thing”.
The CCM prebetatesters found some settings triggering freezes. But we hadn´t found this one. After looking in the CCM biq, we found several citylists with blank lines at the end of the list. This error is very nasty as it can´t be seen directly.
The CCM prebetatesters now have two testgames in the latest stages of the game without freezes.
The next big Tank You is for one of the greatest and in my eyes completest and friendliest modders of Civ 3, who helped a lot with CCM in the last weeks:
Vuldacon
For me it was and is a great experience to have direct contact in this modding-project with such a modding-genius as it is Vuldacon. He helped in catching the freezes, he helped with producing some very good sound files and especially he improved and made tons of graphics for CCM. Wondersplashes that I thought they look good, now even look better and for the round multiple leader-advisor-graphics he often combined many different images with different palettes to a new good looking graphic. If civers in the near future can play with nice coloured advisor images of Lech Walewsa, Adenauer, Sharon, Nasser, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and many others, please don´t forget that it was Vuldacon who combined these multiple leader images (and of course please don´t forget the civers who created the original leaderheads).
Here are some of the round advisor images in a smaller scale:
Persia:
Poland:
Germany:
Indo-China:
Egypt:
The third big Thank You is for the CCM prebetatesters Marine Corps, Rhodie, Badkharma and Recon who contributed a lot to the progress of CCM and also gave many hints and ideas to that mod.
I´m doing now a lot of textwork and a (I hope) final upload of the CCM-files for the last CCM prebetatests until the public CCM betatest can start.
On the 24th March of 2009 I received the following message by Takeo:
Civinator,
I have read about the lock-ups you have been having with CCM and thought I'd message you about something odd that happened in testing my personal mod. I apparentley messed up a city list and left a blank line at the end of it. When testing in debug mode I was putting out some settlers and when one planted down(after all the city names had been used up) it came up with the city name of "new" with no name behind it. I went ahead and settled it with that name. The next city I tried to settle came up with "new" also and the game said I must pick a unique name and would not let me settle. If this happened to the AI in a real game it might cause a hang-up, cause the AI obviously couldn't come up with a new name. Sorry to bother you if you already knew this kind of thing could happen.
Takeo
Takeo, I didn´t know “this kind of thing”.
The CCM prebetatesters found some settings triggering freezes. But we hadn´t found this one. After looking in the CCM biq, we found several citylists with blank lines at the end of the list. This error is very nasty as it can´t be seen directly. The CCM prebetatesters now have two testgames in the latest stages of the game without freezes.
The next big Tank You is for one of the greatest and in my eyes completest and friendliest modders of Civ 3, who helped a lot with CCM in the last weeks:
Vuldacon
For me it was and is a great experience to have direct contact in this modding-project with such a modding-genius as it is Vuldacon. He helped in catching the freezes, he helped with producing some very good sound files and especially he improved and made tons of graphics for CCM. Wondersplashes that I thought they look good, now even look better and for the round multiple leader-advisor-graphics he often combined many different images with different palettes to a new good looking graphic. If civers in the near future can play with nice coloured advisor images of Lech Walewsa, Adenauer, Sharon, Nasser, Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and many others, please don´t forget that it was Vuldacon who combined these multiple leader images (and of course please don´t forget the civers who created the original leaderheads).
Here are some of the round advisor images in a smaller scale:
Persia:
Poland:
Germany:
Indo-China:
Egypt:
The third big Thank You is for the CCM prebetatesters Marine Corps, Rhodie, Badkharma and Recon who contributed a lot to the progress of CCM and also gave many hints and ideas to that mod.
I´m doing now a lot of textwork and a (I hope) final upload of the CCM-files for the last CCM prebetatests until the public CCM betatest can start.
Attachments
Would you be using a decent editor, you could have spotted it more easily, as there is "<click to city>", just after the last line. BTW, it may be interesting to add a little something that checks for white lines and prevents them. I'll try to do that in 0.5.4
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The problem is, that this "decent editor" is not based on the C3C editor 1.00 and therefore has problems with SGLs (or is this fixed now?). Nevertheless an automatism to stop these blank lines in the city list would be a good thing.
In Civ Complete even Firaxis produced some blank lines in the GL- and SGL-lists, but here it seems these blank lines do no harm.
Civinator... This is Great! Closer to the Release. Thanks for all the Kind Praise but it is always my pleasure if I can Help and especially Good Guys like you and the CCM Team. It is You who deserves The Highest Praise for all your Hard Work and Accomplishments for this Game. You and all of the Guys involved with CCM are a Real Pleasure to know and work with. Congratulations on this Stage of Development for CCM... It will Be a Tremendous Game that many people will enjoy 
... I am sure you could use an Army of people to help with the Text Files. They are very time consuming to have everything as wanted. Not just the work but testing and adjusting over and over...not to mention the links and any format that you desire to maintain.
... I am sure you could use an Army of people to help with the Text Files. They are very time consuming to have everything as wanted. Not just the work but testing and adjusting over and over...not to mention the links and any format that you desire to maintain.
Moosezilla
Grognard Warlord
Thanks for the progress report. I can take another breath!
Could you be more specific about the problem with SGLs?The problem is, that this "decent editor" is not based on the C3C editor 1.00 and therefore has problems with SGLs (or is this fixed now?). Nevertheless an automatism to stop these blank lines in the city list would be a good thing.
El Justo
Deity
congrats old friend on getting over that hump the civ3 community is really going to love this 
the civ3 community is really going to love this 
