Civ 2.42, FW, and MGE in one folder

[Cedric Greene]

I'm pretty sure I've thought of a way to have a copy of Civ2 2.42, CiC, FW, AND MGE all in a single directory without conflicts, (though I haven't yet tried) question is would this interest anyone enough for me to take the time and test it or do people not really care that much having them in different directories?

Oh yeah this would mean a single patch to get all four .exe's instead of 2 seperate ones.

 

[Smash]

I personally don't care.They just get reduced to desktop shortcuts anyways.

 

[Eyn]

... why someone would have Civ2 2.42, CiC, FW and MGE on his PC in a single directory or in 4 directories ??

 

[Smash]

well, 2.42 for normal solo play.FW for scenarios.MGE for scenarios and multiplay

 

[Cedric Greene]

To expand more on Smash's explanation 2.42 for Democracy game and succession game .sav compatability.
FW for single player (most people dislike the aggressive MGE AI for SP) and scenarios.
MGE for Multiplayer of course.
BTW the CiC exe (civ2scen.exe) is totally compatible with 2.42 .sav's and when you quit/retire a game it reverts back to the first menu and does not exit the game completely.

 

[Mercator]

2.42 through FW are all in the same folder by default anyway (CiC and FW keep the old executables)...
Unless of course, you're talking about your patched versions.

In any case, people's harddrives these days are in the 10s of gigs. Having all Civ2 versions installed separately would probably still make it smaller than Civ3 (just a guess?).

 

[Cedric Greene]

Yeah it would Mercator, atleast with PTW installed and likely without. Even with my patch it has 2.42-FW in one directory but alas adding the files for MGE brings up the dreaded SMEDS application error when playing 2.42-FW so I guess it won't be coming anytime soon.

 

[Mercator]

Hmmm, I think that could be solved by editing the executables a bit.

I created a ToT Map Editor (being the MGE map editor from your patch). To have it be able to co-exist in the ToT directory, I edited the executable a bit so it would use other filenames (i.e. MPGAME.TXT instead of GAME.TXT, and MPLABEL.TXT instead of LABELS.TXT).

I'm sure something along those lines could be done with any conflicting files. Say, have a SMEDS16.DLL and a SMEDS32.DLL. FW and before using the former, MGE and after using the latter.

 

[Cedric Greene]

Actually MGE doesn't use a smedsnet.dll so it was still the old FW version, so it was another file(s) that was causing the problem. Unfortunately what you suggest Mercator is well beyond my (nonexistant) programming ability at the moment but if you would like to give it a whirl be my guest . But as you and the others have said, with the size of HD's these days one extra install of Civ2 isn't really that big a deal.

 

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Cedric Greene
Actually MGE doesn't use a smedsnet.dll so it was still the old FW version, so it was another file(s) that was causing the problem.

Ah, OK...

... but if you would like to give it a whirl be my guest .

Ahem, well I have plenty of other things to do, so I guess not.