Civ 4 Needs to Close Message

[Omegon3]

OK... I'm just now TRYING to install and run the Warhammer modification. I have downloaded both the main executable and the fix, then run them both -- loading them into the folder "C:\Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods". The "Warhammer" folder APPEARS to be in the correct location and I am currently running BTS 3.19.

But, when I try to load the Warhammer mod, the BTS process dies with a "needs to close" message (the kind that gives absolutely no indication of the nature of the problem!!!).

Does anyone have any ideas on what I might be doing wrong or what else I might need to run it? I'm assuming that this mod is NOT link to the latest, greatest FfH version (which I do NOT have)...

Thanks.

 

[Ahriman]

The "Warhammer" folder APPEARS to be in the correct location and I am currently running BTS 3.19.

We have not yet updated the Warhammer mod to 3.19; it only works with the 3.17 patch. We're working on finding coders to help with the conversion. Until then, you'll either have to uninstall BTS, reinstall up to patch 3.17 and try the mod, or just wait.

 

[Omegon3]

We have not yet updated the Warhammer mod to 3.19; it only works with the 3.17 patch. We're working on finding coders to help with the conversion. Until then, you'll either have to uninstall BTS, reinstall up to patch 3.17 and try the mod, or just wait.

Any idea of the time frame on this? Is there any way that I could help? I used to be a programmer (before a medical condition prevented me from going to work... ) and I have made quite a few mods to FfH and FF. I can NOT do art work and I don't know C++, but I can do some XML work (all according to what you need).

 

[Ahriman]

We are definitely looking for more coding help on this mod, including xml work. We have a huge amount of content designed, but no-one really available to get it implemented.

This mod uses FFH codebase, so if you have prior experience with that it would be incredibly helpful.

I'm designer here (and most-frequent forum patroller) but I don't understand the technical mod details enough - I don't know a dll from an sdk.

Try PMing Psychic Llama (look through this forum, there are a ton of posts by him, eg:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300793

He can hopefully explain what is needed to update to 3.19 better than me.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Hey Omegon3,

if you are willing to help us convert to 3.19 wed be more than grateful how much programming experience have you had before? i myself do not understand what needs to be done to convert to 3.19 because im definately an ammature modder and am not very skilled at programming. perhaps someone with some programming background would have better luck

Unfortunately ive had to stop modding cause of lack of time but also severe lack of inspiration and desire to mod (it became a chore for me so wasnt fun anymore ) so any coding help is sorely needed!

 

[Omegon3]

Hey Omegon3,

if you are willing to help us convert to 3.19 wed be more than grateful how much programming experience have you had before? i myself do not understand what needs to be done to convert to 3.19 because im definately an ammature modder and am not very skilled at programming. perhaps someone with some programming background would have better luck

Unfortunately ive had to stop modding cause of lack of time but also severe lack of inspiration and desire to mod (it became a chore for me so wasnt fun anymore ) so any coding help is sorely needed!

Hopefully you'll read this and respond; otherwise I'm not quite sure how to get in contact with you guys. First off, I've been a programmer since the age of 25 (I'm now getting close to 60!!) and have experience with Java and Visual Basic, but NOT C++ (if that is necessary). I've done some pretty extensive mods in the XML for the FfH series, but am no artist (but I can certainly STEAL art from other mods ). I currently don't have decent tools for editing "dds" and "tga" files, but will certain acquire them if you can tell me where to go (and keep it decent!! ).

If you need to contact me via e-mail, please let me know and I'll give you my address.

 

[Ahriman]

Omegon, we would definitely appreciate all the programmer help we can get.

I think we're ok on the art front; PL will continue to help out with art and thats also a low priority for now.

Take a look at this thread discussing what needs to be done for the update:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=330839

I *think* making a dll requires c++, but I don't really have the foggiest idea what that involves, and I don't really know what a dds or tga file are. Psychic Llamas is technically much more in-the-know than me.

I check in on this board regularly, otherwise you can reach me by PM easily enough.

If you'd like to join the mod team we can also (somehow) arrange to get you access to the private developers forum for this mod.

 

[orlanth]

At the beginning of the year, P_L had made plans to adopt the latest version of Fall Further as the final code base for the mod, and simply replace the Fall Further XML content (units, techs etc.) with Warhammer content as designed. We had initially held off as Ploeperpengel was trying to find time to tweak the old Warhammer DLLs, but since there's a lot of confusion involved in trying to tinker around with the code base; I'm thinking that simply using Fall Further from here may be the way to go after all.

This could greatly simplify things by not having to make any changes to the DLL/SDK/what-have-you , while instantly achieving 3.19 patch compatibility, working with a standard code-base that many in the modding community are experienced with, and giving access to all the available features of Fall Further should we need to use them.

Since we'd planned on plenty of unit and tech tree updates, a lot of XML reworks need to be done anyway, so it's not adding to the work to do these on a fresh Fall Further code base. Not to kid ourselves, there is still a whole lot of work to do in entering XML content and working through any resulting bugs. But if we have Omegon3's help as programmer and lead XML jockey, and several volunteers to help entering content in XML files (french_civ_fan contacted me regarding this), then adopting Fall Further and XML may be the best way to avoid this mod getting stalled out and obsolete. Ahriman P_L and Omegon what do you think?

 

[Ahriman]

Thats not a bad idea at all.
This would also intrinsically include a lot of the bugfixes that the old Warhammer mod didn't include, like actually getting elemental resistances to work properly.

So, basically take the most recent Fall Further codebase and then recreate the Warhammer xml (units, religions, promotions, magic) from scratch on top of that.

The first question that leaps to mind is would that mean we'd lose some of the things like the unique religion spread-patterns; are those in xml or python scripts? What other python stuff are there? Is that easy to transfer?

 

[orlanth]

That & the Shrine builds, spells, events are in the Python scripts and could probably be cut and pasted. It would still be a big undertaking to coordinate all the XML stuff that needs to be done; I don't know if it might be possible to copy some of the existing WH XML files onto the FF base and edit them from there, or if that would cause too many errors & it would be best to create them from scratch. The current XML is rather a mess with some tag names being misspelled or oddly formatted (eg sometimes including a _ sometimes not), which makes it hard to know what tag name needs to be referred to later, often causing errors when changing anything. It would probably help to specify the standardized tag names for units, promotions, techs etc in the design document, to avoid confusion for anyone trying to enter it in XML.
<Class>UNITCLASS_ARCHER</Class>
<Type>UNIT_FORESTGOBLIN_ARCHER</Type>

 

[Ahriman]

Recreation from scratch might be wise, since we were going to have to redo all the units to fit the new "combat system" and tweaked tech-tree design anyway.

With luck, I might have a week or so in mid September between defending my dissertation and starting my new job, so I might be able to spend a few days intensively learning xml and working on this stuff then.

So, would you recommend basically downloading the latest FFH and then the latest FF, and then starting work from that? I'm guessing the XML stuff I could learn easily enough and help out with (since I know the design intentions) if you were able to take charge overall and manage python.

Am I right in understanding that <Class> is a particular unit slot and all of its UU replacements, and then the <Type> is either the core unit in that class or a particular UU replacement?
I could write up a list of <Class> and <Type> for the core and start adding in the UUs by faction.

From memory you recommended some particular XML editor that made unit modding much simpler - can you link to that again?
Any other tools you suggest?

 

[orlanth]

I think the latest Fall Further is a standalone install not requiring FfH; I'm downloading it now. You're also right in your understanding of Classes etc. Hopefully it should help to note XML tagnames on the existing design document as things get implemented.

Here's a link to the XML Editor I'd used earlier:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=270586
you can also just open XML files in a text editor like Textpad (http://textpad.com) & edit them directly. Apparently Fall Further now includes support for trimmed XML, which means you don't have to include every possible XML tag under every unit (eg no need to include a <bInvisible>0</bInvisible> tag under every single damn unit since the default value is now 0). This makes the files a lot shorter and cleaner and improves load times & memory usage; but it might confuse that old XML Editor which is used to having all tags present, so it might be easier to just use a text editor to copy/paste and edit as needed, as recommended in the Modmodders Guide to FF:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=292532

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Id definately agree with orlanth in reconstruction from scratch using FF as a base. that had been my intention a while ago but i got talked out of it

@ Omegon3: if you're still interested i can try get you access to the team forums and we would love all the coding help we can get, and you seem to have a heap of knowledge on that front. wed be more than welcome to have you as a fellow team member

 

[deadliver]

Dude I love whats been done with the XML n stuff for FF man (*cough cough* go Xienwolf!) I was thinking about this the other day because I loved the options when designing new units.

 

[Nelia Hawk]

will you use FF or FF+ ?

played a bit FF+ the last days... quite some nice ideas in there...
like the undead races maybe you could use some of these mechanics for khemri?

or the ability to buy upgrades for troops (better swords) with gold... as promotion.
maybe that could be used too somehow?

 

[Ahriman]

FF. I haven't tried FF+; what do you think in there that would be helpful that isn't in Fall Further?

We're definitely planning to use a lot of scions mechanics for Khemri.

I hate the gold-for-upgrade promotions. The AI is really bad at them. And I hate the outfitters/etc.
Its clutter that adds no real value.

I will fight to the death to stop this mod from getting cluttered with feature creep; I think Fall Further is already too busy with clutter.

I highly, HIGHLY, recommend that everyone read this article by Kael.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=173061

In particular:

1.1 The Danger of More:

&#8220;Perfection is not achieved when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.&#8221; -- Antoine de St. Exupery

Every new object has a cost, not just in what it takes to create, test and manage, but the player has to keep track of it as well. In general we should only add items because they offer a significant improvement to some aspect of the game, and not just to have more units, more resources, etc.

It sounds good to be able to offer a long list of new objects. That was much of the appeal of the very popular Civ3 Double your Pleasure (DyP) mod. But the success of DyP wasn’t because of all the new objects, but because each one had a distinct functional purpose. Adding buildings is easy, making them truly worthwhile is the hard part.

Is it needed? Would it be missed if it was taken out? Is it functionaly unique? If the answer to these is no, it should be considered for removal.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

I will fight to the death to stop this mod from getting cluttered with feature creep; I think Fall Further is already too busy with clutter.

This i totally agree with. FF has reached a stage where it has started adding too much 'stuff'. Ahriman's persistant war against feature creep is a massive asset for this mod

also, that is one more piece of evidence that Kael clearly is a Genius, if not God.

 

[deadliver]

Meh, I wouldn't go that far. FF is fine, too much stuff? Not enough, it needs MOAR! However I can see why you guys feel FF features would not fit in Warhammer. Two seperate settings. At least in FF there is hope for the world...

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

MOAR! is something not everyone likes but i can see the attraction that MOAR! has. im just getting used to Ahriman-the-shoulder-deamon telling me to lay off on too much MOAR!

I do agree FF is fine, but a LOT of the features it has dont really come into play in most games. i want to avoid wasted work on features that wont be used often.

but like you say, two totally different settings. Erebus is far more flexible in terms of MOAR! whereas Warhammer is quite structured if we hope to follow canon lore.