Civ III PowerBar Trainer for v1.29f

[MartinW]

Crusader Joe!

What did you do to the Power Bar. It's so fast!

It used to take five minutes to load, but now -- ZAP -- it's loaded. I thought something had gone wrong and it wasn't going to load, but it had already loaded. ALL THE CITIES!

But what's this about you getting out of the Power Bar business?

We can't allow that. We'll get a law passed or something. It's the best cheater...I mean...ahhh... External Game Altering Device (EGAD) (like that?) available anywhere.

What happens when the next patch comes out? What do we do then? :aargh3:

But anyway, thanks for all your work. You've made the game a lot more fun.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally posted by CrsadrJoe
wow.... that is strange. I know when I've renamed the civ3mod.bic file and forgot to change it back it doesn't let me start a new game.

Well, I reinstalled the game after copying my old scenarios and saved games into a safe file, put in patch 1.17, then started a new standard game and created a city. Activating the new PowerBar, I still had to click on "default rules" to avoid getting the error message box, but when I clicked on "Load" the only thing that happens is the city# box reads "0".

Then I tried to use my old scenario save games and they won't load at all. I'm a little leery now about moving around the "civ3mod.bic". I do note that for some reason I now have one icon labeled "civ3mod.bic" in the main civ3 directory, and an identical icon below it labeled just "civ3mod".

 

[CrsadrJoe]

How many cities were on the map when you clicked Load?

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

Originally posted by CrsadrJoe
How many cities were on the map when you clicked Load?

I tried it with one of my own, then with two.

 

[CrsadrJoe]

Can you give this version a try and see if it helps? Please let me know what happens.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

No such Luck! Using the standard game I saved, selecting "default rules", when I hit "load" the power bar fields still remain blank except for the "0" in the box for cities added since last load.

 

[Mushpuppy]

Runtime Error 5 Invalid Procedure: this is the message I get when I try to run PB, whether 1.17f's update or the X version. I'm using WinXP sure. And the 1.17 patch was working until, well, yesterday.

A great util!

 

[€ønqui$tadør]

i get the exact same problem too. i installed PowerBarX, did everything told (changing the civ3mod.bic things) and pressed Load. then the message 'runtime error 5 - invalid procedure call or argument' came out. then the program shut down itself.

 

[CrsadrJoe]

I'm not sure what's causing these load problems, especially since they seem to occur sporadically among players (and never for me, which is quite frustrating). Nevertheless, I've made progress on extracting the data from the process memory and expect that I should have a working model ready for testing by Sunday evening. I will post a note when it's available.

Thanks,
Joe

 

[Charlie Martel]

I too get the "runtime error"

Pity I've never gotten to use this, it looks like great fun

 

[BeerCur]

Hey Joe, do you think it's possible to add to your program what one Civ's Reputation is with another Civ? You know, if they trust me or think I total and complete lying wanker.

I was playing around with VB6 Pro, and tryed to access a save through ADO... needless to say it didn't work. How are the Save's formated? Is it a database of some sort or something totally unique to civ and I have to hack around with the Hex to find what I'm looking for?

~Matthew

 

[CrsadrJoe]

I just uploaded PB v1.5 which abandons the rules files altogether as the source of game data. Now, PB gathers all game data from the process memory. I've tested this version with all world sizes and a few scenarios and everything worked well. it is now ready for general testing.

My fingers are crossed... please email me with your findings - good or bad

PB v1.5 is available at www.crusaderjoe.com

Joe

 

[Lemming]

it works great for me...even in the scenarios

Originally posted by CrsadrJoe
I just uploaded PB v1.5 which abandons the rules files altogether as the source of game data. Now, PB gathers all game data from the process memory. I've tested this version with all world sizes and a few scenarios and everything worked well. it is now ready for general testing.

My fingers are crossed... please email me with your findings - good or bad

PB v1.5 is available at www.crusaderjoe.com

Joe

 

[Mementh]

Originally posted by CrsadrJoe
I just uploaded PB v1.5 which abandons the rules files altogether as the source of game data. Now, PB gathers all game data from the process memory. I've tested this version with all world sizes and a few scenarios and everything worked well. it is now ready for general testing.

My fingers are crossed... please email me with your findings - good or bad

PB v1.5 is available at www.crusaderjoe.com

Joe

By jove i think he's done it!




:yinyang:
:jump:

 

[Mushpuppy]

I was all set to be ecstatic--but I STILL got the runtime error.

From what I can tell based on browsing the term on the net, seems Powerbar can't find some file or other. However, I've uploaded the DLLs it needs into the Powerbar, Civ3, and...I forget offhand which was required--Windows/system or Windows/system32 directory. I put it into the appropriate one.

All this on an XP system.

Seems like Joe is doing a lot of work, given he had abandoned support. But thank you Joe anyhow!

Aggravating is that PB was working for me until it just decided to start having this error.

 

[SirZacas]

Well, i'd like to say it works for me finally... heh. Thanks a lot.
If i was any good at trying to code stuff, i'd be tempted to buy the code from you and work on it myself to add stuff like to alter the date, culture of each city, pollution levels, and all kinds of such of individual cities... (pollution for enemies... under the sabotage stuff to make 10 levels of pollution per city... hehe evil evil... though that could turn back for the game in general...) I miss the original civ that even with ALL the power plants, factories and such... a recycling center and mass transit would usually take care of it ALL...

 

[siebodii]

I have been having the same problem as Mushpuppy in Win 98. See Attachment.

 

[CrsadrJoe]

Thank you for posting the screen shot, that helps a lot. Here's what to do:

Follow these steps:
1) Make sure MSCOMCTL.OCX is in the windows\system folder (or system32 - which ever you have).

2) Click on the START button and select RUN

3) type regsvr32 c:\windows\system\MSCOMCTL.OCX -or- regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\MSCOMCTL.OCX and click OK.

4) You should get a message that the file has been registered.

5) Run PB and see what happens.

6) Post your results here or email me

 

[Mushpuppy]

Interesting. That's a different error than I'm getting, though. I'm getting Runtime Error 5. It says:

Project 1

Runtime Error 5

Invalid procedure call or argument.

This has happened with every version of PB since the 1.17 patch. However, PB was working for a while after the patch. Then one day it just started doing the above.

Here's my setup: PB in a subdirectory beneath Civ3. (Happens when I place PB in Civ3's directory also.)

The DLLs in Civ3, system32, and system directories.

Typically I'll load Civ3, then load a game, then alt-tab to start PB. Then I'll click on Civ3's map (to remove the desktop) and then PB, then I'll try LOAD--and then the error happens.

 

[CrsadrJoe]

Looks like you have the support files in the right places. The runtime 5 error usually occurs for the following two reasons:

1) A call is made to a procedure that isn't valid (or uses different parameters) on the particular platform. Some VB procedures may only be valid for certain versions of Windows (ie 98 or NT etc). It's possible that PB includes a procedure call in the Load routine that is not supported on the XP platform.

2) I've found that the Mid( ) function in particular (which is used throughout PB for string manipulation) is handled differently by different Windows versions. It's possible that a value being passed as a parameter to this function is considered invalid on XP - like a zero or -1.

I will comb through the load routine for anything that might fall into either of these categories and let you know what i find.

Joe