(Civil Wonders) Prague Castle, Burj al Arab etc.

[Walter Hawkwood]

Might be a simple task of tweaking LSystem entries, but to provide meaningful input, show us where you're currently at.

 

[hrochland]

Colossus of Rhodes as port​

download

I think it would be great to have code that would make a wonder replace a harbor. If the city had a harbor, the code would remove it from the game after the wonder was built. If the city didn't have a harbor, the wonder wouldn't be built after the wonder was built. The wonder would be the harbor.

 

[hrochland]

@ <Nexus> I must say I'm glad you gave me a positive push. I tried to pack my models about seventeen years ago, and I couldn't do it right the first or third time, so I just let it go.
I guess my bad English was the problem.
Yesterday I found a very detailed guide and I managed to pack it. The videos weren't showing up, so I pulled them back into the art directory and so far everything seems fine. Thanks

 

[<Nexus>]

Oh, that's the least thing to return all your hard work. Wish I could do more to show my gratitude.

Yeah, videos don't work packed but the rest does.

BTW, I noticed your English has improved a lot recently. Did you learn so hard or is it a good translator?

 

[hrochland]

I've improved slightly, but I still use Google Translator.

I'll play one test game and make your park this weekend

 

[hrochland]

It's been a while. I promised someone here a cityset with flying houses and the whole thing died down over time. Today I realized that I did something stupid to my mod, so at least I'm fulfilling the promise.

cityset Space_Meso
download

 

[<Nexus>]

It's been a while. I promised someone here a cityset with flying houses

It was me (too)
Thank you! It looks good

 

[Matsuda123]

Here are the files I've messed about with so far.

The CIV V city graphics sometimes sparsely appear. The Basic Asian city graphics included with civ 4 Warlords usually arrange themselves quite well, but that isn't the case for the Civ V graphics currently. I'm not sure what to do about that.

The Modern Age Civ V asian graphics look more well arranged, but i didn't get to use all the models from CIV V in the set, so I'd like to fix that.

I should also note that I turn off all of the city improvement graphics except for Walls, the harbor, and the palace. That usually results in a quite beautifully arranged city with the default warlords Asian city graphics, but still the problem remains with the V graphics currently.

 

[Matsuda123]

I forgot to upload the files last time, sorry about that.

 

[hrochland]

OK. So now it makes sense. I probably won't work with it now, but let's try to unify our thoughts.
1/ These are buildings converted from civ5, right?
2/ You put them in a civ4 cityset and you don't like that they look like the civ4 city look.
3/ I think, as Walter already wrote, the L system of civ5 will be different. I have no idea how significantly

There will definitely be several ways. The hardest one assumes decentralizing NiNodes (for example into circles) to change the overall look of the city.

Then there is the option to cluster buildings. That's what I'm doing now with the new Preancient_eu_cityset.

I've already tried it with an_africa. I managed to break the regular look of the city from huts.

I'll send a picture

Regarding your problem, show some screenshots of your cities and pictures from civ5 for comparison, so we know what you want to achieve.
As I wrote before, I quickly ran away from civ5. It's a stupid schematic washing machine for my private time and the sixth is almost the same.

The beautiful cities are in the seventh, but that's a different league

 

[hrochland]

Promised screenshots of the African decentralized cityset

 

[hrochland]

I was looking at pictures from civ5 to get an idea of what fascinates you about cities.
I think it's the obscenity of rectangularity.
There are cities where you can see how the Lsystem is built.

A large multiple cross, and in the quarters the buildings are essentially built in a circle.
With a lot of effort this could be achieved in the quadrilateral, but a much easier way to break the rectangularity is what I used for the African cityset above.

 

[Matsuda123]

OK. So now it makes sense. I probably won't work with it now, but let's try to unify our thoughts.
1/ These are buildings converted from civ5, right?
2/ You put them in a civ4 cityset and you don't like that they look like the civ4 city look.
3/ I think, as Walter already wrote, the L system of civ5 will be different. I have no idea how significantly

There will definitely be several ways. The hardest one assumes decentralizing NiNodes (for example into circles) to change the overall look of the city.

Then there is the option to cluster buildings. That's what I'm doing now with the new Preancient_eu_cityset.

I've already tried it with an_africa. I managed to break the regular look of the city from huts.

I'll send a picture

Regarding your problem, show some screenshots of your cities and pictures from civ5 for comparison, so we know what you want to achieve.
As I wrote before, I quickly ran away from civ5. It's a stupid schematic washing machine for my private time and the sixth is almost the same.

The beautiful cities are in the seventh, but that's a different league

1. Yes that's right. I converted them from Civ V to be functional in CiV IV. I really wanted places like Asia and Native American and Middle Eastern groups to have more variety and be able to progress into the Renaissance, Industrial, and Future eras without converting to European city graphics. I plan on releasing the CIV V graphics with their default textures, as well as with upgraded textures too.

2. Actually, I like cities being centralized in CIV IV. Rather, the problem is that the CIV V city graphics aren't becoming centralized enough. The space between the buildings is too much, and I am not sure how to lessen that.

Included are screenshots demonstrating this problem.

The gap is so large between the CIV V buildings, and I don't understand why. It never occurs with the CIV IV Asian default city graphics, which are arranged in a neat, orderly centralized fashion I like most of all.

Also I will release the improved texture graphics for the Asian CIV IV cities too.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Basically, see the building shadows as a proof that it's working as intended - see the shadows in your first two screenshots fitting together quite neatly. The LSystem "allocates" a certain configuration of "tiles" to a building, from 1x1 to stuff like 2x3 (a "leaf" of LSystem), and then a city is assembled, tetris-style, from those tiles. All buildings you converted look as if they'd work best on a 1x1 LSystem leaf, whereas you're probably using unchanged LSystem entries from the original cityset that has a variety of building sizes (you can see 1x2 and 2x2 buildings in your last screenshot). You should either try matching the building size to the assigned plot (they are even named in respective ways inside the nif file, and the shadow can be a rough guide for the expected size) or you rewrite the LSystem entries to all point to 1x1 leaf nodes.

 

[hrochland]

Maybe we're back to what I wrote about earlier. I started with the cityset ancient africa. Sorry, I don't remember who the author is - maybe you
This work has two steps. In the first, I'll hang two buildings on a specific node instead of one. In the second, I'll fine-tune the position so that it doesn't look so regular. You can do the same for houses from civ 5 and it should solve your problem.
In my mod, I use pre_ancient citysets and in them I'll use three buildings on one NiNode.


For ancient citysets, this will naturally thicken the space. For later ones, the buildings need to be aligned well in Blender before we return them to the cityset.
For example, by shadow, as you wrote. (by shadow already in NifSkope)

 

[Matsuda123]

Basically, see the building shadows as a proof that it's working as intended - see the shadows in your first two screenshots fitting together quite neatly. The LSystem "allocates" a certain configuration of "tiles" to a building, from 1x1 to stuff like 2x3 (a "leaf" of LSystem), and then a city is assembled, tetris-style, from those tiles. All buildings you converted look as if they'd work best on a 1x1 LSystem leaf, whereas you're probably using unchanged LSystem entries from the original cityset that has a variety of building sizes (you can see 1x2 and 2x2 buildings in your last screenshot). You should either try matching the building size to the assigned plot (they are even named in respective ways inside the nif file, and the shadow can be a rough guide for the expected size) or you rewrite the LSystem entries to all point to 1x1 leaf nodes.

That is correct. I basically just slotted the buildings onto any given area, as my understanding of the ?x? system is rather basic...

How would I go about rewriting the LSystem entries to be 1x1 nodes?

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

In CIV4CityLSystem.xml, there are <LNode Name="xxx"> entries, which have entries for individual buildings as children. For instance, there is a node <LNode Name="Leaf_1x1">, which has entries like <ArtRef Name="generic:an_asian.nif::1x1_01">, <ArtRef Name="generic:an_asian.nif::1x1_02"> etc (all with their own attributes, such as what era or artstyle they represent) - you'll see once you open it. Each such child entry points inside a specified nif file; for instance, <ArtRef Name="generic:an_asian.nif::1x1_01"> points to a node "1x1_01" inside "an_asian.nif".

If you search for entries mentioning a particular nif (such as "an_asian.nif" in this case, ancient Asian cityset), you'll see that various entries sit under various LNodes. LNode represents how much space LSystem assigns to the building in question. "Leaf_1x1" obviously assigns 1x1, or just one "tile" in the city, whereas "Leaf_3x2" assigns a rectangle of 3x2 squares (and a building assigned to that leaf should ideally have such a shape; a good example of a 3x2 leaf building is Palace).

So your task is to ensure your particular nif file has all its internal nodes ("1x1_01", "1x1_02" etc.) referenced as children under <LNode Name="Leaf_1x1"> if you want them all to be 1x1.

 

[hrochland]

I wanted to write something last time, but it seemed stupidly obvious to me. I'll write it now. Sorry if it sounds strange.

I wrote about merging buildings in one Node because it's one of my ways of solving it.

From the looks of it, it seems to me that for the needs of civ4, civ5 houses mainly offer 1x1 and 1x2. That's why there are holes there. That's why in the case of larger Nodes (2x3, 3x2, 2x2, 1x3 and 3x1) I would supplement them or replace them with larger buildings.

By the way, Matsuda, you still haven't given me an answer to the question of what specifically fascinates you about civ5 cities. I tried to guess it above, but I'd like to hear it from you.

 

[Matsuda123]

I wanted to write something last time, but it seemed stupidly obvious to me. I'll write it now. Sorry if it sounds strange.

I wrote about merging buildings in one Node because it's one of my ways of solving it.

From the looks of it, it seems to me that for the needs of civ4, civ5 houses mainly offer 1x1 and 1x2. That's why there are holes there. That's why in the case of larger Nodes (2x3, 3x2, 2x2, 1x3 and 3x1) I would supplement them or replace them with larger buildings.

By the way, Matsuda, you still haven't given me an answer to the question of what specifically fascinates you about civ5 cities. I tried to guess it above, but I'd like to hear it from you.

I think that makes sense to me. If that is the case, then I will apply the larger buildings to 1x2, and smaller to 1x1. I hope it will fix the issue, and I will let you know of the results.

What fascinates me is that they, Firaxis, actually bothered to try to imagine what architecture would look like for various groups, and didn't just force the various culture groups to conform to one European cityset from the Renaissance era onwards.

It's amazing to see and imagine what Mesoamerican architecture would look like had they progressed to the Industrial Era and beyond without intervention and influence from Europeans, and the same goes for East Asia and the Middle East. I figure that CIV is a history rewriting game. In accordance with that, I want to see how units and architecture for each major group would develop on their own. What does it look like when Japan enters the Industrial Revolution on it's own? How does it affect their architecture and military, fashion and more?


Civ can, and should, in my mind, try to theorize what that looks like. I have tried to imagine it on my own and will be doing a lot more in the future. CIV V at least bothered to do that to some extent from the Renaissance Era onward for four major culture groups.

 

[hrochland]

Yes. It would help to take the original Asian cityset as a reference. It is good to keep the orientation for 1x2 and 2x1 buildings. (If you can't see it by the shadows)

The shift of civilization to the modern era can be interesting. I have pyramids in my advanced meso cities, for example, but as if they were built with current technology. I proceed similarly with Asian cities.

Of course, I always squinted a little about civ5 and higher, but my mod has more than 4000 small and large changes at the moment and I'm afraid some of them wouldn't even be possible to implement in civ5.