[Civ2] Civilization II MGE User Interface Additions (CIV2UIA)

[Blasph23]

I'm a self-proclaimed terraformation junkie and have just now switched from version 1.13 to 1.20 and the terraforming UI improvements are just amazing.
@FoxAhead, thank you for doing this tremendous, useful work, I hope you get all the best in life for continuing to do this for the Civ2 community.

 

[Bollisch]

Thank you very much. I just found this patch today. Works well.

 

[Dantavian]

Hello, not sure if this is still in development or not, however I began using this yesterday and I've noticed the wonders have incorrect icons in the menu (see image), wondering how to fix this? Many thanks.

 

[FoxAhead]

Hello, not sure if this is still in development or not, however I began using this yesterday and I've noticed the wonders have incorrect icons in the menu (see image), wondering how to fix this? Many thanks.

Hello!
Can't reproduce this error. What version of CIV2UIA are you using? If this error is reproducible for you, then attach here your SAV-file, ICONS.GIF and RULES.TXT, please.

 

[strykerfett]

This is truly an outstanding piece of software! I have two questions but I'm not sure how possible either one is. Firstly, is it possible to somehow allow us to enable/disable the no-CD function (or somehow otherwise return access to the Intro/Wonder movies and High Council movies)?

And secondly, is it possible in any way to be able to expand the music tracks (or maybe change them) to allow for the original CD's music rather than MGE's soundtrack?

Thank you so much for this great work. I think it will truly play an instrumental role in preserving this game and maintaining its legacy in the years to come!

 

[Lord_Hill]

The old trick for the movies is to manually copy the folder from your cd to the installation folder on your hard drive. Need to check if that's compatible with nocd mode though.

 

[Blake00]

I ran some tests recently and the 'copy videos to hard drive' trick works with regular MGE even without FoxAhead's patch tool and interestingly it'll prioritise the hard drive copy videos over the cd videos. So because that priority order is seemingly hardcoded into the game, then whether you have no-CD on or off in Civ2UIA it'll still play all those video files once you move them onto the hard drive. Which will be kinda handy for my & metro's Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Civ2 mod with all its custom videos.

 

[strykerfett]

Thanks very much guys! Actually, it turns out my problem is something related to the Civ2 Multiplayer Gold Edition: v1.3 update that I had to install before the UIA worked. It seems like installing this update breaks my game's videos somehow. Any advice on what might solve this problem?

 

[Lord_Hill]

You can check you've got the old codec as well, though I've never heard of the official patch being the thing that breaks them before. https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/intel-indeo-video-audio-codec-for-civ2-mge-videos.29545/

 

[strykerfett]

A reinstall of Civ 2 MGE fixed things!

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

is it possible in any way to be able to expand the music tracks (or maybe change them) to allow for the original CD's music rather than MGE's soundtrack?

Currently the only reliable solution in MGE is to either play with the original CD or burn the tracks to a custom disc. An emulator exists, but it's somewhat buggy with Civ2 and doesn't work with UIA.

 

[Blake00]

Yeah converting the Civ2 CD music track player into a mp3 player like what TheNamelessOne did with the similar Test of Time Patch Project is the last big hurdle needed for true Civ2 MGE CD free and portability with no features missing. Hopefully FoxAhead considers attempting it in a future version of Civ2UIA, I've certainly pestered the poor guy plenty about it.

Mp3 player ability would also be great for creating an 'ultimate Civ2 soundtrack' with all the different vanilla, Conflicts, Fantastic World and MGE tracks together in one place as it always sucked a bit that a number of tracks got cut to make room for new songs in later releases.
.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

it always sucked a bit that a number of tracks got cut to make room for new songs in later releases..

I remember digging around GAME.TXT and being surprised to discover @PICKMUSICSCENARIO and @PICKMUSICFANWORLDS lists them all; I jumped straight from vanilla to MGE so I don't know if they actually featured, but it seems as though the full OST was originally intended.

 

[KrisZ7]

First of all, I'd like to express my gratitude to FoxAhead! Since the release of CivII, this tool has been the greatest thing in gaming! Just the scroll wheel support alone is amazing, not to mention all the other features like the internal work counter, research number, city status advisor, and more. It's simply brilliant! My only point of criticism: Why wasn't I made aware of this tool much earlier? But well, that obviously seems to be not your fault.

As a software developer (Oracle PL/SQL), it pleases me to see that you've made the code open for inspection. Unfortunately, I have no experience with Pascal or this type of software, and my last lines of ASM code were written in the late '90s. As far as I understand, ASM is needed here for DLL injection. And while I can generally read the Pascal code well, the approach of how the launcher and CivII collaborate is not entirely clear to me (yet).

Despite the extensive scope of this tool, I have thought of three useful additions regarding economic efficiency that could be considered:

- ad 31 - Enhanced City Status advisor: Instead of showing the total shield production (4th column), I would prefer to see the effective shield production (total production minus support). This information seems to be available (see Civ2UIA.dpr line 1391). Or even better, show the calculated shield loss in the last column "Turns (produced/Total)". For example, "Turns, Loss (produced/Total)," where loss represents the shields in current production that would be lost as excess (see Civ2UIA.dpr line 2942).
Example: 1, 7 (58/80)
1 turn to go, 7 shields will be lost, 58 shields already produced, 80 total (so our effective shield production is 29 per turn)

- ad 5 & 6 - Status Sidebar: Similar to shield production, it would be desirable to display the information from point 6 in the status bar (in the line above the turn count), along with when the next progress will occur and how much will be lost (see Civ2UIA.dpr line 888).
Example: 1, 661 (2329/2418)
1 turn to go, 661 beakers will be lost, 2329 beakers already reached, 2418 total required (so our effective beaker production is 750 per turn)

- City Growth: Since I like to govern my civilization in communism, I would also like to see the possible food losses (analogous to point 31 with shields) or when the storage will be full, and/or a city has just grown. Then I'd only need to go to the city screen to see if the new worker was deployed wisely by the AI.

Perhaps you can assist with these adjustments, or you might consider including them in your own release. Please don't take this as criticism! But when such great work has already been done here, I thought maybe I could contribute some fine-tuning.

Thanks again, and I wish you continued success and enjoyment with this project! I definitely do enjoy playing CivII with your Launcher much more than ever in the past 27 years!

 

[Blake00]

Been getting a strange sound issue lately where when I start a scenario and it goes to the intro/description message Civ2 doesn't play MENUEND.WAV anymore and I just get silence. The only time I can think of that happening intentionally is when you turn CD check back on and you try an official scenario and it plays a CD track (eg Apocalyse song for CiC Apocalyse scenario etc) instead of the MENUEND.WAV file. So I turned CD check back on, put the CD in and sure enough it plays a CD track song as usual but when I turn it off again it's back to silence instead of MENUEND.WAV.

Also I think I've mentioned this other issue before in the thread but thankfully after months of having complete silence in the Diplomacy screen (other than some FANFARE wav's playing) due to it not playing DRUMCL.WAV, it's mysteriously started working again lol. Wish I could figure out the triggers for them stopping and then also triggers that get them working again.
.

 

[tatgar]

I wish I could remove the turn timer, I don't think it adds to gameplay, kinda immersion breaking

 

[Sedna]

Hi The patch is great, but it seems the AI keeps on being aggressive. Is an update to 1.3 or something like that mandatory? My ennemies keep on deciding they should play 1v6

 

[Sedna]

BTW if the AI fix is a simple line editing in some file, i'd love to know which one so I can at least fix it myself by hand. It's almost game breaker in deity or on scenarios without fixed diplomacy!

 

[FoxAhead]

Is an update to 1.3 or something like that mandatory?

Only version Multiplayer Gold Edition 5.4.0f (Patch 3) is supported (CIV2.EXE file size should be 2489344 bytes, preferably unmodified).
You wouldn't be able to use the CIV2UIA if it wasn't.

The patch is great, but it seems the AI keeps on being aggressive.

The AI attitude calculation was fixed over a year ago:

New version 1.20 (build 707).
This time something special.
44. Finally fixed AI attitude calculation. Due to the uninitialized variable, every turn the attitude of the AI changed to the minimum, which made the AI very aggressive towards the player. This bug turned out to be so obvious that it was decided to completely remove the option to enable the fix. This bug is fixed by default without any options.
Unlike the previous version of the patch, which originated somewhere in the deep history of this forum, and which completely cut off the change in the attitude, now the calculation of the attitude should be performed as it was intended by the algorithm.

But you have to consider additional rules, especially the 200 turn rule:

Throughout the project, I try to stick to the rule of not harming the original gameplay. Everything related to changing the rules and restrictions is already modding and should be placed in separate customizable options. As for fixing a bug with AI aggression, at first I casually copied the solution from other patches. But as it turned out, it was too clumsy a decision to disable the function of changing relations. It is not known how many games were played with this option. Then, when I took a closer look at the ratio calculation procedure, I found a classic programming bug with an uninitialized variable in the code. And here, yes, there is a dilemma. On the one hand, this is an obvious bug, due to which the uninitialized relation delta variable in most cases takes random large values, thereby dropping the relationship to a minimum every turn. But on the other hand, the game was released like this, which means it was somehow tested, and perhaps this bug is somehow compensated in other procedures. On reflection, I decided that since this is an obvious bug in the code, it needs to be fixed even without any options. Because even after my correction, the "200 move" rule will remain in the game - the logic introduced in the MGE version, according to which if you are the first in the rating, then after the 200 turn you will have big problems comparable to a vendetta against you.
This is the current state of the solution. In order to understand how much something has changed, you need to play more than one game. And I'm waiting for feedback. Inwardly, I hope that the AI will still remain aggressive, but at least other rules that change attitudes will work correctly - accounting for the number of betrayals, the Eiffel Tower, your own aggressiveness, and so on. And if someone wants a more peaceful game, at high difficulty levels, then this will already be a new option for modding.

The "1v6" situation may have to do with just this rule. At difficulty level higher than Chieftain, if you are the first in power rating, you have more than 4 cities and don't have a nuke then everyone turns against you. Later this can be canceled by Great Wall or United Nations.
The global vendetta can also be triggered by capturing the city of size greater or equal 15 or by international incident. To cancel this flag you have to change government.

fix is a simple line editing in some file

No, it is not that easy. You have to decompile CIV2.EXE, find the necessary place and patch it back in the EXE or in memory.

 

[Blake00]

This is interesting.. someone just posted a link to this old disused Civ2 fan patch on the Civ2 discord that I had no idea about.. was stopped a number of years ago as they saw what an amazing job you did with Civ2UIA @FoxAhead and are kindly telling people on their github to go get your tool instead. However there is one interesting unique feature I noticed in their feature list.. they appear to have successfully added MP3 music support to Civ2 MGE (similar to ToTPP does for ToT). I wonder how accessible their code is as maybe you could use their mp3 playing stuff in Civ2UIA (instead of having to do it all yourself from scratch) conquering that final CD independence hurdle!

GitHub - vinceho/civ2patch: Civ 2 MGE Patch

Civ 2 MGE Patch. Contribute to vinceho/civ2patch development by creating an account on GitHub.

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