Cross-Platform Editor for Conquests now available! 1.51

[Nathiri]

Yeah! an update!

I know that Civ3 is hardwired to 31 civs in the game. But could it be possible to enable more than 31 Civs to be selected in the menue?

Making more than 31 civs selectable was on Antal's TODO list. He said it was possible through using some sort of external file. Dont remember the exact words. He did say it was an engine limit for 31 civs on a map and it wouldnt be possible to work around it.

 

[Quintillus]

Making more than 31 civs selectable was on Antal's TODO list. He said it was possible through using some sort of external file. Dont remember the exact words. He did say it was an engine limit for 31 civs on a map and it wouldnt be possible to work around it.

It would be possible to store the BIQ-relevant information about additional civs in an additional file (or an addition to the BIQ file), and have a utility that could swap the contents of that into and out of a BIQ file. Then perhaps the model would be you start the utility prior to starting the game to get the mix of civilizations that you wish to play in the scenario. That would be selectable, but not in the in-game menu.

I've rather intentionally stayed away from BIQ extensions, however, as it's both a significant time investment, and will face significant challenges to uptake. It's kind of like creating a Super Floppy format in the '90s. Steph did pursue this route around 2010, and while interesting, I'm not aware of any scenarios that ever made use of that work.

 

[Civinator]

There is an ancient hacked editor by Chrissicom, showing 66 slots for civs in Civ 3. Unfortunately after the transfer of CFC to a new provider, the links to that editor and to one of my screenshots are not working any longer. The transferred parts of the discussion can be read here:

Edit: Links rewritten, so that CFC can handle the links to its own posts:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cracked-civ3conquestsedit-v1-22.75688/page-2#post-1608425
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cracked-civ3conquestsedit-v1-22.75688/page-2#post-1608440
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/cracked-civ3conquestsedit-v1-22.75688/page-2#post-1609416

Here is the link to an old post by Virote_Considon: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-32nd-civilization.333830/#post-8424398

You can add in more civs like that in the regular Conquests editor - after adding the 32nd civ, close the rules page, re open, and you'll be able to add a 33rd. I sometimes do this a lot to see what the map would look like if it had the "real" amount of civs on it! It's always a shame that I can't keep them...

Here is a comment done by Steph: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-32nd-civilization.333830/#post-8426769

Yes, but you can clearly see that this hack completly screwed the editor. All the texts are now gibberish.
As a side note, the way the information is stored in the file format means that there is NO way to tell if a unit can be available to a civilization beyond the 32 one. And in theory, this is the only limitation, as all the other civ related information should be expandable to more than 32, if Firaxis had programmed the game and editor correctly.

And a comment to Steph´s comment: That isn't gibberish. That's German.

 

[Puppeteer]

Did anyone ever have > 31 civs *in a game*? I'm seriously doubting so; the SAV file format uses 32-bit bitmasks for a lot of civ-related data, and the barbs count as civ 0.

For example, the tech tracker is a 32-bit value for each tech, and one bit is flipped on indicating that civ knows that tech. A 33rd and beyond civ either just wouldn't work at all or e.g. if the player learns a tech then civ 32 automatically knows it, too. Civ 2 & civ 33, civ 3 & civ 34, etc..

 

[Civinator]

Did anyone ever have > 31 civs *in a game*?

No, as far as I know, this is not possible. I have noticed, that the 3 first links in my last post are not working. This is crazy, as before writing my last post, I came with these links from civforum.de to the posts from winter about the Crissicom editor.

Edit: I went back to civforum.de to use the old links, that are working at that site - but no longer at CFC - and drew new links at CFC to the posts at CFC about the Crissicom editor in my last post.

 

[Kirejara]

The first one sounds relatively easy. You mean the dialog that alerts to when you have an upgrade such as Spearman -> Pikeman -> Musketman -> Modern Armor -> Spearman? It does sound likely that I didn't anticipate the loops being too much longer than that. I'm curious roughly how long the loop was. Is it just running of the screen left-to-right, or is it covering the whole screen?

It was running of the screen left-to-right and total blank. I was unable to shift it to the left to reach the close button (if there still was one).

Befor I had such messages, but they include the complete update path as you have written and I was able to shift them to left to close them.

I am afraid it happened to one of the longest update paths (the Frigates/Cruisers). The double entry was at the end of line, then I copied the Maya Missile Cruiser to create the DDX Missile Cruiser and both upgraded into the Sirene Missile Cruiser (and yes, I know that the USN calls the Zumwalt DDX a Destroyer ).

Catapult Tetrareme (Mathematic) = 8 types
War Galleon (Astronomy) = 11 types
Frigate (Magnetism) = 5 types
Armored Cruiser (Iron Construction) = 14 types
Heavy Cruiser (Combustion) = 14 types
Super Cruiser (Computers) = 2 type (only two navies)
Missile Cruiser (Robotics) = 14 types

Ok, so more than 31 civs to select from are apearently not possible. I was just dreaming.

Thanks!

 

[Ozymandias]

antal1987 addressed this directly:

"Civilizations have been coded in a static structure array:
class_Leader Civilizations[32].
To overpass civ limit of 32 it requires to make this array dynamic.
But there are at least 794 direct references and a lot of another refs to it's offsets. And all of this references have to be patched"

 

[Takhisis]

I know that Civ3 is hardwired to 31 civs in the game. But could it be possible to enable more than 31 Civs to be selected in the menue?

Taking into account all that is mentioned above, you could look at an old project of Steph's for having multiple eras and so on. It's a pity that Steph's not visiting here anymore -I cannot even find his profile and therefore not the thread, at least with the forum's own search feature†.

†: which is powered by Xenforo, which makes things even worse

 

[Civinator]

It's a pity that Steph's not visiting here anymore -I cannot even find his profile.

When being in the Civ3 - Creation & Customization forum only write Steph into the search tool and to search only in this forum.

 

[Adrain]

I cannot even find his profile and therefore not the thread, at least with the forum's own search feature

Hi Takhisis.

Another tip, for more general usage, is to use the 'Site:' option in any and all search engines. I used 'site:forums.civfanatics.com steph' and I was able to find Steph's profile quite easily from there.

 

[Ozymandias]

Steph's well documented, if unfinished ("0.8.2") editor can be found HERE.

 

[LordBaal]

Thanks! That is an interesting way to look at the issue. Too bad they did not think of adding different upkeep back then.

 

[Blue Monkey]

I'm currently in the process of rearranging my computer work area - getting a small desk set up for older machines. But atm I can't run the recent version of editor due to the java issue. So quick question - trying to help answer Gojira's question - does the latest version include editing civilopedia text?

 

[Civinator]

My installed editor 1.35 doesn´t hold such a function (and I think there are more important functions to implant), but this is not the latest version of this editor.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Thanks for the prompt answer, Civinator! Yeah, it was just a question, not a suggestion for adding another function. Personally, I'd much rather Quintillus keep doing what he's doing, plenty on his plate already. Civilopedia editing is well understood. Gojira's just asking about more streamlined ways to do the work.

 

[Ozymandias]

I'm currently in the process of rearranging my computer work area - getting a small desk set up for older machines. But atm I can't run the recent version of editor due to the java issue. So quick question - trying to help answer Gojira's question - does the latest version include editing civilopedia text?

You can also just roll back to Java 8, and disable Java updates. I'm running Windows 10 and haven't found this causing any problems.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm currently in the process of rearranging my computer work area - getting a small desk set up for older machines. But atm I can't run the recent version of editor due to the java issue. So quick question - trying to help answer Gojira's question - does the latest version include editing civilopedia text?

It doesn't; it reads the PediaIcons.txt file so that it can display the icons on some tabs for visual feedback, but doesn't for pretty much the reason you mentioned in post #1235 - civilopedia editing is already well understood, and it doesn't seem like a high priority to invent a better wheel for that task.

What I have considered is adding checks for missing icons or Civilopedia entries. Probably starting with the former, since that can catch the annoying case where a mod won't load, but instead gives messages about missing files. Also not exactly urgent, but more likely to arrive than editing the Civilopedia in-editor.

As for the Java issue, there are two currently recommended resolutions:

- The Liberica JDK, which is mentioned in the "Java Download Links" spoiler in the first post, includes the parts of Java that Oracle removed and which the editor depends on. It can be used instead of the Oracle version, and runs the editor flawlessly.
- The Windows XP version, available in this post, includes its own embedded Java version, which the editor will use instead of any system version of Java you may have installed. It should also work just fine on newer versions of Windows. You can then download a newer version and overwrite the files in the Windows XP version with the newer version files; as long as you launch it in the way mentioned in that post, you'll wind up with an "XP version" modernized to the latest release.

In the end, this falls squarely in the area of, "if this editor was my day job, this would have been solved by now." Alas, as it is, it's complex enough to resolve that it would mean bypassing a major editor feature or a bunch of smaller ones to update it, quite possibly also dropping support for OSes that were new when Civ3 was new in order to do so, and that hasn't seemed like a good tradeoff so far. Though I probably should make an updated XP build with the next version, and perhaps advertise it more prominently as a bundled-Java-on-Windows version.

Disabling Java updates is only advisable if you don't use Java in web browsers. These days using Java in browsers is pretty rare, and as far as I know, Internet Explorer is the only web browser that allows using Java in-browser without significant and deliberate work to enable it. That said, as someone who doesn't use IE, I haven't been current on my system Java version since the end of Oracle updates for Java 8 (I'm currently on a version of Java 13 published in October, 2019), and it hasn't caused an issue.

 

[Ozymandias]

In the end, this falls squarely in the area of, "if this editor was my day job, this would have been solved by now."

@Quintillus - Given all you have achieved, done, and, shared, if there was a CFC equivalent of "Saint," I'd have PMed the CivPapacy to get you on the short list, long ago.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Hey guys - I'm on a Mac. Whole different - if overlapping - set of ways Java is bolloxed up I'll figure it out. There is a Mac version of Liberica for example. Just takes some trouble shooting with directories & such to make sure it & the editor play well together.

 

[Quintillus]

Hey guys - I'm on a Mac. Whole different - if overlapping - set of ways Java is bolloxed up I'll figure it out. There is a Mac version of Liberica for example. Just takes some trouble shooting with directories & such to make sure it & the editor play well together.

You could be the person who could help with testing the editor on Mac in that case. I just verified that 1.38 does generally work with the Liberica JDK 8 version. However, it has an issue where because the PediaIcons.txt file that I'm testing with uses backslashes, it cannot load Civilopedia icons. E.g. the entries look like this:

#WONDER_SPLASH_ART begin
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Pyramids
art\wonder splash\pyramid.pcx
#WON_SPLASH_BLDG_Hanging_Gardens
art\wonder splash\hanging gardens.pcx

So the editor would look at /Applications/Civilization III/Conquests Game Data/Art\wonder splash\hanging gardens.pcx, and not find it because of the forward slashes.

What I'm not sure of is if the Mac version's PediaIcons.txt is the same as the Windows one (with backslashes), and Mac Civ handles that properly, or if the Mac version's PediaIcons.txt file has forward slashes. Seeing your Mac Mod Installation Solutions thread, it sounds like you probably are the right person to ask.

I did look at whether it made sense to buy a native Mac copy to test with, but the only Complete copy on eBay is over $100 . Guess I should have picked up the last copy for sale in a local store 6 or 7 years ago to test with.