Dillo's Realisim and Future Mod.

[Dillo]

Ok guys here it is. All my research on he comabat system has become a mod now. Our first point of buisness it to even out the combat on the unpatched version.Dont misunderstand, we are not gonna make the modern troops tatally overwhelming to the anceint ones,but just a lot harder for anceint troops to defeat and defend against modern ones.I am getting there though,Lots of tweakin going one, then play the game, then twea, then play so it could take a few weeks to get it just right,and fix mistakes I have made too.I am running XP and cant run civ3 after the patch.Therefore I cannot work on the patched version.Then of course ,our next point of buisness will do the same to the patched version,Hehehe When ever they get it working for some of us XP users. I know it works for some so I require no input on that subject.

Basically the mod is to make the combat and things act more realistic.The outcomes ,ect. We will work it out and release our settings in beta for you guys to give input on.These are basically just tweaks to the system.Our next point of buisness it to design era specific ,Civ specific Units.Also at this point one civ is gonna bechanged into canadians.I am thinking Babaloyns, because basically the Babalonians and Persians are the same race from different eras.But why dont you guys give some input. We may also change some that are already there to some that really exist now.For instance, I dont think the Iriquios really belong.Yeah they still exist, but generaly only on reservation lands here in the US. So we are open to suggestion of who you would like replaced, and with whom.

There will very well be new leaders. One for each era.Instead of the same one guy for all eternity.We are also talking about Civ specific advisors.But maybe not.We also wann give the human some snappy responses to the AI like they have to say to us.Just because its more fun. I realize that its worthless.
Our final phase will be a new era. The future. We are gonna try to extend the ending of the game by 2-3 thousand years or even figure if we can alter it to make it selectable.Hopefully fireaxis will take care of that problem for us though.
In the future there will of course be new techs to discover and new units to build.We also plan to make a couple new resources.There will be new Wonders and new small wonders. Also there will be new Improvements.

So If you have any Ideas along these lines ring in, and let us know. I will be trying to get a very simple website up for us this weekend and will post up the link so we dont bother people too much here. Thanks... If you are wondering, "What makes you think you can mod?" Well I have been on several mods for other games.Kingpin,UT,Q3, and Rune.So how much harder can it be?

If any of you guys are into makeing the images for the leaders and advisorse and units ect. Let us Know because there will be alot of them to do.Our only requirement for that stuff, is, They must fit in the game visably well,and they must be who we tell ya to make.Otherwise you are working on some other mod ,ya know.We fully intend to keep all our madifications with in the realm and theme of the game, so you wont see winnie the pooh or Yoda as any leader.Though Yoda would make a very cool leader. Thanks.

 

[scavenger]

awesome, I look forward to seeing the great work i'm sure you guys are likely to churn out

 

[dannyevilcat]

Sounds ambitious

Can I first suggest NOT adjusting hitpoints for conscript/reg/vet/elite units as way of making modern units better? I've heard of this being done, and sorta working, but then it becomes a matter of conscripts never living to be promoted in combat, which is just as bad IMO.

As a Canadian myself, I'm all for adding them, if for no other reason than to build to the north of Americans on the world map!
And if you want to be rid of the Iroquois, I suggest Spain. their purple colour even goes well in the European cultural group.

Also, as I understand it, any new advances on the tree cause problems. Not sure if this is still so, since I haven't really looked to see the changes the patch made to the editor. I really wouldn't go much farther than the year 2500, though, because beyond that (not to mention it's still a good 450 turns over the original), I don't think we can even imagine what it might be like.

 

[narmox]

hm, I had actually quite a grandiose idea for the space race.. Actually, the space races. 2. one for the modern age, one for a future "space age" or something. It involved something about apollo program being more than just a wonder, but a race in itself to get a satellite in space, a man in space, and a man on the moon.

then later on would come the race to get to another star system.. I mean, otherwise, is it really realistic that you start building a spaceship to alpha centaury before you even find out about lasers (or some other modern age tech)?

But my hands are too tired tonight... Maybe I'll babble about it some day

 

[Mad_Gouki]

I am helping dillo with this mod ^_^

well...
we are jsut going to make a lot of the stuff far in the future up...
we can make units... new things to research, and new era's... so we really shouldn't have too many problems except for getting them to work ^_^.

and the main thing for manufacturing/mining/trading in the future would be something like "material x" or something all spacey like that...

it would pretty much be like the mod's for max payne that add all of the new moves and stuff... this would add new unit's, new pictures for the advisors and leaders, and make a new era with it's own specific stuff...

i am not exactly sure how we could make the le;aders change over the course of the game... but the leaders have different video's for different times in history (like the begening is jsut normal, thenn the medieval is all fancy, ect.) so my guess is, we would be doing that...

like america would have george washington, then lincoln, then regan r sumthing, then bush/clinton for modern day ^_^
and maybe monica lewensky for an advisor (j/k)


were open for some suggestions... dosen't mean we will put them in, but any ideas are good ^_^

 

[cutiestar]

Aren't Americans just canadians that became traitors to their motherland??? and so a border was made, lol

that was in reference to the babylonions and persians statement.

 

[dannyevilcat]

and the main thing for manufacturing/mining/trading in the future would be something like "material x" or something all spacey like that...

How about Soylent Green?

 

[Mad_Gouki]

or "x-box juice"
hehe
that soylent green gave me an idea... selling and buying narcotics between countries ^_^

likie cocoa and the marajuana plant...
cocoa would be the most expensive and hardest to find...

 

[Dillo]

Originally posted by cutiestar
Aren't Americans just canadians that became traitors to their motherland??? and so a border was made, lol

that was in reference to the babylonions and persians statement.

No ,not at all, we are brits who became traitors to the motherland...Canadians just laid there and took it. But lets not start that debate.The babalonians are just the anceint persians though.Same people different Time in history. I think Babylon lies near modern day Bagahd in Iraq.And Persia is the same area. The persian Gulf they by Iran,Lybia,and Pakistan, and Afgahnistan? Am I wrong?

I want world powers still.Spain will defiantly make it.If not for spain selling the US west to the french, It would have never become part of our country.And also spain was as powerfull as rome in its hayday.
There will be no narcotics trade. Sorry. And keep giveing names for the resource in question. I like the green Idea, but, not quite. hehehe. Some of my newer Ideas is to limit the rail road travel to like 3 or 4 instead of unlimited.Alot of people dont seem to like this, and its not to realistic. Roads for anceint,Rail for late middle, Highways for Modern, and Teleportation for future.Then it will be unlimited travel. Sometthing like that. Spain and Canada are definatly in the plan though. If possible should they be inaddition to? or should they replace ones that exist? Definatly this will be in the final phase of the mod as it requires a whole ton of work to make up the new civ. It gets new units and leader and text. hehehe And fireaxis or Infogrames or whomever still has to get the patch working for some us XPer's. Thats gonna be the major facto that holds me back. I may revert to Win Me.Dunno. I sure love XP.

 

[dannyevilcat]

No ,not at all, we are brits who became traitors to the motherland...Canadians just laid there and took it. But lets not start that debate

No, let's not.

(easy Dan, someone just knocked your country...easy...easy... )

 

[SpaceWeasel]

You guys should check with the editor's capabilities before working too hard on some of these ideas. I know when I started working on an ambitious mod, I realized many of the things I wanted to do simply weren't possible within the constraints of the editor and graphics system - for example, many wonder and improvement effecst I thought were fairly straightforward became impossible. Anyway, a few things you should definately note:
- Adding a "new era" is impossible as of this time. Any future techs would have to fit on the tech tree with everything else, and if you added too many the physical space on the science screen would quickly run out (since Modern Age is cluttered already).
- Civ-specific advisors: ain't gonna happed
- Era specific leaders - very possible
- New resources: it's hard-coded to 12, meaning you could only add two more without removing older ones.

This is just a quick sampling of things I thought of off the top of my head. It's nice to have grand ideas, but you should make sure everything is doable fairly early so you can maintain an inegrated design.

Now, a couple of unrelated rambles:
As far as fixing the combat values goes, keep in mind that Firaxis spent many hours making sure these were balanced and fit the game well. There are people whose job it is to play these games and make sure stuff is balanced. Changing values for "realism" might adversely impact gameplay, for example overly affecting any civ that falls behind a bit in technology. You should note that even though "spearman vs. tank" seems silly at first, things like this CAN and DO happen even today (take Indonesia and New Guinea, where they are strafing and bombing spear-weilding villagers). Sometimes older units adapt, like Japanese samurai that started to use guns when they became available from the Europeans. Also, units can learn to use the enemy's technology against them: a combat "turn" in Civ represents from one to fifty YEARS, maybe the defenders would be crushed at first but they would soon learn to commandeer tanks, steal rifles, set traps, etc. Observe the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for instance. If you edit combat values too much for "realism" you run the risk of falling into the "sniper trap" that led to so many ultra-realistic, ultra-unplayable Counterstrike ripoffs for the various first-person shooters. It is a game after all =P

Second, about the Iroqouis: Everyone always knocks this civ, and they are the first to get blown off the map when someone wants to make the Luxembourgers or the Malaysians or whatever. Their inclusion, along with the Aztecs, represents an important part of Civ: these two civs, in real life, were badly handicapped by natural and biological factors beyond their control (there is a very good book about this called Guns, Germs, and Steel). Think of it as they ended up with bad starting locations and could never get good resources. By including them in the game, Firaxis shows what COULD have happened if these civs had equal footing. When the Vikings landed in North America, they were quickly slaughtered by the natives (and the Vikings TERRORIZED europe). A few hundred years later, the first English settlers pulled up to find empty villages, unplanted fields, lots of corpses, and a few demoralized survivors who ignorantly trusted that they wouldn't try to slaughter them. If anything, I would get rid of the Americans and add a feature to the game allowing new civs to form - maybe give each city a culture value independent from the capital, and if it gets too strong that city "revolt" and form a new civ. I guess this depends on whether you want to "accurately" represent the CURRENT balance of power by having all the current world players start out in 4000 BC, or have history develop realistically. Keep in mind that America has only been AROUND for maybe 300 years, and it has only been a world power for half that time. Rome was powerful for nearly 2000 years, and even the Native Americans had a pretty good civlization going from the time they crossed the Bering Strait up until the 1500s.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents... whatever you decide, I wish you very much luck on your mod and I look forward to trying out whatever you guys produce.

 

[Dillo]

So you are saying we need a coder. Great. I doubt and Civ 3 mod Coders exist. But I am also banking on the statements that Fireaxis has said that alot of this will be implemented in to the editor in the future. This mod aint comeing out in a week, More like a year or so I imagine.So if they dont implement some of it then it wont be there ya know. We have however noticed some stuff that can be done that we never knew could, so.Its all up to Fireaxis and Infogrames. I am not to impressed with them at the moment, but, I do think they will straighten out this stuff. They too the ability to use the ed hack with the new patch so you cant use the add remove commands. ;P I am still useing the original install however because It wont work on my xp machine otherwise.

If they had wanted Native americans/Indians it should have been that not Just Iriqous.I think The native american (in the game)is as worthless as the babalyonians.2 civs that were replaced with other ones. Neither were world powers.The Aztecs were, Thats why I dont understand why spain didnt make it, seeing how they were once world conquerers.I agree they maybe should have left out some civs like america, Because we are under 300 years, But then who would they have sold the game to?(Joke)

I dont really care how long the people at fireaxis spent tweaking the stats.I dont care for the outcomes.They were focused on fair gameplay more than realism. I am focused more on realism, but I will also pay attention to gameplay. I wont make the modern troops just completely utterly destroy the anceint ones.It wouldnt be fun that way.The way it is now though is pointless to spend the time and money building modern troopes when 4 defending spearman can takeout 30 Unfantry and mech infanty. Then I send 2 riflemen in and take out the 4 spearman. Makes no sense. I have tweaked them and am getting closer to what I feel is realism.and yes it does impact gameplay. Thats why I am testing each tweak that I amke to see wht kind of effect it makes exactly.I wish people would quit compareing anything that has happend in like the past 100 years or so to tanks fighting guys with spears, because it aint happened.There is no modern comparison. These Spearman are basically Cavemen with pointy sticks.They could offer some resistance with like 100 vs 1 tank, but not 100 of them vs 100 tanks. ect, You get my point.

I only plan on adding one or 2 resources anyway, so....
We will obviously have to add an additional tech tree screen.Page 2 so to speak, or maybe even size the different tech Icons down.Np.
Civ specific Advisors is just an Idea, not a requirement.Maybe in the future they will add support just like they are talking about adding civ specific player starts.

Thanks for your Info I have yet to fully explore the ed, as I have been only focusing on the combat resoloution.Thats the first thing I wanna get straight, But I do know that people have definatly changed the Leaders, and at least the looks of the advisors.And added units and other things too. We will just have to see how much support Fireaxis will give mod builders.

 

[SpaceWeasel]

I can see from your thought processes that you are still thinking in terms of FPS mods. Trust me, I have a lot of experience in that area, so two things you will want to consider:

1) "Coders" - Civ3 is structured very differetly from Quake-derivatives and UT. The code is not easily accessible and fundamental game processes cannot be modified at all. For Kingpin, UT, etc. the teams released an SDK that basically allowed you to change everything about the game. You could have made a RTS game out of them if you really wanted to. Not so with Civ3! You have some hard and fast restrictions you absolutely have to live by. For example, as of yet there is simple NO way to add another era screen. Can't be done. The only possibility would be to decompile the EXE, reverse-engineer the DLLs and the *.bic file format, and hack together a patch that allows it, which everyone would then have to install (and risk corrupting their Civ3 install, not to mention virtually guaranteeing that it is incompatible with any future patch by Firaxis). Also, for a Civ3 mod I wouldn't look at a year of development time. That's about right for a big FPS mod but Civ3 mods are somewhat simpler, with the main time constraint being playtesting. I have already made about 40-45% progress on my mod, which involves sweeping changes to the game, a whole new set of units, civs, governments, and techs, and a number of graphics changes including new units. A professional team could develop an entirely new turn-based strategy game of CivIII scale and scope in about two years.

2) Civ mods are much more difficult to package than FPS mods. For example, Half-Life had a a neat mod directory structure where you could have many mods installed at once and just choose which to play. If you want to change graphics or fundamental features for Civ3, you have to actually switch out the game graphics yourself. The way I plan to do this for my mod is with a little VB program that will dynamically generate a batch file from a text configuration file and switch out files appropriately, then switch them back when you want to play "regular" civ. Unfortunately, this will add an annoying extra load-up time to the game. I am hoping to maybe find a competent programmer to help me with this process and maybe write a utility basic and scalable enough that there will be a standardized system modmakers can use - just create a special subdirectory in Civ3 to store the graphics and use a plaintext configuration file to tell the graphics-switcher where to go. Packaging will be very important, moreso the more complex changes you make.

I hope this helps, I think we come from similar backgrounds mod-wise so I hope my comments are at least a little bit insightful to your situation. Again, good luck on the mod and if you want to cross-communicate about anything I'd be happy to help out. Right now I'm grappling with an inexplicable crash bug that I can't seem to pinpoint =).

 

[Dillo]

I was just looking in the hacked ed and I can add eras.Theres a screen right there for it.Is it not able to use them?Have I missed something?
I partially disagree with you on the complexity of the simplicity or complexity of replaceing files and images.I also do realize that with this game you will have to rerelease you mod with each patch or thats at least how it appears to me. In Q3 its madening.To me, Ut it was simple , Rune was the most complicated thing I have ever seen to add skins. My god you hade to skin individual body parts, them script them. I was a skinner on a rune mod, and a mapper and texture artist,and had to become a scripter too just to make skins, because they have body par specific pain skins, and you can allso hack off that body part so you had to script the skin to the pat to the part on the ground, Skinning Rune, even though it was on the simple UT engine,was so channged it was insane.It in essence was takeing a blank premade model, and createing a new character,skeletal animations, and all.It was hard to get anything to workright in rune, every single thing was scripted, even about half the textures were. Ugghgh.

Q2 was the easiest I ever did.Just make the skin name it and throw it in the skins folder.Or a map and throw it in the maps folder, no scripts or ini files nothing, simplicity in its best form.I dont know why they didnt keep it that way. It was great for modders and creators. But never the less, the mod will be no more or less than the ed and our teams skills allow.

Hehehe your telling me how hard it is to mod civ 3 in one sentence and the next telling me how easy and quick it is. Dont confuse me.

I think it would be good for someone to make a mod switcher program. All it would really intail is switching the Civ3modfile.Once you "install" the mod the first time all the files would stay.it just the civ3 mod that tells them what to do with them.So Makeing a civmod switch utillity should be realatively simple. It just renameing and or moveing a file.But there are always unforseen problems. You dont see very many mod switchers out there. I think there may have been one for half life at one time, but I dont remember any others. I think an installer/uninstaller could be modified to use as a "mod switcher utillity" though it would only allow you to use one mod. Thank again fo rthe advise.
once again I say its really up to fireaxis how much they will allow us to do.

 

[SpaceWeasel]

Well, what I meant about the graphics was that many of the graphics files are hardcoded into the game. So for example if you want to change how mountains look, it's as easy as replacing a .pcx in the Art\Terrain\ folder. However, if you make a Mars Colony mod with all new terrain you'd have to replace all the existing terrain graphics with your new, Martian ones. Then when the player wanted to go play a regular game of Civ, it would look like it was on Mars. So you'd have to have a switcher that moved the graphics files around for different mods, assuming they edit those graphics. Units are fine because they get their own directories. However, you would also have to switch back to the original civ3mod.bic for someone to play a game of regular civ (or any other mod). The problem with Civ3 modding is that what is easy to edit is very easy, but what's hard to edit is virtually impossible. The trick is finding clever ways to get around this =). The "Add" button on eras is all well and good, but the fact is that about half of the features with Add/Delete buttons either DON'T work when you add/delete stuff or require lots of messing around to get to work. For example, if you click "add unit" and make a new unit, your game will crash unless you give it its own directory and such (the Civ3Copy Tool is excellent for this). As I said, I wasn't trying to give you hard time, just stuff to think about =). I might make a new thread about my copy program idea because this will become very important once more and more people start releasing mods, especially if they change graphics. It's something Firaxis should have addressed, but I take it they were rather rushed near the end and were too busy not adding multiplayer and not enabling air superiority to add proper mod support =P.

 

[Mad_Gouki]

Originally posted by SpaceWeasel
Second, about the Iroqouis: Everyone always knocks this civ, and they are the first to get blown off the map when someone wants to make the Luxembourgers or the Malaysians or whatever. Their inclusion, along with the Aztecs, represents an important part of Civ: these two civs, in real life, were badly handicapped by natural and biological factors beyond their control (there is a very good book about this called Guns, Germs, and Steel). Think of it as they ended up with bad starting locations and could never get good resources. By including them in the game, Firaxis shows what COULD have happened if these civs had equal footing.

uhm...
i always ally with the iriqous and the aztecs as they tend to have a good military and are good to trade with...

and about adding new elements... we would only add 1 or 2...



and about it being harder to pack up and make an installer and such for...
blah... you iz on pot...

i do have vise installermaker, so i could jsut have an option to install which one you want... the .bic file from the new version, the original, other patches that will come out, and the mod...
wouldn't be hard at all...

 

[SpaceWeasel]

I didn't mean to say it would be HARD necessarily but you would probably need a switcher program like I mentioned. I doubt the player would want to have to run a whole installer program every time they wanted to play the regular game again. I just wanted to point out the necessity of packaging to Dillo since this was not a problem at all for FPS mods.

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by Dillo

No ,not at all, we are brits who became traitors to the motherland...Canadians just laid there and took it. But lets not start that debate.The babalonians are just the anceint persians though.Same people different Time in history. I think Babylon lies near modern day Bagahd in Iraq.And Persia is the same area. The persian Gulf they by Iran,Lybia,and Pakistan, and Afgahnistan? Am I wrong?

First, Persia had a territory that included Iraq, but was mainly situated on Iran. Second, saying that Babylonians (and not Babalonians or Babalyonians) are the same people than Persians, just the ancients ones, is as accurate as saying that Sioux are the ancient Americans, or Arabs the ancient Spanish. For someone that want a realistic mod, you should pay a little more attention to history if you want to be accurate

Second, it's not because that Iroquois did not had cities, factories and gunpowder that they were not a civilization. They had their own culture, their own traditions, they had their kind of governments.

 

[Mad_Gouki]

well there is also the weird zulu race r whatever they are...
the oe that the dev's made up...
guess we could make those canada, hehe

and that different leader for a different time thing is easily doable...

just when the era cahnges, their outfits would change normally... but in the mod... their whole look would change...

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by Mad_Gouki
well there is also the weird zulu race r whatever they are...
the oe that the dev's made up...
guess we could make those canada, hehe

and that different leader for a different time thing is easily doable...

just when the era cahnges, their outfits would change normally... but in the mod... their whole look would change...

Thats true about the look. But the name stays the same. So you will either get a George Bush that looks like Lincoln in the ancient age or a Lincoln that looks like Bush in the modern age