DLL Features

[EmperorFool]

BULL has been released twice now (1.0 and 1.1) and is built into both BUFFY and BAT.​

I've started tinkering with a BUG DLL and wanted to share a screenshot of the first features I've added.

​

City Hover (left, from top to bottom)

• Net Happiness/Health
• Hurry Anger Counter (whip shown here, draft looks the same)*
• Food Assist (shrinking city shown here, same display as city screen)
• Hurry Assist (cost and overflow)**
• Culture Turns
• Great Person Turns

City Bar (top right)

• Airport Icon (I'll replace the globe with an airplane icon soon)

Whip Button Hover (bottom right)

• Overflow and from whipping

I'd like to get some feedback on the display: is it understandable, pleasing to look at, etc. If anyone has suggestions on other ways to format it, don't hesitate to speak up.

Please post your ideas and requests for new features in this thread. If you have links to existing DLL/SDK mods, post 'em too. Remember, the BUG DLL will maintain the unaltered gameplay mantra. So while it includes the two interface fixes from the Unofficial Patch, the core DLL won't include the gameplay fixes/changes or mods like BetterAI. This obviously doesn't stop us or the community from releasing combo DLLs.

* I'm thinking to change the Hurry Anger Counter to show the face instead of the angry population because you may still be under the happy cap and have no angry population as a result of whipping. Same for drafting.

** For Hurry Assist, should I split it onto two lines when you can do both like the following? It would allow displaying the name of the type of hurrying, and for most of the game you'll only be able to do one type.

Whip: 1 pop, 12 3
Buy: -182 ​

 

[smeagolheart]

Neat, it's like you get the whole city info without going to the city screen

 

[NikNaks]

Awesome! I knew you'd bow down to the power of the SDK eventually. How about pulling Unit Statistics from the WoC? That might be cool to have (although a little superfluous).

 

[EmperorFool]

Neat, it's like you get the whole city info without going to the city screen

That's my intent. I hate having to pop into the city screen--even after learning all the city-to-city navigation tricks while inside it--just to find how close a city is to becoming unhappy or what the whip overflow will be.

Awesome! I knew you'd bow down to the power of the SDK eventually. How about pulling Unit Statistics from the WoC? That might be cool to have (although a little superfluous).

I considered that, but I remember reading that it bogged down as the statistics collected. What has your experience been with it? If the slowdown is only storing the statistics (constantly having to pickle all that data for each autosave), then having it installed but off shouldn't cause a slowdown. If that's the case, I'd gladly put it in.

 

[EmperorFool]

To new features to show:

​

Hovering over the total trade route column on the F4:INFO tab or the trade route symbol in the scoreboard shows you the total trade (continental and overseas) you have with that civ.

Which of these do you like better:

a) what's pictured,

b)

37: Land trade (11 routes)
12: Overseas trade (3 routes)

c)

37: Trade from 11 land routes
12: Trade from 3 overseas routes

d)

37: 11 continental routes
12: 3 overseas routes

If anyone has any other suggestions, especially for the word "continental", I'm all ears.

​

The existing hovers for the various commerce types (research, culture, espionage, gold) in the city screen will now show the subtotal of the line items (if more than one) before listing the modifiers.

I'm thinking of changing the subtotal line to match the bulletted lines:

• 59.50 Base Research
• +110% from Buildings
• +10% from Civics

 

[JujuLautre]

Do you intend to have that pop-up also when you have the reduced city screen? That is, when you click on the city name and just have the bottom of the city screen, with buildings and stuffs.

 

[EmperorFool]

If you're talking about the Whip Button Hover that shows the overflow if you whip, yes. It appears for that whip button whether in the city screen or main interface with a city selected.

If you meant something else, please elaborate.

 

[JujuLautre]

Sorry I was not clear.

I'm talking about that new big hover of yours, in the first post, called "city hover". Will it be shown (either by default or when you hover over the city) when you have the recuded city screen open ?

If you can have it, then this means that you could open the reduced city screen, have access to the governor, and instantly see the result in terms of hammers/beakers/food/... produced, without having to open the main city screen.

Of course, some people do not use the governor and want to micromanage every single citizen, but I am thinking about the others

I am sorry I cannot get any screenshot to make my point clearer, I am at work now

 

[EmperorFool]

That image is the hover you see when you mouse over the city bar, and of course it will show if you mouse over the city bar while the city is selected (what you call the recuded city screen where you can see the build queue, assign builds, and use governor/hurry buttons).

To make it visible and updated while you move the mouse elsewhere with that reduced city screen open is possible. The tricky part is that I cannot use the same hover mechanism because the hover text changes as you mouse over other things. I'd have to make it a part of the screen itself (and hide/show it appropriately).

That would not even require the DLL, though the DLL would provide this extra information showing here to it. I think I can ask the DLL for the same hover text and then display it in a normal text field like I do with the scoreboard. It would make sense to move it up higher to be out of the way of the other hover texts.

Please post this idea to the Feature Request tracker at our SF.net site as I don't want to forget it, and I don't want to get derailed from the DLL work at the moment. I have a bunch of BUG-proper changes that the DLL requires in my queue, and I don't want to mix that in with normal BUG features.

 

[r_rolo1]

I already suggested ( but forgot to post in the feature request ) that the hover on a GA button of a GP will give you intel on extra hammers cash and GPP globally......

This could be extended: I'm thinking especially in the shrine button, that could have intel on the raw money you could win by making the shrine

 

[JujuLautre]

That image is the hover you see when you mouse over the city bar, and of course it will show if you mouse over the city bar while the city is selected (what you call the recuded city screen where you can see the build queue, assign builds, and use governor/hurry buttons).

Well, I'm not a professional of the interface like you. I do not know what happens at which moments

I will post that on SF, no pb

Rolo > do you mean something that would also tell you how much commerce/hammers you can gain if you re-organize the tiles and change civics when you trigger the GA? Like "move this citizen from the mine to the windmill, netting you 3 extra commerce to the cost of one hammer, then change to free speech, then... ?

 

[r_rolo1]

No, something like
"If you start Golden age now you'll get:
-X extra hammers per turn
-X extra beakers per turns
-X extra GPP"
based on current MM ( unless BUG dudes find a way of maximixing the MM for a GA to tell the correct number )

 

[EmperorFool]

The hover on a GA button of a GP will give you intel on extra hammers cash and GPP globally......

Hmm, I think that would be doable. It will be an estimate because it will include only raw and changes--not the rippling effects based on modifiers and the things is turned into--and some cities may switch their citizen assignments, especially those running under the governor. It would be useful, nonetheless, and fairly easy to create this initial simplistic method.

Edit: And certainly we could try to get a closer estimate by taking all the other factors into consideration, but that would be a lot of work.

• +1 per tile that has exactly 1 if you're Financial (GA takes it to 2 , and then trait kicks in taking it to 3 )
• Capital under Bureaucracy
• Building and Civic modifiers
• etc.

As you see, simply adding up the +1 / per tile will give a lowball estimate. That's probably better than nothing, or will it be misleading instead?

Another option might be to start the GA, snag the totals, undo the GA, and subtract from current totals. However, I don't know if that will change any citizen assignments in the process that won't be undone the correctly. That's also a pretty heavy-handed approach.

The shrine button, that could have intel on the raw money you could win by making the shrine

I forget, when you control the holy city, can you see every city on the map with that religion? If not, then this could be semi-spoiler. Otherwise, you'd have to know exactly how many cities there are everywhere (not possible if there are any vassals or civs you haven't contacted) and multiply it by the percentage in the F7 screen to get an estimate.

Or is there some other way of getting the information that I'm not thinking about?

 

[r_rolo1]

I sometimes forget this is BtS....

In BtS the shrine does not give line of sight to cities with the religion. Semi-spoiler , it is.. Unless you only count the cities you actually know that have the religion.

 

[EmperorFool]

I sometimes forget this is BtS....

In BtS the shrine does not give line of sight to cities with the religion. Semi-spoiler , it is.. Unless you only count the cities you actually know that have the religion.

That wouldn't be a bad compromise. At least it gives you that much. How about this?

At least +X ​

Or is this better?

X Known Cities with ​

 

[Arlborn]

This definitely opens a lot of avenues, but... I'd hardly play it then!

No Better AI, no unofficial patch, no opportunity to use some other awesome mods with it.

Well, hopefully somebody can merge it with other mods in the future then, but before it I will have to stick with older versions!

But man, does that look cool! Next natural step I guess!

 

[EmperorFool]

No Better AI, no unofficial patch, no opportunity to use some other awesome mods with it.

We'll be providing a version merged with the UP at least, and probably Better AI.

Well, hopefully somebody can merge it with other mods in the future then, but before it I will have to stick with older versions!

The main thing to keep in mind is that the BUG Mod itself will never require the DLL. The BUG DLL will simply add more features to it. In fact, most features in the BUG DLL won't require BUG to work at all. If BUG isn't present, the BUG DLL will turn all features on. Sure, you lose the customizability that BUG brings, but I think that's a pretty fair trade.

But man, does that look cool!

Thanks!

 

[NikNaks]

I considered that, but I remember reading that it bogged down as the statistics collected. What has your experience been with it? If the slowdown is only storing the statistics (constantly having to pickle all that data for each autosave), then having it installed but off shouldn't cause a slowdown. If that's the case, I'd gladly put it in.

It did slow down things as Python, but it's been re-written in SDK, and it's much more efficient now.

Also, I prefer "b" on the Trade hover.

 

[Ekmek]

If anyone has any other suggestions, especially for the word "continental", I'm all ears.

is that "domestic" trade or "overland/ground" trade?


and does "maritime" work better for overseas/intercontinental?

 

[EmperorFool]

is that "domestic" trade or "overland/ground" trade?

It's "overland/ground" as opposed to Overseas. Domestic means trade among your cities. Foreign is trade with rivals/teammates (though technically teammates/vassals count as Domestic in Civ).

And does "maritime" work better for overseas/intercontinental?

I chose Overseas simply because that's what Civ calls it in the trade route hover. I use Civ's lexicon when possible, but in this case Civ left me hanging. A trade route is either Overseas or it isn't. Civ doesn't give a name to the other type.