Enhanced Mars, MasterOfMagic, MasterOfOrion Test of Time scenarios plus ToT graphics for MGE mod

Hi guys,

I've recently been playing a lot of Test of Time (as I barely touched it back in the day) and have been having a lot of fun.

With Civilization 2 MGE I loved playing the Mars, Master of Magic Jr & Master of Orion Jr scenarios. I recently discovered Kestrel's excellent ToT conversion/remake of the Mars scenario and am now curious about the others however I haven't been able to find anything here, on Catfish's site or the League wiki. However the Mars remake isn't on any of them either so I figure its worth asking the gurus here about the others!

1. Is there a ToT fan make conversion and/or remake of the FW Master of Magic Jr scenario? ToTs linked maps would allow for the mirror world Myrran to be added and all sorts of other cool stuff. I'm playing Midgard at the moment and I just keep thinking "omg if only someone used this stuff to remake the MoM scenario!". If anyone here is a guru with that difficult MGE to ToT scenario converter program and thinks they can convert it for me (I'll do the rest lol) please let me know! FOUND ONE HERE (Although let me know if you know of more out there).
2. Is there a ToT fan make conversion and/or remake of the FW Master of Orion Jr scenario? I've seen some ToT Star Wars & Star Trek scenarios using MGE MOO scenario style space gameplay but with nicer space graphics of course yet haven't found an actual MOO remake scenario in ToT. FOUND ONE HERE (Although let me know if you know of more out there).
3. Final question is a different and rather out there one lol. I've seen all the cool Civ2 style graphics and gui overhauls for ToT on Catfish's site however I know there are a lot of MGE fans out there who for various reasons don't want to play ToT. So I'm curious to know if anyone ever made a (obviously non-animating) ToT style graphics set for MGE mod (eg terrain, units, city & dark gui) using the best closest matching 8bit colour equivalents? FOUND ONE HERE (Although let me know if you know of a better one out there or who made that one).

 

Never seen a conversion of either of these. If you have a real itch to scratch there are very interesting versions of both MoM and MoO for Civ 4.

Even if someone here were planning to do a conversion of either it could take months or years to actually materialize. If I remember correctly both scenarios were quite barebone. A major hurdle to overcome in any attempt to add Myrror to MoM is the fact that the graphics don’t really exist, expect for maybe whatever could be scavenged from Curt Siblings Bitterfrost scenarios, I suppose.

If you’re up for it, I could try converting the scenario - I have a somewhat succesful relationship with the CivConverter apparatus - and if you could cobble together the graphics, we could make a rudimentary version and see what could be done from there.

 

1. If you wanted to make a remake youraelf, you're in the right place. I, and I'm sure many more of us, would be happy to help you with the development curve.

2. I have not seen one.

3. I don't know that anyone has made a mod with the old 8 bit graphics but plenty of us hate the TOT standard graphics and there are some mods (such as TechMod) that make things much more familiar. Also if you have MGE friends who hate TOT, I'll bet the Test of Time patch project addresses many of the faults in the base game (you can pretty much get TOT to look and more importantly feel a lot like MGE these days... Name me something that drives you crazy about TOT and I'll bet the patch project of other things have fixed it).

 

My list is:

1). Z coordinate. Allows you to find out on a random map where the neighboring islands and continents are located. On a non-random map, you can “peep” where the enemy's cities are located (just at random, clicking on the map. Where the map is not centered, the enemy city is located).

2). Poorly implemented graphics system. The image of the road, railway, mine and airbase closes all other images. For example, you can create a very beautiful picture of the resource. However, if you build a road on a resource, the image will be closed by the road and corrupted. As a result, a motley hodgepodge is formed. The map is difficult to read.

3). The inability to edit the properties of the river, and the road. The river will always give +1 trade in any terrain. The road gives trade to grassland, plain and desert, but does not give trade to all other types of landscape (unless there is already a trade there by default).

4). The presence of your unit on the square of the sea, included in the territory of the enemy city, does not affect the bonus effects of this square. In addition, your stack of naval units will always be destroyed by one of the defenders.

5). Infinite payload of the aircraft carrier and submarine. I'm not sure about this item, maybe this bug has already been fixed in TOTPP.

6). Well, the most obvious is the inability to edit the properties of the wonders of the world and forms of government.

This is what was remembered in the first place ... But of course the list will continue ...)

 

What I meant by this comment was that there are a few things in TOT (like lack of flashing unit icon, or attack animations) that made it feel substantially different from MGE, but TOTPP has fixed these to the extent that there's little reason to avoid TOT any more.

 

I agree with you that the basic graphics can be configured to be completely identical to the MGE. However, in this graphic lies the same fatal problems (for example, the image of the road or mines, overlapping other images). Perhaps this is the reason why MGE lovers do not see any reason to “change the awl for soap” (a russian proverb, denoting the irrationality of replacing one object with another if the problem that causes the replacement is still not resolved).

However, I absolutely recognize the huge number of positive changes that are contained in TOTPP. But everyone has different tastes. And the fact that you may seem a minor problem, for another person can be a significant problem.

 

@Buck2005

Do what @TheNamelessOne done - Learn programming, make changes to the CIV2 code.

Help the CIV2 program progress, not just complain and pointing out flaws.

 

Thanks for the advice, captain Curt.

However, I do not see anything wrong in that "pointing to the flaws." First, I do not blame you or anyone else for these shortcomings. I'm still more a user of the game than a programmer.
Secondly, fair play, and game ethics assume that all participants in the game are aware of all the bugs. So that no one has unfair advantages. For example, in the last game with McMonky, I used a well-known bug with the Z coordinate. I knew before the attack where his cities were located, although they were formally hidden by the “fog of war”. I do not think this is a cheat of my opponent, since this is a very famous bug (which, moreover, cannot be easily installed simply by an in-game agreement between the participants. Since no one is immune from the fact that he simply accidentally clicks the map and does not recognize that the enemy city is located there). However, I'm not sure that McMonky was aware of this bug. During the game, we did not discuss it (since in fact it is not very significant, and its use gives minimal advantages).

As far as I understand, this bug (like a number of others) is currently unavoidable. Therefore, I believe that all civ2 players should know about it. So that it does not work out extremely doubtful situations like yours. When you, Curt, actually accused (without proof) of another player in the game deception and left the game under a specious excuse, when you saw that he was clearly defeating you. I am sure that this player, and all other players of this forum use only fair play. It’s just that some of them have more experience and are obviously more aware of all the game mechanics (and errors in them).

 

Please be fair. In this thread there was the question "Name me something that drives you crazy about TOT" and Buck2005 answered the question - not in the way that was expected, but correctly, as the question was targeted to the feeling of the individual civer.

This said, I´m very excited about ToTPP and all the interesting work that can be done with it and I will never, never return to MGE.

 

Apologies for the delay, I forgot I made this thread haha! Thanks for the responses guys. Yeah JPetroski did ask the question so it's not really fair being unpleasant towards @Buck2005 for answering it lol.

I too see the weird tile graphics overlapping problems Buck mentioned but for me its mostly oldschool cosmetic video things that I miss. Eg Throne room, Wonder videos, Spaceship launch, aerial city view, and high council videos. Using ToT Patch Project I was able to get the throne room working (although I couldn't seem to make the option appear in the Kingdom menu) and the Wonder videos going. I can't seem to find anything for getting the high council working though, maybe people are happy to see them gone lol but I have a real nostalgic love for them and wish I could reactivate them in ToT. I miss the city view too.

I asked about the 'demaking' the ToT graphics for MGE as I really like them, but I know I lot of people don't like them and prefer to use either a classic graphics pack or Catfish's lighter graphics. Figured 8 bit ToT graphics for MGE would be a fun thing to try some time. When I look at the MoM Jr scenario it event kind of reminds me of ToT graphics, although problem moreso Catfish's lol.

@Northerner that's a very interesting offer mate! Especially as you & I are opposites in what we find daunting which means we could make a good team haha. I have no scripting experience and I've never tried to convert a MGE scenario to ToT but I have done quite a lot of MGE graphics editing and a bit of scenario creating (none of it released publicly though although I plan to finally release my cr*ppy old Star Wars Civ 2 level soon, 20yrs too late lol) which such skills hopefully carry over to ToT okay.

If you reckon you can do a barebones conversion of MoM Jr to ToT that works (just like it did in MGE) scripting & setting wise then I can take that and see about adding a Myrran Map, moving a few starting players over there, and then doing replacement graphics. I haven't tried Curt Siblings Bitterfrost scenarios but I'm seeing a lot of great stuff in default ToT already to be honest. EG the extended original made mode has a alpha centauri map with a lot of nice pinkish purpleish terrain assets and I'm currently playing the Midgard scenario and that is just full of great fantasy terrain types to use (I love the haunted forests with the glowing eyes and ghosts haha). It's also full of fantasy unit animations that would work well in MoM which is good as I have no idea how to make my own animating units, I've only got experience making 2D frozen ones lol. Which also makes me wonder about the special resource animations. Eg if I've got a deer on a green forest and the deer is the only part that animates then does that mean I could make the 2D forest tile a purplish Myrran colour and the deer will just do its thing over the top without me having to touch the animation file? Or would the deer contain 'parts' of the green forest in its animation which would get in the way of a successful conversion of its background tile?

So maybe a plan along the lines of MoM Jr v1.0 is a simple 1 to 1 conversion that looks/feels the same and works in ToT engine and released at CivFinatics for anyone interested to playing or modding.
I attempt a MoM Jr v1.5 with 2 worlds and nice ToT terrain graphics. Release it at CivFinatics too.
Then finally I attempt a MoM Jr v2.0 with animating uni replacements for as many as possible. Release it at CivFinatics too.

Oh and at either 1.5 or 2.0 I'd replace all the building and tech graphics too.

Then people can just play which ever version they want or even take it and push it even further.

 

Hey guys, am mucking around with the 8 bit ToT demake for MGE idea (just for fun) and one of the things that makes it not really possible on the GUI side is Civ 2 MGE's use of dark titles and info text over light backgrounds as opposed to ToT light text over dark backgrounds. Are there any Civ 2 font editing tools or guides out there that allow you to change font colours?

I tried to find something myself but all I get are Civ 4 font editing threads everywhere. Apparently people really love editing the fonts in that game as its all I can find everywhere lol.

 

Hi @Northerner ! Did you end up having a go at trying to convert over the MoM scenario to TOT? If you can get the scenario file to covert I can hopefully do the rest with all the graphics haha!


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And on the other topic... I've found an answer to question 3!!

Someone has indeed already done a TOT graphics pack for Civ 2 MGE. I just found a mod here at CivFanatics here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/tot-graphics-for-civ2-gold.2471/

The mod coverts all units, cities, and terrain to ToT style. It was uploaded by @Thunderfall however the author is unknown as he doesn't say any name in the readme and just gives an email of VWPsycho1984@yahoo.com (which fails).

Here's a photo of me testing it.. it looks like the author has pretty much just done a straight colour pallet conversion with no touch ups as when I do the same thing myself I get the same results.

The grassland is way too dark and black/grey ish. The people who complained about ToT's graphics being too dark would hate this even more haha. Something is wrong with all the faction colours too. Maybe I'll have a play with his files and see if I can make a some improvements..

 

I've been playing around with the ToT mod I found above and fixing up varies bugs (like wrong faction colours eg blue barbarians lol) and improving some of the graphics to look a bit nice (eg green grassland and yellower desert). Here's a WIP shot to compare to the one in the previous post:



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Another success! I've found the answer to question 2. There is indeed an upgraded ToT version of the Master of Orion Jr scenario from Civ2FW.

It was buried over in the old Cradle of Civilization site:
http://sleague.civfanatics.com/COC/scenarios/mod-moojr.shtml



So that just leaves question 1.. an updated ToT version of the Master of Magic Jr scenario.

 

Update on the ToT graphics for MGE mod remaster:

I've made a ToT style darkened GUI that is as dark as MGE can get before text becomes unreadable. Here's shot from my Barbarian game that shows off more undeveloped terrain than the previous shot posted as well as the new GUI.




Am currently playing around making an MGE version of the ToT city screen. There's no transparency in the MGE city screens of course but there's no reason why I can't 'fake' the ToT transparency lol. The ToT info box background marble pattern is too dark for MGE fonts so I had to lighten that too.


Only thing left that I want to do is the fix all the unit shield positions as they're all still in their default Civ2 graphics slots. Then I'll consider this mini project done!

Still no luck finding an enhanced ToT version of the Master of Magic scenario sadly.

.

 

Regarding question 1 I've found some traces from yeeaaarrs ago of someone working on a ToT Master of Magic scenario specifically the Myrror side over at Apolyton HERE and HERE but I don't think it got finished. Might try to track him down!

Either way if anyone thinks they can convert the old Master of Magic Jr FW scenario to ToT using that hard to use converter for me to do custom graphics for let me know! I originally thought it would be fun to remake it using existing ToT fantasy assets however after doing 2D to 2.5D art asset conversion with Metro on the Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2 Scenario I'm now thinking it might be kind of cool to try converting original MoM assets into Civ2 ToT. Either or would be cool haha.

 

SCORE on question 1!

Finally after all this time I got help on this elsewhere when Knightime told me in my C&C and Red Alert WIP Civ2 mod thread about the scenario conversion request thread and gapetit had the Master of Magic Jr scenario fully converted and working in ToT within 24hours lmao! Amazing!

So now I have a template to build something better.. eg a MoM scenario with more than the 5 factions, enhanced and/or retro original graphics, and most importantly addon THE DARK MYRROR WORLD!

2 worlds 1 game:


Testing Gapetit's new conversion:

 

In fact now 3 ideas for the look of the MoM Jnr Remastered mod sit in my head for this:

1. Stick with original Civ2 MoM scenario graphics leaving Arcanus as is (eg screenshot in above post). Make purple versions of terrain for 2nd Myrror world with more terrain special resources. Move some start positions to there.
2. Use existing Test of Time fantasy scenario resources (which animate!) to replace all terrains and units on both worlds.
3. Use ORIGINAL MoM graphics for both worlds since after doing 2D to 2.5D art asset conversions with @Metro Polis on the Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2 Scenario I'm quite experienced with such conversions. Plus original MoM units were 2.5D in city & battle screens already so that just leaves the old 2D terrain to worry about!

Which would people prefer to see? Or do you want all 3 of them done hahaha?

.

 

Even though I'm still busily working on my Red Alert 2 scenario , @Metro Polis has been kindly helping to iron out the setup and improvements for the Master of Magic Jr Enhanced ToT Edition. We've got some pretty cool ideas cooked up and can add a lot (as Micropose clearly rushed and disabled a lot in the original haha). Since this put the scenario to the forefront of my mind I decided to take a quick break away from RA2 to do a terrain colour test..

Took the regular MoM Jr scenario terrain set and re-coloured it to look like the dark mirror world Myrran. Looks pretty good. Just a WIP though.. eg special resources need to have some manual corrections as we don't want them as dark otherwise they disappear lol.

Original graphics for Earth/Arcanus world:


Modified graphics for mirror/Myrran world: