Ethnic Mix More Mod - Mac compatible

[coffee junkie]

ETHNIC MIX MORE X 2 !


ETHNIC MIX MORE IN BLUE :

What is it ? It's Ethnic Mix More with ColdFever Blue Marble terrain graphics ...

The only differences between Ethnic Mix More and Ethnic Mix More in Blue are ColdFever fantastic Blue Marble grahics ... As I couldn't make the Blue Marble graphics working fine in multiplayer when simply added to CustomAssets, I put the files in my mod and this way, it worked

It's just the BlueMarble "core" files ( only BM terrain, without BM mousepointer, without BM fonts, etc ... ) from pure zip package for highres supplied by ColdFever ...

- Tested working fine in both single and multiplayer on MAC
- Tested working fine in single on PC
- Not tested in multiplayer on PC ( sorry : don't have 2 PC at home ) but, if it works on Mac multiplayer, it should work fine on PC too ...

ColdFever Blue Marble thread :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295876

ALL credits for Blue Marble go to ColdFever !




ETHNIC MIX MORE 1.2 UPDATE :

Here the second update of Ethnic Mix More and I numbered it 1.2 ( Valentine Special )

What's new ? Well ... As I try to progress with Nifskope, I enhanced many many units

One point of weakness of the mod was maybe the lack of difference between the Minor Asia civilizations ( Sumer, Babylon, Persia, Arabia, Ottoman ). As a good wizard, Bakuel made some fantastic Berber units a few weeks ago and so, I used them for Arabia and began to re-create and touch some pixels on Minor Asia units until I have enough diversity between them. Then, I used Bakuel Berber meshes to make too some Ottoman units and worked a lot on Nifskope to get some new Sumer/Babylon units. Related to Persia, I used both Bakuel great persia units and some of my own to propose a complete set.

So ...

- Almost all India units are re-created, including a new settler and a new scout ( instead of the MidEastern style of BTS who's really not accurate for India ! )

- Almost all Sumer units are re-created.

- Almost all Arabia units are re-created.

- Almost all Ottoman units are re-created ( including a new explorer )

I began to work on Asia units. There too, I used 2 Bakuel Berber mesh and surprisingly, it worked quite fine for some Khmer units So ...

- Almost all Khmer units are re-created ( added new ones )

- Almost all Korea units are re-created ( added new ones )

- Enhanced too some Mongol and China units

- Enhanced and updated almost all Nihon units

- Created a new Africa settler and created 8 new textures for all African shields ...

- Updated some Native units

- Changed all Carthage units and use the ones from Bakuel

- Updated almost all egyptian units with one mesh only ... Why ? Because I plan to work on new artwork for Egypt units and this mesh ( Ambrox one ) is particulary well done ! so, it will be a base to work on very soon

- Enhanced many Knights of several civilizations, mostly the horse part with a new 256x256 texture !

- I re-create a new carriage for War Elephants ( a 256x256 texture ) and then worked on War Elephants to get a more visual diversity set of 20 War Elephants. I havn't finished yet, so my apologizes, but I'll add more on the next update of the mod

The carriages are a bit empty to let some other creators to add whatever they want ( weapons for example, which is not my best knowledge )

I'll post too these 20 War Elephants in a unit graphic specific thread for those who want them without the Ethnic Mix Mod.

- Added several cuirassiers more etnically diverse.

At last, as pointed by Mamba, I finished to get some crash after many multiplayer tests so, as GeoModder updated its great Cultural City Style to 0.95, I included it. This version ( 0.95 ) doesn't crash the game. I had no problem at all with it

And the Eden Project ( wonder mod ) of tsentom1 is still there .


Tested both on Mac and PC ( single and multiplayer ) and remember : this mod is for Civilization IV Beyond The Sword 3.1.9 only !


- GeoModder's Cultural City Style version 0.95 :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=328300

- The Eden Project ( wonder mod ) from tsentom1 :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7060423#post7060423


Total : 490 Units ... Each unit has its own dds button.

Compressed ( .rar format ) : 130 Mo
Compressed ( .zip format ) : 135 Mo
Uncompressed : 330 Mo


ETHNIC MIX MORE :

This mod is for Civilization IV Beyond The Sword 3.1.9 only and it works on BOTH MAC and PC ( single and multiplayer - I named it Ethnic Mix More as a tribute to White Rabbit EDU's Mod which inspired me

This mod is still a work in progress and I continue to go further with it, with a little bit of patience. It intends to bring to Mac players a bit of units flavor you can find in other mods only available for PC users ...

This mod is not modular. The units are not "FPK" packed for those who want to make their own changes. But not unpacked slow down a bit the Mod launch I suppose.

This mod doesn't include any .dll

The 5 languages of the xml files are written in english ( except for some french parts ) but there are : so, no missing text.

I could add more units ( for example, the same number of units for each civilization ) but my purpose is not only adding any flavoured units but only add quality units. And units creation is like coding : a work always in progress

So, added a complete set of African units ( which is missing in BTS ), some animals units, and of course, many units for almost all civilizations ...

It has been tested both in single and multiplayer games Both on Mac and PC

Units creation credits : Bakuel and Danrell ( I use many of their units ), Chuggi, Polycrates, AlazkanAssassin, AsioAsio, Sepamu92, Mechaerik, Ambrox, White Rabbit, Bernie14, Millenia, Achilleszero, Deliverator, Sakhr, Buddy3101, Gagonite, SaibotLieh, etc ...

A special thanks to Flintlock1415 who pointed me towards a great utility for Mac : SquishDDS which does a great job and spared me a lot of time !!!

To everyone who is not listed : just tell me : I'll add your name !

I did it only because I think that there are not enough Civilization mods really available on Macintosh or Macintosh compatible ...



TO DO NEXT :

- Still looking for a real working terraforming mod ( rhaaaaaa ... planting trees and forests !!! )



EASY INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS :

1) Unzip the Ethnic Mix More folder into your Mods directory ( ../Applications/"yourciv4beyondthesword_install_folder"/Mods/ )
2) Load the game and play as normal by first loading Mod option



VERSION HISTORY :

- Version 1.2 (14/02/10) --> This is the current and 2nd version. Tested working on Beyond The Sword 3.19 multilingual ( both Mc and PC )
- Version 1.1 (01/01/10) --> This is the current and 2nd version. Tested working on Beyond The Sword 3.19 multilingual ( both Mc and PC )
- Version 1.0 (01/10/09) --> This was the 1st version. Tested working on Beyond The Sword 3.19 multilingual ( both Mc and PC )

Work still in progress - So, please, enjoy !


DOWNLOADS

Ethnic Mix More WITHOUT Blue Marble Graphics :

DOWNLOAD ETHNIC MIX MORE --> in .rar format

Ethnic Mix More WITH Blue Marble Graphics :

DOWNLOAD ETHNIC MIX MORE IN BLUE --> in .rar format



SOME PICTURES

The 2 Leaders :

One for France ( fed up with Napoleon and Louis XIV ) : Louis XIII



And one for Native Americans : Red Cloud --> will upload picture


There are not modern units pictures because they are already posted in another thread here :
Modern Units Thread

This is more or less the screen used for the mod :





Happy gaming !

 

[Lachlan]

What about turning it into a full mod with many purposes as you see the perfect Civ 4 Game, you have just to change name of your Mod I will try with pleasure ...

...

 

[coffee junkie]

Thanks Lachlan. Going to try to understand what is exactly perfect Civ 4 Game.

I'm slow sometimes

By the way : I posted some pictures in the related thread of the mod. Going to put more quickly

 

[Lachlan]

Feedback in !

I discovered two things :

A "unite pink" screenshot in place of :

1) Leaderhead Screenshot Hughes Capet into F4 leaderboard...
2) Icon Hughes Capet into Civilopaedia

If not, what about flavouring this by giving local names to units...

By example : the unit should be having theirs names into their native spelling...

Should be didactic

 

[coffee junkie]

mmmmmh ... does this happen too to the Native leader Red Cloud ? ( damned dds )

I named this leader Hugues Capet ( not Hughes Capet ) everywhere I think. Did I make a mistake somewhere ? In a specific file ?

I'll re-do again the leaders dds buttons ... Tell you tomorrow Thanks for the report !

EDITED :

Red Cloud button is fine. So I re-create a .dds only for Hugues Capet and ... still the same pinky problem. I did it with mipmaps, without mipmaps, in dds 3, in dds 5 and ..... still a pink picture.

So, still searching


For instance, as I'm a beginner, easier for me to keep the english names of units. I began to name some of my units with their own name ( like Africa_Tirailleur for Tirailleur Sénégalais ) but I consider too it could be more fun and more acurate to name each unit by its real name in its own language ! )

There are too some units ( I think about the Greek Maceman and the Greek Spearman ) who have too clearly a uniform which is not acurate. I'm changing this when I'm able to ...

...

So, Rendez-vous with the next update of the mod for some improvements.

To come back to my dds button ( the pinky one ) if anybody got a clue !!! Thanks


EDIT : everything is fine for a while now : no more pink button !

 

[coffee junkie]

ETHNIC MIX MORE 1.1 UPDATE :

I have been so away from games these time that's why I have been so late to finish Ethnic Mix More update

So, here the first update of Ethnic Mix More and I numbered it 1.1 ( New Year Special )

What's new ? All minor problems are solved now ( until someone finds somes ! )

Many many improvements, new units, and 2 mods integration : GeoModder's Cultural City Style version 0.90 and Eden Project ( wonder mod ) from tsentom1

Another leader for France ( Louis XIII )

Every information you may need is in the first post of this thread !

For Info : I don't intend to double my posts, but this mod is made on Mac for Mac players in first. So, that's why I post my modest contribution here too

Happy new year !

 

[coffee junkie]

ETHNIC MIX MORE 1.2 UPDATE :

Here the second update of Ethnic Mix More and I numbered it 1.2 ( Valentine Special )

What's new ? Well ... As I try to progress with Nifskope, I enhanced many many units and maybe more !

You'll find all informations and links needed in the first post of this thread and on the Ethnic Mix More official thread there :

Ethnic Mix More

I posted many pictures there so you can make your own idea before any download.

I would appreciate to get some feedbacks from Mac users !

 

[flying toaster]

Your absolutly right !
You should have get feedback sooner.

I play with your mod for months now and never bother to tell you : working great on mine !

 

[Xyth]

I've downloaded 1.2 and I look forward to having a play with it tonight. Had a browse through the screenshots and I have to say you are becoming one of the best unit makers on these forums, I'm most impressed. Mind if I use many of them in History Rewritten? I already use heaps from 1.1

You wouldn't happen to take requests by any chance? >.>

 

[coffee junkie]

Wow ! Thank you for your words Xyth

Of course : you can take whatever please you and use the units you like as you wish ! I don't make them only for my mod

As for your request : let's talk about it

Flying Toaster : thanks for your feedback

 

[Xyth]

As for your request : let's talk about it

Well my biggest request is a Tibetan set. It's a civilization that seems to have been forgotten by all the unit makers on CFC which is a real shame. There's a few other things I'm trying to track down too:

- Celtic modern era units (Infantry, AT, Machine Gun)
- Carthaginian modern era units (Infantry, AT, Machine Gun)
- African and Asian Horse Archers (I have both Horsemen and Horse Archers in my mod, and decent horse archers are rare for these continents)
- Hebrew War Elephant
- Turkish Warrior
- Indian, Turkish and Asian Skirmishers
- Assyrian units
- Hittite units

That's not a request for all of that, don't worry! But maybe one or two of these might be useful to you also? Anything at all is hugely appreciated

 

[Keinpferd]

I play with your mod for months now and never bother to tell you : working great on mine !

I should say that, too, coffee junkie! Downloading your new version.

 

[coffee junkie]

I should say that, too, coffee junkie! Downloading your new version.

Thank you Keinpferd. I hope you'll enjoy this new version with some interesting enhancements

Well my biggest request is a Tibetan set. It's a civilization that seems to have been forgotten by all the unit makers on CFC which is a real shame. There's a few other things I'm trying to track down too:

- Celtic modern era units (Infantry, AT, Machine Gun)
- Carthaginian modern era units (Infantry, AT, Machine Gun)
- African and Asian Horse Archers (I have both Horsemen and Horse Archers in my mod, and decent horse archers are rare for these continents)
- Hebrew War Elephant
- Turkish Warrior
- Indian, Turkish and Asian Skirmishers
- Assyrian units
- Hittite units

That's not a request for all of that, don't worry! But maybe one or two of these might be useful to you also? Anything at all is hugely appreciated

Soooo interesting you mention Tibet because I think about this for a while too !

Few reasons to integrate this civilization and the first one is historical. I fully agree it's a shame it isn't yet in official Civ !

So : yes : it can be something to add to Ethnic Mix More. Now, I tend to study 3D to create new meshes. With a bit time, I will propose a Tibetan civilization with a quite complete set ( Ancient Ages - Middle Ages - Renaissance ) of units. That's the longest part.

About Celtic modern era units (Infantry, AT, Machine Gun) and Carthaginian modern era units (Infantry, AT, Machine Gun) : the difficulties is "only" to create new heads ... Something wich makes these potential units really different, which is not the case for now with many modern units, including mines ...

What do you call "decent" African and Asian Horse Archers ? Can you detail more what are your expectations for these units please ?

Hebrew War Elephant : shouldn't be difficult at all to do ! I can make one if you wish.

- Turkish/Ottoman Warrior : oh yes !!! it must be done !

- Indian, Turkish and Asian Skirmishers : for sure since the archer is not the most "elegant" unit in game.

Related to Assyrian units and Hittite units : I'm really not as good as many people around for accurate historical units. For these one, maybe later, when I'll be better

 

[flying toaster]

+1 for the Turkish/Ottoman Warrior. I'm pretty sure you will make something nice and neat !

I think the Tibetan civ is a great idea, a bit unusual but probably funnier to play and to kill some AI muwahahaha !

 

[Xyth]

What do you call "decent" African and Asian Horse Archers ? Can you detail more what are your expectations for these units please ?

Well there are hardly any Horse Archers available at all for Asian and African civilizations. I've looked everywhere but most unit makers mostly make horsemen with spears or swords. For Africa, Ambrox's Nubian Horse Archer is the only one I can find. And it looks very Nubian and looks odd for Ethiopia, Mali, Berbers and the Zulu.

In Asia there is only Bakuel's Korean Horse Archer which I have to use for China, Japan, Khmer, Siam and Vietnam. So even 1 or 2 new Horse Archers for these two continents would make a giant difference. Horsemen with weapons and animations swapped would be fine.

Very happy to hear you are interested in making some of these suggestions! Thanks so much

I think the Tibetan civ is a great idea, a bit unusual but probably funnier to play and to kill some AI muwahahaha !

From the 7th to 11th centuries they had an empire that was as big as Tang China. They were pretty warlike back then too, though the adoption of Buddhism mellowed them out a bit over the years. I have two leaderheads standing by, Songtsen Gampo and the Dalai Lama, so both aspects of Tibet can be represented

 

[coffee junkie]

IMPORTANT - IMPORTANT - IMPORTANT

For those who have downloaded the 1.2 update of Ethnic Mix More, your attention please ...

An error occured on the Civilopedia text of the mod. So, here is the corrected Civilopedia file :

http://hpnimbus.free.fr/mods/EthnicMixMoreText_Civilopedia.xml.zip

You just have to replace the old civilopedia file ( Mods/EthnicMixMore/Assets/XML/Text ) with the one above ( shorter to download : 340 ko than re-download the full Mod ! )

My apologizes for this

Anyway, I have re-uploaded the complete Ethnic Mix More mod ( same bat thread, same bat link ) with the file corrected

Another interesting detail about Ethnic Mix More : I'm going to propose 2 versions of the mod :

- One without Blue Marble Graphics

- One with Blue Marble Graphics

It's not the complete fantastic Blue Marble Mod from ColdFever
It's just the BlueMarble "core" files ( only BM terrain, without BM mousepointer, without BM fonts, etc ... ) from pure zip package for highres supplied by ColdFever.

It adds 25 MB to the original Ethnic Mix More ( the weight of the terrain graphic files : uncompressed )

Tested working fine on both Mac and PC

- Tested working fine in both single and multiplayer on MAC
- Not tested in multiplayer on PC ( sorry : don't have 2 PC at home ) but, if it works on Mac multiplayer, should work fine on PC too

Blue Marble thread : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=295876

All credits for these go to ColdFever !!!

Asap the files are complete in uploads, You'll find all the available links in the first post of this thread. Thank you.

 

[flying toaster]

Ah ! See that you are polishing your mod more and more !
Still working on my side and having fun

 

[coffee junkie]

Yes ... I polish ... and polish ...

Some infos related to the current work for the next ( 1.3 ) update of Ethnic Mix

I continue working on some Celtic units ( spearman, pikeman, crossbowman )

I already intgrated some other Tsentom1 wonders in addition of his great Eden Project

The ones I added are :

- The Sphinx
- The Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro
- Copernicus Observatory
- Cheomseongdae ( Eastern Flavor of Copernicus Observatory )

For now, it works really fine except the movies ... Must digg the question of .bik files on Mac I suppose ...

Next add from Tsentom1 wonders : Leonardo Workshop

Tsentom1 Python Wonders Thread

After that, going to make 2 more units for Ottoman :

- Warrior
- Rifleman

And before going any further with units, I'll clean as much as possible all units folders ( 450 folders ) because I know that some of them have really to be cleaned ( unused dds, unused stuff )

Then, going to solve all minor bugs ( like some missing textures in Cultural City Style )

Asap I finish, I will update some units and continue to add some ...

Of course, Ethnic Mix More Mod 1.3 will be available both with and without ColdFever Blue Marble terrain graphics !

ColdFever Blue Marble thread

 

[Xyth]

Then, going to solve all minor bugs ( like some missing textures in Cultural City Style )

I fixed some of these when I was working on MAC BAT. Here's an archive of the fixes I did: CC Mac Fixes. Should save you some time . The only issue I've not been able to fix (that I've noticed) is some modern buildings appearing white and untextured in the Mesoamerican citystyle. Do let me know if you solve that one!

 

[coffee junkie]

I fixed some of these when I was working on MAC BAT. Here's an archive of the fixes I did: CC Mac Fixes. Should save you some time . The only issue I've not been able to fix (that I've noticed) is some modern buildings appearing white and untextured in the Mesoamerican citystyle. Do let me know if you solve that one!

Thank you very much Xyth !