Eunomiac's Strategy Layer

[ruff_hi]

I would just go with the smaller palette and not offer user defined colors. You know my motto here ... They can just like what they are given.

 

[EmperorFool]

Well, the palette is configurable already, and I'm not going to remove a feature for no good reason. But even doing that wouldn't solve the current issue at hand: how many and which colors should the default palette have?

 

[ruff_hi]

oh ... well done EF. Go with the small version. The large takes up too much screen real estate.

 

[NikNaks]

Agreed. The small one has plenty of choice and easily enough variety.

 

[Del69]

In poking around it today, I solved one past issue: how each city needs to be placed on a different layer so they overlap visually instead of merging together. As often happens, time away from the problem gave me a chance to look at the problem with fresh eyes, and the solution is so simple it's embarrassing: assign the layer based on its location on the map so that overlapping/adjacent BFCs are on different layers.

So I created a 6-tile grid and assign the layer based on the x and y coordinates of the city itself. Problem solved--and I no longer need to store the layer with each city. This also decreases the data requirements.

Dear god why didn't I think about that *facepalm*....

Yea I'm still lurking around, just barely even enough time right now to play a game of civ. Love the work you've done on this EF, looks great. I'm so glad you continued it after I had to drop it, makes a great addition to the BUG.

 

[DMOC]

Hi, how do I use the city-planning feature? What shortcuts are used?

 

[EmperorFool]

Hey, glad you're still around Mr. Dad! I think this is easily one of the most useful features of BUG. I just wish I had more time to take it to the next level of planning discussed in this thread.

My latest fix was to make it really multiplayer-functional. I already kept track of each player's cities separately, but I didn't know that changing Script Data on one PC didn't get transferred to the other PCs in an MP game. Luckily, it was a very easy fix. I also added a HotSeat fix at the same time, so I think it's fully MP-happy now.

 

[mystyfly]

Ctrl + X / Alt + X. The former toggles the layer so you see where you put the dots. The latter allows you to draw dots.

 

[EmperorFool]

Hi, how do I use the city-planning feature? What shortcuts are used?

First, make sure you're running at least BUG 3.6 or the one from SVN.

ALT + X will enter/exit edit mode, allowing you to place city crosses of different colors. If the dotmap isn't visible when you enter edit mode, it will be made visible.

CTRL + X will hide/show the dotmap. You can play the game normally with it visible, but sometimes it gets in the way of seeing the map or other borders. Hiding the dotmap exits edit mode automatically.

In edit mode, left-click on a tile to place a city of the selected color. Right-click on an existing dot to remove it.

Right-click on an empty tile to exit edit mode (or hit ALT + X of course).

Note: The borders of two cities with the same color will merge into a single area if they touch currently, just like your cities' cultural borders do. I have the fix for this and am tidying it up now so that won't happen. Plus you'll have more colors to choose from.

 

[mystyfly]

Someone of us put a little more effort into explaining this. I think it is not me

 

[Roland Johansen]

Feel free to suggest a different set of default colors. I can of course show the whole palette, but I think that's a) overkill and b) not organized well. So many colors are barely distinguishable as you say, and it takes up a lot of screen real-estate.

The whole palette would of course be overkill. I think that your palette was quite good and had a nice pattern in it, but in my opinion, the upper three rows contained a few colours that were a bit similar.

I used MS Paint, to move a few colours from the main palette to your reduced palette in the first three rows. It doesn't have your nice pattern of different shades of the same colour, but in my opinion, the colours in the upper three rows differ a bit more now.

pallette.JPG

Note: The borders of two cities with the same color will merge into a single area if they touch currently, just like your cities' cultural borders do. I have the fix for this and am tidying it up now so that won't happen. Plus you'll have more colors to choose from.

Is there a reason to do that? You can already show the overlap between the BFC's by using different colours. After city planning, I'm personally not that interested in the overlap anymore as I've accepted it as part of my planning. In that case it's a bit calmer for the eyes when you don't see the overlap anymore. With signs and various coloured BFC's and the normal civ graphics, the screen is crowded enough in my opinion. It's not a big issue or something, but I'm just wondering why you'd want to show the overlap in case the player picks the same colour for two adjacent city BFC's.

BTW, talking about a crowded screen: when you select a settler, you get to see the tile output of every tile just like you can with one of the buttons above the minimap. I'm never really interested in seeing that at that moment and find it makes the map more crowded. It's not really an issue as after moving the settler, the game reverts back to the normal view of terrain, but I'd rather have an option to turn this behaviour off. Is that possible?

 

[EmperorFool]

I have now committed the user-configurable color palette. You can change the width (number of colors per row) and the colors themselves in Config/StrategyLayer.xml. Remove the entire colors <arg>...</arg> section to use the entire 127-color BTS palette with 10 colors per row.

​

Yes, some of the top ones are still fairly similar. I'm open to more suggestions. Also, the entire left column is nearly invisible on the map, but it's there for completeness.

@Roland Johansen - I used some of your colors and rearranged the others. I added a row for browns and another for magentas or oranges, I forget which. You like?

As for your suggestion for an option to allow BFCs with the same color to merge as they did before, I will probably add that shortly. I will be redoing how the crosses are saved since the layer is not needed anymore (determined by grid location now and by color when the future merge-similar-colors option is added), and I want to save the actual color instead of the index into the chosen set. This way if you share a save with someone else, you'll see the colors they actually chose even if they have an entirely different palette than you. I will add this option at the same time.

 

[Roland Johansen]

It sounds as if you're perfecting this great piece of helpful interface. The various options in colours and looks of the the city planning feature are now reaching the high standard of customisation of the entire BUG Mod while the feature is still easy to use. It will be hard to find ways to increase the difference between various colours in the palette now that you've added another 2 rows. And I also like the natural way how each row has 3 versions of a similar colour. It might be impossible to keep that structure and still make the colours more distinguishable.

So, simple put: great job.

 

[EmperorFool]

Cool. Yes, the only way to get more distinguishable colors would be to modify existing colors to the Civ4 palette, but we're not going down that road again!

 

[Grey Fox]

Is this in BUG 3.6? I can see the Show Dot Map option in the options screen, but how do I show the "city-planning dot map layer"? There is no mention of it in the help file that I can find.

 

[JujuLautre]

ctrl-x and alt-x should help you

 

[Grey Fox]

Thanks!

Man this is sweet!

 

[EmperorFool]

Yeah, that was my reaction to seeing it in action too.

 

[StuntedAzrael]

I just want to say thanks for this feature.

 

[Gorey]

i removed the <args> section, and decided i prefer the big one.

i play at 1680x1050, and its really not that big at such a high res. i prefer the larger selection of colors.

but thats just me.