Extinct Animals

Lambeosaurus



I began and finished this unit in October, before the Zombie Elephants pack.

I wanted to borrow some files sounds from the JPOG Canon mod but unfortunately I got no response. I finally used sounds from other sources. So, yes, there are sounds with this unit ! :lol:

Fidget, Fortify, Attack, Death & Victory have sounds.

The palette took some times; there are a lot of colors gradient and thus a lot of chances to get drastic and very visible color loss. I'm quite happy with the result. Open the actual files to see it!

The Lambeosaurus is the larger hadrosaurid known so far: 15 meters long and thrice the size of a man.

Code:
Animations by Supa
Texture by Supa
model by Sixus1
snort & death sounds from Zoo Tycoon, modified by Supa
fidget & victory sound from http://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/, modified by Supa

Thanks to 
Utahjazz for his setup!
Micaelus for his render script!
Steph for SBB!
Cyber Dreyk for Civ3FLC!
Moeniir for Flicster!

Download



The Lambeosaurus won the November 2011 Unit Competition, at ties with the other two units !
 
I love it! I am sure that surprises you.. Your Extinct Fauna will always have a home in my mods :) Once Upon A Time I had an idea for a Civolution mod, where you could follow certain tech trees to develop your creatures along certain evolutionary paths. This could not have been built a decade ago, but you keep inching us closer to having this type of mod some day...

I predict this winning Unit of the Month, should you enter it....
 
Thanks !

Once Upon A Time I had an idea for a Civolution mod, where you could follow certain tech trees to develop your creatures along certain evolutionary paths. This could not have been built a decade ago, but you keep inching us closer to having this type of mod some day...

Unfortunately, Civ-III doesn't have the alternative upgrade paths like Civ-IV. It would be much more fun if you could choose you to evolve your unit. It would still be fun, but not the same.

Your Extinct Fauna will always have a home in my mods :)

That's great. :) But don't worry, you'll soon (1) have also something new specifically for Modzilla.

I predict this winning Unit of the Month, should you enter it....

I'm not so sure, there are a lot of very talented creators theses days! But the Lambeosaurus is in the competition!

[1] Well, soon... It's almost finished, just a bunch of little tweaks to make here and there and, of course, all the boring stuff (FLC).
 
Supa... the Lambeosaurus looks excellent.
Beautiful colors and Great animations. Really Good Work on this Unit :goodjob:

The normal units_32 palette does not have the needed Blue colors but the image can be changed to greyscale to work well on that palette. The Civ Colors can be selected so the #95 Red does not apply to the dark red areas because it is not a Civ Color. I would use #9 for the dark red and #42 for the brighter red.
 
Thanks, Vuldacon!

The normal units_32 palette does not have the needed Blue colors but the image can be changed to greyscale to work well on that palette. The Civ Colors can be selected so the #95 Red does not apply to the dark red areas because it is not a Civ Color. I would use #9 for the dark red and #42 for the brighter red.

That's not really a problem: a scenario modder should keep a RGB version of his units_32.pcx and reduce it to 256 colors (and first row of civ colors) when it's ready. Unit_32 I've made isn't color reduced for that purpose. Same thing with resources.

Nevertheless, I'll keep it in mind.
 
Unfortunately, Civ-III doesn't have the alternative upgrade paths like Civ-IV. It would be much more fun if you could choose you to evolve your unit. It would still be fun, but not the same.
Well, you still can, in a way, with Civ3 mechanics. You wouldn't be able to control how each unit evolves, but you can control what units are produced. My thoughts were to have a "nest" improvement for each branch of the animal kingdom, that would autogenerate the base unit for that branch, which you could then upgrade to the latest unit in that line based on your tech level for that line. The branch-specific "Nest" improvement would be flagged with the "replaces all..." option, so each city could specialize in different branches if they so chose (but ideally you would be better off advancing a single line). Sea and air units would be produced the same way with the same flags.

That's great. :) But don't worry, you'll soon (1) have also something new specifically for Modzilla.
I can't wait!:goodjob:

Enough OT - Keep up the great work, I love animal units, and especially extinct ones
 
Unfortunately, Civ-III doesn't have the alternative upgrade paths like Civ-IV. It would be much more fun if you could choose you to evolve your unit. It would still be fun, but not the same..

Well, you still can, in a way, with Civ3 mechanics. You wouldn't be able to control how each unit evolves, but you can control what units are produced.

Of course you can control how each unit evolves. It's called the upgrade line.


My thoughts were to have a "nest" improvement for each branch of the animal kingdom, that would autogenerate the base unit for that branch, which you could then upgrade to the latest unit in that line based on your tech level for that line. The branch-specific "Nest" improvement would be flagged with the "replaces all..." option...

We should really compare notes.

I would begin the tech tree/timeline at the beginning of the Triassic Age, just after the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. This gives you pre-mammals (Therapsids) as well as dinosaurs, without having to worry about working all the way up from fish to tetrapods to mammals.

I think in a thread named extinct animals a side discussion about how they might be used in a mod is tangentially on-topic, but I could open a separate thread for discussion of it if there's enough interest....
 
Supa... I was speaking only about the lack of Blue Colors for Units in the units_32.pcx file...Not the Civ Specific Colors on it.

Yes, same thing. I worked under the assumption that someone working on a mod would "recompile" a new palette anyway, not using the standard palette of the original units_32.pcx file, thus having blue if needed.

Balthasar > You didn't understand the issue. Let's say you have a basal hadrosaurid close to Probactrosaurus. Would you like to upgrade it to Shantungosaurus or Lambeosaurus, the two being members of two distinct subfamilies (Hadrosaurinea & Lambeosaurinea) emerging from the basal Hadrosauridea family ? In Civ-III, you can't make that kind of mechanics.

Civ-IV allows this and would also allow more fine control of an evolution-like mechanisms (can't upgrade to X if Y condition isn't present).
 
Not as many options as CIV, but the constraints of Civ3 Mechanics and the challenge of making something work around them is a huge part of why I've stuck with it over the past decade.

If you use culture groups to separate animal kingdoms, then gave each culture group 6 distinct "Civilizations" with Unique Units based on evolutionary paths within that kingdom. I wouldn't really worry about what the units themselves upgrade to, so long as the older units can only be built until the discovery of a more advanced tech, at which point their distinction begins, as the ones on the map will eventually die off.

I agree it is tangentially on topic, but a thread on Supas units really shouldn't stray too far from showcasing his genius. I highly doubt I will ever get to Civolution, I was just throwing out the ideas I had for it so others could incorporate these units with other great ones that would also fit, such as Tom2050s animal units and others.
 
Balthasar > You didn't understand the issue. Let's say you have a basal hadrosaurid close to Probactrosaurus. Would you like to upgrade it to Shantungosaurus or Lambeosaurus, the two being members of two distinct subfamilies (Hadrosaurinea & Lambeosaurinea) emerging from the basal Hadrosauridea family ? In Civ-III, you can't make that kind of mechanics.

Civ-IV allows this and would also allow more fine control of an evolution-like mechanisms (can't upgrade to X if Y condition isn't present).

Yes, you can. Resources can be used to differentiate the sub-families. You can require up to three different resources for a unit, so you can separate your sub-families by requiring certain resources (or resource combinations) for each. This could also be a way to control whether any particular critter is common or rare in a given era.

So, to take your example of upgrading from Probactrosaurus, one of your nests might have wood nearby, enabling an upgrade to Lambeosaurus, and another might be near Mountain Flowers, mandating an upgrade to Shantungosaurus instead. Copy this pattern across thirty one different gene groups (Civs), and you can end up with alot of diversity on your map.
 
The point is have a choice to upgrade any individual unit of a type to more than one type further along the upgrade path. So any individual Probactrosaurus has two or more choices of what to become at a single tech advancement. And unit lines can't have diverging forks in c3.

Do I correctly understand the problem?

If so there's a very kludgy solution would be to have two separate units with the same resource & tech requirements, identical stats & graphics. Call them S1 & S2. S1 only upgrades to A & S2 only upgrades to B. Downsides: unit lines can get very complex very quickly - the geometric progression of doubled unit types through multiple evolutionary stages would take up a very large number of unit slots. Designing such a unit upgrade tree would be very complex. Let alone problems with what the AI will or will not do. And then there's the problem of how S2 can evolve into B1/B2. So the trick only works once. It's a very inelegant kludge.
 
BM got it right. If you're taking away the choice, that's not really the same thing. Balthasar, your proposition is sound but requires an evolution model based solely on the geography and can cause problem when you bring, to stay in your example, a Lambeosaurus in a Moutain Nest, allowing it to upgrade to Shantungosaurus (if P > L(+wood) > S(+flower)). Anyway, that's up to the motivated modder, I guess it can work.
 
Okay, whatever method one uses to upgrade is going to be kludgy, and historically imperfect, but we're in the business here of making it work the best we can. I'm not sure that you guys appreciate the diversity of units that can be achieved with a little manipulation, while using the tech tree to limit units to their proper era. I'm learning alot about that while playtesting the Lost Worlds scenario, which has 525+ units in it. Talk about kludgy! Actually, a Civolution scenario would have far fewer units, because there aren't that many animal units available. Upgrade lines would be far simpler, too, since all cultures would be following the same timeline (tech tree) and build from the same unit pool.

Afraid that a unit will upgrade to a unit that it shouldn't? Give the upgrade to a specific culture, but not another - for instance, the Shantungosaurus was discovered in China, and the Lambeosaurus was found in (of all places) New Jersey. So, you can give the one upgrade to the 'Asiatic' culture and the other to North American cultures. Although the tech that allows the next evolutionary step could be discovered by all cultures, only the direct ancestors of the newly available unit would be able to directly upgrade to it. That's one method. There are lots of other little work-arounds like that available.

I opened a thread "Civolution" for discussing this further in my Workshop at SOC if you'd like, so that we can return this thread to discussing Supa's Extinct Animals units. (Unless you want to keep discussing this here, Supa! this is your thread, after all.... )
 
I'm just saying Civilization IV is better suited for a diversification gameplay model with the player as an active decision maker whereas Civilization III can't do it properly. I'm sure there are tricks to give a little evolutionary flavor to the game in Civilization III, as you guys showed.

*Before someone in a more serious mood comes, I'd like to state we're far from talking about actual evolution mechanisms, it's all about gameplay mechanisms within an evolutionish theme.* :mischief:

I opened a thread "Civolution" for discussing this further in my Workshop at SOC if you'd like, so that we can return this thread to discussing Supa's Extinct Animals units. (Unless you want to keep discussing this here, Supa! this is your thread, after all.... )

I don't mind, both suit me. But it'd probably cleaner to, at some point, bring the discussion to SoC, as it will only get more and more technical.
 
From the Ever Reliable Wikipedia :mischief: :

"Collectively, dinosaurs are usually regarded as a superorder or an unranked clade. They are divided into two orders, Saurischia and Ornithischia, depending upon pelvic structure. Saurischia includes those taxa sharing a more recent common ancestor with birds than with Ornithischia, while Ornithischia includes all taxa sharing a more recent common ancestor with Triceratops than with Saurischia. Saurischians ("lizard-hipped", from the Greek sauros (σαυρος) meaning "lizard" and ischion (ισχιον) meaning "hip joint") retained the hip structure of their ancestors, with a pubis bone directed cranially, or forward.[25] This basic form was modified by rotating the pubis backward to varying degrees in several groups (Herrerasaurus,[37] therizinosauroids,[38] dromaeosaurids,[39] and birds[13]). Saurischia includes the theropods (bipedal and mostly carnivores, except for birds) and sauropodomorphs (long-necked quadrupedal herbivores)."

So, two "basic" groups for unit lines to form from - what about flying lizards and sea beasts?

Also, should the "winner" be the first line to evolve into birds?

BTW, there should be settlers (nests) and terraformers (Jurassic forests were kept in check by the giant sauropods looking for softer undergrowth.)

... Perhaps more thoughts to follow ...

BTW, if you're going for the post-Permian/Triassic extinction, here's a Jurassic Earth.

Best,

:Dz
 

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