Well, it seems as if someone's caught up to me on
religious integration. Kael probably figured out the complete picture about the same time that I did, I just don't know how in the world he's had all that time to do all that work so far. Right now, I've got most of 2.1's features done, but the tga's are still killing me in GIMP, so I may have to do them in something else. This may be the last thing to be put in before I release it, the way things are going. Oh well, I guess. I'm just hoping to be feature complete by Monday and be able to release 2.1 sometime around the middle of the week. Pre-tests are telling me that it will weigh in around 8.19 MB, but that can go up or down. It's likely to be anywhere between 8-9 MB by the time that I get done with it.
EDIT: From what I've seen, either Civilization uses a newer targa version than the GIMP developers know about, or the GIMP has incomplete support for targa files. It's not a pallate issue with GIMP, but something far more serious. So, targa files for Civ4 HAVE to be done with a utility other than the GIMP at this point in time, which is a real shame. So, this might lead me into a project later, due to the fact that I've never found anything like this that has ever hampered my Civ developement with the GIMP. I'm real tempted to participate in the summer of code, but I might be better suited for this sort of project for me in another year or two. So, despite this, I'm still on schedule, but I can't work as fast with an editor that I completely loathe and find to be less efficient and convenient.
EDIT 2: I've implemented the overland religion icons, but it's still slightly buggy. Another bug that I'm currently fighting deals with implementing religious founding movies. I tried what seemed obvious to me, and since this had worked in several other instances, I thought that I hit a home run with it. Apparently, it doesn't seem possible to use DDS files in place of the NIF's. There may be some further depth to this that I'll need to unravel. I'm thinking that there's a camera like reference that I need to disable. So, I thought that you guys would like to see some screenshots of the current build while I battle these bugs
This screenshot shows that I may have mastered one religious icon type, but not the other. It's very strange, as they're both formatted the same. I'd expect both not to work:
And here's another that shows that I've made the Religious Advisor screen look much cleaner and a few of the text cleanups so as to make the dialogue much more bearable:
EDIT 3: Today, there will be multiple edits for edit#3 as I wrap things up. Currently, I have fixed yesterdays religion founding bug, which proved to be extremely simple. I'm going to try to resolve the small religion icon bug that I've been having and polish off the rest of my files for the rest of today.
Now I've fixed the other bug, which was also easy. There's also some screenshots at the bottom of this edit. I'm considering doing them differently on the front post and all further posts, to make these posts much easier to find what you want. If you want to see the full sized image, click on the image.
Tomorrow, I'm considering putting in an extra day to replace quite a few of the sound files, as I still think that there are better ones out there. What this means for you guys is that I probably will be putting in the last finishing touches late Wednesday/Thursday and will possibly get this file released close to New Year's eve. I want everything that I've done so far to work out to perfection. I could release it at this point at 8.55 MB, but want to be able to implement every little feature that I've been experimenting with, as I won't be able to mess around with them later. More to be added to this edit later as progress continues.
This screenshot shows off that I have truely fixed the other gamefont file, for all those unbelievers:
This screenshot shows off the new religion founding movies. NOTE: this could be changed later to make them look better in the game. It's not final at this point.
EDIT 4: Hmm... just sharing little tidbits on everything that I've done has gotten me 2,000 more views over the last week or two. Very interesting. I wonder how much more that I'll get once I actually release it. Nothing new for now, just signing in for the day. If you watch long enough, there will be some edits to Edit#4 today as I share my progress. I'm hoping that by the end of the day, that I will have everything in order to release it tomorrow. However, I'll have to PM Thunderfall, and it might be Saturday before anyone sees it, so I'll be not so secretly trying to prove the themers wrong out there once things are wrapped up for good by making a mod specific coloring that doesn't have to override the origional files. I am almost 100% positive that I am right on this one, and don't want to see the community go on blindly under this superstition. Besides, I need to maximize whatever time I have to mod and it's been a long time since I've dived into code.
All artwork is now finalized. When I finish redoing many of the sounds, it will be ready for publishing here on CivFanatics. Right now, the size is 8.51 MB, but that's not final, as sounds can dramatically raise or lower this size. However, you can at least expect to see 8 MB or more. It won't be too long now.
Bagh! Just remembered how hard it is to find what sound effects you want on the internet. I'm going to do my best, but I can't guarantee too many sounds will be exactly what I wanted.
I'm just going to release it. I changed two sound effects, but the selections that I'm finding are lousy, so I'm sticking with what I've got. Almost everything else has been changed with this version, so there's no sense in making an update file. So, stay tuned in the upcoming days when I post my final update for a while here on CivFanatics.
