Kestrel18
Chieftain
Firaxis,
I'm used to using the old Civ2 Rules.txt to create Modpacks/Scenarios.
With that, whenever a new version of Civ2 was released and bulk changes were made to parameters, it was very simple to update modpacks by cutting and pasting the relevant sections of the changed rules.txt into the Modpack rules.txt. (it was also very easy to determine what had changed by using the old DOS FC file compare function.)
Now I know that the reason you gave for not having the rules in a text file in Civ3 was to speed the load times, but surely there MUST be an interim flat file / text format you could create that we could also edit in using notepad or somesuch and then import back into the BIC file ?
This would also be an excellent method to allow players to combine the best features of a number of the different modpacks that are now emerging onto the web.
In the most recent change from version 1.16f to 1.17f you appear to have changed a large number of variables pertaining to all sorts of things - for example costs, timings, propensity to be injured, specific unit abilities, upgrade paths etc. etc. etc.
Maintaining any existing modpacks becomes very hard (with the existing Civ3 Editor) if we have to try to remember where each change has occurred and then "tab" to the place of that change and amend each, item by item. If we have to do it every time a patch or new version is released people will give up on maintaining Modpacks / Scenarios over time.
And when you next change the BIC file format such that existing Modpack BICs become unuseable it will become nigh on impossible to maintain Modpacks over versions of Civ3 - all changes will need to be laboriously manually re-applied to the new "factory standard" BIC .
So how about it ? It can't be that hard, surely.
After all you did promise a game that was going to be "easily modifiable" in the weeks/months before you released the game.
Cheers.
I'm used to using the old Civ2 Rules.txt to create Modpacks/Scenarios.
With that, whenever a new version of Civ2 was released and bulk changes were made to parameters, it was very simple to update modpacks by cutting and pasting the relevant sections of the changed rules.txt into the Modpack rules.txt. (it was also very easy to determine what had changed by using the old DOS FC file compare function.)
Now I know that the reason you gave for not having the rules in a text file in Civ3 was to speed the load times, but surely there MUST be an interim flat file / text format you could create that we could also edit in using notepad or somesuch and then import back into the BIC file ?
This would also be an excellent method to allow players to combine the best features of a number of the different modpacks that are now emerging onto the web.
In the most recent change from version 1.16f to 1.17f you appear to have changed a large number of variables pertaining to all sorts of things - for example costs, timings, propensity to be injured, specific unit abilities, upgrade paths etc. etc. etc.
Maintaining any existing modpacks becomes very hard (with the existing Civ3 Editor) if we have to try to remember where each change has occurred and then "tab" to the place of that change and amend each, item by item. If we have to do it every time a patch or new version is released people will give up on maintaining Modpacks / Scenarios over time.
And when you next change the BIC file format such that existing Modpack BICs become unuseable it will become nigh on impossible to maintain Modpacks over versions of Civ3 - all changes will need to be laboriously manually re-applied to the new "factory standard" BIC .
So how about it ? It can't be that hard, surely.
After all you did promise a game that was going to be "easily modifiable" in the weeks/months before you released the game.
Cheers.
It should only take a day or so for a real programmer to do. Now if only I hada few hours to this...[punch]
