Firaxis you should help us: XML terminology.

[Snoopy]

It's great that we can edit the game so easily in XML, but its not great that most of us haven't the faintest idea what some of the commands do.

For me, there are a few that I would love to know more about, but there are no comments on it or any indication as to what they do. If I change the values, it will either crash or nothing will happen.

So, I am going to compile a list of what I would like comments on, and to anyone else, add what you would like to know more about too.

I know Firaxis is busy, but everyday for the past week, I am pounding my brain trying to work these out, and I have no idea whether what I am doing would have any effect at all.

For myself I need to try and achieve a few things, if I can't solve the problems, I will not be able to go any further with my graphics mod.
Right now, I have changed the Plot Size to 360 from 180, which doubles the size of the 'cells', but rivers, borders, tree's are now all cut up, so I am trying to figure out how to fix that. But everything I have found that might be related, either crashes the game or does nothing at all.


Here is my list:
===========

TerrainSettings.xml
-------------------
BlendMap
iGameCellSizeX
iGameCellSizeY
bTerrainShader
bUseLightmap


Civ4ArtDefines_Terrain.xml
-------------------------
TextureBlend01 to 15


GlobalDefines.xml
-----------------
UNIT_VISIBILITY_RANGE
PLOT_VISIBILITY_RANGE
TERRAIN_POINTS
MAX_PLOT_LIST_SIZE
GAME_CITY_SIZE_MAX_PERCENT_UNIQUE


CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml
---------------------------
Jungle and Forest fScale values do not work (and I think it may have caused my computer to crash once).


Other Notes:
------------
Is there a maximum number for fMaxSpeed under Civ4UnitInfos.xml? When I change the number to something like 100, the speed remains as if it were set to 10.

Why does iGameCellSizeX and Y crash if I change the number to anything but 17?

In GlobalDefinesAlt.xml it says that mods should overwrite GlobalDefines.xml in this file, does that mean, if I change anything in GlobalDefines.xml it won't work? But if I change it in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml it will work?

What is actually meant by the word "plot", I see it used in many places, but they seem to have different meanings depending on the xml file..

 

[CrazyAce]

I agree Snoop and include the python script bible as well.

 

[Zurai]

TerrainSettings.xml
-------------------
bTerrainShader
bUseLightmap

b means Boolean, ie true or false. These two values are for shaders and lightmaps, both graphic engine stuff; shaders add special effects (like a glow, subsurface scattering, etc) and lightmaps are used for things like shadows. You'd probably want to set both of these to false (0) or default them to whatever you're copying from.

Civ4ArtDefines_Terrain.xml
-------------------------
TextureBlend01 to 15

Not 100% certain, but my guess is that this is for multitexturing.


Not very helpful I admit, but any port in a storm...

 

[Snoopy]

thx for ur help Zurai

if thats what b means, what does f mean?

 

[woodelf]

I second everything Snoopy said. Nothing worse than muddling through this without official help.

 

[Nero Would]

thx for ur help Zurai

if thats what be means, what does f mean?

Do you mean "f" as a prefix to a tag (e.g. <fScale>1.0</fScale>)? I assume it indicates a floating point value. "i" would indicate an integer value.

 

[panzooka]

f = float
i = int
b = boolean
l = long int
d = double float

 

[The Great Apple]

if thats what be means, what does f mean?

f intdicates it's a floating point variable.

Basically:

b variables can be 1, or 0 (on or off - boolean)
i variables must be a whole number (integer)
f variables can be any number (with decimals). I think if you want it to be an integer, you still need the decimal - for example, 1 is 1.0.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - check out the wiki... all the stuff I just posted is in there (there are some finer details, such as negative numbers that I'm still not sure on and I'd love somebody to clarify). I'm pretty sure that Firaxis will NOT provide an XML bible, or for that matter a Python bible. There may be a small amount of documentation coming out with the SDK, but I doubt it will be very comprehensive. This is part of the reason we're making a wiki.

http://civ4wiki.com/wiki/index.php/XML_basic_format

As for your tag issues, I'm not sure I can help you with them passed what Zurai said.

EDIT: Ok, beaten to it.

I'm pretty sure Civ doesn't use l, or d

 

[Zurai]

Just as a small aside, a lot of times floats are used for a range of 0.0 to 1.0, representing 0% to 100%. Not always, mind you - they can be any decimal number from 0.0 to ~2billion and a fraction - but it's something to keep in mind if a larger number than 1.0 isn't working. Colors and texture opacity determinations especially are frequently done in this way.

 

[Snoopy]

Thanks for the info.

Big Apple: The wiki is only going to be useful up to a certain point, as I said before, some of the functions in xml give no indication as to what they are, and even changing the values shows nothing in the game.

So all I am asking from Firaxis is to give us some comments on those obscure functions.