Future Mod
- Thread starter Tholish
- Start date
I've posted version 1.29. This uses Revolution 1.65 rather than Rev DCM. I made minor SDK changes to see if the AI won't settle other planets better, and have the capability now to mess around with this and other things in the SDK. Also, since this change, no more python exception popups (so far). Also made other minor changes, fixed Standard Oil, already fixed interplanetary trade, tweaked the yield of forest and allowed earlier but inferior use of plantation bonuses by farms.
EDIT: I'm up to version 1.33, which is interim (aren't they all), but now the AI clearly is colonizing planets and space as they are supposed to. This opens up vast new realms of stuff to work on, just lots of time consuming stuff that I know how to do. I've got pages and pages of notes of things to change and fix up.
Hard things that I need:
A way to make a building be automatically granted if a city is in certain terrain. I'm planning to have a huge space station looking thing blot out the whole cityscape for any city in space, or maybe even frame it to make it look like a cutaway into a cylindical space habitat. The coding part could probably be done in Python.
A way to limit civs and leaderheads to appearing only in certain eras. This will probably require some SDK, since it involves adding an XML tag and adding functionality to it, although it may be possible in Python to just allow wrong one to be made and then switch them but I see that being a really bad way to go.
Also, I have a modcomp (credits are coming, I have a text file on my desktop) that makes random city names, but I want to use it only for Barb cities or selected civs, not for all civs. Again, Python, probably just a couple of lines if I'm lucky. Whatever sets it in motion, just set it under an "if" and check for civ name.
I'm thinking of making a Space Marine unit that has like a jetpack. They bob as they float in space, like a helicopter or something, but otherwise use regular infantry type animations to shoot a laser (no recoil, but weaker) or rocket. Right now there's a stopgap unit in there.
Also I've put in a "Robot" unit that will become a "Self Assembling Prefabricated Improvment" Builds in space but cheaper and earlier than full "Workbot," except builds kill it. Current art is a stand in. What I want is something that kind of unfolds itself.
Orbit: making it water means it looks like water, and I haven't figured out how to reskin a third water terrain--graphically, civ recognizes only deep and shallow. You can add a third but it won't have a texture, so it will look like the underlying water effects. If you cover it with a feature, that feature must be impassable or the terrain is passable through the feature. If you make this feature impassable to non space units, the AI doesn't colonize planets. Thus for now it just looks wrong, because making it water is the best way to get the AI to colonize planets. I took an FFH icepack feature and made it black, but only use it to blacken the edge of planets and also speed movement and ban yields and improvements on planets edge (poles) to reflect more scrunched polar terrain (but prime real estate for one reason or another on all planets and thus settled first). I left in the ability to found cities there, but so far even this confines AI space colonization to space. Once an AI civ has one city on the edge of a planet it will go hogwild expanding into the "interior" but that first city is always there. It isn't because passengers are dropped off there, its because that's the plan. Also I had to sacrifice harbors, which I will replace with something.
Fixed the exception from trying to get units for new barb civs and made all the Terraforming buildings work (previously only the later ones did) though they may change function.
EDIT: I'm up to version 1.33, which is interim (aren't they all), but now the AI clearly is colonizing planets and space as they are supposed to. This opens up vast new realms of stuff to work on, just lots of time consuming stuff that I know how to do. I've got pages and pages of notes of things to change and fix up.
Hard things that I need:
A way to make a building be automatically granted if a city is in certain terrain. I'm planning to have a huge space station looking thing blot out the whole cityscape for any city in space, or maybe even frame it to make it look like a cutaway into a cylindical space habitat. The coding part could probably be done in Python.
A way to limit civs and leaderheads to appearing only in certain eras. This will probably require some SDK, since it involves adding an XML tag and adding functionality to it, although it may be possible in Python to just allow wrong one to be made and then switch them but I see that being a really bad way to go.
Also, I have a modcomp (credits are coming, I have a text file on my desktop) that makes random city names, but I want to use it only for Barb cities or selected civs, not for all civs. Again, Python, probably just a couple of lines if I'm lucky. Whatever sets it in motion, just set it under an "if" and check for civ name.
I'm thinking of making a Space Marine unit that has like a jetpack. They bob as they float in space, like a helicopter or something, but otherwise use regular infantry type animations to shoot a laser (no recoil, but weaker) or rocket. Right now there's a stopgap unit in there.
Also I've put in a "Robot" unit that will become a "Self Assembling Prefabricated Improvment" Builds in space but cheaper and earlier than full "Workbot," except builds kill it. Current art is a stand in. What I want is something that kind of unfolds itself.
Orbit: making it water means it looks like water, and I haven't figured out how to reskin a third water terrain--graphically, civ recognizes only deep and shallow. You can add a third but it won't have a texture, so it will look like the underlying water effects. If you cover it with a feature, that feature must be impassable or the terrain is passable through the feature. If you make this feature impassable to non space units, the AI doesn't colonize planets. Thus for now it just looks wrong, because making it water is the best way to get the AI to colonize planets. I took an FFH icepack feature and made it black, but only use it to blacken the edge of planets and also speed movement and ban yields and improvements on planets edge (poles) to reflect more scrunched polar terrain (but prime real estate for one reason or another on all planets and thus settled first). I left in the ability to found cities there, but so far even this confines AI space colonization to space. Once an AI civ has one city on the edge of a planet it will go hogwild expanding into the "interior" but that first city is always there. It isn't because passengers are dropped off there, its because that's the plan. Also I had to sacrifice harbors, which I will replace with something.
Fixed the exception from trying to get units for new barb civs and made all the Terraforming buildings work (previously only the later ones did) though they may change function.
1stcontact2035
Great Scientist
I haven't read through this all, sorry.
First, I like all the techs and resources used. Very true to what at least near-term future should be like. I've seen some ideas of the future that trend too conservative or too out there, but this seems to be hitting front and center.
Anyway, I have an idea that may or may not be workable. I saw that the multi map-plane from Civ II TOT was suggested, which I agree has the issue of jumping to a set point with no real basis. However, what if you had a main map psuedo-plane that is the Final Frontier map, or something like it. You can zoom to planets in space, spaceships can travel between planets, and once a spaceship is at a planet, IT CAN ZOOM TO ORBIT OVER A RANDOM SPOT ON THE MAIN PLANET MAP!!! You don't necessarily have to have the whole of the Finial Frontier map, with its hundreds of planets, but you do have already at least 5 distinct planet types, which can be attached to a second level of zooming, perhaps once at a system you can zoom in to the system.
I know that sounds, well, next to impossible to do, but I thought it sounded like a good idea.
First, I like all the techs and resources used. Very true to what at least near-term future should be like. I've seen some ideas of the future that trend too conservative or too out there, but this seems to be hitting front and center.
Anyway, I have an idea that may or may not be workable. I saw that the multi map-plane from Civ II TOT was suggested, which I agree has the issue of jumping to a set point with no real basis. However, what if you had a main map psuedo-plane that is the Final Frontier map, or something like it. You can zoom to planets in space, spaceships can travel between planets, and once a spaceship is at a planet, IT CAN ZOOM TO ORBIT OVER A RANDOM SPOT ON THE MAIN PLANET MAP!!! You don't necessarily have to have the whole of the Finial Frontier map, with its hundreds of planets, but you do have already at least 5 distinct planet types, which can be attached to a second level of zooming, perhaps once at a system you can zoom in to the system.
I know that sounds, well, next to impossible to do, but I thought it sounded like a good idea.
I read a lot of science and technology magazines like Scientific American, New Scientist, Technology Review, Discover, and Popular Science.
It would be quite difficult to make multiple layers, though I did read on the dune thread of someone doing something like that for an FFh modmod. I think it was done with multipe maps rather than zoom. The easier way to do it is just use one map and have different sections you jump between, but that messes up the minimap and constrains the wrap. Very extensive modification could transcend these limitations. Ideal would be moving planets that you can use to jump between diagonal wrapped planet maps. but I think I'll keep this mod somewhere within the basic constraints of Civ 4.
Speaking of which, I'm currently trying to merge 3.19 and if I successfully create a version of this mod that is 3.19 compatible then 1.34 will be the last version of the FutureMod that is for 3.17. That's very likely to happen since I installed 3.19 before backing up, though of course I could dust off my other computer. It will be a great excuse to start a new thread also, but to do that I have to wear my Sunday best and have all my ducks in a row. Speaking of which, I was just thinking, I could make the orbit masking feature merely impassable to water navy units, no need to bar land units since they can't walk on water anyway or all terrain units since they are supposed to be able to go in space. Might be problematic for only a handfull: the Air Migration, the SEAL, the Air Assault, and the Workbot, and those can be barred from Orbit without slowing down space migration as long as there is an alternative settler. That is going to be a new unit I will make based on the Shuttle: it won't be able to pass the Polar Margin feature, which Earth doesn't have. Problem is getting an escort unit for it to stack with that doesn't become a general purpose unit or never built unit.
Anyway, I'm halfway through merging my DLL files with the 3.19 sdk files. I'll bet it has problems because what I'm doing is basically defaulting in favor of more stuff rather than actually understanding most of what I'm doing....
Forget that. I made an honest effort to compile the 3.19 dll but I believe that either something was left out or it is incompatible with the VC++Express2005 setup that worked for 3.17. So, I'm going to continue on this mod in 3.17 until 3.19 is a little more worn in. This mod MUST use certain DLL changes. The Revolutions 1.65 is very nice, but the Dune hack for buildiing all terrain "naval" units in inland cities is essential.
It would be quite difficult to make multiple layers, though I did read on the dune thread of someone doing something like that for an FFh modmod. I think it was done with multipe maps rather than zoom. The easier way to do it is just use one map and have different sections you jump between, but that messes up the minimap and constrains the wrap. Very extensive modification could transcend these limitations. Ideal would be moving planets that you can use to jump between diagonal wrapped planet maps. but I think I'll keep this mod somewhere within the basic constraints of Civ 4.
Speaking of which, I'm currently trying to merge 3.19 and if I successfully create a version of this mod that is 3.19 compatible then 1.34 will be the last version of the FutureMod that is for 3.17. That's very likely to happen since I installed 3.19 before backing up, though of course I could dust off my other computer. It will be a great excuse to start a new thread also, but to do that I have to wear my Sunday best and have all my ducks in a row. Speaking of which, I was just thinking, I could make the orbit masking feature merely impassable to water navy units, no need to bar land units since they can't walk on water anyway or all terrain units since they are supposed to be able to go in space. Might be problematic for only a handfull: the Air Migration, the SEAL, the Air Assault, and the Workbot, and those can be barred from Orbit without slowing down space migration as long as there is an alternative settler. That is going to be a new unit I will make based on the Shuttle: it won't be able to pass the Polar Margin feature, which Earth doesn't have. Problem is getting an escort unit for it to stack with that doesn't become a general purpose unit or never built unit.
Anyway, I'm halfway through merging my DLL files with the 3.19 sdk files. I'll bet it has problems because what I'm doing is basically defaulting in favor of more stuff rather than actually understanding most of what I'm doing....
Forget that. I made an honest effort to compile the 3.19 dll but I believe that either something was left out or it is incompatible with the VC++Express2005 setup that worked for 3.17. So, I'm going to continue on this mod in 3.17 until 3.19 is a little more worn in. This mod MUST use certain DLL changes. The Revolutions 1.65 is very nice, but the Dune hack for buildiing all terrain "naval" units in inland cities is essential.
I finally got 3.19 to compile, I wasn't copying in one of the files that kind of gives the new project its settings, plus I hadn't customized a couple of lines in the makefile. However, my first efforts to merge in Revolution failed.
So, I decided to work through my Things to do List in 3.17, have a finalized 3.17 version to leave in amber before moving on to 3.19. Plan now is for that to be 1.4 and the first 3.19 version to be 1.5.
So, I decided to work through my Things to do List in 3.17, have a finalized 3.17 version to leave in amber before moving on to 3.19. Plan now is for that to be 1.4 and the first 3.19 version to be 1.5.
Circuit
Writing Letters
Some self-promotion here...
I made some future civs (in my sig) that you could put in the mod, if interested.
I am interested in this mod. I hope that you can get all eras in, so I can play it from the beginning of civilization to the end.
I made some future civs (in my sig) that you could put in the mod, if interested.
I am interested in this mod. I hope that you can get all eras in, so I can play it from the beginning of civilization to the end.
It won't be possible to do all eras until I can make an SDK modcomp to limit specific Civs to specific eras. For instance, the Civs I am using for the current Future mod are wrong for an ancient era start, and are in fact strained at Industrial. Similarly, Babylon is wrong for a Near Future start, or for new civs emerging via Revolution or Barb upgrade in the Future. I'm learning SDK modding, going for harder tasks each time. I made a modcomp to change global warming to make a feature rather than a terrain and then I made a modcomp to allow era art unit styles for each individual era, rather than merely divided up into early, middle, and late. Next I will try to make one to prevent Civilizations from starting in the wrong era. It looks like this will be easier than limiting leaders. Still, it involves adding two totally new tags (iMaxStartEra and iMinStartEra) to Civilization Infos and putting in code to have them check out or prohibit a civ wherever civs are added.
Then I'll add your civs and an ancient era. I'm thinking I won't go all the way back to the Neolithic, I'll start it at the Ancient Dark Age, ie about 1000 BC. There will be an Ancient Era (whose end is the Dark Ages), a Rennaissance Era (whose beginning is the High Middle Ages) then Industrial, Modern, and Future eras.
The era and tech tree changes are my current project since recent changes were just jammed into the tech tree and it makes less and less sense, so while I'm updating the tech tree why not do this whole part at the same time. And I still have to update to 3.19
Then I'll add your civs and an ancient era. I'm thinking I won't go all the way back to the Neolithic, I'll start it at the Ancient Dark Age, ie about 1000 BC. There will be an Ancient Era (whose end is the Dark Ages), a Rennaissance Era (whose beginning is the High Middle Ages) then Industrial, Modern, and Future eras.
The era and tech tree changes are my current project since recent changes were just jammed into the tech tree and it makes less and less sense, so while I'm updating the tech tree why not do this whole part at the same time. And I still have to update to 3.19
DavidB1111
Not-so-smart Man
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2008
- Messages
- 662
Hi, this looks good. But unfortunately, I can't download from Atomic Gamer. Can you upload it to anywhere else? I really want to play it. But I can't get it from Atomic Gamer, it always screws up the download between 50 and 90 percent.
OK, I'll see where else I can upload it. EDIT: all the other ones recommended are either shut down or a real pain. I'm waiting for approval at one, a few days. File front simply doesn't work. I downloaded from Atomic Gamer just fine.
Anyway, word of progress: currently stalled after a series of false starts (the trying of which is itself a sort of progress) When RevDCM 2.00 came out I made a version that was compatible with it, but never uploaded it because there were lots of things I didn't like about it. Instead I took the Revolution component all the way back to pre RevDCM, just Revolutions 1.65. That worked extremely well and 1.36 is built on it and is pretty stable. I would really like to just keep developing it, but along comes BtS 3.19. I've tried various things to become compatible with it, but the long and short is I can't do that without losing Revolutions at this time (until it comes out as a separate component late in the summer) . I used my old RevDCM 2.0 compatible version with a RevDCM 2.5 DLL. The result runs, but is unstable, loads of Exceptions all the time and CTD sometime between turn 100 and 200, plus it is missing a lot of the space expansion capability that came in with the FutureMod versions after 1.3 or so. I've been trying to make it more stable, but a lot of the problem is BUG, which is something I don't need for my mod, simply something I have to learn to make work because its tied to Revolutions (and Autoplay, which I really like). Plus, they've added a new TGA that has to be dealt with and all this "XML loading" stuff, as if XML was the hard part. Anyway, Revolution is incompatible with multiplayer, so here's what I've decided to do. FutureMod 1.36 will be the last BtS 3.17 version and the last version with Revolutions for a while. I'm going to upgrade to BtS 3.19, but this will mean losing Revolutions. The result will be both a 3.19 alternative and a multiplayer compatible alternative. There is a Barbarian Civs mod version that's python only and I might add that. At least that's the plan now.
Anyway, word of progress: currently stalled after a series of false starts (the trying of which is itself a sort of progress) When RevDCM 2.00 came out I made a version that was compatible with it, but never uploaded it because there were lots of things I didn't like about it. Instead I took the Revolution component all the way back to pre RevDCM, just Revolutions 1.65. That worked extremely well and 1.36 is built on it and is pretty stable. I would really like to just keep developing it, but along comes BtS 3.19. I've tried various things to become compatible with it, but the long and short is I can't do that without losing Revolutions at this time (until it comes out as a separate component late in the summer) . I used my old RevDCM 2.0 compatible version with a RevDCM 2.5 DLL. The result runs, but is unstable, loads of Exceptions all the time and CTD sometime between turn 100 and 200, plus it is missing a lot of the space expansion capability that came in with the FutureMod versions after 1.3 or so. I've been trying to make it more stable, but a lot of the problem is BUG, which is something I don't need for my mod, simply something I have to learn to make work because its tied to Revolutions (and Autoplay, which I really like). Plus, they've added a new TGA that has to be dealt with and all this "XML loading" stuff, as if XML was the hard part. Anyway, Revolution is incompatible with multiplayer, so here's what I've decided to do. FutureMod 1.36 will be the last BtS 3.17 version and the last version with Revolutions for a while. I'm going to upgrade to BtS 3.19, but this will mean losing Revolutions. The result will be both a 3.19 alternative and a multiplayer compatible alternative. There is a Barbarian Civs mod version that's python only and I might add that. At least that's the plan now.
DavidB1111
Not-so-smart Man
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2008
- Messages
- 662
You could PM me a link to an Megaupload/Rapidshare account if you want. As for File Front? What do you mean it won't work?
Seriously, Atomic Gamer just won't work for me. The download will always stop, without fail, between 50 and 90%. Always staling, always broken. And it also can't be resumed.
Also, I hope that Revolutions is an optional component. Let's just say it's very broken, despite what most people think. I've had bad experiences, and the people always complain.
Seriously, Atomic Gamer just won't work for me. The download will always stop, without fail, between 50 and 90%. Always staling, always broken. And it also can't be resumed.
Also, I hope that Revolutions is an optional component. Let's just say it's very broken, despite what most people think. I've had bad experiences, and the people always complain.
OK, I'll try Megaupload/Rapidshare. Filefront makes ten tries to connect and quits. AtomicGamer works great for me. As a matter of fact, here's a link to the 3.19 compatible version, which totally lacks any portion of RevDCM. However, I need to patch it promptly because my own modcomp of Era Unit Art Styles messed up the way some units look.
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=79616
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=79616
Tssha
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2007
- Messages
- 270
Small bug here.
My Offshore Platform just got taken out by a singularity privateer (in the Modern Era...I blame Tssha, I think he hates me
), and I've just researched biology. Now work boats are obsolete and my Prefabs can't seem enter the water. I suggest either allowing fishfarms to build Offshore Platforms or fixing prefabs so they can enter the water.
Of course, I'm not at war with Tssha...I'm at war with Chairman Sung...but how did he get his hands on that kind of tech?
I guess I still blame Tssha. 
My Offshore Platform just got taken out by a singularity privateer (in the Modern Era...I blame Tssha, I think he hates me
), and I've just researched biology. Now work boats are obsolete and my Prefabs can't seem enter the water. I suggest either allowing fishfarms to build Offshore Platforms or fixing prefabs so they can enter the water.Of course, I'm not at war with Tssha...I'm at war with Chairman Sung...but how did he get his hands on that kind of tech?
I guess I still blame Tssha. I'm going to get rid of the Fishfarm unit and just give its capability to build the Fishfarm route to the Workboat.
The Aliens will harrass and raid you with various advanced spacegoing privateers even if they are not at war with you. The best strategy is to just pull back into your cities and wait until they get bored and move on to raiding someone else.
The Aliens will harrass and raid you with various advanced spacegoing privateers even if they are not at war with you. The best strategy is to just pull back into your cities and wait until they get bored and move on to raiding someone else.
DavidB1111
Not-so-smart Man
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2008
- Messages
- 662
Any luck on getting an alternative download spot? 
Didn't mean to ignore you. I was going to do that next time I upload an improved version. I've successfully created an SDK mod that limits what era civs start in, so I am currently adding in the first two eras (Ancient and Rennaissance) and changing the selection of Civilizations. So, for example, there will be three America's that are clones of each other except in the internal XML names being AMERICA3, AMERICA4, and AMERICA4, available respectively in Industrial, Modern and Future starts and with different leaders (Washington and Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan, Korovin and Ryan). I'll get rid of the "Retro" civs created just to keep standard leaderheads from going to waste, and actually put those civs back, but clone them to each have only correct leaderheads for the eras they can start in and only start in the eras they actually existed (though since this is alternate history, they can survive longer than they actually did). While I'm at it I'll add more techs into the later eras to handle some things that are being done by some overburdened techs. The civilizations revamp will allow me to have a smaller download version using only standard leaderheads and one or more optional "extra civs" patches that add in more. I hope to complete all that this weekend and upload it to more than one location, though it may take longer. One of the things involved is creating ancient versions of buildings that are obsoleted by a dark age tech that is a prerequisite for all rennaissance techs. I'll be adding 10 new civics also.
I've expanded the mod to include ancient eras and make use of my era restrictions SDK mod. I also reduced the compressed size to exactly 100 mb so I can put it on the CivFanatics servers once this version has been fully tested and refined.
Plan is to add add to that core mod with "patches" that add more civilizations by mostly by raiding other mods that might be installed, much as I raid the official mods by simply reaching into them by path rather than copying what they contain. Thus if you have Mars Now or Fury Road installed you just select and add in a small XML patch and WHAM your FurureMod now includes a bunch more civs. I'll put the link here when I get it.
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=79616
Plan is to add add to that core mod with "patches" that add more civilizations by mostly by raiding other mods that might be installed, much as I raid the official mods by simply reaching into them by path rather than copying what they contain. Thus if you have Mars Now or Fury Road installed you just select and add in a small XML patch and WHAM your FurureMod now includes a bunch more civs. I'll put the link here when I get it.
http://www.atomicgamer.com/file.php?id=79616
os79
Deity
os79
Deity
Oh well. I did not want Revolution. I wanted DCM part. But OK
.Thanks for responding.
What is it you want about DCM?
Also I forgot to add that I fixed the disappearing religions mod so that your state religion is exempt. I know that it works because in testing the text comes up saying the religion is dying, but then even if you don't pay to subsidize it the state religion doesn't go away.
Also I forgot to add that I fixed the disappearing religions mod so that your state religion is exempt. I know that it works because in testing the text comes up saying the religion is dying, but then even if you don't pay to subsidize it the state religion doesn't go away.
