Glory and Greatness, Development Thread

[Voyhkah]

Good luck on your mod! Remember to credit me for all the stuff from Civ 4.5!

 

[seasnake]

Good luck on your mod! Remember to credit me for all the stuff from Civ 4.5!

Sup dude!

Yeah, full credits will come in the thread and in thank-you .txt

I just go back from church and now I'm doing some testing on a few new things, looks good so far.

 

[seasnake]

Baldyr, I'm not getting the HolyRoman free tech to work when I hit the classical era. I see that it is included in the GGPowers.py file, but it just wouldn't give me an option to select my free technology. Persia is working great though. I'll post a comprehensive list of test good/test bad soon.

 

[Baldyr]

The Holy Roman thing is working quite differently from the Maya (?) actually. There is not separate pop-up prompting you to pick a free Tech, instead you should get the next Tech you choose in the regular Tech window. So it imitates how the free Techs from being first to certain Techs work in the game.

Test again and decide if we need the free Tech window or not.

 

[seasnake]

Hmm, when I pick the next tech I just start researching as normal.

I can't get it to work for me.

Is it working for you? If so, we'll try and figure out what's wrong. I do think that the free tech window would add a little clarity to the power, can we do that like we did for Mali? It would be best.

 

[Baldyr]

Ok, I'll implement the change when I get the chance.

But note that since I've built everything around my own CivPlayer module you basically can't change the civilization short names without breaking the code. If you, for instance, change the name "Holy Rome" the associated power stops working instantly. Its really easy to remedy however, since you only have to look up the associated code in GGPowers and change the name string.

Thinking about it, I could probably do it so that those strings are set automatically on initialization. Then you wouldn't have to worry about changing the names anymore. Perhaps for another version, or something.

edit: One thing that could disable the HRE power is a (unrelated) Python exception at initialization. Because the stored data used wouldn't be set to a default value then. Are you absolutely certain that you've enabled Python exceptions in the .ini file and that error logs av clear? Note that there can be exactly zero exceptions while running your mod, otherwise there is bound to be bigger problems ahead.

 

[seasnake]

I doubled check, I have hidepythonexceptions = 0 in my .ini file and nothing's cropping up saying there's an error or anything. I just research to the Classical Era in my test games (usually a beeline to Horseback Riding) and then when it's time to pick a new tech the normal list just pops up. I pick one, like Polytheism, and then I start researching it the same as normal, it isn't free.

I don't know about the error log av, or what that is, but I know when i play the game I get no messages indicating a problem with the Python. It just isn't quite working!

 

[Baldyr]

Well, it worked for me on my machine and install, but that was with the first setup - not the second one that included Asaf's custom DLL. But as long as there are no exceptions I can simply replace the power function with another and be done with it, and not worry about something being broken that I should be fixing instead. I think I'll get it done together with all the other bugs you're bound to find. And if you don't, then you haven't tested the code well enough!

The logs are found in \My Games\Beyond the Sword\Logs\ - the ones you should keep an eye on are PythonDbg.log, PythonErr.log and PythonErr2.log.

The debug logs is supposed to be full of debug text and if something isn't working chances are that those can give us a clue as to what happened. (When I do my own debugging I'm actually adding lines in the debug log, but I deleted all those before submitting, because this effectively halves the size of the script! )

The first error log should always be empty but I'm not sure about the second one. At lest there shouldn't be any "tracebacks" (exception read-outs in it). Those should appear on screen in any case, but once they do - you don't have to transcribe the traceback from the game interface - open up the error log instead and use copy-paste.

 

[seasnake]

You do realize that most of these powers are working perfectly, right?

Only a few so far, Japan's culture acquisition and the HRE thing. I'm going to test colombia now.

 

[Baldyr]

Of course they all "work" - I tested each one in order. But I never played an actual game, so there are bound to be issues and bugs. This is what playtesting is for, after all. And the more you test, the more bugs will surface. The main thing is that you find the issues so that we can address the - before you release.

 

[seasnake]

Of course they all "work" - I tested each one in order. But I never played an actual game, so there are bound to be issues and bugs. This is what playtesting is for, after all. And the more you test, the more bugs will surface. The main thing is that you find the issues so that we can address the - before you release.

that's what I mean, I'm playing different games and in a game setting the powers are working excellent. The only bug I've noticed is that I fought a war with Japan in Japanese territory and I didn't see any cultural acquisition for the units I killed and when I played a game as HRE I didn't get my free techs! Everything else has worked well, I've played a couple of games on large map into the renaissance era and everything seemed to work just great.

I've already asked a few other people to playtest this as well once it's completely done, but by and large these quick games I've been playing are very promising.

 

[Baldyr]

Just tell me once you've tested all of them and I'll be able to fix those issues. Japan worked for me with my limited testing, but obviously I overlooked something. This calls for some debugging.

 

[seasnake]

i have tested every one, only problems found were those two, I couldn't get the HRE free tech to trigger and I didn't get extra culture in my cities for slain units, and the Aztecs (I wasn't getting gold from killing enemies, either barbs or other civs).

Everything else worked great!

 

[Baldyr]

I'll get to work with HRE and also have another look at Japan and Aztecs. I'll get back to you once I have something.

 

[Baldyr]

I changed the HRE power as to your specifications. I tested it and it works, at least when I add Techs in World Builder. Files are attached (the ones changed are CvEventManager, GGPowers and GGUtils).

Regarding Japan and Aztecs, they work as they did before, but I also realize that the default settings don't yield any culture/gold for units with zero XP. This because I based the code on the sample code you posted. I did however add these settings at the top of the GGPowers module:

iAztecBaseGold = 0
iAztecGoldDenominator = 1
...
iJapaneseBaseCulture = 0
iJapaneseCultureDenominator = 1

I believe that I already explained exactly how they work in an earlier post, so you might wanna revisit that.

I added debug code to GGPowers and if you feel confident that everything works you might delete (or comment out) lines 78 and 181-182. In the meanwhile you can read the debug messages in the Python Debug Log (provided that you have enabled logging). They should help you balance things out while testing. Holler if you need similar debug messages for other powers also, because its possible to add more of them.

 

[Asaf]

Instead of adding and removing debug code all the time, you could just add a global debug boolean variable and put all debug prints inside an 'if' clause.

 

[seasnake]

Okay, everything is working now. Changed those denominators like you said, and the HolyRoman power is working excellently!

Thanks man, now i'll get it ready for a few play tests by some other folks and get back to you.

 

[seasnake]

Quick note: Thanks for all of your work on this, Asaf and Baldyr. Thanks to you guys I think we've made one premier civ mod! Started a quick game with a Random Civ, ended up with Arabia, and was having a pretty good game!

 

[Baldyr]

Instead of adding and removing debug code all the time, you could just add a global debug boolean variable and put all debug prints inside an 'if' clause.

Yeah, that is the way to do it. I probably should have done that from the beginning and I just recently did something more or less exactly like this for Jamie's mod. (This is also what I have in my own project, PyScenario.)

With G&G my goal was always to write as slim modules as possible. As a exercise, or something, I guess.

seasnake:

 

[seasnake]

Okay, sent it to a friend of mine and he likes it. Only thing he noted, and I later saw he was right -- when you play a game as the Aztecs the game will award the gold for winning before the combat is played out on the screen. If you see an uptick in your gold, you know you're about to win the combat so watching the animated battle is pointless!

I'm going to check and see if Germany and the Ottomans do the same thing, and if so is there a way we can delay the award of the gold until after your unit has finished the fight?