History Rewritten (Original Thread)
- Thread starter Xyth
- Start date
Midlantica
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 31, 2011
- Messages
- 1
Thanks so much Xyth for the great work! CivV is silly and slow. I needed a refresh of the old better CivIV and you came to the rescue. Maybe I can send money to you? Where?
It's a shame the graphics cannot be updated but I will be happy with the better game play.
I spent about an hour trying to graft a Minoa Civ I found here* into your History Rewritten Mod before I realized I was out of my depth. I think an ancient Minoa Civ might be a great addition. They were an incredible civilization, great sailors/traders (trireme unit?) and had a beautiful art and monumental buildings. The Minoans are sometimes described as being similar to the Egyptians only having the Nile river run around them and not through them. And the leader would be the legendary 'King Minos' of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization/
*Minoan Civ here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=376784
Thanks regardless
It's a shame the graphics cannot be updated but I will be happy with the better game play.
I spent about an hour trying to graft a Minoa Civ I found here* into your History Rewritten Mod before I realized I was out of my depth. I think an ancient Minoa Civ might be a great addition. They were an incredible civilization, great sailors/traders (trireme unit?) and had a beautiful art and monumental buildings. The Minoans are sometimes described as being similar to the Egyptians only having the Nile river run around them and not through them. And the leader would be the legendary 'King Minos' of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization/
*Minoan Civ here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=376784
Thanks regardless
Glad you're enjoying HR! No need for money, I do this because I enjoy it but also it would get me into serious trouble with Firaxis hehe. Civ5 was such a disappointment, some appalling design decisions there.
I'd love to add the Minoans at some point. I've studied them (and the Mycenaean Greeks) extensively as part of my university degree. I also had the opportunity to spend 7 weeks in Greece and Crete as part of an archaeology field trip. Such an amazing experience.
However, I've not added any new civilizations for a while now and there are 2 main reasons for this. Firstly, I've used up all but 2 leader trait combinations. As I like to have a minimum of 2 leaders per civ this is enough for one more civ (which would be the 50th, currently reserved for a South American civ). I could add an 18th trait to extend this limit though. The more pressing concern is the effect on mod performance that adding all the art required for a new civilization has. A while back I decided that 50 civs was about as many as I could get in without compromising performance too badly. Having said that, I have made some significant performance improvements in recent versions so it might be possible that I can extend this limit a little in the future. If so, the Minoans are on my wishlist.
Here's an example:
In Xyth's History Rewritten/Assets/XML/Text/HR_Techs_CIV4GameText.xml it looks like this:
<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_TECH_CEREMONIAL_BURIAL</Tag>
<English>Ceremonial Burial</English>
</TEXT>
In Pie's Ancient Europe there is a tech labeled almost identically (I should have looked for a perfect match
), but meaning the same thing:<TEXT>
<Tag>TXT_KEY_TECH_CEREMONIAL</Tag>
<English>Ceremonial burial</English>
<French>Ceremonial burial</French>
<German>Zeremonielles Begräbnis</German>
<Italian>Ceremonial burial</Italian>
<Spanish>Ceremonial burial</Spanish>
</TEXT>
There you have your translation. ("Translating" rather long pedia entries this way will be more time saving than one word tags, of course.)
Along the way, this tag shows, how it can already be Mac-friendly, because German Umlaute (ä, ö, ü) need to be replaced with place holders like this:
<!-- oe = ö Oe = Ö -->
<!-- ue = ü Ue = Ü -->
<!-- ae = ä Ae = Ä -->
<!-- sz = ß & = & -->
Since PAE is only dealing with antiquity, you will find only a few matches like the one above, though, while Base is stretching to modern times and will certainly have some more coinicidences with HR.
Minoans
!amrod
Warlord
Dear Xyth, I like your mod, so far it's running well under windows version, too.
Biggest reason I like this is because it actually runs at about the same speed as vanilla civ4 (sometimes seems even faster, except for the loading, which is slower).
Earlier I tried Rise of Mankind and similar mods, which were nice (though over-detailed), but don't really run on my laptop and even take minutes to load on a desktop. So your mod is a nice refresh - it has new stuff, it runs fast and it's not over-detailed, has just enough new stuff to understand. (Okay, a few more things probably don't hurt, but I understand you chose performance to be an important issue and I like it). Thumbs up!
Biggest reason I like this is because it actually runs at about the same speed as vanilla civ4 (sometimes seems even faster, except for the loading, which is slower).
Earlier I tried Rise of Mankind and similar mods, which were nice (though over-detailed), but don't really run on my laptop and even take minutes to load on a desktop. So your mod is a nice refresh - it has new stuff, it runs fast and it's not over-detailed, has just enough new stuff to understand. (Okay, a few more things probably don't hurt, but I understand you chose performance to be an important issue and I like it). Thumbs up!
amrod
Warlord
I am running the mod on a laptop with 1GB RAM, CeleronM1.86GHz cpu and Intel GM950 chipset (which is not a gaming graphics chipset...). It runs fine. A bit more loading time, but turn progressing is actually fast, at least in the early times, I haven't reached so far yet. I've tried one of the Europe maps, don't remember the size, but it's big.
So go ahead and try it!
(Btw old machines are not worthless - my favorite pc is a 11yrs old laptop, pentium3 with less than a giga ram with XP, and it's my fastest machine, very good for engineering work due to its serial port)
Very pleased to hear it's running well under Windows and very pleased to hear you are enjoying the mod! I'm not a fan of the giant kitchen-sink style mods like Rise of Mankind, there's just too much content and not enough balance, not to mention the severe performance degradation they cause. I set out to make History Rewritten somewhere in between those big mods and standard BTS and it's nice to hear that people are appreciating it for that. Plenty more features to come still (many new buildings and resources in 0.9.3, due very soon), let me know if theres anything in particular you'd like to see
I plan to start adding new world wonders in 0.9.4. Closer to the time I'll taking requests.
At the moment yes. I could very easily add one or two larger sizes though if people want them. They're very likely to cause MAFs though.
EDIT: Out of curiousity what mapscripts do people like to use with HR when playing a random map? One of the ones that came with BTS or a third-party one?
davidtylr
Chieftain
When I play I have a custom game. Map, fractal, Continent. Size, huge. climate, Rocky. Sea level, low. Bigger maps would be awesome.
This will probably be incredibly difficult to do but as an edition to the civics you can have a checklist thing as well for example,
Enable welfare system
Enable health care system
free education
women's suffrage
immigration to and from open borders nation
slavery could be on the checklist
This will probably be incredibly difficult to do but as an edition to the civics you can have a checklist thing as well for example,
Enable welfare system
Enable health care system
free education
women's suffrage
immigration to and from open borders nation
slavery could be on the checklist
Howard Mahler
Since Civ 1
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2003
- Messages
- 619
I play on huge maps.
I make use of the ability to try larger maps if they were available.
What are "MAFs"?
I do not know what you mean by mapscripts.
Nor did I not know there were third party ones available whatever they are.
"At the moment yes. I could very easily add one or two larger sizes though if people want them. They're very likely to cause MAFs though.
EDIT: Out of curiousity what mapscripts do people like to use with HR when playing a random map? One of the ones that came with BTS or a third-party one?"
______________
I make use of the ability to try larger maps if they were available.
What are "MAFs"?
I do not know what you mean by mapscripts.
Nor did I not know there were third party ones available whatever they are.
"At the moment yes. I could very easily add one or two larger sizes though if people want them. They're very likely to cause MAFs though.
EDIT: Out of curiousity what mapscripts do people like to use with HR when playing a random map? One of the ones that came with BTS or a third-party one?"
______________
Interesting ideas there but probably beyond what's plausible for the time being sorry.
MAFs = Memory Allocation Failures. BTS is 32bit and doesn't seem to have particularly robust memory handling code compared to natively coded Mac software. What this means is that BTS can only use 2GB of RAM and if it tries to use more, a MAF will happen and you're forced to quit the game. People with less than 3GB of RAM are far more likely to encounter them as BTS doesn't get a full 2GB to work with due to the OS and other running applications using up some of it.
Earlier, less optimized versions of HR were causing these from time to time even on systems with 3GB+ but I've been working hard at optimizing memory usage of the mod to reduce/prevent them. If you've never seen one on a huge map then that is excellent news as it means I'm succeeding.
However, bigger mapsizes and each additional civ on a map increases the memory usage of the mod and thus the chance of causing an MAF. It may be that the optimizations made so far are enough to permit larger maps so in 0.9.3 I'm going to trial two new mapsizes and see what happens: Giant (13 civs) and Massive (15 civs).
Mapscripts are script files that generate the different styles of map that can be played on. The standard Firaxis ones include Continents, Archipelago, Terra, etc. You can install custom ones made by modders, most should be compatible with HR, some of the best known ones seem to be Perfect World2 and Planet Generator. I haven't really explored them much yet, though I may need to if I ever try to add more terrain types.
Howard Mahler
Since Civ 1
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2003
- Messages
- 619
I believe I got a Memory Allocation Failure when I first started playing History Rewritten about 3 months ago.
Huge map, about 14 civs.
However, since then I have been unpacking the fpk files with each new version of the mod, and the problem has not reoccurred.
My Mac has 4GB.
Don't have any idea how much leeway there is to have larger maps than Huge.
I am assuming that unpacking still helps with this potential problem.
I am assuming that even with this, at some map size we will eventually run into trouble.
Huge map, about 14 civs.
However, since then I have been unpacking the fpk files with each new version of the mod, and the problem has not reoccurred.
My Mac has 4GB.
Don't have any idea how much leeway there is to have larger maps than Huge.
I am assuming that unpacking still helps with this potential problem.
I am assuming that even with this, at some map size we will eventually run into trouble.
Unpacking the FPKs will help to a point. FPKs are used because it is much quicker to load one single file than thousands of little ones. The downside is that that one big file takes up a ton of memory, potentially loading art to memory that isn't used in a particular game, but also removing some flexibility to manage memory efficiently.
In recent versions I've kept all the leaderhead art unpacked as it seems that BTS might be loading these on demand from disk rather than keeping them in memory all the time. I'm still trying to work out whether it does this with unit and building art too but my suspicions are that it doesn't.
I recommend always leaving the leaderhead art unpacked and always keeping the terrain and interface art packed (these graphics are in continual use so unpacking them has no noticeable advantage). I've left the building and unit art packed for now as unpacking these causes a drastic reduction in loading speed but there is likely to be some memory efficiency advantage to having them unpacked.
MAFs are a hard thing to test for as they usually don't happen until you've been playing for quite a while.
Yes, eventually there will be just too much happening in a game that can fit in 2GB of memory. Often this doesn't arise until the late game. These new mapsizes will, if nothing else, be a good indication of where this limit is.
davidtylr
Chieftain
I thought so.
Now all you have to do is hire Leonard Nimoy to read all your quotes about techs.
Quick thought: I have always liked Brillat-Savarin's quote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," over using the old proverb for the Nutrition tech.
Quick thought: I have always liked Brillat-Savarin's quote, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," over using the old proverb for the Nutrition tech.
I've often wondered if there isn't some sort of Leonard Nimoy voice modulator out there somewhere. Unlikely to be free though and would probably sound ridiculous with my accent though! I had a lot of fun tracking down quotes for all the new techs.
amrod
Warlord
I'll try to play more and give more feedback, here's some.
Okay, eventually I think I reached the capabilities of my laptop..
-I'm playing a Europe map (don't know the size, but biig), and around 15th century it hung up on "waiting for other civs" (I can move around the map, but my turn won't come..), it happened on reload too; but needs more testing. Still, it's better than some other mods, as my laptop's got only 1GB RAM. (Actually on my desktop pc I upgraded from 2GB to 4GB (the latter it only sees as 3.25GB though), and didn't see any improvement on RoM etc). Will have to do more testing..
Some thoughts on the mod; surely they were already noted, just I was -yet- lazy to read back all those pages.
-I've noticed horses in desert in the Africa map (it was packed with the mod, wasn't it?) I'm not sure if they spawn in random maps, though; anyway it was strange.
-Well, by that way, mammoths are also strange in the desert (and anyway they died out way before 4000BC). Actually, if they can't attack, what are their purpose?
-How comes Attila the Hun as a Hungarian leader? I get it there are no Huns in this mod, and Hungarians had somewhat similar life and war style back then, but these were still two different nations (even if our chronicles reported the Huns to be related to the Hungarians).
- Casimir's hat is floating above his head, there is a gap of air between the two.
-On the city screen, top right, the first few religion icons are displayed, but the list is larger than the number of icons there, so can't see them all. (Is there an easy solution?)
- The pedia entry for Great Scientist says he can found a School, while he can found a University.
- The +1 to great prophet ability of the cemetary is nice early, to get your religion, but then later it decreases your chance to get other types of great persons. (I've had some problems with that - on some reloads I managed to get a different person, but in some turns, after reloading several times I got the same one - such as a prophet with 60% chance, I got him 5 out of 5, not very good stats - is the chance locked the previous turn? Even got a prophet when his chances was way lower, though reload did help in some cases) . And I cannot seem to sell a building like in earlier civ games...
- Some of the pre-made maps/scenarios containing Europe could be improved. I was only looking at Hungary yet, knowing it better, and missed the food-producing abilities (only plains in the Great Plains, no grass, no wheat, no cattle, often no river). Also it's a bit strange to have Corn in Europe in 4000BC.
- A problem with the BUG (will go there to ask, but maybe someone here knows): when I upgrade my units, the name stays, such as : Chariot 2 (cityname) (Horseman) or something like that. Anyone knows how to change the auto-naming of BUG to correct this?
That's for today, keep up the fun! Thanks!
There is a North Africa map included in the mod, is that the one you mean? All these maps were included 'as is', I've made no changes to them other than defining the starting tile for each civilization. As a result there may well be some odd placement of resources here and there.
0.9.3 is going to introduce a lot of new resources so at some point I'm going to have to go through all the maps and add them in. Not looking forward to that ><
They're there mostly for a bit of flavour now. I had some plans for them that didn't work out but I decided to leave the unit in anyway. I guess they could be used to as target practice by early military units looking for promotion? Heh. Or do you think they should be hostile? I should probably remove them but I guess I have a soft spot for them
As for finding them in deserts, they seem to be wandering there from the plains. In 0.9.3 I'll remove their ability to spawn on plains, restricting them to spawning in just Tundra and Snow. Should help, though the occasional intrepid one may still get too far south.
I realize this is a controversial decision. To me civilizations in HR are cultures, not nations. This is reflected in game by having cultural borders rather than political boundaries. Although the Hun and the Magyar were different ethnicities and political entities they were not unrelated and, more importantly, the Magyar seemed to adopt much of the Hunnic cultural legacy as their own very early in their history.
I didn't have room for the Huns as their own civ but Attila was such an interesting leader and I didn't want to omit him. I've made a similar decision with Timur as a Mongol. It's not a perfect situation but I think its better than the alternative.
The model has a fur lining around that gap that only shows up on systems with good enough graphics cards/drivers (much like Shaka's wreath). I'm suspecting this is why you are seeing this. I'm not a 3D artist but I'll see if I can't tweak it a little.
There is! Go into BUG options (the little green bug button just above the research slider), go to the City Screen page, scroll down and look for an option called "Only Present Religions". Switch that on and while it will only show the religions in that particular city, it can display more than the first seven.
Oops, good spotting. Fixed for 0.9.3.
This is a problem and I need to have a rethink on how this works. On my todo list for 0.9.4.
Maps are not my area of expertise (or interest to be honest, I always play on random worlds) and I included all those maps as-is because several users of the mod requested them. I'm going to have to update and improve them at some point because of all the new resources but it's not high on my list of priorities.
There's also the issue that I don't actually know how to alter the maps without wrecking their fixed starting point functionality... I'd have to have a chat to the guy who created that particular component and see what it involves.
Hmm, I haven't experimented much with unit naming yet so I'm not sure on this one.
This feedback is very helpful, thank you. Please let me know if you notice anything else or have any other criticism
