iEditCiv Released!

[nmcul]

Originally posted by DiamondzAndGunz
So have I . I just love the multi-units.

Hoo boy. First change I ever wanted to do to Civ 3 (that I could at the time ) was to replace the swordsman. So I went to CFC... and changed my horsemen. I still had hopes of a new swordsman, though. I came up with this guy before PTW was even a rumor. If a free Mac program with FLC-making abilities comes out, maybe he could still be a possibility. (Sorry, pal, but I cannot afford to shell out $500 for a program to let me make fancier animated GIFs.)

 

[nmcul]

Okay, so if I have PTW, could I extract the guerilla unit and add it to a mod.bic as a special forces unit? This actually is asking two questions: (1) Can I do it technically? and (2) Can I do it ethically?

1) Since PTW used the fruits of many PC designers w/out any apparent permission (it may have been done privately; I'm not exactly the CIA here), I'd say yes.

2) Let's see... Infogrames lied to me about getting a map editor (it still says "robust map generator" on the Mac box, even though we didn't actually get one), delayed my map editor indefinitely by refusing to live up to its bargain to make one (if Saint Brad hadn't forsaken a paycheck to make the editor we'd have nothing at this point), refuses to get the Mac Civ 3 up to par with its PC counterpart, and now seems to have no intention of porting PTW (doubtless because of "lack of enthusiasm" in Mac consumers ). Looking at all this, I'd say that I wouldn't have any moral reservations about doing it.

 

[ejday]

Originally posted by senecasax
Happy Modding!
Put any comments / suggestions here. Its a suprisingly short program (around 500 or so lines of code).

Tried it. It works! It works well. It works smoothly. So far, stable as the Rock of Gibraltar. Managed to add multiple buildings and units with it.

Thank you, Senecasax!

[edit]One suggestion: In Civ3Edit, when editing custom rules, I noticed the Terrain category has a selection for "Pollution Effect." With enough virtual crud, mother nature can cut Mountains into Grasslands. Coincidentally, I noticed there is a whole rules category for "Worker Jobs" as well as a selector for "Worker Jobs" in each Terrain Type category.
The Big Question: Could this be a back door for a hack to edit in different terraforming tasks into "Worker Jobs"? If so, could a future version of iEditCiv do that?

 

[senecasax]

Originally posted by ejday

this be a back door for a hack to edit in different terraforming tasks into "Worker Jobs"?

I doubt it. From what I've seen, all the worker jobs are hard-coded into the software (see PTW and the millions of new ones they added). I could make a feature that would add a new job, but I don't think that the game would recognize it, as there would be no icon for it or anything. Sorry!

 

[ejday]

Originally posted by senecasax, re: terraforming
I doubt it. From what I've seen, all the worker jobs are hard-coded into the software (see PTW and the millions of new ones they added). I could make a feature that would add a new job, but I don't think that the game would recognize it, as there would be no icon for it or anything. Sorry!

Bummer. If you happen to notice paths of possibility in the future, keep it mind. Icons, buttons, etc., can be made easily enough (I'll do them. Instantly.).

 

[frunobulax]

Ignore this !

The question I originally posted I've answered anyway !

I iEditCViv - I got me a new Cruiser unit

 

[Trabpukcip]

Hey I could use a new feature for iedit... add civilization advances... in fact I desperatly need it...

 

[senecasax]

Huh, I thought Civ3Edit would add/delete those. I'll look into it though. I need to get my machine back up & running, I just reformatted and repartitioned my drive for easier OS 10 / 9 booting and a speed increase (a fresh install of 10.2 seemed to do a world of good).

After I get all my backups in place and Civ3 reinstalled & patched, I'll take a look at adding civ advances. There are some issues with icons and stuff in 1.21 that'll need to be looked at.

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by ejday

Tried it. It works! It works well. It works smoothly. So far, stable as the Rock of Gibraltar. Managed to add multiple buildings and units with it.

Hmm...., do you guys reckon any fixes that come through for the editor concerning 10.1 might negate any of the mods we've already played around with? Who knows, but I think I'm just going to get familiar with it and hold off on any serious customization.

 

[senecasax]

Originally posted by dojoboy

Hmm...., do you guys reckon any fixes that come through for the editor concerning 10.1 might negate any of the mods we've already played around with?

I doubt it, basically because the editor's routines that read the data most likely have nothing to do with the operating system's libraries (some of the method calls changed name or case between 10.1 & 10.2).

BIC data is BIC data, whether it be in 10.1 or 10.2. If something serious does come up, I can see about a fix - but I don't think it'll be a serious issue.

 

[Trabpukcip]

Originally posted by senecasax
Huh, I thought Civ3Edit would add/delete those. I'll look into it though. I need to get my machine back up & running, I just reformatted and repartitioned my drive for easier OS 10 / 9 booting and a speed increase (a fresh install of 10.2 seemed to do a world of good).

After I get all my backups in place and Civ3 reinstalled & patched, I'll take a look at adding civ advances. There are some issues with icons and stuff in 1.21 that'll need to be looked at.

Thanks, your really great...

 

[ChrisB]

Originally posted by nmcul

If a free Mac program with FLC-making abilities comes out, maybe he could still be a possibility. (Sorry, pal, but I cannot afford to shell out $500 for a program to let me make fancier animated GIFs.)

While it's not free, at $35 Graphicconverter certainly is a lot cheaper than $500. It comes with .FLC editing, even if I have to admit I have not tried to do any actual modding. It's kind of amazing to look at some of the unit animations at 121 pics.

http://www.lemkesoft.com/us_gcabout.html

 

[senecasax]

If you download X11, the X11 SDK, and fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net), you can use finkcommander or the terminal utilities to download and install a free X11 image editing program that will let you edit regular FLC's called THE GIMP. It's better than GC and its FREE!

The Civ3 FLCs are a different format than normal FLCs, so a tool like "FLICster" needs to be created to split the FLC's up, and put them together. We've got a few people looking into a mac version of this, we'll see what we can come up with.

Leaderheads can be created with anything that will save FLCs in normal format - maybe QT pro? I'll have to try.

 

[elpadrino87]

by X11, do you mean OS 10.1 or there's stuff on a website(or that one you listed) named X11?

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

This is what he means by X11
http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/

 

[senecasax]

Originally posted by elpadrino87
by X11, do you mean OS 10.1 or there's stuff on a website(or that one you listed) named X11?

Be warned, running X11 ( the X window system, see D&G's post ) is not easy like most things on the mac. Apple has made a nice installer for it, but fink uses a lot of terminal stuff to get its job done. I'll try to enumerate the steps here if you are planning to install it. FINK downloads binary and source files for UNIX software ported to OS X. If you have a slow internet connection (56K, i don't advise it).

AGAIN - This is NOT like most things on the mac - It's easy to screw up your machine in the terminal if you're not careful.

1) go to http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/
go to the download section. Download X11. Don't close the window yet, you need the SDK too. You can get it by going to the bottom right hand corner of the download page and download it. Run the X11 installer, then the SDK installer.

2) go to http://fink.sourceforge.net, and download fink (they have a nice installer too).
After downloading fink & installing, you should get the nice GUI, called finkcommander.

** IF you've installed another package similar to fink i.e. OpenDarwin (http://www.opendarwin.org) - The GIMP's fink packages may screw up your machine. If you haven't installed it, you're safe ***

finkcommander can be found here:
http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/

Download and install this: its just a cocoa app so drag it on over to Applications.

3) Now you need to run finkcommander. It'll start by updating the table list. do a search for gimp in the little search box in the corner.

4) you're almost there, control click (or right click) on the gimp package (just the one that says gimp) and select Binary -> Install. If you've got a lot of time on your hands, you can download the source and build it, but I recommend the precompiled binaries.
This can take varied amounts of time as fink searches for packages that gimp depends on. Ones its all done and installed, start up X11, type gimp, and you're on the way to a free photoshop. There's all sorts of other free software that this project has, you can browse around, but most of it is terminal based stuff.

Troubleshooting: Most commonly, people don't install the X11 SDK by apple and you get an error somewhat to the effect of "libraries not found". Make sure this is installed from apples X11 download page.


Hope this helps. Sometimes you might need to update your X11 terminal file, fink has instructions on how to do it. If any of you adventrous types want to try it, good luck.

And don't blame me if OS X comes crashing down around you in flames :flamedevi

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Originally posted by senecasax
Ones its all done and installed, start up X11, type gimp, and you're on the way to a free photoshop. There's all sorts of other free software that this project has, you can browse around, but most of it is terminal based stuff.

I tried this out, and it was all fine and dandy, up to this point. I started up X11, typed gimp, and nothin. Just "gimp: Command not found." Hmm, whats up with that?

 

[senecasax]

oh - theres a file you need to put into x11 that will tell it to look for applications in the /sw/bin directory.
if you type /sw/bin/gimp it should run. i'll see if i can find the shell file you need to change

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Excellent. Thanx senecasax. It works now.

Seems to be a pretty good program. Don't have anything to edit right now, so I'll finish playing around with it later.

 

[senecasax]

oh try this
in a terminal

go to your home directory
type pico .cshrc
on the first line place:
source /sw/bin/init.csh
press CTRL-O, Return, CTRL-X

see if you can type gimp now in the Xterm.