incremental patch discussion

[davidlallen]

theres some small art errors with patch 1.3.3

Can you tell me the details of what I missed, so I will not repeat the mistake?

EDIT: I copy/pasted the granary building and button for the catchbasin and reservoir. I guess that counts as an "error", but I do not really have any better art to insert. Was there anything besides that?

why did you take out all of the projects regarding spiritual victory? i kinda liked its idea.

I think there are too many victory types. I took it out first, because I thought I needed the "seven items" for my terraforming victory. Then I discovered I could use the undocumented "victory threshold on buildingclass" to do it. But I did not add back the victory. If you feel strongly, go ahead and add it. But do we really need nine separate victory types?

further more - you guys cut down some buildings, isnt it to thin with buildings now?

For myself, I removed a few buildings after discussion and agreement on the "tuning economics and buildings" thread from several weeks ago. I agree that some of the early game techs now have few buildings. Perhaps some should be moved from later in the game to earlier. The feedback from Ahriman was that there were way too many buildings especially in the later game, because none of the buildings get obsolete. I agree with that, but I did not do any counting of the number of buildings compared to vanilla.

 

[keldath]

hey david,

check out the pedia - on improvements - see the transforming- it gives nothing,
mostly its something in the improvement art file.

also, the 2 new terrain types you added - are dark and has no green graphics, and they wont blend right, its square like.

some buttons are pink.


i kinda liked the spiritual victory,
i can remove the holy war vic - its just something i invented...just conquer terrain and and spread religion.

but i think a verity of vic conditions, allow people to play the games with several ways, just adding some fun you know.

i dont like to have spam of buildings as well, but,
i want that during the game, there wont be a situation that you barley have anything to build but units...just want to make it interesting in gameplay.


dont worry about the glitches,
ill fixed on Friday,

can you add the new transforming vic in concepts or somewhere in the pedia?
so everyone will know what it does.

 

[davidlallen]

check out the pedia - on improvements - see the transforming- it gives nothing, mostly its something in the improvement art file.

I guess you are referring to the improvements from the previous terraform mod which you added. I am not able to remove them using xml, because funny xml parse errors come up. Is there an sdk component to that mod which you added? Could you remove it?

also, the 2 new terrain types you added - are dark and has no green graphics, and they wont blend right, its square like.

I don't understand how that can be at all. Can you send a screenshot? If anybody else has installed this patch, are they seeing blending of the proper colors? They are vanilla grass and vanilla plains, they should have the same color as vanilla.

some buttons are pink.

I see that the two buttons for these two terrains are pink. However, it is odd, because I have just copied the terraininfos from vanilla. So it is not clear why these buttons should be missing.

 

[keldath]

gey david,

ill post you a screen shot on Friday.

i didnt realize you removed the old terraform stuff, so yeah ill remove it completley from all of the files.

dont worry,
ill fix all the bugs.

 

[Deliverator]

I'd like to get 1.3.4 up before Friday. It is now going to be only bonus and improvement changes, but they are quite significant. I am going to add a couple of new techs as well.

 

[keldath]

cool deliverator,

do you mind fixing the pink buttons and the new terrain by david for patch 1.3.4?

i think ill do patch 1.3.5.

 

[davidlallen]

do you mind fixing the pink buttons and the new terrain by david for patch 1.3.4?

@ Deliverator, the two terrain buttons are missing. Are you able to see the terraform terrain correctly in the game? Correct light brown/lime colors, and no hard edges? To set it up quickly in WB, give yourself Way of Liet technology, switch civics to paradise, use WB to give yourself a Reservoir of Liet, and autoplay probably 10 turns.

 

[Deliverator]

Patch 1.3.4 is here. It is a full patch over 1.3. I decided to post the details in the bonus thread as it is all bonus and improvement changes.

I didn't manage to check the terrain. Sorry guys.

I anticipate doing a response-to-1.3.4-feedback patch pretty soon. I'll do the terrain work and any fixes I said I'd do in that patch as well.

 

[davidlallen]

Great work! I am merging it with my local changes. Did I miss the changes to the pedia text entries? You have a bunch of text in the forum post, but I was not able to find it either in xml/terrain/civ4bonusinfos.xml or xml/text/DuneWarsText.xml.

Once I am sure I did not miss it, I can paste it into the pedia. I have a script which does the cloning of the text for all the languages.

 

[Deliverator]

I was lazy and didn't actually put the text in the pedia...

I think the BonusInfos.xml great renaming is probably even more urgent as the tags have been further scrambled by my changes. I changed the order of BonusInfos.xml too to help my understanding so be careful when merging - it may be better to take mine and copy any changed bits in.

I have tried to clean up the art for improvements and bonus resources. I have started a new art/structures/imp folder for improvements and art/terrain/bonus for the resources. This is to make it easier to locate and upgrade art files. Once the migration is complete we can drop the existing improvement and resources folders, and then rename structures/imp -> structures/improvement and terrain/bonus -> terrain/resources.

 

[davidlallen]

@ deliverator: hopefully, nobody has any locally modifed bonusinfo, so there should be no merge.

@ keldath: I can do the bonus renaming Friday afternoon my time (30 hours from now). Or I can wait until after you make a patch. It will change many files such as unitinfo, all the places where bonus names appear. Please let me know your preference.

 

[Deliverator]

david and keldath, if you decide among yourselves who takes 1.3.5 and 1.3.6, I'll book 1.3.7 by which time I should have a decent list of bonus refinements as well as the remaining terrain work and finished Fedaykin.

By the way, what role do the bonuses Refined Water and Refined Spice actually serve?

 

[keldath]

hey people,

yeah i think ill go for patch 1.3.5,
ill try to upload it in less then 30 hours...



next patch 1.3.8,
the person that answers this quastion will get to do it:

who is the speed of the average sparrow?


just kidding...


***
ok im lost,
i have no idea how to fix the new grass and plains terrain, ive tried everything:

see attached pic.

the buttons ive fixed.


***
started to work on patch 1.3.5,
ill release it tomorrow so you guys can pick up from it to the next patches.

 

[Deliverator]

We've passed 1000 posts on this subforum in three weeks... and they're not all me!

 

[davidlallen]

This post could go onto the art thread or the 1.3 feedback thread, but it's more related to a patch.

I am tired of the existing build buttons. There are many copies and they do not match what they are for. Attached is a directory which should be "assets/art/interface/buttons/builds". I have added the following buttons:

BUILD_WINDTRAP Art/structures/improvements/windtrap/windtrap_button.dds
BUILD_SOLAR_FARM Art/Interface/Buttons/builds/buildsolarfarm.dds
BUILD_MINE Art/Interface/Buttons/builds/buildsurfmine.dds
BUILD_MINE2 Art/Interface/Buttons/builds/builddeepmine.dds
BUILD_MINE3 Art/Interface/Buttons/builds/buildcoremine.dds
BUILD_GREEN art/interface/buttons/builds/buildinsfarm.dds
BUILD_CAMP art/interface/buttons/builds/builddewcoll.dds
BUILD_GROWTH Art/Interface/Buttons/Builds/BuildCamp.dds

A number of the buttons are cut out of the final frontiers atlas, but it seems that a build button cannot come out of an atlas.

It can go into whoever does the next patch, which is probably not me.

 

[davidlallen]

i have no idea how to fix the new grass and plains terrain, ive tried everything: see attached pic.

I was sure you were wrong. So I went into my WB and placed some tiles of these new terrains to create my screen shot. But, you are right! I do not see how this can be happening. When I look at terragrassblend.dds in photoshop, it has the proper green color. But when I place the terrain in WB, it is not correct. I have checked my original files; they are the same between my patch 1.3.3 and Deliverator's patch 1.3.4. So I cannot blame it on him

I also cannot see what has gone wrong. I will try to figure it out. If anybody else has some ideas that would be great.

 

[koma13]

I also cannot see what has gone wrong. I will try to figure it out. If anybody else has some ideas that would be great.

Order in Civ4TerrainInfos.xml matters. I remember we had some graphical problems with terrain on the old land based map scripts I made and I fixed that by moving the faulty terrain from last position to somewhere inbetween. Try to put it next to the other flat land terrains.

 

[keldath]

i will get the buttons in thanks.

koa13, ill try that, really weird.

i think i found a small bug in the system, not in our specific code,

if you remove a number of build_ in the buildinfo.xml you get an error of something - xmlloadutility loop.

i think theres need to be a minimum number of build - or else there will be an error on load game.

i stabmled upon this when removing the build_hill+ build_terraform that belongs to the terraform mod.
i left in that files 2 test builds. so the error wont appear.

 

[davidlallen]

i think i found a small bug in the system, not in our specific code,

if you remove a number of build_ in the buildinfo.xml you get an error of something - xmlloadutility loop.

I have found the same thing. It happens when you remove one specific build related to the old terraforming mod, such as BUILD_HILL. It does not relate to the total number of builds, it is specific to the terraforming mod builds.

I assumed that there is something in the terraforming sdk code which requires these builds. So when the builds are removed but the sdk code is still there, you get this funny error. So I was assuming that when you removed the terraforming sdk code, these errors would go away.

Have you removed the terraforming sdk code? That "should" solve the problem.

 

[keldath]

hey,
theres no sdk code for the terra, its just a few lines in the cveventmanager,

in order to test my theory, i tested revdcm 2.51 alone - deleted some builds, and bang the error appeared.

also - i have removed another build - not the hill - for exampe the windtrap - and again the error appears.

so i guees the limit is on,
if you can test this aswell it would harden my theory.

i wasted 3 hours on this cause i thought i did in patch 1.3.5 something wrong...