incremental patch discussion

[davidlallen]

@ Deliverator, please update the first post in the installation thread. Please point people to the civfanatics download page for the 1.5 version. Note that it is an exe file which should automatically find your BTS installation dir.

@ Keldath, if you have a chance, please update the first post in the welcome thread. I know we had some discussion about modifying the fonts and so forth. Please do point to the offsite web page and the civfanatics download page.

 

[Deliverator]

@ Deliverator, please update the first post in the installation thread. Please point people to the civfanatics download page for the 1.5 version. Note that it is an exe file which should automatically find your BTS installation dir.

Done. Good work for putting all this together. I'll take some good screenshots for OP of the modpacks thread - images are what will draw people in. Also, you should add an image to the uploaded file - so that it stands out in the list. When I get the chance I think I'll make a new banner to go at the top - simillar to what I've done for other mods.

 

[Ahriman]

Nice. Did you add improvement construction on polar terrain?

I take it the sound files are not in this version, but are compatible with it.

Maybe you should link to the sound file in the download post?

 

[davidlallen]

Added sandworm screenshot to download and first post in modpacks thread.

Added link to music pack in download page, first post in modpacks thread, and external website.

 

[Deliverator]

I'll check the music pack for 1.5 compatibility.

 

[Ahriman]

It didn't seem to be working to me; maybe I screwed up, but I don't seem to be getting the new sounds.

The lowered windtrap, well and greenshouse yields are a vast improvement I think.

 

[Deliverator]

@david: I actually meant add an image to the uploaded file so that it shows up on this page. It is a bit confusing. On the download page, you have to click Choose File, pick your image and then click the Add Image button.

 

[davidlallen]

I have downloaded from my installer, and I reproduce Ahriman's problem. This is fatal. I cannot play a game usefully with this problem. I will have to see what is different between my local installation, and the installer. I will try it first as a zip file instead of an installer. I have updated the download database page with a message.

 

[davidlallen]

Added sidebar image to download page.

Updated distribution file with slightly older dll; exception problem on desert is now fixed; details in 1.5 feedback thread.

BTW, if you find the installation working now, please put future 1.5 feedback into the modpack thread since this will cause more publicity. It may be that nobody wants to be "First" in that new thread. The main reason for doing this is to get more people interested in the mod; there are very few new posters coming to the subforum.

 

[Deliverator]

As Ahriman has pointed out the Salt Flats is pretty much invisible since the heightmap was changed. I'm wondering if it is possible to rework the code to make Salt Flats a terrain type rather than a feature. I don't think it's going to be possible to get a good result with a feature. Clearing the Salt Flats would just change the terrain type to Mesa/Rock just like terraforming.

 

[Ahriman]

The other advantage of this would be no more salt-flat hills, which don't make much geological sense.

 

[keldath]

@ Keldath, if you have a chance, please update the first post in the welcome thread. I know we had some discussion about modifying the fonts and so forth. Please do point to the offsite web page and the civfanatics download page.

will do,
in a day.

 

[Ahriman]

since the heightmap was changed.

The other big change; spice now lies on top of the cultural borders, which can make borders hard to spot.

 

[Deliverator]

Yeah, I've noticed that one. The cultural border follows the heightmap, but the spice layer has to sit above the seabed otherwise it merges with it and looks particularly bad around the base of the land masses. Not sure of a solution to that yet.

 

[davidlallen]

The original motivation for salt pans was to have "something" on the terrain besides just deserts (or mushrooms.) I agree they are almost invisible now. Also they practically have no game effect.

Now that we have heightmaps working, what do you think about adding a terrain type which is slightly lower than land, but not as low as ocean. I can place that in the mapscript. We'd be going for something like a lake-shaped salt flat. These could provide a useful salt resource, instead of just taking time to clear.

 

[Ahriman]

Now that we have heightmaps working, what do you think about adding a terrain type which is slightly lower than land, but not as low as ocean. I can place that in the mapscript. We'd be going for something like a lake-shaped salt flat. These could provide a useful salt resource, instead of just taking time to clear.

Sounds plausible to me. Though I'm not sure about salt being a valuable resource given the tech levels we're talking about.
I'm going to make another shout-out for the actual Dune-specific terminology; pan, sink and graben. These are referred to in Dune several times: the native population of the pan, sink and graben, as opposed to the Fremen population of the desert.
Maybe we could work this into broken, badlands, rock and mesa. Mesa in particular doesn't really make sense; a mesa should be an elevated terrain, like highlands in Planetfall.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa

 

[Deliverator]

Sadly there is the game limitation of four heightmaps since the plot types are a hard-coded list - ocean, flats, hills and peaks. You can alter each of these, but you can't add completely new ones.

We can potentially change the shapes of hills to make more of a plateau. Is that what Planetfall has? I noticed some custom heightmap stuff in the Planetfall PAK.

I would think grabens, pans, sinks would correspond to our deep desert and desert waste terrains. In my head, the land terrains correspond to the brown rocky elevated areas on the Dune map - so that's why I chose Mesa (after the Pasty Mesa), though I'm not hugely attached to it. We all probably have different interpretations of how our terrain types correspond to the map. I'd like to see the terminolgy Erg used - but I think Deep Desert is perhaps clearer for those unfamilar with the books.

 

[God-Emperor]

The Fremen are not the people of the pan, sink and graben. The "people of the graben, the sink, and the pan" are the natives of Dune that are not the Fremen (as per page 38 in Dune, as seen on Google Books).

These terms actually all refer to lowered areas of terrain. Some selected excerpts from the definitions from the online Merriam-Websters Dictionary:
Pan: (1) : a natural basin or depression in land, (2) : a similar artificial basin (as for evaporating brine)
Sink: a : a depression in the land surface; especially : one having a saline lake with no outlet, b : sinkhole
Graben: a depressed segment of the crust of the earth or a celestial body (as the moon) bounded on at least two sides by faults

Evidently the non-Fremen townspeople live in various low-lying terrain, rather than on hills or other raised areas. This is actually not too surprising - these lower areas ought to be slightly cooler (due to getting slightly less direct sunlight) and have better access to water (if you are in a lowland, you shouldn't have to dig your wells so deep to get to the subsurface water). This is aparently something like the opposite of what your map is doing, where the cities are built on relatively high areas.

 

[Ahriman]

Pan, sink and graben are more like our rock/mesa terrain; these are the arid but NON-desert terrains where much of the native population lives.

For reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graben
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_pan_(geology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sink_(geography)

Yes, technically they are depressions below the desert where it is cooler and so there is slightly less evaporation, but the main thing is that they have some soil and more humidity, and thus can support some plant life.
The main advantage of highlands in Dune is the idea that they are protected by the shield wall mountains, and so are in the lee of the sandstorms.

I'm ok with the current heightmaps; they work.
But the terrain is a bit boring, and there isn't much variation between the types.

The one thing that would be neat to try, just for visual effect, would be to swap the heights; so our land tiles pan/sink/graben(=currently mesa/rock/etc) are at ocean level, and have hills and peaks in them, and then the desert and deep desert is at flatland level. It would be cool to see what this looks like.

 

[cephalo]

Sadly there is the game limitation of four heightmaps since the plot types are a hard-coded list - ocean, flats, hills and peaks. You can alter each of these, but you can't add completely new ones.

We can potentially change the shapes of hills to make more of a plateau. Is that what Planetfall has? I noticed some custom heightmap stuff in the Planetfall PAK.

I would think grabens, pans, sinks would correspond to our deep desert and desert waste terrains. In my head, the land terrains correspond to the brown rocky elevated areas on the Dune map - so that's why I chose Mesa (after the Pasty Mesa), though I'm not hugely attached to it. We all probably have different interpretations of how our terrain types correspond to the map. I'd like to see the terminolgy Erg used - but I think Deep Desert is perhaps clearer for those unfamilar with the books.

Heeey... what's going on with the heightmap changes? That sounds interesting, and if I'm not way off in understanding what you guys are talking about, I think I have an idea. How about if we swap the heightmaps for land and sea? So the sea(sand) is raised above the land? That might look cool. Then we can have real salt pans that are actually pans.