Large Rivers (trying to make an old dream come true) [IMPLEMENTED]

[Kendon]

[QUOTE="Tugboatspotter:

One further suggestion for the pedia text for large rivers: ...due to abundant resources of food like fish and fertile land, as well as the economic advantages... is a little clunky. I would suggest changing it to:

...due to fertile land and abundant resources of food such as freshwater fish, as well as the economic advantages...

This is fairy pedantic though. It is fine as it is [/QUOTE]

Here's another possible phrasing, a little shorter overall, using the same content as XSamatan:

Civilization began along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Colonization followed the Mississippi, Amazon, Saint Lawrence and Mackenzie rivers, broad highways into the heartland of the New World. Large rivers meant abundant food and fertile land, as well as transportation. Vessels on deep rivers could carry more cargo without grounding.

Back when bridges were built only on the busiest routes, crossing a large river was a dangerous undertaking. Wide rivers had to be forded using sand banks, shallow water or islets. Enterprising settlers might rig a ferry system to get people, cargo and livestock to the other side.

 

[raystuttgart]

So ok, basically it took us 1 month to get here.
(That is pretty much the time I expected to get here.)

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We started real modding on "Large Rivers" on October 5th.
(Not couting the "pre-analysis" and technical concept I had already made before.)

Features of this size can really take months since we are duing this in our spare time.
I can fully understand that community gets impatient but quality also needs time.

Yes, we are not yet at the finish line - but we can see it already.

I am very confident that we will publish our next big release in about a month.
(And it will include even more than just "Large Rivers".)

-----

To all people out there that think about becoming modders:

People sometimes do not believe it, but modding simply needs patience and perseverence.
In the end this will lead you to success and the results will fully compensate you for all the effort you invested.

All it really needs is to make the first steps and continue walking.
The rest will simply come over time - you will get better and better with every small feature or bugfix you create.

Nothing is impossible if you are really motivated to invest the effort.
And trust us, modding in a team can be really fun and thus motivating.

Come on, give it a try.

Just imagine how it would be to create all the cool stuff you always wanted in Civ4Col yourself.
Fulfill your own gaming dreams, create your own "favourite game ever".

 

[raystuttgart]

@Kendon

Would you be interested to become a supporter that is directly cooperating with our team?
We were really impressed by all the effort you had put into the text improvements.

• access to our internal team chats
• particpation in our team meetings
  
• access to unpublished development branches
• more influence on feature decisions (of the team)
  
• knowledge and support to become a modder of your own
  
• ...

 

[raystuttgart]

@Nightinggale:

Just checked your code for teaching Pioneers to build "River Ferries" on Large Rivers to connect Cities.
It looks extremely elegant !!! Much better than anything I would have come up with.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Kendon]

@Kendon

Would you be interested to become a supporter that is directly cooperating with our team?
We were really impressed by all the effort you had put into the text improvements.

• access to our internal team chats
• participation in our team meetings
  
• access to unpublished development branches
• more influence on feature decisions (of the team)
  
• knowledge and support to become a modder of your own
  
• ...

Yes, I’d like to be a supporter. Thank you. The text you saw was my third major try. Realizing I should use Notepad++ made the difference.

It was a surprise and a thrill to see one of my changes actually appear when the game reopened. The process made more sense after that, and in a few places I conformed the formatting. I’d enjoy learning how other aspects of the mod function.

 

[Nightinggale]

@Nightinggale:

Just checked your code for teaching Pioneers to build "River Ferries" on Large Rivers to connect Cities.
It looks extremely elegant !!! Much better than anything I would have come up with.

Thanks a lot.

I think I'm done with this feature.

• Human players can use "build route to" and it will build river ferries if crossing a river.
• AI players will build river ferries when trying to connect colonies with road.
• AI is unable to build river ferries if the pioneer is trying to improve the land around a colony (like building farms)

I think this will make the AI use river ferries in a way, which will appear intelligent. However it will likely take a lot of AI testing to see if the AI will act as I predict. It's a bit more complex/time consuming to test than checking if a button works.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

Here's another possible phrasing, a little shorter overall, using the same content as XSamatan:

Civilization began along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Colonization followed the Mississippi, Amazon, Saint Lawrence and Mackenzie rivers, broad highways into the heartland of the New World. Large rivers meant abundant food and fertile land, as well as transportation. Vessels on deep rivers could carry more cargo without grounding.

Back when bridges were built only on the busiest routes, crossing a large river was a dangerous undertaking. Wide rivers had to be forded using sand banks, shallow water or islets. Enterprising settlers might rig a ferry system to get people, cargo and livestock to the other side.

..and the Nile? Civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt are believed to have emerged independently.

I would suggest minor changes:

Civilization is widely accepted to have begun around 3000 BCE along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq, and along the banks of the Nile in Egypt.

Colonization of the Americas followed the Mississippi, Amazon, Saint Lawrence and Mackenzie rivers - broad highways into the heartland of the New World. Large rivers meant abundant food and fertile land, as well as transportation. Vessels on deep rivers could carry more cargo without grounding.

Back when bridges were built only on the busiest routes, crossing a large river was a dangerous undertaking. Wide rivers had to be forded using sand banks, shallow water or islets. Enterprising settlers might rig a ferry system to get people, cargo and livestock to the other side.

 

[raystuttgart]

There are way more important and critical task to do for this feature now than changing text.
(I can not spend time on changing the text 10 times - it eats up too much valuable modding time. )

Once the feature is implemented and in internal testing phase we can give it to a supporter that fine tunes the texts.
(e.g. @Kendon can take a look and can do it himself, once he got access to the development branch.)

But for now I think the text is good enough.

@Kendon

@Nightinggale just told me that he already invited you.
We are looking forward do see you in the team chat.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

My post was already addressed to Kendon, since I thought he was taking charge of new texts.

I just wanted to offer my opinion on possible fine tuning, which of course is completely up to Kendon, and I respect his judgement.

 

[Kendon]

..and the Nile? Civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt are believed to have emerged independently.

I would suggest minor changes:

Civilization is widely accepted to have begun around 3000 BCE along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq, and along the banks of the Nile in Egypt.

Colonization of the Americas followed the Mississippi, Amazon, Saint Lawrence and Mackenzie rivers - broad highways into the heartland of the New World. Large rivers meant abundant food and fertile land, as well as transportation. Vessels on deep rivers could carry more cargo without grounding.

Back when bridges were built only on the busiest routes, crossing a large river was a dangerous undertaking. Wide rivers had to be forded using sand banks, shallow water or islets. Enterprising settlers might rig a ferry system to get people, cargo and livestock to the other side.

I agree with your changes. Egypt along the Nile represents two-thirds of the history of civilization.

I'm just starting as a supporter, learning as I go. There are still some steps before the words get another polish. raystuttgard says, "Once the feature is implemented and in internal testing phase we can give it to a supporter that fine tunes the texts." That sounds good. Take time. Get it right.

 

[raystuttgart]

I have posted a help request for adapting our MapScripts here.
(I am simply not really skilled considering MapScripts. )

I have no problems getting a new TerrainType in there that is placed "randomly" by e.g. checking conditions like lattitude,
but to adjust the MapScripts to create "nice looking logically flowing Large Rivers" is not really my "league" considering MapScripts.

So maybe there is a talented MapScript creator in the Civ4BTS community willing to help us.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

What about a community map project?

We could manually add large rivers to a variety of map types and sizes, so even if the map script takes a bit longer to be included, we will still have a selection of large river maps to download and play.

 

[raystuttgart]

What about a community map project?

We can not give it to community yet because it has not yet been fully internally tested.
Thus it is also not yet balanced.

So sorry, community will have to wait.
We would get massive amounts of issues / bug reports we already know we have (balancing, texts, ...)

We are all simply extremely busy right now with real life and work.
I personally e.g. can spend basically almost no time during the week on real modding.

 

[Nightinggale]

I noticed there is no hotkey for building river ferries. Would it make sense to use R?
I mean it's a road (sort of) and Civilization and Colonization have always used R for roads. Yes it's in use already for another build, but ferries and roads are mutually exclusive. You can never build both on the same plot due to terrain requirements.

 

[raystuttgart]

I noticed there is no hotkey for building river ferries. Would it make sense to use R?

Should be fine, because they can not be built at the same time / on the same plot.

Edit:
R-Hotkey to build River Ferries has been implemented, tested and commited.

 

[raystuttgart]

Current Status on "Large Rivers":

• Feature Implementation and AI have been finished
  
• First test games are being conducted internally and until now we only found "minor issues" that we already corrected though
  
• Balancing has also been improved and should be "good enough for now"
  
• Adapting the MapScript to generate nice looking "Large Rivers" will probably get started soon (@Nightinggale volunteered to take a look )
• Adapting the Maps has been delayed, because we will implement further Terrains and maybe Terrain Features first (see here) and we can add all new Terrains / Terrains features at once

Our next release will really get a monster ...
Which however also means, it will take a bit longer to finish it.
(We still hope we can publish it end of the year - before Christmas.)

Considering a "test-release" to community:

It is not planned, because we still have too much of work going on in the branches.
So releasing stuff that is one week later outdated, makes no sense and would cause too much overhead for us.

 

[Kendon]

After playing almost all the gigantic maps in Scenarios I see Large Rivers, graphic Shipwrecks and Campfires. Exploring has more variety. On my Two Continents map most rivers were large, but that would be accurate for North America’s northwest coast draining the Rocky Mountains.

I see now how large rivers improve the mid-game. It takes time to get coastal ships and the other shallow draft units that can travel upriver to trade in the interior.

I like the bullet list for Large Rivers in Colopedia but it appears to be affected by Styles. The font looks different from earlier entries, as if it’s bold. Pasting and retyping the whole entry had no effect but, if I took an earlier H1 header without the text and pasted it in, Large Rivers text conformed to other topic body text.

It works but it’s certainly not an elegant solution. I assume Styles is in a deeper program we can’t modify.

Why bother? Because if the look is consistent each new player reads the guide to the game as a unified whole. The new concepts look like they’ve always been there.

This may not be the right thread to go into detail about text format. After going from the code to the game and back, what’s needed is more like copywriting than writing for publication. I could start a new thread for people who fuss over grammar and spelling so we don’t waste the action programmers’ time. It would put all the rhetoric in one place.

 

[raystuttgart]

Yes, if you want to dicsuss formating issues of Colopedia that should be a new thread.
Thanks for taking a look at it.

 

[Nightinggale]

It works but it’s certainly not an elegant solution. I assume Styles is in a deeper program we can’t modify.

Ultra short because this isn't the thread for it. The limit we can't change is 10240 characters for each string. That's about it. The main issue is that the guide to tell how to do what we can do with text is in the head of some modders (me included). It's on my todo list to write a guide, but I haven't started yet.

 

[raystuttgart]

So ok, at least there was a little further progress considering "Large Rivers" feature this weekend.
Right now I have fully adjusted about 50% of the maps to have "Large Rivers".

In total we have 20 maps. 9 are fully adjusted now and have been further improved.
Especially most largest ones are ready now. ("Gigantic Maps" take much longer, than the small ones.)

The rest will be adjusted as well of course.
This is however extremely tedious and boring work ...

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Every weekend a small step forward towards the release ...