Thanks everyone who voted for this terrain in the May PCX of the Month Club. I'm truly thankful. King Arthur got a credit for it too, which I don't mind a bit considering his contribution to this and
all the stuff we do together....
UPDATE: I've updated the Biq and Resources file to make this terrain easier to re-mod. The new resources file has the first 26 (or 25) squares blank - that's where the generic resources normally go - and the squares up to 95 (or 96) are only the resources used on the map. They're in proper order now too, for easier use. The Old larger resources file is now a file called "Resources All" and I left it in there so that a future modder can have some extras to mess with. I'm glad I did that, though - I hadn't realized that the Guggenheim Museum resource was corrupted somehow or that there was a little American Settler in the middle of Central Park. Surprising how little things get by like that.
While I was updating, I added two new resources; the Colgate Clock on the Jersey shore and Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park (which is how I found the settler). I also added the Metropolitan Museum, something I'd meant to do and let slip... If you've already downloaded the map, the files you need to update to get these are the BIQ file, the resources file, and the marsh file.
I did all that because of this question:
Let`s say I want to import the map to a different biq. What exactly have you changed ? Which boxes have I to check at least ,to import it successfully ? The map and the terrain settings at least I think ,but what else ?
I had to think about that; reverse-engineering isn't my strong point. On the map,
cities and starting locations (so that the Empire State Building is in the correct place - I swear I'd make a custom interface for the first person who could figure out how to get a full sized Empire State Building on this map any other way, and before you say multi-tile, I tried, and the angles are wrong,
but I digress....), and don't forget that in order to
have an ESB, only one civ can have "American" culture and that civ should have only one city. That's why there are so many goodies up in that neighborhood; I want the ESB to be a relatively strong city-state so that it stays on the map.
What else? hmmm....
Terrain rules are important here: you should be able to "irrigate" (put lighting on) or "mine" (put fancy lighting on) Streets, but not be able to plant "cities" (hereafter called "Branches", as in branch offices) on them. Besides Streets (plains), Branches should not be allowed on Parkland (desert), lots with Trees (forest) or Large Trees (Jungle), or Marsh. You should be allowed to irrigate or mine everything except Marsh, including trees and Industrial areas (volcanos). Roads should be allowed to be built
only on Streets. One caveat: some of the eye candy in Central Park is Dessert Irrigation (that's how it's spelled). I've tried to avoid having the AI mess it up by making irrigation worthless as a parkland terrain improvement; if that doesn't work, disable Parkland irrigation and you'll lose the zoo, MOMA and the Hayden Planetarium, but have a clean park.
C'est la vie.
Finally, you'll have to import the
Natural Resources rules (I think) in order that they all appear in the right places. You can play with most of these, but some are landmarks (NY Public Library and St Patrick's Cathedral, for instance) so be careful to leave them where they are, else you'll have to figure out later where they all belong! This is what led to all the work I did last night; I'm aware that the resources file was a nightmare for someone trying to integrate this map into another mod, so I've re-written the biq and re-done the resources file in such a way that the first twenty five resource blocks are blank, so that you can use your own mod-specific resources in addition to the ones that are already there. That huge original resources file, which was really only a go-to file I'd had laying around forever, is now in the file named Resources All. Note: even though the resource images have been moved on the resources pcx, some of them are still marked as strategic and luxury resources so that this can be played right out of the box, so to speak. Obviously, a modder might want to change this...
I mucked a little with the Labels and Scripts files, but didn't do a thorough job. Mostly it was little things like changing "airport" to "subway" - that sort of thing.
That's all I can think of; let me know if I've missed anything. Sorry the reply is so lengthy, but I wanted you to know
why you might want some feature or another so that you can decide it's value. This terrain is meant, after all, to be modded.
I want to remind the non-modders that even after all the changes I made in this update, you can still load this up and play a game on it "as is", albeit with anachronistic units. I've done some unit-substitution on my personal copy, using, for instance, Virote's Office Worker and Vuldacon's Mike Rush - and his cars!
By the way, this terrain could REALLY use a NYC taxicab, if anyone wants to make one.
Wow! Truly impressive Balthasar! It's amazing the work that must have went into making this!
You ain't whistling "Dixie", buddy. My hobbies seem to be absurdly complex projects and wordy posts. But there's even better stuff to come in the pipeline....
)
