Meet the Modders

Hi Civinator.
My work is all about the save file and where & how to find and amend items. Some of it is automated in my Excel spreadsheet app but other parts are just notes on how to find particular information within the file using a hex editor.
I'm happy to talk on Skype or WhatsApp to anyone interested in talking. I don't use the game in all modes so my current knowledge my well be limited in many ways. That said, if there's any info I've determined for myself or learned from anywhere public then I'm happy to share with other modders.
I won't post contact details publicly but any members in here are welcome to PM me for them.
Do be aware that what I have may well already be duplicated elsewhere - even the stuff I determined for myself.
I won't simply post what I have as the notes make sense to me and the app may need tweaking before general use. Would almost certainly need configuration changes.
 
Another thing the Excel app does that I find very useful is to log and show data like all CITYs in a worksheet and all UNITs in a separate one - though that may be a little buggy it can still be very useful.
It can also log & show info from TILEs (where there are GOODs), PRTOs, BLDGs, GOODs, TECHs, LEADs & RACEs.
PRTO = Prototype or UNIT types; BLDG = Building; GOOD = TILE bonuses but not the Grassland Shield; TECH = Technology; LEAD = Leader & RACE = Race or civilisation.
Pretty basic stuff but helpful for analysis if you're into that sort of thing (as I am of course).
 
Adrain, your tweaked Excel app could be a nice addition to the Civ 3 utility programs, that can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ3-utility-programs.54/

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Can I please attract your attention to the problem of transforming a special C3C save file, holding Barbarian cities, to a biq in this thread:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarian-cities-in-civ-3.646253/

The save file holds Barbarian cities, that cannot be created in a normal civ game. Barbarian cities with the proper names and locations could be very useful in worldmaps and many scenarios. Quintillus is working on that problem, but he had not found a complete solution until now:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarian-cities-in-civ-3.646253/page-2#post-15486822
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarian-cities-in-civ-3.646253/page-2#post-15487064

Even those questions could be interesting for improving C3C:

- Where is the location of the nationality of a unit on the map (in a save file) and is there a way that this nationality can be changed, so that, per example, a civ can hold preplaced Barbarian (or other nationality) artillery - or even better: can build artillery with a different nationality ? This could be extreme useful for a better working C3C landartillery (as it was reported, that the AI uses artillery with the nationality of a different civ not only strictly defensive).

- Where is the location that determines, that a unit is loaded into another unit and how can the state of a preplaced unit on the map be changed into a 'loaded unit'? This could be especially useful for creating 'landcarriers'. At present we can only place land units in the same tile that holds an army and hope, that the AI will load that unit into the army. In space scenarios we can place fighters in the same tile that holds a 'land-spaceship' with a carrier setting (like a battlestar Galactica), but when that 'land-spaceship' is moving, it does not carry the fighters (or missiles or troops) with it, as the AI and the human player cannot load them into the 'land-spaceship', even when the carrier and the fighter still have the proper settings in the editor.
 
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Just rushing out now but that's a bunch of very interesting stuff to look at. I believe Barbarian cities can be created in normal circumstances when a city gets captured by them but I don't have any examples in my files.
As I say, I look forward to investigating and adding what I can to the overall understanding.
 
Adrain said:
Just rushing out now but that's a bunch of very interesting stuff to look at. I believe Barbarian cities can be created in normal circumstances when a city gets captured by them but I don't have any examples in my files.
As I say, I look forward to investigating and adding what I can to the overall understanding.
Click to expand...

Adrain, unfortunately in Civ 3 cities cannot be captured (or be founded) by Barbarians. They only get plundered (or buildings get razed or the population be reduced). This is the reason, why creating Barbarian cities in Civ 3 is something very special.
 
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Ah. Thanks for that info. I wasn't aware. I use barbarians mainly to get my units up to elite.

That leaves us with CITY ownership. There are actually a number of different CITY class objects in CivIIIC for each city. I should add that most of my current work is related to CivIIIC and has been for a long time, but there is some residual info I have left from earlier CivIII versions. Just to bear in mind.

Each different class starts with CITY but is followed by a 32-bit integer value that represents how many more bytes follow this and are included within the current object. The one I would look to first is of the format :
CITY{88 00 00 00} where the text "CITY" is followed by a 32-bit integer. Remember that in Intel the numbers are stored in what we humans would consider reverse order so the least significant byte is on the left and the most significant on the right. IE. If they were labelled, left to right, as A, B, C & D then the value would be D*1000000 + C*10000 + B*100 + A. Thus, in this case, we have a value of 00000088 which equates to 136 decimal.

My terminology is that the data for the class discludes the header section. The header section, in absolutely all cases, contains 8 bytes - 4 for the mnemonic (CITY, UNIT, BLDG, etc) and another 4 for the length. So, the following byte is referred to as offset 00, or just 00. Generally speaking I will refer to all such values in hex unless otherwise specified (Rare). It's just so much easier that way.

Now, in CITY{88 00 00 00}, there is a value, which I believe is 32-bit but never takes up more than a byte, and which is used to determine (or specify) the Leader. Leaders (LEAD) and Races (RACE) are linked but different. Leaders always start with 00 as Barbarian and generally follow with 01 as player (in single player mode).

If you wanted to convert an existing city from one player to Barbarian then I would start by changing the Leader value at offset=08 to 00. I will do some quick testing to see if this is workable.

Well, one of the first things to do is to ensure that the city you want to change is either free of any units OR you also reassign those units to Barbarian as well.

Beyond that you'd have to ensure all TILEs in and around the city are within the cultural radius of the city and Barbarian, as well as setting the visibility (Due to Culture) of all TILEs around the city as well as one extra in each direction.

Now, having tested that all out it seems to work - but I can't guarantee the game will play well with it. The graphic for the city itself is a little unusual. If you'd like to see for yourself then feel free to send me a BIC SAV file with instructions for what you want & you can see for yourself how it's handled.

Enough for now. I'll look into other issues later.
 
I guess this probably isn't the correct place to post my notes about the various classes I know about within the BIC SAV files, yet I was unable to find where they would be most appropriate. I'd appreciate it if one of the more experienced members would point me towards the best place so I can post them all together in one place.

For now I'll post them here with getting them moved in mind, but if that is a wrong thing to do then I will understand if a moderator needs to delete them. For now I just want to make them visible as I suspect that basic information, for some members, will be enough to get them better capabilities to play around.
 
Adrain, what you have posted here in such a short time about Barbarian cities is, as far as I can understand it, great ! :hatsoff: Quintillus and WildWeazel are programmers, that can understand this much better and I really hope your findings can help them. I think a good place for posting these findings would be in the thread about Barbarian cities, as Quintillus and WildWeazel have posted here, too.

You are completely right about the unusual graphics of Barbarian cities. :thumbsup: The first two cities hold an era 4 city graphic and the next cities hold advisor graphics of the Mayan leader Smoke-Jaguar in angry mood. This was shown by two independant screenshots (one done by me).
Spoiler :

attachment.php


These 'unusual' city graphics wouldn´t be a big problem for maps and scenarios, as these graphics could be set to transparency and resources showing different city graphics could be placed in the tiles of the cities in fixed maps.
 
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@Civinator, I believe the previous post answers both your suplemental questions.
Do be careful to ensure when you set a unit to be contained within another, container, unit that you set them both up to match.

Also, bear in mind that lngRace indicates nationality whereas lngLeader indicates who now owns and controls the unit.
 
I need to shoot for ten minutes but I'll be back later. I'll have a look at the other threads and what can be posted where. I'm not a mod here so moving posts may be beyond my capabilities. Funny position to be in as I Admin at Bytes.com where I do my Access stuff. All good fun anyway. I'm enjoying this :-)
 
Adrain, that´s very interesting stuff, you have posted here. :goodjob:
I made a post in the 'Quintillus editor thread' with links to all your posts you did today.
 
Thanks. I saw that. I'll try to add a few more today. Only the CITY ones are large and multiple. Some other smaller ones are quite basic.
 
I should add that I was started on my journey from a thread in apolyton.net from 2004 by a member called Gramphos. You'll see the link as I've also attached a scanned copy of what I printed off back then with a few of my own messy notes scribbled across it - as well as various stains from spillages etc :-(

It's hard to express how grateful I feel to Gramphos and all those others that contributed to this metadata being made available. Top Man!

I should add that this thread is no longer available (I tried recently & actually have an outstanding question sent as feedback as to exactly where it may still be found.) but hopefully my scanned copy will do.
{FYI: Currently trying to determine why uploaded PDF file is not visible here...
It seems it's not an acceptable file for some reason.
No worries - the original thread is available again so not a big deal.}
 
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Oh no I Forgot in the 7th is my birthday

Besides that I mostly playing stellaris I’m planning to convert the leaders to the game
 
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