[TOT] MGE Conversions

[Thorvald of Lym]

Aye, I jumped straight from vanilla to MGE but I gather there were several undocumented changes under the hood (see: Major Objectives coming and going, &c.). It's not actually needed but I'm a pedant for rounding off edge cases, plus it could be useful down the line if ToTPP adds a function to (re-)enable wonder vids in scenarios to pair with custom videos.

The legacy events converter/engine is NOT!!! meant to be a way to learn to write code. It should "just work" as long as the legacyEvents.txt file is a valid events file for the macro system.

Ah, so it works as a live interpreter rather than a file converter. Yeah, a pared-down version could be useful—it wasn't that long ago I was still running off monthly bandwidth rations, so streamlining file size has become instinctual.

EDIT: of course, if you're converting the events manually to learn the system, that's OK too.

Aye, the MGE scenarios don't really need Lua conversion; it's more a convenience for the ToTPP generation if they want to tinker around with these themselves. Virtually all my coding knowledge comes from picking apart existing work and learning through trial and error, and I do my best to pay the experience forward.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

@Thorvald of Lym

Can you remind me why you need the events converted to Lua? If you're just re-releasing the scenarios in Test of Time, then the macro events should be fine. TOTPP can interpret macro events, it is just not recommended to have both macro events and Lua working together. The legacy event engine is necessary if you want to add extra Lua exclusive features to a scenario, but in that case you should be working with the full template anyway.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

the MGE scenarios don't really need Lua conversion; it's more a convenience for the ToTPP generation if they want to tinker around with these themselves.

Again, it's courtesy: since most of ToT's modding has shifted to Lua, I figure why not throw in parallel events files as a springboard for third-(fourth?-)party modding. Some of these I do plan to spin off into ToTPP-featured upgrades, and having a workable Lua base can only help.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Again, it's courtesy: since most of ToT's modding has shifted to Lua, I figure why not throw in parallel events files as a springboard for third-(fourth?-)party modding. Some of these I do plan to spin off into ToTPP-featured upgrades, and having a workable Lua base can only help.

In that case, I don't think it makes sense to ship with a "stripped down" conversion system.

If designers want to add something at a later date, adding in the whole template to an existing and working scenario is not difficult, given the current state of the template. The template provides a lot of functionality from modifying tables rather than having to actually code. That said, I do need to write a proper documentation guide for it. I have a couple more modules that I plan to add before starting (I've started documenting before, and ended up making changes to file organisation).

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Aye, if my experience modding OpenRA has taught me anything, programmers speak in tongues but rarely see fit to provide a dictionary.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Finally had the time to swing back into this: Demo for Alexander. Tweaked the city graphics to be more culture-appropriate, and reconfigured the units to use ToT permissions rather than the old special techs; base game tech tree has been restored and "Plumbing" added as a phantom tech to preserve the original research times, such as they are. Apart from tribe masks, the only other to-dos are terrain graphics and possibly leader portraits now that TOTPP enables custom DLLs.

Since bitmaps retain the same file size regardless of detail to the image itself, I had the brilliant idea to throw in revamps even for units that don't feature in the scenario, so that tinkers like me have thematically-linked assets on hand for their own house rules. Case in point: here vanilla sprites have been substituted with available Hellenic counterparts.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Demo for The Great War. There are still some graphics replacements slated (mostly improvement icons) but the base game is more or less done. This offered a good showcase for economizing sounds, and revealed a filename typo that meant most of the cavalry wasn't using the custom attack WAV since... probably back in CiC. Vanilla ToT cities use the umbrella industrial set (Row 5); final release will feature TOTPP per-tribe definitions as teased in the file. I changed the grassland shield to buildings to give the map a more 'lived-in' feel, but I'm not sure if this makes it too noisy.

In the course of moving the special techs off of base game substitutions, I discovered a quirk that is probably common to the CiC stream: the rules don't include definitions for the extra techs added in FW (X1–X7), and the ToT converter appears to randomly give them to civs despite being unresearchable by default. It's not a game-breaker, but this alters research costs and will need to be checked in all the older scenarios.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Demo for APOCALYP. I have plans for graphics revamps, but currently little is changed from the original: hidden techs reconfigured, minor sound adjustments, and changed the Fanatics sprite to differentiate it from the siege engine. There's a minor behavioural change to the Barbarians apparently hard-wired into ToT, as the missiles are more aggressive and the warship at Sri Lanka moves out to raid the nearby city on the first turn, rather than fortifying in place. Pre-fortifying all units may stop this, but that needs hex editing and combing the unit index is a project in itself.

Fixing the pollution glitch documented over here, it turns out that while CivConverter will translate Bytes 694–5 from existing on-map pollution, this isn't the value ToT uses to process pollution effects: Bytes 1000–1 are the "key" variable, and Bytes 694–5 and 1001–2 sync to match at the turn change. Manually adding pollution via the cheat menu doesn't register properly if saved directly to scenario (saves to 1001–2 but but not 1000–1, which overwrites 694–5), so you'll want to verify these by hand.

 

[Blake00]

Ooooh well done.. Looking forward to seeing this one as I loved the old CiC Apocalypse scenario!

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

In time for Juneteenth, demo for the Civil War. Most of the units were done last year, but I got hung up thinking there was an older helicopter graphic I could use for the bonus sprites. One of the biggest advantages of ToT is shepherding sound sets consistently between "factions". Tweaked some names for nicer reading, and cribbed some graphics from A Divided Nation for flavour (pops and improvements). I've been playing around with terrain but I'm not sure if I like it (basic irrigation and legibility of railroads). I'm debating whether to mask all units and then tweak civ colours to match the uniforms, since most non-Union civs use the Confederate sets.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Demo for KESH. One look at the units file will explain why this has been upgraded to a full revision: it was made without any understanding of hardcoded properties or sound layout. The rules are also a statistical mess, with many units effectively unused by the AI since they're superseded by contemporaries. I intend to remap everything, but since many of these are already on the map I'll have to work up the confidence to hex-edit the changes.

On the happier side, this is the first demo including ToTPP per-tribe cities, a portion of which are previewed here: Renaissance graphics correspond with the Ancient-era sets.

EDIT: Patched a glitch in the Transport sprite.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Update for KESH with remapped units and new sounds. ( ) Stat rebalance still pending but I took the opportunity to fix a few goofs: Jet Fighter can now intercept, Stealth Fighter is now an air unit instead of a sea carrier (???), and Tanks are now feasible ground units. EDIT: Also paratroopers now paradrop. I've also patched the first download to fix the dummy techs, which I thought I'd done on the initial pass; it's probably not game-breaking as only the first four bits are linked to techs, but hex-editing reveals bits 5–8 may also be switched on, so I'll go back through previous updates and zero everything manually just to be safe.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Demo for The Conquest of Britain. Civ-specific units and techs are now properly keyed to prevent access by rivals, and their prereqs adjusted for the sake of logic; note that Elite Knights and the Viking units were never buildable by anyone. The original readme says Settlers are supposed to be buildable by the Saxons only (prereq Bridge Building), but I opted to leave them as-is. For some reason the "Can/Can't Research (Yet)" labels are missing in this and other scenarios, but the advances are properly gated.