MGE Gold versus ToT

[Cassius Critzer]

Wow I have to express my disappointment in the aesthetics of ToT. It looks gimmicky and cheap versus the clean interface of MGE Gold. Not only that but it seems like they were trying to halt modding by not including an interface to directly alter unit stats. My initial response was "Yuck" who made this ?

Is there any advantage to it?

At least Civ 2 MGE Gold looks like Civ 3. The terrain in ToT looks cartoonish. The units are abysmal versus the sometimes extraordinary appearance of units in MGE.

No map editor? Weird.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Check out some of the ToT mods over at the Scenario league. Especially the ToTPP ones....

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Hey Erika, I admire your work on units. Obviously you are very talented, passionate about making units, optimistic that they some day will be seen in a scenario or mod, as well as having a delightful sense of humor. I can run ToT on my Android but I can't run the unofficial patch for it. So any ToT scenarios on large maps where you are making more than 255 cities then won't work for me.

The unit.gif file for MGE is smaller in the matrix so I gather that this is one benefit of ToT as you can declare many more units versus trying to sacrifice as few slots as possible with generic labeling of infantry or tanks or whatever.

I'd very much like to do a postmodern scenario of say the North Korean crisis with realistic numbers of units for the US, the EU wing of NATO, Russia, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan with some of those controlled together like China/NK, Japan/SK, and then have NK do a launch in which a nuclear missile doesn't splash in the Sea of Japan, but goes awry and hits a Japanese city. Then a counterstrike by President Trump, a massive movement of conventional forces, the EU reneges on their NATO commitments, Russia and China begin counteroffensives in India and Eastern Europe, ...then Iran seizes control of the Caliphate and attacks in the Middle East as all the major players are focused on Asia and Europe. Israel stands alone.

https://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id=north-korea
Global Firepower has general unit strengths for diverse unit types, and these could be scaled when making a mod/scenario. Then there are think tank statistical estimates too.

NK is such a rogue state that it really is a nightmare scenario with an unintentional missile strike due to guidance or loss of telemetry or whatever....or pure insanity and brinksmanship.

My generation daily was concerned about a nuclear holocaust. Today that's become a faded memory post the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the USSR collapse, massive economic change in China, etc.

It could literally happen any second. Should such an error happen, say triggered by the earthquake like damage caused at NK's nuclear facility, then they would be tempted to use their EMP satellites (supposedly they have three) in order to cripple the US infrastructure such to imperil the raising of sufficient ground forces from being mustered. Plus you have the issue of low quality of millenial men physical fitness based upon Pentagon estimates meaning the EU wing of NATO is desperately essential for invasion of NK.

 

[Noire Leblanc]

On the subject of their differences: I fully agree that TOT looks worse initially, and the removal of the Editor menu is initially a pain as well (especially its Events Editor, which I substantially preferred to text files most of the time.)

However, when making a detailed modpack or scenario, chances are pretty good that you'll have to modify rules.txt in ways the editor may not allow, or edit game.txt, labels.txt, pedia.txt, and so on yourself anyway, and the ingame Editor is not particularly good for graphics work (although it does at least ensure you get the right palette, a troublesome thing on modern systems when people have 24- or 32-bit color and have forgotten or even been born after the days of 4, 16, or 256.)

Test of Time, even without the TOTPP, allows you to use sections like UNITS_ADVANCED and CIVILIZE2 to set up "unique units" and to remove once-hardcoded unit abilities like the Engineer and Spy improvements, and even civilization-specific unique tech trees; its events system is more robust, if harder to deal with, and you have the advantage of using 2 or 4 maps (it doesn't like 3, even though it's supposedly possible.) A mod for TOT can go into greater detail and isn't that much harder to make if you're used to doing things the manual way.

In short, Test of Time is a right pain in the buttocks but it's more powerful than MGE once you get used to it.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Yes, I did some reading and people didn't like ToT when it came out. Even though I enjoyed the basic Civ 2, I was unaware of ToT except for hearing the name on occasion, then went straight to Civ 3 and left Civ 2 behind.

What the fanbase did was fundamentally toss the graphics in the ToT engine and did a wholesale replacement since the initial graphics were horrendous. Compare the basic units in ToT to what has been modded and you'll note a tenfold improvement.

Since it is so dated then I can't find the standard sort of fan articles explaining how to mod basic things for ToT like graphic differences, multiple maps, editing beyond the the menu, etc. Much of it is obscure. I'll bet these things were obsessively discussed in now defunct fan sites. I've noticed lots of dead links which is natural based upon the age of the game.

Because I'm editing the files on an emulator not on a windows pc then I am also hindered. For example I used Photoshop since version 3 (27 years ago...eons ago), then Paint Shop Pro, then Gimp up to a few years ago, so doing some graphic editing is not new to me, but Gimp doesn't work at all on my tablet but locks up. I may have to actually use Gimp online or try to edit on a Mac, upload what I edit back to a cloud, then download it back to my tablet.
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There isn't an explanation of how to convert MGE graphics using whatever protocols to ToT and vice versa. Many of the current artists are using ToT and it means cutting and pasting from their work to MGE.

But then since the unofficial patch ToTPP is essential due to breaking the 255 city limit, that is what is currently my roadblock since that won't apply on an Android tablet. Civ Unlimited will patch though which is peculiar. Who knows if ToTPP will ever be worked on again too?

Ultimately I may be able to mod basic elements like parameters only on the tablet and just play scenarios that don't use huge maps and more than 255 cities. It's still enjoyable.

If you are a tablet user or an iPad or iPhone user, then Civ 2 still is remarkable since it's a superior strategy game to what is available.

I'm chomping at the bit because the Wine emulator is reporting 35 beta testers got Civ 3 to operate. Unlike Civ 2 it needs Windows 95 while Civ 2 used Win 3.1. You can get Civ 3 to work on a paid emulator but it probably won't work on my older tablet due to its aging OS.

Edit
MGE folks can now have more than 255 cities. I tested this in the most rudimentary fashion by creating 265 cities thirty minutes ago. See this post which was buried in the forum from back in 2005.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ed-on-an-android-system.625959/#post-14965663

My plan is to test it rigorously over the next week and report back.

 

[Noire Leblanc]

From my work in converting the old FW Mars Now scenario into ToT, the only real difference in UNITS.GIF itself is that the Test of Time sprites can be taller. You can cut and paste from an MGE units.gif file into a TOT one but you have to do it one row at a time so you can account for the different height. I suppose I *could* go break out my programming on a day off and try to set up a way to do that automatically... Also gotta make sure to disable animated units. (And in my case to resist attempting to convert old *.SHP format graphics for Tiberian Sun or Red Alert 2 to work as animated units in TOT.)

Also, have you tried patching the game elsewhere first and then moving the copy onto the tablet? That might be a way around your emulator's problem.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

I no longer have an emulator issue with MGE. See my last edit of post five. All MGE folks can now combine some dated information made in a forum post back in 2005 in.conjunction with Civ Unlimited launching first to bootstrap civ2.exe.

But yes, if I wanted to focus on ToT and utilize ToTPP as a patch then one could load on a pc, use the port on an android so it's basically a drive and copy the patched ToT to the tablet. The problem is if the patch bootstraps the exe then the emulator still needs to recognize that it's valid code and allow it to run without faulting. The latest limbo emulator may work, or winulator, or the latest version of Wine,but those won't run on my OS. I'm stuck with getting ExaGear to work which is an earlier Wine version that will work on my Nook HD, or finding a techhead who can figure out why dosbox clones can't setup Win 3.11 and won't load (it works for half of users) which would then allow Civ 2 to directly run. There may be mouse driver issues with the tablet too.

I think basically that nine to eleven units could be altered in the vanilla units.gif by say adding in some ToT graphics from say Erika's work or others, would not be more than a couple hours of work at most, but could be as little as 30 minutes, and then a fantastic resource would be around in the download section. From that point a proper compete unit.gif could generically be used from 4000 BC to 2000 AD.

Lots of people might like a ToT units.gif for MGE in the medieval, industrial,.or modern age but noting the smaller matrix limit. It's great to include every unique unit but mostly that is widow dressing versus a flag identifying them as civs. Sometimes a significant technological advantage say like in the 1st Gulf War and tank battles and range. But then, there is no range in Civ 2 as there is in Civ 3. In Civ 3 you can send a missile or even a trebuchet projectile a certain range versus attacking the next square, thus there was some tactics involved in manuevering to get a kill shot. So I guess in Civ 2 you would alter one tank's movement rate and stats to simulate driving which is NOT the same thing at all as range.

Read that post #5 carefully. In the link elsewhere, Skyer was an assembler programmer and increased the MGE matrix from 60 something to 80 something! That is very significant. Basically he flipped a swittch so many more icons could be read from the units.gif.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Fairline back in 2012 describes the reverse process.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/graphics-editing-question.464445/