[MOD] Colonization: 2071

Ok cool, I am glad to have your help! :cool:

I see you already got an account on sourceforge and were added the the Colonization Mod Collection. The first step is to learn and get comfortable with how to use git and sourceforge, in order to easily download the latest version of the Colonization2071 mod branch from there to your pc. This may take a little while to learn at first, but once you master it you'll be able to easily "push" updates that you make on your pc onto the latest mod version hosted at sourceforge, and "pull" any further updates stored on sourceforge onto the local version on your pc. I think Nightingale was going to post a new tutorial on this soon [edit: initial version already up here:king::goodjob:). A good way to get started is to download SmartGit here, then read the SmartGit Intro and this good tutorial with a general Introduction to Git. Once you feel you're getting comfortable with the basics of it, try using SmartGit to "Clone" a copy of Colonization2071 mod branch from sourceforge onto your pc and run it for yourself. (see we told you there would be Clone Wars involved!:p)

In the meantime I will start putting together a megapack of scifi nif graphics I've been gathering and upload these for you soon. Fortunately I already have lots of good graphics gathered, so I think the best first task to work on will be to start adding these to the Units and Buildings in the mod. This will involve placing graphics into appropriate folders in Assets/Art folder, then editing the XML files in the Assets/XML/Art folder to link them to appropriate Units/Buildings, then testing them in game to see that they're showing up appropriately. So other good things to get familiar with are the basics of XML editing, the structure of the XML/Art files, and also download Nifskope and start trying it out to view some of the "nif" graphics used in the game.

Another great software for graphics modding is SageThumbs which will let you easily browse and view DDS files, which are the 2D graphics files used for things like backgrounds, buttons, Founding Father pics, etc. So if you download that you can also start to have a browse through the gigantic 2071 buttons pack in my sig. :scan:

PS Sure you are more than welcome to add the mod link to your sig. : borg : : scan : are my 2 favorite smilies on this site as you can tell :p
 
That account has read only access to Colonization 2071 though. Do I assume correctly that you want me to change that to write access? :)
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Sure why not, your signature looks fine & we can always revert if there are any unfortunate git accidents ;):nuke::p But for now, you can just focus on being able to Pull the latest version to your pc, then start making local edits to your copy and test them out to see them working in-game. Once you've incorporated your edits into a version that's running well & stable on your pc, it should be easy to learn to use smartgit to Push to sourceforge.

(BTW I know we had wanted to avoid keeping a built DLL there, but I think it may be too much for newer modders like PatriotNorwood to have to deal with rebuilding a DLL locally after each update. Do you think we could go back to keeping the most current 2071 DLL available on the 2071 branch in git?)
 
orlanth said:
Sure why not, your signature looks fine & we can always revert if there are any unfortunate git accidents ;):nuke::p
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Depending on what goes wrong, we can revert (which is a new commit to undo the old one) or make a new branch before the error and force that one as head, which completely remove the faulty commit from the log. The latter can cause issues and should primarily be used when committing files, which shouldn't be committed, such as adding hundreds of MBs by mistake.

I have experience in doing both.

orlanth said:
(BTW I know we had wanted to avoid keeping a built DLL there, but I think it may be too much for newer modders like PatriotNorwood to have to deal with rebuilding a DLL locally after each update. Do you think we could go back to keeping the most current 2071 DLL available on the 2071 branch in git?)
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I have made screenshots of how to compile and intend to add those to the wiki. I don't think it will be that hard to compile if you have a step by step guide.

However your idea is not bad because the situation is now different from what it was when the DLL was removed.

The issue was keeping the DLL up to date because it needed updating all the time. However since we started using branches in the submodules, we really only need to compile a new DLL when there is a new source release or changed yields. Presumably both are somewhat rare events.

On the other hand keeping it on git could give issues (as well as use disk space/bandwidth). Maybe release a zip file with just the DLL will do the trick.

Long term plan is to remove the hardcoded yields from the DLL. That will make it possible to make one DLL for all mods and people can just copy the DLL from last released M:C. However that is a long term plan.
 
I just had a new idea regarding DLL distribution. We can make a new git module just for compiled DLLs. That way we can easily delete the module and make a new one when the combined size of the old DLLs becomes too big and it will not take up bandwidth when cloning the mod itself. This will open up for adding DLLs for development, like when adding DOMAIN_SPACE.
 
That sounds fine, but it looks like the DLLs are actually quite small at around 4MB (& I think the one for M:C is in that git branch already), I wouldn't have expected it to create big size or bandwidth issues. Does it create an issue just because with frequent DLL updates, git would have to store previous versions in history?
 
:sleep:

I sense a problem here. Nobody committed anything to git for two months and it's not like this thread is overly active either. Two new people have showed up and are willing to mod and the result is the one man project turned into a 0 man project :confused:

What is preventing this mod from progressing?

I uploaded the DLL file for those who haven't figured out the compiler (yet?)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=529266
 
Hey Nightinggale,

I apologize for my absence, things have been fairly busy around here. I hope to get back into this soon. I haven't heard much from orlanth of recent, but I am sure he is still around. Again sorry for my unexplained activity.
 
PatriotNorwood said:
Again sorry for my unexplained activity.
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Now I'm really worried. I wrote about lack of activity and now you state you have unexplained activity
image.php


There is no reason to apologize for being busy with other tasks. That's a part of life and completely normal. What's not normal is absolutely no activity for two months. It would also appear that Orlanth appears to have been missing on the forum for a half a month. Maybe he too had some unexplainable activity
jail.gif
 
I'm getting an error when I try to activate the mod
it says "Error XML missionaryinfo not correct", something like that.
 
Nightinggale said:
No it's fine. That's the newest version, which is considered playable.

I'm clueless about the error message though. It sounds like incorrect XML files, but if you suffer from that, then why do they appear to work for other people :confused:
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Here's the thing I'm not sure where the mod directory is.
I might not have installed it right.
I put the mod in users/admin/documents/colonization/custommods/
and I don't know what else I'm supposed to do, because I don't want to bork the asset folders.
 
C:\Program Files\2K Games\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\Mods\

Alternately you should be able to put it in your install folder, mods folder, like above.

This tends to be a 'more stable' place to put it, as some mods can require this, for different reasons.

Whether this could cause problems for 2071 or any col mods out there I don't know, I just do it as standard practice any way.

but unless you have done something to the leader head file, it should not cause a problem, I am assuming this is an error at start up?

It looks like the MISSIONARY_FAIL is not a valid entry, which usually occurs because of a typo or some such, but again if you haven't messed with the files, everyone should experience this issue.

One of two things might have happened, corrupted download (which can happen once in a blue moon) or maybe putting it the documents folder is causing an issue where most would put it in the main install, but it would seem to me that this problem would more commonly arise if that were the case.

The simplest thing you can try as a hopeful punt is redownloading and installing in the hopes that it was just some byte that is out of whack from when you downloaded.
 
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