[MOD] MongooseMod

[avain]

Congrats on the release, LunarMongoose!

 

[LunarMongoose]

Alright, it looks like I'm not actually getting a subforum (sigh), so I went ahead and updated the top post. It will now tell you the most important things you need to know when using the mod, although it doesn't cover everything yet. I also fixed the broken screenshot links, which got messed up when I went through and organized the Civ4 files on my site where they're actually being hosted (sorry about that).

Also noting for the record that the Leader Cycling description was originally posted on 6 March 2010 along with the second set of screenshots, since the top post's last-updated date no longer reflects that.

Cmon guys, 80 downloads and only one response? Don't let Avain have all the glory! Post your thoughts, opinions and epic experiences today! ... Or tomorrow! Any time this week is fine really!

 

[Highwayhoss]

Cmon guys, 80 downloads and only one response? Don't let Avain have all the glory! Post your thoughts, opinions and epic experiences today! ... Or tomorrow! Any time this week is fine really!

I downloaded it and went to check it out...or tried to but it keeps freezing and/or crashing.

 

[LunarMongoose]

I downloaded it and went to check it out...or tried to but it keeps freezing and/or crashing.

Thanks for trying it. I'm not sure what to tell you; I just downloaded and opened the zip, verified it's identical to the original files, and successfully launched the game with the unzipped mod folder, so the zip itself isn't corrupted. The mod has been heavily used on both Windows XP and Vista without any issues, though we haven't tested it on Win7 yet.

Is it crashing on launch or during a game? Is anyone else having a problem?

 

[Highwayhoss]

Thanks for trying it. I'm not sure what to tell you; I just downloaded and opened the zip, verified it's identical to the original files, and successfully launched the game with the unzipped mod folder, so the zip itself isn't corrupted. The mod has been heavily used on both Windows XP and Vista without any issues, though we haven't tested it on Win7 yet.

Is it crashing on launch or during a game? Is anyone else having a problem?

I am using Windows 7; it usually freezes or crahses when I am browsing the Sevopedia.

 

[Blizz]

looks like a great mod, but there is a problem. when you select Putin as a leader when game starts it shown as Peter, same as Suleiman shown as Mehmed etc...

 

[avain]

Ok, I started up the mod, played a bit and checked stuff. (I had zero problems like crashing, btw.)

Beware: All this is based on a first impression, not a thorough play-test!

General impression: professional mod, it certainly feels you gave your best here LunarMongoose!

What I liked:
- runs smooth and feels smooth
- good concepts (although didn't have time to check much in practice)
- nice Stone Age - I'm also thinking about adding a Stone Age to my mod, but here's the catch: Just how interesting is a Tech that gives +1 Health or +1 Happiness? It is realistic I agree, but still feels it needs spicing up.
- nice new graphics

Minor things:
- I know this could be a touchy issue, but I didn't care that much about the intro music. You are a far better programmer than musician, LunarMongoose
- loading screen has pink area at the bottom (most probably made for wide screen?)
- couple of TXT missing ( e.g. TXT_KEY_CIVIC_TRIBAL_LAW_STRATEGY, Training ground text, etc...)
- Wood Working tech. - twice the text: "Can build a Lumberyard"
- I think Great Person bars are better aligned in BUG mod
- didn't find autoplay (although it's not needed for a normal play I agree)

All in all, good work
Just don't be so secretive, release the damn source People who don't give credit will continue their sinful ways anyway, and I never could understand what's this "I just don't feel like releasing my source code just yet" attitude.

 

[avain]

looks like a great mod, but there is a problem. when you select Putin as a leader when game starts it shown as Peter, same as Suleiman shown as Mehmed etc...

I'd assume it's a feature (Leader Cycling)

 

[Blizz]

I'd assume it's a feature (Leader Cycling)

thanks for the answer

one more question, what is darkmongoose level, is it balanced level for the mod or is it more difficult level than vanilla noble or even deity?

 

[avain]

BTW, LunarMongoose, you are using some not optimized units, e.g. immortal ( I hope you like my bumping )

 

[xarver]

For some reason when trying to open the zip file for your mod I get a "uncompressed folder is invalid" error. I've tried downloading it twice.

 

[EmperorFool]

Looks pretty cool so far (just got started). Avain stole the bugs I was about to report, but not all of them.

• I started in the Ancient era (default), and I was only getting 2/turn. The Cradle showed +8, so I don't know what happened. I went along for a bit and ran into a couple werewolves. I defeated them both, but when I killed the second one my civilization was destroyed.
• I just popped a hut and got a Slinger . . . in my capital. Did it activate a tribal village sleeper cell?
• The GP and GG bars highlight when you hover, but nothing happens when you click or hover. You can use screen.setHitTest() to deactivate them. You can get an example usage in CvMainInterface for sure.
• Event Signs are displayed in unexplored territory.
• The path-finding algorithm should take damage from terrain into account. If it has a choice between Plains and Desert where both provide the exact same path distance, the Plains should be chosen. Hill vs. Jungle (both require 2MP) is tougher since the Jungle provides +25% more defense.

 

[EmperorFool]

When drawing the outline for a Tribe, it shows the full square city outline that you won't get until the first border pop. It should draw a + formation instead.

Barbarian animal names have numbers which you might want to remove. I don't know about other barb units yet.

 

[EmperorFool]

Animals and Cultural Borders

Animals can enter your land and destroy cities? Might want to mention that on a Things That Are Very Different From Vanilla page.

Edit: I founded a tribal settlement next to a Panther, and I see now that it was not booted from my borders. Perhaps this is a bug?

Barbarian Spawning

Has the "barbs won't spawn within 2 tiles of any unit" rule changed? What is the new rule? I had a unit blocking spawns as below and a barb spear spawned in an area that would be off-limits in Vanilla:

​

 

[LunarMongoose]

I am using Windows 7; it usually freezes or crahses when I am browsing the Sevopedia.

The Sevopedia could still use another big update, which I've been meaning to do for a couple years now actually. I guess the urgency of that will greatly increase if I start crashing too when I upgrade to Windows 7, which I was planning to do fairly soon here. Thanks for the report in any case.

Just how interesting is a Tech that gives +1 Health or +1 Happiness? It is realistic I agree, but still feels it needs spicing up.

The health and happiness starting values for cities are lower than normal, at least on DarkMongoose, so you need those Stone Age techs to compensate, basically. They make the difference between city size limits of 2, 3, 4, etc which at low numbers are significant, especially since you can't actually harvest any luxury resources until early Ancient.

- I know this could be a touchy issue, but I didn't care that much about the intro music. You are a far better programmer than musician, LunarMongoose

Eh, fair enough I guess. I personally love that track, but it was mainly chosen b/c it was the closest thing to the vanilla Baba Yetu music in spirit that I had written. I was meaning to go back and update it at some point, but I will probably stick with the same basic material musically.

- loading screen has pink area at the bottom (most probably made for wide screen?)

Correct. The way Civ4 scales images in the loading screen is very complicated and I had to backwards-engineer the formula, but the gist of it is that if you use a 4x3 image that would never show something on the bottom with any possible resolution, then it will expand or compress the image vertically on widescreen resolutions which made the buildings in the picture look terrible. So I went with one that keeps the correct proportions but bands on the bottom in 4:3. I could've used a black band instead of a pink one though I suppose.

- couple of TXT missing ( e.g. TXT_KEY_CIVIC_TRIBAL_LAW_STRATEGY, Training ground text, etc...)

Yes, I'm aware... There are actually quite a lot of them still missing. It's all Strategy and to a lesser extent Pedia tags, but I just haven't had time to add them all yet. Low priority and I'm the only developer heh.

- Wood Working tech. - twice the text: "Can build a Lumberyard"

That is because there are two versions of the Lumberyard: the one the Gatherer suicides to build, and the one the Worker builds normally without suiciding. The resulting tile improvements are identical either way, but because of how the XML works I couldn't make a single Lumberyard entry work for both of them.

- I think Great Person bars are better aligned in BUG mod

I haven't looked at the BUG mod in a long time so you might be right; that's just what I came up with on my own. There is extra vertical space alotted for the espionage spending slider which doesn't appear until later however, so don't forget to factor that in.

- didn't find autoplay (although it's not needed for a normal play I agree)

It's deliberately disabled for the release version of the mod.

I'd assume it's a feature (Leader Cycling)

Yep. There is no way to directly control or modify the game creation lobby screen so I had to have it just override your leader selection.

one more question, what is darkmongoose level, is it balanced level for the mod or is it more difficult level than vanilla noble or even deity?

Ah yes, sorry, that's on my to-do list to add to the top post description. DarkMongoose is fairly simliar to Deity. It is a bit easier in most regards and a bit harder in a few others, but overall easier. It is heavily customized versus the vanilla difficulties for use with the mod, and it is what we always play on. I definitely need to add one or two more custom difficulty settings that are easier, but I didn't want to mess wih the vanilla ones at all so they were left as-is (except for the necessary Goody Hut changes).

HugeMongoose is very similar to Huge, it just has a much higher default player count which affects a few things later in-game, and uses the SuperHuge dimensions that Perfect World has always remapped Huge into anyway, but will apply them to all maps. I also found yesterday that a least one vanilla map, Maze, doesn't work with the extra world size at the moment so I will have to fix that one up and maybe a few others.

EternalMongoose is an 1800-turns setting, otherwise similar to Marathon.

PerfectMongoose is my slightly-modified version of Perfect World, obviously.

BTW, LunarMongoose, you are using some not optimized units, e.g. immortal ( I hope you like my bumping )

Thanks for the heads up, I'll look into it for the next version.

For some reason when trying to open the zip file for your mod I get a "uncompressed folder is invalid" error. I've tried downloading it twice.

No clue. Sorry heh.

[*]I started in the Ancient era (default), and I was only getting 2/turn. The Cradle showed +8, so I don't know what happened.

It obsoletes in the Prehistoric tech that unlocks the Palace, which you will have if you do an Ancient start. You have to ignore the Cradle and immediately build your free Palace if you do a later-era start basically.

I went along for a bit and ran into a couple werewolves. I defeated them both, but when I killed the second one my civilization was destroyed.

Umm... you mean before you founded your first city, or after?

[*]I just popped a hut and got a Slinger . . . in my capital. Did it activate a tribal village sleeper cell?

That's one of the more minor changes that's in the Change Log but not in the MongooseSDK description yet. Yes, getting units out of huts will spawn them at your capital now, or if you don't have a capital yet then at your first city. This is to prevent having to escort them back from distant exploration areas if they're non-combat units, and to prevent combat units out of distant huts from being able to assist in getting more huts more quickly. It also eliminates any extra Unit Supply costs, and gives you city defenders that are immediately in place, to relieve you to build more exploration units.

[*]The GP and GG bars highlight when you hover, but nothing happens when you click or hover. You can use screen.setHitTest() to deactivate them. You can get an example usage in CvMainInterface for sure.

The GP bar opens your highest GP-point-producing city if you click on it, but only if you have a city producing GP points. I don't think my GG bar does anything though, so thanks for the deactivation tip.

[*]Event Signs are displayed in unexplored territory.

Hmm... I wasn't sure if they would do that or not and didn't have time to test it, but I might rather have it that way so they will at least exist later.

[*]The path-finding algorithm should take damage from terrain into account. If it has a choice between Plains and Desert where both provide the exact same path distance, the Plains should be chosen. Hill vs. Jungle (both require 2MP) is tougher since the Jungle provides +25% more defense.

I assumed the vanilla code already accounted for feature damage since feature damage is a vanilla stat. I don't remember off the top of my head whether I added terrain damage support to that part of the code; I did mirror feature damage almost everywhere but maybe that one slipped through. Or maybe the vanilla code doesn't account for feature damage in the first place. However it does mean the barbarians frequently come in wounded, which for the higher barb setting on DarkMongoose plus the Raging Barbs setting we use, that effect is pretty nice heh. But yeah I'll look into it.

When drawing the outline for a Tribe, it shows the full square city outline that you won't get until the first border pop. It should draw a + formation instead.

That's been a bug with Chalid's SlowBorders mod ever since he released it several years ago. I didn't immediately know how to fix it and it's only a minor display issue so I left it alone, but again yes, that could stand to be fixed.

Barbarian animal names have numbers which you might want to remove. I don't know about other barb units yet.

All units for all civs have numbering, which is interesting and useful and intended. No plans to change it atm.

Animals can enter your land and destroy cities? Might want to mention that on a Things That Are Very Different From Vanilla page.

It's in the MongooseSDK AnimalMod description. They are allowed to enter city borders now, but only do so as part of their random movement. If there is a city defender they will probably lock-on to it, but if there isn't they may or may not randomly walk into the city tile itself. If they do it gets destroyed.

Edit: I founded a tribal settlement next to a Panther, and I see now that it was not booted from my borders. Perhaps this is a bug?

See above.

Has the "barbs won't spawn within 2 tiles of any unit" rule changed? What is the new rule? I had a unit blocking spawns as below and a barb spear spawned in an area that would be off-limits in Vanilla:

Yes, it has. They are now allowed to spawn in all fogged tiles, regardless of proximity to their own units or to yours. This was necessary to allow very high barb density settings in DarkMongoose and/or the Raging Barbs setting to function properly, as they were not able to spawn more than a certain relatively-low amount generally without this change.

Thanks for all the comments guys!

 

[EmperorFool]

The Sevopedia could still use another big update, which I've been meaning to do for a couple years now actually.

I've added several features to the Sevopedia in BUG, and it's quite separate from BUG except two checks for option settings which you can easily remove. It has an index page (rewritten from the one in the community) that is very handy, especially since the lists aren't sorted alphabetically in MM. You might want to swipe it.

It obsoletes in the Prehistoric tech that unlocks the Palace, which you will have if you do an Ancient start. You have to ignore the Cradle and immediately build your free Palace if you do a later-era start basically.

Ah, I don't remember if the +8 was only in the hover or in the list. Probably in the hover; I didn't know about the swap to Capital at the time.

Umm... you mean before you founded your first city, or after?

Quite a bit after I founded my first city, and the unit was about 10 tiles away from said city. Now, one possibility I've considered given that the city was not defended is that on the same turn (merely a coincidence) some other animal destroyed my city. Since there's no unit death message, it's possible that the normal "Washington has been destroyed" message is skipped in favor of "Your civilization has been destoyed." Of course, I started a new game since then before I started keeping a list of bugs.

[re: Event Signs] Hmm... I wasn't sure if they would do that or not and didn't have time to test it, but I might rather have it that way so they will at least exist later.

If you save the sign data as BUG does, you can display them in the PlotRevealed event. However, I'm guessing you don't save the data since there's no option to hide/show signs and thus no point.

I assumed the vanilla code already accounted for feature damage since feature damage is a vanilla stat.

I wouldn't be surprised if it skipped that check.

That's been a bug with Chalid's SlowBorders mod ever since he released it several years ago. I didn't immediately know how to fix it and it's only a minor display issue so I left it alone, but again yes, that could stand to be fixed.

The code that draws your current city borders and where the Settler is is in the SDK, perhaps CvGame but I forget. It's where the code that draws suggested plot outlines is located, the little blue circles.

It's in the MongooseSDK AnimalMod description.

I totally meant to read that before my first game. Yeah. Totally.

They are now allowed to spawn in all fogged tiles, regardless of proximity to their own units or to yours.

By fogged do you check all players, even AIs? If not, does that mean barbs can spawn in AI cultural borders?

So far it's pretty fun. It's nice to play a variation of the vanilla game without being too different.

In my new game I have Fishing Boats on Fish and Shrimp, but I am not seeing health from them in any cities--not even the ones working them. Is there a new requirement not listed? One city has Pigs only, and the hover shows "+1 from Resources." Where's my sea food? I made tartar sauce!!

Edit: I see now that Pottery enables them, but this isn't shown on the pedia page for those resources nor in the hovers for them or Pottery itself. The only way to figure this out is to look at the pedia page for Pottery.

 

[LunarMongoose]

I've added several features to the Sevopedia in BUG, and it's quite separate from BUG except two checks for option settings which you can easily remove. It has an index page (rewritten from the one in the community) that is very handy, especially since the lists aren't sorted alphabetically in MM. You might want to swipe it.

If my version is causing a crash in Win7 then yeah I will definitely have to do something about it. I know what your version of the Sevopedia does and I like some of it, however I've always been philosophically opposed to having an Index page heh. The lack of alphabetical order is one of many things I mean to address in a big update, along with adding the Pottery thing below. About that: it's the XML "TechCityTrade" value, which Pedias have never shown before on the resource pages, though obviously it should be added yeah.

It's intended to require Pottery though, since the Fishing Nets still give you a greatly-improved tile to work; the actual health resource is meant to come a little later, so you don't get both benefits all at once.

(I'm still the author of the original BTS version of the Sevopedia you know, so it'd be great to reassert myself on that front; I've got a lot of ideas, just not sure if I want to bother lol. Oh well, we'll see.)

Quite a bit after I founded my first city, and the unit was about 10 tiles away from said city. Now, one possibility I've considered given that the city was not defended is that on the same turn (merely a coincidence) some other animal destroyed my city. Since there's no unit death message, it's possible that the normal "Washington has been destroyed" message is skipped in favor of "Your civilization has been destoyed." Of course, I started a new game since then before I started keeping a list of bugs.

I believe the City Destroyed message is indeed skipped in favor of the Civ Destroyed message, yes. There's also an animal in MM, the Cheetah, that has base speed 3, so they love to run in from off-screen and cause unexpected problems.

If you save the sign data as BUG does, you can display them in the PlotRevealed event. However, I'm guessing you don't save the data since there's no option to hide/show signs and thus no point.

Interesting. No I don't, and yes I should. Will be in a future version.

I wouldn't be surprised if it skipped that check.

Unfortunately, neither would I.

The code that draws your current city borders and where the Settler is is in the SDK, perhaps CvGame but I forget. It's where the code that draws suggested plot outlines is located, the little blue circles.

Yeah I figured there was probably a way to fix it, just never bothered to look into it to be honest. I'll get this done in the next update, which will address all the easy-to-address stuff pretty soon.

By fogged do you check all players, even AIs? If not, does that mean barbs can spawn in AI cultural borders?

Yes it checks all players, except the barb player, so AI and human vision will block them but barbarian vision will not.

 

[EmperorFool]

I've always been philosophically opposed to having an Index page heh.

Are you Amish or something? I guess we all have our idiosyncrasies, but personal preference shouldn't hamper your players' enjoyment of the mod.

It's intended to require Pottery though, since the Fishing Nets still give you a greatly-improved tile to work.

Oh it's quite logical, and I like it. I noticed my cities had access some time later and guessed it was a tech that enabled it; Pottery was my first guess.

(I'm still the author of the original BTS version of the Sevopedia you know.)

I didn't know that. I assumed it was Sevo given its name, but we've already established that you're an odd bird.

I believe the City Destroyed message is indeed skipped in favor of the Civ Destroyed message, yes.

That was probably it then. It hadn't had its first border pop yet, so a 2 move animal could have been 2 tiles SE/SW from the city and swooped in. I personally don't think an animal should be able to destroy a settlement, but that's just me. In any case, that animals can enter your lands and destroy your cities should probably be fairly prominent in the README.

The only complaint I have with the mod so far isn't really a problem with the mod at all: it's that it doesn't have BULL or BUG. I know, I'm obviously partial to my mods, and I'm not so arrogant as to believe every modder should take the time to merge in BUG. But there are some key features of BULL that I find hard to live without, primarily the extra city bar hover info. Given that your target player segment is multiplayer, swiping that one feature from BULL's setCityBarHelp() would fit perfectly. With it you rarely have to enter the city screen, and when time is critical, avoiding that screen is quite helpful.

Quick question: Desert causes damage to units. Am I going to #$&% myself by settling in it?

 

[jdog5000]

Awesome! Glad you got all your hard work posted!

 

[EmperorFool]

WHAT THIS MOD IS NOT

A fantasy or scifi mod.

Werewolves . . . Okay, that's cute. They're strength 3 so no big deal.

Strength 20 regenerating Jungle Sandworms . . . Seriously?