[MOD] Necro Cristi - Post-Apocalyptic! Zombies! Philosophy! - Warlords

[Colin]

NECRO CRISTI


EDIT 6/7/07: 0.1 proper now available at http://www.sendspace.com/file/g5d180

Mod Description:
Necro Cristi is a post-apocalyptic mod about the remnants of humanity trying to survive in the zombie-invested and nihilistic ruins of civilization. It brings together my love of post-apocalyptic films/books, philosophy, Alpha
Centauri, Utopianism/Dystopianism, and general sci-fi and horror geekiness.

Features:

An entirely redone tech tree focussing as much on the religious and political
development of mankind as on science and war. All new wonders and buildings as well of course.

Five new religions, all with different gameplay mechanics. Ensure your
survival with militant evangelism, apocalyptic nihilism, or worship of your
undead masters!

New civic system. Will you forge a new feudalism run by Merchant Princes, or
an Ecological Utopia?

8 unique factions (complete with art) representing the last of mankind. Prowl
the abandoned highways as Eves Forgotten Children, embrace the gothic
revivalism of the Zanzibar Dynasty, or attempt to restore order with Homeland Security.

Zombies replace barbarians! Live under the shadow of the growing undead
menace and prey the infection doesn't reach your own cities.

Post Apocalyptic soundtrack.


Screenshots:

Choosing a Faction. There will eventually be 8, each with 2 leaders representing different facets of that factions philosophy.

Part of the early tech tree. The techs are all done, but as you can see I'm still in the process of tying them all together.

The Civics screen. All in, although only those in the first two colums do anything meaningful yet. I wish I knew how to fix the last option falling off the edge in that somewhat unaesthetic way.

Status:
I am learning how to mod the xml files as I go along so progress is slow (finding time around 2 jobs and an upcoming PhD viva also plays its part), but with the help of the modding tutorials on this wonderful site I am getting
there. The tech tree and civic system are largely done, and half of the
factions are in place. I need to add in buildings, units and religion and
then I'll have a 0.1 release on my hands.

Assistance, Issues, etc:
At the moment I am enjoying learning how to play around with xml and art
files, but I'm sure there will come a time when I hit a brick wall. For now
though, moral support (and of course testing/suggestions once there has been a release) is more than enough. I would also appreciate any input on issues of copyright regarding images and music - as you can see from the first screenshot I am not creating my own graphics, so just how much flexibility is there for 'recycling' images grabbed from around the web?

 

[Colin]

<reserved>

 

[asioasioasio]

It might be great mod Good luck with it because this community needs good postapocalyptic mod

 

[ArneHD]

It might be great mod Good luck with it because this community needs good postapocalyptic mod

Yeah, the old one died quite horrably.

At any rate I will look forward to a release of this mod. it would certainly be an interesting play.

 

[Colin]

A quick progress update and a couple more screenies.

All 8 factions now in, each with 2 leaders. I am in the process of adding things like flavour, text, etc.

Technologies all in also.

Religions in and functioning (although they only act like vanilla religions at the moment).

Buildings half done, and I've finally managed to navigate around the xml enough to add my first unit (Did I mention I was a beginner at modding?).

Some more pics:

Meeting the neighbours

Religions in all their badly formatted glory!

So far I've only encountered one crash which I've been unable to fix. It's to do with making first contact with another civ. At the moment if this is done in the first couple of turns the game crashes. When meeting later everything plays out fine. If anyone has heard of anything like this before and knows of a possible solution, by all means let me know.

 

[woodelf]

Keep the updates coming. This does look cool.

 

[asioasioasio]

nice screeshot (and nice girl) keep the mod going on

I don't know what may cause this problem maybe something in diplomacy texts?

 

[Colin]

Still running into problems with the crash mentioned previously. I've managed to narrow it down to a specific technology (rather than first contact), but have reached a dead end. Here is a zip of the mod in its current state in case anyone with bug-removing abilities fancies having a crack:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/t0iope

Please note that even without the bug this is not really in a playable state. I mean, it is technically playable (as long as you don't research the technology in question), but still far short of even a beta release.

Some more info on the crash: When researching the technology 'Spirituality' about 95% of the time I am getting a crash to desktop. There are no error messages on startup, I've tried emptying the cache, playing with a variety of civs, pretty much everything I can think of but no joy.

Also, this is based on the Barebones mod, with spirituality replacing mysticism if that is of relevence. This never used to be an issue, and though I've tried retracing my steps I really can't see anything wrong.

I'd be grateful to anyone who could help here as I'm wary of continuing to develop the mod until this rather large bug has been squashed.

EDIT: The crash can also happen before the first technology is chosen, so doesn't seem to be just tied to Spirituality. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the civ4techinfos.xml, but I'm unsure which other files to check for a technology bug, especially one which seems to hit at random.

 

[ArneHD]

I think the problem is that you forgot to include the tech schema in the assets file (CIV4TechnologiesSchema.xml, also note that it has to be in the technologies file, as far as I know).

It needs to be there in order for the technologies to work. Just use the one included in the regular civ game (this applies for all other XML as well).

 

[Colin]

I tried adding the tech schema but it didn't seem to be the problem as I'm still getting the crash. Gah, this is driving me nuts.

 

[ParkCungHee]

OMG those Leaderheads look great.

 

[asioasioasio]

Maybe lack of TXT_cause crashs - try to type there anything

 

[Colin]

asioasioasio - do you mean having the actual text in the xml file (rather than a seperate xml file with all the tags for text in the game) might be causing a problem? I was under the impression this was done only to make translations easier, and found it needlessly time-consuming. Heck, I'm willing to try anything at this point though . . .

 

[asioasioasio]

I'm not sure about it - i saw in others mods that texts works well
but i'll make them in separate file

Try to type anything (evend three dots) in tags of civilopedia.

I checked technologies.xml and it doesn't seams to have bad ebtries)

 

[Colin]

Hmmm.

I tried making technology descriptions into TXT_KEY_TECH references, and also adding something in the civlopedia entry but the crash is still occurring. It's the seemingly random nature of it that is so frustrating - as it only sometimes occurs it's very difficult to track down where the problem is.

My only thought is that maybe it's nothing to do with technologies at all. I'll continue to investigate.

 

[asioasioasio]

for me technologies looks ok - sorry i don't have time to look in other files now, when i'll have it i might look for bug.

 

[Colin]

A couple more screenshots, just to show progress is being made.

About to take the Pale Hand capital

A technology in the civlopedia. It is my long term goal with this mod not just to provide a good gameplay experience but to tell a story too. One of the reasons I enjoyed Alpha Centauri so much, and FFH for civ for that matter, is that the world-building and narrative are given due attention:

Also a general question: At what stage in a mods development do people find it productive to download it? Do you need something you can enjoy as a reasonably stable game, or are you happy with something more unfinished to get a sense of where it's going, help with bugs, etc.? And should I move this to the modpacks forum when I do release it?

 

[asioasioasio]

There's no simple question for this

I like to play complited mod (or just in stable version)
But it's good idea to release it earlier for betatesting

 

[Colin]

More screenshots. I'm rather proud of my title screen:

The buildings are coming along nicely too:

Real life means taking a little break over the weekend unfortunately, but a beta release creeps inexorably closer . . .

 

[darkedone02]

The Civics and the Religion names need some space to fit it right...