Modified Scenarios Workshop

[techumseh]

If I did, then I'm sorry for it, Gapetit.

 

[gapetit]

If I did, then I'm sorry for it, Gapetit.

I think we are here to relax and have a good time, sharing what we like. Nothing happens. I understood it as just a misunderstanding in the interpretation of what I wrote. It happens to me too. So let's go to the interesting topic. I'm temporarily uploading my conversion version of one of the Civ-2 classics by Catfish. And surely I will give more definition to some of the icons and take the mine from the Techumseh version. It is very cool. Most of my conversions are very good because I have spent many years modifying and adding things from talented people. And there I also include Techunseh.

 

[techumseh]

Thanks Gapetit. To illustrate what I'm talking about, here is the units file from Seize the Crown. This is a superb scenario, very well suited to a multi-player game, but the units (and terrain and cities and icons etc.) are hopelessly dated. Unfortunately, the scenario is now largely forgotten.

I'm willing to take on the graphic conversion if you aren't keen on it, but some help would be welcome. Gareth and Tanelorn as well, if you're game.

 

[Fairline]

Yeah certainly. I think between Tanelorn and me we have most of the units covered already. For some reason Seize the Crown was one of the few 'recognised' MGE scenarios I never played. By the looks of it we need dark age through to 1200-ish units?

EDIT: 1139-1189 BCE units needed apparently

 

[gapetit]

Thanks Gapetit. To illustrate what I'm talking about, here is the units file from Seize the Crown. This is a superb scenario, very well suited to a multi-player game, but the units (and terrain and cities and icons etc.) are hopelessly dated. Unfortunately, the scenario is now largely forgotten.

I'm willing to take on the graphic conversion if you aren't keen on it, but some help would be welcome. Gareth and Tanelorn as well, if you're game.

View attachment 560008

I remember that was chosen the best scenario the year of its creation. And it was always highly valued for its playability and emotion. But as with many other scenarios, there were no units. And you can have the best scenario in the world, but if you don't have an artist to generate the characters, certainly for me, you don't have a conversion to ToT. Better played in FW or MGE. If you realize, most of the scenarios passed to ToT that I upload, coincide with the times of which there are units of Fairline or Tanelorn.

Yeah certainly. I think between Tanelorn and me we have most of the units covered already. For some reason Seize the Crown was one of the few 'recognised' MGE scenarios I never played. By the looks of it we need dark age through to 1200-ish units?

EDIT: 1139-1189 BCE units needed apparently

I tried to modify the units of both for this scenario years ago, and abandoned the project because it did not have the quality that the scenario deserved: There were Irish and different kinds of uniforms and so on. And I did not find the inspiration to finish it.

You can learn many things ... but drawing well is complicated.

 

[techumseh]

Wow, I get it. I wish you had said that in the first place. I appreciate your efforts very much. Maybe our outstanding artists can fill the gap.

 

[Fairline]

I've made a start on adding to Petit's unit set, with the added incentive that I get to play a scenario from a top FW/MGE designer for the first time. I'm really not sure why I never played this, as I played John Ellis's other scenarios 100 years war, Colonies and Bonaparte to death.

 

[gapetit]

I've made a start on adding to Petit's unit set, with the added incentive that I get to play a scenario from a top FW/MGE designer for the first time. I'm really not sure why I never played this, as I played John Ellis's other scenarios 100 years war, Colonies and Bonaparte to death.

Great news Fairline. And what makes it more bearable than the last update of Windows 10 took my laptop to a continuous restart. It's already resolved, but at least I've lost the latest mods and game install. I hope to be operational again in a short time.

I had started the Cold War Flash Point game, and the beginning couldn't have been better. The quality of the graphics enhances it, and the beginning, playing like the Warsaw Pact, couldn't be more exciting. The counterattack was intense, but unfortunately after losing several cities and being a good target the border units, I won too many units by events ... which forces me to think about changes or divide the events according to which side is played. Although I have also thought of locating the borders in territory that is impassable for airplanes, so that only ground units can destroy them, which ensures that changes only occur with the advance of troops in the territories. Let's see how it works.

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi all,

Kobayashi’s "The Rape of Nations" scenario has been updated with new graphics and to run with ToTPP. It can be downloaded from the CivFanatics download section located here.

This is a great little scenario which I’ve enjoyed over the years. There was already a conversion to ToT for this scenario done back in 2016 but based on the original graphics which were a little dated by today’s standards and I felt didn't do it justice. I hope the author doesn't mind I took the liberty to update it with a new set of graphics (under a new download thread).

 

[gapetit]

Hi all,

Kobayashi’s "The Rape of Nations" scenario has been updated with new graphics and to run with ToTPP. It can be downloaded from the CivFanatics download section located here.

This is a great little scenario which I’ve enjoyed over the years. There was already a conversion to ToT for this scenario done back in 2016 but based on the original graphics which were a little dated by today’s standards and I felt didn't do it justice. I hope the author doesn't mind I took the liberty to update it with a new set of graphics (under a new download thread).

Great contribution

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

I hope the author doesn't mind I took the liberty to update it with a new set of graphics

Lordy, I still remember this thread.

Ironic who won out once ToT became the standard.

 

[Fairline]

Lordy, I still remember this thread.

Ironic who won out once ToT became the standard.

*Cringes* - In my defense I was ****-posting in that thread because Kobayashi had taken it upon himself to denigrate anyone who was making isometric units in Nemo-style in other threads, but seemingly without having a laugh about it.... I should have kept my trap shut and let him get on with it.

 

[rumpoled]

Sorry to be a pain but i tried to run the download for the Rape of Nations version by Tootall_2012 but the Rules.txt file in the download is the same as the Events.txt file, as in the text it is. So when i run the scenario it has the same unit names as the Vanilla Civ2 TOT main files, because there is no valid Rules.txt for the scenario in the download. I really want to play this scenario.

 

[techumseh]

Ahh, those were the days! Even 'old tons o' fun' chimed in to straighten everyone out. Great thread!

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi rumpoled,

My apologies, there was an error in my events.bat file which when run replaced the rules.txt with one of the events.txt file. I ran this bat file just before zipping up the scenario package and didn't properly test it to confirm it work properly, hence the reason why the rules file was the same as the events file in the zip.

As such, I've corrected the bat file and re-uploaded the scenario with the proper rules.txt file. Once again you should be able to download the scenario here.

I hope you enjoy Kobayashi’s scenario as much as I did.

Note: the bat file was primarily created at the last minute to help those players who wanted to play a MP game so that they didn't have to manually switch the event files.

 

[rumpoled]

Thats fine, thankyou.

 

[gapetit]

Well seen rumpoled. Thank you for the quick Tootall resolution, but I have another doubt with .scn: I always modify with hex editing following Catfish's Tot conversion guide (http://users.tpg.com.au/jpwbeest/jp_conversion.htm): point 5:

5. The Converted Scenario Crashes the Game

With CivConverter 1.4 beta, the conversion process is far from perfect and on occasions you may find yourself with a converted scenario that crashes the game. I am aware of two causes that are directly attributable to CivConverter:

1. Corrupt Labels File: As stated in section 3.3, partially written labels.txt files (created when CivConverter crashes) will crash ToT if used with the converted scenario. Remove labels.txt from the original scenario's directory and run CivConverter again. Convert the file manually, as per section 4.
2. Corrupt Data in the SCN File: There are a number of scenarios around that, when converted to ToT, will crash the game during the first turn of play (normally during the AI's move or when the Build menu is accessed). Examples of these include Bonaparte II by John Ellis, and 2194 Days of War by Captain Nemo and Alex the Magnificent. This is not caused by the presence of x3 city objectives, as has been stated many times elsewhere (including CivConverter's readme file), but by a corrupt table found at the end of each block of tribe variables in the SCN file. All converted scenarios suffer from the problem; it's just that most can cope with the garbage data without crashing. As players take turns, these tables are updated and old values are overwritten, so if a scenario survives the first turn it will probably work out fine. However, this does not mean that the scenario is unaffected: after all, the game still reads this junk on the first turn and often the lower part of each table is not rewritten until the more advanced stages of a game. Therefore, it's recommended that the following fix be applied to all converted scenarios, not only those that crash on the first turn.

Technical Info: The table in question contains entries for up to 64 map locations. Its function is a bit of a mystery, but I believe it is associated with AI goals. In FW and MGE, these tables are located at offsets 3322-3705 + 1428N, where N is the tribe number (0 to 7, starting with Barbarians). Each table is 64 x 6 (384) bytes. The first 4 bytes of each 6-byte entry contain the map coordinates; the function of the last 2 bytes is currently unknown. In ToT, these tables are located at offsets 5778-6289 + 3348N. That's 64 x 8 (512) bytes; ToT has an additional coordinate (2 bytes) for map number.


Instead of expanding the original table to include the 2 extra map bytes, CivConverter, inserts 98 zero bytes at 5753-5850 + 3348N, then takes the 25 bytes that preceded the table in the original file and dumps these at 5851-5875 + 3348N. The first 49 x 6 (294) bytes of the original table are copied unaltered to 5876-6179 + 3348N, but the last 15 entries are expanded from 6 bytes to 8, with 2 zero bytes inserted at the beginning of each entry. Net result: corrupt tables.


Solution: That's right, it's a hex-editing job. You need to edit the 8 tables located at offsets 5778-6289 + 3348N, where N is the tribe number (0 to 7, starting with Barbarians). If you're nuts, you could carefully recreate the tables using the data from the original scenario. A more practical solution is to simply zero all values in each table until you reach entries of 0x000000000000FF00. This essentially restores the tables to the same state you'd find for a completely new game.


I have noticed that in this scenario and the previous that you -Tootall- have converted to ToT, those parameters are not modified in the scenario, but no one has indicated that the scenario stops working, which seems to indicate that perhaps with ToTPP that problem is solved?

On another issue I have found in Boer War that this issue does not have it, which could be a rules problem.

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi Gapetit,

Thank you for the technical feedback. You’ve certainly helped identify and fix some of my conversion projects in the past.

As with my own projects, I always test my conversions, if for no other reason that I actually want to play them myself.

In the case of TRON, I successfully played the scenario from beginning to end and didn’t encounter any saving or crashing problems. There were just a few very minor issues, which were easily resolved. I certainly would have reached out if I ran across unexpected errors.

As this is a traditional empire building game and not an objective based scenario, I don't believe the objectives issues should apply, and as indicated I believe it's also handled by ToTPP, though please correct me if I'm mistaken.

To be honest, I’m still not truly comfortable with hex-editing. I remain apprehensive about attempting to modify the scn file, unless it proves absolutely necessary, as I’m wary of causing more harm than good.

As recall, when I tried to follow your instructions in the following thread I simply couldn’t find the corresponding data in the scn file (even when using the Replace feature of my Hex Editor).

 

[CurtSibling]

Lordy, I still remember this thread.

Ironic who won out once ToT became the standard.

Ah - It was a more innocent time!

 

[gapetit]

Hi Gapetit,

Thank you for the technical feedback. You’ve certainly helped identify and fix some of my conversion projects in the past.

As with my own projects, I always test my conversions, if for no other reason that I actually want to play them myself.

In the case of TRON, I successfully played the scenario from beginning to end and didn’t encounter any saving or crashing problems. There were just a few very minor issues, which were easily resolved. I certainly would have reached out if I ran across unexpected errors.

As this is a traditional empire building game and not an objective based scenario, I don't believe the objectives issues should apply, and as indicated I believe it's also handled by ToTPP, though please correct me if I'm mistaken.

To be honest, I’m still not truly comfortable with hex-editing. I remain apprehensive about attempting to modify the scn file, unless it proves absolutely necessary, as I’m wary of causing more harm than good.

As recall, when I tried to follow your instructions in the following thread I simply couldn’t find the corresponding data in the scn file (even when using the Replace feature of my Hex Editor).

It is quite true Tootall, that the more you touch a scenario in conversion, the more problems can cause - in fact in cwflashpoint, I do not know what can happen, but in this scenario the unpayable terrain is only for ground units, but planes and helicopters can pass smoothly, and I do not think this will happen with these scenarios -. So if it works smoothly, you've done very well to leave it as is. I will try to give a new explanation of the use of hex editing, for those scenarios that in one or two shifts fail. Thank you very much for this and future conversions.