moding of resources

[Dark Sheer]

For all the modmaker out there, I have a few question on resources (Perhaps Dan might shade some light on this ? )

1) Has anyone tried to have more than 8 luxury resources? The last time I do this the game will crash when I try to zoom into any city (whether its mine or the AI's) that has the 9th luxury Civ3 will crash. Anyone manage to have 9 without crashing?

2) Has anyone manage to make Civ3 show more than the 24 resources icon on the map? While Civ3 can recognise the resources and place them on the map accordingly, any icon beyond the 24 can't be seen on the map.

3) Is there a limit to the number of resources (in total for all luxury, bonus and strategic) in game? I have so far added 5 strategic resources with no problem. However, lately my game tends to crash when a certain portion of the map is cleared (after I added another 2 bonus resources, rice and bali which uses the same icon as the wheat). It has to do with the map cause the game only crash when I scroll to a certain area of the map (and for each game its a diff area of the map so I suspect it has something to do with resources).

Any info on the above would be greatly appreciated. I understand that all games have their limitation. All I want to know is WHAT is the limitation so I can think of a way to work around it

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Good questions, I'll see if I can get some answers for you. If you post your BIC file and resource icons, I can just fire the game up tomorrow and jump right in with the debugger running, to get an idea of where it's crashing (i.e., if it's a bug with resources or something else)

Dan

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
Good questions, I'll see if I can get some answers for you. If you post your BIC file and resource icons, I can just fire the game up tomorrow and jump right in with the debugger running, to get an idea of where it's crashing (i.e., if it's a bug with resources or something else)

Dan

As I am reading this from my office, I just grab a copy of the problematic bic files from Apolyton

I can only post the resource file from home later tonight. Just to make sure, my bic file is heavily modded with an additional 13 to 14 units

 

[Dark Sheer]

As I was zipping the resources file something suddenly come to my mind regarding resources. In the mod I set 3 of the luxury resources to be able to deplete (Ivory, Gems and Furs) and I have an appearance ratio of 150 in the mod. However, they don't seems to appear elsewhere on the map after they disappear. I suspect that the code can handle them on disappearance but can't handle the reappearance of luxury resources like the strategic resources. You might want to confirm this point as well, Dan ?

At the mean time I am going to remove 1 strategic resources and 1 bonus resources then start a new game and see if the game still crash. If it still does then I will remove another bonus resources and try again. (I never give up on something until I find out why )

 

[Dark Sheer]

I think my theory is correct.

After removing the 2 resources (there by reduce the total to 34 from the original 36) the game no longer crashes.

A lesson learned, do not put toooo many resources

And I believe the theory on luxury resources don't respawn like strategic resources is also correct as the last game (Monarch level) I kill off 3 Civ and owned a major portion of the map and didn't even once see the luxury resources respawn after depleted.

Dan, if you have manage to test it you might want to confirm what I test?

 

[sturbs]

I have 36 resouces and the game runs fine except for the fact I can see horses but can not use them, same for the AI, but the barbarians can, and your right the ones after 24 won't appear. I have 11 BR, 10 Lux, and 15 SR. Why is there 36 frames but only 24 being used? I have never had the game crash.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by sturbs
I have 36 resouces and the game runs fine except for the fact I can see horses but can not use them, same for the AI, but the barbarians can, and your right the ones after 24 won't appear. I have 11 BR, 10 Lux, and 15 SR. Why is there 36 frames but only 24 being used? I have never had the game crash.

You can have 10 lux?? Whenever I zoom into a city with the 9 lux Civ3 will crash on my So I am back to 8 lux. But can the program handle the 9 & 10 lux with market place? For me it becomes a whole roll of happy face

And maybe I have 36 instead of 34 in total, I will double check on that one

 

[sturbs]

Do you have 9 Lux of the same type in your city? I am not sure about the market place making the differance, altho I do have them in the cities. What puzzles me is why the horses show up but can not be used, even if the city is built right on top of it. Also I have right clicked on a terrain tile with a 25-36 resouces that was put in by the editor (all the icons show up using the editor, and can be placed anywhere per the rules you set for them) an it says it is there even if it can not be seen during game play, and I do not get any of the benifits of that resouce.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by sturbs
Do you have 9 Lux of the same type in your city? I am not sure about the market place making the differance, altho I do have them in the cities. What puzzles me is why the horses show up but can not be used, even if the city is built right on top of it. Also I have right clicked on a terrain tile with a 25-36 resouces that was put in by the editor (all the icons show up using the editor, and can be placed anywhere per the rules you set for them) an it says it is there even if it can not be seen during game play, and I do not get any of the benifits of that resouce.

Hmmm...I do get the benefit of all the resources even if I can't see them on the map though.

There seems to be some logic error here somewhere in the code. I only hope Dan can confirm this.

 

[sturbs]

After looking at this problem I noticed that there are 8 Sr, 8 Lux, 8 Br which =24 on a 36 square grid. I added 7 Sr, 4 Lux, 1 Br, to the 36 square grid in that order, which did not work (see above)...so I changed the order in which they appear on the 36 square grid, 15 Sr followed by 12 Lux then 8 Br with gold being the last, changed the text to the same pattern and so far everything is working great. This is on a random map with colonies made, before and after a market place, and seeing most of the resouces. I am not sure if all the resouces appeared per the appear/disappear rules. Try this and see if it works for you.....I know it is a pain to juggle all the icons and text, but if it does the trick maybe worth the effort.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by sturbs
After looking at this problem I noticed that there are 8 Sr, 8 Lux, 8 Br which =24 on a 36 square grid. I added 7 Sr, 4 Lux, 1 Br, to the 36 square grid in that order, which did not work (see above)...so I changed the order in which they appear on the 36 square grid, 15 Sr followed by 12 Lux then 8 Br with gold being the last, changed the text to the same pattern and so far everything is working great. This is on a random map with colonies made, before and after a market place, and seeing most of the resouces. I am not sure if all the resouces appeared per the appear/disappear rules. Try this and see if it works for you.....I know it is a pain to juggle all the icons and text, but if it does the trick maybe worth the effort.

The sequence count?? Hmmm...I will give it a shot once I finish my current game

I will post the result if that works. And editing the pcx file is a piece of cake as I added 2 additional rows

 

[Umask077]

Ok I have experimented heavily with adding resources and this is what I have discovered..

1: Adding luxurys works to a point. If you manage to get 9 resources however it doesnt seem to affect citizen happiness anymore and causes graphical problems in the city display. Didnt cause crashes for me but i suppose it could. Doesnt do much.

2: Adding stragic resources works fine provided you mod the units to require them and make them available at the proper time.

3: Adding bonus resources also works fine however its very easy to unbalance the game by making a resource too powerfull.

4: there is a hardcoded limit of 2 additional resources even though the graphical file and the editor will support many more. The editor will even place them if you generate a map. They wont show up in the game however the bonuses are there on the map. Theres just no display for them. This ones up to firaxis to fix. As I said, The game will give you the benifit of those additional resources, however you wont know unless you examine the terrain and you still wont know what the resources are.

All and all im pretty happy with the way resources work however the graphical display limit of 2 needs to be fixed.

 

[Kal-el]

quote:
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Originally posted by sturbs
After looking at this problem I noticed that there are 8 Sr, 8 Lux, 8 Br which =24 on a 36 square grid. I added 7 Sr, 4 Lux, 1 Br, to the 36 square grid in that order, which did not work (see above)...so I changed the order in which they appear on the 36 square grid, 15 Sr followed by 12 Lux then 8 Br with gold being the last, changed the text to the same pattern and so far everything is working great. This is on a random map with colonies made, before and after a market place, and seeing most of the resouces. I am not sure if all the resouces appeared per the appear/disappear rules. Try this and see if it works for you.....I know it is a pain to juggle all the icons and text, but if it does the trick maybe worth the effort.
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When you say "and seeing most" what do you mean by that? Are you still only able to see the 24 or can you see more now after the switch?

 

[Anglophile]

Dark Sheer, I asked some of the same questions on the LWC Mod thread (figuring there was a lot of mod expertise there). My game also crashes with the 9th Luxury resource, as soon as I get it myself or try to set up an embassy with a civ that has it. I suspect that where it is in the order of resources may be important, i.e. first 24 OK, after that a problem but I would really like to know the answer to that. So far, extra strategic resources have been OK but I am not really confident that they won't eventually crash my games (as they did in the LWC .8 mod).

As for bonus resources, they appear to be pretty problem free, barring the invisibility problem. However, you can reuse any of the first 22, maybe 24 - I haven't tried, for other resource icons and they show up on the map as the correct resources with the correct bonuses and don't crash the game. Incidentally, it also works for strategic/luxury as far as visibility but maybe not crashes.

Looking forward to some clarification on this, so I will know what limits to put on my modding so thanks for starting this thread. Maybe the next patch will expand what one can do with resources and these questions will become irrelevant!