Modmakers Tutorial: Add new units, improvements, wonders, technologys, and Resources!

[Plutarck]

Rhye: I believe it's basically bad/no error checking in the game.

Other than trying to use the same color twice, I believe the colors are restriced by all kinds of different requirements such as fitting pallete colors, possible unique unit conflicts, etc etc.

In short: I think they'll have to be the ones that fix this screw up.

If we were actually able to move the colors around someone could put out a color-blind patch without having to wait for them to do it.

You know for a company that claimed to understand the importance of the mod community, the only evidence I see is the few good people like Magaha and others who's name I can't remember that are in the forums occassionally. But as for support in the game itself...I don't see it.

Obviously they just don't get the fact that so many people are willing to improve the game in hundreds of different ways, and all they have to do is make it possible without a hex-edit.

 

[KloePoek]

thx for the tip, i immedeately made cotton, hardwood (required for all ancient and middle age ships ) and titanium (required for most spaceship parts, extremely rare

 

[ahenobarb]

Kloepoek, it seems that currently, you can only add 2 resources. The problem is this: Civ III does not display the last two (empty) lines of resources. I think these were provided for the graphics design team, but not used in the game. I added several resources, but anything after the first two was not displayed on the screen. The game will allow you to play with more, but this means the computer will know where everything is and you will not unless you right-click all your terrain looking for the 3rd, 4th, etc. resource you added.

I think those boxes are similar to the last line of unit boxes in Civ II, where you could put unit graphics in them, but not use them in game play. A later version of civ II allowed you to do this. I hope we won't have to wait for a later version of civ III to get more resources, but it looks a little grim right now. I have been beating my brains trying to get more resources. I put colored blobs in each boxes and made up a resource to correspond to each of them. Nothing.

 

[Russiophile]

When you edit pcx files, what program do you use? I tried using photoshop 6.0 and received errors whenever I try to open a city file.

 

[Garret]

All,

These tips are great! I'm working on a custom CIV right now (the Scots). I just replaced the English for the time being, and I was wondering...

Is there a known way to change the image on the Foreign Advisor screen? It still shows Elizabeth.

What about the AI Text for the diplomacy screens? I know there's a text file with all that stuff in there, but I'd like to keep the standard stuff and not harm it if someone wants to play a regular game without my customizations.

Anyone out there a graphic artist with some time on their hands and want to draw a new unit?

I'll post the custom stuff after it's done and playtested. Then you too can be Robert the Bruce!

Garret

 

[BlackMcNigga]

Originally posted by Thunderfall

Can someome write a modpack installation tutorial for newbies? I have received several emails from 'newbies' about modpack installation.

Funny but true....

Anyway good work Plutarck, now if you could just write one of these on women ; )

Bob

 

[heardie]

can I post this as a tutorial at my site? http://www.trakoria.f2s.com

 

[Taé Shala]

I have a problem similar to RagnarDs.

I tried to create a Halftruck to carry units.
Every time I put it in the production my system crashes.
I created an extra folder, but it still crashes.

So please help me.

Is it because I tried to have some own Graphics?

May I not do it this way?

 

[Capt. Quirk]

Can someone point me in the right direction or give me some suggestion as to how to add new units to the game?

I followed Plutarck's tutorial (and I don't think I missed anything)

Here is my problem. I created the units. They seem to be there, are in the cyclopedia and show up on the build menu, but the program crashes when I try to build them!

I used the new 'hacked editor' to add these items (was that wrong? should I have used that copy tool program?) and used an existing icon (or should I say re-used).

Is it possible to set certain values too high (such as movement) or is it not allowed to create a unit which is a worker and a settler combined?

Please let me know if you have any suggestions, thanks!

 

[Dreifels]

Problem: Crash

If I add one small wonder, it works fine.
If I add more than 1* the same (and rename it) all works fine until I build the 2nd and it's ready.

(I added 5* Forbiden Palace, renamed all so that they had all their own name, corrected txt files. The curious point is, that I had such done already 2 weeks ago and it worked without problems.
The only difference now is that I stored the rules in the bic without map and called an empty map without rules when I started it. The 1st try I made successful I load both in editor and
then I saved a new bic that I played.
Don't see why it now crashes.

CIVILIZATION3 verursachte einen Fehler durch eine ungültige Seite
in Modul CIVILIZATION3.EXE bei 017f:0054bf50.
Register:
EAX=00870d0c CS=017f EIP=0054bf50 EFLGS=00010216
EBX=00870a98 SS=0187 ESP=00abf01c EBP=00870d0c
ECX=00000000 DS=0187 ESI=008725e8 FS=1197
EDX=0000006d ES=0187 EDI=00871098 GS=0000
Bytes bei CS:EIP:
8b 41 08 56 85 c0 74 09 b8 18 00 00 00 5e c2 18
Stapelwerte:
0052f4b7 00870d0c 0000015f 0000006d 00000000 00000000 00000000 00871098 00870a98 00000000 00871000 00000000 0055885e 00871098 00870a98 00871014

 

[Kal-el]

did you make an animated unit for your Halftruck? The unit_32 image looks great.

 

[Taé Shala]

Mhm, I don´t think that I will continue my work, because Dark Sheer also made an very good animation of an army truck.

Dark Sheers Army Truck

But if some people are interested I will see...

 

[stonecypher]

What happens if you build a building B with prerequisite A, and then A is somehow removed? Does B still exist? Does it function? I'm curious if it matters how A is removed, also; I can see the case for destruction (bombardment, nuke), sale, or even using that "remove anything else with this flag set" setup.

Let's make the unlikely case that someone makes a building dependant on a *particular* type of power plant - say, for Solar Power, something called Extension Grid, which increases the Solar Plant's effectiveness.

Let's say that they then installed a Nuclear Plant, which removes Solar Plant. Does Extension Grid still exist? Does it function?

It would be nice if there were a tag number alongside the "remove anything else with this flag set", so that you could specify a different tag and make different exclusive sets of replacable city improvements. But I digress. Besides, we'd need a tech browser capable of handling *Way* bigger trees for something like that, anyway.

 

[Kal-el]

I don't know what is going wrong. I have added the great wonder "Sphinx". It works fine if I use the pyramids wonder_splash, but if I try to use the one I made it crashes.

I am using Photoshop. Should that matter? Like I said, it works if I use a splash that came with the game, but not with a homemade one. Please help. Here is the splash image.

 

[Kal-el]

Figured out what the problem was. The images were in an RGB format instead of an index format. Don't really know what that means but when I was able to change it it worked.

Sorry for the false alarm.

 

[Dragon Warrior]

i'm confused. where's this copytool.

 

[Dragon Warrior]

never mind i found it

 

[LordRasp]

Is it just luxury resources that have a limit of two additional icons or is it all resoruces (bonus and strategic?).

I'd like to add a number of strategic resources as well as a few bonus ones, but am concerned that i won't be able to actually 'see' them anywhere!

 

[tpasmall]

i followed all the steps, but how do i get the new graphics for units to work? also all my saved games wont load....

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by tpasmall
i followed all the steps, but how do i get the new graphics for units to work? also all my saved games wont load....

To get any new units to work, you must make sure a few things:

1) There is a folder with the same name as the new unit under Civiliztion III\Art\units (ie for Corssbowman, there must be a folder called Crossbowman)
2) There must be an ini file in that folder which has the same name as the folder (in the above example there must be a Crossbowman.ini)
3) The lines inside the ini file must point to an existing flc file (ie if the ini point to CrossbowmanDefault.flc then this file MUST be in the folder).

And lastly, once you add new units to your Civ3mod.bic file then you can no longer load any savegames as Civ3 detect a major change in rules and will not allow you to load the files.

Hope that helps