Need help with modpacks

[ElderDarkDragon]

This may have been covered before but I've looked and looked...

I'm trying to make use of all the modpacks and scenarios floating around for download for something a bit different and in hopes to learn more and perhaps make my own someday. They work for the most part but I get error:lables.txt out the wazoo if I try to look at anything in the civilopedia and the top menu is all screwy. I wouldn't mind as much if I could read the terrain menu well enough to know what food/shield/trade values it gives (or anything else for that matter) but without that it's rather unplayable.

I've tried the different versions of Civ II, reinstalling, copying the mod files over the original files and I even downloaded a modpack manager which works very well but doesn't solve the problem.

Scenarios work fine if loaded from begin scenario with the original game but many of the mods I have aren't included with scenarios. I can, of course, save a scenario with the modpack and load it with original and it works fine but that limits my game choices to the one scenario and involves a lot of opening and closing the game, fileswapping, etc.

I feel like it's something simple I'm just not thinking of but I've tried close to a dozen and they all do the same. Anyone know anything?

 

[Catfish]

I've tried the different versions of Civ II...

Which versions? Which modpacks? They're not all compatible.

I can, of course, save a scenario with the modpack and load it with original and it works fine but that limits my game choices to the one scenario and involves a lot of opening and closing the game, fileswapping, etc.

I don't follow. How exactly are you installing these mods?

Anyone know anything?

I know a bit.

 

[ElderDarkDragon]

I realize that was rather sloppy so I'll attempt to reiterate.

I've tried many different mods from different authors.

Any modpacks I've tried that state they are for classic Civ II or FW work fine with the required version. I have to delete the get_info.exe in the PEDIA directory so the menus will show the proper Wonders, units, etc. but the terrain won't work at all. Most of the readmes supplied with the modpacks state this step is necessary, otherwise it just shows the original game units and such.

I get the error:lables.txt problems with any mods requiring MGE. Deleting the get_info does nothing and none of the readmes have been any help in trying to figure out the problem.

Anyway, I've spent a lot of time trying to get this to work but I've had marginal success. I'll try a few more things and try to explain better and with more detail when I have a chance but for now I'm going to focus on something else, like the GoTM. =]

 

[Catfish]

Any modpacks I've tried that state they are for classic Civ II or FW work fine with the required version. I have to delete the get_info.exe in the PEDIA directory so the menus will show the proper Wonders, units, etc. but the terrain won't work at all.

Ah, I see what you mean about the terrain in the Civilopedia. It's been a while (like last century) since I last tinkered with FW. I don't think it's possible to get custom terrain in the Civilopedia in FW; you'd have to switch to MGE or ToT. In those versions a file called describe.txt determines the content of the Civilopedia.

I get the error:lables.txt problems with any mods requiring MGE. Deleting the get_info does nothing and none of the readmes have been any help in trying to figure out the problem.

MGE doesn't use Get_Info.exe, it uses describe.txt. Wild guess: you've installed Cedric Greene's MGE upgrade files over the top of an existing Civ2 installation. Not every mod changes the labels.txt file. Give me an example of an offending mod and I'll take a look.

 

[ElderDarkDragon]

You are correct. I used the MGE patches to upgrade CivII classic to MGE so that explains a lot. I'm not too worried about FW since it seems most mods can use MGE anyway.

As for examples, I've found a lot of Mods from John Valdez, some Star Trek and other mods based on the old FW scenarios (Desert, Mars, Lunar, Iceplanet, etc.) and a few Lord of the Rings mods and others from other authors. I think my problem is they aren't compatible with MGE and that's why I get all the label errors. However, there are a few (Antarctica, Outer Space) that say they will work with MGE but I still get the label errors. (all from http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/downloads/modpacks)

The strange thing is I can use scenarios included with any of the mods even if they aren't for MGE. Everything works perfectly and no label errors. I can also install the mod, start a new game, save it as a scenario, quit, start Civ II MGE and load that scenario and it works fine.

So essentially if I use these modpacks just for the included scenarios (or make my own like above) I'm good but I can't start a new game under a mod without all the label and menu errors. I suppose I can just create my own but it seems to me that's not quite how modpacks are intended to work. It's not that big of a deal but I feel like I'm making more work for myself than I should have to and I would like to be sure I'm doing everything correctly so if/when I decide to make my own mods I won't run into these problems.

Thanks for all your help, BTW. Learning a great deal.

 

[Catfish]

I downloaded the Outer Space mod (only found a scenario version of Antarctica) and installed it. You're doing better than I: as soon as I tried to run MGE, it crashed (on Windows 7 32-bit). The culprit is menu.txt. The FW version is incompatible with MGE. The reason it works for the scenario, but not the mod, is that menu.txt is not loaded by scenarios. There are some scenarios that include a menu.txt file, but it's quite useless. The author probably only tested the mod with FW. Restore the original MGE menu file and give it another shot.

Labels.txt, on the other hand, is loaded by scenarios, and the author has included separate files for vanilla Civ2 and FW, but not for MGE. MGE is back-compatible with FW scenarios (AI diplomacy and major city objectives, excepted), so you shouldn't run into any major issues using one created with FW.

 

[ElderDarkDragon]

Interesting...I'll have to check it out. At worst I can do what I want with minor inconvenience. Thanks again