(Planetary Mod)The Ascent of Mankind

[Galacticat42]

Okay, so the college spring semester is over now and I can get back to modding. Today I've looked into Spatz's mod on how he turned unit builds into improvement-less actions. I'll be implementing this feature in ATOM to get the spaceship to settle the orbital colony probably by either Monday or Tuesday. At that point I'll tie in the build action to creating a colony shell in the Astropedia, then I'll release this as an early alpha. Do not expect the colonies to really do anything other than just being there until I update them further with attributes. When I update the colonies with attributes I will need as much feedback as possible to balance the colonies so they won't be overpowered nor useless.

 

[Pouakai]

Awesome.

Will you be able to choose what planet to settle on?

 

[Galacticat42]

@ Pouakai
No, not yet. Interplanetary settling won't be in ATOM:CTP.

 

[Galacticat42]

Maybe buildings built in different places can have different bonuses? eg. An astronomy built on the moon will provide more science than one built on earth because there is less atmospheric disturbance?

Looking back over the thread (I like to do that sometimes) I did realize one thing I can do with telescopes on the moon. There is this idea that if the moon's perimeter is lined with giant telescopes, then the moon will act like one giant telescope. With the telescopes acting together around the moon's perimeter, they would be able to effectively target and look at anything in the galaxy. Whereas the Hubble telescope can only take HD pictures of the cosmos, a lunar telescope of such proportion would be able to literally see individual landmasses on planets orbiting stars as far away as the center of the galaxy.

 

[Galacticat42]

Alright, so I've narrowed down a few things, clarified a couple others and tossed the rest. I must say that colony creation via units is coming along smoothly. Although it's not quite the way I wanted it to be, it actually turns out for the better in the way of AI - well in theory at least. Anyway, so I couldn't have a unit that acts like a worker or settler that uses a 'build' command since the unit is after all an air unit and would require it built on the city. The second alternative was to make a new unit mission, which is near impossible since they seem to be hardcoded in the DLL. My final approach was to ignore unit missions altogether and just have it autonomously create the colony upon completion of the unit. This is actually the easiest way not only for programming, but also for the AI since I won't have to tell it when or how to make a colony - the colony is made when the AI makes the unit. This is not tested in any way actually but rather a conclusion that I have come to while writing the Lua for it. I'm still not done implementing it, but I'm getting close and the Alpha release will shortly follow after colony creation is fully implemented and working.

 

[Galacticat42]

Cleaning up my code today I got the random name generator to work. Last year I made the random name generator in C++ and have finally gotten around to finish converting it to Lua.
I'm still working on getting the code to recognize the unit in order to have it make colonies, but I forgot the function to make Lua convert the serialized unit number into the unit name. Once that's done the alpha will be released - once again this is the first alpha and is basically just a template with no real meat or function behind it. I still have to make the colony management screen and put together the attributes and building queue.

 

[feniks]

wondering how this mod is coming I love all Sci-Fi and some fantasy mods to CIV, played a lot of them in civ4 (BTS I think).

good luck with project!

 

[Daybreak]

It's been a long time since we had any update on this, which is sad. This project has great potential to be one of the truly great civ 5 mods and I hope it's still in the back of someone's mind to finish it. nudge/wink

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Perhaps rather than popups it would be interesting to have space as a terrain?

That way you can keep everything depicted, and in the same map.