Possible collaborative project: Truly Heroic Mod

[Son of Moose]

FexFX

Wow .... there has certainly been quite a lot of action during the half an hour that I spent watching "The Simpsons".

I definitely think should be included is the idea of a Military Great Person...which really just gives more variety without adding a new concept

Agreed!!!

I said I am not looking to change the core gameplay just expand it. More, More, More

Yes .... this is indeed fundamental to our philosophy.

and it may well be a function of Culture and not Population, but I think one raduis larger would be an interesting development in the late game. I am still pondering whether or not this belongs. I know larger population sizes are inevitable with this scope and scale however.

Yes .... I really like this idea if it can be implemented. Perhaps this might well be the way to permit the development of bigger cities within the basic gameplay parameters.

At this time I feel ready to begin adding techs to the Ancient era...actual implementation.

THANK YOU AND GOOD LUCK!!!

 

[Son of Moose]

Maxpublic

I think that the current idea would be to retain the default structural building times with somewhat prolonged unit development times and yet further expanded technology research times.

Therefore you could well have an extremely valid point.

 

[FexFX]

One other thing I just thought of: barbarians. In a long game, if you increase build times to stretch them out barbarians become much more threatening than they are in stock civ. A player can handle this (although they're a real pain), but the AI has problems. In my first run - before I changed the way barbarians are generated - about half the AI civs were overrun by barbarians before we left the Ancient era.

Max

Oddly I have not experienced this in my 1000 Turn game!
I think its because I did NOT modify the Barbarian behavior to match the rest of the mod. Instead I left barbarian generation numbers as they would have been for Epic...which is harsh but not unduly so.

 

[FexFX]

Can someone verify or deny that TechYieldChanges can be added to a terrain type as well as to bonus and improvement types...The Schema makes it look like this will work, but I am at work and cannot verify that this will work.
It is not used this way in the default files, but the schema makes it look possible if I simply add in the desired booleans...etc

If not possible I can think of other ways to work fishing...although not as dramatic, it could simply make ocean stuff visible...before fishing there would be no fish or clams or crabs on the map

 

[maxpublic]

Can someone verify or deny that TechYieldChanges can be added to a terrain type as well as to bonus and improvement types...The Schema makes it look like this will work, but I am at work and cannot verify that this will work.

Actually, terrain uses the TerrainInfo portion of the schema file, which doesn't include TechYieldChanges.

Max

 

[FexFX]

Actually, terrain uses the TerrainInfo portion of the schema file, which doesn't include TechYieldChanges.

Max

Yes, I am aware of this, however I am wondering if I can simply add it to the Schema for TerrainInfo...I would also need to add it to TerrainFeatures.

It SHOULD be a simple matter of adding:
<element type="TechYieldChanges"/>
to:
<ElementType name="TerrainInfo" content="eltOnly">
and:
<ElementType name="FeatureInfo" content="eltOnly">

But I dont know if the engine will vomit if I do this.
I believe I then have to add:
<TechYieldChanges/>
to all terrain types and feature types which do not have a techyield change datum, and then the appropriate:
<TechYieldChanges>
<iYeildChange>1</iYeildChange>
<iYeildChange>0</iYeildChange>
<iYeildChange>0</iYeildChange>
</TechYieldChanges>
or whatever to those which do indeed change...

But I am unsure that this will work.

 

[Finarfin]

I don't know that I have much to offer in the way of this mod, though I would be willing to try to help with some XML editing, as a subordinate to the leader of that portion. My experience is limited to basically adding units to Rise of Nations and since I can't even figure out how to subscribe to a thread on CivFanatics I might be in over my head.

 

[Son of Moose]

Finarfin

Thank you so much for your most generous offer!!!

I think that the next couple of days will be very important as we will then be able to guage the level of "hands-on" support for our proposed LITTLE mod. Hopefully, we will then be able to start "delegating" various tasks to our volunteers according to their respective areas of expertise.


Btw: I apologise if my comment of yesterday regarding "talk is cheap" seemed a little too brusque. I suppose that it is always a little tricky to convert words (no matter how interesting and stimulating) into concrete action.

Therefore I hope that our "regulars" will not desert this thread.

 

[FexFX]

I have yet to have a chance to check out the above theory...on Terrain modifications...

But I did learn that a GridY of 0 (on the tech chart) looks bad (half off the top of the screen) so In my tech chart it should be considered that techs range from 1-17 rather than 0-16...which means you will have a vertical scroll bar...but only like the bottom two pixels of the 17th row of techs is actually affected.

These offers of help are great tho!

 

[FexFX]

I will not be home until after 5pm (pst) tonight.
So...
I want someone to test this "modlet" as a proof of concept.

This modlet should make a subtle change to the game.
Ocean Squares and Coastal squares should produce NO food until AFTER you have learned the Fishing Tech. Note: this does not affect fish or crabs or clams, just the ocean squares themselves.

Please load this file and verify.
This will allow me to actually tinker with this for the next 5 hours...rather than wondering.

To test: Load the modlet.
Build a City next to water.
Attempt to work the water.
Note how much of what you get from the water.
Coastal should give 2 Commerce and no food.
Ocean no food and 1 commerce.

If you get an error let me know I have a feeling you may get an error.

 

[FexFX]

Gee wiz...
no help was forthcomming

 

[FexFX]

Well I got home, tested, and it failed to work.
got errors.
found the cause
fixed the errors
and the function is non-functional as I feared, it does nothign in the wrong file...
oh well.
Then I realized I was being a dummy...
you cant work water tiles at all before fishing anyhow so why does changing the yeilds mater?!
So I changed it so that fishing makes Crabs, Clams and Fish visible as well as allows you to work the water.
No fishing boats per my tech chart.

 

[Finarfin]

I was trying to reply and download your file to test it for you, but the stupid Civfanatics servers kept giving me database errors. Sorry I couldn't help. Sometimes these servers are soooooooo slooooooow.

 

[FexFX]

That's okay, I found that I was pursuing something that needs the SDK.
Meh!
No biggy!
Since I also realized I was doing something redundant, and discovered that they had already put a single use tag in there to make fishing allow working of water.
I wish they had put two tags in there to separate ocean from coasts to that "fishing" only gave you the ability to work the Coasts, and a later tech could allow the working of oceans...

 

[Son of Moose]

FexFX

Yes .... the release of the SDK (sometime early next year) should enable us to do "Great Things" with the "LITTLE" mod.

Perhaps we could even consider the following:

Change the default city layout (especially in view of all the new buildings that we will be adding to the game)

Change the default scaling to substantially reduce the size of the units relative to the buildings (I know that master modder Sn00py is very interested in doing this).

 

[Finarfin]

There is a program out there that allows you to customize the size of the units, buildings, etc. It's called civscale.exe, I think, and was created by the person/people that put together the Blue Marble graphics mod. I've used the scaling tool and it works well. I bumped the cities up to the largest size so that they look bigger on the map.

 

[Seven05]

Unit scales are easy to change right now with a handy utility called "notepad.exe"... well, tedious but not difficult

They're all in XML\Art\CIV4ArtDefines_Unit.xml, like this:

<fScale>0.61</fScale>

You'll also probably want to adjust:

<fBattleDistance>0.35</fBattleDistance>

Once you have adjusted those scale values for all of the units the game will automatically enlarge them if you choose to not use multi-unit visuals (or whatever that option is called). You can remove that enlargement in XML\GlobalDefines.xml, look for:

<DefineName>SINGLE_UNIT_GFX_EXTRA_SCALE</DefineName>
<fDefineFloatVal>1.25</fDefineFloatVal>
</Define>

And change as desired

 

[FexFX]

FexFX

Yes .... the release of the SDK (sometime early next year) should enable us to do "Great Things" with the "LITTLE" mod.

Perhaps we could even consider the following:

Change the default city layout (especially in view of all the new buildings that we will be adding to the game)

Change the default scaling to substantially reduce the size of the units relative to the buildings (I know that master modder Sn00py is very interested in doing this).

The layout thing is not even on my radar at this point, I am planning that at least in first release there will be no "building" models. They are not 100% necessary, just a nifty thing. They will function the same just no image on the map. Eventually this would be a "nice touch", but its far from required.

The scaling thing I am flatly against...this is a pure taste thing and as has been pointed out there are numerous ways for players to do this themselves to their own exacting tastes. I know some out there want things LARGER so that they are more visible in a top down view, and others want things smaller so the units seem more reasonable next to the cities...personally I am happy with things as they are for not and dont give a smeg about scaling.

So I am gonna say with the current laundry list of things to do...
Lets leave this one on the cutting room floor until we get to the point where we are doing frivolous things..

 

[FexFX]

At this point I am about ready to buckle down and start putting this bad mutha together!

Just weekends are bad for getting this sort of thing done


Plus I am in the middle of the 1800s in my full length FX-Huge FX-Grand game and I am enjoying the heck out of it!

The pacing feels just about perfect to me!

I think the great people may still be a tiny bit weak, but they are certainly usable...


I will attempt to balance them a bit more in FexFX - MORE. (Since I am the one moving forward at this point, this is the working title for this mod for now...as more people contribute, more names can be discussed, I need more than ideas, I just need more help on the coding, need I say more?)

FexFX - Bigger & Longer have provided a fair ammount of data on the balancing of an extended game. I can see small weak spots in my current model, and I am certain I can improve them in FexFX - MORE.

 

[maxpublic]

The layout thing is not even on my radar at this point, I am planning that at least in first release there will be no "building" models. They are not 100% necessary, just a nifty thing. They will function the same just no image on the map.

So, what do you do? Just replace the ArtDefineTag with NONE? Will the game simply not draw the building on the map, or will it leave a blank space in the city?

Max