Problems with the Age of Imperialism Mod

[blackwatch1914]

I noticed there was a thread for fixing problems with mods on Macs, however I havn't found any help on making the Age of Imperialism Mod work.

I keep getting an error that says the file: "Art/Units/British Indian Inf WW1/../Infantry/InfantryDeath.flc" could not be found, and the game quits.

Has anyone else seen this problem, and is there a solution?

 

[Blue Monkey]

There are several cases where the problem is a mis-match of file names - like "Infantry Death" rather than "infantryDeath". That's just an example, not an actual solution. Unfortunately you'll have to scour the thread for solutions. It's not a Mac problem, just a typing problem.

 

[mythusmage]

There are several cases where the problem is a mis-match of file names - like "Infantry Death" rather than "infantryDeath". That's just an example, not an actual solution. Unfortunately you'll have to scour the thread for solutions. It's not a Mac problem, just a typing problem.

I'm having the same problem as the poster above. So I copied the InfantryDeath.flc file from Civilization 3 Game Data/art/units/infantly and transferred it to Scenario/AoI/art/unit/British Indian Inf WWI.

Didn't work. I got the same error message, which leads me to suspect it's a problem with the biq itself.

The only reasonable conclusion I can reach is that Age of Imperialism is not meant to be played on a Mac. Not without a Windows emulator, so the Windows version of Civ III can be played. Which is a shame, since AoI sounds so gol danged cool.

 

[AlanH]

Pretty well zero Civ3 (or Civ4) mods are "meant to be played on a Mac", since none of the major mod makers run Macs; Civ3 Complete for OS X didn't even exist when most of them were written; and none of the mod making software is native to OS X.

If the error message quoted in the OP is exactly as it appears in the error message then it indicates that Civ3 was looking for a file called InfantryDeath.flc in Art/Units/Infantry/, because the '../' means go up one level from Art/Units/British Indian Inf WW1/. You could try putting a copy of the entire Infantry/ folder from Civilization 3 Game Data/art/units/ into Scenarios/AoI/art/units/, but I'll make no guarantees, and you may simply move the problem on to another unit or building that requires access to standard Civ3 art.

Aspyr attempted to ensure that several possible search paths were checked when looking for files specified by mods - and the Rev A patch tried harder than the original version, so make sure you are running that patch. However, these efforts have proved less than 100% successful, resulting in the kind of problems you are seeing when running mods in Civ3 Complete. Solving these problems is made more complex by the fact that the software has probably searched several places to look for Infantry/, and the error message may not be reporting a correct path. So we don't know for sure where we really need to put Infantry/ for it to find it.

You may also find that some mods work better in Conquests Game Data/Scenarios, and others need to be in ~/Documents/Civilization 3 Complete/Scenarios/

I'll download this mod and see if I can throw any light on the solution. Am I right in thinking the main post for this mod is here?

 

[mythusmage]

I'll download this mod and see if I can throw any light on the solution. Am I right in thinking the main post for this mod is here?

It is.

 

[AlanH]

I've had a look at it, and the problems are not trivial.

You can get past the error shown above if you put a copy of the Civilization 3 Game Data/Art/Units/Infantry/ folder into Scenarios/AoI/Art/Units/ (I did it by putting a symbolic link in to save duplicating the files).

The problem then moves along to another unit - the Colonial Sentry, which wants to access files from the standard Rifleman. But the file path in this error message is different, and the previous solution of putting a link to Rifleman in the AoI Units folder doesn't work this time. I fixed that unit (after several trial an error cycles) by copying the following three files from the standard Civilization 3 Game Data/Art/Units/Rifleman/ folder into Scenarios/AoI/Art/Units/Colonial Sentry/:

RiflemanAttackBlast.wav
RiflemanRunFoot1.wav
RiflemanRunFoot2.wav

The next error was in the Field Cannon. That needed a copy of one standard Civilization 3 Game Data/Art/Units/Cannon/ file into Scenarios/AoI/Art/Units/Field Cannon/:

CannonAttackExplosion.wav

Having made these changes I was able to get the map up, and play a few turns. I've no idea whether there would be further problems as the game progresses, but I suggest trying the above changes.

 

[mythusmage]

I've had a look at it, and the problems are not trivial.

You can get past the error shown above if you put a copy of the Civilization 3 Game Data/Art/Units/Infantry/ folder into Scenarios/AoI/Art/Units/ (I did it by putting a symbolic link in to save duplicating the files).

The problem then moves along to another unit - the Colonial Sentry, which wants to access files from the standard Rifleman. But the file path in this error message is different, and the previous solution of putting a link to Rifleman in the AoI Units folder doesn't work this time. I fixed that unit (after several trial an error cycles) by copying the following three files from the standard Civilization 3 Game Data/Art/Units/Rifleman/ folder into Scenarios/AoI/Art/Units/Colonial Sentry/:

RiflemanAttackBlast.wav
RiflemanRunFoot1.wav
RiflemanRunFoot2.wav

The next error was in the Field Cannon. That needed a copy of one standard Civilization 3 Game Data/Art/Units/Cannon/ file into Scenarios/AoI/Art/Units/Field Cannon/:

CannonAttackExplosion.wav

Having made these changes I was able to get the map up, and play a few turns. I've no idea whether there would be further problems as the game progresses, but I suggest trying the above changes.

Thank you. I'll give your suggestions a try.

 

[timerover51]

Pretty well zero Civ3 (or Civ4) mods are "meant to be played on a Mac", since none of the major mod makers run Macs; Civ3 Complete for OS X didn't even exist when most of them were written; and none of the mod making software is native to OS X.

If the error message quoted in the OP is exactly as it appears in the error message then it indicates that Civ3 was looking for a file called InfantryDeath.flc in Art/Units/Infantry/, because the '../' means go up one level from Art/Units/British Indian Inf WW1/. You could try putting a copy of the entire Infantry/ folder from Civilization 3 Game Data/art/units/ into Scenarios/AoI/art/units/, but I'll make no guarantees, and you may simply move the problem on to another unit or building that requires access to standard Civ3 art.

Aspyr attempted to ensure that several possible search paths were checked when looking for files specified by mods - and the Rev A patch tried harder than the original version, so make sure you are running that patch. However, these efforts have proved less than 100% successful, resulting in the kind of problems you are seeing when running mods in Civ3 Complete. Solving these problems is made more complex by the fact that the software has probably searched several places to look for Infantry/, and the error message may not be reporting a correct path. So we don't know for sure where we really need to put Infantry/ for it to find it.

You may also find that some mods work better in Conquests Game Data/Scenarios, and others need to be in ~/Documents/Civilization 3 Complete/Scenarios/

I'll download this mod and see if I can throw any light on the solution. Am I right in thinking the main post for this mod is here?

It is problems like this that have led me to forget about trying to run mods that add new units to a file on my Macs. The only ones I get to work consistently are the ones that add no new unit animations, but use existing graphics.

 

[mythusmage]

It is problems like this that have led me to forget about trying to run mods that add new units to a file on my Macs. The only ones I get to work consistently are the ones that add no new unit animations, but use existing graphics.

What I do in such situations is duplicate the file in question and move the copy to the scenario folder. It's worked so far. So if the error message reads something about a missing file in Art/Units/Scooby Gang/GreatDaneDither.wav, I know to use Spotlight to search for the GreatDaneDither.wav file, duplicate it, and move the copy to the Art/Unit/Scooby Gang folder. It usually works.

 

[timerover51]

What I do in such situations is duplicate the file in question and move the copy to the scenario folder. It's worked so far. So if the error message reads something about a missing file in Art/Units/Scooby Gang/GreatDaneDither.wav, I know to use Spotlight to search for the GreatDaneDither.wav file, duplicate it, and move the copy to the Art/Unit/Scooby Gang folder. It usually works.

To each his own, I guess. I am not that interested in spending the time to try and get a mod to work.