question about adding techs and the civilopedia

[Kal-el]

In my mod I am adding 48 new techs and the question I have is, is it possible to have the right civilopedia images show up with the proper techs?

I am not talking about in the science advisor screen. I understand that as you add techs you can no longer uuse the higher numbered tech icons. But is there a way to still get the right images to show up with the civilopedia?

It seems that once you start adding techs the game starts throwing images around willy nilly. Right now as it stands when I look at the civilopedia entry for The Wheel I get the image for Code of Laws (or some such thing).

Has anybody figured this out? I realize it is a minor problem and many people may not even care, but it would be nice if it would work. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Maleficence]

From what I have seen in the game, it seems like a fairly complex affair (frankly, the more I edit civ3, the less impressed I am by Firaxis, it looks like such a hack job, in terms of how much stuff is hard-coded and how hard it is to make even the slightest of changes. It just runs contrary to most everything I've been taught in regards to programming. Modularity! Error checking! Text first, Code later. blah blah blah blah.)

SO anyways...

You have the Art\tech chooser\Icons folder
The small icons are assigned based on the number you give the tech in the editor. All is dandy so far. The large icons instead of referring to this same number for their respective assignment go through the most assinine scheme I've seen.

It first assumes there are n techs. Where n = icon number of Writing. It then alphabetizes the techs (including "The" prefix in their name). Starting from the last tech, in this case writing, it will go down the list of icons available, all of which are numbered up to 82. Then starting from n it will make linked list of sorts for every small icon to a specific large icon.

So, say you add one tech.

n = 81
Start of large icons = 82-writing-large
It begins making the linked list"
81-warrior code-small gets linked to 82-writing-large
80-theorygravity-small gets linked to 81-warrior code-large
and it goes on and on like this.

Then every time the civilopdia shows the tech list and you click on a particular tech with a specific icon it will show you the large .pcx file that was linked to that icon.

What this means is you currently cannot add more than 82 techs.
And if you do have 82 techs it means they will all have the same blasted icon. Each new tech you add reduces your icon selection by one, so adding a few techs can probably be managed by careful reselection of the icons taking into account the new n value. As well as by renaming the small icon files to match the new n value. So if you add three new techs you lose three icons. You can go about renaming all 79 files so that you end up with 79 icons that will line up, but I leave that entirely up to those with too much time on their hands. Alternatively, one could write a small application that might be able to do this.

Ideally, it'd be great if Firaxis fixed this silly implementation.

EDITED some incorrect stuff out...

Anyways, hope that helps.

 

[Bjorn Bjornson]

actually i have added 3 techs, with different icons; although they were already in the list

but then there is the problem with the pedia and the sciadvisor popup, not showing the right icon, it is always off by however many new techs you add.

god damn blasted system; like what dude said its messed up.

so basically im slowly figuring ways to completely rework the advances system; making it more generic and add more branches (like modern times there is very few commercial and cultural advances; they are all scientific/militaristic)

but if you want to add a grip of new techs, the best way to do it is to make all the icons look the same - or else theyll all be scrambled anyway

 

[mizaq]

I've had this problem, but I read the solution on the boards somewhere. Here it is:

make the last tech in the list (writing) use 81 instead of 82. I can't really explain it like it was explained to me, but I know it works because I added 40+ techs and they all use the icon that I want them to. Err, what I mean to say is that they use the icon selected from the list of 81 that I wanted it to (I would prefer to add my own thank you very much).

 

[mizaq]

here is a picture of them in game:

 

[mizaq]

writing needs to be using this icon in order for everything else to work. btw, I don't think you should let anything else use icon 82 either.

 

[Maleficence]

Let me see if I understand what you're saying. You have writing set at icon number 81, then everything else is at an icon number lower or equal to 81, and you've added more than one tech, and both the science advisor and each civilopedia entry for every tech works?

Here's my situation.

I add one tech, set writing to 81, it all works with a one icon shift in the large icons in the civilopedia.

I add two techs, keep writing at 81, it shows the small icons correctly but if I scroll through the entire list of icons in the civilopedia it will crash at Warrior Code

I add three techs, keep writing at 81, it shows small icons correctly but it crashes in theology this time as well.

If I however keep decreasing writing and subsequent technologies so no technology is using an icon higher than writing's it will work.

Am I missing something?

Would it be too much to ask to see the .bic file you're using Mizaq, so I can see how to make this adding tech thing work. Thanks

Note: it only crashes when you go to the screen showing the description of the tech. Not in the science advisor or civilopedia index.

 

[Kal-el]

thanks for the responses.

mizaq, like maleficense, I am curious if you have gotten this to work for the civilopedia? I can get it to work just fine in the science adviser screen, but if I don't eliminate the last 48 icons and I try to click on one of them to see the pedia entry the game crashes.

still confused

 

[mizaq]

****, now I realize what the last part of that long ago post meant. Indeed, you have to keep subtracting one icon for every new tech you add. I cannot get the civilopedia to work atm (science advisor is fine). The real kicker is that the ***** crashes my mother****ing computer instead of just closing like a good program would. Civ3 programmers need their asses kicked for doing so many things wrong. I'm not going to post my bic at the moment, because you guys are right about the game still crashing in the civilopedia. Dammit, now I'm ****ing pissed again at the stupid, unintuitive manner in which this game was designed. It's like the designers forgot what made past civilization games so good, the customization.

sry about the half assed answer I gave earlier. I never realized what the last part of that post meant, and I hadn't checked the civilopedia side of adding techs because I hadn't finished all my civilopedia descriptions yet.

 

[Maleficence]

Restarting my computer became all too routine while I was trying to test out the Tech Adding schemes.

As for the programming job done in Civ3, I must say I too was appalled. I did know a friend of mine who interned there and was actually helping with coding for this game, I feel like calling him up and ask him just what exactly went on there!

So I take it the only solution so far is to just reduce icon count and double/triple up on their usage?