Quick Modding Questions Thread

[PPQ_Purple]

Speaking of which, what do the iAsset and iPower tags for a tech do? Are they like tags for the AI?
Also what does bIgnoreIrrigationField do? It's always 0 in the original game.

 

[Nightinggale]

Speaking of which, what do the iAsset and iPower tags for a tech do? Are they like tags for the AI?

Without having looked at the AI code for techs specifically, those two variable names are usually for the AI as in the AI is more likely to fear the military might of players with high power. It would make sense to make the AI fear whoever has gunpowder when they don't. iAsset is AI perceived wealth (I think).

 

[<Nexus>]

If I may make a feature request one thing that I really wanted out of an editor was the ability to load the original CIV4 XML with techs in parallel with a blank file and than copy techs into the blank file and rename them.
Creating tech after tech is just so much boring busywork and being able to just edit where needed is great.But doing so on a blank file is much better because you don't have to mess with a file full of existing techs and having intermediate states where half the techs are yours and half aren't.

Maybe WinMerge as a workaround?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

This post has inspired me to build my own Tech Tree Design tool. If I get it ironed out, I will post it to the Resources.

I would like to thank you.

Not only have you spurred me on to actually finish my project but you have released me of a great worry.

Long story short, the tool I need for tech editing has some very unique requirements. Requirements that would make it unsuitable for general purpose use. And it has been held up as my motivation was lacking but also because I couldn't square the requirements of making a custom tool for my self and wanting to give back to the community.

Now that you have taken on the second I can proceed to do my own thing and build my own nightmare kludge without having to worry. And thus the game goes on.

 

[tvbowman]

Here is a preview of the Civ4 Tech Tree designer I am writing. It runs in the debugger fine, but there are errors that prevent it from running as a standalone program. Here are some features I did not show in the video:

Loads and saves to/from XML.
When creating a tech, you can copy an existing tech to get the basics inserted for you.

 

[<Nexus>]

Here is a preview of the Civ4 Tech Tree designer I am writing. It runs in the debugger fine, but there are errors that prevent it from running as a standalone program. Here are some features I did not show in the video:

Loads and saves to/from XML.
When creating a tech, you can copy an existing tech to get the basics inserted for you.

Wow!

It's very impressive. I wonder if it can handle mods? I mean when a mod has custom XML tags.
I really like the feature that you can even listen to the tech quotes.

 

[Nightinggale]

Here is a preview of the Civ4 Tech Tree designer I am writing. It runs in the debugger fine, but there are errors that prevent it from running as a standalone program. Here are some features I did not show in the video:

Loads and saves to/from XML.
When creating a tech, you can copy an existing tech to get the basics inserted for you.

I had to scroll back to see when you announced starting working on this. Truly impressive, particularly considering how quickly you managed to get it working. It's common to have bugs this early in development. I will turn it around and say it's more impressive to see what actually already works.

Do you plan to make this open source? Not only would it be interesting to see how you did this, open source would make it possible to alter the xml reader to match custom xml layouts, hence giving it a better chance of working with various mods.

 

[tvbowman]

I had to scroll back to see when you announced starting working on this. Truly impressive, particularly considering how quickly you managed to get it working. It's common to have bugs this early in development. I will turn it around and say it's more impressive to see what actually already works.

Sorry to say I began work long before I announced it. I simply did not have it to a point where an announcement was prudent.

Do you plan to make this open source? Not only would it be interesting to see how you did this, open source would make it possible to alter the xml reader to match custom xml layouts, hence giving it a better chance of working with various mods.

I will release the source code. I tried to incorporate reading the schema, but it was in such a different format compared to the Xml tech file that I had to abandon it and hard-code the Xml template to match the BTS tech file.

 

[Leyrann]

I'm probably just missing something obvious here, but how do you use multiple mods at once?

The way I understand modding in Civ 4 (and Colonization, which I actually have more experience with in that regard), you throw everything in one mod and load that mod as a singular entity, but I'm seeing a lot of components and the like (such as individual civs) on the creation and customization subforum here, and I'm just not sure how to load multiple such components at once. Or does the user need to manually combine the mods? In that case, is there a simple guide in how to do so?

 

[Darkator]

I have a question why vanilla ai uses planes and Beyond sword doesn't use anymore (or at least doesn't produce)

 

[<Nexus>]

I'm probably just missing something obvious here, but how do you use multiple mods at once?

Actually you don't. Civ! is not like 5 or 6 where you just throw in every mod you want. Here you can use only one at a time. You can combine many into a single mod but that requires modding skills.

Or does the user need to manually combine the mods? In that case, is there a simple guide in how to do so?

Check out Civ4 - Modding Tutorials & Reference section and ask more specific questions. E.g what mods do you want to use at once?

 

[Darkator]

I have a question why vanilla ai uses planes and Beyond sword doesn't use anymore (or at least doesn't produce)

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I have a question why vanilla ai uses planes and Beyond sword doesn't use anymore (or at least doesn't produce)

I am not aware of this issue.

 

[Darkator]

I am not aware of this issue.

this is mine, just my observations playing RTW mod

 

[Nightinggale]

CvEraInfo has a tag called iSoundtrackSpace. Do anybody know what it does?

The reason I'm asking is because there are reports of We The People crashing somewhat randomly. I have a report that hitting control+M to start/stop music forces new music to play and that is prone to crashing. Increasing the sound track space to the same number of tracks has reportedly reduced, but not removed the number of crashes.

Any ideas to why music should be able to crash the game? Apparently it's full crash to desktop kind of crashes.

 

[<Nexus>]

Any ideas to why music should be able to crash the game? Apparently it's full crash to desktop kind of crashes.

In my mod I have a LOT of music, like 50+ per eras and I never experienced any problem with music.
True, some players reported problems when installing my MoreMusic addon but in most cases it turned out to be something else as far as I remember.
Wait... I remember that the audiodefines are very sensitive. Just an extra empty line caused the game crash or not even start. I don't remember which, it was long ago.

 

[Darkator]

how to more air missions and range bombard from Road to War.

 

[f1rpo]

CvEraInfo has a tag called iSoundtrackSpace. Do anybody know what it does?

The only hypothesis that Google turns up is this CFC post:

[...] I have also set <iSoundtrackSpace>0</iSoundtrackSpace> to 0 from 400 to reduce the wait time between each track in CIV4EraInfos. [...]

A test with a value of 1000 has resulted in no subsequent track being played within the few minutes that I've waited. My guess is that the delay is stated as tens of seconds, i.e. 40 seconds for the Classical era in BtS. I've turned off music long ago in my own games, and I didn't recall those long breaks during the Classical era, but a test supports that this is how it works; or perhaps it could've been even 400 seconds. I'm pretty sure I've waited for more than 100 seconds in the test with a space value of 1000 ...
iSoundtrackSpace does not appear to introduce a delay upon unmuting all audio.

Perhaps also worth noting: Unlike Colonization, BtS 3.19 has a function CvGame::getSoundtrackSpace (implemented in CvGameInterface.cpp) that returns the maximum of 1 and the soundtrack space XML value of the active player's current era. And the EXE only calls that function, not CvEraInfo::getSoundtrackSpace directly.

 

[raystuttgart]

My guess is that the delay is stated as tens of seconds,

I can confirm that in my own tests.
The higher you set it, the longer you have to wait for the next track.
I was already wondering why I had to wait for so long recently since we increased it.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

If I make Manhattan into a national instead of a world project does that mean each player will have to build its own to unlock nukes individually?