Rallying call for all interested: Colonisation of the Moon mod!

[woodelf]

Sounds like a plan.

Sorry, it wasn't Haarbal, it was Falkonite, and I know he was doing it because he said he was using the flags I uploaded for leaderheads.

I'll process the pic into a button pronto. How big (small) does it need to be?

We *really* need to start defining other things like techs, and buildings.

Will the game respond well to added terrain improvements?

For the button? Whatever size the others are. I've never made one.

We'll see how well the game responds when we playtest. Not much else we can do. I'm going to update some buttons and re-upload another civic page in a few.

 

[JBG]

Ok I've done terrain improvements.

Unfortunately, the Radar Tower fell by the wayside because there's no way I can see of giving improvements an LOS rating or the ability to detect stealth.
The Outpost had to be modified because there's no way I can see of giving improvements the ability to refuel air units.
I'll have to give health and happiness ratings elsewhere, in buildings and Civics XMLs.
How do you ensure that you can only build improvement x if improvement y has been built there first?

I've altered the terrain to fit with the terrain style outlined in the Moon Bible.

I've checked it for typos.

 

[JBG]

BTW, you might want to alter the column and box dimensions to fit in the sixth civic column and row. Follow the link I posted earlier on about civics modification to see how (I can't remember).

Or alternatively lift a civics screen file from a mod that's already been done

I know that normal buttons are 64x64 pixels but the ones on the civics screen are more like 20x20...

 

[woodelf]

Check this one out:

http://www.filegone.com/nzh8

I used the correct box this time. Duh!

I need buttons for Black and White, Virtual Market, and your Sentient Rights. The others I've scanvenged and they look all right.

 

[woodelf]

Those terrain improvements look awesome as well. You're a machine!

Are we switching gold for energy or something more space-ish?

 

[woodelf]

Here's a rundown of things I'm not sure about for civics:

Despotism - having (-1) happiness in cities over size 7
Hierarchy - having (-10%) effectiveness in anit-capital distance cost improvements
Communism - No capital distance cost? I think they all default to zero
Democracy - (+1) prod/comm in tiles. This sounds more like a trait.
Decentralized - The (-20%) revenure from foreign trade
Black-n-White - Randomly lower/raise foreign opinion
Cooperation - raises foreign opinion and favourable treaties
Mediation - 3rd party treaties
World Government - automatic alliances and (+1) unhappiness with WG. Needs to be a religion I think to work
Disparate - The (-1) prod/comm. Same as Democracy
Xenophobia - foreign element unhappiness and no spread of foreign culture
Sentient Rights - Not sure about (+1) happiness in all cities.
Free Speech - same problem as WG. It might need to be a religion to work
Bureaucracy - Increased commerce from 5 largest
Closed Economy - Anything about foreign trade units.
Virtual Market - (-10%) revenue from routes

Cripes. That looks like a lot. I really did accomplish some stuff....

 

[Falkonite]

Check this one out:

http://www.filegone.com/nzh8

I used the correct box this time. Duh!

I need buttons for Black and White, Virtual Market, and your Sentient Rights. The others I've scanvenged and they look all right.

I feel like I've been slacking off... I've only managed to make two civs, NASA and ASEC... It was tough trying to comprise a civilopedia for ASEC, as the organization doesn't exist. I'll try to work my creative juices and come up with something.

 

[woodelf]

Hard to slack in a volunteer project. I'm going to look through the bible and see how many techs are listed and see what we need.

 

[woodelf]

Crud. There are no techs in the BIBLE! OH-NO!

I'll check his CivII thread and then scavenge from other places and see what everyone likes.

 

[woodelf]

I'll wait for JBG's tech update. I don't want to reinstall CivII just to look at them. And he might have different ones in mind.

JBG - How many will there be? One mod I could "borrow" from has 97, the other 99. If we have that many or less we have less work to do.

 

[GarretSidzaka]

as to what you were saying about reskinning terrain- that is very cool. im not sure as to how to do this at all tho. i remeber it was easy b4, you just had the pink sheet with all the tiles on them LOL
right now im interested in looking into reskinning units. i have a scenario planned that will probly require this. but if you can link me or introduce me to someone whos reskinning terrain, i would be grateful.

BTW does anyone know when this "Gift in January" SDK comes out?!?!?

 

[Haarbal]

if your intrested i'm trying to wake up and get over my hangover
at the moment i'm still looking for the thingy to unpack my data library so i can access the art files. (i also didn't know i was going to do the civs? been there, done that )

haarbal

 

[Haarbal]

can we all please stop talking about the SDK
everybody is getting lazy and saying that all the stuff only will become possible with the SDK without knowing anything about it.
on this tread, created by JBG, the first answer someone shouts is that the SDK is required, while it's easy to mod in.
let's try to create it as far as possible without being too lazy (a bit lazy is good ) to even try/have a good look.

haarbal

 

[woodelf]

haarbal - it's been so long that I unpacked my art that I don't remember how I did it or where I located it. There might be help somewhere around here.....sorry.

And I agree about the SDK. Kael did a superb job with FfH without it. We can do this mod superbly as well.

 

[woodelf]

I'm finding pics and making tech buttons now. Still no idea of what the techs will be, but I figure energy pics and stuff like that can always be used.

Oh yeah....Where's JBG?!?!?

 

[woodelf]

Here's a rundown of Buttons I've sized for the Techs. The description may/may not be the actual tech name. Ideas taken from the screenshot in JBG's Civ2 mod. I'm missing a lot since the screenie didn't show all of the techs. Government, Civic, and human type tech buttons we can most likely borrow from Firaxis or other mods.

Advanced Automation
Advanced Electrolysis
Advanced Genetics
Advanced Spacesuit
Advanced Hydrponic Plant
Alloys
Artificial Blood
Asteroid
Atom
Automated Worker
Basic Genetics
Biosphere
CO2 Recycling
Combustion
D2 Fusion
Energy Net
Factory
Fiber Optics
Flowing Energy
Futuristic Highway
Gas Extraction
Glass Working
Hydrogen Firing Chamber
Lunar Scout
Moon Rover
Moonwalker
Nuclear Energy
Plasma Weapons
Plasma
Quantum Energy
Simple Automation
Simple Fusion
Simple Spacesuit
Simple Hydroponics
Solar Power
Surface Mining
Underground Mining
Windpower

 

[woodelf]

More tech buttons:

Food Replicator
Shuttle
Ore Refinery
Ore Extractor
Space Station
Space Station Schematics
Future City
Booster Rocket
Deep Mining
Terraforming
Chemistry
Bore Mining
Generators
Body Armor
Advanced Body Armor
Space Laser
Cyber-Robotics
Simple Robotics

Again, these might not be tech names, but they can be tied to techs so we have buttons.

 

[Belizan]

Sorry for the delay in posting, I was away for the weekend.

EDIT: WARNING: long post here!
I've thought long and hard about great people. Ideally, I'd like to add the number of great people varieties currently available, to:

Great Artist (as normal)
Great Engineer (as normal)
Great Merchant (as normal - possibly can be changed)
Great Scientist (as normal)
PLUS:
Great General (created randomly when an experienced unit enters combat)
Great AI (sort-of great prophet, but more powerful (and rarer)
Great Statesman (? tentative - only add if possible to add new great people)

So that means we need to add one type of great person or at least replace the Great Merchant (which will be hard and difficult). At the moment, we can replace Great Prophet with Great AI.

No problems so far.

Great Generals are spawned from experienced units winning battles. They ought to do some of the following ideas:

That's easily done.

*give a complete promotion line (say, all garrison promotions, or all city raider promotions) to a unit,
*give one promotion to each unit in a stack,
*lead a unit to certain victory
*upgrade all instances of a certain unit for free
*fortify a colony granting a massive defensive bonus plus an experience bonus for units garrisoned in the city
*set up a military academy that incurs a smaller defensive bonus and a massive experience bonus for any unit built in the city
*combine with another great person to give a golden age.

Most of these are pretty straightforward to code, albeit quite powerful 8), but... Teaching the AI to use them... Ok, each one in turn...

*give a complete promotion line (say, all garrison promotions, or all city raider promotions) to a unit,

"Easy", popup to pick the unit, popup to pick the promotion. You'll have to hard code the list of promotion options, and any criteria you want for each line being available (techs, experience, etc.). Which means you have to explicitly spell them out to me.

As with most of these options, teaching the AI to use them is not possible. Instead, we'll ahve to write code to make these decisions for the AI by doing unit sweeps on PlayerBeginTurn() for each AI and using his Great Generals for him as we think is appropriate.

*give one promotion to each unit in a stack,

Yeah, "easy". Same as above, basically

*lead a unit to certain victory

Ok, this is not so easy. My first question would be what sort of interface did you envision for this ability? We can't interrupt combat before it takes place. So our options for implementing something like this look like... Granting a promotion with some arbitrarily huge bonuses which we then remove after their next battle. Automatically full healing the unit after it's next battle. Respawning the unit if it dies in its next battle. (Any or all of these above). Note that even if we respawn it, we are only post-fixing the combat result. So, for instance, if your invulnerable unit was the last unit in a city, if it lost, it would still cause the city to be captured, and then we'd ahve to spawn the unit in a neighboring plot (like it withdrew, basically). Also, I'm pretty sure we can't override getBestDefender() for a Plot, so without a super promotion, we can't gaurantee that this unit will be chosen to defend the stack by the next attacker.

*upgrade all instances of a certain unit for free
*fortify a colony granting a massive defensive bonus plus an experience bonus for units garrisoned in the city
*set up a military academy that incurs a smaller defensive bonus and a massive experience bonus for any unit built in the city

All three are straightforward, but the xp bonus for units built in the city and the def bonus would need to be implemented as buildings created by the unit. Similar issues with the AI as the others, btw...

Great AIs are supposed to be very rare crosses between engineers and scientists. Their spawning ought to be limited by some kind of criterion - religion/civic/technology or something. They appear rarely and convey great bonuses.

Hmm.. not sure about using a civic to modify GP %age appearance chances. You can, of course, make them rare by simply not adding much chance of them to each wonder or building (or specialist). I'll have to look into the civic aspect.

*do the complete remit of both great scientists AND great engineers

Don't understand what you mean?

*enter a city's networks as a super specialist, providing massive commerce and science benefits

Straightforward super specialist.

*enter a city's networks as a permanent resident, helping protect against spies and viruses, incurring a defensive bonus, reducing corruption/maintenance and increasing the science of the city

Hmm.. well, spawn an unmovable unit to spy for you, add a super specialist, a building (for the defensive bonus and maintenance)... Yeah.. doable, but ugly 8). I'll have to check when I go to implement it if I can condense this at all.

*research a powerful technology

Straightforward.

*Enter another civ's networks as a secret agent for only a few turns, granting access to that civ's LOS and cities

Hrmm... offhand, I don't know if this is possible. I'll have to go look at the espionage functions.

Great Statesmen are supposed to be influential politicians. They can enact any one civic the player chooses, ensure success in a trade/negotiation with another civ (think Margaret Thatcher and the EU rebate here), etcetera, etcetera.

Hmmm... not sure about any of these. Activating a civic I *think* can be done by override CanDoCivic. Ensure trade/negotation with another civ should be doable by override the diplomacy ai, but may be arbitrarily difficult to get working :/ (i.e. a lot of work). Can't say about the etc., etc. 8).

 

[Belizan]

Ok I've done terrain improvements.

Unfortunately, the Radar Tower fell by the wayside because there's no way I can see of giving improvements an LOS rating or the ability to detect stealth.

When the improvement is built you spawn an invisible, no maintenance, unmovable unit in the tower with the LOS you want (and make it capturable).

The Outpost had to be modified because there's no way I can see of giving improvements the ability to refuel air units.

Haven't looked at airplanes, so I don't know. I can start taking a look at that if you like, but one project at a time would be nice 8).

I'll have to give health and happiness ratings elsewhere, in buildings and Civics XMLs.

I haven't had a chance to read the bible yet (I just got back and am reading this thread), so I'm not sure what you mean. I don't know if this is doable (improvements directly providing health/happiness), but again, I can take a look.

How do you ensure that you can only build improvement x if improvement y has been built there first?

Override CanDoImprovement. Not sure if the AI will reacte properly, however.

 

[Belizan]

I haven't looked into implementing unusual civics, so I'm not really up on what can be done. Some of these sound doable, and some seem like they should be doable via XML. I can take a look at these issues as well, but again, one project at a time would be nice 8).

Here's a rundown of things I'm not sure about for civics:

Despotism - having (-1) happiness in cities over size 7
Hierarchy - having (-10%) effectiveness in anit-capital distance cost improvements
Communism - No capital distance cost? I think they all default to zero
Democracy - (+1) prod/comm in tiles. This sounds more like a trait.
Decentralized - The (-20%) revenure from foreign trade
Black-n-White - Randomly lower/raise foreign opinion
Cooperation - raises foreign opinion and favourable treaties
Mediation - 3rd party treaties
World Government - automatic alliances and (+1) unhappiness with WG. Needs to be a religion I think to work
Disparate - The (-1) prod/comm. Same as Democracy
Xenophobia - foreign element unhappiness and no spread of foreign culture
Sentient Rights - Not sure about (+1) happiness in all cities.
Free Speech - same problem as WG. It might need to be a religion to work
Bureaucracy - Increased commerce from 5 largest
Closed Economy - Anything about foreign trade units.
Virtual Market - (-10%) revenue from routes

Cripes. That looks like a lot. I really did accomplish some stuff....