[RaRE] RaR Extended: a combined modmod for the RaR modification

First of all, something came up and I haven't been able to mod at all since I wrote the last post. The release will be somewhat late compared to my original plan

I would recommend using git to download the xmls from sourceforge. Not only is git good at merging changes from multiple people, the xml on sourceforge are likely "final", at least in Assets/XML/Texts. This mean overwriting whatever is released for RaRE should be ok. Maybe it would be a good idea to add the translation to RaRE itself.

Be aware when you translate that the file encoding should be CodePage 1252 or Windows-1252 (two names for the same encoding). Alternatively use html escapes for non-ascii characters. I know people claim the encoding to be ISO-8859-1, but that is incorrect. I think Firaxis added the iso in text to the xml files, but that setting is ignored, hence the confusion. So far I think all translators used html escapes, but just using the correct encoding should work (test to be sure) and it's not like html escapes are really readable when reading the xml files.

I heavily modified text xml reading in M:C, but didn't more any of that into RaRE. We are stuck with the vanilla code, as limiting as it is. I didn't plan for translators to turn up.

 

Where can we get this modmod, if it's available?

 

I haven't really modded in months and today I finally got around to look at the remaining issues holding back a release. I can see from the timestamp that this post was written while I was working on the code. That shouldn't really be possible with the current activity level

I think I fixed the issues and I started writing changelog and other text files like how to install. Also I need to figure out how to make a clean version (no config or temp files) and compress that. I hope to upload a release in the very near future. I will announce the upload here and elsewhere once it's ready to be downloaded.

 

Hah! Very fortuitous, then. I look forward to seeing that, then. I like a lot of these changes.

 

I uploaded RaRE 2.5 on Sourceforge. I decided on 2.5 even though it's the first because it builds on top of RaR 2.4 and it would be confusing if RaRE 1 is newer than RaR 2.4.

You need to copy files from RaR 2.4 to make it work.RaRE is a 7 MB download and you need to copy 1.1 GB graphics and sounds. See included install instructions for details. It also tells how to switch between 1 and 2 plot city radius.

Download link: https://sourceforge.net/projects/religionandrevolutionextended/files/

Changelog: (compared to RaR 2.4)

Spoiler :

RaRE 2.5

Features: (all done by Nightinggale)
- added ability to switch between 1 and 2 plot radius for colony catchment area
- feeder service threshold change to supply construction
- import/export window now has buttons to set and clear multiple yields with one click (like clear all)
- autoexport to turn off export when there is nothing to export (no real gameplay change, but should prevent a late game slowdown)


Fixes:
- export threshold is no longer capped at 8 bit/255 (wladyslaw17)
- barbarian pirates now only spawn in areas with access to Europe (wladyslaw17)
- fixed issue where the feature had to be removed to allow building certain improvements, such as vineyards (Nightinggale)
- fixed broken hotkeys due to command order (ray)

 

You have been very busy indeed! You are the

 

Thanks for the update! Downloading when I get home.

 

Great to see you working on this. Will definitely try it out on my next game.

 

First I want to thank you, Nightinggale, for uploading the latest version.
I have been playing since TAC came out but was - after one trial game - not convinced by the larger city radius. So I stayed with RaR v 1.4 (?, the last one with a one space radius) and thus missed a lot of changes since.
Now I am trying your v2.5 for the first time to see how all the intermediate changes affect the game.

After micromanaging for a while I started to use transport routes a few turns before this happened:
A wagon train is going bonkers on a new transport route. Try this:

- find New Haven (almost on the east coast of the large bay)
- find the wagon train just north of it (called 'Enterprise')
- assign a transport route shipping sheep from Salem to New Haven
- start a new turn

After clicking through the usual messages try to find Enterprise.
Hint: it has picked up the sheep in Salem and is happily on its way to Jamestown in the far north east.
If you start another turn it will go there, vanish through a worm hole, and reappear between New Haven and Salem.
Wash, Rinse and repeat.
Only - after a few more turns the Enterprise ends up in Jamestown and stays there.
Oh - and the sheep are apparently used as fuel for the worm hole journey; they just disappear!?

I have tried to restart the game, including emptying of cache. Same story.
I have tried to delete the wagon train and put a new one in (by WorldBuilder). Same story.
I have tried to use Plymouth instead of Salem. Same story.

Any ideas?

edit: tried to rename all cities in question - same story.
tried to import sheep to New Haven from various other cities - same story.
tried with an oxcart - ...
tried with ore instead of sheep - works as expected.
How can I make the good citizens of New Haven eat ore?

 

I announced I would stop developing RaRE when this release came out because I want to focus on M:C. However reading about such a bug makes me reconsider that statement. I guess it would be best to keep RaRE activity to "bugfixing only".

Having said that, I have no idea how such a bug can occur. While I changed quite a bit in transport automation, the changes affects which plot the AI wants to go to, not how it goes there. Teleporting units sounds like it is totally unrelated in the code. That doesn't make it any less serious to the player. It just mean I don't have a clue to the cause right now. Also I have never seen it happen myself. This mean fixing it will be a real detective task with no known ETA, not even an estimate.

In unrelated news 38 has downloaded RaRE so far, which I guess is decent since I didn't do anything to promote it other than post on the forum. I'm a bit surprised at the country statistics though. TAC and RaR are German and translated to German. RaR is also translated to French and RaRE kept those translations. Still only 4 downloads from German speaking countries and a just a single Canadian download, which may or may not be French. For comparison Indonesia has 5 downloads and the US has 13. Apart from the US, it's not really the distribution I was expecting.


Also: why didn't anybody tell me I borked the RaRE download link in my signature? I accidentally provided one, which only works if you are logged in to SF and has upload permission to RaRE. It had this broken link in more than two weeks before I noticed by chance.

 

Thank you for your quick response.
I will have to do that route manually then, for the time being.
Will report if there are any more related issues.

 

More issues:
Two more wagon trains on transport routes ended up in Jamestown:
Tassoudac-Salem-Plymouth and
Plymouth-New Haven-Boston
both not involving sheep.
Other routes with all of these cities seem to work.
No changes on the original files on my side.
Please note that Jamestown is the "capital" as in the first city founded.

This is annoying!
later edit: it keeps happening with some routes but not others. The best I can say is that
- the detour always leads the Wagon Trains to Jamestown
- there seems to be always at least one of the cities Salem, New Haven or Plymouth involved.

Two more things that might or might not qualify as bugs:
- Colopedia (under Game Concepts/Movement) says units with promotion 'Mountaineer I' can enter peaks. Not so.
- Forts can only be built 3 tiles apart which seems silly given that typically larger cities can be built two tiles apart. Monasteries might be the same, didn't try.

Not a bug but terrible design:
When I hover over a military unit a list of this unit's abilities is shown on the left hand side of the screen. On my screen however, the list is so long that I cannot see the uppermost lines of that list which unfortunately contain the crucial information about unit type, profession, and - most importantly - experience. The effect is worst with mounted units but the same for higher infantry units.
It gets even worse as the unit gains promotions that may result in an even longer list.

 

Sounds like CvUnit::canMoveInto or one of the functions it calls fails to check promotions. The problem is the AI is stupid. It can't get a map overview like humans can and for each unit, it tries to move it to all sorts of locations to tell if it is even possible. In the end it will use the "best" solution it came by. As a result, the number of times it tests if a unit can enter a plot is astronomical. It doesn't take much of a slowdown for each check before the combined effect can be noticed.

It would be best to solve this issue correctly, but the standard approach where it loops all promotions to find those owned by the unit and then check if it unlocks peak movement is simply too slow for this task. It requires some sort of allows peak movement cache.

It makes sense if they use the same distance as between cities. They were coded at a time when only 2 plot radius was used. It would be so RaR like to write 3 in the code instead of using the xml value, hence when I changed the distance to 2, forts didn't change accordingly.

I completely agree and the same goes for most people. However after it ended up like that, finding somebody to fix the issue turned out to be hard. It is likely time consuming.


Keep the bug reports coming. Since at least one bug is severe enough for a bugfix release anyway, I will fix whatever is reported if it isn't too time consuming.

However right now the makefile takes priority. For unknown reasons Kailric can't use fastdep (works fine for me though), which prevents him from compiling until I told him how to work around it (which then makes compiling an issue if header files have been modified). As this potentially can affect all mods using Makefile 2.5 (including bts mods), I give this the top priority. Regardless of how great RaRE is, it is just a single mod and no modders risk getting stuck due to the issues. This naturally has a negative impact of an eta for bugfixes.

I just realized I get serious bug reports for both RaRE and the makefile and both use version 2.5. I don't like that number anymore

 

A serious and quite ugly exploit is possible at default difficulty, even right before revolution. Wage a phoney war with some irrelevant tribe and ask King for veterans. He will sell all kinds of units for around 1000 gold, on average. Again and again. Thanks to good relations.

 

Nighttinggale - Is RaRE 2.5 compatible with RaR 2.4 saves?

 

I saved some traderoute stuff and city radius, which mean the savegames are altered. I don't think I managed to make the savegames compatible, but I can't remember offhand. It should fail to load if it doesn't work, which mean you should be able to at least test this if you use the two plot radius dll.

 

Yup, that should make it incompatible. I don't think there's a point in me testing with 2 square radius.

 

It might make it incompatible and it might not. There is a variable called uiFlag and this one assigns a sort of version number to savegames. Using this number, new data can be added if the modder knows how to do it and bothers to write the extra code. I sort of fear for the last one

If/when the next RaRE is released, it would certainly be a goal to make it able to read 2.5 savegames.

 

The import/export all goods buttons are pretty helpful to get your dozens of merchant ships around, but can’t the auto-export settings be saved with the game? Every time you load the saved game the boxes are unchecked and you have to go through all cities again.

After playing TAC then RaR and now RaRE, I hope to have finally reached the highest state of the game without looking much further and missing another expansion. It’s really astonishing work what all the modders have made so far of the original game over the years.

 

Hu, they aren't saved? I'm somewhat sure I made sure to save everything needed to be saved. The list of items I need to check just keeps on growing and growing

I still haven't had the time and energy to deal with anything RaRE related. I will do it eventually though. I hate when people leave great software behind and ignore bugs, particularly if they are serious.