[Religion and Revolution]: Mod Development

[raystuttgart]

It would be possible to have unique units or professions for certain Natives.
(And giving them special UnitAIs or special capabilities.)

But I absolutely do not like that idea.
(Benefits compared to efforts simply to high.)

I will not create special UnitAIs if it is not absolutely necessary or promisses high benefits.

Also, unbalancing the Native Nations does not sound very promissing to me.

So I guess, we can stop that discussion.
(I would probably put a veto to such a feature anyways.)

 

[Martock]

Hopefully this is the right directory for this as I didn't see a obvious "Suggestions" thread.

One suggestion I have for this mod, though I'm not 100% certain it can be done, is to have a info pop-up show up when you've educated a free civilian displaying what cities need what units in them to fill a job. I've found it tedious to say the least going through town after town to see who needs a carpenter or weaver, etc. If this could be done by moving the mouse over the description or even just a side panel showing what each city lacks in terms of educated civilians, that would be awesome. Just a thought.

 

[Tigranes]

Your F1 screens have a lot of information you might find useful. Particularly screens with buildings and citizens...

 

[raystuttgart]

... though I'm not 100% certain it can be done, ...

Almost everything can be done, if we believe it is worth the effort.
(But in this case I personally don't believe it is.)

... displaying what cities need what units in them to fill a job.

"What your cities need" is a very subjective matter.
(And it is not simply about open slots for professions ...)

Also as Tigranes says, there are the Advisor Screens already.

 

[raystuttgart]

@team:

New revision available in SVN.

2 small bugfixes:

A) Fixed a bug that could cause negative storage
B) Fixed a bug that allowed cheating when bargaining with Natives

 

[Sanotra]

Hi everyone! When is release 1 dropping on us!?

 

[raystuttgart]

Hi everyone! When is release 1 dropping on us!?

It is out since 2 weeks already.
(see here)

 

[mscibor]

If You don't mind, I would like to ask for small change in alerts regarding escaping of unfree colonists. Current message is: "An unfree Colonist has fled". I'm afraid that this message is a little confusing for me and I'm losing some time to investigate who exactly and where escaped. It would be great if this message could include city name (to make it easier to locate where this Colonist has fled). In addition it would be great if this message would indicate the exact type of unfree Colonist.
For example: "A native slave has fled from Jamestown!".

What do You think?

 

[raystuttgart]

For example: "A native slave has fled from Jamestown!".

What do You think?

The German message was already more precise.

When I originally implemented "Learning by Doing" and the other features in that mini-framework it was for TAC
and I was only focussing on German and wrote only minimal texts for the other languages.

The message will tell the city for other languages as well with the next release.
(Already corrected in SVN.)

 

[Sanotra]

I didn't notice it was out. I will download now! How come the mod is not in the Civ4Col downloads directory? Too big?
I look forward to playing!

 

[Isabelxxx]

No way, 300 MB in 7zip (800 MB in folder)!

 

[Sanotra]

Is Tac really so small as to fit in the 10Mb download? Let me check.

Edit: I see what TAC did, having the user download an installer linked to an alternate download source. Is it possible for RaR to do the same, and is that in the works already?

 

[Sanotra]

My post would be too long, and the time too demanding to give ample praise to this RaR mod. RaR is a game within the game, and is so far removed from what SidMeier gave us in Vanilla that it should be selling for 30 bucks a pop on the Wal~Mart shelves. I have been well pleased with the size of the mod, and the valuable content it possesses. It has been my honor to supply maps to the mod, and to give ideas to the team which I see ultimately ended up in the mod (like native slaves). Thank you team for making this thing!

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Is Tac really so small as to fit in the 10Mb download? Let me check.

Edit: I see what TAC did, having the user download an installer linked to an alternate download source. Is it possible for RaR to do the same, and is that in the works already?

I don't know, but in any case it is possible to have the download database link to the download mirror, rather than have it link to a file that is directly stored in the database.

 

[raystuttgart]

@team:

Please everybody get newest revision.
(It contains several bugfixes from Robert and myself.)

@Robert:

I have fixed today:

1. Unrest Icon
2. Diplomacy Texts related to an old DLL-Diplo-Event (only German texts had been correct)
3. A bug related to Automatization and "Natives not talking when furious"

 

[raystuttgart]

@team:

New revision available in SVN.

I have revised our XML for Texts.

Basically I have merged many small ones into bigger ones.
(Removing many files that were originally only meant as working files.)

Thus I have reduced the number of XML for Text by 10.

There is currently one last "working file":
CIV4GameText_RaR_Founding_Fathers.xml

It will get merged into the others, once we have finished implementing the planned Founding Fathers.

Otherwise, I think our XML for texts is ok now.

 

[raystuttgart]

In a next step, I will rework loading our variables from GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.
(I agree with Isabelxxx, that this can be done much more performant.)

 

[raystuttgart]

@team:

New revision available in SVN.

I have reworked the loading of variables from GlobalDefines.xml and GlobalDefinesAlt.xml.
(Variables from Vanilla, TAC and RaR are affected.)

More than a hundred of these variables are now only initially loaded from FVarSystem and then strored as global variable.
(I have especially done that with variables very often called at Plot, Unit, City, Player, UnitAI, CityAI and PlayerAI.)

Massive amounts of code changes but the performance increase (turn times) is incredible !!!

 

[Isabelxxx]

More than a hundred of these variables are now only initially loaded from FVarSystem and then strored as global variable.
(I have especially done that with variables very often called at Plot, Unit, City, Player, UnitAI, CityAI and PlayerAI.)

One of the things that make me laugh is that after doing that you still have those variables in FVarSystem (!)

I mean, now you have them in Cache, and the DLL will use only your cache (if you change the rest of the code). That increases performance as I told you. But now do this at the start of cacheGlobals():

uint uiFVarSystemSizeStart = GC.getDefinesVarSystem()->GetSize(); //DOANE

Not necessary to say what you will find when debugging...

So what's the problem here?
Variables are never removed from that system, even those added to cache (!).

And the other problem? Check how cacheGlobals() work...

• It is called several times during the game (not only at start).
• Every time is called, it rewrites ALL the cached values reading the ones in the FvarSystem. Why? Because every time you do something like SetDefine***(***) it has to cache globals at the end to give you the possibility to rewrite any possible cached value with the same variable name.
• You can not remove variables because then all the cache would be corrupted on next call.

And why I did all those investigations?
Because you have now the same variables in 2 places, but really only using them from one place(unnecessary memory usage).
And because all the not cached values are still loaded from FVarSystem, so all that chunk only slows their reading.

 

[raystuttgart]

... you still have those variables in FVarSystem(!)

I know.

That increases performance as I told you.

Yes it does.

So what's the problem here?
Variables are never removed from that system, even those added to cache (!).

...
Because you have now the same variables in 2 places, but really only using them from one place(unnecessary memory usage).
And because all the not cached values are still loaded from FVarSystem, so all that chunk only slows their reading.

So what do you suggest ?

But since I read much less from FVarSystem now, I don't think there is a real problem.
(Nothing is perfect in this world.)