Savage Heart

[The Guardian]

Savage Heart
​

Some 3500 years ago Civilization came to the Americas. The earliest Europeans to arrive on the western continents described the people that they discovered there as Savages. By the time they arrived on those shimmering shores, the greatness of many of the meso american civilizations had wained away long ago. The Mayan, Olmec, Toltec, Moche, Pipil, and Tupi were a fading memory of once great civilizations. Only the Aztec and Inca remained as great powers. The Mayan civilization stood as a great power from 2000 BC until 250 AD. Longer than any other nation on earth. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world.

These civilizations built huge awe inspiring pyramids rivaling any built in egypt.

Their architects designed cities of fantastic beauty.

There Astrologers and priests created a language that is still being deciphered and a calendar that we still use today.

But there was a dark side to these people as well. A savagery beyond belief, which was the foundation of their beliefs. Other ancient civilizations often required sacrifices from their followers, but nothing like the sacrifices required by the ancient meso american Gods. These ancient deities required the blood of still beating human hearts. It is written that more than 20,000 captives had their hearts cut from their chests and their bodies cast down the steps of the great Pyramid of the Sun, on a single day.

Now you have the opportunity to go back more than 3000 years and see if you can conquer the savage heart.

There are 12 meso american civs to choose from.
approximately 105 unique units
93 buildings

First and foremost I want to thank RedAlert for allowing me to use his graphics from Born of Fire and his generous advices. Almost half of the building and most of the interface were created by him.

I would like to thank Blue Monkey for his map, which I did some heavy editing on,
and his suggestions and advises. He was a great help.

The terrain graphics are mostly from Pounder. Also the wonder splash screens interface is from Pounder.

Takhisis helped with the popheads and had several good ideas I incorperated.

Any unit creator that has produced a an indian unit, it's probably in this scenario, so thanks to all.

This is a beta release. I have tried to enlist some beta testers but the results were insufficient.
The civilopedia file is incomplete and I will continue to work on that and hopefully I can get some feedback on this release.

Here is the DL for the main file and BIQ
Savage Heart

Update your BIQ file with This BIQ
This includes fixes to BIQ problems mention in post #3 by BlueMonkey

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

Is this updated from the one (alpha test?) that was available earlier from the main C&C forum?

 

[Blue Monkey]

I've been replaying the "Sisters" training scenario for relaxation, so I thought I'd give this one a try. Here are some quick notes in random order (images in spoilers):

I think I should be able to build the Mayan War Chief. It doesn't show up in the available builds. I'm under the right gov't. I can't see the resource on the map, but it shows up as available on the city screen.

Spoiler :

The overlaps & lack of arrows on the tech screen are a real problem. There are threads available in C&C that address how to clean it up.

Spoiler :

There are some very strange graphics - like the decorative runes in the civilopedia.

Spoiler :

Without some minimal gameplay notes in the 'pedia some builds don't make sense. One is the dog unit - seems to duplicate the function of the scout. Another is the ability to build the boat maker in a landlocked city.

Spoiler :

There are magenta "halos" around several graphics. Often this happens when the graphic is getting reduced to a 256 palette. It's the last 2 positions in the palette, rather than the specific color, that determine invisibility of a color.

Spoiler :

The graphic border on the diplomacy popup is outstanding. However the background is just vivid enough to make some of the text difficult to read. A little experimentation with brightness & saturation may be all that's needed to fix this.

Spoiler :

Early days as far as playing this, so most of what I've noticed is visual rather than game mechanics. Looks to be a very interesting and fun scenario - keep at it!

 

[The Guardian]

Is this updated from the one (alpha test?) that was available earlier from the main C&C forum?

Yes there are extensive changes. You will need to download and replace the test files with this.

 

[The Guardian]

I've been replaying the "Sisters" training scenario for relaxation, so I thought I'd give this one a try. Here are some quick notes in random order (images in spoilers):

I think I should be able to build the Mayan War Chief. It doesn't show up in the available builds. I'm under the right gov't. I can't see the resource on the map, but it shows up as available on the city screen.

The War Chiefs are all auto produced. For the Maya, you must build the Meso War Chief Building. This building will auto produce a Meso Heoric Leader ( War Chief ) every 15 turns. Each Chief will be automatically named according to the names list in the civs military leaders.

The overlaps & lack of arrows on the tech screen are a real problem. There are threads available in C&C that address how to clean it up.

Yes I am aware of this. I was thinking that maybe I should place some of the 1st era techs into the 2nd era, and some of the 2nd era techs into the 3rd era to alleviate the crowding and thus create room for the arrows. What do you think?

There are some very strange graphics - like the decorative runes in the civilopedia.

Those lines are just a seperator. If you think they are distracting, I can remove them.

Without some minimal gameplay notes in the 'pedia some builds don't make sense. One is the dog unit - seems to duplicate the function of the scout. Another is the ability to build the boat maker in a landlocked city.

Yes, as I mentioned in the intro, the civilopedia file needs a lot of work. TurfCat was working on that. The last message I recieved from him was in April in which he mentioned an illness in the family. I have contacted him several times since then but haven't had a reply. I hope he is ok. I am going to try working on the civilopedia and will see what I can do to clarify some things.

There are magenta "halos" around several graphics. Often this happens when the graphic is getting reduced to a 256 palette. It's the last 2 positions in the palette, rather than the specific color, that determine invisibility of a color.

Graphics is not my forte, but I will see what I can do to clean these up. TOM2050 and General666 have helped me in the past with some graphics and I have learned quite alot from them. I think I handle this.

The graphic border on the diplomacy popup is outstanding. However the background is just vivid enough to make some of the text difficult to read. A little experimentation with brightness & saturation may be all that's needed to fix this.

Same as above. However, The text looks ok on my screen. I know, that on different types of screens and display panels graphics can have a different appearance. I have not taken this into consideration while designing my scenarios. I assumed that if it looked ok on my screen then it would look ok on everyone elses too. Well we all know what happens when we makes assumptions I'll see what I can do.

Early days as far as playing this, so most of what I've noticed is visual rather than game mechanics. Looks to be a very interesting and fun scenario - keep at it!

I want to thank you Blue for your excellent comments. This is exactly the type of reply I was hoping to receive. I will make the correction to the BIQ file and repost the corrected BIQ shortly. The rest is graphical and may take a little longer. However, these are minor (but important ) adjustments and can be fixed with a small patch and won't require a complete re-downloading of the files.

Thanks again for you comments, please keep them coming.

 

[Blue Monkey]

If you can post a rough readme that has just the gameplay info on units, improvements & resources it would help testers without requiring you to work on the pedia right away.

Look around the forum. There are several places where there is good advice on how to make a packed tech tree look decent.

The magenta adjustments shouldn't be that hard - change the "false" magentas to dark brown & see how that looks. For the text bg: just lighten it & reduce the saturation slightly. The main problem right now is that the dark outlines of the glyphs obscure the lines of text that fall on them.

 

[The Guardian]

If you can post a rough readme that has just the gameplay info on units, improvements & resources it would help testers without requiring you to work on the pedia right away.

Look around the forum. There are several places where there is good advice on how to make a packed tech tree look decent.

The magenta adjustments shouldn't be that hard - change the "false" magentas to dark brown & see how that looks. For the text bg: just lighten it & reduce the saturation slightly. The main problem right now is that the dark outlines of the glyphs obscure the lines of text that fall on them.

Started working on the readme file. Will take a couple of days.
Used Stephs editor and rearranged the tech tree. Will post a patch tomorrow.
I'll look at the graphics after I finish the read me.

Thanks again Blue.

 

[The Guardian]

Just uploaded the New Biq file. This fixes the Tech tree graphics problem ( Overlapping )

 

[mythusmage]

The one problem I have with the scenario is the lack of a wealth option. Building dog units gets boring after awhile.

 

[The Guardian]

The one problem I have with the scenario is the lack of a wealth option. Building dog units gets boring after awhile.

Do you have a suggestion for fixing that? A recommendation would helpful. Should I add more buildings, improvements? More Units? Shorten research time?

 

[mythusmage]

Do you have a suggestion for fixing that? A recommendation would helpful. Should I add more buildings, improvements? More Units? Shorten research time?

Neither nor, just let the civs 'construct' wealth from the beginning.

 

[The Guardian]

Neither nor, just let the civs 'construct' wealth from the beginning.

OK I can do that in the next update

 

[SwordmanFortify]

This looks awesome, so I'm pretty bummed out to find that it's gone. Anyone still have the files?