Scenario League Wiki Rebuild

[JPetroski]

I think all of us who are here and active right now should have editing rights and the ability to grant those to newcomers in the future using our best judgment. I don't know that there will ever be a time when there will be so much interest again that it'll be an issue.

 

[techumseh]

I've always viewed the wiki as the 'resource centre' for SL, as opposed to the 'communication centre' which is the forum. So If members (I like your definition, btw.) want to link to scenarios, artwork, tips etc that they have uploaded., then great. It's important to define clearly what the wiki is supposed to do, so that it doesn't become a random collection of unrelated content.

 

[techumseh]

One area where the wiki could be greatly improved is the display of Civ2 artwork. If it were properly organized in a central repository it would be a very valuable resource.

Categories might include : units, terrain, cities, icons, and people. Graphics could be organized by period (for units), or by artist.

 

[Blake00]

Access:
I guess the only question I have on the topic of allowing people wiki admin access criteria is.. how easy is it for admins to roll back pages and undo damage done by a bad person? And is there anyone left here who knows how to do that stuff. I'm not great with wiki's so I have no idea! On the bright side I was able to fix all the broken links and missing downloads I reported with no troubles, and also figured out the built in file uploader and how to 'media link' to files uploaded by it inside a wiki page. However I failed miserably at trying to add a new page (purely for testing and would have removed it) to the wiki the other day and couldn't figure it out lol. But anyway if no one here knows how to undo vast amounts of damage then stricter criteria is advised ie been a member for a year or 2 and released at least 1 mod, plus a check of their posting history for bad behavior.

Artwork:
That would be great and the good news is that pretty much already exists on the old wiki as I was browsing it last weekend. However sadly it wasn't used much as there's a bit of content under units and a decent amount under Cities but not much under anything else

I was surprised to find nothing under terrain. Whatever the terrain pack was that was used in Eivind's Colonialism and so many other MGE scenarios along with the gorgeous & highly detailed lighter terrain packs Catfish and you guys have done for ToT should be front and center for new/returning players as I've seen that a lot of people out there don't like the vanilla MGE & ToT terrains. I noticed you guys have got some sweet threads here gathering up graphics which is great (especially as I've seen some cool graphics library threads on the Civ3 forums and thought "jeez Civ2 needs some pinned threads doing that") so some of the rescue/investigation prep work is already done.

Music:
Apologies @Prof. Garfield I've read your sig before but somehow missed that! That's really cool! You really do know your programming & hacking stuff! I've edited my last post with the correction. And I'm so getting that for my copy of ToT! I already have all the Civ2 eras soundtracks on mp3 (in prep for my video series) so I'm good to go lol.

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[Prof. Garfield]

guess the only question I have on the topic of allowing people wiki admin access criteria is.. how easy is it for admins to roll back pages and undo damage done by a bad person? And is there anyone left here who knows how to do that stuff.

By searching Special:RecentChanges, an admin (or maybe anyone, I don't know) can see recent edits and rollback changes of the most recent contributor. The history tab of individual pages offers more gradual rollbacks. So, it shouldn't be too hard to undo damage.

However I failed miserably at trying to add a new page (purely for testing and would have removed it) to the wiki the other day and couldn't figure it out lol.

Search for the exact name of the page you want to add in the search bar. If it doesn't exist, you should be given the option of creating it.

 

[McMonkey]

As we found out when trying to obtain the source code for Civ2. Nobody seems to know who owns the rights & more importantly, nobody seems to care.

My planned solution (that only got to the experimental phase) was to replicate what Luiz Guzman did with Open General & create a site with all the ToT files + patches & scenarios in one easy installer. Anyone showing interest can then be directed to that site to download it, unzip to their PC & enjoy the retro gaming experience.

You could even use the revamped Wiki, if the file size allows. The attraction of Open General is you can just download & install with a couple of clicks, without any need to understand how the files go together. The biggest obstacle for potential new players is learning which folder files are meant to go in, which patches are required etc... Why not make life easy for people?

 

[McMonkey]

http://www.open-general.com/

 

[CurtSibling]

I entirely support the idea of sticking all the CIV2 MGE/ToT stuff on a site with the relevant add-ons, patches, etc. It's a good way of drawing out
what entity actually owns the Microprose rights...Then these mysterious owners could be approached with a few of getting the source code.

The code is the CIV2 Holy Grail. I wonder if anyone has emailed Sid Meier about it...He is still doing the odd podcast, between organ recitals.

 

[McMonkey]

I don't think the source code will ever be found. Even if it does still exist somewhere, the legal aspect vs the size of the audience would make it not worthwhile for the owners to bother with. Without some financial gain to be had, they have no incentive to even try. I recall that back in the day, people made contact with all those involved in making Civ2 and, though they expressed sympathy to the endeavour, none of them was able to help.

Lua pretty much gives designers all the tools they need, so the quest for the holy grail seems futile. By all means, prove me wrong

My point is that, should someone bundle the whole package into one download, nobody will be coming after you for Copywrite infringement. It's simply not worth their time or the cost & they just don't care at this point.

 

[CurtSibling]

If we could provide the player with more than 7 civs to choose and use, then we could call that the quest complete...Until then...

 

[McMonkey]

Yes, that would be amazing. I just think that if the code was out there, the old campaign would have uncovered it. I recall there was a petition with a significant number of signees. Some of the original designers expressed their sympathy with the cause but nobody had any idea if the code was still out there somewhere (doubtful).

I guess it doesn't hurt to try. You never know. I just wouldn't waste any time on it.

 

[CurtSibling]

I agree, McM.
The most realistic path is for the CIV2 modder community is to try and break that infamous 7 civ barrier.

 

[techumseh]

I remember this being discussed at the time of the source code conversation. I'm the last person who understands computer workings, but I recall that it has to do with the architecture of computers at the time Civ2 was designed. Does 8 bits make sense to anyone? I think that 7 civs + barbarians is built-in and cannot be exceeded. It's more like the speed of light rather than the speed of sound.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Computer memory is divided into 'bytes', which are 8 'bits', and each 'bit' can be 0 or 1. A byte can have 256 values, either 0 to 255, or -128 to 127 if interpreted as a number. So, if a unit's information has several bytes of information, and one of those bytes corresponds to the unit's type, it is relatively easy to tell the program that instead of 0-79 being valid unit types, 0-127 (or maybe 126) are valid unit types. It's not impossible to overcome this sort of thing, @TheNamelessOne seems to have somehow overcome a 1 byte limit for the number of cities.

Another way to interpret a byte is as a group of 8 'flags'. For example, a tile can be revealed or not revealed for each tribe. If there are 8 tribes, each tribe can have a bit to determine if the tile is revealed to them,and one byte per tile can store the map revelation information. Having more tribes would mean using 2 bytes per tile (at least up to 16 tribes), and there are a lot of tiles. Probably one of the earliest decisions they made was that there would be 7 tribes plus barbs, so everything they wrote would be based on that assumption. While it would have been good practice to have a parameter in the source code 'numberOfTribes', I could easily see just using 7, since it would never be changed. Even tech costs are linked to the fact that there are 7 tribes (look up the 'key civ' if you don't know what that is). So even if we had the source code, it would be a bit of a job to go through and change everything to recompile for more tribes. Not to mention, the new game would be incompatible with old saved games.

 

[CurtSibling]

At this stage, it would be easier to construct a time machine and go back to convince the designers to have 20 civs!

 

[Blake00]

And stick around to grab all the long lost Civ2 scenarios while we're there lol.

Back on the scenario wiki rebuild topic I thought just mention that an interesting conversation happened with @Solver on the WePlayCiv #Civ-talk discord the other day (18/4/21) about how he's still got all the old scenarios and modpacks etc from the Poly servers and wants to make a simple low maintenance list page of all the scenarios and downloads (think white page with simple text links that lists the scenarios with title, author and description) that doesn't fall over every 5 mins like the old over complicated poly download pages used to. However to do that he needs people to go through all the old files identifying what's what and submit the identification info via markdown to a Github hosted (meaning its public and multiple people could contribute) library that his server would automatically build new pages from. He asked me if I wanted to have a go at taking it on as he's seen my crazy scenario search projects and helped me out with a few rescues. My reply is similar to the one on our wiki discussion here in that it's a great idea, and I'd be happy to continue to a team working on it however if no one else is interested and it's just me then I need to finish most of my other big current projects to free up time for such a huge undertaking.

Why do I bring this up here? Well firstly I figured the restoration of the entire Poly Civ2 MGE & ToT downloads section might be of interest to people here but mostly I mention it as the Poly downloads repository was huge as it including all the scenarios/mods from CSC, First Greek, Spanish Civ, and Ultimate Civ site (it also had the SL and CoC but they've already been rescued to CFC of course) so a working restored Poly scenario collection with proper identification (eg titles and authors instead things like of wfz.zip lol ) would certainly help in finding and adding content to a new public wiki IF it ever went ahead and could also serve as another mirror host. I've also linked him this thread in case he's interested in our wiki discussion too.

PS good to see you back @McMonkey ! Things were looking a bit worrying when it looked like you were the last person with admin access to the old wiki but in the end Garfield was able to get in. He gave me admin access and I was able to fix a bunch of broken links I'd found.

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[CurtSibling]

Why not just upload them to CFC? Or are we being territorial over old sites?

 

[Blake00]

Dunno, you can probably answer that better than me mate lol. Is there any bad blood between CFC and Poly these days that could cause a territorial problem? I took a 17 year break from the scene and missed the death of SidGames, the slow downfall of Apolyton and the Atomic mess here at CivFinatics all those years ago so I don't know. The SL, CoC and other stuff moved between the sites, were those transfers amicable? I asked Solver if there's any old rivalries still going and he said no, so I'm guessing it's all good these days. But does that mean he'd be willing to hand over the thousands of old Civ2 files on the poly server to CFC? I dunno lol. I guess he'd have to be asked very nicely haha!

If the Poly restoration project goes ahead and the files become publicly available I guess a copy could be taken pretty easily for CFC. Would certainly save time as lately I've been manually one by one downloading scenarios (of interest to me) from the Poly webarchive backups and uploading them to the CFC downloads area which takes ages!

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[CurtSibling]

Enough with the over-reactions, please. I'm talking about being practical and uploading this treasure trove of old CIV material.

I know some people are loyal to the old sites, but we must look at preserving the great work done by past modders.

CFC is huge, secure, and a valid choice for this.

 

[Blake00]

My response was friendly?

Sorry Curt but I'm not interested in dancing with you this time, you'll have to find another partner.

I'm all for putting a copy of the files on CFC...

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