Should BUG have its own DLL?

[EmperorFool]

Ruff, the idea of the CCCP is that it merges mods without enabling them. You have to add a global define to actually change the game.

I'd be very hesitant to include non-UG mods in BUG's DLL, even if they're off by default. If someone wants to take BUG's DLL and add non-UG mods, they are free to do so just as they have always been able to do with BUG.

P.S. I haven't forgotten about fixing those icons, EF. I'm really busy but should have them done in a week or so.

Thanks. I have the code ready and waiting.

 

[ruff_hi]

@Sam - That is a valid point. In fact, all the points posted have been valid (except Ruff's; he's always wrong ).

I am starting to think that someone is getting a little too big for their boots.

 

[EmperorFool]

I am starting to think that someone is getting a little too big for their boots.

Uh oh, Sam. Looks like you're in trouble!

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Uh oh, Sam. Looks like you're in trouble!

It appears that EF is an experienced buck passer.

 

[ruff_hi]

On of the items that I really wanted to put into BUG was HOF's Field of View. I've dug into their code and found that it appears that you can change this via ...

gc.setDefineFLOAT("FIELD_OF_VIEW",float(95))

Now, HOF have a nice little slider which changes that 95 to what ever the user selects. The default value is 42. Here are some pics using 95 ...



They are thumbnails, so click on them to go to the full version.

You will notice 2 things - the city bar is way too big and the tiles are way to small when the city screen is up.

Fixing the second is easy - just flip the FIELD_OF_VIEW global back to 42 when the city screen is up. What about the first one - anyone know of a way to scale the city bar? If we can do this all in python - then we can delay the dreaded BUG DLL .

Edit: Note that the city screen is now back to normal. I've put some additional code in the main interface to recognize when the city screen is up. At the moment, the city screen comes up with FoV set as per main view but if you flip to the next city (right / left arrow) it goes back to the game default. Looks like I might just have to move my set FoV code around in the 'redraw' function a little.

Going to put this in the BUG options as a drop down with values ranging from 1 to 100 instead of forcing EF to add a slider option.

 

[Dresden]

I think we can probably reset the field of view when the city screen is up, through Python only.

But I would be shocked if we could dynamically scale the city bar, even using the SDK.

 

[ruff_hi]

I looked at a game under the HOF mod and the city bar doesn't scale. The action you see above re city screen is also the situation under HOF. I will work on getting this into python and test it (didn't I say this somewhere else and EF had a go at me for saying that I would test?)

Edit: I did - it was in a Y! chat with EF ...

emperor.fool: so their citybar shrinks as you change the FoV?
emperor.fool: scales, rather
ruff_hi: need to check - think so
ruff_hi: will do that now
emperor.fool: does the text in it scale as well?
ruff_hi: ok - take it all back - the HOF mod is just the same as those pics I posted
ruff_hi: guess we can do 1 better than them by resetting the 'city up' screen back to normal
emperor.fool: ya that's doable, all in Python too
emperor.fool: looks like I'll need to add code for adding sliders to an options tab
emperor.fool: shouldn't be too hard
ruff_hi: yes you will
ruff_hi: I will add the code to maininterface and test
emperor.fool: omg, did you say "test"?

see - I even get stick from EF when we chat live

 

[·Imhotep·]

Well, I'd say "go for it". As a BUG user from early on I've always viewed it as "Civ IV how it should have been". Therefore tackling the DLL issue is the next logical step in this process (you could even include Airport Icons then ). Honestly I don't understand people's concerns about unaltered gameplay. You are free to not use the DLL if you don't like it. The unaltered gameplay is not a sacred dogma. You've done so much with XML and Python, now let us see the real good stuff !

 

[stagnate]

If it isn't going to be required, I'm not really clear on why you're asking

My main problem is that I like to use BetterAI, so I wouldn't be using the DLL in general (unless there happens to be coordinated merges, but that gets messy as release cycles aren't in sync). So while you can do whatever you so desire, I wouldn't be using the DLL. Either way, though, I'll be using BUG as best I can.

 

[EmperorFool]

If it isn't going to be required, I'm not really clear on why you're asking

We asked since we knew many people had reservations, and this was the best way to get a good sense of what those were, specifically. To summarize what I've seen so far:

Fear that the DLL will be required to use BUG.

I hope it's clear that the BUG team is unified in our commitment to keeping the DLL optional.

Fear that the DLL will alter gameplay.

Ditto, it wouldn't be BUG if it weren't UG.

Merging with other mods like BetterAI and Unofficial Patch will not be feasible for 99% of players.

Dresden has said he'll handle the merge of the UP, and I bet we can find someone to do BAI. Regardless, since the DLL is optional, you can still use BUG with BAI/UP as you do now if there is no merge.

 

[Del69]

Just my .02 on it, as long as its an optional thing and anything that depends on the dll fails nicely and transparently to the user, I think it would be a great addition to BUG. There is a lot you can do with python but there is quite a bit they didn't allow to be modded from python that really could enhance BUG.

My only suggestion would be figure out a way to get a standard gnu toolchain to compile it. Makefiles blow but they do work damn near on any platform

Haven't even looked at it myself so I don't know if its even possible to do or not.

 

[Dresden]

I've always been told the MSVC 2003 Compiler is an absolute requirement and I am perfectly willing to believe that since it is a component of a Windows-only game. But you're free to use whatever IDE suits your fancy and most (if not all) configurations use a Makefile instead of the VC project file.

After the imminent release of Unofficial Patch 0.21 I'll go back through our changes and make a baseline 3.17 setup where all Unofficial Patch changes can be turned off with a single define as a starting point for BUG.