Star Trek Mod II: The Wrath of Mod

[Craynak Zero]

capt tripps, daft, the folder path goes as such: My documents/my games/bts/mods. All star trek II files are in a folder called star trek II. Does that sound correct to you guys?

 

[God-Emperor]

That is not really the right place to install it. It should be in the Mods folder under where the game is actually installed, the same folder that has all the mods that came with BtS in it such as Final Frontier.

Any mod that uses a theme different from the default BtS theme will not work when installed in My Games since the BtS executable fails to load the theme files correctly from there (and possibly some other stuff). Final Frontier and all derived mods use altered theme files.

 

[cpt.tripps.2012]

TO INSTALL:

Unzip or copy the folder "Star Trek II" to your CIV4: Beyond the Sword "mod" folder.

Example:

[Win32]

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods

[win64]

C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods

:

When you are done you should have a folder like this one:

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Star Trek II

: that contains all the MOD data


To RUN:

Start up Civ4: Beyond the sword. click "advanced". Click "load mod". Select "Star Trek II"

OR

Create a short cut with the following target:

[win32]

"C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Star Trek II

[win64]

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Star Trek II

 

[xaster]

Hi cpt.tripps.2012

yes the romulan models are already in the mod, but bound with artstyle.xml
to the Romulan Civ. So they don't use there dedicated buttons for this ships
It will be cool to have a big squad of unique ships for the great 3 in Star Trek
universe. You have did this for Starfleet and Klingons already an will be nice to see it at the Romulans as well

One more think. the Borg
You made the Civ to a non playable one and use a kind of barbarian script to create it to a game, right ?
What is the trigger for this ? Iam playing a big map since a couple of hours with space pirates activity only When will the borg come into the game ?

For what reason you have made the borg non playable ?
A cool thing this is to play the borg with different leaders like in the old Star Trek mod

 

[fahrenderfisch]

Sorry...

I was so happy about your effort and looked forward playing the game, but now I am sad

Just installed the new Verison 4f, started new game and...
...all Planets on my home System show "size = 0" (see attached screenshot)

deleted BTS, reinstalled it, patched it with 3.19 (official), new Game and...
...all Planets on my home System show "size = 0"

patched it with the "3.19 unofficial Patch v1.6" new Game and...
... same result

NoCustomAssets is set to 1, I checked.
I also emptyied all temp Folders I could think of...

any Ideas?

CivIV BTS patch 3.19 and 3.19 unofficial 1.6
Win XP (32bit) SP3

 

[Samson]

any Ideas?

CivIV BTS patch 3.19 and 3.19 unofficial 1.6
Win XP (32bit) SP3

I really know very little about this sort of thing, but I have installed this on 2 XP systems and 1 Windows 7 system. I had the size 0 planets problem on both XP systems and not on the Win7 system. Just to add a data point, I do not know if it is possible it is because of this and I did not do the comprehesive clean installs that fahrenderfisch has done.

 

[cpt.tripps.2012]

@Xaster

I am going through and redo each Civ one at time. Right now I am working on Ferengi. NExt is the romulans. If you want to help me out (and make it happen faster), give me a list of each class name and some famous ships and they're current relationship in the game (class wise). I'll put you down on the writing team in the credits.

The borg appear later in the game. They are not included as a playable character because I haven't been able to mod the C++ SDK yet and I have to do that to enable the assimilation skill and all the stuff that makes the borg cool. they will most likely be one of the last Playable character to get added.

@Fahrender and samson

No idea. Why don't you two try to figure out what you have in common. Are you sure you don't have Bug mod installed separately? Check your user/games folder.

 

[Craynak Zero]

TO INSTALL:

Unzip or copy the folder "Star Trek II" to your CIV4: Beyond the Sword "mod" folder.

Example:

[Win32]

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods

[win64]

C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods

:

When you are done you should have a folder like this one:

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Star Trek II

: that contains all the MOD data


To RUN:

Start up Civ4: Beyond the sword. click "advanced". Click "load mod". Select "Star Trek II"

OR

Create a short cut with the following target:

[win32]

"C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Star Trek II

[win64]

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=\Star Trek II

This didn't work. At first, it wouldn't even display the mod in the "Load A Mod" screen. Then, I left a copy of the whole folder (files included in it) and made another copy back where I originally had it. It showed on the Load a mod screen and did the GCF error again. Quite the puzzler.

 

[fahrenderfisch]

my "user\games" Folder (free\my games\Beyond the sword) is empty except some savegames and the "custom Assets" Folder.

could it be that I still use win xp?
or that I Installed it in a custom folder? ("C:\Programme Spiele\")???


by the way:
still get a lot of error messages (see screenshots) and neighbouring systems still are empty and still have the beginning score of 5000...

 

[Knighthawkke]

Hi all, been trying out this mod and the Star Trek I version and been having loads of fun. After a few more runs I might have some good adivce

I wish I knew more about modding the files I would love to be able to contribute more, maybe I will get into some files and try to learn XML and such.

What are the best guides to Civ 4 modding in everyone's opinion?

 

[God-Emperor]

Playing through a game of this, I have found a significant problem: The espionage mission that destroys a building causes the building information to get messed up.

Specifically, when the spy type unit does the mission that destroys a building it removes the building from the data the DLL keeps about what buildings are in the "city". It does not remove the building from the lists of what buildings are on what planet kept by the Python code. These two must match or bad things tend to happen, the most noticeable one being the "can't build buildings anymore" issue. There is also currently no Python event or callback that gets called when this happens (as far as I know), so there is currently no way to make it adjust the planet building data. Therefore I have to recommend either adding some callback for this in the DLL and Python (which will randomly pick one of that building type to remove from a planet, if there is more than one) or removing this espionage mission from the CIV4EspionageMissionInfo.xml file.

I also think that you are getting some slowness due to a flaw in the base location selecting algorithm. In selecting a position for the "regular" base type (bStarbase set to 1, bOtherBase not) it loops over every plot and generates a value for those that are not impossible locations. Except that the findBestResourcePlot function in CvAI.cpp doesn't check to see if the plot has a feature on it that should block the building of the station until after it has calculated the rating (which causes it to zero the rating). You get a bit fo a speed-up each time it runs this function by moving that check to happen before it does the rating.

To do this, the code near the end of findBestResourcePlot that says

				# Don't build anywhere except in empty space & asteroids
				if (pLoopPlot.getFeatureType() != -1 and pLoopPlot.getFeatureType() != CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getFeatureInfo,gc.getNumFeatureInfos(),'FEATURE_FOREST')):
					iPlotValue = 0

should be removed. Then up nearer the start of the function some similar code should be added so that it looks like this (added code in bold and red):

			# CP - Check the plot being rated to see if it already belongs to someone else.
			iPlotOwner = pLoopPlot.getOwner()
			if ((iPlotOwner != -1) and (iPlotOwner != iPlayer)):
				continue
[B][COLOR="DarkRed"]		
			# Post v1.81: moved this check to here - why loop over nearby plots if this one is bad?
			#	Instead of zeroing out the value, just skip the check.
			# Don't build anywhere except in empty space & asteroids
			if (pLoopPlot.getFeatureType() != -1 and pLoopPlot.getFeatureType() != gc.getInfoTypeForString('FEATURE_FOREST')):
				continue[/COLOR][/B]
					
			iDistanceFromCapital = CyMap().getGridWidth()

(the code is for FFP as it is in my copy with changes done since the last official release, thus the "Post v1.81").

In FFP this change makes a small but occasionally noticeable reduction in turn processing time. In ST-II you have a second type of base that uses this function to determine where it should be built, so it is called something like twice as often, and therefore the speed improvement should be about twice as much. Exactly how much that is is not clear, but I think it shaved off an average of something like a couple of seconds per turn when I made the change with my Standard size game (however it had been a day since I had last played it and I didn't do a direct comparison). You might want to run a saved game, late enough that everyone can build bases, for 5 or 10 turns without it, timing each, and then make the change and run the same 5 or 10 turns again to compare. If it makes a measurable difference you can add a "now x% faster" type blurb to your next release.

 

[xaster]

@Xaster

I am going through and redo each Civ one at time. Right now I am working on Ferengi. NExt is the romulans. If you want to help me out (and make it happen faster), give me a list of each class name and some famous ships and they're current relationship in the game (class wise).

Hi cpt.tripps.2012

based on your question I made a list with the available models of the Romulans.
The unit buttons are in the "Art\Interface\Buttons\Units" folder.
There are many different ship class in the mod so some if it need to use two times. I hope this help you a little bit

            Force | Move
Warp 5 Ship	2   1	Scout Class 		romscout.nif
Warp 7 Ship	2   2	D7 class I		romd7.nif

Light I		3   3	D7 class II		romd7.nif
Light II	4   4	R'derex class I		romrderex.nif
Light III	6   4	R'derex class II	romrderex.nif
Light IV	9   4	D'dredar class I	romddredar.nif
Light V		12  4	D'dredar class II	romddredar.nif
Light VI	16  4	Valdore			romvaldore.nif

Heavy I		16  3	Warbird D'deridex class	romwarbird.nif
Heavy II	20  3	Scimitar		romscimitar.nif	

Exploration I	1   2	Scout Class I		romscout.nif
Exploration II	2   3	Scout Class II		romscout.nif
Exploration III	3   3	Bird-of-Prey I		rombop.nif
Exploration IV	4   4	Bird-of-Prey II		rombop.nif
Exploration V	7   4	R'tan class I		romrtan.nif
Exploration VI	10  5	R'tan class II		romrtan.nif

 

[Drakarska]

Hmnn. I used to play a board game called Star Fleet Battles, if you could find an old copy, or google it, you may find a whole lot of ships from the various races to use for your models.

 

[Knighthawkke]

Cpt Trip, Not sure if you want to go into it for a source material, but if nothing else STO has a great depth of ship selection to get plenty of ideas for ships from anyway.

 

[Drakarska]

Cpt Trip, Not sure if you want to go into it for a source material, but if nothing else STO has a great depth of ship selection to get plenty of ideas for ships from anyway.

Lol, I completely forgot about that. The irony is, I'm a member of STO. My thx KH, off to check on my acct.

 

[cpt.tripps.2012]

wow! awesome posts guys! I have used some of the ship names from STO for the unique ship names. As far as models go, I'm pretty much locked into those as I have absolutely no 3D modeling software.

Xaster, Thanks for the list. I'll put it into the next release.

@God Emperor

I really haven't been able to dive into the dll, but I guess I can't avoid it at this point. I did have another question for you. When I did the old build (based on the original ST mod) I used python to add action buttons to units. when I use the same method with the FFP build it doesn't work. TC01 thinks it has something to do with the BUG mod, but he said you would know. Any ideas?

 

[God-Emperor]

I really haven't been able to dive into the dll, but I guess I can't avoid it at this point.

Well you could just remove the "destroy building" spy mission, at least for now.

I did have another question for you. When I did the old build (based on the original ST mod) I used python to add action buttons to units. when I use the same method with the FFP build it doesn't work. TC01 thinks it has something to do with the BUG mod, but he said you would know. Any ideas?

I saw those posts. But I'm in the opposite position of TC01: while I know something about BUG, I have never looked at the Python action button stuff. I would not be surprised if there is something that needs to be a bit different because of BUG.

 

[cpt.tripps.2012]

lol. I meant I can't really avoid digging into the dll in general. I was going to remove that mission in the mean time.

I guess I'll have to get in touch with the bug team.

 

[God-Emperor]

I looked through TC01's How To Make Python Action Buttons tutorial and it looks like it should work the same.

You might want to use numbers for the iData values which are bigger than the 300 range. I suggest 4 digit numbers, just in case. There was an issue with actions and the hover help in B5 once they added enough unit upgrades and promotions and such so that the numbers used started overlapping the numbers used by the planet related things (which use numbers from 666 to 678) in the "city" interface (see this post for the fix for that; if you haven't made this fix you probably should).

There are a few minor differences in the files, which I can elaborate on if you want:

In CvMainInterface.py the handleInput function is not empty so you have to be careful where you put things. But the relevant part of updateSelectionButtons appears to be identical to regular BtS.

In FinalFrontierGameUtils.py the getWidgetHelp function already has things in it too, and has the potential issue mentioned above.

If you are adding anything that uses the plot selection as shown in the tutorial you need to add the plotPicked event definition for BUG up in the init function of FinalFrontierEvents.py and add the onPlotPicked function (perhaps by copying the base event handler from the BtS CvEventManager.py file, or the tutorial) since that fucntion is not currently in there - assuming you want to add it to this file instead of creating a new one and loading it all as a new BUG mod during the BUG init (done in the files in the config folder).

By the way, something not covered in the tutorial: if you want to avoid "out of synch" errors, anything done by the human like clicking on a Python button should actually be done via a "mod net message" like the existing things for moving population from or to a planet. You can do all the necessary setup and plot selection and such, but when it comes to actually doing anything that changes the state of the game you should send a mod net message instead of doing it directly. This makes it happen on all players' computers in a multiplayer game instead of on just your own. Assuming it matters to you (FPP apparently is not 100% multiplayer friendly anyway).


But here is the important point:

I found nothing significantly different in how any of this should work in FFP. (With the caveat that I did not actually try to implement anything, just compared the tutorial to the FFP files.)

Therefore as far as buttons not showing up or not doing anything anymore it sounds like a problem in the CvMainInterface.py file like using spaces instead of tabs to do indentation somewhere or causing the handleInput function to either exit before it is done processing everything or fail due to a bug in the code in there, or more than one problem of this sort.

 

[cpt.tripps.2012]

No, it's not the spaces/tabs issue I've dealt with that before. I'll try moving the buttons into a higher id range and see if that fixes it.