Hey,
as I have been posting about in the development thread, I have been working at transitioning from multiple scenario files for each starting data to a single custom map file that you can start from with the Play Now option.
You can find more details about what that means there. But the bottom line is that this will allow handling multiple scenarios, additional map settings, transitioning to the new map, and having multiple civilizations while using less slots and performance in the future.
My work on that is now almost complete. I have uploaded the current state of it on a new branch named custommap. It would help me out a lot if you can play from this branch to see if everything works. The goal is to have the same supported scenarios as before, with everything working as before, only accessed differently. As usual, you can get the branch by using git fetch and git checkout.
To start a game, now follow these steps:
Also: this branch is not savegame compatible with the develop branch, so you have to start a new game and play it entirely on this branch.
As I mentioned above, I am not done with this feature yet. But I think at this point things are stable enough to collect additional feedback and bug reports while working on the remaining tasks. What is still left to do?
as I have been posting about in the development thread, I have been working at transitioning from multiple scenario files for each starting data to a single custom map file that you can start from with the Play Now option.
You can find more details about what that means there. But the bottom line is that this will allow handling multiple scenarios, additional map settings, transitioning to the new map, and having multiple civilizations while using less slots and performance in the future.
My work on that is now almost complete. I have uploaded the current state of it on a new branch named custommap. It would help me out a lot if you can play from this branch to see if everything works. The goal is to have the same supported scenarios as before, with everything working as before, only accessed differently. As usual, you can get the branch by using git fetch and git checkout.
To start a game, now follow these steps:
- Click PLAY NOW. (The "Scenarios" button should now be grayed out.)
- Do NOT use "Custom Game". It is mostly functional, but not moddable so I could not prevent it from offering options that will break the game. I could also not disable it. But it is unsupported.
- Afterwards, you will be given some non-options about map size, climate, and sea level. You can simply proceed.
- Now you can pick the scenario: 3000 BC, 600 AD or 1700 AD.
- After that, you can choose your civilization and its leader. Note that the available civilizations and leaders match the scenario. It is possible to start as Iran, Mexico and Colombia in every scenario.
- Like before, you can select your game speed and difficulty level.
Also: this branch is not savegame compatible with the develop branch, so you have to start a new game and play it entirely on this branch.
As I mentioned above, I am not done with this feature yet. But I think at this point things are stable enough to collect additional feedback and bug reports while working on the remaining tasks. What is still left to do?
- Most importantly, collect metrics about how many civilizations are active at the same time at the maximum, and then reduce the number of slots to match that. I already set up logging for that, which I shared a few months ago. This should bring an immediate performance gain.
- In combination with that, make sure that slots can be shared and reassigned. Especially, if no free slot is available, deciding if it should be freed by collapsing an existing civilization, for example.
- Demographics graphs need to be civ based: currently they are still slot based, i.e. would not respond to a new civ being assigned to a slot
- Scenario starting visibility: this is the most significant difference to the initial situation in the scenarios compared to before. Right now, every civ only starts with its territory revealed. In the current setup, the initially revealed area for each civ is carefully defined, which is not sustainable and not even done very well right now. I want a more generalised approach where you do not have to define every single revealed tile for every civilization.
