Summer Project

[techumseh]

Thanks, I forgot the hotkeys also added tile improvements. It took me less than 15 minutes to finish what would otherwise have been a 2 hour ordeal. The Patch is going to make everything much easier. So now my map is finished!

Next is to 'Edit Kings'. Set alliances mainly, no attitude stuff needed - no one can talk to anyone anyway. British allied with the Chinese, Japanese allied with the Thais, and both sides at war with each other. I'll use the 'Negotiator' event to allow the Thais to talk to the British when (and if) the Brits recapture Rangoon.

 

[EZRhino]

My own 2015 project is also making good progress. Hopefully we can look forwards to at least a couple of new scenarios this year

Not to hijack, but what project is this?

 

[techumseh]

I've been busy this weekend finalizing the core technologies, adding improvements and wonders, and setting pre-reqs for the various units. The basic Chinese and Thai infantry units will be buildable by those civs; all their other units will be based on events only. All Japanese units will be event-driven and not buildable.

Research based events will deliver most of the British unit types. However, a few units will be buildable in some Indian and Burmese cities. All unit types will be obsolete, however a few select cities will still have certain units in their build menu. At the start, a few Burmese cities will be building Burma Rifles, others Kachin Levies (hill tribes loyal to the British). Several Indian cities will be building Indian Infantry, one in the north-west of the map will be building Gurkhas. Several more in both countries will build supply units (motorized and pack animal types). All other cities will not be able to produce any units, and will be restricted to capitalization. The idea is that only locally sourced units can be built in cities on the map - if you couldn't produce a Spitfire in Mandalay historically, then you shouldn't be able to in the scenario.

While I hit one frustrating glitch (the subject of the next post), I've now finished all the basic infrastructure of the scenario. I'll now begin adding the units, developing the events, and playtest as I go. This is the fun part.

 

[techumseh]

I did hit one snag that was very frustrating. It is certainly not the first time for me, or others, so I thought it might be worth writing about.

I was editing the Rules file, and when I reloaded the save game, I got this:

Civ II Fatal Error
error -6 in module '3'
data 00

This happens from time to time, and is almost always due to some simple error with a missing comma or something like that. The problem is that it's often very hard to find, and your scenario will not run until you fix it. In this case, I had made a number of changes to different fields in the Rules, so narrowing down the error was difficult. After a couple of hours of frustrating failure trying to find a misplaced comma somewhere, I decided I needed to be more systematic in my approach.

Fortunately, I had a backup Rules file that preceded the buggy one. I renamed both files and put the backup in place, and the scenario loaded just fine. Then I replaced the various fields with those from the faulty file, one by one. First @COSMIC, and the game loaded OK. Then @CIVILIZE (the tech field), then @IMPROVE and @ENDWONDER and everything still worked. Then I replaced @UNITS, reloaded and got the Fatal Error message.

Having narrowed the problem down to the @UNITS section, I looked again at the source of the problem. All the commas and periods seemed in place. I remembered that one of the big changes I had made was to give most of the units the same obsolescence technology, called Procurement, or U2. Checking that, I found one tech with a lower case u, instead of the capital letter U. After making the change, the scenario loaded perfectly.

This glitch can be very frustrating, and sometimes a very methodical approach will reach a solution more quickly than just guessing.

 

[McMonkey]

Not to hijack, but what project is this?

Its the Spanish Civil War mod here

Tech,

I have had similar issues in the past. Very frustrating indeed. Sometimes the methodical approach is the only way to find the needle in the haystack. Thank goodness there is @DEBUG for events!!!

 

[TheNamelessOne]

I did hit one snag that was very frustrating. It is certainly not the first time for me, or others, so I thought it might be worth writing about.

I was editing the Rules file, and when I reloaded the save game, I got this:

Civ II Fatal Error
error -6 in module '3'
data 00

This can be very frustrating indeed. See this post for a partial solution (extract the attachment into your scenario folder).

The other essential tool is DebugView, which will log the offending line. The thread containing the above post has more details.

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks TheNamelessOne. This will no doubt save us designers some time and spare us a fair bit of frustration!

 

[Patine]

I didn't know you could set obsolete units to be buildable in some cities but not others. Is that an exploit of the programming I was unaware of? Or a feature of the patch I missed on the list of changes?

 

[techumseh]

I didn't know you could set obsolete units to be buildable in some cities but not others. Is that an exploit of the programming I was unaware of? Or a feature of the patch I missed on the list of changes?

I suspect it's the former.

 

[techumseh]

This can be very frustrating indeed. See this post for a partial solution (extract the attachment into your scenario folder).

The other essential tool is DebugView, which will log the offending line. The thread containing the above post has more details.

Thanks, TNO. I'll look at incorporating those for future projects.

 

[techumseh]

These are the units for Burma Campaign: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=390894&stc=1&d=1425717547

 

[McMonkey]

This selection of units look brilliant. I can tell from this alone that Burma is going to be another classic!

I assume that the symbols represent things like units that can travel in gliders etc... Good idea!

 

[techumseh]

Thanks Drew. And huge thanks to Fairline for his superb units, many custom-made for the scenario. Over the years, he has endured my constant requests, badgering and repeated changes of mind with good humour and supplied beautiful unit art for nearly a dozen scenarios. If scenarios didn't look as good as they do these days, I don't think ToT would have survived as long as it has. Also Tanelorn, who supplied the Japanese mountain gun, and who is also coming into his own as a great unit artist. And Curt, who has made some very beautiful cities that I've incorporated. Cheers to you all!

 

[McMonkey]

I totally agree. Without the fabulous graphics that inspire us scenario designers I think Test of Time would not have stood the...er...Test of Time. It is these beautiful units that inspire me to create worlds for them to inhabit. Bravo to the pixel artists!

 

[techumseh]

I assume that the symbols represent things like units that can travel in gliders etc... Good idea!

Almost. I decided to add symbols to certain units that had special functions or purposes. The parachute is pretty obvious, the wings represent paratroopable air transports. The arrow represents long-range penetration units, able to use road movement in all passable terrain and to move through zones of control. They are indeed transportable in gliders, but a few other types are as well. The lop-sided circle is a symbol for supply units, one of which must be disbanded within 3 squares of ground units at the start of a turn for them to attack or to move more than half their designated MF. The pack-animal supply unit is air transportable.

(edit) I forgot the M symbol, actually an E on it's side. For units with the settler/engineer function. Prob. obvious.

 

[techumseh]

Work on the scenario has been a little slower the last couple of weeks, but there is some progress. I sorted out a plan for the Chinese lend-lease. Supplies to China were a key objective of the Americans, who wanted to keep China in the war. (Britain on the other hand, just wanted to recover their lost colonies, esp. Malaya-Singapore.)

I'll use a couple of cities with airports to represent the "Hump" airlift. Japanese fighters at northern Burma cities will possibly be able to intercept, making their recapture a key British objective. When " The Hump" (Radio) is researched by the British, US and British supply units will be able to use the airlift command to move to China, near Kunming.

British/US supply units arriving in China near Kunming will be able to attack an adjacent fortress unit of a fifth civilization, called "Lend-Lease". Each time an allied supply unit attacks the L-L fortress, an event will either 1) give the Chinese another combat unit on the map, or 2) counteract the steady events driven progress of the Japanese army off-map. If not enough supply units get through, events will determine that the Japanese have achieved a breakthrough in China (off-map), and large scale reinforcements will soon arrive at the map edge near Kunming, with the potential to destroy the Chinese civ. This would end the game in favor of Japan. In order to ensure enough supplies get through, the allied player will also want to create a land connection to China as soon as possible.

 

[McMonkey]

Sounds really interesting. There's more to this scenario than simply taking city after city. This whole aspect of the campaign is a logistical endeavour as much as it is a military one. Really looking forwards to playing it if/when you need a playtester.

 

[techumseh]

I will indeed. Thanks.

 

[techumseh]

I just hit a major snag that may set me back a long way. The Burma Campaign has been designed from the ground up with the ToT Patch Project in mind. Suddenly, certain features of the ToTPP stopped working, for unexplained reasons. Specifically the limited rail movement and the ship movement on rivers feature have failed. Other features like stacking combat and the new terrain slots are still functional. Rail movement is again unlimited, something totally unrealistic for the rickety colonial railways of Assam and Burma. I can still adjust road movement in the normal way, but it still automatically changes the river movement as well. If I can't get the Patch issue resolved, I will have to redo much of the terrain.

Specifically, I will have to :

1. Replace all the rail with roads, and adjust the graphics so they look like railways.
2. Delete all the roads I added.
3. Replace navigable rivers with ocean terrain.
4. Replace non-navigable rivers with another multi-tile terrain, like forest or hills.
5. Replace that multi-tile terrain with another single tile terrain.
6. Add (real) rivers wherever the new, fake rivers enter an ocean square.

The big problem with 4 above is that rivers become a type of terrain, not something that overlies other terrain type. So there are no rivers through plains, jungle or mountains. It's just river terrain. But at least they don't serve as nature's railways.

I've posted for help on the Patch thread, so hopefully that will be forthcoming soon. Otherwise, I have a lot of grunt work to do, for a lower quality product.

 

[McMonkey]

I'm confident TheNamelessOne will find the cause of this bug and eliminate it soon. There must be something within the game that resets the values after a set time. It doesn't sound like an insurmountable issue for someone as talented as TheNamelessOne!