Survey Time: Which Civ3 tools would you kill for, on which Mac OS?

[Lord Yanaek]

OK, i have not made any major mod so far, but i managed to ADD a few units using civ3edit and the modified nib file. The bic does not crash the game and the units can be produced normally.

It's only small changes so far, but it works.

The way i see it, the editor CAN handle additional units, techs ... but firaxis does not support this, so neither does macplay. The developpers disabled those features by reoving the interface buttons. Some good soul made a modified interface to give us the fully functional editor

I created the bic with an install of civIII 1.21 but played it with 1.29.

The modified nib is here be sure to d/l the file frow DiaondzandGunz (scroll down a bit), the file from senecasax is for a previous built of the editor.

Trabpukcip, maybe you did a "wrong" change. I know for instance that changing the number of entryes in the barbarian city-names list crashes the game. Silly isn't it . Maybe we can discuss in PM in order not to "spam" this thread, i'm not i will be able to help you, but i could try

 

[frunobulax]

I use a dual-boot system - OS9/1 for when I'm working on editing music (it's my day job) but OSX Jag. for Civ3 and using the Editor.

Re. the Editor, now that i have a copy of Word X installed I've found that editing is so much easier - I figure that Word handles the text formatting a lot better than any other OSX-based text editor. I now have a great mod with lots of extra resources (gas, tobacco, sugar, tea,coffee, sheep, pearls etc) and extra units (Special Forces, 2 types of Carriers, Trebuchet etc), plus some new Wonders (Five Year Plan, Silk Road and Temple of Zeus). have been playing my mod for past fortnight and not 1 crash ! [All praise to Brad Oliver ]

Would like to see a unit placement and city editor utility...

Fruno

 

[Sid]

Hey Fruno, please post your mod!!

 

[Sassenach Ruler]

I've been running the beta version of Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and Civ 3 is just as stable as it is in 10.2 (Panther).

 

[the#zero]

Hey Alan, some editing/modding tools for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) would be great. I'm looking into doing some creation stuff for Civ3 on 1.29f, and so far I'm unable to even begin to do so. It'd be cool to have a group of Mac Civ3 editors (there seems to be a few in here). Then we can pump out scenarios and mods that we know will work on Mac, and then the PC users might have to spend hours getting it to work. Specifically, I'm looking into some ancient scenarios, in terms of the Punic Wars or Roman expansion in general, the Pelopponesian Wars in Greece, perhaps a scenario involving Alexander, and, well, you get the point. I was even thinking of doing a scenario that basically puts the player in control of a few "characters" who explore the world of Greek mythology and try to achieve one of several goals. It sucks not having events, though. :-/

The technology tree idea is great. Anything you can give us in terms of the new editor on PC would be great. I hear that editor is wonderful.

Anyway, whatever you want to do is fine - anything is appreciated.

 

[the#zero]

frunobulax, do you think the AppleWorks 6 word processor would be able to do that sort of thing? Unfortunately, I didn't have the money to get Word X, so I just got AppleWorks 6 for $70 less.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by frunobulax
Re. the Editor, now that i have a copy of Word X installed I've found that editing is so much easier - I figure that Word handles the text formatting a lot better than any other OSX-based text editor.

I assume you use Word X for civilpoedia entries? There doesn't seem to be any other requirement for text editing. But why do you need Word's text formatting capabilities? I would have thought you only needed something like TextEdit to write those files.

I now have a great mod with lots of extra resources (gas, tobacco, sugar, tea,coffee, sheep, pearls etc) and extra units (Special Forces, 2 types of Carriers, Trebuchet etc), plus some new Wonders (Five Year Plan, Silk Road and Temple of Zeus). have been playing my mod for past fortnight and not 1 crash !

Does your mod run OK with v1.29? Are you planning to put it up on the Creation forum?

[All praise to Brad Oliver ]

Hear! Hear!

Would like to see a unit placement and city editor utility...

This would add units and cities to map locations in a .bic file, and allow you to specify city states (civ, population, existing buildings etc.)?

 

[frunobulax]

Originally posted by AlanH

I assume you use Word X for civilpoedia entries? There doesn't seem to be any other requirement for text editing. But why do you need Word's text formatting capabilities? I would have thought you only needed something like TextEdit to write those files.

Yes, using Word X for Civilopedia, but more importantly for the PediaIcons file, which seemed to be the route cause of all my previous modding woes. TextEdit just didn't seem to do the job properly... I am not sure exactly why, but I presume it was something along lines of missing out carriage returns at end of lines etc...


Does your mod run OK with v1.29? Are you planning to put it up on the Creation forum?[/QUOTE]

Only been using 1.21... I have two installs of Civ3, 1.21 and 1.29 and the latter was for GOTM, but since I just can't get into playing GOTMs, I'm pretty much using 1.21 exclusively. I'll maybe test it sometime with 1.21.

I could certainly put the mod on the Creation Forum... I'm only on a 56k modem at home, so will try this at work sometime soon (I'll let all you Mac Users know!) There's many extra units files which will need bundling together with the bic files, civilopedia, resource graphics etc etc


This would add units and cities to map locations in a .bic file, and allow you to specify city states (civ, population, existing buildings etc.)? [/QUOTE]

Yes ! Just like with the good old Mac Civ2 Editor

Fruno

P.S. Am actually modding the mod at the moment - adding Galleas, Dreadnought, Attack Helicopter, B-1 Bomber, and tweaking a few other settings (like Stealth Fighter, so it actually IS a fighter, and not just a Ground Attack fighter...) It's very addictive, now I've got the hang of it !

 

[frunobulax]

If you're interested, I've uploaded a screenshot 'family portrait' of some of my added units/resources...
Here's the link !

Fruno

 

[frunobulax]

Originally posted by the#zero
frunobulax, do you think the AppleWorks 6 word processor would be able to do that sort of thing? Unfortunately, I didn't have the money to get Word X, so I just got AppleWorks 6 for $70 less.

Don't know, haven't got it on my machine! Sorry !

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Originally posted by frunobulax
Yes, using Word X for Civilopedia, but more importantly for the PediaIcons file, which seemed to be the route cause of all my previous modding woes. TextEdit just didn't seem to do the job properly... I am not sure exactly why, but I presume it was something along lines of missing out carriage returns at end of lines etc...

Strange, i thought a simpler text editor would work better. However, i've had some issues with leaderheads not appearing in foreign advisor screen, maybe it's the reason, i used text edit.

do you think the AppleWorks 6 word processor would be able to do that sort of thing? Unfortunately, I didn't have the money to get Word X, so I just got AppleWorks 6 for $70 less.

Well, i'll try this out, i have AW6. I surely understand you don't want to buy word just for modding civ 3

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Originally posted by Bob Morane
Well, i'll try this out, i have AW6. I surely understand you don't want to buy word just for modding civ 3

Bad news are, NO, Apple Works does not work.
Well, there is a carriage return issue when editing with Text Edit, when i opened the pedialcons.txt in Apple Works, the CR for the lines i added where missing. Using Apple Works, i have been able to add those missing CR. Editing was fine, but saving went wrong. It looks like AW6 can't save in plain text format, even if you chose the "text" format when saving. Too bad.

Good news are, you don't have to buy Word X to edit your files

Slightly bad news are, you must not be afraid leaving the pretty, welcoming, user friendly Aqua interface in favor of the less pretty, slightly unwelcoming, not-so-user-friendly X11 interface.

Open Office, a FREE X11 alternative to Microsoft Office will do the job perfectly. Just be sure to put 2 (that's TWO) carriage returns between your lines it looks like you have to. Then save your file as text with encoding, and that's it. It worked perfecly for me, new leaderheads appearing in foreign advisor screen

 

[tao]

You may use vim (vi for Macintosh) to edit text files the down-to-basics way.

Edit: does't work

 

[AlanH]

I typically use BBEdit for text file editing unless I'm writing code - then it's normally done in Project Builder. I used BBEdit when I had to change a faulty pediaicons file and it worked fine. It has options for DOS, Mac or Unix line endings.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Yeah, unfortunately BBedit is not free. I'm not going to pay $100 for a text editor when i have a free, full-featured open source office suite

As for project builder, thought it can open plain text files, it won't work better then text-edit, i fear. I opened the bad pedialcons file (i still had a copy), and the missing CRs appeared presents (there were CRs where i knew they were missing, not sure i'm clear ).

If anyone kows of a good, FREE text editor, i'll give it a try, but so far the best choice is Open Office. Sure it's a BIG download and if you don't have X11, it's another d/l

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by frunobulax
Would like to see a unit placement and city editor utility...

This is something that was added to the 1.29 version of the Civ3 editor. Time permitting, I hope to someday finish up a build. I mention this mainly because from a resource standpoint, it'd probably be easier for me to add this into the existing editor than for someone to hack up a new editor to add this functionality. Still, if someone gets the urge to do so, don't let me stop you.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Brad, you're the

I really wonder what we would do without you.
Buy a PC probably

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Bob Morane
If anyone kows of a good, FREE text editor, i'll give it a try, but so far the best choice is Open Office. Sure it's a BIG download and if you don't have X11, it's another d/l

Hmmm! So Bare Bones have gone all commercial on us! BBEdit Lite has been replaced by TextWrangler at $49. And as you say, the built-in pico and Project Builder editors only put line feeds on the line endings.

Well, it seems silly that you have to abandon Aqua and install that behomoth OpenOffice.org plus X.11 just to get CR/LF in your pediaicons.txt, so I've hacked Apple's TextEdit to provide the facility.

Here's the link to download the modified application

I don't know if it's "good" in your terms,, but it's "FREE". I haven't explored the side effects that might arise if you use it beyond simple plain text editing. Consider it a beta, give it a try, and let me know what you think.

It detects the line endings in an opened file, and defaults to saving it with the same endings. New files default to saving with Mac OS X line endings so that it preserves the existing TextEdit behaviour.

You can choose to change the line endings in the Save as ... dialog. The options are line feed (OS X and Unix), carriage return (older Mac OS) or carriage return plus line feed (MSDOS). You need to use MSDOS standard CR/LF for pediaicons files. There are tooltips on the buttons to help you remember which format to use.

[Update] New version uploaded. Now opens .rtf files correctly

 

[Lord Yanaek]

You sure are the too
Well, i'll try this out, it would sure be a lot simpler.

As for Open Office, i already had it installed, cause having an alternative to Micro$oft products is always coll . But it sure isn't a small thing

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Bob Morane
You sure are the too
Well, i'll try this out, it would sure be a lot simpler.

Please let me know how you get on. You'll be able to tell from my development timescale that it's had precious little testing here, so I'm depending on you as my guinea pig

As for Open Office, i already had it installed, cause having an alternative to Micro$oft products is always coll . But it sure isn't a small thing

Sure, I have it as well, but I find myself avoiding using it as much as possible. That's a sure sign that it's sadly lacking compared to real Mac apps.

Also, I have found that if I fire up Civ3 while OpenOffice.org is running and then pause Civ3, X.11 has shut down and taken OOo with it without a by-your-leave. Not very helpful if you are trying to use them in tandem for something like editing. I assumed that Civ3's unconventional monopoly of the Mac's display is upsetting the X.11 window manager and it's taking its ball home, but maybe it's just my installation. I'd be interested to hear if you have this experience.