Terraforming
- Thread starter k_mac
- Start date
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
Yes.
I have terraforming in my own mod (Crazy Spatz, over in the modpacks forum, although it's part of a content mod that includes all sorts of other future things). Effectively, your worker unit creates a temporary Improvement, the game checks for the creation of that sort of Improvement, and when it finds it it alters the terrain of the tile and removes the improvement. Voila, terraformed terrain.
The biggest problem is that there's no easy-to-use "map refresh" function, so changing a terrain type won't change the graphics until you reload the game, at which point it fixes it to the new types. This also applies to creating or destroying hills; you can do it, but it won't have a graphical effect until the next time your game is loaded. (The reason for this is that the game needs to know which three hexes border on each intersection point, to know what sort of transition is needed between tiles.)
The one change you CAN do with immediate graphical effect is create temporary Features, such as forests or jungles. Although, there's some headaches involved with that as well, so it might not actually work as well as it first appeared to.
I have terraforming in my own mod (Crazy Spatz, over in the modpacks forum, although it's part of a content mod that includes all sorts of other future things). Effectively, your worker unit creates a temporary Improvement, the game checks for the creation of that sort of Improvement, and when it finds it it alters the terrain of the tile and removes the improvement. Voila, terraformed terrain.
The biggest problem is that there's no easy-to-use "map refresh" function, so changing a terrain type won't change the graphics until you reload the game, at which point it fixes it to the new types. This also applies to creating or destroying hills; you can do it, but it won't have a graphical effect until the next time your game is loaded. (The reason for this is that the game needs to know which three hexes border on each intersection point, to know what sort of transition is needed between tiles.)
The one change you CAN do with immediate graphical effect is create temporary Features, such as forests or jungles. Although, there's some headaches involved with that as well, so it might not actually work as well as it first appeared to.
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
Civ5. (If you wanted Civ4, you wouldn't be asking in this forum.) Mountains would be a headache in that you can't place Improvements on them, by default, so there'd be no easy way to use that temporary Improvement as a trigger. But there are other ways, albeit less efficient ones. (Alternately, you can change Mountains so that you CAN place an improvement on them. But that could lead to some very strange situations.)
Galacticat42
Drifting through space, lost
@ Spatz
I was looking through the Lua Game Events page on the Civ V Wiki, have you tried to manually trigger SystemUpdateUI? This might be what's missing, I was one of the first ones to work on terraforming but gave up due to the inability to update the user interface and to me that event name sounds very promising.
I was looking through the Lua Game Events page on the Civ V Wiki, have you tried to manually trigger SystemUpdateUI? This might be what's missing, I was one of the first ones to work on terraforming but gave up due to the inability to update the user interface and to me that event name sounds very promising.
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
The problem is, that's an Event, not a function. Presumably, this means you don't call it to update the UI, it means it triggers when the UI is updated (whatever that means). Like how calling PlayerStartTurn doesn't start the turn, but is triggered when the turn starts.
I'll look into it, because it still might be useful for some other things I've been doing, but what we really need is a Game:RefreshMap() void.
I'll look into it, because it still might be useful for some other things I've been doing, but what we really need is a Game:RefreshMap() void.
SLGray
Emperor
I do not remember this feature in Civ 3.
civ 5 my friend, is it possible?
SLGray
Emperor
LeeS
Imperator
- Terraforming by Engineer units was in Civ2.
- k_mac's original post was from ~7 years ago. As were the first few responses to his question.
- there's no work-around anyone has found to my knowledge for the need to reload the game in order for the graphics to update the terrain-type. Modding for civ5 has never been given access to the graphics engine of the game.
- other than the graphics issue it is possible but you need to make the actual terrain-change via lua code, which then needs something (like Spatzimaus' improvement or DonQuiche's IGE user interface) to act as a trigger for the lua code to activate and alter the underlying terrain-type.
- Given that neither Spatzimaus or DonQuiche are active in modding anymore you're pretty much talking to an echo chamber
sman1975
Emperor
@k_mac - how about a middle ground approach. Create some new "improvements" that will accomplish most of what you're trying to do (constructed by workers, changed appearance of tiles that alter yields). There are several options you can add to improvements that might also sweeten the approach.
The only issue is to integrate new artwork, but there are several mods out there that can serve as a model for that, plus a lot of available artwork as well. I'd imagine there's some things from the "Future Worlds" mod and even more in the BE game that could serve as a pretty good approximation to "terraforming" - things that wouldn't required saving/reloading the game every time a tile is terraformed.
Just a thought...
The only issue is to integrate new artwork, but there are several mods out there that can serve as a model for that, plus a lot of available artwork as well. I'd imagine there's some things from the "Future Worlds" mod and even more in the BE game that could serve as a pretty good approximation to "terraforming" - things that wouldn't required saving/reloading the game every time a tile is terraformed.
Just a thought...
