[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[JPetroski]

@committed hero

Attached please find a ToTPP "starter kit" with some caveats:

1. The blank rules I *believe* work but I made one set that was throwing up some errors and to correct them what I ended up doing was taking each section and pasting it into a normal rules file until I determined what caused the error. For the life of me I can't remember if this rules file is working or not. The most likely issue will be:

NumberOfTerrainTypes, 16,11,11,11

I went ahead and changed the 16 to 11 and it fired right up so you should be good.

11 is the # for the base game. Up to 16 works but you need to have corresponding terrain 1, 3, 5, 7 that will accommodate it if it throws an error.

These rules have the integer # for the units, advances, improvements, and wonders. This is important in case you decide to pursue lua, as lua can be integer reliant on events - i.e. it can search for unit 1 rather than engineers. (it can also be text reliant but I find that limits your options).

I've included a copy of terrain 1 that works but is set up for Over the Reich and isn't from the standard game. I also included Over the Reich's rules just in case you coudn't get the ToTPP blank rules to fire.

Hope this helps. Any special projects in mind?

 

[committed hero]

Thank you sir!

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Is anyone else having issues with the tech paradigm again? On my end, loading a game as a mod, where the rules.txt set the tech paradigm to 20, does not initialize into 20 when the game is loaded and on the map, it remains at 10 when I look into the scenario settings.

Scenarios still initialize the tech paradigm properly, however.

 

[Patine]

Is anyone else having issues with the tech paradigm again? On my end, loading a game as a mod, where the rules.txt set the tech paradigm to 20, does not initialize into 20 when the game is loaded and on the map, it remains at 10 when I look into the scenario settings.

Scenarios still initialize the tech paradigm properly, however.

In all of my many years of Civ2, I've never tried my hand at making an actual mod - only scenarios - so I'm not even sure how one changes the tech paradigm for an actual mod, to be honest.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

In all of my many years of Civ2, I've never tried my hand at making an actual mod - only scenarios - so I'm not even sure how one changes the tech paradigm for an actual mod, to be honest.

It's under the @Cosmic set of paremeters in rules.txt:

@Cosmic
3 ; Road movement multiplier
2 ; 1 in x chance Trireme lost (mod. by Seafaring, Navigation)
2 ; # of food each citizen eats per turn
10 ; # of rows in food box (rows * city_size+1 = box)
10 ; # of rows in shield box
1 ; Settlers eat (govt <= Monarchy)
2 ; Settlers eat (govt >= Communism)
7 ; City size for first unhappiness at Chieftain level
14 ; Riot factor based on # cities (higher factor lessens the effect)
8 ; Aqueduct needed to exceed this size
12 ; Sewer System needed to exceed this size
20 ; Tech paradigm (higher # slows research) <--- Tech Paradigm goes here
5 ; Base time for engineers to transform terrain (x2)
3 ; Monarchy pays support for all units past this (max 8)
3 ; Communism pays support for all units past this (max 8)
8 ; Fundamentalism pays support for all units past this (max 8)
0 ; Communism is equivalent of this palace distance.
0 ; Fundamentalism loses this % of science
50 ; Percent shield penalty for production type change
10 ; Max paradrop range
100 ; Mass/Thrust paradigm (increasing slows spaceship time)
10 ; Max effective science rate in fundamentalism (x10, so 5 = 50%)
1 ; Value of each citizen to the Civilization Score.
20 ; Value of each wonder to the Civilization Score.
2 ; Reward for landing on A. Centauri first = this multiplier*(# of habitats)*(prob. of success)
-10 ; Cost to Civilization Score (+ or -) for each extant non-AI controlled polluted tile.
1 ; For each turn of peace after turn 199, this amount *3 is added to Civilization Score.
5 ; Value to the Civilization Score of each future tech researched.
0 ; Penalty assessed to Civilization Score each time player betrays another race.
0 ; Cost to Civilization Score (+ or -) for each unit destroyed.
00001111 ; bitmask for goodie huts, right bit =map0, 0=no goodie huts
0 ; Helicopters pick up huts 0=no 1=yes

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Is anyone else having issues with the tech paradigm again? On my end, loading a game as a mod, where the rules.txt set the tech paradigm to 20, does not initialize into 20 when the game is loaded and on the map, it remains at 10 when I look into the scenario settings.

Scenarios still initialize the tech paradigm properly, however.

Is the actual technology cost unchanged? I thought the scenario technology paradigm was meant to change the tech paradigm compared to what was in the rules text. That way, you can have multiple scenarios use the same rules, but have different technology costs (e.g. rome and wwii in the original game).

 

[Knighttime]

TheNamelessOne's Lua documentation for the civ.cosmic.techParadigm field says:

Returns the tech paradigm. Scenarios use civ.scen.params.techParadigm instead of this value. Ephemeral.

So I think Prof. Garfield is right -- there are two different values here. When you change the entry in the @ COSMIC section of rules.txt, as you would do for a mod, you shouldn't expect that to be reflected in the scenario parameters.

You should be able to tell whether the mod is correctly applying your rules.txt value by setting it to an absurdly high number, which should cause the research cost of the first few techs to jump substantially.

 

[Knighttime]

But... I think you're on to something here, @PlutonianEmpire. I set up a mod with a tech paradigm of 20 in rules.txt, and then entered print(civ.cosmic.techParadigm) at the Lua console, and it said 10. That's not good.

After further testing, it seems that all other values in COSMIC are read in correctly when beginning a mod -- at least, Lua reports them back correctly -- but not techParadigm.

The good news is that this field is writeable by Lua. So you could add a line of "civ.cosmic.techParadigm = 20" into events.lua, and adjust the tech paradigm for a mod that way.

The bad news is that apparently this still doesn't work. I added that line to my events.lua, but the "Discoveries Every __ turns" message on the F6 screen didn't change. Lua correctly reports the new value of 20 for this field, but it doesn't seem to be having the expected effect within the game. Unless the research cost is only calculated (in light of the tech paradigm) when you begin researching a new tech? In my testing, though, I didn't see a jump in research cost at that point either.

When you said, "loading a game as a mod', are you simply starting a new game with modified values within rules.txt? Or did you actually add the @ MOD section at the top of rules.txt, using the TOTPP "Custom Game Mods" patch, and begin a game using the "Play a Mod" option that appears on the TOT menu? The latter is what I was doing for my testing, in case that's important.

 

[Knighttime]

Last post about this but it is good news! I used lua to set civ.scen.params.techParadigm to 20 -- even though I was just running a mod, not a true scenario -- and that immediately worked! The number shown in the "Discoveries Every __ turns" message instantly doubled.

So, my conclusions:

1. Setting a tech paradigm other than 10 in rules.txt has no effect whatsoever on a mod
   
2. Assigning a different value to civ.cosmic.techParadigm using Lua has no visible effect within the game, while playing a mod
   
3. Assigning a different value to civ.scen.params.techParadigm using Lua works great, even when the game is a mod and not a scenario.

If you want to run a mod (not a scenario) using macro-language events instead of Lua... I don't think tech paradigm can be changed, unfortunately. I tried adding "techParadigm=20" to the @ MOD section at the top of rules.txt, but this did not update the value of civ.scen.params.techParadigm within the game. So as far as I can tell, the only way to set this is with Lua.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

@Knighttime

How many technologies did your game have when you tested this? If it was 0, try again with a few technologies. I think the first technology always costs 10. What's more, I believe that there is a difference in behaviour between the 19th and 20th tech (or maybe 20 and 21, I don't remember exactly).

 

[Knighttime]

Hi @Prof. Garfield , I started several new games (as mods) but also used an older saved game that had progressed quite a ways. In that save, the tribe I was looking at had exactly 20 techs, which is quite a coincidence -- I wasn't aware of any difference around that point. It still seems very significant to me, though, that changing civ.scen.params.techParadigm instantly made a noticeable change on the F6 screen, whereas changing civ.cosmic.techParadigm didn't.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

OK, I just wanted to double check that it wasn't a case of the two values doing something different. I seem to remember that the included MGE scenario editor specifically discouraged changing the tech paradigm parameter, so I thought it might be the case that they were different.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

When you said, "loading a game as a mod', are you simply starting a new game with modified values within rules.txt? Or did you actually add the @ MOD section at the top of rules.txt, using the TOTPP "Custom Game Mods" patch, and begin a game using the "Play a Mod" option that appears on the TOT menu? The latter is what I was doing for my testing, in case that's important.

I was definitely doing the latter. Properly added to Rules.txt and everything. The only workaround I found was:

1: Load your mod. Set things up as you wish.
2. Enable cheat mode, open up the scenario parameters dialog, set the tech Paradigm to 20
3. Save as scenario in the same folder as your mod
4. Load it as scenario.

This is the best option if you want to save a .sav file, cuz for some reason, going straight to the mod and then saving as a .sav, it doesn't save the scenario parameters, therefore again resetting Tech Paradigm to 10, along with all the other scenario resetting to default too.

 

[techumseh]

I've got a glitch in one of my ToT scenarios that I've been converting to the Patch Project. As it only occurred once I loaded the scenario (or saved games) with the launcher, I'm assuming it is somehow associated with ToTPP. The diplomat unit has stopped working. When I try to bribe a unit or city, or any other diplomatic function, nothing happens. Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions or help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Patine]

I've got a glitch in one of my ToT scenarios that I've been converting to the Patch Project. As it only occurred once I loaded the scenario (or saved games) with the launcher, I'm assuming it is somehow associated with ToTPP. The diplomat unit has stopped working. When I try to bribe a unit or city, or any other diplomatic function, nothing happens. Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions or help would be appreciated. Thanks.

A very good point. Many recently-made scenarios don't have a diplomatic role unit, or if they do (like @tootall_2012's Napoleon) it occupies the spy slot. This is a very worthy thing to bring up, and I agree warrants investigation.

 

[tootall_2012]

I know countmc experienced the same issue while playing my Napoleon scenario, though no one else reported having this problem.

If I recall correctly, I also encountered this problem many years ago when I was working on my Battle of France, where my Recon unit's (aka Spy) spy abilities stopped working. If I remember properly, as a last resort, I ended up reinstalling ToT, at the time, before it started working again.

Otherwise, the only other thing that comes to mind is, as Patine says, make sure that it occupies either the Diplomat or Spy slot and has the appropriate diplomacy role.

 

[Patine]

I know countmc experienced the same issue while playing my Napoleon scenario, though no one else reported having this problem.

If I recall correctly, I also encountered this problem many years ago when I was working on my Battle of France, where my Recon unit's (aka Spy) spy abilities stopped working. If I remember properly, as a last resort, I ended up reinstalling ToT, at the time, before it started working again.

Otherwise, the only other thing that comes to mind is, as Patine says, make sure that it occupies either the Diplomat or Spy slot and has the appropriate diplomacy role.

I'll have to watch for this. In my Pacific Rim scenario, I'm using a single, unified unit for all Covert and Special Operations units of the various agencies and elite military spec op teams and organizations for the nations present in the scenario, and putting that unit in the Spy slot.

 

[techumseh]

How do you uninstall the Patch Project?

 

[tootall_2012]

I don't think you uninstall TOTPP as much as you simply don't use its exe to start ToT (though I think its possible you may have issues related to scenarios that have lua events).

But again the simplest way to address any concerns is to have two separate ToT set ups, one for regular ToT and one for ToTPP.

 

[Knighttime]

I'm not aware of a documented uninstallation process. According to the installation instructions, the first time you run TOTLauncher.exe, it actually patches your civ2.exe file in some way. It's possible that the only change it makes to this file is to cause it to load TOTPP.dll and lua.dll, so if you renamed/removed both of those files, you might have eliminated TOTPP and be running native Test of Time. But I can't be sure about that, so unless you have a backup of civ2.exe from just before you installed TOTPP, the only truly safe way to make sure you're not running TOTPP at all would be to reinstall Test of Time from scratch into a different directory. Like Tootall, I'd recommend doing that and having two separate ToT installations, one with the patch and one without.

The installation instructions state that if you have TOTPP installed and have run TOTLauncher.exe once, but then after that you only run civ2.exe in that directory and not the launcher, you are still running the patch, using the settings stored in TOTPP.ini.