[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[JPetroski]

Let me know how that goes, I haven't tested the latest version of TOTPP on XP yet. If this fails I can also provide statically compiled binaries (= no dependencies).

That solved the issue perfectly! Thanks.

 

[Lavirous]

I recently cracked a copy of TOT we purchased a while back and installed the latest version of TOTPP. I found that automating settlers causes the game to crash. Has anyone else noted this?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I recently cracked a copy of TOT we purchased a while back and installed the latest version of TOTPP. I found that automating settlers causes the game to crash. Has anyone else noted this?

I just tested, and I can confirm that the most recent version of TOTPP does cause a crash when trying to automate a settler. I have a different version to play Medieval Millennium (I think v15.1), and I can automate a settler in that.

 

[AyCe]

Same for me, on Original setting. With or without a city.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

Thanks for the bug report, this will be fixed in the next release.

 

[techumseh]

TNO, I have an issue that I believe may be a Patch Project bug. Some time ago the macro event modifier 'continuous' stopped working for me. I'm not sure it's caused by the patch, but it happened following one of the upgrades, though I don't recall which one since I didn't notice it at first.. It occurs on my laptop (Win7) and on my desktop (Win10). I currently have v 0.15 installed. Hope you can help. Thanks.

 

[Blake00]

Firstly I want to say thank you to @TheNamelessOne for adding Mod folder support to ToTPP so no one has to override half their ToT files just to try a mod anymore! Such a BRILLIANT addition!

One query I have about the new mod folder support is does include custom video replacements? I ask as I recently tried the Empire Earth ToT mod with the new mod folder mode and it worked great! (ie his custom dlls all loaded resulting in nicely converted menu graphics etc) However his 'ToT original mode' scene replacement videos (ie spaceship and death etc) did not play instead of the default ToT ones and his custom wonder videos did not play at all from me putting them in a ..\Test of Time\EmpireEarthMod\Video or \Test of Time\EmpireEarthMod\ location.

The scene videos not playing instead of the existing ToT ones presumably means the answer is no and I'd still have to manually swap out/replace the original ToT videos to see the new custom mod ones. However as for the Wonder videos not playing at all, well that's sent me down a whole other confusing rabbit hole today. A year or so ago I copied all my MGE wonder video files into my ..\Test of Time\Video folder and was thrilled to see that they played in-game when I built wonders in ToT. I was never sure if it was ToTPP allowing me that or if it would have worked anyway with vanilla ToT but I was thrilled to see them working.

However fast forward to now today and even those wonder videos have stopped working too. Meaning when I build a wonder in regular ToT (outside of any mod mode) the MGE wonder videos I've got in ToT's regular 'Video' folder do not play anymore. Same machine, same OS, and same game installs as I've haven't reinstalled anything. They still play fine over in MGE so I know the Indeo codec is still all good, and my ToT intro videos and scripted event videos in Midgard & Scifi still play fine too so I know it's not ToTs video player acting up. I also tried with and without MGE & ToT CDs and Cd checking on and off etc but made no difference. So now I'm wondering what on earth has changed since around a year and half ago when they worked. I updated from ToTPP 15.1 to 17 however I don't think its that as I reverted back to 15.1 and the wonder videos still didn't play, and I also fully reverted back to vanilla ToT without ToTPP and again the wonder videos still didn't play.

I can see in this old thread some people saying they could play MGE wonder videos in ToT too while others said they couldn't so whatever the setting is that controls whether wonder videos can be played is obviously very fickle and delicate haha! At the end of the thread I can see a guy saying he switched over is Civ2.dat file in ToT to the MGE one and that made the wonder videos play in ToT but caused other issues. Sure enough that worked for me just now however it causes some other strange menu glitches and I'm pretty darn sure I didn't have to do something weird like that a year and half ago, it just worked right off the bat which was why I was so surprised when it went so well back then.

So I guess here's my 2 dream/wishlist items that I hope @TheNamelessOne may consider in the future.

1. Somehow getting the old Wonder video support working all the time for everyone in ToT 'original mode' as it seems to work sometimes but not always. Probably best as a tickbox like you did for the throne room as I guess people would not want them playing during Scifi or Fantasy mode lol!
2. If the above goes well then also adding support for custom intro, scene 1-13 & wonder 0-27 video replacements from a 'Video' sub folder of a mod folder as that would be great for ToT mods like Empire Earth that contain scene & wonder video replacements. May eventually convert my Heroes of Might & Magic mod from MGE to ToT one day too and thats full of custom wonder videos too.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

TNO, I have an issue that I believe may be a Patch Project bug. Some time ago the macro event modifier 'continuous' stopped working for me. I'm not sure it's caused by the patch, but it happened following one of the upgrades, though I don't recall which one since I didn't notice it at first.. It occurs on my laptop (Win7) and on my desktop (Win10). I currently have v 0.15 installed. Hope you can help. Thanks.

Could you post a (preferably minimal) example that demonstrates this? I tried with FLAG/CHECKFLAG and continuous seems to work fine for me.

• Somehow getting the old Wonder video support working all the time for everyone in ToT 'original mode' as it seems to work sometimes but not always. Probably best as a tickbox like you did for the throne room as I guess people would not want them playing during Scifi or Fantasy mode lol!

Adding a checkbox shouldn't be a lot of work. Funny enough the code already checks if the game mode is not Scifi or Fantasy when playing wonder movies, meaning they updated this code for ToT, even though they shipped without wonder movies in the end.

Did you know you can test wonder movies by shift-clicking the "Wonders of the World" menu while cheat mode is enabled? This also works in ToT, and doesn't require the game option to be set. If you're really determined to have this work now when building wonders, you can hex-edit civ2.dat and add 1 to the byte at offset 0x10. This will then have the option enabled in new games.

• If the above goes well then also adding support for custom intro, scene 1-13 & wonder 0-27 video replacements from a 'Video' sub folder of a mod folder as that would be great for ToT mods like Empire Earth that contain scene & wonder video replacements. May eventually convert my Heroes of Might & Magic mod from MGE to ToT one day too and thats full of custom wonder videos too.

I suppose I could make it check for a Video subfolder before checking the main Video folder. Although a custom intro would be pointless, as it would always run before a mod was loaded.

 

[techumseh]

Never mind. I appear to have solved the problem. If I put the 'continuous' modifier immediately behind 'Flag', it seems to work. I'll do more experimentation, but that just might do it. Thanks TNO!

 

[JPetroski]

Hi TNO,

The enhanced functionality you've provided via lua has been tremendous. It leaves very few things in the "base game" that could still use some tweaks. I am curious if it would be possible to add extra technologies as you have with units to get it to 127 (I believe you mentioned that was the maximum). I've been able to use lua to recycle unit slots and civilizations to break past the natural barrirers there, but I hesitate to use the same concepts to reuse technology as one can easily cause themselves problems and crashes when messing with the technology.

As to lua, I believe Prof. Garfield and others may have made some requests for new "set" fields with some items, such as unit.type.name. If possible, being able to "set" whatever attributes are currently in the rules file in terms of units and terrain would more or less allow us to make batch files a thing of the past (assuming all the art can be swapped out as we know the terrain can be in game).

Frankly you've done more than enough and it's getting to a point where it's challenging to think of new stuff we "need/want" but I figured since you're here I'd bring it up. As you can see, your work is not going to waste now - multiple designers have embraced lua especially and created some pretty darned cool stuff, so thank you!

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Could you post a (preferably minimal) example that demonstrates this? I tried with FLAG/CHECKFLAG and continuous seems to work fine for me.

I've attached the example that @techumseh provided here. (except I deleted the alternate event files). I saved at turn 6, and for several tries turn 7 displayed the message "Flag 20 is on.", but turn 8 did not.

Based on an earlier post in that thread, a small test didn't reveal the bug.

 

[techumseh]

I repeated my test on my new scenario over 20 times, and it fired each time. I will continue to test and keep you posted. I wonder if it has to do with the particular scn. file being used, giving different results depending on the particular scn. file. I have had a bad experience with old events becoming embedded in the scn. file and subsequent changes to the events file having no effect. In that case, I had to completely remake the scenario (Burma Campaign).

 

[Blake00]

Adding a checkbox shouldn't be a lot of work. Funny enough the code already checks if the game mode is not Scifi or Fantasy when playing wonder movies, meaning they updated this code for ToT, even though they shipped without wonder movies in the end.

Thanks mate, considering my troubles and the thread with people saying "it works for me" and others saying "doesn't for me" etc etc it must have a bit of a mind of it's own, so giving us full control over the hidden setting with a tickbox would be wonderful! That's cool that they already put in a wonder video safety check for 'original mode', so strange that they didn't ship with the wonder movies then.

If you're really determined to have this work now when building wonders, you can hex-edit civ2.dat and add 1 to the byte at offset 0x10. This will then have the option enabled in new games.

Oh wow, you found the mystery setting location just like that! Thanks I'll give that a try!

Did you know you can test wonder movies by shift-clicking the "Wonders of the World" menu while cheat mode is enabled? This also works in ToT, and doesn't require the game option to be set.

No I absolutely did not know that! Jeez a whole secret menu for test playing wonders, that is brilliant! I always thought is was a shame that you couldn't view wonder views again from the wonders area. Would have been a good feature to ship the game with but I guess no one thought of it back in the day.

I see turning on cheat mode, holding shift and clicking on Wonders from the World menu also brings up a similar secret wonder playing menu in MGE too. Oh man @Metro Polis and I could have really used this back when we were making our HoMM mod wonders as poor Metro had to make test savegames for every wonder to test his videos. This secret menu would have made things so much easier haha. Oh well, I might mention this trick in both my up and coming MGE and ToT HD tour videos (btw I'll be heavily covering your amazing ToTPP work in the ToT video of course) as I think a lot of people would enjoy using this.

I suppose I could make it check for a Video subfolder before checking the main Video folder. Although a custom intro would be pointless, as it would always run before a mod was loaded.

Thank you thank you thank you! That would be awesome! Yeah @Knighttime was just asking me 'what if the other setting you asked for makes it play the old wonder videos instead of your custom mod ones' (I'm paraphrasing), however if it checks the mod video folder before the main video folder as you say it should hopefully protect us from that.

Ahh yes I did notice when I activated the Empire Earth mods it took me straight to a modded version of the new game menu instead of a modded version of the main menu so getting it to play a custom intro after activating the mod is presumably impossible or too much hassle. No matter, I'm sure there's hardly any mods out there with custom intros anyway!

God I wish MGE could have a cool mod loading feature like yours too as it would be perfect for the HoMM mod by @Metro Polis & I which is filled with custom videos and dlls etc, I'm gonna go beg Foxahead for it in his similar Civ2 UIA tool for MGE lol.

.

 

[techumseh]

I tried adding the 'continuous' modifier to my existing events for the new scenario, and I regret to say that it failed to repeat the event.

 

[Knighttime]

Yeah @Knighttime was just asking me 'what if the other setting you asked for makes it play the old wonder videos instead of your custom mod ones' (I'm paraphrasing), however if it checks the mod video folder before the main video folder as you say it should hopefully protect us from that.

Actually I was thinking about mods or scenarios that don't have any custom wonder videos (which is almost always the case) or a folder for them. I presume then the game would play the default wonder videos, if they are installed and if the new box is checked? But the mod may have completely altered the wonder names, in which case the original videos wouldn't be relevant. I suppose in that case it would just be up to the end user to uncheck the box so they weren't shown -- unless there could be some way for the scenario designer to disable them (without providing replacements, I mean).

 

[Blake00]

Been chatting with the talented (and infamous haha) ToT modder Nicheal who some people here probably remember. He's been working on some cool new mods and likes the new ToTPP mod folder mode!

He's not on CFC anymore so he asked me to pass on this issue/suggestion. I haven't messed with masking in ToT or the extra unit sprite slots so most of this goes over my head but I'm assuming the gurus here will hopefully know what he means:

Usually you can do Sprites, so that the units can change faction colors.

Imagine that: Once you had the Units.bmp with your 9 x 9 slots. You create a 9 x 9 slot BLACK mask.bmp. You grey the Units in bmp, so that any grey color is overridden by the WHITE color in mask.bmp signalizing to override by tribal colors.

Problem: TNO maybe forgot to implement, that all new units beyond the 81 get multiple attacks too.

The Sprite maker software just sprites the first 81 too. Either a new software to sprite ALL 127, the new rows too.

Or, my suggestion: That TNO will implement a Sprites.mask.bmp, so that you have your Units.bmp, PLUS your Sprites.bmp as a black and white to tribe color the grey colors in Units.bmp, you got that? Kind of complicated.

But to implement another .bmp for masks and tribal colors would be GRRRREAT!

Actually I was thinking about mods or scenarios that don't have any custom wonder videos

Ah my bad, now I get what you mean mate sorry. Yeah we'd probably turn it off when not playing original mode. Hmm see what TheNamelessOne thinks is best I guess.

.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

There's an issue with the mod folder patch. The COSMIC parameters are not being loaded upon mod load. Example: Tech paradigm is set to 20 in COSMIC, but upon mod load, checking scenario parameters shows default 10/10 tech rate.

 

[AyCe]

There's an issue with the mod folder patch. The @Cosmic parameters are not being loaded upon mod load. Example: Tech paradigm is set to 20 in @Cosmic, but upon mod load, checking scenario parameters shows default 10/10 tech rate.

Isn't the scenario parameter in addition (or rather multiplication) to the cosmic parameter?

 

[JPetroski]

I have a potential bug to report but I'm not sure what it is.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/operation-herbstnebel-v2-0-for-tot.26528/

This scenario worked a few versions back at least but no longer works now. Is it working for anyone else? It crashes immediately for me and I'm not sure why. I've tested a few other older scenarios and they seem to work fine, but there may be others out there that have the same issue.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I have a potential bug to report but I'm not sure what it is.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/operation-herbstnebel-v2-0-for-tot.26528/

This scenario worked a few versions back at least but no longer works now. Is it working for anyone else? It crashes immediately for me and I'm not sure why. I've tested a few other older scenarios and they seem to work fine, but there may be others out there that have the same issue.

I get the exact same thing. When trying to load the scenario, I immediately get the following message with crash to desktop.

(I'm using Linux and WINE, so the error may be different for others.)

The scenario does seem to start properly in TOTPP v15.1. (I'm pretty sure that is the version I have for Medieval Millennium, where I tested.)