[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[Catfish]

• Fixed a crash bug in the "Extra terrain types" patch when playing with less than 16 terrain types.
• Fixed a graphical glitch in the "Active unit indicators" patch.

Both working at my end. No issues to report so far for v0.9.1.

[Edit: OK, scratch that, I've been able to generate another CTD, associated with Terrain2.bmp overlays. It occurs when loading a new game where the 'number of tiles' value (@OVERLAYS) for a given terrain slot is increased. For the same game type (folder), it seems that any increase will do it. That probably won't affect many games unless batch files are used for file swapping. However, it also occurs when you switch game type, properly quitting (Ctrl+Q) to the main menu before loading the next game. If values change from 1 or 3 to 16, I'll get a crash. I'll attach another crash report. Is the region at the very top (1,1) of terrain2.bmp free real estate? I'm using it.]

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Giving a bomber the spy functions would go a long way towards having strategic bombings. "Industrial sabotage" could be renamed "bomb industry" poison water would be "attack civilians."

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Giving a bomber the spy functions would go a long way towards having strategic bombings. "Industrial sabotage" could be renamed "bomb industry" poison water would be "attack civilians."

And Plant Nuclear Device could be renamed Nuclear Sneak Attack, and with 100% chance of getting "caught"!

And speaking of Spy stuff, the ability to frame other civs for our shenanigans would be so much fun....

 

[TheNamelessOne]

When I install the 0.91V, and I start the launcher, I an option to apply a patch (pretty much all I can do). It then claims it cannot open civ2.exe for some reason.

Means the file is in use by another process. Either kill that process, or, if you don't know how, a good ol' reboot will do the trick.

1.9 crashes for me as well.

Which patch? While doing what? Do you have a crash report?

I've been able to generate another CTD, associated with Terrain2.bmp overlays. It occurs when loading a new game where the 'number of tiles' value (@OVERLAYS) for a given terrain slot is increased.

Good catch. It was freeing unallocated memory (using the new, higher number instead of the old). I've fixed it for 0.10 (1.0?).

Is the region at the very top (1,1) of terrain2.bmp free real estate? I'm using it.

Sure. Older versions used that space, but ToT doesn't.

 

[techumseh]

Which patch? While doing what? Do you have a crash report?

Sorry TNO, I didn't record all the info. I installed the official patch, then your first 1.9. It caused a crash whenever I tried to load a save game.

I've removed it and continued working on my Stalingrad project using 1.8. The one change I could really use is rivers with no movement advantage. Railways with a finite movement advantage a close second.

 

[Catfish]

Sure. Older versions used that space, but ToT doesn't.

Yeah, I meant in terms of ToTPP overlay compatibility, but you've answered that question as well. I was using a 16-tile jungle overlay in that position without any apparent side effects - well, aside from the overlay memory bug. Just checking to be sure.

Got another CTD. Can't tell you much about this one other than that I was testing some graphics in the Sci-Fi game, let the AI run around for several turns (Shift+F3 → No human player) and then it crashed. I managed to reproduce it in another AI-only Sci-Fi game and saved the turn prior. Crash report and SAV attached.

[Edit: I can add that this appears to be related to the 'City & unit limits' option, currently set at 1024 and 4096, respectively.]

 

[TheNamelessOne]

Sorry TNO, I didn't record all the info. I installed the official patch, then your first 1.9. It caused a crash whenever I tried to load a save game.

When you say 1.9, do you mean 0.9 or 0.9.1?

The one change I could really use is rivers with no movement advantage. Railways with a finite movement advantage a close second.

You're in luck, a railroad movement multiplier will be available in the next release.

Got another CTD.

You're running into a ToT bug where the city array is indexed with -1 as a result of improper bounds checking. In vanilla that works, even though it reads unrelated memory; with the City & Unit patch it's an access violation. I'll fix it.

 

[McMonkey]

You're in luck, a railroad movement multiplier will be available in the next release.

Outstanding I will make extensive use of this feature in all of my scenarios. Can't wait to start laying track.

 

[techumseh]

When you say 1.9, do you mean 0.9 or 0.9.1?

Sorry. I mean 0.9.

You're in luck, a railroad movement multiplier will be available in the next release

Outstanding! Thanks.

 

[Greizer85]

Hello again,

been gone for a long time; my motherboard done got fried the very moment I was going to begin work on the new world map. Got a new one now, but the size of the project has become a bit daunting in my mind, and besides I'm quite busy with some irl stuff as well. I'm sure others will pick up the slack, but I will get around to it eventually. (These features were 16 years in the making, so a few extra months hardly matters. )

Meanwhile, I'll add a drop into the recent ocean of suggestions:

* Is it possible to disable the automatic city growth on 'We Love the President' days in Republic/Democracy governments? Just to give the Commies a bit of a fighting chance. I do seem to recall that Governments were one of the hardest things to change, but if it can be done it'd be pretty nice. --If the governments themselves can't be altered, then perhaps an external 'event' could be made that immediately lowers the city populations by 1 after they grow due to the hard-coded effect?

Also, I'll say again that someone more socially inclined should make a splash on Reddit about this project. Could bring in a lot more users/testers. Nostalgy + improved ergonomics; what's not to like? Although it may be wise to wait, perhaps, so that the most major features are in place and a 99 % stable 'layman' version of the project can be made. Civ II is notoriusly hard to please when it comes to ctds, graphical errors, etc, as evident in this thread. Frankly TheNamelessOne your patience is second only to your skills.

... Part of that 'layman' version could be the ultimate world map... I'll get right on it.

 

[techumseh]

I'm adding objectives to my scenario. The 1 and 3 point city objectives work, but they are not displayed in any way, either on the "find city" display, or when you click on an enemy city. In fact, when you click on the city of another civ, nothing about the city is displayed at all. Again, I'm still using 0.8.

 

[Catfish]

They're working for me on v0.9.1. Have you saved the game as a scenario? If not, save the game as a scenario and reload it (Ctrl+L, not 'Begin a Scenario'). It won't show up in the SAV file list, so type the file name with the SCN extension (or change the file's extension to SAV). All of the scenario parameters should be working on reload; they're now appended to the new file. Continue working on the game and save normally thereafter. This is normal behaviour for regular ToT.

Feature Requests

• An idea for one of the unused @IMPROVE flags: disables the Civilopedia **imp.bmp graphic. Many scenarios, especially those converted from earlier versions, lack some or all of these graphics, and thus inherit the ones from the main game folders (Original, Fantasy or Sci-Fi). They're not always appropriate.

 

[techumseh]

No, it doesn't work for me at all. Click on a German city and it just lists grassland - nothing else.

 

[Catfish]

One of my earlier requests:

• Allow the @CITYINFO box (or similar alternative) to appear when left-clicking foreign cities, without the Trade tech requirement and its associated commodity demand list, when the Objective Victory Flag has been set. It's much easier than having to scroll through the @FINDCITY window (Shift+C) when checking objective values.

Your tribe has the Trade tech?

 

[techumseh]

That enables the name, nationality and trade goods when you click on the city, but not the objective status.

 

[Catfish]

What about the other scenario parameters, such as 'Forbid government switching', 'Eliminate pollution' and 'Tech Paradigm'? Have you set any of these? Are they working when you reload the game?

 

[techumseh]

No, I haven't got that far yet.

 

[Greizer85]

Ah -- how could I forget! One more for the grand list; this one I think everyone agrees should go the way of the dodo:

* When you start making a mine on a Hill tile (possibly also other improvements, but at least it works with Mines), then tell another Settler to make a city on that same tile, and wait for however long it takes for the first Settler to finish the mine (without disturbing it), then once the Mine is finished, the city tile will have +2 extra Shields (iirc), which are not attainable without the use of this exploit. This should not be; kill it with thy special powers, o one who shan't be named!


... Or is this already fixed? It seems so glaring that one'd think they'd have taken care of it already in ToT, or one of its patches. Apologies if this is old hat; I haven't tried this lately and my ToT installation is a mess atm, so I can't test it right now.

EDIT: @techumseh: I noticed that on the excellent world map that you posted in my map thread on the Scenario League forum, you'd somehow enlargened the map dimensions far beyond what is normally allowed by the map editor, or even MapEdit, which I use for externally editing my maps. Could you tell me which tool you used to achieve this (if indeed it is still available)? I won't make my map that huge, but it'd be nice to have some leeway around the polar areas of the map (thanks to the handy new fertility thing, plus the extra terrain types, there's no longer a need to avoid huge tracts of polar wastes on world maps! I can finally make my Northern Fleet as RussiaSoviet Union! ).

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

^ On the other hand, the city tile automatically gives one shield to a terrain that would otherwise never produce shields. Perhaps make it customizable somehow?

 

[Greizer85]

^ On the other hand, the city tile automatically gives one shield to a terrain that would otherwise never produce shields. Perhaps make it customizable somehow?

I've always taken this to mean that the settlers 'clear' the landscape to make room for the city structures, making it a productive environment regardless of initial conditions (with blacksmith's quarters etc.). Imo every city square should have the same stats, barring perhaps some exceptions in case you found the city directly on top of a resource (if not compensated, this would create the opposite kind of problem; it would become a rule to never found cities on resources). Still, the best route in this, as in other things, is to make it fully customizable. At the very least the exploit must go though (or you could make it so that city squares can be mined even after the city's been founded, but imo that'd make the least sense out of all the available options).