[TOT] The Test Of Time Patch Project

[Patine]

Google is your friend. What web browser are you using? Internet Explorer 11? Tools → Compatibility View settings → Add this website. I use Firefox and don't have the problem.

Thanks Catfish! That DID work!

 

[Patine]

I don't if this was been suggested yet, or if it would work without re-writing (or crashing) the game, but, is it possible to separate the movement multiplier of units with the alpine flag from the base road multiplier like you have with the river movement multiplier?

 

[TheNamelessOne]

Well, knowing both you and Curt managed to get negative population values, I dont think it would have mattered in the first place, because I crashed again anyway, even with the patch disabled.

When a save file or scenario already contains a city with size 0 it is liable to crash even with the patch disabled I'm afraid. Best is to start over, or hex edit the offending city's size.

The bug is fixed though, I'm attaching a new release in this post.

1) When completing an improvement, the ability to access the rush buy instead of having to close the city screen...

2) MORE CIVS! I know this is a tricky one, but having groups of 4, 5 or 6 civs instead of 3 cultures linked to a civ-colour would be glorious!

1) Please elaborate, that's not quite clear to me yet.
2) Tricky indeed, would require quite a few changes.

Additionally, I decided to try a fresh start, so I loaded from the .scn file, to try starting a new game. As soon as events.txt finished loading (I watched debugview like a hawk), and immediately after debugview listed @endevents, the game crashed, this time an APPCRASH instead of BEX.

This looks like a different bug. From the error I can gather the problem, but not the cause. Could you please attach the scenario file, so I can do some debugging?

Windows wouldn't let me add totpp.exe to the DEP list, but I take it this is by design?

That's by design. Dll's are never loaded separately by the OS, always within the context of an executable. In this case, the exception you made for civ2.exe covers TOTPP.dll.

I don't if this was been suggested yet, or if it would work without re-writing (or crashing) the game, but, is it possible to separate the movement multiplier of units with the alpine flag from the base road multiplier like you have with the river movement multiplier?

I think so, yes. Shouldn't be too much trouble.

Here's the point release, 0.11.1, it replaces 0.11:

• Fixed a bug in the "City population loss" patch where cities were not properly removed upon reaching size 0.

As always, detailed information about the patches is available in the launcher. For an overview of all patches, see the included README.txt. Happy gaming!

 

[CurtSibling]

@TheNamelessOne:
Just tested the city pop loss patch, and razing is back on the menu!
Things are working fine now...!

As for my city-build wish:
It would be nice to allow players to issue orders from the zoomed city screen at the start of a turn...

Example as follows...
When starting a new turn, and zooming to a city after it builds an improvement,
or order has been restored after civil unrest, CIV2 never lets you press "C" to
enter the build menu, instead saying, "you must close the city screen"....

I have never seen the logic in why the game never lets us give new build orders right away,
making the player manually mouse clicking the menu, when it would be easier to merely
press the hotkey "C" for change build orders, or "B" for rush buy...

Not really a game breaker, but would speed things along for larger empires...

 

[CurtSibling]

Just wondering, is there any way to re-assign city to a different civ within the game...?

If I wanted to change a roman city to persian ownership, for instance, or more usefully, to the barbs?

I guess it could be done with spies in cheat mode, but to create barb cities would be harder...

This feature would be of major help in scenario creation!

PS
There is a 32-bit program to do this, but it is hard to run these days!

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

When a save file or scenario already contains a city with size 0 it is liable to crash even with the patch disabled I'm afraid. Best is to start over, or hex edit the offending city's size.

Or, you know, since the save loads fine, I could edit the city size with the ingame cheats.

The bug is fixed though, I'm attaching a new release in this post.

This looks like a different bug. From the error I can gather the problem, but not the cause. Could you please attach the scenario file, so I can do some debugging?

Done. It may have been from something I did or didn't do while saving the .scn file, so I included 4 files, 2 scenario setup saves, and 2 scenario files. I had made two separate scenario types with it, one with all of the opponent's battles revealed (similar to hitting the "Y" key during cheat mode, but without all the hassle of watching every single move), the other with the Civ default of battles being hidden. I accomplished this via using the "reveal/cover whole map" operations on specific maps.

This does give me an idea, however. Perhaps an extra @COSMIC2 parameter enabling or disabling the visibility of the opponents' battles? (Or alternatively, such a parameter being used elsewhere?)

That's by design. Dll's are never loaded separately by the OS, always within the context of an executable. In this case, the exception you made for civ2.exe covers TOTPP.dll.

Aha, that makes much more sense now. Thanks!

Here's the point release, 0.11.1, it replaces 0.11:

• Fixed a bug in the "City population loss" patch where cities were not properly removed upon reaching size 0.

As always, detailed information about the patches is available in the launcher. For an overview of all patches, see the included README.txt. Happy gaming!

Excellent.

 

[Catfish]

Additionally, I decided to try a fresh start, so I loaded from the .scn file, to try starting a new game. As soon as events.txt finished loading (I watched debugview like a hawk), and immediately after debugview listed @endevents, the game crashed, this time an APPCRASH instead of BEX.

This looks like a different bug. From the error I can gather the problem, but not the cause. Could you please attach the scenario file, so I can do some debugging?

I've got something similar. Version 0.11.1. I'm getting a CTD when I start a new single player game right after Civ2 executable launch. It does this for all of the official games and custom scenarios. If I load a saved game first, quit to the main menu and then start a new single player game, I'm good. Do you need a crash report for this one?

Edit: I re-encoded all of the official Indeo AVIs to AVC. When testing in-game video playback, I noticed that superimposed text, eg, @ARCHAEOLOGISTS3 (game.txt) for the defeat video (scene3.avi), is replaced by a black box. Another example is @SCORE and scene7.avi. It's the same for the original Indeo videos when the DirectShow video option is enabled. Apart from that, the improvement in playback quality of these crusty old videos is significant.

 

[CurtSibling]

I noticed the CPU patch causes crashes, and I also get the single player crash.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

I've got something similar. Version 0.11.1. I'm getting a CTD when I start a new single player game right after Civ2 executable launch. It does this for all of the official games and custom scenarios. If I load a saved game first, quit to the main menu and then start a new single player game, I'm good.

I have observed the exact same behavior with MGE on Windows XP.

I always play with the single player edition on my old mac and it has worked flawlessly. A few months back, for GOTM 158, we decided to commemorate the 100th anniversary of WW1 by playing Curt Sibling's Kaiser scenario. That scenario is only playable with MGE. I bought a copy and installed it on my Windows XP machine. Then I observed the same behavior Catfish explains above and by trial and error found the same workaround.

 

[Metro Polis]

Is it possible to have barbarian settlers build cities, too? I mean, they can only get cities by conquering some, but it would make the game funnier and include an unexpected touch if you suddenly bumped into a neutral / barbarian city. As far as I know barbarian settlers just move around and disappear after a few turns, but they never do anything settlers were supposed to do.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Barbarian settlers!? I have never seen any in the regular game. Is that a TOT specialty?

 

[TheNamelessOne]

As soon as events.txt finished loading (I watched debugview like a hawk), and immediately after debugview listed @endevents, the game crashed, this time an APPCRASH instead of BEX.

I noticed the CPU patch causes crashes, and I also get the single player crash.

I've got something similar. Version 0.11.1. I'm getting a CTD when I start a new single player game right after Civ2 executable launch.

It's all the same problem, caused by turning on optimization for TOTPP.dll in 0.11, which in turn revealed a bug in some assembly code not preserving registers. This caused no crash with optimization turned off, even though the bug has been there for some time. Anyway, it's fixed now.

Release 0.11.2, fixing crash bugs in 0.11 & 0.11.1:

• Fixed a bug in TOTPP.dll that caused a game crash after loading events.
• TOTPP.dll doesn't rewrite its own code anymore, and should no longer crash when DEP (Data Execution Prevention) is enabled.

As always, detailed information about the patches is available in the launcher. For an overview of all patches, see the included README.txt. Happy gaming!

 

[Metro Polis]

Barbarian settlers!? I have never seen any in the regular game. Is that a TOT specialty?

Actually not. But you could have some as soon as you mess around with the slots and units specifications or the event file.
I think it would be a nice idea to let them build neutral cities, though.

 

[TheNamelessOne]

@TheNamelessOne:
As for my city-build wish:
It would be nice to allow players to issue orders from the zoomed city screen at the start of a turn...

I see, it almost seems like a bug that the keys don't work at that time. I'll put it on the list.

Just wondering, is there any way to re-assign city to a different civ within the game...?

I'll see if I can add this to the "Edit City" menu, that seems like a good place for it.

Edit: I re-encoded all of the official Indeo AVIs to AVC. When testing in-game video playback, I noticed that superimposed text, eg, @ARCHAEOLOGISTS3 (game.txt) for the defeat video (scene3.avi), is replaced by a black box. Another example is @SCORE and scene7.avi.

You're quite right, I'll fix that in the next feature-release.

Is it possible to have barbarian settlers build cities, too? I mean, they can only get cities by conquering some, but it would make the game funnier and include an unexpected touch if you suddenly bumped into a neutral / barbarian city. As far as I know barbarian settlers just move around and disappear after a few turns, but they never do anything settlers were supposed to do.

Barbarian AI is quite special, units with roles >= 5 (settle, diplomacy, trade) will expire after a couple of turns. There's an override for this in @UNITS_ADVANCED, but their settlers still won't have default AI.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Edit2: Running good so far! Excellent work

In the meantime, can someone double check the hex values in the scenario files I uploaded earlier? I can't remember if I did the necessary delevent and event flags procedure, but I've seen the AI sending Partisans to Mars (Map 1) when they shouldn't be able to.

 

[CurtSibling]

Thanks for the fixes and responses, NamelessOne!

 

[CurtSibling]

One thing I was wondering - Is there any way to prevent the "change money" events
resetting the player's gold back to 30k, if the treasury holds more than that? Since we
now can have truly big gold amounts, it would be good to overcome this events limit...

 

[TheNamelessOne]

One thing I was wondering - Is there any way to prevent the "change money" events
resetting the player's gold back to 30k, if the treasury holds more than that? Since we
now can have truly big gold amounts, it would be good to overcome this events limit...

Done, I've added the change to the no-limit patch.

 

[CurtSibling]

Thanks, sir!
I will test that in my current game!

 

[CurtSibling]

Tested the new patch out, but the treasury still gets capped at 30k...