[UXP] Legends of Revolutions

[Prebral]

Reporting one... well, not a bug, but an inconsistency:

Capped ram can "bombard" units outside cities including ships. This is a bit weird, its OK with bombards, cannons, trebuchets etc., but I can not imagine a non-pythonesque scene, where you bombard someone with capped rams

 

[Ninja2]

Reporting one... well, not a bug, but an inconsistency:

Capped ram can "bombard" units outside cities including ships.

I believe this is a "feature" from DCM, where siege weapons (originally thought of as projectile weapons) could do opportunity fire, including waterunits. I had the same observation in Merged Mods, so I made a fix in the dll. Basically, all units with a <iCombatLimit> of 10 or less can't do opportunity fire. And I've set all rams to a value of 10.

 

[achilleszero]

Phungus: Why did took out all the nonshader nif files from the unit art in LoR?? Do I need to put the regular nifs back in the .FPK?

 

[phungus420]

Phungus: Why did took out all the nonshader nif files from the unit art in LoR?? Do I need to put the regular nifs back in the .FPK?

What? I don't think I did...

There are some models that don't have non shaders, so I did my best to use the most apropriat nif file for them. Is this what you mean?

 

[achilleszero]

What? I don't think I did...

There are some models that don't have non shaders, so I did my best to use the most apropriat nif file for them. Is this what you mean?

Didnt mean to say all the nifs. But I have seen a few. Theres a couple of units files that I commonly take things from, so I know that they have a normal nif and a _FX nif. But as I was checking all the LoRtest art I saw that a couple only had an FX nif when it had both types before. so I went back and looked at the older beta fpk's and sure enough both types of nifs were there. I've only seen a couple like that though. If you didnt do that maybe there was a problem with Pakbuild when I unpacked. Will go back and unpack LoRtest again and see.

 

[phungus420]

That would be unintentional, of course it's possible I just screwed up and removed art I didn't mean to. But really not having the non shader art was bothering me for some units, so I can't see how I would do this, since I was basically trying to fix this when I was going through the art by adding ethnic non shader models to models that didn't have one...

 

[phungus420]

I played Bronze, Steam and Tear and loved that Mod. However, I began getting video memory allocation errors more and more frequently until it got to the point where it would crash every turn. (After reloading the game, the turn would then process but crash again the next time.) I loaded the latest patch to no avail. I was happy to find Legends of Revolutions, but even when I first begin a new game, it crashes every turn like before. Do you have any suggestions or info I can provide that may help?
I have never experienced this issue with any other mod or the base installs. I'm running XP Pro, fully patched, Q9450, 4GB ram, ATI 4870 w/500MB ram, DX 9.0c

The video allocation erro means your RAM and/or Video Card is getting overloaded. The best things to try to fix this would be to update your video card's drivers, or play on a smaller map. There is also this thread that has some info on MAF trouble shooting: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=224178

Not much else really to reccomend here. I've done my best to remove high poly units, and achilleszero is in the process of tyding up some city art, but other then that there isn't much else to do to improve the performance. Also with the specs on your computer you shouldn't be having this problem. Although I don't recognize the Graphix card, if it's top end though it should have no problems

 

[phungus420]

@Gatling Gun:

Here is your save, but fixed so it doesn't hang, in case you want to finish your game. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Unfortunately still no fix for it yet, because I'm not sure what is causing it. I was able to isolate the offending unit, and switching it's UnitAI type fixed the hang, but that doesn't really tell me how or why something is breaking in the UnitAI code. I've reported as much as I can to glider and jdog, hopefully they figure something out. Anyway if this occurs again please post it, getting multiple instances of this fatal bug might allow me to figure out how to reproduce it, which in turn might help me figure out it's cause, and how to fix it.

 

[HannibalBarka]

I played Bronze, Steam and Tear and loved that Mod. However, I began getting video memory allocation errors more and more frequently until it got to the point where it would crash every turn. (After reloading the game, the turn would then process but crash again the next time.) I loaded the latest patch to no avail. I was happy to find Legends of Revolutions, but even when I first begin a new game, it crashes every turn like before. Do you have any suggestions or info I can provide that may help?
I have never experienced this issue with any other mod or the base installs. I'm running XP Pro, fully patched, Q9450, 4GB ram, ATI 4870 w/500MB ram, DX 9.0c

what the hell is Bronze, Steam and Tear ?

 

[achilleszero]

what the hell is Bronze, Steam and Tear ?

Its what this Legends of Revolution was called in its alpha phase.

 

[rkade8583]

Speaking of lores (and this goes back to wolf's), there are ethnic art units that will default to original units or even pinkies when you run the game on lores (like I do). Not game breaking but annoying.

 

[phungus420]

Yeah, I get those pink blobs every so often, not sure what causes it, as the models are fine. You can WB out the unit, and put it back in and it looks fine That's really rare though, I might see it happen once out of three full games. It's also possible with the cleaning up of the models achilleszero is doing, this will become a thing of the past, have to see. Also I really think this is more of an issue with specific video cards...

Onto the current status of this project. I've isolated the cause of gatlin gun's critical bug, but unfortunatly I can't figure out what exactly is going wrong. I have a fix, but it's not perfect. Basically I will need to take away the UNITAI_ATTACK availability for pathfinders. This wol't effect the game much, but unfortunatly the AI wol't see or build or use pathfinders as viable attack units (this wol't effect UU pathfinder variants like the minuteman or conquistador). I could also revert back to RevDCM 1.02, but I'd rather just push forward and except there is some rare flaw in AI logic (I can't reproduce it, but it's happening in the save game gatlin gun posted, and switching the UnitAI from attack to explore fixed it) that can occur with pathfinders in RevDCM 2.00 that are using the UNITAI_ATTACK UnitAI. So 0.9 will push forward once achilleszero is done with touching up the unit art.

Edit: Also if anyone else has a save game with an instance of a critical bug in the test build, might be really helpful in tracking down the specific issue causing this hang. Or has no one other then gatling gun experienced an issue with the 0.9.2 test build?

 

[achilleszero]

Phungus, I just got done compressing all the oversized texture files. Lots and lots of 512x512 files. Also I still ran across a couple of over 2000 poly units and fixed them. 2 of them were right in our faces, legends no less (Sacred band was 4500!! also fixed its crappy block looking cape while I was at it).

Still looking around for bad nifs/nodes. May never find all of them. They seem to randomly trigger errors from the logs and you cant tell just by glancing at nif.

Was wondering about the nonshader thing I mentioned yesterday. The ones i was asking about were the ones that used to have both nifs. The xml for some of those units is still set up for both types. Ones that come to mind are some of the various warlords. It would be easy to put them back in the art folders with little or no xml changes. Shaders are supposed to perform better but the nonshader are good to have too. That way the few people who have computers that cant do shaders will have that much less problems.

Oh by the way, Just from the compressing and the resizing of the texutes, the unit art folder got cut by over 17 MB!!

Yeah, I get those pink blobs every so often, not sure what causes it, as the models are fine. You can WB out the unit, and put it back in and it looks fine That's really rare though, I might see it happen once out of three full games.

You know I've never seen that. Ive also never encounter alot of the problems people are having. Mostly because my computer just freezes up if any thing. Its strange though that I handle civ so well, I doubt any one in this thread has an older/slower computer than me.

Do you have any hypothesis on what could possibly be causing the pick blob thing? Is it missing texture or are you talking about the red sphere thing when theres missing nif.

 

[phungus420]

Wow, that's alot. That's about how much I shaved off the wolfshanze.fpk last time I trimmed all the fat I could find. One question I have, does the TeamColor folder actually do anything? If not, you can cut that too And thanks for finding the high poly count in the sacred band, to be honest though I'm not that worried about single instance units, the early flyer is also at around 4000 polys, but since these are all performance improving things, I didn't think haveing a single model over the 2000 limit would really hurt performance much. By all means though clean anything up you are wanting and willing to do, just letting you know that for legends, and wonders I'm not really too concerned.

As far as shaders and non shaders, I really tried to go through and add non shader nifs for all the unit ethnic art that didn't have them. I must have messed something up there, thanks for fixing that. As you say it's only important for low end systems, but I want this mod to be pretty on low end systems as well. As it says in the OP the goal is to simulate a "commercially viable" expansion pack, so any art and all that will ideally be set up in a way firaxis themselves would do it, if they had the time and resources the Civ4 modding community has.

 

[achilleszero]

Do you mean the team color folder in unit art or the one in interface art? I dont know what the interface one is for. The 1_teamcolors folder in units folder all looks like unit art that was cut from the XM: already. I dont see any refrences in the art defines for those units.

As far as adding of nonshaders, I will probably only get around to re-adding ones that had them in beta. I dont think I will have time to actually make any. Even more rampant is the lack of shader nifs. Most art in the DB usually just has the non shader since its easier to make, and dont include a shader_FX nif. Maybe it would be a project for LoR v1.50 or ther abouts, to make all units have both nifs.

 

[phungus420]

Do you mean the team color folder in unit art or the one in interface art? I dont know what the interface one is for. The 1_teamcolors folder in units folder all looks like unit art that was cut from the XM: already. I dont see any refrences in the art defines for those units.

Yeah, the unit art one. I was going to delete this, but forgot. I was also concerned maybe there was some reference in the kfms or whatever that needed this folder for teamcolor.

As far as adding of nonshaders, I will probably only get around to re-adding ones that had them in beta. I dont think I will have time to actually make any. Even more rampant is the lack of shader nifs. Most art in the DB usually just has the non shader since its easier to make, and dont include a shader_FX nif. Maybe it would be a project for LoR v1.50 or ther abouts, to make all units have both nifs.

Cool. Yeah, having both non shader and shader nifs for all the LoR models would be a serious ammount of work... I mean alot of work. If you do actually do this, would be best to just release it as a super art pack, rather then doing it just for LoR. Also this would be a project to only consider if you really wanted to work on something for a few months.

Edit: Also tracked the critical hang to a specific cause. For some reason the 20% withdraw on the Pathfinder was causing it. While this is most likely a flaw in the new BetterAI code, and definatly not a typo or anything in the XML, the easiest work around is to simply remove this atribute from pathfinders. So I'm going to do that. Hopefully glider or jdog will figure out the error in the actual AI code, so I can give pathfinders back their withdrawl, but for now, I'm removing it.

 

[achilleszero]

Phungus, would 512 textures be ok for single instance units? Say legend units or wonders.

 

[Meatbomb]

I am not reporting a bug, more a play balance issue.

The "Barbarian CIv" aspect is a lot of fun, but really seems overpowered. In my games the Barbs are rising really fast, and getting their special event with a leader and a tonne of units way too fast.

I know this isn't directly Phungus420's work. Does anyone else find this a little overpowering? Anyone have an easy way to adjust this to tone down the speed / possibility of the barbs developing, and having their "massive free army" event?

 

[phungus420]

Phungus, would 512 textures be ok for single instance units? Say legend units or wonders.

That's fine, definatly. Actually I wasn't really concerened about 512 textures overall, just 1024 size ones, but if you can reduce the 512s to smaller texture sizes, that's great.

@Meatbomb
The barbarian civ army spawning is difficult to balance. On one hand the desired barbarian army size when it spawns and is reinforced should be enough to give a militarily oriented barb civ the ability to become a force on the map, a civ in it's own proper right. This means it must spawn enough units to be able to capture a couple cities from other AIs. On the other hand, it can't spawn enough units to destroy a human player and thus ruin their game. Also the ammount of units they spawn needs to scale with map size and era. Currently I don't think barbarian civ is fully balanced, but it's pretty good really. I certainly prefer playing with it on then without. Anyway I reccomend perusing the Revolution.ini file, lots of revolution oriented stuff you can tweak in that file to your tastes; and all the values have common sense names.

 

[rkade8583]

Why not do a 4/1/2? 4 defenders, 1 walking defender, and 2 attackers per spawn?

Phun, is 92 stable providing I play on large maps as opposed to huge ones? Remind me why huge maps are screwing everything up? Because they're just so immense in size? Makes you wonder about uber-mods like RoM2... jeez.

I wish I could help more. I really do.