Viewports

[Hydromancerx]

I have also been getting the great wall and bridges moving to random locations on the map. Mainly in the middle of the sea.

 

[Cosmic Fox]

@Kitsune420

The built in "max compatibility" means you can still play the same game even after you update. That's how the SVN can work where we update our games everyday with new stuff and still are able to play the same game.

Thx for replying Hydro.. I have forgotten how the SVN works, what tool I need to use it. I remember Civ3 helping with some Mods that used it but clean forgotten what I need to make it work. I would love to use it again. I want to play on Gigantic Maps too, I loved the biggest possible being a builder, I isolate myself meet up with other civs later on in the game.

Exactly what do I need to use the SVN?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Kitsune420

Well "max compatibility" works not matter if you use the SVN or not. As for using the SVN, you would want to use it if you want to keep updated with the most recent stuff. Note there is a lot of experimental stuff going on. Its much less polished as the official releases. But it will give you a chance to see some of the cool stuff we are working on.

For more about SVNs please go to the SVN thread and follow the instructions. If you have any questions please ask in that thread.

 

[CivDad]

I just started using viewports and they are AWESOME.

 

[CivDad]

Pressing the 'C' key with a unit selected causes a crash for me.

I was using a viewport size of 40x40.
Simply press the 'C' key with my warlord chief selected.

View attachment AutoSave_BC-3750.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Koshling]

Pressing the 'C' key with a unit selected causes a crash for me.

If you have a reproducible case please post the save game, wi details of the viewport size you have configured and instructions as to what I need to do from loading the save to getting the crash.

 

[Cosmic Fox]

@Hydromancerx thanks very much for replying with a great explanation. I have old age moments a lot lately, only 57 years old but body and mind are bit beat up! The civ series has been my favorite game genre since around 1994 or 95 when I played Civ 1 and a bit later bought Civ 2 for my son, he hated it! I decided to check it out and was hooked ever since.

I'm using it myself using the default viewports 30x30 I think it is. Playing a a gigantic map with 15 land masses and 15 civs. I also for first time decided to use the minimize AI turn speed. Either viewports or the turn speed option is glitching the hell out of my game graphically. Farms disappear, my personalized map isn't showing any land marks. They pop up once in a while after switch from one port to another one.

Reloading a save after a crash is super fast now, turn times are increased substantially, I'm guessing maybe 50-75% increase, but the gfx glitches are horrible. The mini map is where they show up most notably. Horse farms will sometimes snake onto the water if they are coastal on main map and stay there for a long time. I'm around 4000bc at this time and haven't met any other civs yet.

I want to know if this is a problem using viewports or AI turn minimizing being ticked on instead? It states it may affect graphic animation only and why I post this here to find out from someone else who may have experienced this situation before I begin another game. I'm also playing eternity mode! Thanks

 

[Koshling]

@Hydromancerx thanks very much for replying with a great explanation. I have old age moments a lot lately, only 57 years old but body and mind are bit beat up! The civ series has been my favorite game genre since around 1994 or 95 when I played Civ 1 and a bit later bought Civ 2 for my son, he hated it! I decided to check it out and was hooked ever since.

I'm using it myself using the default viewports 30x30 I think it is. Playing a a gigantic map with 15 land masses and 15 civs. I also for first time decided to use the minimize AI turn speed. Either viewports or the turn speed option is glitching the hell out of my game graphically. Farms disappear, my personalized map isn't showing any land marks. They pop up once in a while after switch from one port to another one.

Reloading a save after a crash is super fast now, turn times are increased substantially, I'm guessing maybe 50-75% increase, but the gfx glitches are horrible. The mini map is where they show up most notably. Horse farms will sometimes snake onto the water if they are coastal on main map and stay there for a long time. I'm around 4000bc at this time and haven't met any other civs yet.

I want to know if this is a problem using viewports or AI turn minimizing being ticked on instead? It states it may affect graphic animation only and why I post this here to find out from someone else who may have experienced this situation before I begin another game. I'm also playing eternity mode! Thanks

More likely viewports, though I haven't heard of anyone having issues with them of the type you describe. Can you screenshot it and post?

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Kitsune420

I loved Civ2 and somehow missed out on civ1 and civ3. By the time I discovered a civ3 was out civ4 was already available.

As for viewport bugs you should as Koshling. He made them. Also they have only been in the mod since v24, but keep getting better and better. Sorry I could not help you more.

Good luck with eternity, its bit too slow for me. I love snail speed personally. It feels right to me when I play.

 

[Cosmic Fox]

Good luck with eternity, its bit too slow for me. I love snail speed personally. It feels right to me when I play.

I like snail much better, this speed is far to slow for my tastes!

I can try to post a screenshot, but most of the glitches are on the minimap, I would need a video to show it clearly. Minimizing AI turn time, it did say it will sacrifice graphic animation but I thought this would be happening on AI side not for the player.

Okay, this is a glitch the settler has, it won't show me the best spot to place my city, instead it does this, sometimes the circle for best placement is in the water! With scouts and wanderer the circle that normally will show up around goody huts is off in the water, silly glitches like this is what I was talking about. Before my land mass was fairly full, little flashing white dots would show up all over the minimap on unexplored areas. Hard to explain actually!

 

[Koshling]

@Koshling:

Here's a much better illustration of the rivers being improperly revealed on a viewport shift.

Ok, I've tweaked this a bit. It now does the spoofing on viewport switches in two stages. Initially it completely hides rivers on unrevealed tiles (so they are not there to be revealed by the fade down), then 5 seconds later, it switches to not spoofing the tiles adjacent to the revealed region. During that 5 econds some artifacting around the edges will be visible (rivers appearing to end half way across the last revealed tile for instance) because it cannot correcly render the revealed tile without also having full information on the adjacent unrevealed one. However, this isn't very noticable unless you're looking for it, and the view will be correctly rendered once the fade down completes.

Would it be hard to make that "5" variable (one more line in the parallel maps file)? I think recentering the viewport from anywhere would be useful, but other folk may not.

Done.

I have also moved ALL viewport configuration into BUG options (main screen, bottom right). Changes will not take effect until the next game restart however.

Note that the BUG settings override the global define ones, with one exception - you cannot turn OFF viewports from BUG if the global defines say they are on. This is so that people playing now with viewports on, who need it to preven MAFs on load in their current games, are not MAF'd before they can ever get to the BUG options in their current game! In the default state (as shipped, with viewports off in the global defines) all BUG settings work as you'd expect, so for most users they will never need to be aware of the global defines at all.

 

[Cosmic Fox]

Koshling, I can give you my save if you want? The mines are graphically wrong unless you guys changed them in v25?

I have some screenshots showing the mines mucked up?

 

[Eldulac]

@Kitsune420
I have been having the same problems with my game. Bridges jumping around the screen occasionally, mines and other improvements glitching graphically. The cotton resource disappeared for me (visually that is) when I built the plantation improvement on it.
Often the white circle under the current selected unit doesn't show at all, or shows up several spots apart from the actual unit.
These problems seem to vary quite a lot, as when I switch viewports, they sometimes start working again.
Maybe this has something to do with my graphics card, or the ingame settings, I don't know.

I'd like to state here that all the problems I listed are small compared to the benefits these viewports provide. I love playing with them on, and not just because of the memory usage, but also for the immersion effect it gives me. You can play for a long time thinking that what you see in your minimap is the whole world, only to discover later that there was a whole other world just outside your view. Excellent for gigantic maps I'd say.

Anyway, when experiencing these issues, I was playing a gigantic map, eternity speed, 20-25 civs, but no minimize AI turn speed.

 

[Koshling]

Koshling, I can give you my save if you want? The mines are graphically wrong unless you guys changed them in v25?

I have some screenshots showing the mines mucked up?

The placement of highlight circles (such as suggestd city splots, or places for workers to improve) has been fixed if you run the SVN version.

The occassional displacement of unit selection circles and flags is a known issue I have not yet cracked - selecting another unit then switching back cures it.

 

[ls612]

The placement of highlight circles (such as suggestd city splots, or places for workers to improve) has been fixed if you run the SVN version.

The occassional displacement of unit selection circles and flags is a known issue I have not yet cracked - selecting another unit then switching back cures it.

As does re-initializing the Viewport.

 

[Cosmic Fox]

@Kitsune420
I have been having the same problems with my game. Bridges jumping around the screen occasionally, mines and other improvements glitching graphically. The cotton resource disappeared for me (visually that is) when I built the plantation improvement on it.
Often the white circle under the current selected unit doesn't show at all, or shows up several spots apart from the actual unit.
These problems seem to vary quite a lot, as when I switch viewports, they sometimes start working again.
Maybe this has something to do with my graphics card, or the ingame settings, I don't know.

I'd like to state here that all the problems I listed are small compared to the benefits these viewports provide. I love playing with them on, and not just because of the memory usage, but also for the immersion effect it gives me. You can play for a long time thinking that what you see in your minimap is the whole world, only to discover later that there was a whole other world just outside your view. Excellent for gigantic maps I'd say.

Anyway, when experiencing these issues, I was playing a gigantic map, eternity speed, 20-25 civs, but no minimize AI turn speed.

I agree with you there, I love how they work and the improvement to game speed is amazing to say the least!

@Koshling I haven't install the svn version as yet, I planned on doing it for next update, but since I might be helpful a little to you debugging I will see about installing it as soon as I figure out how. Hydro gave me a link.. I will check it out..

I'm playing with new settings, don't care for them much, 5 titles from other civs. It is 1800bc haven't met a single civ yet, but I see the borders showing up. I basically want to see if the MAF appear or not on gigantic maps like usual. If they don't occur as I suspect they won't using viewports, I will start a new game using the svn code to see if the glitches have disappeared or not.

 

[Zain]

Hi Koshling,

some screenshots of the flying tile improvements I reported in the C2C thread.
I have also included a savegame, though as Cyrusfan suggested, these weird glitches happen only some time (a few turns for me) into the save. Additionally, they sometimes get randomly fixed by themselves. Reloading fixes all the errors for a couple of turns or so.

It's also worth noting that not ALL tile improvements within a viewport have graphical errors, not even of the same category (for example I had mines that had the correct graphics, and not all walls were flying in the air when I took the screenies).

I've also seen docks in the middle of the lakes and rice paddies and elephants (unimproved and improved) that are completely off the tile.

Thanks for your work, I really appreciate it and I'm having great fun playing the new ver even with these mild graphical annoyances

 

[Cyrusfan]

After some mild frustration in a hotseat game this afternoon, I discovered the "c" key tells units to automate city defense, if the option is enabled (which it is by default, but I had it turned off for single player games, which is why I hadn't noticed the problem). Thus centering/redrawing the VP was automating the selected unit.

I would suggest switching the automate hotkey to shift c, or ctrl c, since centering the view is probably what most people expect "c" to do.

 

[Koshling]

After some mild frustration in a hotseat game this afternoon, I discovered the "c" key tells units to automate city defense, if the option is enabled (which it is by default, but I had it turned off for single player games, which is why I hadn't noticed the problem). Thus centering/redrawing the VP was automating the selected unit.

I would suggest switching the automate hotkey to shift c, or ctrl c, since centering the view is probably what most people expect "c" to do.

I was not even aware of that option - where is it set? Is it BUG or basic BTS game options?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@Koshling I have created a TERRAIN_NONE for you to use instead of TERRAIN_SPACE.