Whales and Whalingboat Development Thread

[Kailric]

Here is the upload with my latest changes.

Fishing works like I explained above. You have to have a City set to Import food and another to Export food in order for the Whaler to unload at a city that imports food. If not it will just unload at nearest city. In my testing if a single city had both Import and Export food for some reason the Whaler sailed to Europe first. Then when you send it back it then goes to the Import food city.

I will have to go through the Trade Routes code and find out exactly what is going on there, but what I want the Whaler to do is go to the nearest City that imports Food regardless of wither there is a city that Exports food. I'll have that in the next update hopefully.

In this upload the Whaler will give you three red warning text if he can't fish. A check for the Bonus, a check for if another Whaler is present, and also a check for if the Unit is Completely full. The last one I just finished coding and it checks the Whaler for room to carry more Food. If a Whaler has a food unit already in its cargo it does a check to see how much yield is actually in that Food Unit and if there is room for more Food then it will allow the Whaler to fish.


I also added help text so when you mouse over a unit that is whaling it tells you what its doing and how much Food per turn it brings in, much like a Pioneer when he works.

 

[Aymerick]

Yeah I've tested it and it does go to Europe. Maybe it should just be a button appearing when the cargo is full that would set the ship to go to the nearest city...

I'm gonna look for a more appropriate model for a small fishing ship like you mentioned...

 

[Kailric]

Yeah I've tested it and it does go to Europe. Maybe it should just be a button appearing when the cargo is full that would set the ship to go to the nearest city...

I'm gonna look for a more appropriate model for a small fishing ship like you mentioned...

I'll fix it so it don't sail to Europe for any reason when its done fishing. The problem with sending it to the nearest city button is what if the player don't want it to go to the nearest city but somewheres else.

Here is a thought. Sense the game is full of transport ships the whaling ship want be needed as such. So why not let it have three commands using the existing commands. One is the Fish the High Seas command that simply tells the unit to Fish. The other would be the Automate command which tells the unit to Fish the spot then headed to nearest city. Then the third command would be for choosing a specific city to deliver the food, you hit the command then are given a choice of what City. We would just use the buttons that are already in place. I can have it display text that tells what the command actually does for the Whaling ship.

Just a graphical whaling question... in the movie Master and Commander in the whaling ship scene the whaling ship had lots of black smoke pouring out of it. Is that normal for a whaling ships? If so then it would be cool to add an effect either to the ship or to the spot the ship is whaling at that shows black smoke. It would work much like my my Pirate Cove that is built that creates a big patch of fog around the Cove. Its little things like that that really make a mod stand out.

 

[Aymerick]

Yeah the 3 options sounds perfect! I can make new buttons if you want...

I haven't seen that movie in a while... but I found that reference:

Whaling ships had the reputation for being rough and ready. They (reputedly) smelt so bad you could smell them before they could be seen. When whales were sighted Whaleboats were launched and crews chased down the whales. Once harpooned the crew then endured the “Nantucket Sleigh-ride” until they exhausted whale could be harpooned again (and again) until it died. Then the whale (often with the help of less successful crews) was towed back to the ship. Whale blubber was then (flensed) cut off in huge strips which were then boiled in Try Pots giving off smoke and the dreadful stench. (think of the deception used at the end of Russell Crowe’s ‘Master and Commander&#8217

Sounds like the smoke was from boilers to make Whale Oil... The smoke effect from damaged ship might work too...

 

[Kailric]

Yeah the 3 options sounds perfect! I can make new buttons if you want...
I haven't seen that movie in a while... but I found that reference:
Sounds like the smoke was from boilers to make Whale Oil... The smoke effect from damaged ship might work too...

K, I'll work on the 3 options sometime today and tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get it done in next day or so. We should add new buttons too for the fishing ships so yeah, do that if you get the chance.

Its easy to add effects to the plot, but adding effects to animations is beyond me at the moment. We could have two different effects depending on the bonus type, either the fish net for fish and smoke for whales. Just so the player knows who is doing what and makes the game feel more alive.

 

[Kailric]

One question, should we just not allow the Fishing ships to work the Trade Routes? That would make them a little more specialized? I was just thinking if one of the whaling ships has more than one cargo space it would need to cost as much as a Caravel or we would have an exploit where you could build whaling ships to do all your early transporting rather than build a more expensive Caravel.

We could also prevent the Whaling ship from carrying anything besides food and or trade goods, but then if your only ship left due to "Privateers" was a whaling ship you may need to transport other goods as well...

Anyway, hopefully I'll have another upload for ya tomorrow.

 

[Aymerick]

I'm gonna see what I can do for the animation...

I think those two ship could be more expensive since they do add more value then a Caravel to prevent exploit... But we can tweak that when we'll test the gameplay impact.

They should also be able to carry any goods, just in case...

For the Fishing Ship, are talking about regular Trade Routes or the 3 options?

 

[Kailric]

I'm gonna see what I can do for the animation...

I think those two ship could be more expensive since they do add more value then a Caravel to prevent exploit... But we can tweak that when we'll test the gameplay impact.

They should also be able to carry any goods, just in case...

For the Fishing Ship, are talking about regular Trade Routes or the 3 options?

If we allow the Fishing ships to carry all cargos then they should be able to do the regular Trade Routes missions, thats what I ment. Instead of actually building Whaling ships, we could have it set up as a profession that Caravels and Merchantmen can have, just a thougtht.

 

[Kailric]

Here is the latest upload.

There is two commands; Automate Fishing Boat and Fish the High Seas.

Fish the High Seas works as before.
Automate Fishing Boat will give you a list of Port Cities you can deliver too. Once selected it will fish till full then head to that city to unload. It should be checking for enemy ships and stop en-route if it sees one.

With this version is if you select to Automate Fishing Boat then cancel in the same turn your ship loses all its moves that turn. If it had full moves it will fish that turn though. If you command it to Automate Fishing Boat again in that turn you wont be asked what city to deliver to till the next turn. This will prevent an exploit where you can fish, cancel, fish, cancel, and just continue to gain fish. It works like the found city command if your unit has already moved it want actually found a city till the next turn.

I add a temporary icon for Automate Fishing Boat... please change it

Also, I only made those 2 commands. I figure that will probably do for now and see how testing goes.

What we could add at some point is my "Assign Home City" command and "Return to Port" command. Those make life in Colonization so much easier. I been meaning to make those a separate ModComp as when your ships arrives from Europe or other situations you can just hit "return to Port" and it will auto head there instead of having to make a path for it each time.

 

[Deliverator]

I've rigged the Whaling Boat to the Frigate animations for you guys. You may want to remove the cannon fire nodes from the NIF if you don't want cannon fire during combat. The art defines XML should be based on the Frigate ones.

 

[Kailric]

I've rigged the Whaling Boat to the Frigate animations for you guys. You may want to remove the cannon fire nodes from the NIF if you don't want cannon fire during combat. The art defines XML should be based on the Frigate ones.

Sweet, now just make it so that little sailors jump in the boats and harpoon a whale! Haha, jk, I am slowly learning about graphics modding myself. Its fun stuff.

 

[Aymerick]

I've rigged the Whaling Boat to the Frigate animations for you guys. You may want to remove the cannon fire nodes from the NIF if you don't want cannon fire during combat. The art defines XML should be based on the Frigate ones.

Sweet, now just make it so that little sailors jump in the boats and harpoon a whale! Haha, jk, I am slowly learning about graphics modding myself. Its fun stuff.

Thanks Deliverator! Works great!!

But Kailric's right, I think we need an animation when "working". I wanna learn how to do that too!

If you look at the Civ4 Whaling Boat animation, when it's not working the buoys are on the ship's deck. And when working, they are surrounding the whale...



I'm gonna try to "detach" the Whalers (those 5 small boat) from the Whaling Boat and replace the buoys with them so they look like they're cercling the whale when working and go back to they're place when not working...

I dunno if that would be easier if the Whaling Boat turn unto an improvement when working, for the graphical part anyway...

Oh and BTW, Kailric I think you forgot to update de SDK folder in your last update...

 

[Kailric]

You are right, I forgot to put that in. Here is the updated files...

Oh, yeah, if you want to add the animations above I can do that in SDK really simple probably. If you make the changes you say to the graphics post them for me and I'll add them.

 

[drjest2000]

In the Whaling 0.02 version with Kailric's changes, I get crashes whenever I speed up a colonist in the queue Goes straight to the "Send error report to MS" screen and exits the game.

 

[Kailric]

In the Whaling 0.02 version with Kailric's changes, I get crashes whenever I speed up a colonist in the queue Goes straight to the "Send error report to MS" screen and exits the game.

What exactly do you mean by "speed up a colonist in the queue"? You mean when you press Shift-A to make your automatic units finish their jobs that turn?

Edit:What all else can you tell us about what is happening when the crash occurs. Do you have any whalers working, are they enroute to a city, things like that?

 

[Aymerick]

What exactly do you mean by "speed up a colonist in the queue"? You mean when you press Shift-A to make your automatic units finish their jobs that turn?

Edit:What all else can you tell us about what is happening when the crash occurs. Do you have any whalers working, are they enroute to a city, things like that?

He means "Hurry Colonist" in Europe screen, It crashes when there's a Colonist in the Europe screen's "Dock" and you move your mouse over it... I had no whalingboats unit at all in the game...

I've looked up the logs but haven't found anything usefull, only the Whale bonus sounds missing (I'll add those) but I don't think it's relevant...

 

[Kailric]

He means "Hurry Colonist" in Europe screen, It crashes when there's a Colonist in the Europe screen's "Dock" and you move your mouse over it... I had no whalingboats unit at all in the game...

I've looked up the logs but haven't found anything usefull, only the Whale bonus sounds missing (I'll add those) but I don't think it's relevant...

Ahh, ok.. totally forgot about the Europe screen. I already think I know what it is, had this error before. I'll post a fix shortly...

 

[Kailric]

Took less time than I thought. Just had to add a check for if getGroup() was NULL as colonist waiting at docks don't have a group.

Fix version is posted.

 

[Axis Kast]

Can anyone offer some friendly direction on how to install this mod, once I've downloaded it? Many thanks in advance!

 

[drjest2000]

Kailric, Aymerick already explained it for me. I figured it was something subtle and sly in the Europe Screen's code, but I wasn't sure if it was only the Europe Screen and wanted to do more testing. It was limited to the colonists in the Dock area of the Europe Screen, and it appears resolved in your latest release. Which is very cool, coz we all need New England whalers in the game! One step closer! I am looking forward to the final with great anticipation.

Axis Kast:

Place the extracted folder in your MODS folder.

The usual location is in your documents folder:

~(My) Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\MODS

watch out for a double folder:

~(My) Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\MODS\Whaling v0.02 with Kailrics changes v3\Whaling v0.02 with Kailrics changes v3\Whalingboat_v0.02

all you want is:

~(My) Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization\MODS\Whalingboat_v0.02

after it is installed to the MODS folder, start the game as usual, then select the ADVANCED item from the menu, on the next screen select LOAD MOD

See the attached images for illustrations