What about new utilities?

[CivPartisan]

Hey fellow civers!

Perhaps with the release of Civ III, we may be looking a slow down of new utilities for Civ II. I wanted to reaffirm that there is a large playing community for Civ II and that utilities will continue to be needed.

If anyone has an opinion on this, I invite them to discuss this matter here.

Also, this is a thread you can list utilities that are needed.

Thanks!

John

 

[CurtSibling]

I dream of being able to defeat the unit limit in Civ II.

I hear this is hard-coded, but so was the 30,000 money limit,
and that was cracked.

The genius that could increase the unit limit would be a hero indeed.

 

[techumseh]

I ache for a Test of Time sprite editor. It would make all the difference. The animated sprites which come with the game are generally poor and have limited use in scenarios. If you only create a couple of unique units for a Tot scenario, you have to drop the animation altogether, because you can't make the sprites for the new units. It is the lack of a sprite editor, imho, which is the main reason ToT hasn't done well.

Any ideas about how it could be done? Would it be very difficult?

 

[Eyn]

yeah ! a sprite editor for ToT !!!
that will be very interesting

 

[Peregrine]

I'd like to see some kind of utility gizmo that could better control the diplomatic attitude of the MGE AI. In too many scenarios, the AI just goes nuts with warfare. The AI civs just sneak attack each other about every other turn. There are no peaceful interludes. It gets predictable after awhile.

That's my request.

 

[SunTzu]

Cracking the Unit Limit and creating a new AI, that is more diplomatic and not so hmmmmmmmm Soviet Union-ish

 

[willemvanoranje]

Is the city limit cracked yet?

 

[Mayhem]

There is also a resource hacker you can download to personalize the CIV II dlls.

I'm working on a new leaders patch. I'm sick of looking at these uninteresting people.

 

[insurgent]

The city limit annoys me a lot... Any solution to that problem would be extremely welcome...

 

[CivPartisan]

First I think that unit and city limits for Civ II do need to be cracked...this has been an ongoing request by the civ community...we've only recently got GIGA MAPS...an attempt to crack the city code was a bit unstable I think.

The AI in MGE has always been a pain and utility that "subdues" the AI might really be what we need.

A SPRITES EDITOR for ToT is in fact probably at the TOP of the list. It is true that the animation limitations has crushed the popularity, but I wouldn't stop there. The backgrounds (even with some of the patches to lighten them) are to dark and all out unacceptable. I know this is a strong opinion but it has really slowed my interest in ToT.

I think an events utility would also be appreciated for ToT.

Here's another thing...what about that dang bug where you are never sure if playing a wav or a CD track at the beginning of a Civ II scenario will work? Why can't that get fixed!

On the other hand, I think that changing the mk.dll (kings) file and finding better picture is MOST DEFINITELY a worthy pursuit. Quite frankly, I am surprised it didn't happen long ago.

Very good...keep the comments rolling!

John

 

[techumseh]

Originally posted by JValdezToo
On the other hand, I think that changing the mk.dll (kings) file and finding better picture is MOST DEFINITELY a worthy pursuit. Quite frankly, I am surprised it didn't happen long ago.

That's easy enough with Rune Berg's 'GifExtractor'. I've done it several times, so have others.

 

[Peregrine]

Isn't there a caveat with the gif-x-tractor thing that, even if you change the dlls, they won't appear differently every time? I have the utility, and did learn a little bit about how to use it, but it seems like somebody told me that it was pointless, because the scenario file wouldn't save the changes to the dlls.

Otherwise, I'd have used it a lot.

 

[Mayhem]

FREEWARE utility to view, modify, add, rename and delete resources in Win32 executables. Incorporates an internal resource compiler and decompiler. Works on Win9x, WinNT and WinXP. This is a better program than GIF Xtractor.

http://www.civfanatics.com/downloads/civ2/utility/reshack.zip

Anyone care to compile a new kings dll?

 

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Peregrine
Isn't there a caveat with the gif-x-tractor thing that, even if you change the dlls, they won't appear differently every time? I have the utility, and did learn a little bit about how to use it, but it seems like somebody told me that it was pointless, because the scenario file wouldn't save the changes to the dlls.

Otherwise, I'd have used it a lot.

Nope, it works like a charm, and it's permanent, so back up your old files. The only problem is that each gif file you install can't be larger (in bytes) than the one it replaced. And the new .dll must be installed in the main Civ directory. You can't use the scenario folder.

Here's the download location for my sci-fi scenario 'Millenium 004'. http://cullivan.com/civ/scenarios/mil4/index.htm The main directory files download contains a modified mk.dll (leader portrait) file.

 

[CivPartisan]

But we need to make sure to find pictures for all the kings that will fit in the .dll or it won't work...

Who wants to volunteer to produce (or scavenge) for some new people and post them here for us to vote on?

This is a worthy pursuit that will be of great help to upgrading Civ II!

John

 

[Mayhem]

http://www.cityvision2000.com/history/peter_close2.jpg

http://i.timeinc.net/time/time100/leaders/images/profilepix/churchill.jpg

http://i.timeinc.net/time/time100/heroes/images/profilepix/guevara.jpg

"Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man"

http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/

I was thinking of those, converting them into GIFs and setting their aggressiveness accordingly.
But I dunno if I wanna do it, if you I can get one of you guys to do it. (I'm lazy)

 

[Smash]

The AI in MGE has always been a pain and utility that "subdues" the AI might really be what we need.

iirc,it is possible to "downgrade" MGE>FW with Cedric's updates.

 

[Peregrine]

is becoming more interesting with every post. I sure would like to substitute some pix I already have for the leader pix in some of my scenarios. Tecumseh, my handle on aim is; ExiledinDarkness. If you get the chance, would you care to contact me and walk me through the process of substituting these pix in AoW? Replacing these graphics is something that I've always wanted to do (and tried), but was never able to fully understand the workings of the x-tractor.

I'd also like to know about this "Cedric's update." What is it? Where can I find it? How does it work? It would frankly be a dream come true if I was able to "calm down" the hyper-aggressive MGE AI and make it behave more like the FW AI. My scenarios would be greatly enhanced if I could find something like that and make it work.

JV--Excellent thread!

 

[Mercator]

Cracking the unit and city limits, and the amount of civs is of a wholly different level from cracking the map size and money limits. In principle, it would of course be possible, but only with considerably more effort. And even then, if someone would achieve that, that Civ2 version would become incompatible with any other Civ2 version, so you could throw all your savegames and all Civ2 scenarios in the dustbin (or create a converter).

That ResHack thingy is nice and all, but it does absolutely nothing when you have Civ2 FW or earlier (those are Win16 applications)!

Peregrine: About changing the DLL graphics... what GifX or ResHack do is allow you to replace an image in your DLL. If someone changes graphics in there and wants to add it to his scenario distribution, he has two possibilities:
1. include only the replacement graphic(s), and describe to the user how they can put the graphics in the DLL's themselves.
2. Include the entire changed DLL, but that dramatically increases the size of the download.

So, another suggestion for a utility (something the creator of GifX was actually working on too, but never finished):
Make a small utility that can automatically replace and backup the DLL graphics and so automates step 1. as I mentioned above.
Scenario creators would only need to include the GIF's and (a download link to) this little application. The scenario users would then only need to run that program to switch the graphics, and run it again to put the originals back in, or something along those lines.
Another thing about the DLL's: I think that even when using ResHack the palettes of the DLL graphics can't be changed (well, they can, but it will look all screwed up if you do). That severely limits what graphics can be put in as replacements.

About the apparent downgrade by Cedric... I don't think he has made it. Cedric has only ripped off Microprose and Hasbro by creating patches that illegally upgrade or downgrade your civ2 version.
He created a patch which can upgrade Civ2 classic or downgrade Civ2 ToT to Civ2 MGE. He also created a patch that upgrades Civ2 classic to Civ2 FW.
In any case, if anyone would make a "patch" that would downgrade MGE to FW, you would simply get FW, which means NO multiplayer.

 

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Peregrine
is becoming more interesting with every post. I sure would like to substitute some pix I already have for the leader pix in some of my scenarios. Tecumseh, my handle on aim is; ExiledinDarkness. If you get the chance, would you care to contact me and walk me through the process of substituting these pix in AoW? Replacing these graphics is something that I've always wanted to do (and tried), but was never able to fully understand the workings of the x-tractor.

OK, do you have Gifxtractor 3? If not, I'm pretty sure you can download it from the Cradle of Civilization site. Double click on the exe. icon, then go to 'file', and select 'load'. Search out the MK.dll file in your main civ directory (be sure to back it up first). Scroll down until you find the image you want to replace. Select 'image', then 'load'. Find the new gif. file you want to add, then click 'save.' Repeat for the next image.

The biggest problem I've found is that the new image can't be larger (in bytes) than the one it replaces. Some gifs in the original .dll are larger than others, so they're easier to replace. You can use various techniques to reduce the size of the new gif: reducing the dimensions and reducing image quality being the main ones.