[WIP]The Peacekeeper Wars

[Ajidica]

I've decided to not make a separate release of just FF+RevDCM, I'm just going to convert it directly to The Peacekeeper Wars. People can still use that as a base if they wish. Main reason is that I'm basicaly makeing the mod right now, and the separate conversion thing would take to long. If the conversion ends up being successful, I might go back and do it.

 

[Agent327]

We'll just wait and see then.

 

[Ajidica]

It doesn't look like it will be that hard (just tedious) because most of the python files are separate from the FF ones. The hardest part is likely going to be merging the city interface, which I think I'll need help.

 

[Ajidica]

After a month and and half of procrastination, I finaly got the new civs added, unfortunatly I haven't started on merging yet. I got a bit sidetracked by FfH and an awsome mod I found for Rome:Total War. If you wish, I can post the new civs.

keldath, I need your opinion. I have to include the character Scorpius from Farscape because hes by far my favorite character, but the Peacekeepers already have two leaders (I could easily make that three with the inclusion of Commandant Grayza) and from the show it seems relativly clear Scorpius has no care to rule the galaxy, he only wants revenge. Because I only have on leader so far for Terra, what do you think about including him as a secondary leader for Terra? I'll have to look through the dominic Flandry books for any alternate Terran Emperors.

 

[keldath]

wow what a coincidence,

i nornally dont look at the posts in the main general forum,

i dropped by here and saw your post

next time pm me.

as for scorpy,
well i think he can serve as a leader for terra, though is more linked to the p"k,

how about inventing a new faction for scorpy? ..

but, he can be a good leader for terra.

 

[Ajidica]

Yeah, he would work better as a Terran leader temporarily as he was pk by choice and is only with them to get revenge on the Scarrans. Because here the pk would be really xenophobic, he would likely end up as a Terran.

EDIT: Keldath, in the dune mod, what do you think about adding new terrain to allow you to create off planet maps? I recently reqatched Children of Dune, and it might be interesting to recreate Muad'dibs Jihad.

 

[Ajidica]

I'm finaly back working on the mod after finishing my Total War campaign, unfortunatly I'm getting Empire Total War later this week and then I'm gone for another week. I don't think the alpha version will be done by the end of the summer. Later on I will need help in merging the FF and the RevDCM city interface files and I looked at them and am completly clueless.

 

[The_J]

Are you sure, it'll be ever finished ?
Train a bit your working morale .

 

[Ajidica]

I know, I have the bad habit of getting caught up in other things, but after next week, my schedule is compeltly free so I should be able to get a fair bit of work done. When school starts I'll have more discipline as I have limited time to work on the mod.

 

[Ajidica]

I really appologize for not getting anything done here over the summer. I got caught up in total war mods. However, I am updating with a few things/events I'm putting in the mod.

1>House Raedbrechen: Basicaly they were a large family of planetary governors who with 'robust' politics threw off all pretense of being servants of the Terran Empire. Their navy is a Terran/Imperium hybrid leanign toward medium ships.

2>The Kingly Wars: I'd rather not do python coding for this (I'll see what I can do in the civics XML.) but basicaly after the first round of secessions from Terra/Old Empire, there was a period of complete instability where almost any commander with a navy could set himself up as a petty warlord. If its possible, I'll set the starting civic to have massive stability penalties. Also, if anbone has any ideas for 'minor' civs I'd like to hear them.

An idea I have been toying with but that I think might ruin the atmosphere is the Enterprise War, where the Imperium and Terra went to war over who gets to name a ship Enterprise. Is it too cutesy?

 

[Ajidica]

Again, I've started work on The Peacekeeper Wars. I know I've said that alot, but I mean it this time. (The Total War games also started annoying me. The AI is lightyears behind the CivAI). I currently have the leaders and civs in using JEELEN's flags from MoO2. I have about 1/3 of the tech tree in (the tech tree is about 3 times longer than the default FF one.) In addition, it will have a modified (and slightly more logical) backstory.
Heres a new leader (and new first greeting comment!)

 

[The_J]

The picture looks interesting, good choice.

 

[GoodGame]

Are there any playable downloads at this point? The link appears boroken.

 

[Ajidica]

Currently, no. I've been busy studying for finals but I should have a while to work on it before my Advanced Writing Composition and Public speaking classes kick into high gear. I'll fix the link once I have something interesting for dl.

 

[Ajidica]

The tech tree is done! It is similar to the last version, but with enough differences to make it flow better. I Hope to have an absolute alpha version out by sunday where the techs requirements have been updated.

 

[Ajidica]

After nearly 3/4 a year, I have a working version of The Peacekeeper Wars! I'm not sure if the maps will work, but everything else does. I still need to fix all the TXT key errors, and numerous other things. Here are some pictures for those that have been following:
EDIT: Don't worry, there are plenty of other traits that will be available. If anyone can correctly geuss where Peersa for the State is from, you will get a character named after you!

 

[orlanth]

Wow, that looks impressive Ajidica. I'm looking forward to trying it; when do you think a download will be ready? Re Peersa I have no idea lol, love the eyepatch though. BTW to reduce TXT_KEY headaches, I've just been typing text directly into <Description> tags etc where it's easier, it can save tons of time.

 

[Ajidica]

I hope to have something to dl soon. The reason I'm using the TXT_KEY entries is because I hope to eventualy translate this into spanish (I'm learning it in school, so translating a whole mod should be good practice.)
Further clue to where Peersa for the State is from, its the Larry Niven Universe, but I'm not sure its part of Known Space.

EDIT:ARGH! I'm experiancing that issue where the game will default to desktop as soon as I hit end turn. I don't have a clue why it is doing this. I ran it through civchecker, and the only errors that came up are the exact same errors normal FF has. I have yet to do python trolling to replace all the units, but I'm going to start on that. The logs are completly unhelpful, according to them everything loaded up just fine, they have no reccolection of a crash occurring. Any ideas? I really don't want to have to build this all up again.
EDIT2:I went through the python files and I think I got all the instances of units/techs/things that were changed in python, but it is still crashing. I really don't know what is happening and it really sort of sucks. If this is the exact same issue that happened with the last mod, it was tech tree based. I'll look and see what else could be causing it.

 

[Shiggs713]

you could try reverting the tech tree back and see what happens. I've had to do some very sad and similar things to not lose days and weeks worth of work before. Thats why if I ever mess with anything I'm not totally familiar with I only change a couple things at a time and then test. Of course this no longer includes XML for me anymore. Hope you can figure it out.

 

[orlanth]

Gah, sounds frustrating Ajidica.

I'll assume you have python exceptions on in Civ4Config and that's not reporting anything either.. Did you have a working version earlier that ran without crashes; if so do you have a saved version you can revert to, or recall what was changed since it started crashing? Well here are some potential sources of crash bugs I recall from adapting the FF mod for Warhammer:

One untraceable crash that got me before was vanilla game Events going off; make sure to replace the /Events XML files with empty ones.

Also scroll through the whole pedia of units/buildings to make sure there's not missing art (red orbs) that can cause crashes.

FF has some tags defined in globaldefinesalt.xml (UNIT_SLAVE, PROMOTION_SHROUDED, etc etc) that the DLL tries to load, make sure you still have XML tags with those names.

In adapting FF to the Warhammer mod, we had to deal with crashes arising from the various FF python calls in CvGameUtils and Eventmanager as well as from the Lairs code in entrypoints/CvFlavourInterface so you'll have to read through those files closely; we finally ended up including improvements for their existing Lair tagnames such as IMPROVEMENT_MARNOK_HILLGIANT_STEADING.

One quick testing approach that let us find the above Lairs crash was to start a Custom Game with all FF gameoptions turned off. If a specific FF gameoption is causing a crash, you can track it down pretty quickly that way.

Another issue is there are references to the Fall Further directory in several python, XML and resource files, that you need to change to refer to the correct folder name of your mod; I'll attach a recent patch from Warhammer that corrects the path errors so you can see which files you'll need to edit.

If you're also including stuff from the RevDCM mod DLL, I think its DLL refers to several tech tagnames such as TECH_THEOLOGY, Scientific Method, Communism, and Liberalism IIRC, check with people on the RevDCM forum and you may need to include techs with those XML tagnames to avoid problems.

That's all I can think of offhand; frustrating crashbugs are common and the only solution is to keep frequent working backups and add slowly while testing. Well keep at it and I hope to be playing your mod soon!