World War II 1939 - A Civilization IV Modification

[asioasioasio]

I didn't played civ3 since Jan 2002 and i thought i won't return to it (since i disliked civ3 with comparison to civ2 and alpha centauri)

 

[JungleIII]

I know I have mentioned this before.... but more units and buildings just for the sake of having your favorite unit in there does NOT help make the game more enjoyable to play. The joy of having variety is overshadowed by the increasing slowness of play and cumbersomeness of menus.

My favorite example of the misguided folly of overkill is the old Civ3 mod called Storm Over Europe, a WW2 mod that grew and grew and grew, with hundreds of UUs, buildings and all the rest. I was curious as to what ever happened to it, so the other day I looked for it on the web and found that as of 2 weeks ago, it was still NOT finished. Back in Civ3 days, the latest "finished" version was completely unplayable due to slow downs, the time between turns on even a high-end PC was measured in tens of minutes. It was impressive in its size, and in the amazing amount of work that went into it... but in the end it was unplayable.

I would much rather see a smaller mod that is stable and fun to play.

Woton you are right on... it appears this mod is following the same path. Some people prefer to 'look' at the units... myself and 90% of the players (I feel) play the game for the 'game'. You don't need every unit to be special and every unit that was made during the era to be in the game... just enough to give it flavour, as I also have mentioned previously. I doubt the game can be enjoyably played now with this many units, at least not on the average computer and with the average gamers patience. I'm sure it 'looks' great... but will it be playable?

 

[asioasioasio]

Hmm

I added more units in bts version - that's true.
But only one i think are necessery - in most cases flavour units for new countries - i don't see possibility for japan using spitfire since there's mitsubishi zero already made. The same i don't see possibility to make fw 190a , b , c ........ so you make sleep well . There are only units that IMO are necessery.

I didn't tested mod on scenario but three things should lower the needs of good pc
- BTS itself - it runs a lot better than Warlords (without problem i play BTS with huge maps, when on warlords it wasn't fully comfortable such a maps)
- Small scenarios - just with couple of countries - good for slow computers or lunch brakes (they might appear after the premiere tough)
- When the mod will be launched i'll make special version - with downsized textures (so where 256x256 texture is used will be 128x128 - so 4 times less pixels). Mod will look crappy, but should lower needs of memory.

 

[asioasioasio]

OK I was thinking about what wotan321 and JungleIII said.

This news probably will make happy people waiting urgently for the mod and afraid about the demands of pc. And probably make sad group of people that wants extra flavour in the mod.

The release for BTS won't have flavour infantry and ships. The flavour units will appear as seperate mod's mod. So people with better pcs will install it on existing mod and have more flavour. Another plus of this solution is that mod will apear sooner (in december) and after release i'll finish adding flavour units for countries (so this mod's mod will appear in for example february-march)

 

[wotan321]

That is good news asioasioasio, thank-you.

I am really looking forward to playing this mod.

 

[Ace of Gold]

That is good news asioasioasio, thank-you.

I am really looking forward to playing this mod.

same here.

 

[asioasioasio]

Bored a little bit with xml i started experiment with old scenarios. Since the alpha version is near i started fixing 1933 scenario by JungleIII - I fixed the leaders and improvments (i need to fix units and buildings). I don't change anything in the scenario except what i have to (what has changed since warlord like for example civics) - the balancing and adding other changes i leave to Jungle.

I opened map (i didn't believed it'll open since there are units to fix, but it did). Tough not without a problems - check the screenshots



- everywhere are great walls
- some planes didn't flyed on the sky (on intercept mission) but just hang on the sky (they didn't move)
- After adding unit in worldbuilder the game crashed

hope it won't be hard to find and fix all the bugs that came from different tags in warlords and bts.

I played couple of turns and i notieced two things one bad and one good
- AI worke much inpredictible (changes of civics, weird alliances etc) - wich means more ballancing in the mod and perhaps in scenario.
- the AI turn last 15-20 sec. wich is real great improvment from Warlords (playing those scenario wich is on large (huge?) map and with big numbers of nations) on Warlords took me 30-45 sec.)

 

[asioasioasio]

I think i fixed Great Wall problem

More screenshots

 

[Agent327]

Looking good! Keep it up.

 

[Koba the Dread]

Stupid questions:

Are the screenshots above from your much anticipated MOD? The reason I ask is that you reference 1933 scenario and Jungle III. Is the MOD/Scenario from above playable now (with your fixes of course)?

 

[asioasioasio]

Yeah from new mod for bts (i'm translating 1933 scenario made by JungleIII and debugging it - i leave non critial bug and game balance to Jungle)/

Right now there's not much left in .xml - more than 90-95% of xml (excluding texts) is done (but less important xml left - you can say mod is ready to play if you turn a blind eye on scalling and raw game balance).
around 75% of texts (what's left is parts of civilopedia and diplomacy talk).
a dozen or so models.
and of course converting scenarios and adding few sdk changes.

About playability - I played just couple of turns so it's hard to say if it's playable

 

[Shiggs713]

screen shots look great. looking forward to its release

 

[Koba the Dread]

Any word?

Any chance of beta testing this?

Also, is this going to be for BTS 3.13 or BTS 3.17?

 

[asioasioasio]

3.17
The beta will be public, someday in december it should appear.
The .xml is almost done - 98% I finished yesterday making unit's xml.

So it shoul be somehow playable, but i tried to play yesterday scenario, but it crushed in third or fourth turn
I don't know if bug is in .xml or in scenario.

 

[asioasioasio]

I played today 1933 scenario) (and made 20 turns without problem and whole page of noncritical but lame bugs )
I still don't know why it crashed yesterday.

Here's the current screenshot

 

[wotan321]

How do you identify the bugs? The log files? Some other program? I would like to know how to figure out crashes that seem to have no rhyme or reason.

 

[Koba the Dread]

Incredible progress, simply amazing. I wish you the very best of luck with finishing this (potential) masterpiece.

Regards,
Koba

 

[asioasioasio]

How do you identify the bugs? The log files? Some other program? I would like to know how to figure out crashes that seem to have no rhyme or reason.

I don't use any software.
For xml bugs i just use this rules:

1. Backup often xml files and test the game after applying changes. If something will go wrong you'll know in what part are errors. You can use winmerge software to compare files "before" and "after" and often find bug quickly

2. Use ctrl+c and ctrl+v as much as possible. It saves time and generates a lot less bugs then typing all the tags from hand. Cool tool is xml marker - it speeds up balancing and changing tags in bigger files.

3. Fix the bugs that civ4 is showing the reason (for example wrong tags names) - afte launching the game when some tags are missing game informs.

4. If the game crashes without giving reasing - check civilopedia - 95% of critical bugs can be traced there
- it can crash in civilopedia in certain (or during launch the game) or show half of the list of for example units (the list units finisheds for example on infantry) - the ArtDef in the example of unit is missing or is spelled wrong. For example is in unitsinfo.xml it is ART_DEF_UNIT_LAVOCHKIN_LA_7 (it'll be next unit after infantry in alphabetical order) and in artdef it's for example ART_DEF_UNIT_LA_7 or artdef.xml will be missing art definition for Lavochkin
- just the button in civilopedia means you made wrong path in artdef's.xml <KFM> tag
- red blob in civilopedia graphic means that <NIF> <SHADERNIF> tag's paths are wrong in artdefs.xml
- pink button means that the button is missing or the path in artdef is wrong
- pink texture means that the modell is missing the texture or the model has some shader issues (apeears only on pcs with lower graphical settings)
- the civilopedia also shows you many dependancies and game ballancing. It can helps to balance the game and track noncritical bugs.
- Some aren't showed - if you for example remove technologies or units the Events.xml also needs to be cleaned.

For map
- i don't have good method here - many bugs appears after loading game (but if you use worlbuilder more than notepad - you shouldn't have much problem with map)

No idea how to fix python and sdk, since i'm noob in programming.

Incredible progress, simply amazing. I wish you the very best of luck with finishing this (potential) masterpiece.

Regards,
Koba

Thx

 

[Kedwinbi]

Long time no news...

 

[Vince_2000]

Yea... I still waiting for the release date !