[WTP] Quick questions

[raystuttgart]

Just wanted to say thank you for keeping this going.

And thank you for still being interested.
We really appreciate such nice feedback from time to time.

We can really need all loyal fans we have - we lost way too many over the last years.
And please spread the word that we are still here.

I love this game and I loved R&R.

We do as well.

That is why we still work on this project even after so many years - now it is simply called WTP.
But you will see, WTP has become bigger and better than its parent mod RaR.

And with the help of community, we will make it even better with every further release.
We are only few team members and active modders left, but we try our best.

Happy to see WtP and other Colonization fans still working on this game.

I should say a few words about the modders that started WTP (and also still work on this) and thus more or less saved RaR from being abandoned:@Nightinggale and @devolution

Without them, WTP would not exist and CivCol modding community would not have a single actively developed mod anymore.

I think I have not told you guys often enough:
Thank you guys, for continuing the proud tradition of RaR by starting WTP!

But of course:
Many thanks as well to all former team members (incl. TAC and RaR) and also to all our current supporters.
Without you guys, this mod would also not exist.

 

[Norian]

Do we have discord?

Ever thought about getting one set up? Seems to be the preferred way for gamers to communicates these days. Could be used to get information out and generate buzz for the mod.

 

[Nightinggale]

I decided not to answer this one until later, perhaps this weekend. We have multiple options and I want to make sure the team agrees before making any statements.

 

[Neko Keeshi]

I would **love** to see a discord for this mod/modding for Civ4 Col. Would help with finding games, and sharing in real time.

 

[Vaelin723]

Hello everyonne, and sorry if there is already a topic about this subjet, i tried to read and see if i could find another thread about my problems, but could not find any.

I just discover this mod and i want to play it.

To instal the mod i follow the video from this guy on youtube :

I follow every step with a fresh game (i install the game just before trying to install the mod).

However i'm having issues with the mod when i launch the game, going to advanced, load a mod, chosing WTP 2.8 (like in the video of Cueballgames) and when the game restard with the mod, i'm facing a lot of error message such as the screenshot below :

I read of course the install folder and i check the version of my game which is :

I know that the version needed is the Patch 1.01f, so i find it and dl it on internet to try to install it but when i launch the patch, i have a msg error saying that i need a old version so that the patch can be installed.

I also decided to play with the 2 city plot,so i copy the CvGameCoreDLL.dll in the assets, like it said in the install instructions.

Extra informations : I dl the mod via zip (i don't know if its better to dl via WinRar, i'm not an expert).

Please let me know what i did wrong, it will be much appreciate, because the mod look amazing.

 

[raystuttgart]

@Vaelin723

Please let me know what i did wrong, it will be much appreciate, because the mod look amazing.

I think you have not really done anything wrong.
(The installation itself seems to be correct.)

It seems that all your problems are related to playing in French.

For a long time we had no French team member so we hardly maintained the French texts.
(Many of the French texts do not even exist for all the recent features we added. - It would simply use the English ones though in such a case.)

The only 2 languages that are fully maintained are English and German.
(Because we have some German modders on the team as well.)

Potential solution:
(Please try it to verify that my assumption considering language problems is correct.)

1. Start the base game
2. Switch to English
   
3. Load the mod via "Avanced" again

I know this is not fully satisfying for a native French speaker, but we currently simply cannot offer full French translation.

@Nightinggale

Could it be related to the fact that we still have encoded special characters in French?
Can we solve it by simply replacing the encoded charactes by unencoded ones?

 

[Vaelin723]

Dear @raystuttgart

Thank you so much for the answer, you are right, the issue was that the game was in French, change to english and try to load the mod, and no error msg !!

English is perferctly find for me no worries, its make me work it and improve it

anyway topic close thx to you !

 

[raystuttgart]

Thank you so much for the answer, ...

No problem.
A mod needs players so we are happy to help where we can.

English is perferctly find for me no worries, its make me work it and improve it

Maybe one day we will have a French team member again and thus could also properly maintain the texts in French.

 

[Diapsalma]

Hi. Maybe a stupid question but when customizing a game there is a victory condition called industrialisation. I cant find any info on what it is?

 

[Nightinggale]

Hi. Maybe a stupid question but when customizing a game there is a victory condition called industrialisation. I cant find any info on what it is?

Start the Industrial Revolution (production rate per turn)

If you want to know in more detail, then it is:

Spoiler :

first team to produce 10k yields in a single turn.
Yields are cargo (food, cotton etc) as well as yields, which can't be transported like bells, hammers and crosses.

 

[Diapsalma]

Start the Industrial Revolution (production rate per turn)

If you want to know in more detail, then it is:

Spoiler :

first team to produce 10k yields in a single turn.
Yields are cargo (food, cotton etc) as well as yields, which can't be transported like bells, hammers and crosses.

Thanks!

 

[Juku Salonen]

Is there an XML reference for WTP or even Civ4Col somewhere? A lot of it is self-explanatory, but I do wonder about the exact effects sometimes.

 

[raystuttgart]

Is there an XML reference for WTP or even Civ4Col somewhere?

A lot of the XML documentation created for Civ4BTS is still valid for most of the general things.
(I would estimate that it is about 70% of all the tags - but it is usally XML tags are are easy to understand anyways.)

A complete XML documentation for Civ4Col does not exist to my knowledge.
A few XML files had been explained of Civ4Col in detail over the time though.

Once in TAC we had started creating an XML documentation but it was all just in German.
(I am not even sure where I could find it today. And a lot of it is also outdated considering WTP.)

For WTP we never got to the point where we had enough time to writing guides.
It is really tedious work to write such extensive guides and often they get outdated quite fast if a mod is still in development like WTP is.

------

Summary:

• Some of the XML documentation from Civ4BTS is still valid - but it is mostly about tags that are easy to understand anyways.
  
• There are a few smaller Civ4Col specific XML guides spread out there over the forums - but for WTP they are partially outdated as well.
• For WTP we have not found the time to start an XML documentation until now - it would currently eat up too much valuable resources.

------

That is by the way one example why we wanted to start "WTP Modding Academy".
We had intended to explain the XML files and other important things new modders might need to know.

But interest from community was basically non-existant.
All participants were either already modders or supporters of WTP.

Thus we more or less stopped further efforts for it ...

 

[Juku Salonen]

I get it that it's a PITA to maintain a reference sheet when basically nobody uses it. Normally, that'd be a 'chicken and egg' situation, though.

But WTP seems to be at a point where 'casual' modding pretty much doesn't exist anymore.

A few XML files had been explained of Civ4Col in detail over the time though.

Can you point me towards one? A brief search of the forums showed nothing.

Once in TAC we had started creating an XML documentation but it was all just in German.
(I am not even sure where I could find it today.

I'd like to read it anyway, but if it's too hard to find, well, leave it be.

often they get outdated quite fast if a mod is still in development like WTP is.

In theory, if you're changing the effects of an XML tag so frequently and completely the reference becomes truly useless, your mod is breaking some fundamental game design rules.

I don't think that specifically is an issue for WTP, most tags are working roughly the same pretty much all of the time. And entering new tags into an existing reference shouldn't really be too hard for people adding new tags. After all, what's the point of externalising data without explaining what exactly got externalised?

I guess the bigger problem is that someone would have to create the reference in the first place, and enforce adding new entries to it or do it themselves. And that's not particularly fun.

I guess I'll have to live with code-diving, then.

 

[raystuttgart]

It is simply a matter of effort and time thus motivation.
The WTP Modding Academy (maybe with recordings) would have been a lot more efficient and less tedious for me than writing.

But if community wants to start writing such XML documenation that would be cool.
And whenever something is unclear, community members could simply ask the experienced modders.

It is like always, somebody needs to start ...

 

[Villovik]

How can i modify "random map creation"
Somebody work on it?

 

[Nightinggale]

Random maps are in PublicMaps. Apart from adding large rivers I don't think there is any work done. The random map generators are python scripts and can be identified by the .py file extension.

Everybody are free to modify and/or create their own new map scripts. In fact it's encouraged to do so. However I have to say that making a good random map maker isn't the easiest part of modding. If anybody can do it, then we would like to welcome said person to be part of the modding team.

 

[JohnDay]

One question about two problems.

The first concerns the governor. I sometimes conquer other Europeans and then conquer their governor
with and have two of them. Owning two of them may have been the last word in wisdom. Can't you
turn it into an event and demand a ransom for the captured governor? So that you only ever have one
of them?

The second concerns an event in which a whale resource is created. It has often happened to me that
this resource is dropped and a few laps later, my culture has risen and the new resource has risen
within my cultural boundaries. In order to be able to use it, however, it has to be outside my limits.
Wouldn't it be possible to create more distance?

It's just a request to think about it.

Greetings John

 

[raystuttgart]

The first concerns the governor. I sometimes conquer other Europeans and then conquer their governor with and have two of them.

Actually I always liked that.
It is one of the "highlights" for me to capture another governor.

Also it is almost impossible to figure out the "original owner" of a Governor for the "ransom" without really heavy programming in DLL for a single event.
Thus such a "ransom" event might result in a very strange case where you actually lose your original governor which would cause other discussions and player complaints again ...

Thus not really worth the effort to adjust that in my opinion.

Wouldn't it be possible to create more distance?

Hard to do with the current "out-of-the-box" functionality of the events. Also relatively rare that this happens, basically bad luck.
Thus not really worth the effort to adjust that in my opinion.

----

See guys, we can not always add separate complicated logic (maybe even in DLL) for every single small Python Event.

If we would, this mod would flow over with "almost never used logic" - that may be triggered only once or never in a game.
It would basically become unmaintainable and almost impossible to handle for non-programmers.

The Python Event System has its limitations but it is really not that bad either and it is still easy to understand for a modder even if he is not a programmer.
We need to use its standard functionality whenever possible and in 95% of the cases it is really good enough.

 

[Link Gaetz]

Is buying land from natives just broken? It doesn't seem to reduce the relations hit much, if at all.

I took over some settlements from another European colony, was asked to buy the land, and said yes. Immediately I get a -12 penalty for "You have stolen our land".

In a different game, I started my second inland colony and was asked to pay for the land (2 squares away from larger settlement with the two tile radius DLL), which I did. I immediately get a -2 penalty. They attack and raze the settlement a few turns later. Meanwhile, another European had founded a settlement right next to one of their villages and left it undefended for some 15-odd turns and was not attacked. The AI seems to be extremely tolerant of aggressive settling from other Europeans but not the player. In fact I can barely recall the AI ever starting wars against other Europeans, whereas they certainly do against the player (Omagua and Shuar in particular).