[WTP] Quick questions

[nci]

the gold gives you like 80% chance to win

Isn't it supposed to?

 

[Mr. ZorG]

is it possible to make a graphical representation of the fact that someone is already studying in the natives' village? some icon, for example.
if possible, I will create an issue on GitHub.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

is it possible to make a graphical representation of the fact that someone is already studying in the natives' village? some icon, for example.
if possible, I will create an issue on GitHub.

View attachment 594831

Isn´t there already a line below the job? As in, if the village trains Expert Famers and I have a colonist in the village, then below "Expert Farmer" is a line that shows the progress of the colonists learning (full line = guy is finished).

 

[raystuttgart]

is it possible to make a graphical representation of the fact that someone is already studying in the natives' village?

Of course it is technically possible.

The effort to do it is about 2h for a programmer.
(Without programming you have no way to do it though.)

I would probably not look pretty to have another icon in city billboard though.
(You would also need to explain that Icon again and again to beginners.)

However, I generally also do not even like that change.
(see below.)

Isn´t there already a line below the job?

Only for your own colonists that train in the village.
You will simply not see on the screen that a colonist of another Nation is training there.

-----

Personal Opinion to such a change:

Actually I like the way it currently is.

There is no need to know and get visualized everything that other Nations do.
Simply because it is not predictable that way.

Why should you know in advance that another colonists of another Nation already trains there before actually being at the village?
Other Nations will not tell you about their plans and the Natives are not going to tell you either.

Not everything in a game needs to be convenient.
There need to be some small "Damn these ..., they have stolen my Training Spot again!"

These angering moments spice up a game as well.
Angering / Annoying a player sometimes is what my features are supposed to do.

I simply am no fan of removing all of little bad surprises and thus annoyances and have the mod become "Fairy Pony Land" ...
This is simply a tiny anger you remember and those will make you remember playing the game.
(Our brain remembers angering moments much better than nice and boring moments.)

Emotions - good and bad - keep the game interesting.
I implement such anger moments in my features by design.

Like I tried to explain:

• Reward and Punishment (or at least risk) need to stay balanced.
  
• Moments of Joy and moments of anger need to stay balanced.
• Good effects and bad effects need to stay balanced.

Players may not believe me or simply not understand my "design philosophie":

For me this is the spice that makes the game interesting and fun and keeps our players playing.
Once it is just "Fairy Pony Land", players will get bored of it because it will have "no more taste".

Our mind is really not wanting everything to be nice and boring.
Our brain needs stimulations of all kinds to not get bored.

The believe "It will be so much fun, if 100% is predictable and there is no more bad surprises and thus I can control everything." is simply a misbelieve.

Just remember your relationships:
Have you appreciated your partner because she / he was always predictable, nice and boring?
Or have you appreciated your parter because she / he was surprising, sometimes a "bad girl / bad boy" but fun?

---------

Sorry.
This was getting way too long again.

I know I get theoretical all the time recently, but I kind of need to explain these things to people.
They otherwise do not understand why the mod does not always need to be "nice and fluffy" for me.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

Isn´t there already a line below the job?

as Ray said, only in your colonies..

There need to be some small "Damn these ..., they have stolen my Training Spot again!"

yes, it was something like this
but I understood and accepted your point of view

 

[ConjurerDragon]

...
Only for your own colonists that train in the village.
You will simply not see on the screen that a colonist of another Nation is training there.

Ah- I wrongly assumed that AI / other players would see the line too and would know that the village was occupied.

Personal Opinion to such a change:

Actually I like the way it currently is.

There is no need to know and get visualized everything that other Nations do.
Simply because it is not predictable that way.

Why should you know in advance that another colonists of another Nation already trains there before actually being at the village?
Other Nations will not tell you about their plans and the Natives are not going to tell you either.

Not everything in a game needs to be convenient.
There need to be some small "Damn these ..., they have stolen my Training Spot again!"
...

o.k. but does that argument not contradict the other guys presence in the village?
We can have a missionary (who right away builds a coloured cross to show off his presence),
a trader (who right away advertises his presence by building a box in front of the village)
and a colonist who learns from the natives.

I agree that the colonist would be the one with the least external attention, but if the goal would be to have my colonies presence in natives villages unknown then we should burn the crosses and the boxes...

 

[Mr. ZorG]

hmm ... the flip side of Ray's logic ... however ...

 

[raystuttgart]

o.k. but does that argument not contradict the other guys presence in the village?
We can have a missionary (who right away builds a coloured cross to show off his presence),
a trader (who right away advertises his presence by building a box in front of the village)
and a colonist who learns from the natives.

A mission or a trade post are buildings, that are constantly there. They are buildings, not just people.
There is nothing surprising about it and you can make the decisions to burn the ones of other nations down with negative consequences considering relations.
Missions and Trade Posts were really known in the surrounding area because such news spread.

--> It really does not work to remove those Billboar Icons, because the Player claims "ownership" with his mission or trade post.
Much more "negative consequence" for losing it / not having gotten it. Important strategically and much more value.
It will constantly spawn Treasures or Converts. It is not just annoying to have your enemies create such "outposts".

Colonists training at a Native Village are temporary. They may be there or may not be there.
Thus the situation can change and surprise you. Also you have no influence to change it other than wait to take the next training slot.
Who ever knew which white men were at the moment in the next native village 20 miles away without visiting it.

--> There is no necessity for a Billboard Icon, because the Player just has temporary presense.
Just a little tiny bit of annoyance for having to wait a couple of turns. No real strategic importance and very little value.
It does not really change anything on the big scale. Wait 5 turns, who cares?

----

We are kind of trying to compare big apple trees with single small cherries.
(Totally different scale of importance and stategic impact.)

Again guys, there is no wrong or right in modding.
I am just trying to explain my personal taste and my design philosophies.

And even for things like this topic I try to do it properly.
Even if it is as impactful to gameplay as having another grey hair on my head.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

my older sister does not have a single gray hair on her head. I can ask what paint she uses
thanks for your great clarification, Ray

 

[schueler]

Is the way the engine spreads buildings around the city tile hard-coded or can it be modded?
It's just at times they look way too off when looking at them closely, then again, this is not SimColony.
I've just thought about this as my government palace is in a corner far out. This is merely an aesthetic quibble.

It does almost look like melcher kürzer has a system to give cities a more logical layout..

 

[raystuttgart]

Is the way the engine spreads buildings around the city tile hard-coded or can it be modded?

There is no real difference between "coded" and "modded" for us.
(We have access to the code and a lot of our work also happens in the code.)

Coding is just one of several ways of modding.
(Other ways of modding are e.g. XML modding or graphical modding.)

The current positioning was coded in Python (by me).
And yes it can be modified / done differently again.

It does almost look like melcher kürzer has a system to give cities a more logical layout..

There is no real "system" in terms of easily configurable.

He placed the single "SpecialBuildingSlots" and configured graphics for specific Buildings and "tree paceholders" technically just as I did.
It is not that complicated in theory, but he is simply much more skilled considering aesthetics, visual design and creating graphics.

To make his screen a bit dynamic:
(We know how he did it but it is also quite some effort to make it look good.)

• He added additional logic to check the base plot to adjust the City Screen Background.
• He added additional logic to create routes in between the "SpecialBuildings" actually built.
• ...

In theory / technically we understand 100% of everything he did.
It is simply a question of skill, patience, endurance, motivation, ...

Melcher was one of the best 3D and 2D graphical modders that ever existed in Civ4BTS and Civ4Col modding.
(I say "was", because after TAC, he basically slowly but surely became a private modder than only share some stuff with his friends sometimes and then completely disappeared from the modding scene.)


----

I would love to have the great changes of melcher adapted for our mod.
But it seems that he is not active anymore and currently nobody of us succeeds in contacting him again.

Just "copy&paste" will not work though. It is more or less completely recreating it, since WTP has so much more buildings, so much more Yields, 2 Plot City Radius, ...
It will be at least half a year of modding for an extremely skilled and experienced modder to create a WTP version of what he did.

TAC is tiny compared to WTP.
(Thus the effort to create something like that for WTP is also much bigger.)

You see where I am going here ...

-----

This is not a question of "not wanting":
It is a question of time, motivation and skills.

Show me a skilled, experienced and motivated modder that has time to work on it.
I will literarely kiss his feet if he creates anything even closely as good as melcher did.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

But it seems that he is not active anymore...

he promised to release his mod when he finished it a little. maybe even this year...

 

[Nightinggale]

Is the way the engine spreads buildings around the city tile hard-coded or can it be modded?
It's just at times they look way too off when looking at them closely, then again, this is not SimColony.
I've just thought about this as my government palace is in a corner far out. This is merely an aesthetic quibble.

It does almost look like melcher kürzer has a system to give cities a more logical layout..

Are you talking about the colony screen or the map view?

As Ray already wrote, we have full control of the colony screen. In fact I have announced long term plans to make it more modular in the code as that will allow the next step of drawing the screen differently on different monitor aspects. It looks awful on ultra wide screens and it makes very little use of the screen space as it's a 4:3 (12:9) screen stretched to fill 22:9. 16:9 could also improve as that one is stretched too. It's sadly far down the TODO list at the moment.

If you are talking about the map view, then there is the LSystem in xml. No idea how it works though as it's complex. Either that or it's the fact that I'm not big on 3D graphics. Not sure how much can be done by people who knows what they are doing with the LSystem.

 

[raystuttgart]

... we have full control of the colony screen.

That is true, but the technical possibilities and knowledge is not the problem here.
(We know how it works and in theory what to do.)

The programming of the logic will not be the big issue. (It is not that complicated in itself.)
But this is about finetunig fonts, colours, scaling, positioning, ... in the screen: pixel pushing basically.

It is extremely tedious for a programmer since it requires a lot of patience, huge talent, eye for aesthetics, lots of endurance, willingness to create something outstanding ...
This is not about "I slap it with my code hammer until it finally gives up and does what I want ..."

The type of modder that is so in love with details and so talented to create such a matching masterpiece in visual design is really rare.
It is more of an "artist of graphical and visual design". You simply can not train and educate somebody like "Michelangelo".

It is almost demotivating for people like me to know that I will never achieve his greatness in this specific kind of modding.
There are simply 2 kinds of modders you eventually can become (both need time of course).

• hard working and experienced alrounders
  
• highly talented specialists with inspiring genius

In fact I have announced long term plans to make it more modular in the code as that will allow the next step of drawing the screen differently on different monitor aspects.

Sure, it is a good idea to modularize and make it easier to enhance and maintain.
(CvMainInterface.py is really a mess of way too many different Screens and way too much code in one file.)

It looks awful on ultra wide screens and it makes very little use of the screen space as it's a 4:3 (12:9) screen stretched to fill 22:9. 16:9 could also improve as that one is stretched too.

Yeah, it will surely be nice to have it ...

It's sadly far down the TODO list at the moment.

Like so many other things ...

If you are talking about the map view, then there is the LSystem in xml.
No idea how it works though as it's complex.

Yes, it is actually very complex and yes it was not really designed for a programmer. (Even much less than the Screens and 2D graphics.)
To really understand and use it, you really also need to understand 3D graphics (graphical nodes, layers and animations) and tools like NifScope / NifTools ...

And again, it is not simply about knowing how it works.
It requires modders with graphical talented to really make something pretty.

------

Summary:

All our combined programming skills will not really help us here without graphical modders like @Schmiddie investing massive work.
(And we are not talking about a few weeks here. Talking about 6 months is more realistic if you expect anything that comes close to the work of melcher.)

• new 2D for our buildings
• redesign of buttons and UI of the screens
• repositioning, recoloring, changing fonts, ... in screens
• rescaling of Units, Improvements, City Sets, ...
• recreating of Terrains and Terrain Features
• massive work in L-System for Improvements and Bonus Ressources
• ...

We can be happy if we even get tiny bits of all of that.
(Once we have more graphical modders, we might start talking again.)

------

Sorry, for being the realistic and pessimistic guy here.
But sometimes it needs to be explained when community asks "Hey, why do you not simple do it like that ?"

We are simply not a paid development studio that can simply hire all experts it needs.
We need to work with only voluntary contributions of work of the few modders we have.

 

[schueler]

I was talking about the colony in the 3d map view. I had a good hunch that it would not be trivial but I was wondering if it was moddable at all, since civ iv isn't completely open-source and a few things the engine does seem to be off-limits from what I've read on the forums.

Thanks to both of you for your very detailed answers.

 

[Nightinggale]

Sure, it is a good idea to modularize and make it easier to enhance and maintain.
(CvMainInterface.py is really a mess of way too many different Screens and way too much code in one file.)

I'm in the process of splitting the domestic advisor into one file for each screen. It works well and the plan is to eventually do the same again and make a file for the colony screen and one file for the yield bar at the bottom (it's also used in the domestic advisor, hence would likely benefit from being a standalone). I don't feel like modding the colony screen until after the split because without a proper overview, the risk of adding hard to fix bugs is too great.

As you might guess from this, it will be a while before focus is on the colony screen. It will be time consuming and for the time being there are other tasks, which we will benefit more from doing first.

 

[raystuttgart]

I was talking about the colony in the 3d map view.

Of course that is possible as well and was actually heavily modified by @Schmiddie who created lots of City Sets and 3D Building graphics.
(It is mostly 3D graphical modding and positioning / rotating / scaling in XML, e.g. L-System.)

I had a good hunch that it would not be trivial ...

It is not trivial, but @Schmiddie our graphics expert is very experienced in it.
Actually experienced graphical modders for Civ4Col are really rare these days.
(Other games are simply way more "shiny" considering graphics.)

... since civ iv isn't completely open-source and a few things the engine does seem to be off-limits from what I've read on the forums

The source code for the game logic and UI is 100% open source.
And considering 3D graphics or 2D graphics for Units / Buildings / Improvements / ... we can also basically do everything that is possible with such an old graphics engine.
(Balancing to be accessible is self speaking.)

Only the deep graphical engine itself and the exe are basically impossible to directly mod.
(But there are some tricks here and there although they are usually very risky.)

Summary:

I have never seen any other game that offeres modders as many possibilities as Civ4 (BTS or Col) does.
We can do much more than most people expect, but it is not without effort ...

 

[The_Mynock]

Hi,

can someone tell me where I get an overview about the domestic market? What did the people consume? What do they need/want? How much money did I earn?

I just built the first market but didn't find any information about it...

 

[peter kosmas]

HELLO , the MOD does not have any info about Master Cabinetmaker , what the hell is this Unit ? what does it do ? , MOD does not contain any information .
Also i suggest you have a better guide on this mod , i was trying to Create a City and i had to search all the menu to find out.

 

[Mr. ZorG]

Hi,
can someone tell me where I get an overview about the domestic market?

on the colony screen, press the "Governor" button, and then on the "domestic market" button. unfortunately, I can't provide a screenshot yet. I can only in the evening, if it is still relevant.