17-09-2004 08:37									#1
	revamped ToT site Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I've revamped my site, and added a brand new Test of Time scenario - Operation Market-Garden. Check it out!
http://www.tecumseh.150m.com/

	17-09-2004 21:32									#2
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Splendid!

Some of the graphics are broken though. I think it's only the icons on the main page to the OMG and Warlords scenarios as well as the credits image on the OMG page. The image URL's are links to your local webfolder rather than relative links.

	17-09-2004 23:11									#3
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Thanks, Merc. It must be possible for my browser to add images from my hard drive to the webpage being displayed - sort of "filling in the blanks". I used my wife's computer to check and saw what you were seeing. Anyway, it should be fixed now. Let me know if it's OK.

	18-09-2004 17:52									#4
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It's OK now.

	18-09-2004 19:57									#5
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Cool looking site. I'm always glad to see someone supporting ToT, which I like better than the earlier Civ2 versions.

I'll probably give the new scenario a try when I have finished grinding my way through my current game.

	19-09-2004 20:19									#6
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Downloaded Market Garden. ... I'm going to have to be more careful next time. Montgomery did better than I irl, which is not very good to say the least...
I have some trouble distinguishing the engineers from the other units for some reason. Does that do for an excuse? Nice scen as always, Techumseh.

	19-09-2004 20:48									#7
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LDC, I'm not sure why you can't distinguish the engineers. Have you put the animated sprites in a separate folder? 2 engineer units arrive via events on turn 3. They're the bulldozers.

	20-09-2004 02:23									#8
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Nize!

Is it just that I'm using Opera, or does Tecumseh continue his chant even after loading the Red October page? Kinda contrapuntal, what with L'Internationale and the chant going on at once.

I'm interested in seeing what 2005 brings!

	20-09-2004 19:57									#9
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With my o.s. the music stops when you switch to the next page. What's contrapuntal? Is that when you block a punt?

	20-09-2004 23:49									#10
	Remove this text

Thanks, Tecumseh.
Keep up the good work.

	21-09-2004 10:48									#11
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Thanks.

	21-09-2004 17:25									#12
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

techumseh, my sound card had not been working for a few days. Then I visited your site, and the sound works again!

Looking forward to the China Warlords scenario, and I'm still trying to work on the various things I was doing way back when.

On an unrelated note, I have moved to Maryland, in the USA, and I think that my county government would probably count as having Green SE choices.

This is the first time I have ever lived in such a place and I need time to recover.

	21-09-2004 19:25									#13
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Among other things, I've been known to bring sight to the blind and music to the deaf! Warlords is 80% done, but I won't really have time to work on civ stuff again until Dec/Jan. I'm always looking for playtesters, so let me know. BTW, what are 'Green SE choices'?

	22-09-2004 08:27									#14
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Green Social Engineering choice as in Alpha Centauri.

I have another question: what utility do we need to use in order to eliminate the unit bar above the units?

	22-09-2004 08:34									#15
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I have my own answer to that question: I should use SpriteGen by Mercator.

However, I have done this and I don't know why my "hidden" Hill base units still have their health bars above them.

I am trying to make all the sprites derive from the units.bmp - will this affect the sprite gen utility?

	22-09-2004 09:06									#16
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I've read around, and a long time ago (so don't take my words as very reliable, as i haven't even played ToT ever) that the only way to make ToT health bars disappear is having them a long way above the units (i think that this can only be done in the sprite files), and that even then they are visible when you zoom out all the way, above the map.

[edit:]

And beware for those Green settings, as if they get too green, then they might consider planting fungus around for extra production...

	23-09-2004 09:34									#17
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quote: Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia However, I have done this and I don't know why my "hidden" Hill base units still have their health bars above them.

I suspect that you have the .SPR file override still enabled (Cheat menu -> Scenario Parameters -> Edit Special Rules). If this parameter is set to 1 the game will ignore the new .SPR file that you created and instead read directly from units.bmp - hence the visible health bar. Each unit also has an individual .SPR file override in the @UNITS_ADVANCED section of the rules.txt file. This value must also be set to zero (the default) if you want the game to draw the sprite for that particular unit.

Since for any scenario I usually have only half a dozen or less units that require the hidden health bar treatment, what I normally do is make a copy of units.bmp, change the entire background to magenta (a simple way of avoiding problems with other background colours), clear all of the "visible health bar" units from the file (so it's almost entirely magenta), and set the individual .SPR file override (in rules.txt) flags for those units to 1. With only a handful of unit icons left in your copy of units.bmp, when you run SpriteGen on the file, the resulting .SPR file size can be less than 50 kb, as opposed to a couple of hundred if you had left in all of the superfluous units.

quote: Originally posted by N35t0r I've read around, and a long time ago (so don't take my words as very reliable, as i haven't even played ToT ever) that the only way to make ToT health bars disappear is having them a long way above the units (i think that this can only be done in the sprite files), and that even then they are visible when you zoom out all the way, above the map.

That's correct – that's exactly what SpriteGen does.

	23-09-2004 17:52									#18
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Aha! Okay, that was what held the scenario back. I flipped the scenario override and the rules text override and it works now.

Now I'm working on placing "hidden" cities, i.e. those at odd/even map coordinates. Anybody know a utility I can use for that?

	23-09-2004 18:30									#19
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Hmmm, I'm not aware of this technique. You can only place units in "the other dimension" thru events - by giving an odd-even coordinate. I'm not sure if you can create a settler that way and found a city.

The other possibility is to hex edit the coordinates of existing cities.

	24-09-2004 00:13									#20
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I've seen cities on the altrnate dimention somewhere (and quite recently, though i don't remember who or where), which were mainly used to name landmarks.

Perhaps you could ask in the Creation forum?

	24-09-2004 02:37									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Catfish (...) With only a handful of unit icons left in your copy of units.bmp, when you run SpriteGen on the file, the resulting .SPR file size can be less than 50 kb, as opposed to a couple of hundred if you had left in all of the superfluous units.

That's interesting. I never thought of that.

quote: Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia Now I'm working on placing "hidden" cities, i.e. those at odd/even map coordinates. Anybody know a utility I can use for that?

Making them hidden actually has nothing to do with the coordinates. And cities at odd/even coordinates are really only good for making "labels".

There is a utility with which you can hide cities, though. I posted it in your thread in the Creation forum.

	24-09-2004 05:15									#22
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Okay, so if I want to have Barbarian cities constantly spewing out troublesome units, the cities (no matter how well defended) are ultimately vulnerable to attack, right?

I was sort of hoping to have a region called "Dr Evil's Secret Lair" and have Minion units come out of there every so often. :S

	24-09-2004 15:20									#23
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That is very possible. Hidden cities can never be captured. A hidden city square will be like any other square on the map. The only difference is that you'll still see a city name under it, and the city still uses surrounding squares for food, production and trade.

You could even build a second city on top of it.

	24-09-2004 17:55									#24
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In order to have an unbeatable barbarian civ that has cities and causes problems for the world, I probably need one hidden city (so it can never be captured) and all the rest to be "real" cities then.

I was hoping to have them all hidden cities, but then the civ cannot produce units that affect the surrounding world meaningfully.

	24-09-2004 18:11									#25
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Why not put your cities on a second map, inaccessable to the other civs. You can control which types of units of can move to and from which maps, and when. I'd be please to explain how to do this.

	24-09-2004 18:38									#26
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Okay. Let's do that in another thread. I have already thread jacked this thread too much.

	24-09-2004 18:45									#27
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quote: Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia I was hoping to have them all hidden cities, but then the civ cannot produce units that affect the surrounding world meaningfully.

Oh, yes they can. They can produce units like any other city. They really are cities like any other city, yet the city square is like any other square.

From the perspective of the City Screen, the city is perfectly normal. From the perspective of the Map, it does not exist.

Um, have a look at the attached savegame. Antium is hidden. You can only access its city screen through the city status.

But techumseh has a point. That will have just about the same effect.

(edit: ahem, whoops, too late )

	24-09-2004 18:52									#28
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But the units that the hidden cities produce would be "lost" in the alternate universe, right? Or do they magically appear on the correct map when they're made?

	24-09-2004 19:01									#29
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Such an "alternate universe" only happens if you put cities in odd/even coordinates.

The way I did it, the city is in a perfectly acceptable coordinate, so there is no alternate universe. The units will appear just as normal.

	24-09-2004 22:48									#30
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I noticed one strange thing twice in the Market Garden scenario: Engineer and Sherman flails were generated in the northern part of the map instead of south. I guess they were created by an event after I had foolishly lost the original ones, but they ended up to the north instead of the south for some reason.
And my problem with engineers has more to do with my inability to properly handle a big stack of units in the middle of which an engineer lurks, hidden. I process all units and move the engineer someplace it wasn't intended to go. The only way to avoid that would be to have big red blinking engineers which require a confirmation panel when you want to move them, but that'd probably not be very practical.