27-07-1999 14:53									#1
	A couple of questions from a non-newbie. Increase the size of your Attachments

I've played CIV II quite a bit but haven't played any scenarios except those that came with MGE. Yah, I know - Boo, Hiss, download some of ours! I have two sets of questions.

1. What is the difference between a modpack and a Scenario? I suppose it has something to do with the way they are loaded and which files get replaced.

2. My biggest gripe with the "Official" and "Best of the Net" (both versions)scenarios is that the designers went to all this work to develop new icons, tech trees, etc. and then quit without putting any decent discriptions of the advances and wonders in the Civapedia. If I start down loading scenarios from the various sites used/run by people here will I find this also? Is this something that I will just have to accept and live with. I've actually gotten to the point where I have seriously considered writing my own entries on the advances and wonders and installing them in an enhanced version of the scenarios that I prefer playing.

Ken

	27-07-1999 16:56									#2
	Increase the size of your Attachments

1.There is not much distinction even on websites that contain a "Scenario" section and a "Modpack" section. Ideally, modpacks are for general changes in your Civ2 game files for normal play, while scenarios are much more limited in time and place. There's really no difference to the way you load them, just make a new scenario file and put all files from the zip file in it.

2.Jesús Balsinde's scenarios have very thorough Pedia files, with Harlan Thompson's coming in a close second. Believe me, you can't go wrong downloading scenarios by these authors. In general only the city improvement and wonder descriptions can be customized. I'm not sure anyone has changed advance or unit descriptions. Harlan is probably the best at putting detailed unit imformation in his readme files; look for those scenarios with the longest ones.

	28-07-1999 04:34									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

the aforementioned scenarios makers bests can be found at http://mrtemba.civnation.com/ click on "Best on Net"

A modpack changes basically the same files as a scenairo, the diffference being you load them over the basic civ2 files and play the normal game with them whereas a scenario is something that you can click "Begin Scenario" and then start.

Hope that helps.

	28-07-1999 04:49									#4
	Got spare money?

You just want the extra traffic!

	28-07-1999 08:00									#5
	Get a bigger avatar today!

I pity the fool who doesn't go to Mr T's site!

	28-07-1999 08:34									#6
	Inflate your Upload Space

I also appreciate a thorough job on the Civilopedia - it's especially helpful when there's lots of new units, techs, improvements, etc. A point of clarification on Michael Daumen's comment regarding editing Civolopedia entries. In the latest version of Civ II, you can modify any entry that appears in the Civilopedia using the following two files as templates:
PEDIA.TXT
DESCRIBE.TXT

	28-07-1999 11:24									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

but not in FW. Hopefully this will still be possible in TOT.

Of course I want the traffic...I'm trying to break 2000 by the end of first month!

lol Daumen! I think I'll use that from now on.....

	30-07-1999 03:27									#8
	Increase the size of your Attachments

What Mr. Temba means is that editing is not be possible with the horrible editors that ship with FW and MGE. One can always use Notepad for the purpose.:-)

P.S. They are finally getting rid of the editors in ToT. Yay!

------------------
St. Leo
www.sidgames.com/imperialism/
www.sidgames.com/sidportal/
www.sidgames.com/forums/
Member of the AUP!

	30-07-1999 03:43									#9
	Full PM-box? Change here!

It's not as easy as it sounds. I'm designing a space modpack using MGE, and I make extensive changes to describe.txt, which changes the descriptions for advances, units, wonders, terrain, the works. I've changed just about every advance, unit and wonder to something suitably science fictiony, and I decided to include a quote from an SF source to go along with a brief description of each unit and each advance. It's time-consuming stuff. And then if I make spelling errors, I still come off looking like an idiot...

	31-07-1999 09:25									#10
	Got spare money?

EnochF,

Spelling errors, while not great to see, can be tolerated or if they bug me too much I can fix them and save the corrections under the old name. My problem is with Advances and Wonders that have no descriptions. Maybe I've just spent too many years writing manuals and regulations or maybe, as I've been told, I'm just annal retentive, but I like being able to read the descriptions and background information on the advances and wonders like Version 2.42 had. To me this is especially important for scenarios so that I can have some kind of idea of what the designer's thoughts and intentions were when the scenario was created.

As for the argument that it is so time consuming to write descriptions for the advances, improvements, wonders, or units, and yes I know that I just made the list bigger, being an "Old School" programmer I look at this like using flow charts. If you write up descriptions of each new unit, improvement, advance, or wonder that you intend to implement before you actually start writing the scenario code or placing units in slots or changing any of the controlling .txt files in the game you should come out with a much better scenario with less problems to fix than if you just make up your cool Icons and start winging it from there.

I'll readily admit that I haven't started writing any scenarios yet for Civ II but I have for other games. As I programmer I don't do Windows, yet, but I do write in COBOL, FORTRAN and machine code.

Ken

	01-08-1999 07:23									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Heh heh ANNAL retentive. I get it.

	01-08-1999 08:27									#12
	Increase Your PM Length

all the editors work great except the events editor. I use all of them, except the events editor.

	03-08-1999 11:28									#13
	Full PM-box? Change here!

This is just to say thank you for the answers above. I've downloaded scenarios by the suggested designers and they are more along the lines that I was looking for. I'm getting some strange results from some and will take that up with the designers since I think it could be a Fantastic Worlds vs. Gold thing.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Ken

	05-08-1999 11:42									#14
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

The advancement descriptions can be edited with any text editor by opening the .pde files in the Pedia directory.

	06-08-1999 23:21									#15
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

.PDE files have to be placed in the pedia directory and I don't think that CiC+ allow the default Civilopedia to be used. I recommend using pedia.txt to change Wonder, Improvement, and Government descriptions and leaving Units with only stats.:-)

------------------
St. Leo
www.sidgames.com/imperialism/
www.sidgames.com/sidportal/
www.sidgames.com/forums/
Member of the AUP!

	07-08-1999 06:24									#16
	Tired of ads?

What can be done with Describe.txt? This is the first I've heard of it (and I consider myself a veteran).

Will ToT use .xlf files or something else?

	07-08-1999 09:40									#17
	Got spare money?

After reading the above posts I checked my MPGE files and found the describe text in the main directory (Folder, for those of you running on a Win95 mentality instead DOS like me). The beginning of the file says that it is intended that you change the descriptions to fit your changes to Units, Improvements, Advances, and Wonders. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but the reason so many scenarios have the Description grayed out in the Civopedia is probably because there is no describe text in the scenario folder for that particular scenario.

I'm going to copy the describe text into a scenario folder and see if that provides descriptions for the Civopedia on that scenario. I'll let you all know later today what happens.

Ken

	07-08-1999 20:41									#18
	Full PM-box? Change here!

It's been tested. If you copy describe.txt from the main directory to a scenario directory you will get descriptions for everything in the Civopedia just like you normally would. Obviously if you made changes to units, wonders, etc. those descriptions won't be accurate until you make the changes to fit your scenario.

Now to do my research to update the describe.txt for the scenarios that I would like updated and forward to the designer for review and inclusion in the next update, if they so desire, and to get permission to include the file with any redistribution that I might make of their scenario.

Ken

	08-08-1999 16:37									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Er, just to clarify:

Having tried to insert my own "describe.txt" file into a scenario (and failed), let me just state: copying the describe.txt into a scenario folder will not allow your new descriptions to be accessed by the game. The only way to display new descriptions is to edit the file in the main game folder. (At least, that's the way my game has always worked; admittedly, I haven't downloaded a patch for MGE, so maybe that's fixed later on.)

I've dinked around with the file for a while. It's possible to create descriptions even for advances and units like "Extra Air Unit" or "Plumbing" by assigning it a new number and inserting the description (followed by a line mimicking the other parts of the file, for example, @Extra Air Unit or @User Def Tech A). It's a little like editing the advice.txt file, if you know what I'm talking about.

	09-08-1999 07:35									#20
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

EnochF,

I'm not sure what caused your difficulty. Here's what I did.

1. I'm using MGE with no patch.

2. Copy the original Describe.txt file to the scenario folder. As I noted this will not be accurate for anything that you changed.

3. If this is one of your own scenarios then you probably still have your notes on changes and can just open describe.txt with wordpad or another text editor. Otherwise start the scenario and open the Civopedia for the entries for which you want new descriptions and click on the description button. You should now have a description for the original item. Make a note of this is and it's new name. Do this for every item for which you intend to change the description.

4. Open the describe.txt file in the scenario directory with wordpad or whichever text editor you are using. Go to the description entry that you want replaced or changed. Replace or change the existing text line with your new text/changes. Note: All the descriptions are in one long continous line of text because the compiler used to build the game will do it's own line wrapping. I did not try putting any line breaks in my text. At the very beginning of the file there is a note from MPS stating one line per entry. While this might just apply to the index it probably applies to the descriptions also.

5. Save your changes leaving the file in the scenario directory. Go back to the scenario and you should find that your changed descriptions show up in the Civopedia for the new items instead of the original descriptions provided by MPS.

6. I was able to do this for scenarios created with FW and MGE.

7. I did not need to change anything in the index or any titles in the description section of the file. Obviously if you use any of User defined items or items for which MPS has indicated that there are no descriptions, then you will have to follow the directions provided with the file if those descriptions are going to show up in the Civopedia.

Ken

	16-08-1999 06:58									#21
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

1st) could you guys use your expertise to answer my questions in the help section ?
2nd) question still open: how do you change graphics in the pedia ?