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dexter4dxm
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CA, USA
Jul 2001
time: 21:16
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As promised, Civiliza Demo 4 is now here, and available for download. 
A whole lot has been added to the game, which of course means more bugs have been added to the game. One that i noticed at the last minute is one that prevents you from ending your turn. However, there is a workaround for this. If it happens to you, try opening a city window and changing the unit production order or try unsentrying some of your units.
Here is a full list of additions/changes/fixes since the last release.
-Fixed bug where player initiated combat wouldn't resolve correctly,
which gave the AI players invincible units under certain circumstances.
-Fixed bug where AI units would simply get stuck after trying to randomly
move a certain number of times.
-Fixed bug which caused AI ships to freeze.
-Fixed bug where city screen would edge scroll.
-Restructured visuals. Map now takes up nearly the entire screen.
-Added resources bar to top of screen.
-Added unit data loading from editable text file =)
-Added population numbers to bottom tab.
-Added easy new unit building selection in city window screen.
-Fixed bug which ended player's turn while a city window was still open.
-Added terrian data file loading.
-Added resource showing on worked tiles in city window.
-Added automatic selection of tiles to be worked on by cities, so that
resources could be harvested.
-Added tech data file loading.
-Added tech tree research picking.
-Fixed bug which caused a delay when the next player in line was dead. This was
especially evident on maps that did not contain the max players allowed.
-Corrected city radius land ownership to be based on the city's population.
-Added population growing based on current city population and corrected city sizes.
-Added game year tracking.
-Added city resource harvesting in which player can select which tiles the city will harvest.
-Fixed new bug which caused game to freeze or CTD (crash to desktop) when player
tried to take an enemy city and max number of cities already was owned.
-Fixed main map screen cities to show city sizes in 2 digits.
-Fixed city build unit name position in city window.
-Added city radius tile borders.
-Fixed move cost so that it is based on terrain data.
-Fixed bug where cities above size 0 could not harvest more than 1 tile at a time.
-Added city tile harvesting for resources based on terrain type data. Harvested
resources are added to stockpile for all cities each turn.
-Fixed bug which made ciry radius tile borders not appear correctly in city 0, which
caused everything else, including all the terrain, to dissapear.
-Added epoch and category data to tech tree selection.
-Fixed bug which caused double digit sized cities to not display size correctly.
-Fixed bug which unshrouded map where enemies city radius is.
-Changed unit build points to be based on city population.
-Modified player movement so that the player can move one last time if their movecost is half
of what is needed to move to that tile.
-Added city population to city window.
-Added city improvement data loading.
-Added city improvement building.
-Added city improvement queue graphics and selection.
-Added research point production and tech selection prompting.
-Added terrain view range data for uncovering shroud from different terrains.
-Adjusted city unit/improvement/research production.
-Added size/land workers/city workers city stat graphics to city window screen.
-Added growth/research/production city stat graphics in city window screen.
-Added routine to evaluate whether a city is connected to a capitol (palace) or not.
-Added x/checkmark graphics in city screen to tell user if city is connected to capitol (palace).
-Added * for capitols on main map, although it's hard to see & the graphics need redone.
-Fixed auto-worked land marking (which happens for each city on each turn) so that it no
longer will fill in missing marks after the user takes them away. Marks are now added
as population is added.
-Added disease and literacy. Literacy calculations linked to city improvements and techs.
-Revised new tech selection to show you what tech you just researched, if any.
-Added # turn till unit completion in city window. (NOTE: this is an approximation, and
the unit/improvement will almost ALWAYS take longer!)
-Revised city improvement queues to only show "Nothing" once.
-Fixed bug which would not allow the auto-land-tile-working for new populations.
-Fixed bug which caused techs not to be researched properly.
-Fixed bug which caused city's size not to be carried over when captured.
-Fixed bug which caused cities to not show up. 
-Added the majority of the rest of the units.
-Fixed bug which disabled ability to build cities when settler unit is not unit #0
-Added new double-blit for units, so now they are filled in with owner's color.
-Added public works road system. Roads must be linked.
-Fixed overlay placement for highways and circuits.
-Added public works irrigation system, for both player and AI. Irri's must be linked,
and the terrain must be irrigatable. Extra food from irrigation is counted each turn
for all civs, and extra food resource pictures show up in city window on worked land.
-Fixed bug where players and AI could irrigate non-irrigatable tiles by building a city.
-Added Pottery/Granaries as requirements for irrigation.
-Re-wrote city-capitol link routine. Cities may now be connected to capitol
by harbor, airport, or road. Cities can also connect to an already capitol-
connected city by road. Max road link distance set to 6.
-Added AI select technology routine.
-Re-wrote AI unit choosing routines. Now supports all units.
-Added AI tech selecting routine.
-Added unit obsolete building restriction for both player and AI's.
-Added buttons to devide unit selections by type: land/sea/air.
-Added aircraft ability to fly anywhere (except for enemy occupied tiles
of course) for both player and AI.
-Added SAVE/LOAD functions. WOOHOO!!! =)
-Fixed tech data bug, which caused Flight to not be researchable.
-Fixed bug which improperly showed upgraded roads.
-Changed city window unit and unit-pick to use the double-blit.
-Fixed bug in save/load functions which incorrectly saved city populations.
-Fixed bug in city improvement queues, where queue #5 could not be set and
it would bring up the demographics window instead.
-Added automatic upgrading of unit production orders for obsolete units.
-Added tracking of players through ages. This affects research costs and
art (later).
-Fixed problem where excess settlers that the AI builds would just sit
there and take forever because no more cities could be built.
-Fixed problem where AI units would sometimes sit there FOREVER, and not
know what to do. This is a temporary work-around until better AI is written.
For now, if an AI can't find it's way to the target by at least taking ONE
step, it will sentry itself. THIS SPEEDS UP THE GAME *A LOT*!
-Fixed Granary/Supermart/AdvFoodCtr so they properely show extra food
in city window AND they properly collect extra food each turn.
-Added Library/University/ResearchLab abilities. Research effects now
shown in city window and counted up each turn.
-Added WoodWalls/StoneWalls/Shields bonuses for combat.
-Changed tile improvement costs.
-Fixed bug where public works targeting could be started when in a city
window.
-Fixed bug where clicking on a unit would unfortify it but not unsentry it.
-Added forcing of waiting at end of turn, and message to user to press enter
or space to end turn.
-Fixed graphics bug where future era techs would show improvements as their icons.
-Added color flag for who's turn it is when it is the AI's turn.
-Fixed bug where player could build tile improvemetns on shrouded tiles.
-Fixed palaces so they can only be built once, and can only be
built by only one city at a time.
-Fixed bugs where AI's would capture cities and all data would not
be carried over.
-Fixed bug where capitol cities (cities with palaces) would retain
their palaces when captured.
I hope you enjoy my new demo.
To download it, head on over to my little site:
http://www.geocities.com/dexter4dxm/
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dexter4dxm
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CA, USA
Jul 2001
time: 21:16
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well tischo, no comments, nothing?
anyways, demo 4b will be out by this weekend i think. it will include sound, many very important bug fixes, and finally a small exe with the editable art files placed in the directory. resource use, city improvement use, and diplomacy are high on the list right now, so you may see these things added soon and thankfully you won't have to download an exe that is 2+ megabytes. oh, and i would also like to either update the map editor or write a random map generator. anyone have info about the latter?
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Miznia
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Madison WI
Jul 2001
time: 23:16
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Dexter, in case you don't have the info you're looking for yet, I'll tell you what I know (and hope I'm not saying anything obvious).
It's really, really easy to make a map generator distinguishing only land and ocean. Well, and mountains... because probably the easiest method is to base it on elevation. Assign a random elevation to every tile on a map, and do a certain number of passes over the whole map "levelling" it. I think there's more than one way to do the levelling. One way is, (for each pass) for every tile, alter its elevation by averaging it with a randomly selected adjacent tile. (That may not be the most efficient, but that's how I've done it.)
The results, for me, are generally that the more passes you do, the more likely it is that you'll get a big continent or two; if you do fewer passes, you'll get a lot more islands and patches of inland water. Of course it depends how you do it.
What I have implemented right now is a kind of "volcanic" generator that makes blob islands like Hawaii. (This is what made the map in the little pic I posted awhile ago.)
Terrain is harder. In the "volcanic" generator, based entirely on elevation it creates Mountains, Hills, Desert, Plains, and Grassland. Presently it randomly throws in single tiles of Forest and Jungle. Arctic is assigned based on latitude.
I'd like to come up with a better way of placing desert... Latitude and distance from water are important, but I don't know how to get the Namibian desert. One thing I did do, possibly useful here, is to make another system, like the elevation but with more variables, to determine "luxury zones," e.g. tobacco zones, sugar zones, etc. "Desert zones" or "jungle zones" might work.
I also don't know a great way of doing rivers. It seems that it's fair to just pick a random starting point and wander around with it until you hit the ocean. I think you do have to keep track of the flow of the river, though, rather than just marking "river in this tile," "river in this tile." I say this because it might look bad if the source of the river is adjacent to the ocean, with the river flowing parallel to the coast: Unless the flow is stored, the river will appear to flow into the ocean from every tile.
If any of this isn't very clear, I'll explain more/better. I hope it may be useful, although I'm no expert.
And, P.S., I'll be trying your demo as soon as I install DirectX.
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Miznia
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Madison WI
Jul 2001
time: 23:16
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Alright, I downloaded DirectX 8.1, I believe, or whatever Microsoft is offering at the moment.
To my surprise, Demo 3b still displays funny. No improvement after the DirectX installation... About half of every tile displays as pink. Like Civ2's units.gif transparency background, type of pink.
Demo 4, though, displays almost perfectly. The pink squares persist at every city (as though it is meant to be transparent), and around every unit while that unit is active. There's a very small pink block following the mouse pointer around, too. I wonder what's up?
Really pretty, though. I especially like the deserts and coasts. I'm curious though as to why you picked 640x480 resolution. Is it a question of performance?
It really feels like a game. What would really help, though, is if the pieces slid when they moved. It might help if the active unit blinked, as well. I imagine this is a bit tricky with an isometric view...
One thing I didn't quite get, and ended up deciding was a rules difference, was that sometimes when I attack a unit, it seems that neither unit is killed. Is it maybe a movement point thing? Without piece sliding it is hard to discern the status of my intended attack.
I didn't notice anything that seemed to be an outright bug, except for the one about not being able to end your turn. This doesn't seem to happen, though, if you use the interface in a consistent way.
I'm curious, more as a programmer, what the AI players are doing for path-finding. They seem to be somewhat slow at taking their turns compared to Civ2 players with the same number of units. Is this the "connection to capital" calculation? And if so, what does it presently affect?
The AI is pretty good at building roads. I was impressed by that. They're not quite so good at offense/defense, though; I often see them waltz out of a city that I'm about to attack, and they pretty much leave me alone if there's enough room between our possessions.
I was a bit confused about the population system. Cities max out at 99, but they seem to do so pretty quickly. Big cities also don't seem to be that much more valuable than small ones. What are the "X" and check-mark indicators in the city view, above the growth / trade / prod?
And that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Really nice to see all this progress!
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dexter4dxm
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CA, USA
Jul 2001
time: 21:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Miznia
To my surprise, Demo 3b still displays funny. No improvement after the DirectX installation... About half of every tile displays as pink. Like Civ2's units.gif transparency background, type of pink.
Demo 4, though, displays almost perfectly. The pink squares persist at every city (as though it is meant to be transparent), and around every unit while that unit is active. There's a very small pink block following the mouse pointer around, too. I wonder what's up? |
Well, as you know Civiliza runs at 640x480 in 16 bit color.
Some of the art files are down-sampled from 16-bit to 8-bit to save downloading time. That might be the problem, but I am not sure at all. I have absolutely no problems with transparencies not working. Civiliza 4b won't have any down-sampled graphics as the graphics will no longer be included in the exe and the user will only download them once (well, maybe except for a major update to art).
quote:
Really pretty, though. I especially like the deserts and coasts. I'm curious though as to why you picked 640x480 resolution. Is it a question of performance? |
It's only pretty because I'm using "borrowed" art. All the art for the game is either modified art from the Civ series or art I download off free texture sites, which I also modify. Okay, some of the art i did myself, especially in 4b, but not much.
As for the use of only 640x480, I picked it for compatibility reasons and just because it's my first project and all. 1024x768 (or higher) would be nice, but definitally not a priority.
quote:
It really feels like a game. What would really help, though, is if the pieces slid when they moved. It might help if the active unit blinked, as well. I imagine this is a bit tricky with an isometric view... |
The day I get sliding pieces in the game will probably be the day I get normal combat into the game (who knows when that will be). I hadn't really thought about unit piece sliding though, so thanks for the suggestion
As for the active unit blinking, that will be easy, I'll add it to the list
quote:
One thing I didn't quite get, and ended up deciding was a rules difference, was that sometimes when I attack a unit, it seems that neither unit is killed. Is it maybe a movement point thing? Without piece sliding it is hard to discern the status of my intended attack. |
I realize that without any kind of hit-point display, it can be very confusing to see what actually happened in an attack. I'm not sure how I will approach this problem yet, however this is all just another reason to implement the real combat system. The way it works now is that a unit has a 100% chance of dealing damage to the unit it attacks, regardless of terrain. It's firepower is subtracted from the target's hitpoints. Defensive units like pikemen, muskateers, and infantry have lots of hitpoints, as well as modern units in general. I need a display of this information on the new unit selection screen, don't I?
If you attack a unit and it doesn't dissapear, you either didn't take enough hit-points off of it to kill it or you really did kill it and another unit of its type was in the same tile.
quote:
I didn't notice anything that seemed to be an outright bug, except for the one about not being able to end your turn. This doesn't seem to happen, though, if you use the interface in a consistent way. |
I think it may be caused by closing a city window while you're selecting new units or improvements, however I am not sure. Either way, I'm taking care of it and other things that may be responsible for this bug.
quote:
I'm curious, more as a programmer, what the AI players are doing for path-finding. They seem to be somewhat slow at taking their turns compared to Civ2 players with the same number of units. Is this the "connection to capital" calculation? And if so, what does it presently affect? |
The AI is probably taking so long because it is randomly moving it's units (because it doesn't know where to go). Unfortunately, my AI is very limited right now. It looks about 5 squares or so in all directions around it to try to find an enemy. If it finds one, it moves towards it to attack. If it doesn't find a target, it randomly moves. I know this puts a huge delay in the game (mainly because the AI players in Civ3 do it too), and it is being taking care of. That might mean that they will just sentry themselves somewhere, I don't know yet. However, you thing that is helping this situation a lot is that the distance the AI checks for enemies has nearly quadrupled. Hopefully this will be okay on slower systems (i'm running at about 2 gigahertz here, so it's real hard for me to tell).
BTW, I often keep track of the AI's ability by clearing all the shroud (F9), then killing my starting settler (k). Unfortunately, you will still have to press enter/space every turn. This has been fixed in version 4b, and also the AI turns are MUCH MUCH faster due to a timing fix. I think that even with the expanded AI processing the turns will still be much faster will all the new fixes.
quote:
The AI is pretty good at building roads. I was impressed by that.
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Yes, but they need to learn how to build connections between their cities and other players' cities (and upgrade them when the get the proper technologies). Whenever I play, I build the connections for them - it really adds to the gameplay. I love how the road system just links the cities and doesn't cover every single tile of the whole freakin continent like in Civ2/Civ3. You can purposesly blockade a road and it will actually mean something.
quote:
They're not quite so good at offense/defense, though; I often see them waltz out of a city that I'm about to attack, and they pretty much leave me alone if there's enough room between our possessions. |
The increased targeting distance helps this a lot. When you see them waltzing out the cities you are about to attack, it's because the AI keeps a set amount of units sentried in the city, and then builds 'attacker' units that hunt down enemy units or randomly move. I know this is not the best way of doing things, but it works - for now. Adding diplomacy will rapidly change the way the AI players are handled, and diplomacy is coming. I'm open for suggestions.
quote:
I was a bit confused about the population system. Cities max out at 99, but they seem to do so pretty quickly. Big cities also don't seem to be that much more valuable than small ones. What are the "X" and check-mark indicators in the city view, above the growth / trade / prod? |
The bigger the city is, the faster it will grow. This is especially true in the early game where decades pass by each turn. There will be structures you have to build to get by population caps, like aqueducts and sewers in Civ 2. These should make it into 4b. There is also disease, which although displayed, is not factored into the population growth yet. And finally there is population-sharing, which is a planned feature that will be implemented into the game a few different ways. Roads are the most basic utility for population-sharing between your cities, then there's railroad stations, highways, harbors, airports, and so on. Propaganda will take a role in population sharing between nations, but that won't be in for a long while.
I agree though, the population growth is way too high
quote:
And that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Really nice to see all this progress! |
Thanks for the feedback! 
I really appreciate it, and I will be keeping track of the growth of your project as well
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dexter4dxm
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CA, USA
Jul 2001
time: 21:16
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Demo 4B is out.
UPDATED FROM DEMO 4:
-Added DirectSound support
-Added unit attacking sounds.
-Fixed timing after unit moves (both player and AI).
-Added button sound, load/save game sounds, and build city sound.
-Fixed timing after unit attacks (both player and AI).
-Icons for 8 players re-added.
-Fixed bug with aircraft movement where air units were actually
using terrain movement data.
-Fixed bug where player could build roads on ocean tiles.
-Fixed graphical glitches with fighters, helicopters, and
jungle terrain.
-Fixed tech links for some structures.
-Unlinked unused/pointless units and structures to their
respective techs.
-Iron Working now requires Masonry instead of Trade (to help
make Swordsmen come earlier in the game, where they should be).
-Fixed delay between AI turns when they have no units to move,
which GREATLY increases the speed of the game
-Fixed obsolete data for units that were connected to
unlinked units.
-Fixed bug which wouldn't show you what tech you just researched.
-Fixed bug where you would be asked to pick a new tech even though
there are none to pick from (already researched all techs).
-Changed mecha sound because it was way too long.
-Fixed graphical glitch which caused north-south highways/circuits
to not connect right.
-Fixed bug where age graphics would revert after an alt-tab.
-Re-wrote Save/Load game routines. Working perfect so far...
-Added extended AI road building routine.
-Changed AI pathfinding to use the whole map.
-Fixed AI pathfinding CTD bug.
-Fixed bug where build city sound would play even though
a city was not successfully built.
-Added unit stats to unit selection screen.
-Fixed starting screen to center on starting settler.
-Fixed bug where aircraft would have their view blocked by
terrain.
-Fixed bug where roads would link to tiles off the map.
-Fixed bug which prevented players and AI's from getting
past the middile ages.
-Made the map grid look a bit better. That cyan color I
picked earlier was horrible.
-Added blinking for selected unit icon and for end of turn text.
-Leadership now requires Conscription instead of Chivalry.
-Added tech restriction based on what age you are in.
-Added AI selection of city improvements to build.
-Changed attack/defence (firepower/hitpoints) values for
many of the land units.
-Changed build-times for nearly all the units.
-Added ability for barracks to give units an extra
hit-point if they are in the city (they need not be
built there, they simply must begin one turn there).
-Added ability for barracks/harbor/airport to heal
land/sea/air units.
-Catapults/cannons/artillery/howitzer have all been
temporarily removed from the game.
-Added cities category to demographics screen.
-Added AI targeting debugging info.
-Fixed AI pathfinding typo bug, where AI players would
negate the use of highways/circuits completely.
-Changed unit displaying so that only one unit is displayed
per tile (not the entire stack overlapping each other). The
unit with the highest amount of hitpoints will be shown,
unless there is a unit selected, in which case it will be
shown over all others until its turn is over.
-Changed unit combat so that the unit with the highest
amount of hitpoints defends first.
-Added population caps for cities without aqueduct (size 12),
sewers (size 25), and land fill (size 60).
-AI units now move accross highways at double the speed,
and accross circuits at triple the speed.
-Added numbers to represent number of units stacked on a tile.
-Fixed bug that prevented player from ending their turn
if they were selecting a new unit/improvement to build in
one of their cities, and they closed the city window before
making their selection.
-Fixed bug that allowed the player to end their turn after
their turn was over but they selected a sentried/fortified unit.
-Added different city graphics for all the different eras.
-Changed population caps for aqueduct/sewers/landfill (they
are now 20, 40, and 60)
-Added automatic clearing of worked city land tiles for
cities that have reached their max population.
-Fixed bug that prevented cities north and/or west of the capitol
from being linked to the capitol.
-Linked disease to techs and improvements.
-Fixed bug where building a city on highways or better would
replace it with roads.
-Fixed bug where building a city on farmland or better would
replace it with irrigation.
This is the first version of civiliza to have independent editable art files, as well as sound effects. NO art files were downsampled for this release because it is likely that you will only have to download them once. Future updates will only replace the somewhat small exe file, unless of course their is a major art update. Even so, only a couple files would need to be downloaded again. Anyways, the total size of this release is about 3.4 megabytes. I have forgotten how long this takes to download using a 56krap modem
http://www.geocities.com/dexter4dxm/
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15-12-2001 12:54
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