06-05-2003 01:07									#1
	Allie resumes work on two scenarios Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I have dug out the patched version of my ToT game and have decided to give this scenbuilding lark another go.

I have two scenarios on the go - one is a Diplomacy-style game with the Earth as it is in the present day, and the seven civs as America, Russia, China, India, the EU, the Islamic Neutrals, and the Democratic Neutrals. There will also be a considerable number of cities taken over by barbarians. It is planned to be a multiplayer game, with at least four players taking part. America is not supposed to be a player controlled power - I'm still trying to iron this out but I think we can leave it either computer controlled or allow human players to forego their 'normal' nation to play a turn as the Americans.

The other scenario is a Star Wars scenario in the manner of Rebellion (or Supremacy, as it was known in the EU). The map will consist of islands in an expanse of sea. A template will be applied to render these as planets,stars, moons, and asteroids in an expanse of space. Most of the combat in the game will be between fleets of starships, although the player will need to use ground troops to take and hold planetary systems. The ships involved will be drawn from a very wide array of SW games, including Dark Forces, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Supremacy itself.

However, I have a few questions.

Sounds:
I placed a Jet Fighter unit in the slot for an Archer, and the Jet Fighter keeps on using Archers.wav. This is true even if I delete or rename or replace Archers.wav. Does anybody know how to force a unit to use the sound you put in for it? I have tried altering the .wav entries in the rules.txt file but to no avail.

Map:
Is there a map editor that is powerful enough to handle gigamaps? One of the reasons I got ToT in the first place was to play gigamaps, but until I can find an editor to edit them, I will be forced to do so painstakingly by hand in the Scenbuilder's Shift+F8 function. (This takes a very long time.)

The game refuses to recognize the Star Wars scenario save slots from Civ2, so I will have to program the map for that one by hand from scratch. Without a specialized map editor I will be unable to do this in a timely fashion.

Units:
Are there any artists out there who would know of good unit gif libraries? I've got a few unit art requests to make - none too drastic, most of them are just for modern aircraft and military units.

As for the Star Wars units, I have pictures of most of them that I can grab from the games mentioned above, but I am not proficient enough with graphics programs to make them look polished. Can anybody suggest a good program to use, or better yet collaborate with me to touch up the pictures I capture?

Combat numerics
Right now this is giving me severe headaches. I'm trying to work out a paradigm that would work between land, air, and sea defences.

AEGIS Cruisers, for example, are the strongest defender against any given air attack in the normal game. Place them in a base with a SAM site and the defence score is 8 x 4 = 32 (and that doesn't include fortify orders or terrain concerns). This is far superior to Stealth Fighters, which get a 5 (innate defence) x 4 (for scramble) = 20. (Remember that SAM sites don't fire when a Fighter unit defends your territory in Civ2.)

So I'm trying to work out a suitable mathematical range of attack and defence values to allow for various things. First off, I've made Fighter units (all three of them) very weak in attack so their basic purpose is air defence and interception of enemy bomber units. Secondly, I have given Fighter units actual ranges (I think it was 2 or 3 range instead of the 1 range before). This means they spend more time in the air, but it also prevents a Fighter from attacking every square they move. Now, when they attack, they lose the rest of their movement points.

I still want Fighters to be the defence of choice against air attacks, but I'm leery of raising their defence ratings too high. (Otherwise ground troops launching an attack on the city, defended by a Fighter, might be defeated and that wouldn't make sense.)

Moreover, missile attacks are almost never defended by Fighters unless they're the last one in the city. This makes good sense, but it also means that ground defenders are still important, since they'll be the ones to absorb missile attacks. I am thinking about putting anti-missile units in the game, but do not know how to stop them from also posing lethal threats to attacking bombers. I'm not even sure if this needs to be done.

Essentially, I am keen to move away from having the AEGIS Cruiser as the defender of choice, as that doesn't make much military sense (and also gives a great advantage to coastal bases). But in my move to do that, I have to be careful that I don't overbalance one or another branch of military operations.

Reducing the AEGIS' defence has an attraction but that causes problems with the entire naval unit hierarchy. Does it make sense for another AEGIS Cruiser to take yours out when a missile can't do that?

Anyway, I'm ironing those out and hoping that the final scenario could make for interesting human vs. human vs. human vs human player action!

	06-05-2003 05:57									#2
	Re: Allie resumes work on two scenarios Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia I have dug out the patched version of my ToT game and have decided to give this scenbuilding lark another go.

Great!

quote: However, I have a few questions. Sounds: I placed a Jet Fighter unit in the slot for an Archer, and the Jet Fighter keeps on using Archers.wav. This is true even if I delete or rename or replace Archers.wav. Does anybody know how to force a unit to use the sound you put in for it? I have tried altering the .wav entries in the rules.txt file but to no avail.

Shouldn't be, but try this. Way down on your rules text file, is a place for unit sounds. To the left of your Jet unit, type . That should get it sounding like a prop plane, but at least it's progress. If you want it to sound like a jet, move the unit to a spot below the helicopter slot, type , and see if it works.

quote: Map: Is there a map editor that is powerful enough to handle gigamaps? One of the reasons I got ToT in the first place was to play gigamaps, but until I can find an editor to edit them, I will be forced to do so painstakingly by hand in the Scenbuilder's Shift+F8 function. (This takes a very long time.)

Download Mercator's MapEdit program from his site, here: http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/ It can create gigamaps and has certain very useful functions. To actually draw the map once the it's been created with the dimensions you want, I simply load it in my MGE mapeditor and it works fine. I'm not sure if the one from FW works for gigamaps.

quote: Units: Are there any artists out there who would know of good unit gif libraries? I've got a few unit art requests to make - none too drastic, most of them are just for modern aircraft and military units.

Have a look at the unit creation threads over at Scenario League, there's lots of good ones there. If you want Star Wars graphics, start with BeBro's site, here: http://www.bebro.civ2.org/ Check out Cobra's SW units collection. As for a graphics program, I use PaintShop Pro by Jasc. Trial versions are downloadable from their site. (Sorry, I don't have the URL)

quote: Combat numerics Right now this is giving me severe headaches. I'm trying to work out a paradigm that would work between land, air, and sea defences.

Can't help on this one, sorry. Sounds like a lot of trial and error. Good luck!

	06-05-2003 06:00									#3
	Support Apolyton

Sorry, it won't show what you have to type for the air unit sounds, 'cause it's some kind of code for this forum. I'll try adding spaces between the characters:

< n o n e >

See if that works.

	06-05-2003 07:13									#4
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

quote: I still want Fighters to be the defence of choice against air attacks, but I'm leery of raising their defence ratings too high. (Otherwise ground troops launching an attack on the city, defended by a Fighter, might be defeated and that wouldn't make sense.)

Both the AEGIS and scramble are powerful modifiers. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading the Combat: Adjustment Factors thread in the Civ2 Strategy Forum. Here are some relevant notes:

quote: FIGHTER FLAG - Can attack air units (fighter): The unit can attack air units with range > 1. This also affects other combat circumstances, as follows: A fighter stationed in a city that is attacked by an air unit with range <> 1 scrambles, gaining a x4 defense bonus. A fighter stationed in a city scrambles and gains a x2 defense bonus when attacked by another fighter. A fighter cannot benefit from a SAM adjustment unless attacked by a missile. This applies to any domain unit with this flag. Scrambling applies only to air units with the fighter flag. AEGIS FLAG - x2 on defense versus air (AEGIS): An AEGIS cruiser gains a x3 bonus when attacked by an air unit, x5 if the attacker is a missile (destroyed after attacking).

IIRC, these two flags can work together, making an 'AEGIS' fighter's df modifier x12 in a city! Using these flags ought to allow you to set up the paradigm you're seeking.

	06-05-2003 12:10									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

252 Starwars Units for ToT ?
http://eyn.free.fr
Section Test of Time - Bibliotheque Graphique

There's also one pack Terrain1&2 for "space" maps (where planets are only 1 tiles)

	06-05-2003 20:30									#6
	Suffering from ads?

Thanks for the help! I'll look into these next time I'm at home.

(My friend came by and took back his cable modem the other day so I'm on dialup. However, I should be back on cable sometime soon.)

	06-05-2003 21:34									#7
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

nice to know there are people actively working on TOT scenarios.

Does it make sense to design an MP oriented one though? Is there really large enough base of TOT MP scenario players out there? (I'm selfish on this, i never play MP)

Have you thought of using multiple maps for the Star Wars scenario. I dont know a lot of the Star Wars universe (only saw episode 4 - ie the first movie) but it seems that TOT's multiple maps are an underutilized feature.


I would offer to help - ive wanted for a while to do learn some scenario making skills - but I've just bought SMAC and so my limited time for "game stuff" is pretty much taken up.

	06-05-2003 23:01									#8
	Remove this text

MP is the current thing in scenarios, and ToT is slowly gaining ground among scenario makers, so I think it's a good idea as long as you don't mind a limited audience. I've released 2 ToT scenarios, the second of which was made for multiplayer. It's called Roman Civil War, and there's currently a game of it over on the PBEM thread with 7 players.

	07-05-2003 16:56									#9
	Re: Re: Allie resumes work on two scenarios Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by techumseh Download Mercator's MapEdit program from his site, here: http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/ It can create gigamaps and has certain very useful functions. To actually draw the map once the it's been created with the dimensions you want, I simply load it in my MGE mapeditor and it works fine. I'm not sure if the one from FW works for gigamaps.

The FW (and before) map editor can't deal with gigamaps.

On the mapedit site I also have a "Test of Time map editor" available. It's the MGE map editor changed to work in the ToT game directory. It's also capable of creating gigamaps...
Several people couldn't get it to work though... Oh, and for some odd reason, it can't run simultaneously with ToT.

	09-05-2003 20:49									#10
	Put an end to popups!

Thanks for the responses.

Boco - that link is very useful! I'll definitely be looking into it soon. Thanks for posting it.

Lord of the Mark - multiplayer is pretty much the only way to go as far as AI is concerned. The Star Wars scenario will fall flat on its face if you play only against the AI, because the AI is simply not powerful enough to use ship transports. The Earth scenario too relies on there being a strong and active America faction, and the map is so large that America's projection of power is highly dependent on moving air units to their targets via aircraft carriers, etc.

Lately when I made changes, the game started to crash between turns and when cities were captured. I think this may be a problem with the tech tree and I should get it sorted out soon.

My approach (way back in summer '01) with the tech tree was to build it from the ground up. So essentially you could play a normal (albeit very abbreviated) game with the tech tree starting from nil,nil techs to the late game advanced techs. I also put Future Tech on nil,nil to make sure that a civ can always research it.

However, I made a few changes and now the game keeps crashing. In any case I'll have to wait until after a week or so before my classes are finally over and I can start working on them properly.

	11-05-2003 00:19									#11
	Increase Your PM Length

I remember Civ2 FW had an editor that allowed you to alter things like shield positioning on the unit graphic. Does anybody know whether that is enabled for ToT as well? I need to sort out the shield positions for some of the units.

Also, I'm wondering about making some cities barbarian owned without waiting a turn for them to conquer them. I heard there's a scenmaking tool for that - is this true?

There are other things I need to iron out, but a cable modem is first on this list.

	11-05-2003 01:57									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Unfortunately, ToT has no unit, terrain, or event editors.

What's even worse, you can't alter the position of the unit key. AFAIK, those two dots on the borders of unit icons in Unit.bmp are useless.

The utility you're looking for is Carl Fritz's CivCity. There must be one on Cradle of Civilization.

	11-05-2003 09:42									#13
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Thanks, Boco!

I'll be back with more irritating questions, I promise but right now I'm off to Cradle.

Still no cable but I'm working on it.

	12-05-2003 22:24									#14
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

CivCity is a very useful tool - thanks for pointing me in that direction! Now I can set up the trade routes and designate cities as Barbarian cities without actually having to play the game through a few turns.

Two questions now - take your time in answering:

1. How do I position the life bar and faction flag on the units?

2. How do I position the faction flag and pop number on cities? Some of the city icons I'm using right now actually are missing their population numbers. This doesn't kill the game but it looks bloody unprofessional.

	13-05-2003 02:47									#15
	Tired of ads?

1. You can't... Aargh! It's always positioned centered at the top of the unit graphic.

2. Those are determined by the dots at the top and to the left of the city graphics. The blue for the top-left of the flag, the orange for the top-left of the population number.

	13-05-2003 03:19									#16
	Tired of ads?

It's ... Jorrit ... isn't it?

Thanks for 2. I'll get on those and work out what's up with them.

So they never had an editor to alter unit shields, eh? That's a shame. I remember FW had a simple little thing that you could do that with but they must have left it out for ToT.

Does this go true even for still pictures? I'm not using animated sprites.

	13-05-2003 04:40									#17
	Tired of ads?

Yes it is...

Yes, even for still pictures. Actually, with sprites there's just a little bit more leeway.
The shield is always centered at the top of the image, so if you give the unit sprite another size, the shield will also move. E.g. you could have a 64x32 unit sprite, instead of 64x64, and then the health bar will be halfway lower. (does that make any sense?)

	13-05-2003 05:39									#18
	Put an end to popups!

quote: 1. You can't... Aargh! It's always positioned centered at the top of the unit graphic.

Mercator's right, but a while back Daftpanzer found a way to tweak the unit key to make the best of a bad situation. You can actually play with the unit key graphics a fair amount. The template is found in the upper right of the Units.BMP file. See Daftpanzer's thread on Unit Keys. Mercator came up with a slick metered look. Here's a few examples of what you can do.
http://apolyton.net/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=1602108
On the screen they look like: http://apolyton.net/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=1431056
[Edit: I thought these things were supposed to show up as images rather than links now]

Don't forget that if you want to create something like impassable terrain units, you can use the invisible flag in @UNITS_ADVANCED.

	13-05-2003 21:37									#19
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

That's too bad. I had wanted to make certain units blend in with the background so if you were really observant, you could see them. However, the fact that they put the health bar right in the middle of the top means that there's no real way I can hide these Hill Base units.

	14-05-2003 05:07									#20
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

How about making giving them the invisible flag? Then you can't see them unless you look in a city screen or see their name pop up when you right click an adjacent square in which they reside.

Here's an example. The game is in view mode, so the top pane gives info about the selected square. It's a mountain (Jhebel) square containing a 'Terrain' unit from the 'Impassable' civ. Other than the description in the top pane, there's no other clue.



Or would giving your unit the submarine flag work?

	14-05-2003 05:29									#21
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

The point is that they'd be hill base units, so that Osama bin Laden (for example) could hide in them but if an American unit wants to get him, it has to attack and defeat the Hill base unit first (easier said than done).

To prevent this from knocking out all the units on the same square, I'll put airbases down. They're less visible than fortresses, as they're underneath the unit bmp, whereas fortresses are superimposed on top of them.

	14-05-2003 05:40									#22
	Increase Your PM Length

How does the Invisible ability work? I always thought that Stealth Fighters and Stealth Bombers would logically have it, but then again I might be wrong.

	14-05-2003 06:51									#23
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

In the @UNITS_ADVANCED, for each unit there is a set of flags to set. The very last one on the line governs whether the unit is visible as usual (0), or invisible until it attacks or is attacked (1). It's not completely hidden, since the unit description shows in the top panel when a friendly unit has moved adjacent to the invisible unit. No icon shows on the map, though. In addition, the description only lists the top unit.

So with a little experimenting, you could probably make the base a unit that is always listed instead of the terrorist. IIRC, a zero-range air unit can serve as the base, and the terrorist can be a land unit. Then the player can discover, with a little difficulty, where the hidden bases are, but not which base is 'contains' a terrorist unit.