09-09-2000 16:16									#1
	A little question Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Having ironed out most of the bugs in my napoleon scenario (I have a feeling I am going to regret saying this later!) I think that I should try to improve it as much as possible before I release it.

One of the things I was least happy about was the lack of events space, because of this many things that I would have like to included were left out of the playtest versions. The easiest solution to this would be to use more than one events.txt file, but I want to do it in a differant way than most people have so far.
In the scenarios I have seen where multipul events.txt files have been used, they are used one after the other (events B superseeds events A, which (B) is then superseeded by events C, etc.)

I wish to have 4 or 5 events.txt files running at the same time, 2 for military events, 1 for city capture, 1 for historical texts, interesting things about battles etc. and 1 for other events.

what I would like to know is:

A) Is this possible (in theroy)
B) Is it likely to work (in practice)
C) will it require me to write a batch or similar file (which I almost certainly can't do!)?

thanks

P.S if any of my playtesters have any futher feedback, then it would be much appriceiated (sp?)
send it to cockney9@hotmail.com

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	10-09-2000 00:28									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I don't think that is possible. But what do I know.

If you are going to run then all at the same time I don't hink a batch file would be necessary. Besides simple batch files are easy to make. It's just DOS commands in text format with the .bat extention.

	10-09-2000 11:28									#3
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Wonderful concept in theory, but just not possible. Civ only allocates a certain amount of space for Events, and loads it into RAM with the rest of the game. This data becomes physically part of the game when it's saved (hence the reason multiple event games must use the saved game-delevent.exe combo to clean the slate for a new event file). To actually "see" the problem, load a saved game file into a hex editor, and near the bottom you'll find all the events text strung together.

It's also easy to test. Start up a new game and immediately plug a new events file into the folder. Not one of the new events will execute. Same thing will happen if you save the game and restart without using delevent.

I had hoped to do something similar using Game.txt (which is NOT part of a .sav file) since it can offer many event-like announcements. Changing them on the fly seemed like a cool concept, but even that is forbidden. When you launch a Civ game or scenario, it immediately puts hooks into the game.txt file and any attempt to change it generates an error message (basically a refusal to make the substitution.) If you save-close-substitute-reopen, no problem. But you might as well run the .sav file through delevent while you're at it, so it's just the same old thing.

Using Batch files is still the best way to handle this situation.

	10-09-2000 12:31									#4
	Full PM-box? Change here!

If I remember correctly, Alex the Magnificent's Spartacus scenario used multiple events files, but never had to use the delevent.bat, but then again... it was a new scenario you played each time, maybe you could have the person open the cheat menu, save their game as a scenario, then have them replace the event file.

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-Cal

	11-09-2000 19:22									#5
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I wonder where the information on the maximum events space is stored. If anyone who is good in programming could hack into that file, this could open new dimensions in scenario designing!

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	11-09-2000 23:00									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

thanks for your help guys,

looks like I will have to find another way round this