28-02-2002 02:42	edit | quote	#1 | report |
Modmakers Guide: Common Crashes, Glitches, Errors, and AI problems Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

I have ran into many things that causes Civ3 to crash, lockup, or something just as bad, I am also sure that other mod makers have ran into problems I have yet to encounter. Though as of now there isn't any conclusive list of these problems, so many mod makers are needlessly stumped by crashes other mod makers have already discovered, this will be a guyide to those thing. I'll start with some common things I have encounted, and I please hope everyone else will share things that break the game.

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Crashes
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*DataIO operation System Error: CNSL
this happens when you load a save game that you have added new buildings to with Gramphos's multi tool, save game are not compatable with a civ3mod.bic that has a different number of buildings

*Changing the entertainer to require a tech
this causes the game to hang without warning whenever the AI attempts to switch one of their citizens to an entertainer

*Playing a modded civ3mod.bic that has added units
if someone has used the C3MT to add new units to the game the player must create the appropriate unit files in the civ3/art/units folder, if not the game will crash when one of those units are built

*Changing the Civ's colors
this has a work around, and firaxis promised to also fix this, but as of now selecting anything but the original 16 colors will cause the game to crash when you first start

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Glitches
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*Playing a modded civ3mod.bic that has added units
even after adding the unit files the player must add in a new units_32.pcx file to the game that has added unit spaces, otherwise the units in the build queue will experience problems, most notably the settler's picture will disappear and the worker will now have the settler's picture

*Playing a modded civ3mod.bic that has added units or buildings
even after creating the proper unit files and adding the units_32.pcx file you must update the civilopedia.txt, and the pediaicons.txt to have many of the pictures and the text to display correctly

*Government Specific Wonders do not work as advertised. If you make a wonder government specific and a player builds it, when they switch governments it will disappear from your list of buildings but its effects will remain in effect

*Free buildings from wonders cannot be used as a prerequisite for other buildings. Additionally if you set a building to require a wonder it can only be built in the same city as the wonder, while this is useful in certain situations and should remain in the editor, there should be a way so that if you have the wonder you can construct the building in all of your cities. Additionally, free culture buildings from wonders don't show up in the cultural advisor screen, the additional culture point per city does, however. One last problem is that free culture buildings from wonders don't get the 1000 year culture bonus.

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AI Problems
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*giving a unit the build road command
unless the AI has all available terraform commands, and has its AI set to terraform it won't build roads

*making a great leader like unit
to gain the leader AI, a unit must be able to both hurry improvements and build armies, if you give a unit only the ability to build armies and set its AI to army, instead of changing into a great leader it will only set in the city (this was an attempted work around of the pre 1.16f situation where the editor couldn't allow the mod maker to determine if a building needed a victorious army or not

this is just a short list for now, i will go back and look for other problems we encountered in working on the blitz mod and add those, but i am sure that other mod makers have ran into other limitations, and please add those! the more items on this list the easier it will be to discover why your mod is having problems

Gramphos could you top this? please

Last edited by korn469 on 05-03-2002 at 12:21

28-02-2002 07:29	edit | quote	#2 | report |
Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Very useful thread.

About changing of civ's colors:

It is possible, if the attached file is unzipped in the Art\Units\Palettes directory.

Attachment: colorfix.zip
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24-03-2002 18:37 | www	edit | quote	#13 | report |
Increase the size of your Attachments

Attachment: huh.jpg
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