Wonder Movies Question

[Taliseian]

I'm glad the movies are back, but I'm kinda dissapointed with them.

I really liked the movies from Civ2, more historial and much more interesting/entertaining. Those movies made me want to push hard for the wonders just to see them

So I'm curious........I'm also at work so I can't try this until late tonight

Would it be possible to use the Wonder Movies from Civ 2 in place of the ones in Civ 4???



T

[Locutus]

Yes, download the RAD Video Tools and you can convert the Civ2 AVI files (or any other popular file format) to Civ4 Bink files.

[Taliseian]

Thanks for the reply Locutus.

I went ahead and posted this at CFC for those over there who may be interested.



T

[Orcrist]

Got it working: Very Easy... well sorta ;-)

Well thanks to the tip from Locutus I downloaded the RAD Video Tools and gave it a try. See attached for the results.

What I did:
1. First download the RAD Video Tools as linked above.
2. Browse to a folder containing the old Wonder films (on the CD or in the install directory) They are labeled wonder01.avi, wonder02.avi, etc.
3. Copy the files to a 'working' directory. I then previewed and renamed the relevant files, so I knew which was which. For my test run I took Hanging Gardens (I believe it was 'wonder 01' and the Civ 4 name is "HangingGardens.bik").
4. Install and run the RAD Video Tools.
5. Browse to your working directory, choose your wonder file and click "Bink it!".
6. Wait a while: It took about 5 minutes or so on my 1.6 GHz. Laptop with 1 GB RAM.
7. The produced ".bik" file is about 17MB with the default settings. I'll leave to tweaking those settings as an exercise for the reader.
8. See below.

Here's where there are 2 possible ways, The presumably correct way is to copy this file into the appropriate path in a MOD subdirectory (e.g. "Test_mod\Assets\art\movies\wonders"), then load that mod.

However, when I loaded that mod it wouldn't let me load a saved game in which I was shortly before getting Hanging Gardens. Hmmmm... well I didn't feel like playing a new game to get to that point before I could test, so I went into the main "Assets\art\movies\wonders" directory, made a backup of "HangingGardens.bik" and copied my "HangingGardens.bik" in there. Loaded up my game and voila: Good old Civ II Hanging Gardens movie :-) The new infos for Hanging Gardens were then displayed after the movie played, so you can still see the correct information after the movie. I made a screenshot of that too, but I can't figure out how to attach more that one file to my post (new here).

Have Fun!

[vovan]

Re: Got it working: Very Easy... well sorta ;-)

Originally posted by Orcrist
Hmmmm... well I didn't feel like playing a new game to get to that point before I could test, so I went into the main "Assets\art\movies\wonders" directory, made a backup of "HangingGardens.bik" and copied my "HangingGardens.bik" in there. Loaded up my game and voila: Good old Civ II Hanging Gardens movie

I believe the way to get around that is to put the aforementioned file into the appropriate folder under:

My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Custom Assets

This way, you aren't overwriting any game files and you don't have to load a mod.

[Orcrist]

Re: Re: Got it working: Very Easy... well sorta ;-)

Originally posted by vovan
I believe the way to get around that is to put the aforementioned file into the appropriate folder under:

My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Custom Assets

This way, you aren't overwriting any game files and you don't have to load a mod.

I guess I should have mentioned it: I believed that too, and tried it, but it still used the default movie. Maybe a setting has to be changed somewhere to use stuff in those folders?

Edit: Or -- and this just occured to me -- it's because I'm using an English install of the game on a German version of XP? Though the installation did correctly place those custom directory structures in the proper place so that seems less likely. Still, it wouldn't be the first time an installation program and the program it install do things differently with regards to communicating with the OS.

[vovan]

Re: Re: Re: Got it working: Very Easy... well sorta ;-)

Originally posted by Orcrist
I guess I should have mentioned it: I believed that too, and tried it, but it still used the default movie. Maybe a setting has to be changed somewhere to use stuff in those folders?

That's odd. I was playing with some UI tweaks through Python and putting the changed files into the Custom Assets folder did the trick without loading a mod or changing any setting anywhere...

Edit: Hey, maybe it has something to do with the same mechanism that prevents saved games from being loaded when the game is started with a different mod? Maybe they somehow know they weren't using the custom assets when you saved them and so they load the default ones instead?

[Orcrist]

I thought I would bump this thread to get some more eyes on it and see if anyone has the answer to the question(s) we raised at the end the thread...

-chris

[Xerxes712]

This would probably help people who are having horrible playback of the Civ4 original movies.

These are less system resource demanding. BTY What where is CFC to try it out? ?

[Tiberius]

Maybe clearing the cache would help? Just an idea.

Otherwise thanks for the tip This is especially great if you want to mod in some old wonders like the Great Wall.

[Xerxes712]

Where can you download this please? Thanks.

[Orcrist]

Originally posted by Xerxes712
This would probably help people who are having horrible playback of the Civ4 original movies.

These are less system resource demanding. BTY What where is CFC to try it out? ?

Wow, you're right. I hadn't noticed that. At least in the stand-alone player these use significantly less processor time than the Civ IV versions. I have to say that it's not really a factor for me since the only problem I had with the movies was that they are not as enjoyable as the Civ II ones. I suspect one could just as well take the Civ IV versions and reduce the resolution, etc. to get the same performance effect, but I was curious enough to watch them each once and that's enough. Whereas, the Civ II ones still just give me that feeling of... 'accomplishment', for lack of a better word. And the music is better :-)

For my next attempt I'm working on learning the whole Python API well enough to do something so that the old Advisors pop up at the appropriate moments, but I need to put some thought into which conditions/events would apply to which advisor statements (I've been reviewing them and it will involve a bit of video editing, I'm afraid), and then program that in Python. The biggest problem will probably be if/when I want to distribute that. I'm pretty sure copyright issues would prevent me from distributing the modified/converted videos, so I would have to have some kind of batch file which performs the editing and conversion using an existing Civ II CD as the source.

-chris

[Orcrist]

Originally posted by Xerxes712
Where can you download this please? Thanks.

If you mean the RAD video tools, follow the Link in Locutus' post (second post in this thread), if you mean the Civ II videos, I'd be willing to upload them (or the converted 'Bink' versions) if Firaxis explicitly gave permission since I assume it would be a copyright violation otherwise. The only other option is if you already have Civ II lying around somewhere.

-chris