ToT or MGE?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by GoPostal
Is ToT an expansion pack, like FW, or a full game? Also, is it true it uses animations, because the lack thereof is what makes civ2 so editable.

Ive never played FW, so im not sure. Its plays stand alone, so in that sense its not an xpack - but if you use it to play the original game, there are almost no rule changes, just different graphics. It comes with a two fantasy games and two sci fi games - all on multiple maps, so more than just scenarios for original Civ2. and additional editing tools, of course.

Yes it uses animations, but these can be turned off.

[curtsibling]

It is a full game - It was intended to be CIV2 on steroids.

But like an athlete that cheats - It got caught out!
And in CIV-ToT's case, it was it's lacklustre presentation that hurt it most.

But behind what some might think is a moribund and daunting program lurks some hidden diamonds.

The fact that with boosted graphics, extra units and events - It is a modders dream boat.

But again, it is a matter of taste.
People should ignore the hype, and try ToT out.
There are some good scenarios out there -
And if people decide to make the jump there will be more.

[Boco]

Yer an officer an and gentleman!

Waitaminnit! This is Catfish you're talking about.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Boco
Waitaminnit! This is Catfish you're talking about.

You don't know how right you are.

Originally posted by GoPostal
Is ToT an expansion pack, like FW, or a full game?

My comment above about it being essentially a mod-pack may have been misleading. As LOTM and Curt say, it's a stand-alone game. However, it's basically an evolutionary design of Civ2 and IMO the original price tag wasn't justified.

Originally posted by GoPostal
Also, is it true it uses animations, because the lack thereof is what makes civ2 so editable.

You've seen ToT units posted around these forums before. They're 24-bit 64x64-pixel bitmaps. Never made an animated unit in my life – but the option is there if I wanted to.

Originally posted by lord of the mark
...and additional editing tools, of course.

Actually, ToT has no editing tools at all.

Since it was mentioned earlier in the thread, I played around with Imperium Romanum last night. I'd converted it to ToT a couple of years ago, so I'll post it here. Since I'd fiddled with the original, I've had to sort of "unfiddle" with some of it before uploading.

Imperium Romanum ToT Conversion (811 kB)
Imperium Romanum Sound Files (607 kB)

Changes:

• mirrored some of the units to face left-to-right.
• edited the batch files to remove the superfluous pedia entries.
• included a dummy resource.spr to prevent issues with the one from the Original directory.
• removed replicated sounds – not required in ToT.
• Bernd used a number of graphics from ToT. I replaced these with the originals (better colour depth).
• transferred the wonder descriptions from pedia.txt to describe.txt – they were way too large and wouldn't fit in the Civilopedia window.
• I believe I half-heartedly began to edit some of the text; to what extent I can't really remember. Bernd's German -> English ain't so hot in some cases.

I also hex-edited out all of the "build transporter" orders. It's a bug in CivConverter where the 18th unit byte (16th in older versions of Civ2) is incorrectly copied when units are issued with Goto orders. Values of 0x0B need to be changed to 0x0C. Fortunately it's a fairly painless process.

During the "unfiddling" process I was reminded of a few other conversion issues. Because the last part of the rules.txt isn't created by CivConverter, the @SOUNDS section is missing. If you want the correct sounds for your units, you'll have to include this section in the file. I also found myself having to do a bit of editing in icons.bmp.

Something else: unlike earlier versions of Civ2, air bases in ToT lack the railroad flag. This may require edit/s to the map.

[curtsibling]

Excellent work, Catfish.

Another advantage of ToT (one of my favourites, actually) is the ability to give an individual sound file to each unit!

Also ToT supports stereo sounds.
(I could be mistaken here)

[GoPostal]

Well, it's about £4, so it is on my next amazon order (maybe)

[fairline]

OK, which of you MGE-only boys broke my computer? I haven't been able to access Poly since I posted this drunken thread, but it looks like it stimulated some kind of debate..

The real purpose, if there was one, of having this poll was to try and see if the myth about nobody actually owning ToT was true. Current standings indicate that 2/3 of an admitedly small sample do own ToT, so the 'no audience for my scenario' excuse holds no water. Let's face it, there are 20 or 30 of us regulars left anyway, so any civ2 scenario, whether FW, MGE or ToT has a pitifully small audience... As Phenix said, we aren't doing this for world recognition, we're creating stuff to please ourselves which a dozen or 2 other people can appreciate as well.

I think it's probably an understandable fear of the unknown that holds people back, but if you already use a text editor to write rules and events for FW/MGE then you are perfectly capable of designing a ToT scenario. If you want to use all the bells and whistles of ToT then that will admitedly involve a bit of a learning curve (I imagine!), but the point is, you don't have to initially. You can even change the interface appearance to standard civ if you don't like it.

As far as resources go, there are Catfish's terrain files and all other graphics can be easily modified from standard civ graphics, if you don't want to use animation.

In essence, you can design your standard MGE scenario with much better terrain graphics, larger events size and a few nice new rules flags and individual sounds for units without having to delve into the multi-map feature, sprite animation, or any of the other more complicated stuff.

[fairline]

Originally posted by our_man
I wouldn't design scenarios for it myself though. It doesn't seem as user friendly as MGE and it's complexity would require far more work investment.

O-M: from tinkering a bit with a ToT version of Hannibal's War which had been converted from MGE, there isn't anything to worry about; I'm sure Tech, Boco and Catfish would be able to advise with the more complicated stuff.

[fairline]

Originally posted by Boco
What kind of beer?

Bass bitter finished up with a couple of Bushmills IIRC (which I don't really)

I found a bottle of McEwan's that's tasting pretty good. Btw, did you read that beer can cause gout?

I know, and smoking causes cancer but I'm sad to say I do that as well..... McEwan's eh? I've never really learned to appreciate Scottish beer

ToT oozes with potential, but reaching that potential does require a lot of effort. In fact without all the utilities, tips, and art posted on the forums, it'd be pretty daunting to make a ToT scen. So lotsa thanks to Tech, William Keenan, Merc ("read the d**n readme before posting!"), Gothmog, that ManU diehard, Wobbegonefish, and the rest of you. Not to mention the event discussions of Yoshi and Wobbegonefish over at CivFan.

Well you hit the nail on the head there D. - the resources are all available.

BTW, you'll have to explain the Cat/wobbegonefish reference

[Boco]

Catfish goes by Wobbegong over at CFC. Once after beers, I thought it was clever to concatenate the two. Between Wobbegongfish and Gentleman, he gets no respect on this forum.

IIRC (which I don't really)

Complexity seems a major issue with ToT. But remember, you can simply do what you do for a MGE scenario, but with a deeper palette. No law says you must fill the event stack, use the additional event commands, use a impxx.bmp for every improvement, etc.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by curtsibling
Another advantage of ToT (one of my favourites, actually) is the ability to give an individual sound file to each unit!

IMO, one of the best features of ToT is the "tribe may build" mask in the @UNITS_ADVANCED section. It can really help simplify the tech tree, because you can restrict the production of specific units to specific civs without having to use the tech tree to do it. It means different civs with different sets of units can share many more techs.

Originally posted by curtsibling
Also ToT supports stereo sounds.
(I could be mistaken here)

You're right, but I'm pretty sure all of the older versions do, too. I hope that's the case 'cause I recently told someone else as much over at CFC.

Originally posted by Boco
Catfish goes by Wobbegong over at CFC. Once after beers, I thought it was clever to concatenate the two.

Just as well you didn't throw in Bullbuggerer.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by curtsibling
Bladdy heck - I just converted Dictator to ToT...
Blimming superb tutorial - Nice one, catfish!

I guess that means I'm out of a job.

Originally posted by Catfish
Something else: unlike earlier versions of Civ2, air bases in ToT lack the railroad flag. This may require edit/s to the map.

That's not true. Airbases never had the railroad flag, but they use the city flag. That city flag is what caused the problems. It caused airbases to act like cities. So airbases, just like cities, would get a free (rail)road and irrigation upgrade (remember how you could also get an extra food if you built an airbase on a hill). In ToT that bug was fixed.

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Catfish

IMO, one of the best features of ToT is the "tribe may build" mask in the @UNITS_ADVANCED section. It can really help simplify the tech tree, because you can restrict the production of specific units to specific civs without having to use the tech tree to do it. It means different civs with different sets of units can share many more techs.

I agree, that mask is a real winner.
Just like the 'twice removed' feature invented by Gothmog, only coded...

Sadly I could never get that feature to work -

Any chance of going over how you got it to work for you, Catfish?

[curtsibling]

Originally posted by Mercator


I guess that means I'm out of a job.

You could make my Bitterfrost II map!

(j/k)

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Mercator
I guess that means I'm out of a job.

You don't get off that easily. You're a regular here. I'm not. I seem to always get sucked in to these damned ToT vs MGE debates, though.

Originally posted by Mercator
That's not true…

…and you're the one who sets the record straight when we get it wrong.

Originally posted by Mercator
(remember how you could also get an extra food if you built an airbase on a hill)

Nope, I don't. That's how long it's been since I used FW and I was only ever a casual Civ2 tamperer back then – still am, really.

Originally posted by curtsibling
Any chance of going over how you got it to work for you, Catfish?

I've never run into any problems with this one – works solid. It's section A of the advanced unit fields. The values are reverse programmer notation which means you read them from right to left. There are 8 flags, one for each civ, starting with civ 0 (barbarians). 1 = can build, 0 = can't build. In the example below, only civs 1, 6 and 7 would be able to build that unit – even if all civs possessed its prerequisite tech. If the human player can't build a particular unit you will see a red "You cannot build this unit" displayed in the Civilopedia description. Look in the Original game rules and you can see that everyone can build everything – as you'd expect.

@UNITS_ADVANCED
11000010, ...