revamped ToT site

[N35t0r]

I've read around, and a long time ago (so don't take my words as very reliable, as i haven't even played ToT ever) that the only way to make ToT health bars disappear is having them a long way above the units (i think that this can only be done in the sprite files), and that even then they are visible when you zoom out all the way, above the map.

[edit:]

And beware for those Green settings, as if they get too green, then they might consider planting fungus around for extra production...

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
However, I have done this and I don't know why my "hidden" Hill base units still have their health bars above them.

I suspect that you have the .SPR file override still enabled (Cheat menu -> Scenario Parameters -> Edit Special Rules). If this parameter is set to 1 the game will ignore the new .SPR file that you created and instead read directly from units.bmp - hence the visible health bar. Each unit also has an individual .SPR file override in the @UNITS_ADVANCED section of the rules.txt file. This value must also be set to zero (the default) if you want the game to draw the sprite for that particular unit.

Since for any scenario I usually have only half a dozen or less units that require the hidden health bar treatment, what I normally do is make a copy of units.bmp, change the entire background to magenta (a simple way of avoiding problems with other background colours), clear all of the "visible health bar" units from the file (so it's almost entirely magenta), and set the individual .SPR file override (in rules.txt) flags for those units to 1. With only a handful of unit icons left in your copy of units.bmp, when you run SpriteGen on the file, the resulting .SPR file size can be less than 50 kb, as opposed to a couple of hundred if you had left in all of the superfluous units.

Originally posted by N35t0r
I've read around, and a long time ago (so don't take my words as very reliable, as i haven't even played ToT ever) that the only way to make ToT health bars disappear is having them a long way above the units (i think that this can only be done in the sprite files), and that even then they are visible when you zoom out all the way, above the map.

That's correct – that's exactly what SpriteGen does.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Aha! Okay, that was what held the scenario back. I flipped the scenario override and the rules text override and it works now.

Now I'm working on placing "hidden" cities, i.e. those at odd/even map coordinates. Anybody know a utility I can use for that?

[techumseh]

Hmmm, I'm not aware of this technique. You can only place units in "the other dimension" thru events - by giving an odd-even coordinate. I'm not sure if you can create a settler that way and found a city.

The other possibility is to hex edit the coordinates of existing cities.

[N35t0r]

I've seen cities on the altrnate dimention somewhere (and quite recently, though i don't remember who or where), which were mainly used to name landmarks.

Perhaps you could ask in the Creation forum?

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Catfish
(...) With only a handful of unit icons left in your copy of units.bmp, when you run SpriteGen on the file, the resulting .SPR file size can be less than 50 kb, as opposed to a couple of hundred if you had left in all of the superfluous units.

That's interesting. I never thought of that.

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
Now I'm working on placing "hidden" cities, i.e. those at odd/even map coordinates. Anybody know a utility I can use for that?

Making them hidden actually has nothing to do with the coordinates. And cities at odd/even coordinates are really only good for making "labels".

There is a utility with which you can hide cities, though. I posted it in your thread in the Creation forum.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Okay, so if I want to have Barbarian cities constantly spewing out troublesome units, the cities (no matter how well defended) are ultimately vulnerable to attack, right?

I was sort of hoping to have a region called "Dr Evil's Secret Lair" and have Minion units come out of there every so often. :S

[Mercator]

That is very possible. Hidden cities can never be captured. A hidden city square will be like any other square on the map. The only difference is that you'll still see a city name under it, and the city still uses surrounding squares for food, production and trade.

You could even build a second city on top of it.

[Alinestra Covelia]

In order to have an unbeatable barbarian civ that has cities and causes problems for the world, I probably need one hidden city (so it can never be captured) and all the rest to be "real" cities then.

I was hoping to have them all hidden cities, but then the civ cannot produce units that affect the surrounding world meaningfully.

[techumseh]

Why not put your cities on a second map, inaccessable to the other civs. You can control which types of units of can move to and from which maps, and when. I'd be please to explain how to do this.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Okay. Let's do that in another thread. I have already thread jacked this thread too much.

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia
I was hoping to have them all hidden cities, but then the civ cannot produce units that affect the surrounding world meaningfully.

Oh, yes they can. They can produce units like any other city. They really are cities like any other city, yet the city square is like any other square.

From the perspective of the City Screen, the city is perfectly normal. From the perspective of the Map, it does not exist.

Um, have a look at the attached savegame. Antium is hidden. You can only access its city screen through the city status.

But techumseh has a point. That will have just about the same effect.

(edit: ahem, whoops, too late )

[Alinestra Covelia]

But the units that the hidden cities produce would be "lost" in the alternate universe, right? Or do they magically appear on the correct map when they're made?

[Mercator]

Such an "alternate universe" only happens if you put cities in odd/even coordinates.

The way I did it, the city is in a perfectly acceptable coordinate, so there is no alternate universe. The units will appear just as normal.

[LDiCesare]

I noticed one strange thing twice in the Market Garden scenario: Engineer and Sherman flails were generated in the northern part of the map instead of south. I guess they were created by an event after I had foolishly lost the original ones, but they ended up to the north instead of the south for some reason.
And my problem with engineers has more to do with my inability to properly handle a big stack of units in the middle of which an engineer lurks, hidden. I process all units and move the engineer someplace it wasn't intended to go. The only way to avoid that would be to have big red blinking engineers which require a confirmation panel when you want to move them, but that'd probably not be very practical.