Seeking advice for El Aurens v2

[Boco]

Making progress

A meandering blog just to keep my thoughts straight.

• Got past some major bugs. City indices seem stable now.
• Hexed city founders to prevent walls from disappearing when the Allies capture towns deep in the Western Desert and Darfur. The difference between walls and no walls is huge to attacking Sanussi and Fur troops. That made vulnerability to their counterattacks too dependent on luck. I want to create a feel that Allies are somewhat safe in towns but in danger on the sand.
• The Sudan mini-campaign is shaping up well. The AI seems to be forcing you to keep much of the Egyptian Army there, rather than hopping over to Arabia.
• Cook's Steamers (Transporter Improvements) and map restrictions work well to keep reinforcements to Arabia limited to the Egyptian Army and Armored Cars.
• Some genius is going to figure out that engineers can go to Sudan and Arabia, too. Don't know if I'm going to try to prevent that.
• Added U-Boat interdiction of shipments between Sollum/Matruh and ports East. That gives a risk-taker the option to reinforce Sollum before the Sanussis attack.
• Italians are more of a presence near Tobruk and Bardia (as they were historically).
• Only just realized ( )that the + & - on the World View Map rotates through the four maps. I usually rely on the keyboard combos, but those are only available in cheat mode.

Some gratuituous eye candy: the 4 World Maps in El Aurens.
[list=1][*]The main theater from Libya to Iraq[*]A map where Bedouins are generated according to tribe and become available when their tribal home cities on the main map are captured[*]An organizational map from which most regular forces of the Allies are stored until activated by tech discoveries.[*]The Sudan mini-campaign from the Chad border to Khartoum. Also contains some stuff with the Turks and Germans that I want to sequester from sight.[/list=1]

[fairline]

Good progress Boco

Are you looking at a Christmas release?

[our_man]

Sounds great so far! What have you decided to do about Allenby?

[Boco]

HEX QUESTION

Allenby — KISS principle for now. Turn-based. Depending on feedback, I may make it more complex.

New Year's is more realistic than Chrismas , but the Alpha is going well through 6/16. If I continue to make progress, don't be surprised if some small art requests make it across the puddle.

Anyone know how to hex in a few extra spaceship structures and components? I s'pose I could hex in Apollo, add the improvements, then hex out Apollo, but I was hoping for something more direct. Interestingly, BestowImprovement creates two components or structures per Action.

[Sarsstock]

I seem to remember the question of hex ediding the space ship components has come up before. Sadly I don't recall any definitive way being discovered to go about it.

The sad thing is that if the spaceship could be edited it would certainly open up a whole new realm of possibilities for scenario's by adding an "Alph Centauri" like goal as an alternate means to victory in gameplay.

[fairline]

Re: HEX QUESTION

Originally posted by Boco
New Year's is more realistic than Chrismas , but the Alpha is going well through 6/16. If I continue to make progress, don't be surprised if some small art requests make it across the puddle.

I still owe you a couple mate. Hassle me 'til I get my lazy arse into gear.

[Boco]

Another benefit of building a spaceship (conventionally) is that it can place a civ under a tweakable amount of economic stress. You can either use the Landing as an outright victory as Sarsstock mentions, or use the AlphaCentauriArrival as the trigger to something really important.

[Sarsstock]

I hadn't realized landing on Alpha Centauri could act as an event trigger. It certainlly would be great to see a breakthrough made in hex editing the space ship improvments, however I fear once again the conclusion will be reached that the spaceships are hardwired into the game coding and thus are what they are.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Boco
Anyone know how to hex in a few extra spaceship structures and components?

Must be your lucky day. From a table of mine:

  

    
Offsets
    
Type
    
Values
    
Description
  
  

    
5766-5767 + 3348N
    
Short
    
0x0000-0x0027
    
Space Ship Structural
  
  

    
5768-5769 + 3348N
    
Short
    
0x0000-0x0008
    
Space Ship Components - Propulsion
  
  

    
5770-5771 + 3348N
    
Short
    
0x0000-0x0008
    
Space Ship Components - Fuel
  
  

    
5772-5773 + 3348N
    
Short
    
0x0000-0x0004
    
Space Ship Modules - Habitation
  
  

    
5774-5775 + 3348N
    
Short
    
0x0000-0x0004
    
Space Ship Modules - Life Support
  
  

    
5776-5777 + 3348N
    
Short
    
0x0000-0x0004
    
Space Ship Modules - Solar Panel
  

N is the tribe number (0-7, starting with Barbarians). Hexadecimal values use little-endian notation.

Originally posted by Sarsstock
I hadn't realized landing on Alpha Centauri could act as an event trigger.

The full list of ToT's triggers and actions can be found in macro.txt.

Originally posted by Sarsstock
It certainlly would be great to see a breakthrough made in hex editing the space ship improvments, however I fear once again the conclusion will be reached that the spaceships are hardwired into the game coding and thus are what they are.

What do you mean?

[techumseh]

Originally posted by Boco
Another benefit of building a spaceship (conventionally) is that it can place a civ under a tweakable amount of economic stress. You can either use the Landing as an outright victory as Sarsstock mentions, or use the AlphaCentauriArrival as the trigger to something really important.

You can also use the components as repeatable triggers, using the CityProduction trigger. If you disallow one of the 3 components, no spaceship can be launched. Lots of possibilities.

[Boco]

Re: HEX QUESTION

Many thanks, Catfish. You saved me a lot of time.

Originally posted by Boco
Interestingly, BestowImprovement creates two components or structures per Action.

Anyone else seen this?

[techumseh]

No. Interesting.

[Boco]

Maps?

Anyone have a link or file to a good map of Europe in 1918? It should also stretch to at least Alexandria. I'd like to use one as the backdrop to EA's 'spaceship'. Here's the palette:

[Boco]

Suggestions?

I could use some $0.02 here.

The basic motif for the spaceship is shown below. The theme is a ledger tracking transfers from Egypt to France. Landing the spaceship is essential to getting at least 2 WoW's (i.e. victory points) renamed as Bulgarian and German Armistices. Aliases are:

• Structures = Labour Corps Companies transferred to France
• Components = Units transferred to France (Inf Divs & Other Units)
• Modules = Troop Convoys (#1, #2, #3)

This image is pretty bare bones. I'm still learning the layout of the various images on the spaceship. While I don't want to flood the overall bitmap with too much eye candy, I'd like to make this more attractive. The palette supports BW photos well, but is limited for color. Unfortunately, the garish green is needed to obsure "A.S.S. Lloyd George (Allied)". It seems the Civ2 programmers had something against the old liberal. Any ideas are welcome.

[techumseh]

I'm liking this, Boco.