You don't need the source code to make Civ2 better...

[Mercator]

For the love of Civ2, everyone have a look at this thread on CivFanatics:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=147759

Skyer has been posting a few threads in the Civ2 General forum there and is hacking the Civ2 executable, implementing different features. One of his more recent ones, for instance, is lifting the 2048 units per game limit.

But um, be gentle, it's only one guy. There's only so much time he has. But it would be nice if we could come up with a nice list of some changes we'd all like to see.

Clearly, the Source Code Petition hasn't been going anywhere lately, so people like him, who can do, well, whatever it is he's doing, are the ones who can help us make some of the improvements we'd like to see.

There's also another guy who seemed to be capable of doing things like this, in this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=112086

They're both working on Civ2 MGE, though. I don't have that so I haven't actually been able to test any of it yet. It would be nice if some people hear could "playtest" their creations. And then of course, maybe we could persuade them to switch to ToT.

[Tigey]

I saw that thread. If what he's doing is actually working, it could be as revolutionary for Civ2 as Bhruic's patcher was for Master of Orion 3... If it works, that is, the Civ2 exe is difficult to poke around in...


I'm not sure if English is his first language, so like Mercator has said, don't bombard him. Experience shows that this scares people off:

[jim panse]

Sounds like a sound plan

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Tigey
I saw that thread. If what he's doing is actually working, (...)

Quite. That's the first thing I'm hoping. That the SL people could test his patches out and see if they really do what he says they do.

[Broken_Erika]

i was wondering when someone would try that,

[Palaiologos]

Jesus.

There is a revolution on our hands.

[Harry Tuttle]

Someone verify this all works first.

[Eivind IV]

A list you say?

It would be the best Christmas ever for me if we could have more civs. 7 civs is rediculously little...

[Arthedain]

Mercator: Everyone can upgrade their civ2 versions to MGE with Ceedrics patch (downloadable over at civfanatics).

[Sarsstock]

For me the wish that would top that Civ II list is an expanded graphic pallet.... something.... anything would be better than the decade old antiquated 256 colour pallet.

Though in terms of actual gameplay simply being able to have an eighth, ninth, maybe a tenth civ would top an expanded pallet in terms of importance though. I mean, how many historical based projects out there were hampered and scaled down as a result of there simply not being enough civ's to go around.

If I were ever to get my "Jules Verne" project up and running again I could include that "Latin" civ I had been contemplating...... lets hope this wish becomes reality sooner than later .

[Tigey]

Originally posted by Sarsstock
For me the wish that would top that Civ II list is an expanded graphic pallet.... something.... anything would be better than the decade old antiquated 256 colour pallet.

Though in terms of actual gameplay simply being able to have an eighth, ninth, maybe a tenth civ would top an expanded pallet in terms of importance though. I mean, how many historical based projects out there were hampered and scaled down as a result of there simply not being enough civ's to go around.

If I were ever to get my "Jules Verne" project up and running again I could include that "Latin" civ I had been contemplating...... lets hope this wish becomes reality sooner than later .

Tbh, from what I know of this sort of thing, I doubt adding an 8th civ is possible. I imagine Skyer is simply tinkering around with the Civ2.exe with a sim=ple hex editor. From the experience of Moo3, the things that can actually be done are rather limited. I doubt such things as adding new terrain types, increasing the number of units, or adding more civs is possible: the amount of changes needed to make this actually happen in the game would be staggering, and I doubt the .exe file would survive such major surgery, assuming it was even possible. I'd imagine only relatively minor changes are practical, such as possibly playing around with the effects of city improvements, of the effects of diplomacy, etc...

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Arthedain
Mercator: Everyone can upgrade their civ2 versions to MGE with Ceedrics patch (downloadable over at civfanatics).

I'm not into illegal activities. Though if such same illegal activities could help convert Skyer to ToT, surprisingly, I'd suddenly be slightly less opposed.
[moderator]Then again, no talking about such things here you nasty Arthedain. [/moderator]

And there are plenty of people with more time and active interest in Civ2 on this forum who do have MGE. So will *someone* test these bloody patches and report here? Pretty please?

Originally posted by Tigey
Tbh, from what I know of this sort of thing, I doubt adding an 8th civ is possible. I imagine Skyer is simply tinkering around with the Civ2.exe with a sim=ple hex editor.

I think he's doing more than just that. *cough* I, um, did actually download part of Cedric's patch. Just the executable, just for a size comparison. The file sizes are actually different. So at least he's doing more than just replacing a few bytes here and there.

Even if he is just doing hex editing, he's getting a lot further than anyone around here has ever gotten.

In either case, I don't really know what exactly can reasonably be expected from such things, assuming just one person is spending his limited time on this.

But as The Person noted in that thread. There's a patch developed for Transport Tycoon Deluxe that was all done with this. All edited without any source code that is. That patch actually fixed bugs, and added functionality. I'm not familiar with (any) MoO3 (patch).

Skyer's being rather mysterious so far, so it can still turn out to be a dud, or not quite a dud, but just not quite good enough to get anything really exciting either.

[Eivind IV]

Something as simple as having a flying spy would be beutiful. Imagine Strategic bombers set on mission to destroy certain city improvements. Oh, it would be absolutely amazing!

[Panda]

Actually that would be pretty cool if certain hardcoded restrictions could be unrestricted: I want flying freight units.

[Eivind IV]

Originally posted by Mercator
And there are plenty of people with more time and active interest in Civ2 on this forum who do have MGE. So will *someone* test these bloody patches and report here? Pretty please?

Halleluja my friends! This guy has managed to create a setler without the ability to build cities. By replacing the civ2.exe and the game.txt in the main civ2 MGE folder by the ones he posted it worked out perfectly in game.

When hitting b for build, you get a message: Sorry, in this game settlers don't build cities(!). This is a great step for civ-kind!

Pope Fairline, can you please beatify this man?