Uses for the Spaceship

[typhoon]

Recent work by Boco and Smiley on the Spaceship screen could be turned to other applications.

- For WWII scenarios, perhaps the race to construct the spaceship could be changed to the race to get the bomb. Since the strategic nature of nuclear weapons are impossible to simulate as a unit in the game this could be used as an alternate to the 'conquer all' strategy commonly used as a victory condition. I forsee this being particularly relevant in scenarios involving the Pacific theatre (Hint to a particular Canadian forumner.)

Just some mad ramblings of mine. If anyone has better ideas, feel free to contribute.

[Tigey]

Is it possible to use the events system that's used in the ToT Extended Original game? Where spaceships don't win the game, but are vital to progressing to the next stage. I really like the idea of the player building their spaceship, atom bomb, etc, and upon it landing (or the bomb being tested), it doesn't win the game, but simply triggers another set of events, such as opening up a new map, enabling a section of the tech tree, etc...

[curtsibling]

Manipulating the spaceship screen is something I really want to get into.

Can anyone reveal what software is needed to access the screens and content?

Perhaps a tutorial might be in order from Boco?


...

[Boco]

Originally posted by Tigey
Is it possible to use the events system that's used in the ToT Extended Original game? Where spaceships don't win the game, but are vital to progressing to the next stage.

Yes, this is quite possible.

Originally posted by curtsibling
Perhaps a tutorial might be in order from Boco?

It might be, if Boco had time. I'm still way far behind for the holidays, and recovering from a 20h work day on Tuesday. In Civ prioroties, getting the El Aurens v2 beta comes first. Then I'll be a less selfish. Sorry, guys.

It is a fun new horizon.

[fairline]

Theres a utility called gifextractor available on the civfan site:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2/downloads/utilities/

[Boco]

Curt, I didn't mean to 'go ma dinger' (yeah, I've been adding some color to EA2). I'd kinda like putting something together, but I just don't see having the time in 2005.

ResHacker does every thing GIFExtracter can do, without many of the restrictions. I'm sure there must be a link to it on Merc's site.

[Mercator]

Here's the link:

http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/

You should *not* be using GifX for MGE or ToT. Not because it doesn't work, but just because it's limited.

I did write up some short instructions, but then my browser crashed, and now I'm too lazy to write it all again.

Basically, just have a look around the thing. If you make backups of the DLL's nothing can go wrong.

To edit images, you'll need to save the resource to file, edit it with your favourite image editor, and then import it back into the DLL by replacing it. Right-click on the "leaf nodes" for the save and replace options.

Each resource is identified by its type, name and language, they're the things you see in the tree (type=top-level, name=one level down, language=leaf). When replacing a resource, you need to enter the values of the resource you're replacing.

For the DLL's with all the images in them, the type is always "GIFS" and the language is always 1033 (the code for English).

[Boco]

Thanks.

The required GIF type is 87a noninterlaced, right Merc? I recall crashing badly when I used the wrong format.

[Mercator]

as always

[:) Smiley]

The amount of modding that can be done to the ship screen is limited, though. Only small parts of the 800x600 can be used until the ship gets to around 20 structures, and location of engines and modules is fixed.

[N35t0r]

Is there a size limit for the modules / components? and in which corner are they anchored?

[Boco]

Yes, Yes.

Okay, here's a rudimentary (and not thoroughly checked) example. In this screenie:

• The allowed size and location first two components are marked with yellow squares labeled 1L and 1R. Other components and modules are sprinkled in the map region.
• The map shows the location and max size of the structures.
• The upper left square shows the location and size of the data area. Actually, the max size depends on the text in Labels.txt. The red text can be eliminated by deleting the appropriate lines in Labels.txt, but that will also affect the city screen.
• The beautiful green bar obscures the spaceship name. It's named 'x.S.S. Leader_Name (Civ_Name)', where x is the first letter of the Civ Name.
• The button position is fixed, but the design is not.
• The bottom square shows the location and size of the 'odds of success' statement. The actual size depends on the text in Labels.txt. The text can be eliminated by deleting the appropriate line in Labels.txt, but the number will still print (Red [255,0,0] with a black shadow [0,0,0]
• As Merc pointed out elsewhere, you can use a less limited palette for these images, but I suspect (without any testing) all need to share the same palette.

Btw, events and cheat builds create ss parts in pairs.

[:) Smiley]

If you go in and extract the original GIFs, some of them have the bounding box of the usable area drawn in. The structure area expands a bit more to the left once you have 20 structures built.

Components and modules are pretty much limited in size and location to the original spaceship graphics.

One place with some flexibility is the engine exhaust graphics, which can get big once you have 6 or more engines.

[Patine]

- For WWII scenarios, perhaps the race to construct the spaceship could be changed to the race to get the bomb. Since the strategic nature of nuclear weapons are impossible to simulate as a unit in the game this could be used as an alternate to the 'conquer all' strategy commonly used as a victory condition. I forsee this being particularly relevant in scenarios involving the Pacific theatre (Hint to a particular Canadian forumner.)

I got the hint there, typhoon. I would certainly consider it, if someone could get me a Los Alamos screen to replace the orbital spaceship one. What are three good component parts of an A-bomb that are each needed in numbers, anyway, to replace SS Structural, Components, and Modules? Having to beat the US before they can get such a thing up and airbourne (one the way to Japan) could be a good objective in and of itself. But, how high a priority is the spaceship to the AI? I need to know that before further considering this significant change in course.

[Mercator]

Pretty high as far as I know... In most games I play, whenever you get to the space age techs, the AI tends to try and steal the technologies and then build a spaceship as quickly as possible and launch it as soon as it can.