Civ4 scenarios

[Eivind IV]

Can some of the nice graphics already made for civ3 be transfered to civ4 or are they obsoleted in terms of quality?

I just made a read through of the changes from civ3 to civ4 at wikipedia, and I must say it sounds quite amazing. Also, I like the layout a lot more than that of civ3. I think I must try this game out!

[fairline]

They're obsolete - civ4 uses 3d models whereas civ3 used animated sprites.

[Eivind IV]

Ok, but seriously, civ4 sounds brilliant! At least if it is as modable as I hope it is.

Also, if you happen to have one of these sprite softwares, how hard are they to use? Is it in principle the same as the pixels we work with for civ2, just that you here need to make many from different angles etc?

[fairline]

No, it's completely different. Sprites are animated still frames - effectively lots of single drawings played one after the other cartoon-style to produce an animation. Civ4 uses 3D models; lots of polygons assembled to sreate a virtual 3-dimensional model. A 'skin' or 2d coat of paint if you like, is applied to the model to give colour and detail. The latter are easily modified in much the same way as a civ2 frame, but a polygonal modal requires special software and skill with creating 3d modals.

[Broken_Erika]

I got Civ4 for Christmas, i have yet to install it due to lack of hard drive space, both of my 120 gig hard drives are almost full,

[Boco]

Can a model be generic enough for many skins? Can the Sherman model Tech describes be skinned to look like a Tiger? An M113? If so, how big is the current model set?

Any answers to Tech's event question? Since I learned that I need to upgrade my gfx card, I haven't read much about C4.

[Tigey]

Originally posted by techumseh
I tried the Afrika Korps scenario. It was very simple - the Italians and British both had Sherman tanks.

Is it just my imagination or are the maps on Civ3 & 4 much smaller?

Any news on events capability? I know you can adjust the strengths and abilities of units in great detail, but I don't know if you can program historical events as in Civ2.

The maps on Civ4 are smaller than Civ2, but they require HUGE amounts of memory: I've got a fairly up to date PC and graphics card, but rendering them in game is a constant (emphasis on constant) cause of PC crashes: I have to scroll the map at a snail's pace, other the game crashes...

And the graphics are horribly simple in the North Africa scenario: graphics are recycled for each side (ie: the Sherman and Crusader are IDENTICAL ), and the Wellington bomber appears as a B2 Stealth Bomber!!!! Hopefully some more complete scenarios and graphics packs will appear in time or in expansions...

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by techumseh
Any news on events capability? I know you can adjust the strengths and abilities of units in great detail, but I don't know if you can program historical events as in Civ2.

I believe you can include events, but I've no idea how easy or hard it is. In the one scenario I have played, event driven units were created and other countries joined the conflict. Some events were apparently time driven while others resulted from player actions.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Peter Triggs]

techumseh:
I want to know if anyone in our community is doing anything. There's nothing to say that SL is limited to Civ2.
...
I tried the Afrika Korps scenario. It was very simple - the Italians and British both had Sherman tanks.

AFAIK, there's nobody from SL doing anything yet. But the Afrika Korps scenario was written by Locutus and Dale, who both did a lot of work on modding CTP2.

Neither of them do graphics, they're both programmers. There are more fan created units available at CFC now, but obviously these weren't around at the time they did that scenario.

rjmatsleepers:
I played one of the scenarios that came with the game - the one about the American war of Independance

That was written by Jon Shafer/Trip, who used to post more at CFC than at Poly. He's now a Firaxis programmer.

rjmatsleepers:
I believe you can include events, but I've no idea how easy or hard it is.

That's one of the things you use Python for; for an overview see:

http://modiki.apolyton.net/index.php?title=Guide_to_Python_in_CIV

and

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140611&perpage=50&pagenumber=1

Locutus:
There are basically 4 ways to use Python:

1) Map generation - there won't be additional documentation for this in the short run, but the existing scripts are well documented so you can learn a lot by studying those. Creating completely new map scripts is not for the faint-of-heart though, some grasp of OO programming and the mathemetical concepts underlying the scripts is required. You can find the mapscripts in the PublicMaps folder

2) UI modding - documentation here isn't really needed, the code is more or less self-explanatory. You can find the UI files in the Assets/Python/Screens folder

3) Events - the most common way in which you will use Python, there are many different applications, not just for your standard scenario events. A list of available events is below. The core event manager is Assets/Python/CvEventManager.py

4) Overrides - some game functions can be overwritten, for example what can be built in what cities, what civics/techs/religions/etc are available to who (all dynamically, so on a case-by-case and turn-by-turn basis, much more powerful than the static XML files), some AI behaviour, Barbarian spawning, victory conditions, etc. These overrides are in Assets/Python/CvGameUtils.py

In Civ 4, events are 'hooks' into the executable. It's been promised that the game's core source code will be released (in the 'SDK'). When that happens, it should be possible to add more of them, i.e. new user defined event types.

[MagyarCrusader]

lol @ techumseh. I was just going to send you a pm regarding similar questions I had about civ4. Thanks for the thread.

[techumseh]

Hey Mike! Good to hear from you. I was just playing your 7 Years War scenario.

[N35t0r]

I've been playing some civ 4 and while it doesn't run very good, by turning graphic detail to the minimum (but not screen resolution), It plays at an acceptable speed, even in the relative endgame, (I stay away from the larger sized maps though) and have had almost no CTD's.

It's supposed to be better with the last patch, but I only just played a couple of turns and while it seemed a bit slower, the graphic options had reset to deafult and I had to restart the game to change them (and since I'm very lazy I didn't).