Cepha Development Thread

[Timor_Leste]

Thank you! :bow: I can't wait to see how people react to some of the units I'm actually happy with. I don't know about "cthulu", but I'm getting better at incorporating images of something called a "walktapus".

Thanks Boco. I remember having seen that thread before, but, not surprisingly, I forgot.

Edit: Can anyone suggest a scen(s) that used Text pop-ups judiciously to enlighten the player and build atmosphere?

[Boco]

I had an inkling that the Oedo thread wasn't foreign territory for you.

Can anyone suggest a scen(s) that used Text pop-ups judiciously to enlighten the player and build atmosphere?

Well, I wouldn't call it judicious, since El Aurens is utterly out of control in this regard, but here's the Game.txt. It has a high percentage of the dialogs customized. You may get some ideas to use pop-ups in a more sensible fashion.

These dialogs are very useful to provide both atmosphere and tips at no cost to the event heap space. As you imply by your use of 'judicious', text dialogs in Events.txt eat up heap space quickly.

Here's another example of a dialog not generated by a Text/EndText sequence in Events.txt.

In Events.txt

;CT Sollum (by Allies) -> GT CSIC near Bardia (Italians)
; CU 2x Garrison Bn (Allies)  
@IF  CityTaken  
city=Sollum  
attacker=Allies  
defender=Sanussis  
@THEN  
JustOnce  
GiveTechnology  
technology=79  
receiver=Italians  
CreateUnit  
owner=Allies  
unit=Garrison Bn  
count=2  
veteran=no  
homecity=CSI Cirenaica  
locations  
16,44  
14,44  
12,44  
endlocations  
@ENDIF

The dialog resulting from Sollum's capture is generated by the GiveTechnology action at a fraction of the memory cost that would be required by a Text/EndText sequence in Events.txt. This particular dialog is generated from data in the SAV file ("Italians")†, Labels.Txt ("deploy"), @CIVILIZE ("CSIC near Bardia"), and @UNITS ("AutoMG"). Plus you get a flag to boot.



†Edit: "Italians" most likely comes from the Receiver parameter of the GiveTechnology event action. I s'pose that's technically in the SAV file, but I wasn't particularly clear.

Edit2: Any evil sperm whales?

[Timor_Leste]

Thank You, Boco! I haven't sat down and starting typing out the events.txt, but I have a feeling you just saved me from being as frustrated as I’ve been with the dither.

What I was thinking was I don't want text popups so often, or the text to be so long, as to damage the, ah... fun-ness. But, I don't want the player to be in the dark about what's going on, either.

I was gonna use the Whales like Elephants. I've only found one usable one. But, my attempt to make a shark is looking more and more like a whale, so maybe I'll use it instead.

[Timor_Leste]

So I read Jorrit Vermeiren's article on changing the Civ2 in-game graphics. The problem is, some of the DLL's I'm trying to get a look at don't have ANSI text labeled "87a". Anyone know what I should look for instead?

[Boco]

If this is for ToT, I could help you more. It appears to be for MGE or FW, and sadly, I'm a novice here. Which DLL are you editing? I've found 'GIF87a' strings in the Intro, Mk, Tiles, and SS DLL's. Are you searching for ANSI Strings rather than Raw Hex Bytes?

[Timor_Leste]

Originally posted by Boco
Which DLL are you editing? I've found 'GIF87a' strings in the Intro, Mk, Tiles, and SS DLL's. Are you searching for ANSI Strings rather than Raw Hex Bytes?

No, unfortunately, I'm looking at DLLs from non-civ games. I've had some success in cracking some of them and finding cool graphics, but others are just page after page of gobleygook. I tried looking for "87A", but no go. Maybe it's another word/phrase?

[Boco]

32-bit DLL's?

Resource Hacker Home Page

Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems.

Works like a breeze if your DLL's qualify. No need to search for strings.

Also soon to be found via a link on Mercator's home page!

[Timor_Leste]

:Bump:

Despite the best efforts of RL, I've made some progress with this scen.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Timor_Leste
No, unfortunately, I'm looking at DLLs from non-civ games. I've had some success in cracking some of them and finding cool graphics, but others are just page after page of gobleygook. I tried looking for "87A", but no go. Maybe it's another word/phrase?

Try opening the DLLs withResHacker. It may work in some cases.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by techumseh
Giant Squid would be so pleased!

He now lives at http://squid314.livejournal.com/ ^-^

[Timor_Leste]

Originally posted by St Leo
Try opening the DLLs withResHacker. It may work in some cases.

Thanks St. Leo.

I'm giving serious thought to doing this in ToT, even though I've never played that version. The thing I love is the impassable terrrain feature. But, I have a few questions:
1) Does the game put huts on impassable terrain? If so, what happens if a unit (with the flag) opens it?
2) What feature(s) do designers love using for their ToT scenarios?

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by Timor_Leste


Thanks St. Leo.

I'm giving serious thought to doing this in ToT, even though I've never played that version. The thing I love is the impassable terrrain feature. But, I have a few questions:
1) Does the game put huts on impassable terrain? If so, what happens if a unit (with the flag) opens it?
2) What feature(s) do designers love using for their ToT scenarios?

Be aware that these are just guesses, but I'd say that probably yes, the game puts huts wherever they pop up, as long as it's not ocean.

As for units popping them, as long as they're not air units (which just erase them, exept for the special air units they made for the midgard scens, so in Fantasy games helicopters can pop huts, IRC) then the hut should be popped and yeld normal results. If units pop up (either friendly unit on tile or barb units on adjacent tiles) then if the units which do pop up are not able to move through impassable terrain then they'll only be able to move to legal adjacent tiles. If they're surrounded by impassable terrain then they'll be stuck there...

Again, I'm just guessing, but I'd bet money it'll be like that (or very close at least)

[Timor_Leste]

All right, community opinion time!

So I've been working on the city list recently. So that it be somewhat relevant to the subject, I translated a bunch of words (like squid, ocean, deep) into non-Latin languages.

But, usually when I play Civ2, I make up words for the city names.

So, which would be better for city names:

1- translated water-related words
2- made-up words

[curtsibling]

I think made up names, but borrowing from recognisable words would work best.

Make them sea-related, but don't worry too much about latinisation.

[Timor_Leste]

Originally posted by curtsibling
I think made up names, but borrowing from recognisable words would work best.

Make them sea-related, but don't worry too much about latinisation.

Thanks Curt!

So, another thing I'm not completely certain of...

So I've been coming up with names for the units. For instance, the giant walker in the top left corner of the first attachment from this thread is called the Brontopod: Thunder Foot. I also have a scythe-carrying unit that'll be called Falciferi: Scythe-bearing. One of the first machine units will be called Agathaumas: Great Wonder.

I've asked the Civ2 players I know, but can anyone here think of a reason why using Greco-Roman words for unit names in this kind of scenario is not a good idea?