Adding Rivers to a Saved Game file

[Kull]

I realize this can be done by some of the user-created Map Editors out there, but I DEFINITELY remember reading a tip that showed how units could be used to add Rivers onto a map during a game. If memory serves, it involved an unlikely set of esoteric commands but the details escape me. I've examined the primary "How-To" Design documents (Marrick & Thompson) and have searched Tip sections on several of the popular web sites, but all to no avail.

Sooooo.....can anyone help me out here? Do you remember this tip? Do you know where it is? Can you post a link or a reprint? Any and all help appreciated!

[Mercator]

I know I've seen this question asked several times at CFC lately, and it has been answered too... But I can't find the threads right now.
Instead I tried locating the info with Google, and guess what I found? Leon Marrick's document, but version 1.9 of it! (CFC and my site have version 1.8, which I thought was the latest).
It must have gotten lost somewhere I guess. So anyway, version 1.9 does contain the river adding info (and also reveals it wasn't Harlan who discovered it).
Here it is: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare...3/tipadsce.htm

(I'd better update the document on my website too)

[Kull]

Thanks Mercator! I too, was under the impression that 1.8 was the last version of Marrick's Design Document (and now that you mention Harlan, that clicked open a memory of having seen this tip on his wayyyy old "Glyph Web" site - what a loss when THAT went down!). For those who are interested, here's the tip - courtesy of "LeMay", Harlan Thompson, & Leon Marrick.

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Adding rivers after you start designing your scenario:

It has long been thought that rivers could only be created in the map editor. Now, thanks to LeMay and Harlan Thompson, this is revealed not to be the case. To create rivers:

1) Open up the rules.txt file and change the base time for engineers to transform terrain in the cosmic principles section to zero (0). Also in the rules.txt file, temporarily change the terrain that all the terrains you plan to alter are transformed into to "no". After you have finished making rivers, change them back.

2) Create three (or more on other terrain types. For example, mountains take eight) engineers on each of the squares you want rivers to appear. Lastly, create any unit of that civilization off to one side (see next step for why).

3) Select the unit off to one side, and give it any order. This "initializes" the method, and tells the program that all future sets of engineers will be making funky terrain. Without using the mouse, issue the "o" (transform) command to engineers on the squares you want rivers to appear on as they start blinking in turn. As the third engineer on a desert, plains, or grassland square (or more on any other terrain) receives the transform command, the terrain will turn into an odd river/coal/desert combination.

4) To restore the proper terrain type, simply use the cheat menu to alter terrain. All the funny-looking graphics will disappear, but the river will remain.

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I KNEW it was a weird set of commands, but I'd forgotten just HOW strange they are!

P.S. Harking back to the Glyph Web memory, I'm sure it was "LeMay" (whoever he may be) that discovered the technique, and Harlan (as usual) who popularized it.

[Mercator]

Yes... The good old days.
Well, sort of... Although I visited them often enough, Apolyton was the first site I actually became a member of.

I did some hexediting to see what actually causes this anomaly. And to see if perhaps there was a way of adding more terrains.

In principle, I guess it would be possible to use the resources as separate terrains, but unfortunately there is no way to change the garbled terrain graphics that it has.


About this river-creating, if anyone's interested in technical details:

When transforming terrain, the terrain constants are treated as the terrain values (0 for Desert... 10 for Ocean), performing the transformation will then change the terrain value of the square to that value.

Apparently, the value of "no" is -1 (or 255, depending on how you look at it), which is a standard use for false/undefined whatever values.

Civ2 is somewhat buggy in that it doesn't properly check whether this transformation value is valid if transformation time is 0... So, what you get is that the engineers start transforming the terrain to value 255 (= -1). In binary notation that is 11111111, the first 1 is normally used to indicate a river square, the 2nd 1 to hide the resource. What's left is 111111 (= 63 in decimal) of which the first 2 1's are ignored by Civ2 (opr rather, the remainder 63/16 is used, which is 15 or 1111 in binary).

But, there only are 11 terrains! And as I said before, Ocean has the value of 10. So Civ2 then looks this up in the rules.txt, counting 5 past Ocean... And what do we find? Coal, of coarse.

So, we have a Coal terrain square with a river on it (and the resource hidden, but Civ2 keeps that a secret), just what we see in the Civ2 Status Window.

The only problem for Civ2 is... Where could it possibly look for this terrain's graphics? It seems to kind of messily display some things in the vicinity of the "dither" image in the terrain1 image file. Because of all the transparency nothing really comes through.

Unfortunately, even when adding terrains at the bottom of the terrain1 image file (hoping Civ2 would find these as the new graphics) it looks all the same... So this bug can't be used to create extra terrains...

And they lived happily ever after...

[kobayashi]

Damn, I wish had discovered this thread earlier

[Lucius]

I independently discovered this same feature, by using the O command inadvertantly on terrain that was set to "No Transform." You don't have to set time to transform to zero, that just makes it faster.

What exactly do you mean by "resource hidden?" I know that no graphic appears, but would a city for instance get the benefit of the hidden resource?

Lucius Alexander

Palindromedary Enterprises

[Catfish]

I independently discovered this same feature

Same here. I was remotely aware of the engineer method for creating rivers, but never gave it any thought, as I've always done it by hex editing. I could have saved myself the bother.

[Lucius]

Thanks

Same here. I was remotely aware of the engineer method for creating rivers, but never gave it any thought, as I've always done it by hex editing. I could have saved myself the bother.

Thanks for the link - I feel dumb saying this, but I never imagined setting terrain to transform into itself. Now that I know it can be done, I plan to do it in the scenario I'm working on.

Lucius Alexander

Did a palindromedary eat my tagline?