Civilization III BIX/BIQ file format

[sabrewolf]

about the map preview you're doing: i actually this this way is better to see details of the map. if you start using comined hill and mountain ranges and especially start using the "softened" coastlines, then everything will get more blurry. that might be nicer to look at, but worse to see the details, requiring a bigger picture

Hi sabrewolf. Yeah, well, sometimes the mountain must come to mahomet (aka Gramphos)

PS Love your avatar, brings back fond memories. I even built a primitive speccy emulator on my Mac once, and succeeded in loading Manic Miner into it from audio tape through the audio in socket! It ran, too, excruciatingly slowly!

impressive... an own emulator!!! how come, all great programmers (except graphos of course) come from CFC? :hmm:
i've seen some around in the web, but mostly you can find games (like attic attac, MM, JSW, sabrewulf , etc.) already extracted and they can be loaded. so no audio sockets needed . i once saw a java-version of several games. never looked further into it, but i presume there's an emulator or a speccy-->class compiler in it

sorry for going off topic, gramphos!

[Dianthus]

Originally posted by AlanH
I realised I could get it from the adjacent tiles, but that seems rather laborious. Also, I don't think that's the way Civ3 does it. I haven't looked at it for a while, but last time I did I was pretty sure that I fount it was using two different variants in equivalent situations. I'll try to find an example again.

It's not that laborious, and at least it's derivable. What's not derivable is the index into the forest/jungle bitmaps (I currently just randomize these) and whether to use the deltaRivers.pcx/mtnRivers.pcx. If you find this in the file make sure and let us know Alan .

Oh, one last tip, mountains/hills (and lots of other stuff) have to be shifted vertically by half a tile. Can't remember whether that's up or down, but that's something you can look for when you're testing.

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Dianthus

It's not that laborious, and at least it's derivable. What's not derivable is the index into the forest/jungle bitmaps (I currently just randomize these) and whether to use the deltaRivers.pcx/mtnRivers.pcx. If you find this in the file make sure and let us know Alan .

Sure will

Oh, one last tip, mountains/hills (and lots of other stuff) have to be shifted vertically by half a tile. Can't remember whether that's up or down, but that's something you can look for when you're testing.

Been there, done that. The image is just a 10% reduction of a full size map. Apart from the fact that the hill sand mountains are all the same, at 100% it looks indistinquishable from an in-game map terrain. Here's a bit of the 100% version ...

[Dianthus]

Hi Gramphos,

I think your "free units"/"all units free" fields are not quite right in the GOVT section, at least for C3C. I'm seeing values of 0xCCCCCCCC for your "free units" field for Facism/Feudalism. Rather than:

    4	long		??? (1 for Republic/Democracy, 0 for the rest)
    4	long		free units
    4	long		all units free (-1 = yes, 0 = no)

I think it should be:

    4	long		??? (1 for Republic/Democracy, CCCCCCCC for Feudalism/Facism, 0 for the rest)
    4	long		??? (CCCCCCCC for Feudalism/Facism, 0 for rest)
    4	long		free units (-1:all free, >=0:number of free units)

[Gramphos]

Now it would be interesting to know when that changed.

[Dianthus]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Now it would be interesting to know when that changed.

That sounds like challenge . I'll take a quick look at the latest versions of CivIII and PTW tonight. Older versions are obviously a bit more hassle.

[Dianthus]

I've been so busy releasing my new version of CRpSuite that I almost forgot I promised to do this!

Anyway I've got 1.29f of Civ III installed and I edited the civ3mod.bic file and checked the differences:

Changed The Republic to have all free units:
Before:

      workerRate(4) = 2
      Unknown(12)=
         000000:01000000 .... 
         000004:01000000 .... 
         000008:00000000 .... 
[b]      freeUnits(4) = 0[/b]
      freeUnitsPerTown(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerCity(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerMetropolis(4) = 0
      costPerUnit(4) = 1
      warWeariness(4) = 1

After:

      workerRate(4) = 2
      Unknown(12)=
         000000:01000000 .... 
         000004:01000000 .... 
         000008:00000000 .... 
[b]      freeUnits(4) = -1[/b]
      freeUnitsPerTown(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerCity(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerMetropolis(4) = 0
      costPerUnit(4) = 1
      warWeariness(4) = 1

Changed Democracy to have 5 free units:
Before:

      workerRate(4) = 3
      Unknown(12)=
         000000:01000000 .... 
         000004:01000000 .... 
         000008:00000000 .... 
[b]      freeUnits(4) = 0[/b]
      freeUnitsPerTown(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerCity(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerMetropolis(4) = 0
      costPerUnit(4) = 1
      warWeariness(4) = 2

After:

      workerRate(4) = 3
      Unknown(12)=
         000000:01000000 .... 
         000004:01000000 .... 
         000008:00000000 .... 
[b]      freeUnits(4) = 5[/b]
      freeUnitsPerTown(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerCity(4) = 0
      freeUnitsPerMetropolis(4) = 0
      costPerUnit(4) = 1
      warWeariness(4) = 2

[Gramphos]

I verified this againcst BICs form v1.07f, and is seems as if it never changed, but always have been as you state it.

[wotan321]

Has anyone stumbled across where in the C3C saved games files or the .biq files the "locked alliances" or "locked war" info is stored?

Thanks.

[Gramphos]

The colony and City ref in the TILE section are swaped. I'll update it next time I edit the first post.

[Legend]

Originally posted by Dianthus

It's not that laborious, and at least it's derivable. What's not derivable is the index into the forest/jungle bitmaps (I currently just randomize these) and whether to use the deltaRivers.pcx/mtnRivers.pcx. If you find this in the file make sure and let us know Alan .

Don't know if you're still subscribed to this Dianthus

It appears that the decision to use the deltaRivers / mtnRivers is dependent on the underlying terrain Icon number.

If the underlying terrain uses (say) icon 4, then it will always use (say) DeltaRivers. I haven't worked out the exact detail, nor the pattern, but I will endeavour to do so. Presumably this approach extends to the forest and jungle as well.

[Dianthus]

Originally posted by Legend
Don't know if you're still subscribed to this Dianthus

Yes, I'm still around.

Originally posted by Legend
It appears that the decision to use the deltaRivers / mtnRivers is dependent on the underlying terrain Icon number.

If the underlying terrain uses (say) icon 4, then it will always use (say) DeltaRivers. I haven't worked out the exact detail, nor the pattern, but I will endeavour to do so. Presumably this approach extends to the forest and jungle as well.

From the meagre research I did it looked like delta rivers were used on the coast, and mountain rivers on hills/mountains/volcanos, but I couldn't see any other correlation. I use the 4 tiles under the river to decide if the terrain is water or hill/mountain/volcano. I'm checking 4 tiles because the rivers are offset by half a tile vertically from the hills/mountains/volcanos or other.

If you can find a better way of doing (I.e. to look the same as Civ) then that would be great!

[AlanH]

I was playing with the hills in the editor (unfortunately the 1.21 version, as that's all that's available on a Mac). You can get a different pattern of four hills in a diamond on grassland substrate depending on which order you place them. I didn't spend much time on it, but it looks like there must be something other than the known fields determining which graphic is used for an overlay on base terrain.

[Dianthus]

I just tried something similar. I cleared the map to plains (wasn't sure whether bonus grass would make a difference). I then created a number of 4 tile diamonds of hills, always creating them in the order top-bottom-right-left. I got quite a few different combinations!

[Legend]

That is what I meant - the overlay terrain icon (hills, mountain, forest, river etc) depends on the icon of the underlying terrain.

Take you base terrain, and add visible numbers on it corresponding to the icon numbers (might want to do this with the overlays as well).

There are four hill icons that don't connect to anything (0, 1, 2, 3); I'm sure that you will find that if you draw an unnconnected hill on base terrain icon "X", it will always be the same one. I'm sure that the same will hold for two connected hills - the icon chosen will depend on the base terrain.