Modmakers Tutorial: How to add new units, improvements, wonders, and technologys!

[Sir Max]

I'm having an interesting time trying to get pics inside a town. I know i saw something someplace here, but i can't find it so someone please fill me in.
I found an interesting bug with the new editor... The first structure you add is whacked in that the production cost you put in is not the standard multiple of 5 for buildings or 10 for wonders... its 30 !? WTF What gets me is the civilopedia actually says that right amount. Something very wierd going on there.
Happy hacking all.

[Willem]

Re: Problem with new Wonder

Originally posted by Red Monk
Plutarck, I created a new Wonder following your instructions (this one creates Libraries in all cities instead of Courthouses.) Everything worked fine until construction of the Wonder was complete, the game immediately crashed.

Any advice?

Red Monk

I think it might have something to do with the splash screen graghic. The game is expecting something that isn't there. I created a Mint small wonder that had problems as soon as it was finished and the graphic came up. Fortunatley I have Norton Crashguard on my system so I was able revive the game and go on after that. I had no other problems with it other than that.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Gramphos
I think there is a limit to 24 resources, as the bitwise number of what resources a terraian can hold only are 3 bytes.

There's a limit of 24 icons available to the game, but not on actual resources, at least with bonus resources. I'm using the same icon for two or three different resources sometimes and I haven't been having any problems. In fact, I'm getting a nicely varied lanscape. I'm now up to 18 bonus resources and the game is doing a nice job of spreading them around.

I did run into a problem at first though, when I added sheep in the hills. I think the game was trying to put two resources on the same square, gold and sheep, which caused the game to crash. I changed gold to a luxury resource, and I haven't had a problem since.

I think though that there is a limit to the strategic and luxury resources in that theres only room in the city view for 8 of each. I haven't put it to the test yet, but I think if you get more than 8 of either one, the game will crash every time you open up the city view.

It would be nice if Firaxis would come up with a patch that allows the city view resources windows to scroll. I have a lovely icon for timber, which they provided, and I'd love to use it as a strategic resource for building ships etc.. Frankly, I think it sucks that I can't use bonus resources as a requirement for construction.

[Hanksname]

Game crashes with custom units in a new scenario

Does anyone know of any errors/missing features in the editor ( aside
from being able to establish start positions ) that will cause
something to crash?

The only error I seem to be getting is with two units I created. it
should be pretty easy ... create a unit folder under /art/units with a
unit.ini file pointing to whatever .flcs ( from another unit ) you
happen to want to use. Then add PRTO_ info in the pediaicons and
civilopedia files.

I've done it other times with no problems. However, I added two
units for a scenario I am doing, and to test them I took out the
advancement requirements and set the shields to 1 so I could build
them right away and make sure they okay.

It crashed right away. I made sure the unit values and
pediaicons/civilopedia info were the same as a warrior this time, to
keep it simple. Still it crashed.

So I went back and took them out and tried to create them through
Civ3Copy Tool ... I got a 'mismatch' error which was solved when I
stopped loading in the map ... but without a map the scenario doesn't
exist. So why Civ3Copy would get errors is another issue.

I can load this thing up and play it fine when I don't have these two
units being built yet ... this leads me to think there's something
missing it is trying to read, but other than a unit folder with a .ini
file in it, and entries in pediaicons and civilopedia, I don't know
what could cause it to crash ... especially since I have added in
units successfully before. The Wonders, resources,civs and
improvements haven't caused anything to crash. If necessary I can post the files.

Thanks,

Hank

[fimp]

I have made this DanishCiv, but cant get those CivilopediaIcons working. And when i go into the foreign advisor screen, the game crashes.

I have added all that i would need, i think, to the pediaicons.txt file, but i cant get it to work.
This RACE_DANES thing is what i have wrote:

#RACE_ENGLISH
art\leaderheads\LZ.pcx
art\advisors\LZ_all.pcx
#RACE_DANES
art\leaderheads\DK.pcx
art\advisors\DK_all.pcx
####
# Happy Icons (conquer/domination/space winner)
#HAPPY_RACE_ROMANS
art\leaderheads\CE_HAP.pcx


Any solutions?

[WesW]

Originally posted by Willem


I think though that there is a limit to the strategic and luxury resources in that theres only room in the city view for 8 of each. I haven't put it to the test yet, but I think if you get more than 8 of either one, the game will crash every time you open up the city view.

It would be nice if Firaxis would come up with a patch that allows the city view resources windows to scroll. I have a lovely icon for timber, which they provided, and I'd love to use it as a strategic resource for building ships etc.. Frankly, I think it sucks that I can't use bonus resources as a requirement for construction.

I have added Marble as a bonus resource to the game, but made it a requirement for some buildings and wonders, and it seems to be working just fine.
I also added Copper as a strategic resource, but I have not played far enough recently to run into an 8-item limit in the city view. I can see where the limit would come in for the luxuries since there is not room in the happiness area for more than 8 lines.

To answer Hanksome's question again (my old post seems to have disappeared in the server move), I have found that you need to manually copy all of the copied unit's files into the new folder, or else the game will crash. Copy Tool sets up the ini file to point to the old unit's folder for these files, but that apparently does not work.

Fimp, you cannot add a 17th civ to the game at this time, if that is what you are doing.

[Willem]

Originally posted by WesW


I have added Marble as a bonus resource to the game, but made it a requirement for some buildings and wonders, and it seems to be working just fine.
I also added Copper as a strategic resource, but I have not played far enough recently to run into an 8-item limit in the city view. I can see where the limit would come in for the luxuries since there is not room in the happiness area for more than 8 lines.

To answer Hanksome's question again (my old post seems to have disappeared in the server move), I have found that you need to manually copy all of the copied unit's files into the new folder, or else the game will crash. Copy Tool sets up the ini file to point to the old unit's folder for these files, but that apparently does not work.

Fimp, you cannot add a 17th civ to the game at this time, if that is what you are doing.

Are you sure it's recognizing the Marble when it comes to a construction requirement? I tried almost the same thing, except with Limestone, and it didn't work. The game wouldn't recognize a bonus resource as a requirement,so I was stuck with buildings I couldn't build.

[fimp]

Originally posted by WesW


I have added Marble as a bonus resource to the game, but made it a requirement for some buildings and wonders, and it seems to be working just fine.
I also added Copper as a strategic resource, but I have not played far enough recently to run into an 8-item limit in the city view. I can see where the limit would come in for the luxuries since there is not room in the happiness area for more than 8 lines.

To answer Hanksome's question again (my old post seems to have disappeared in the server move), I have found that you need to manually copy all of the copied unit's files into the new folder, or else the game will crash. Copy Tool sets up the ini file to point to the old unit's folder for these files, but that apparently does not work.

Fimp, you cannot add a 17th civ to the game at this time, if that is what you are doing.

I have already added a 17th civ, using Gramphos Civ3-copytool. Now i just wonder how i get this problem fixed.

[Atlantys]

you can't go to the foreign advisror screen if you've added a civ. the .exe is hardcoded with the flc files to display while you're talking to advisor. and since you have a new civ, Civ3 doesn't know which file to use, so it crashes.
when you started the game, did you notice that where you face should be (in the center of the "pick civ" screen), it's all black? well, it was for me anyways.
and as far as i know, the hardcoded flcs in the .exe is the reason you can't go to the foerign advisor screen. i just have to double clcik on a unit of the civ i wanna talk to. very annoying, but only way to do it (so far).

[fimp]

Originally posted by Atlantys
you can't go to the foreign advisror screen if you've added a civ. the .exe is hardcoded with the flc files to display while you're talking to advisor. and since you have a new civ, Civ3 doesn't know which file to use, so it crashes.
when you started the game, did you notice that where you face should be (in the center of the "pick civ" screen), it's all black? well, it was for me anyways.
and as far as i know, the hardcoded flcs in the .exe is the reason you can't go to the foerign advisor screen. i just have to double clcik on a unit of the civ i wanna talk to. very annoying, but only way to do it (so far).

But when you look at this in the PediaIcons.txt:

#RACE_ENGLISH
art\leaderheads\LZ.pcx
art\advisors\LZ_all.pcx
#RACE_DANES
art\leaderheads\DK.pcx
art\advisors\DK_all.pcx
####
# Happy Icons (conquer/domination/space winner)
#HAPPY_RACE_ROMANS
art\leaderheads\CE_HAP.pcx

i thought that the art\advisors\DK_all.pcx thing would tell the game to loof for the files... guess not. Hope you can do this in an upcoming patch.

But at the Civ selection screen it works just fine. Look for yourself in my DanishCiv thread.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Plutarck


But we'll save ourselves some effort. According to PediaIcons.txt's last entry, Battlefield Medicine is in the 63rd slot. There are 10 spaceship parts, which are counted, so that means the very first item you create is in the 74th position. Because I created Guild Hall first my Chichen Itza is in number 75.

So since I just copied the Pyramid's entrys everywhere else, I just went ahead and did it again. So my entry is this:

#WON_SPLASH_75
art\wonder splash\pyramid.pcx

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I've been fighting with that crash for weeks now. I looked in that area and tried to copy a graphic, but I didn't account for the spaceship parts. I numbered it #64, right after Battlefield Medicine. It makes perfect sense to me now. I would never have thought of that.

[Guerlot]

Adding a Technology

I got a weird problem while creating technologies.

I did exactly what Plutarck said, lowering the icon number for writing by one for each technology I created.

So here's the deal: I started from scratch, with the original civ3mod.bic file, totally untouched, pure and kept clear from any evil modifications.

With the copytool, I copied Music Theory. Then, went in the Civ3edit tool, renamed the copied tech to Magical Power, with a prerequisite of Chivalry and Music Theory. I verified the civilopedia.txt an pediaicons.txt files, and everything was just ok.

I tried the game (note that I only added this tech and nothing else to the bic file.). Everything was cool, the game didn't crash once I got Writing. And later, it didn't crash once I got Magical Theory. WOW! The first try was perfect!

Then, I stopped the game and copied Literature to create a second tech called Spelling, that I put between Writing and Literature. Once again, I tried a new game, no crashes, everything was just perfect... but evil is now in the game, I can't create any Naval Units or Coastal improvements (like Colossus, Harbor, etc....). Holy cow... Does somebody know what happened?

[Wolfshanze]

Water Helps

Maybe you're not near the ocean... you need to have your city next to water to build naval units or the Colossus.

[Guerlot]

funny, really funny...........

I was near the ocean, don't worry about that...

[Mizaq]

grr