Utility for placing cities

[Civfan]

Hi everyone. After months and months of hardwork, I have created a utiliy... I wish. If i knew how sure. Anyways has anyone seen a utilty for placing cities on the map for CivIII?

If so, can you direct me and everyone else of the community to it to download.

[Gramphos]

As far as I know there is no one yet, and the BICs doesn't seem to be able to hold cities.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Gramphos
As far as I know there is no one yet, and the BICs doesn't seem to be able to hold cities.

you would think that in those "little" 50 - 60MB files, there would info on where the cities are at!

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
you would think that in those "little" 50 - 60MB files, there would info on where the cities are at!

The BICs doesn't hold any cities, and are not 50 MB. The sves holds cities, but to move city is harder then it seems to, as the city number are used on many places.

[Gromit]

A long shot I know, and probably some-one tried already... But... is it possible to use a Savegame editor to add cities? Or to update one to be able to do so? I mean, cities are just objects on the map with owners, aren't they? Or are they more complicated than that. Dunno, just throwin' out ideas.

[Civfan]

abit more complicated from what i've heard. Guess will just have to wait. Hopefully, and I really mean that, for it in the new patch which the beta testers i think are testing.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Gromit
A long shot I know, and probably some-one tried already... But... is it possible to use a Savegame editor to add cities? Or to update one to be able to do so? I mean, cities are just objects on the map with owners, aren't they? Or are they more complicated than that. Dunno, just throwin' out ideas.

Sure they are just objects. The problem is that the City structure is very complicated, and to be able to add cities you need to know what to default every value to. There is also this that the cities are refereed to from more then one place of the tile, and right now I don't know the difference. But stay tuned, I might get it working soon.

[Civfan]

Cool.... Maybe will have this issue resolved before the expansion pact comes out in like 6 months from now.
All the best of luck.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Gramphos

The BICs doesn't hold any cities, and are not 50 MB. The sves holds cities, but to move city is harder then it seems to, as the city number are used on many places.

I would love to give you my one save file, its a standard map and the save files a piece are 50+MB. However, I'm sure you'll understand that my 28K internet connection (its the phones lines dammit) would hinder such a file upload.

Such bloatted coding IMHO.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

The size of the savegame has very little connection to the efficiency of the coding. Savegames of many games (not just Civ III) are big because they load faster than if they were compressed

Since most users typically have hundreds of megs (if not gigs) to spare, speed is more of an issue than HD space.


Dan

[MonsterMan]

Computers with the mimimum requirement to run civilization III -- such as mine -- do have a problem with the bloated files, because hard drives from that time were just 2 gigs or so. But people can always do as me; keep an archive of zipped saves taken now and then from the saves folder. A zipped save is usually 5% the size of the unoptimized save, so it's really efficient

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
Since most users typically have hundreds of megs (if not gigs) to spare, speed is more of an issue than HD space.

That's the reason why you used this obsolate 8bit 255 colors graphics from Civ2. Some years ago it was OK but the CTP series showed us that there is something better possible (24 bit 16 million colors). And the graphics formats are much smaller concerning units, goods, cities and effects.

Year it is poor if game developers don't care about the effecient use of our hard drive space. I don't buy a new big harddrive just to realize that the next game that I buy will use half of its space. (I did this once. )

-Martin

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
The size of the savegame has very little connection to the efficiency of the coding. Savegames of many games (not just Civ III) are big because they load faster than if they were compressed

Since most users typically have hundreds of megs (if not gigs) to spare, speed is more of an issue than HD space.


Dan

You know, on my 13GB HD, I had about 2 GB before playing the game, now at the end of the week I usually delete about 200 - 500 MB of the save files. Most of my other games BARELY make to a single MB!

If you ask me, I could wait a minute or so extra to load, it takes that long anyway to load. Memory of any kind is the biggest part of my list when I make programs, keeping code clean and making sure I use as little memory as possible in my code (if I'm only using numbers from 1 to 10, I use a SHORT instead of a regular INT as a quick example). Making code and not paying attention to things like this is sloppy, lazy, and practicly insulting.

I thought that even if the save files were big, that were some sort of compression, but I guess you answered that already.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
You know, on my 13GB HD, I had about 2 GB before playing the game, now at the end of the week I usually delete about 200 - 500 MB of the save files. Most of my other games BARELY make to a single MB!

One more reason to play CTP2 the Real Civ4. Yeah and now we have figuered out to to make the AI to a real pain for you. Oh and CTP2 save games are under 1MB and yes they are compressed, exept the image that tey contain is uncompressed. But there are also the fast save games without images and you are hardly able to compresses them.

-Martin

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann


One more reason to play CTP2 the Real Civ4. Yeah and now we have figuered out to to make the AI to a real pain for you. Oh and CTP2 save games are under 1MB and yes they are compressed, exept the image that tey contain is uncompressed. But there are also the fast save games without images and you are hardly able to compresses them.

-Martin

I hear ya, I'm going out this weekend and pick it up.

On a side note, here are some file sizes for some of my OTHER games

Rebellion: 587KB
AvP GE: 886KB
Force Commander: 1.25MB (Ohhhhhhhhh, such a big deal, so thats why they put a CAP to the number of save you can have!!!

JK: 253KB
Q2: 436KB


Thats all I can find right now, I come back again and post some more save game file sizes. For Firaxis reference .