Scenarios for the Mac

[valmont]

Does anyone know of any good scenarios for the Mac? I have played conversions of Babylon5 and Lord of the Rings. I want more!

[Smash]

Do you have the Gold version?Besides the multiplayer option it also includes "Conflicts in Civilization"and "Fantastic Worlds"add-ons as well as "Best of the Net".30 or 40 scenarios in all.I never had any luck finding stuff on the "net"for the MAC version of civ2.Tons of pc stuff,no MAC.The Jules Verne(included with Gold) scenario is good.

[monolith94]

It's really not that hard to convert pc stuff to mac scenarios. Just make sure you have an extractor for zip, and then use something like, say, graphic converter to convert the .gifs to .picts, and the text doesn't need to be changed. The map files are cross-platform, I think.

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"Why don't those humans just grow up and evolve!"
-Starchild

[valmont]

monolith94 is right; it's basically not that difficult. For most scenarios, one will only need to change the graphics and sound. So I've been working on converting 2 scenarios to MAC format -- Cam Hill's Gangsters and Allard Hoefelt's Homeric Age. It took almost no time to convert the GIFs to PICTs (I am using Graphic Converter 3.5.1), HOWEVER, I cannot be sure that the colors of the resulting graphics are true. All the blues which represent water in my converted PICT of Cam's terrain files are bright aqua. In my PICT of Allard's terrain, however, the ocean is a color somewhere between orchid and lilac. (The rivers are aqua, though, just like in Cam's terrain.) In addition, the grassland squares seem too pale while the plains squares seem too orange. I've tried all sorts of settings when converting the GIFs and always get this result. I have no way to tell if these colors were intended by the creators. If the colors are wrong, it doesn't seem to have an adverse effect on playability. All the units look fine, and both scenarios run perfectly well -- no editing of the text files is needed at all.

GC has a feature called "color table" which I am assuming is the same as "color palette" -- is this correct? But I cannot figure out how to save the color table from the original Civ2 graphics and apply it to the scenario graphics I've converted. If there's a way to do this I think the color problems would be solved.

I hope there's someone out there who has more familiarity with Graphic Converter than I do -- please explain if I'm doing something wrong!

I would like eventually to make these scenarios available to other MAC players, but don't want to do so until I'm certain that the player will see what the creator intended.

As for sound, I've ignored it so far. I believe the MAC version uses AIFF files instead of .wav files, so those would also need to be converted, right? (I'm not sure how complicated that process will prove!)
[This message has been edited by valmont (edited August 27, 1999).]

[valmont]

I forgot to comment on the map files -- yes, they are cross-platform. There is a curious anomoly with the .scn files, however -- they won't work unless you have ResEdit and can change the "Creator" information in the Info screen. Again, this isn't difficult, you just have to know what you're doing. Fortunately, you can just copy-paste this info from an existing scenario file.

[MarkG]

see this page http://apolyton.net/civ2/tfgc2s/mac/cfm.shtml

[monolith94]

Valmont, I don't know what you're talking about with the scenario files. I've never had to use resedit on them. As far as I'm concerned, they're cross platform too.

#1 Download scenario
#2 Unzip it
#3Convert any graphics and sound
#4 put them in where they belong

I've never had to mess around with any of the scenario files.
Whatchou talkin about, valmont?

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"Why don't those humans just grow up and evolve!"
-Starchild

[valmont]

monolith,

I've downloaded 10 or 12 scenarios so far and I've had to do this to every one. I'm using Zipit to decompress. The unzipped folder contains a .scn file which does not have the proper Civ2 icon. I start up Civ2 [MGE], choose begin scenario. But when the menu opens, no scenario file appears in the folder. I quit the game. I open ResEdit and choose "Get File/Folder Info, and change the Info of the scenario file. The box labeled "type" must read "Cv2S" and the box labeled "creator" must read "Civ2" (these are case sensitive -- if you accidentally type
"Cv2s" it still won't work). I save the file and close ResEdit. Now I start the game again, this time the scenario file appears in the menu (with the Civ2 icon) and the scenario loads.

I would never have been able to play the scenarios if I hadn't found the instructions somewhere on the web for changing the Info with ResEdit. Unfortunately I can't find the page that gave me the tip. (I thought it was Amandeep Jawa's guide to converting PC modpacks, but I just checked it and there's nothing about ResEdit there. Hmm, I hate when this happens...)

monolith, what do you use to convert the graphics and sound?

[This message has been edited by valmont (edited September 03, 1999).]

[MacUser]

MacAddict had an article (or maybe just an answer to a question?) on how to convert multiples files (I think it was sound files) from one formate to another in a single "batch". I THINK the application was called "Batch Typer", but I'm really not sure. This might make the process quicker...

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