Hidden undersea terrain (as in CtP1)

[lev]

Does anyone know if there is any way to hide the undersea terrain until a player gets submarine technology, as it was in Ctp1? It's a feature I miss...

[Locutus]

I agree, I miss this feature too. The only way I can think of to bring it back is to create some new terrain types (which are duplicates of the existing ocean type terrains) and change all the graphics of the current ocean type terrains to shallow water. Then, when the right advance is discovered by the human, use SLIC to terraform all old ('shallow looking') ocean terrain type tiles to the new ('deep looking') tiles. The terraforming process could well be a bit time-consuming though, esp. on big maps...

[lev]

That could work

Yeah, that could work, but it might indeed be slow. I wonder how Ctp1 handled it? Was there some sort of "show ocean floor" flag, or something?

[Locutus]

I think so. The problem is, if you can simply edit the source code all you have to do is change the stuff that get's sent to your monitor. Basically it's not all that different from popping up the city window or something like that. If you have to do this through SLIC you actually have to change the gamestate, meaning you have to go through the entire memory (and part of this memory could well be located on the (slow) harddisk) and manually change every single tile.

(I don't know how computer-savvy you are so I tried to put this explanation in layman's terms, I hope it made sense and didn't offend you or anything )

[lev]

Don't worry, no offense taken. I had just hoped it was a flag that you could set in some text file somewhere; if it's in the source code, then I guess we're stuck.

[Locutus]

Well, IIRC there *was* a flag in a text file (don't remember what it was called though, but I can look it up)- so you could change the advance at which the change occured - but unless I'm very much mistaken that flag no longer exists or at least doesn't work anymore.

[Martin Gühmann]

In CTP1 there was a flag in the Advance.txt: ALLOWS_DEEP_OCEAN. The enabling advance for it was: ADVANCE_OIL_REFINING. There is also a flag in the CTP2 Advance.txt: DeepOcean. And surprise the enaibling advance is the same. Therefore this flag has no effect on the game it is there but just for your joy or something else.

-Martin

[WesW]

The flag to show deep ocean was one of a number of flags that worked in Ctp1 but not in Ctp2.

[SMIFFGIG]

Could it be done then cause I really do miss this too????

[Pedrunn]

The only way i can think of is terraforming the volcanos and rifits in the beggining of the game making just deep sea terrain. Still we save the volcanos and rifts in arrays. If a player has the advance to enable the seeing of the undersea terrain we terraform the volcanos and rifts saved in the arrays back as they should be. In the beggining of the turn of the player without this advance we remove volcanos and rifts throgh terraform again. when the turn of the player has the advance we terraform the volcanos and rifts saved in the arrays back again. And by terraforming in and out we simulate the feature.
I got tired just in thinking about it

[SMIFFGIG]

That would work (im getting tired thinking about you thinking about it)

Once again WHY the *@$k did activision not included this anyway or rather EX-clude it as it was in CtP1 . Frustrating to say the least.

[Martin Gühmann]

Unfortunatly this terraforming method would need a lot of time.

I think Activision did not included the deep sea feature, because the hadn't the time to implement it the flag is there.

-Martin

[Pedrunn]

Unfortunatly this terraforming method would need a lot of time.

I was afraid of that.
Still terraform isnt as problematic as the CreateImprovement event.

We could make a global appearance though. If a player gets the advance all players can see the deep sea terrain. Or it could be slowly showed up to the player with the advance when moving units over it.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Pedrunn
I was afraid of that.
Still terraform isnt as problematic as the CreateImprovement event.

That's correct.

Originally posted by Pedrunn
We could make a global appearance though. If a player gets the advance all players can see the deep sea terrain. Or it could be slowly showed up to the player with the advance when moving units over it.

In the case of doubt the global appearance is better when moving a ship over it. I can't imagine how to realize the second idea properly. But for the first idea I would rather create additional terrain for the sea volcanos instead of storing them into arrays, so you don't have to think about it if I reload slic.

Actual the best sollution would be to get the source code and implement it directly.

-Martin

[Pedrunn]

so you don't have to think about it if I reload slic.

This would be catastrophic for the game

I would rather create additional terrain for the sea volcanos instead of storing them into arrays,

But it has to be saved in arrays otherwise how will i know where to put the volcanos and rifts?
Simulating the map creation?!? I Dont think so, too much work!