The Medieval Pack II Beta: The Gathering

[Bluevoss]

Wes,

I'll look at the diplomod thread and keep trying. Keep your chin up. About two years ago, a comrade and I cracked Sierra's Red Baron flight model code and modified the aircraft to fly better. We thought we had everything figured out and playtested it (so we thought) to death. But within 30 mintues of posting, a deluge of problems were reported.

Still, we weathered it. And since then, groups have built on what we did to improve the game far beyond what was released. Which is why RB3D is still a popular games three years after release.



------------------
Bluevoss-

[preacherman]

Wes Playing game in cheat mode. at each pause could hear sound for walking. seem to happen most with player 4 sometimes with 3. I/A/W flow chart should of had roads with wheel, not so. Why do zulas sound like horses?

[Coflek]

Just to report more or less the same issues...
Game crashed on 2380 BC(a bit earlier) but I tried the gigantic map, and barbarians are still not agressive enough. There are plenty of them, but they don't attack straight.

I built a settlers and went into a goody hut, barbs were there, and they didn't attack me next turn. Plus instead of goiong to the city 2 squares away, they left in the opposite way and dissapeared. All barbs were archers, and I found a stack of 6 once with a warrior, this time they killed it straight, but again didn't go to the nearby city. (barbs seem to stack regularly now)

Everything else seemed fine, science runs well, and new tile values are much better.
Great work, everyone!!!

[This message has been edited by Coflek (edited March 10, 2001).]

[Chris B]

Wes, I'm having a problem remnicient to the 1 i had with alpha. It still can't read the different governments and callls it a database error when I load. However, I didn't use modswapper. Modswapper works, but the only mod it sees is the standard game.

[WesW]

I have been making some improvements to the mod, and fixing some minor glitches. Mostly, I added stats for the Wonder units (I can't think of another name for them right now), I seemed to have fixed the mountain city sprite problem, which no one had reported, and I altered the Intro readme to provide a warning about using Modswapper.

If you followed my initial advice regarding its use, you have made the same mistake I did, and you will need to get the originals download from my webpage. Please read the revised Intro at the top of the thread, and manually place the three files in the originals download in their proper folders.

On the downside, I have not been able to fix the "75 turn glitch", though I have noticed a few things, which may enable some of you computer-savvy guys to figure out what is going on.

1)The computer seems to stop running the game, and start searching the hard-drive for something as soon as the glitch occurs. This would suggest to me that it is not related to the pauses that occur when a goody hut gives an advance or unit.
2)If you load autosave, which puts to back to the turn where the glitch occurs, and use cheat mode to select the problem AI, or one who goes after him, and press End Turn, the game will cycle through with no problem.
However, when you re-assume control of player 1, the game will crash at the same point that it did before, meaning during the same AI's turn. The problem AI, I believe, is the one after the last color shown, meaning that whatever causes the glitch happens at the very start of the player's turn. This would suggest that the glitch is not dependent upon anything which happened in a particular turn, but rather upon the human being in control of player 1.

I have not tried playing as another player (2 or 3, etc.), though I did try out-commenting the scenario and diplomod slc's and re-loading slic in the cheat mode to see if that would do the trick.

If anyone has any thoughts, please state them, and those of you who can play the mod need to try tinkering with it, to see if you stumble upon anything which might help us.

[David Murray]

Looks good so far, but why has it completely messed up entries in the great library? I hope that's going to be fixed sometime--I have no idea how to fix it.

Some more stuff I wanted to say but...er...I forgot.

"Sometimes I feel so inar...inar....inar...inarticulate."
[This message has been edited by David Murray (edited March 11, 2001).]

[GreatDane]

Regarding the 75 turn crash bug:

This may not be relevant but I will report it just in case.
I used the cheat mode to select the AI player as Wes suggested, and when I ended the turn, the game gave me the message about not being able to support the units.

Maybe the bug is related to this somehow, maybe not.

Anyway keep up the good work. This mod got me playing the game again.

[Gooner]

Wes, I am not a programming expert, so what I'm about to suggest may be completely off-beam, but I'm going to suggest it anyway.

In my limited experience of programming languages there is normally some sort of debugging routine that you can use when stepping through a program - either a box on screen listing the current command line or some sort of text file that is generated.

I wouldn't mind betting that the guys at Activision had some sort of routine like this when they were writing the game - especially for the SLIC stuff.

I wonder if it's possible for somebody to either write a debug program or somehow coax it out of Activision? It would make the writing of mods a darn sight easier.

The mysterious crashes could then be pinpointed rather than at the moment trying to sort things out by trial and error.

If what I have said is completely ridiculous, forgive my stupidity.

[WesW]

UPDATE ALERT: Well, not an update per-se, but very improtant. I found the cause of the glitch! It is one of the triggers in the scenario.slc. I don't know which one yet, I will test them out in the next couple of days by trial-and-error to see which one it is. I should have the rest of the texts updated as well by then to eliminate the other mistakes that I have found in the mod.
In the meantime, you need to open up the MM2_script.slc, and out-comment the MM2_scenario.slc line at the bottom. Those of you having trouble with the Diplomod can out-comment that one as well for the time being.

[Mal the magnificient]

At long last I've managed to catch up with the rest of the crowd and get this mod working before catching the same loop c2400BC. I think someone else has already reported the "Call to Power:Not responding" on the CTRL-ALT-DEL menu which seems to suggest some attempt to read the CD-ROM.

But then I'm not a tech so wouldn't know any better and haven't even got the ability to come up with an original username (Is it possible to change this or am I doomed forever to live with this ridiculous title)

So not being able to add anything new to the thread this is just a short thank you to you guys out there working so hard to turn this into an interesting game. I only wish I knew enough about it too help more.

One thing I have noticed though is that the Advance chart seems to be the game original and not the new one. Have I printed out the wrong document?

[Mal the magnificient]

Duh! I thought the commenting out of the scenario.slc code would catch the turn 75 glitch!!

But I had never even made it to turn 75 - more like turn 60 - until I did the dirty on the script file. Now I reach the turn 75 problem but without the stomping around.

Still much better stuff now where there's no chance of getting lucky and putting two AI civs out of the game before 3000BC now that there's the home guard out to hold the home front. Even if we can't get to the stage where we would have done the pesky little b*st*rds anyhow.

....

One other point though, Dale's Diplomacy Mod is designed to improve the AI diplomacy - Very good idea!!!

But there is another area of the game where CTPII has improved on CTP but seems to have given ALL the advantages to the human players. Don't tell me that you haven't done the same but you wander along to a new city at the early stages of the game and say to yourself - "Well let's see". If you get lucky you win a free city while, if not - you can always retreat when you see your lone warrior faced against a stack of five samurai and archers. If I knew where to look I'd start lloking for ways to work on this while you guys are working on the serious stuff

[Dale]

I'll be emailing a new MM2_diplomod.slc to Wes today. It disables break agreements and the re-creating of embassies. The AI will still try to create embassies normally, it just won't automatically re-establish them after a war. It's a random value.

There's just too many problems with break agreements (both the script in MM2 and the normal diplomacy mod script) so I've decided to cancel it. If you have no problems with break agreements, just simply don't update.

------------------
Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[preacherman]

Wes,Found many problems, no crash though. No militia, according to Tec tree should get roads with wheel--don't show up till trade. got to gunpower and cannon making and no new units. lost archers early in game with no foot replacements for then, makes it real hard to take mountain citys. catapault (were called sege engins) won't bambard. When they became obsolete no replacement for them.In the chart for land units Culverin available with cannon making and obsolete with cannon making.
The futher into the game I got the less slowdowns I had. I am up to 1560AD. I saved the game hope I can get it back.
Had one Ai with 2 settlers in my civ, requested withdraw--they aggreed two turns later one had left the other built a city in center of my civ.
Other wise mod works good at war most of game with at less 4 out of 5 Ai civ. barb not even worth talking about. Ai's attack all my citys with large stacks.Gold seem great--PW was genarated of--happnes became a problem at city size above 7--no room to adjust bars without lose of happness. playing hard--normal map--6 civs--barb's on roving bands.
[This message has been edited by preacherman (edited March 13, 2001).]

[Mal the magnificient]

Is this a topic in itself or what but I've got that turn 75 crash again - 1840BC to be precise?

All I can add here is that the message that the Native Americans are racing to build the Temple of Karnak is the last thing I see before the game sticks. That and the 30 times or so that the TryMilitia error has dumped me out of the game between one and three times before the inevitable conclusion.

And reloading the autosave gives me exactly the same problem.

Seriously though, the play is still better than the original product.

[Locutus]

Update: I found the cause of the 75 turn problem. A fix should be available soon. If you can't wait: go into MM2_scenario.slc and replace all instances of 'EventisbandUnit(' with 'KillUnit(' (without the quotes). Haven't tested it yet, but I'm pretty sure this solves the bug.
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited March 14, 2001).]