Wonder Possibilities

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Locutus

But there are plenty of other issues in which Hancock and other people with 'far-out' ideas (such as e.g. Clyde Winters) have a point, something that other historians and archeologists ought to take more seriously, IMHO...

I agree. Established archaeologists stick to a script and seem reluctant to venture into other discussions even when shown evidence they can't explain. . .

One item that comes to mind is the idea that the Sphinx has "evidence" of water erosion, which seems odd, when it's in the middle of a desert environment. . .

[Immortal Wombat]

Woohoo!

I got some of the city expansion tile improvements to work. Thanks Martin, it seems I had set Class:Road. Class:Mine seems to solve it, and now 9 out of 16 of them display correctly, specifically Tileset Indices: 84 and 92-99.
Tilesets 85-91 are showing blank space.

Still, thats 9 at least available for wonders

[Leonidas]

Fast work, Immortal.

Do images of the Wonders have to drawn, or can they be imported from other works?

Sorry, I don't know enough about the workings/graphics of CTP2 to know how this actually works. . .

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Woohoo!

I got some of the city expansion tile improvements to work. Thanks Martin, it seems I had set Class:Road. Class:Mine seems to solve it, and now 9 out of 16 of them display correctly, specifically Tileset Indices: 84 and 92-99.
Tilesets 85-91 are showing blank space.

Still, thats 9 at least available for wonders

That is also odd and higher tile set indices should also be available as I can access all the single road pices.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

Leonidas, that wasn't using wonder graphics, they'd have to be made specially; I was using tile imps I converted from BlueO's city expansion mod last month.

Martin, it is indeed strange, and I noticed somethign else after I posted. Though the TileIDs were set up like that in the TIle File, in tileimp.txt, the TileSet numbers were given as 600-615 Yet they still showed up in the game. Its really most bizarre.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Leonidas, that wasn't using wonder graphics, they'd have to be made specially; I was using tile imps I converted from BlueO's city expansion mod last month.

No problem

Has anyone looked into actually doing the art work for Wonders yet?

[Immortal Wombat]

I guess not. It depends what we want as landmark wonders. Is there a list yet?

Anyway, update on the tile side of things, I have found 18 indeces that work in both the tile and in timleimp.txt and in the game.
These are: 84, 92-99, 600 and 608-615 (ranges inclusive) working on this basis, It seems that every other block of 7 or 8 work, but I haven't had time to test many other values.

In any case, I have managed to implmement 16 city suburbs as tile improvements, which makes the city expansion a lot less complex hopefully, with no huge host of terrains and goods, and no problem of the big old suburbs being traded across the map so much.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
In any case, I have managed to implmement 16 city suburbs as tile improvements, which makes the city expansion a lot less complex hopefully, with no huge host of terrains and goods, and no problem of the big old suburbs being traded across the map so much.

Wow!!!!!!!
this is a huge improvement to city expansion wich i use in my almost ready mod.
Do you have the code?
And the tile improvements?

[Kull]

Some really neat stuff here! Locutus suggested i drop in for a visit, and this is a fantastic idea! Some truly revolutionary thinking! Now I'm not much of an artist, but it seems to me that much of this "tile improvement art" already exists in the world of Civ2 Scenarios. So rather than create stuff from scratch, why not borrow and edit what already exists? As an example, the attached file contains three pieces of tile art from the Civ2 Jules Verne scenario; Pyramids, an underwater city, and a waterfall:

If you like this idea, the next step would be to develop a list of desired wonders (I'd recommend including "Natural Wonders" such as the Grand Canyon) and then issue a "call for tile art" on the Civ2 forums (HS-Scenario League and Civ2-Creation). There's plenty of knowledgeable designers who could tell us which scenarios contain the art we're looking for.

[Locutus]

Kull,
Thanks for having a look

AFAIK we've never borrowed stuff from Civ2 before and (IMNSHO) with good reason: CtP2 can handle much better graphics than that. The Civ2 graphics are small, only 256 colors, there's no shadows, no alpha channel, etc. With all due respect to the makers of that Civ2 art (most of them are just hobbyists but still manage to produce professional quality art - it's the limitations of the engine that restrict them), those tiles you posted just don't do justice to the beautiful photos Leonidas posted on page 1. CtP2 tiles probably wouldn't do so either, but they generally tend to look much better than Civ2 ones.

That said, I think Morgoth (and Katy) left the CtP community ages ago and BlueO also moved on to Civ3, so (AFAIK) we're without really talented artists at the moment. So if noone can come up with high-quality CtP2 art, it might indeed be good to have a good look at those Civ2 scenarios and see to what degree that stuff can be used by us (but resizing is probably involved, which always screws things up).

One other thing we might want to look at is AoE, maybe some of the wonders there can be reused? I haven't played that game in ages, but I do remember that it had some really neat wonder art. Also, perhaps the graphics from the Civ3 city view could be reused? They're not exactly ugly either, but I don't know how well that would work. Also, I don't know where various fan-made CtP city styles come from, but the guys who made that stuff did an impressive job as well, maybe some of them still hang around and could help us out?

Edit: natural wonders are a nice idea too, Dale brought this up a while ago - they'd be created randomly across them map and have a tourist benefit or something. That would be interesting.

[Martin Gühmann]

[SIZE]Originally posted by Locutus[/SIZE]
Also, I don't know where various fan-made CtP city styles come from, but the guys who made that stuff did an impressive job as well, maybe some of them still hang around and could help us out?

I thought Harlan made the Meso-American Pyramid and the Castle city styles for CTP1 and added the industrial age styles to CTP1. PinkFriend made the ancient and renaissance palace style he offered it to Wes to implement it into his MedPack2 in the beta thread. But unfortunatly he had no idea how convert his graphics to sprites therefore I did it and added the the industrial style by taking screencaptures of Harlan's Industrial styles and cut out the non style specific portions and cut out the palace from PinkFriend's style and combined them, by the way I made the roofes of the industrial buildings green in order to harmonize them with the green copper patina of the palace roofs. I don't who is pinkfriend he made only 13 post exept of one all in the MM2 alpha and beta threads. The Egyptain style and the new modern age was my idea.

-Martin

[Locutus]

Ah yes, thanks for refreshing my memory (again).

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
The Egyptain style and the new modern age was my idea.

Did you also make the graphics for these? The Pyramid style is by far the best looking city style. If you made it, you would definitely be a candidate for designing these wonder graphics for us

[Immortal Wombat]

I have the AoK X-pack now, so that'll be as good a place as any to start with the American wonders.

Oh, and isn't Dave a graphic artist?

[Locutus]

Is he? Never seen any art from him, AFAIK... Then again, I could be wrong...

Anyway, Ben and I have been looking at AoE art (Ben at AoK and Conq, I at AoE and RoR), below are all wonders from AoE(+RoR) and 2 from AoK. Maybe IW can post the rest of the AoK pics later, if we decide we like these.

Question to anyone who currently has Civ3 (I don't): are the City View pictures in a readable format? Could some examples of those be posted here as well, for comparison?

From top-left to bottom-right: the Spanish, Aztec, Middle Eastern, Asian, Roman, Greek and Egyptian wonders (no, I don't know what some of these are supposed to be either).

[Locutus]

I managed to get a picture of the wonders 'in action' (not really, just copy-pasted with PSP). I'm afraid the quality is not very high, I'm a total moron when it comes to graphics, but it gives an impression of what it might look like (although the wonders might be slightly too large here)...