My Letter To Activision (Being Nice...)

[Rhuarc]

Would a mod editor make people like WesW's job any easier? I know he is putting a lot of time into the MedMod2, and anything that would help him out would be worth it. In my opinion anyway!

[The Evans]

Damn them

What I loved about Civ 2 was the modding. If was so easy if you spent an hour or so fiddeling with it. CTP2. I havn't a clue how to mod it. The editor screen is to large and confusing! I hope they reply to the letter, and give you modders some decent modding equiptment! Oh, and you could senfd this if they refuse to let you have them
It scares me......

:0

[Immortal Wombat]

Actually, the til editor wont make modding any easier, but it will make it possible to do more modding, of tile improvements and terrain graphics.

On a related topic, I emailed Martin the Dane (creator of the *.zfs editor for CTP) about whether he would have a go at writing some software than will decompress .til files, cos Activision are such gits... He has agreed to give it a shot, so things are looking more hopeful.

[Darkknight]

Yeah! great news immbot.
I took up the post around dec15 or so just before Christmas so there wasn't many mods out around then. I made a few of my own at the start but left the heavy duty (Slic) modding to programmers. I had to gather knowledge on all the various parts of modding and help newbies along. But there was so many areas I couldn't really know it all and Mark wanted some tutorials for newbies about all the different files. I didn't have time and the modding was dieing down a bit so I resigned. I only had it for about five weeks.
I'm still looking for my 400 posts that I was supposed to get I could upload my own avator if I had those. Now I have to slog through 200 more posts.
It was good fun, got to help a load of people and I got to know how a game like this is made. so not a dissapointment.

Shane

[Immortal Wombat]

Shame about the post count thing
I would subtely suggest floating down to the OT, but post-count no longer counts there, so just keep posting I guess...
I think the post of Mod Editor has been taken on by the collective group here, everyone is willing to answer questions and stuff.

[Peter Triggs]

That's good news about Martin the Dane.

Btw, Wombat. Thanks for the tip about getting a city's production over in CTP1. It was just the idea I needed. Great lateral thinking!

[The Evans]

I didn't say easier, I said better. There's a difference That's good news though, but one thing, how do I instal mods, without overwrighting the original game files. Is there a mod controller like with Close Combat games?

:0

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by The Evans
I didn't say easier,

Rhuarc asked

There are two ways to install mods.
1) Like the MedMod, use modswapper (download program and readmes here.) This makes all the gamefiles swap from the default and use the mods ones, assuming they are named slightly differently. See the medmod, or CityMod2 for examples.

2) Put it into a scenario directory, copy the layout of the Activision scenarios, then start a game using "select scenario" This is not ideal because of various savegame bugs, but it is easier to get the hang of.

[Martin Gühmann]

ModSwapper

I also know two other methods:

3. You put in a *.zip file all the necessary files with file structure. This method has the disadvantage that it will overwride all the original files, you can't swap back if you want to play a scen or another mod and you forgot saving the overwritten files.

4. The method used in HARLAN'S GRAPHICS MOD for CTP1 and Citymod for CTP2 was renaming the files to something else Harlan used a suffix (MODPACK) and also Citymod (MOD). The second step is to tell the user were these modded files goes. The third step is renaming the original files to something else and the final step is to cut of the suffix. Instead of the suffix you can also use a prefix. For ModSwapper you just need to add three files to the list.

ModSwapper is a very powerfull but sinple program. First it searchs for a *.txt file with gamefile in the filename. The gamefile.txt contains a list of all files that are in the ..\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\.

For example:

citysize.txt
diplomacyproposal.txt
diplomacythreat.txt
advancelists.txt
personalities.txt
feat.txt
endgameobjects.txt
CM2_citystyle.txt
CM2_agecitystyle.txt
CityMod2 (Deutsch)
CM2_newsprite.txt
CM2_Great_Library.txt

The game will load a file called feat.txt and a file called CM2_agecitystyle.txt and not file called agecitystyle.txt. That's the magic of ModSwapper you give your modified file a different name and change also the name of the file according to your modified file in the list of the gamefile.txt. The default gamefile.txt has 65 lines. All lines afterwards this line are ignored by the game but not by ModSwapper. Line 66 will be displayed in ModSwapper therefore this line is for the name of the mod. The files newsprite.txt and Great_Library.txt aren't loaded from the regulary gamefiles therefore line 67 and 68 are for ModSwapper only.

Now I will explain what ModSwapper do. Modswapper search for *.txt file with gamefile in their names. The 66th line of all of these files will be displayed in ModSwapper. Now you select one of these mods from the list. ModSwapper has already placed the files:

orig_gamefile.txt
orig_newsprite.txt
orig_Great_Library.txt

This are files identical to the original files created by ModSwapper as you installed it.

Now Modswapper will overwrite these files:

gamefile.txt
newsprite.txt
Great_Library.txt

Withe these files if we use the example above:

CM2_gamefile.txt
CM2_newsprite.txt
CM2_Great_Library.txt

In general ModSwapper will overwrite the file newsprite.txt with the file that is located at line 67 of ???_gamefile.txt and the Great_Library.txt will be overwritten with the file at line 68.
And finally the gamefile.txt will be overwriten with the modified gamefile.txt.

And one last thing of ModSwapper the files in the ..\ctp2data\german\gamedata folder are not included in the gamefile.txt. Therefore you have also to modify the Strings.txt in the same folder. It contains also a list of files. That is the only file that is in the gamefile.txt.

In comparison to the scenario file structure ModSwapper has the advantage to prevent savegame bugs. With the patch I get a the extra turn bug. A turn only for me and not for the AIs. I the move points for my units are reset, I get extra PW, Gold, Scinence et cetera. And maybe your savegames becomes corrupted. In my last game savegames produced crashes and crashes also already loaded successfully savegames. And early savegames showed strange effects: My land cities used the sea city sprites of CTP1 I don't know why. I only know that I put them into a self created sub directory but I didn't implement them.

But there is also another advantage of ModSwapper for a small mod like CityMod2: CityMod2 is compartible with your old unmodded savegames. That's not true for the scen structure. So far as I know you have just wait for the next tech or til a city grows and you can see the new city styles. CityMod2 is just a mod for your eyes no changes of the rhules, I think that is the reason for its compartibilty. A mod based on a scenario file structure is be limitated with changes afterwards you started a game.

I didn't mentioned how to install ModSwapper but I think you should know how to install a program.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

The first one that you suggest is an overwrite, which The Evans asked to avoid, and the second is an overwrite with backups made, so

[Martin Gühmann]

I know that both possibilities are very ,therefore I explained how ModSwapper work. I didn't find any readme or other documentation about it. Every mod should be for Modswapper. So you can play this mod, today, and another mod tomorrow. This program is the golden way to install a mod and is of course very . it should be in the Apolyton CTP2 Database.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

Yeah, I agree, ModSwapper is a great tool. Just scenarios should need the scenario structure.

[The Evans]

Thanks, but either it was too complicated for me to understand, or I didn't really care I'll look at the mod-swapper sometime. But not now, Thanks for the "help" (/brain hurting waffle)

:0

[Darkknight]

I hate complicated programs. I just do it the manual way.
I also hate it were you come back after 10 minutes to find this screen waiting for you to reply and you cant remember what you were going to say

[Immortal Wombat]

BUMP

Locutus, I think the time has come to send the letter.
I think that probably you are right, and that it would be better off going through a member of the A-team, and sometime before Activision go backrupt.
If you could send it as a letter, then I would be very grateful.

Whatever you think would be best. Thanks

Ben