[C4:AC] MOD base v0.207 (download)

[Rubin]

There are two ways to enable the sounds and I realize that my initial structure approach might be unfortunate.

Here is what I did:

Copy the "fx" and "voices" folders from 

"C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" 

to

"C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\C4AC"

This would allow for for ALL mods to use the SMAC/X sound files. My idea was to make the sounds available for all kinds of variations to the C4:AC base mod without having to copy&paste the folders every time a new mod version was added.

Kable, it may be a good idea to rename the folder in order to avoid confusion; perhaps something like "C4AC_Audio".

We do not want the SMAC/X sound files distributed with the mod and we do not want the SMAC/X sound files included in the Sourceforge SVN version.

[Kable]

Good point about sharing the sounds between mods, putting them directly into the main civ 4 assets folder made sense to me when you mentioned that.

As it gets towards release stage I assume they'll be an installer like many other mods... this could easily contain a custom step which picks up the SMAC/X location from the registry and sticks the audio wherever is required. That would be the ultimate in simplicity.

A start menu item could be included to run the copy step at a later date, if SMAC isn't available or installed when the mod is run.

[ForesterSOF]

I coppied the files and not the folders and files.

That could have been my problem.

[ForesterSOF]

That was it.

I put it in my Mod/Assets and worked like a charm.

[ForesterSOF]

Rubin; for redundency do you want to put the .207 on the Source forge download

That way we can advertise it is still being worked on and maybe get some new people that are checking only SF.

[PJayTycy]

Should I try to port the different changes I made to the SDK to the new base on subversion's SVN ? Or do you prefer to work from scratch ?

List of things that could be implemented :
-> home city for units
some pictures
pic 15 : independent unit
pic 16 : same unit after issuing the "rehome" command
pic 20 : example of the rehome-command gui

-> support for crawling functionality in the SDK
-> crawler unit XML
almost all other pictures at the link I posted

-> support for different tech colours (although it seems that is still included in rubin's base, as it was only python-work)


Personally I think the "Home City" functionallity could be usefull, even if you decide not to implement crawlers.


edited because direct-links to pictures on picasaweb didn't work

[Rubin]

PJayTycy, thank you for having written such an excellent guide on how to access the SVN!

I just checked out the lastest version and fixed some missing graphics. There are some junk files that should be deleted but I need to go through the files carefully before deleting anything (I did delete a junk mp3 file and 4 junk png images).

[Blake]

Originally posted by PJayTycy
Should I try to port the different changes I made to the SDK to the new base on subversion's SVN ? Or do you prefer to work from scratch ?

List of things that could be implemented :
-> home city for units
some pictures
pic 15 : independent unit
pic 16 : same unit after issuing the "rehome" command
pic 20 : example of the rehome-command gui

-> support for crawling functionality in the SDK
-> crawler unit XML
almost all other pictures at the link I posted

-> support for different tech colours (although it seems that is still included in rubin's base, as it was only python-work)


Personally I think the "Home City" functionallity could be usefull, even if you decide not to implement crawlers.


edited because direct-links to pictures on picasaweb didn't work

I think there are grave balance and micromanagement issues here which must be assessed.

Supply: I tend to prefer supply costing hammers to supply costing Gold - it means that maintain a large army makes it harder to build more units, rather than more expensive...
And then there is the problem with +SUPPORT, free supply is only useful to the extent you micromanage your units to be supported not from the productive cities (which train units so much faster) but from the spammed out marginal cities... not cool.

What I would tend to favor is a system somewhat like CTP2 with distributed supply costs... like say you have 30 units, you have 10 free supply, you'd have 20h of supply which would get deducted from cities as a kind of tax. We could have a button to deemphasize supply in a city and also have a "Build Supply" process which allows you to effortlessly designate supply cities. This handily gets around the issue of excessive micromanagement while keeping the benefits of the hammer based supply costs and keeping SUPPORT a powerful effect.

So far as crawlers go, the balance issues are grave. I would think it would be best to have them work much as I thought they would work when I first played SMAC, that is the crawlers would be useful for crawling tiles outside of he city radius, rather than crawling everything which MOVES. Under this model, we would want to have crawlers cost a "pop" point, in other words, setting a crawler to work takes a tile worker off a tile in the home city, we say that the crawler is transporting the workers out to the worksite, the pop is still needed to turn the stuff into buildings. This would mean that crawlers can be effectively used in a niche role, you could use them for energy parks and stuff where the super-energy city doesn't have to be in the middle of the dry energy park...
Under this model crawlers could safely extract even the entire output of a tile rather than just one yield type. In the city itself the crawler outputs could be display much like specialists, a column of crawlers which you can mouseover to see how much each is bringing in. Since the crawlers sustainable by a base is limited to the base population this should be possible to scale reasonably well in the GUI....

I really like crawlers and I would like for them to return in a balanced role, as such I do support adding the home city and crawler infrastructure back in, modified for balance.

The support model would have to be done from scratch, of course but it doesn't seem like it would be too hard except maybe fairly distributing the excess "tax".

[MarkG]

screens look awesome!

thank you for your work!

[Impaler[WrG]]

This release dosn't contain any DLL, shouldn't we have a release witch includes the latest code (assuming its stable). Any thoughts on when the next version should be released and what it should have?

[Impaler[WrG]]

I'm having a weird issue trying to load original Civ4 (which I havent touched since I got WL) it always hangs on Init Python even without running a mod, Custom Assets is empty and I cant see any reason it should be doing this. Anyone have any ideas? I might have to re-install

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I am not going to lie to you. (a) this looks friggin awesome guys-bringing together the best of SMAC and C4 is one which is LONG overdue. I take it you will be making use of Impaler's amazing Spy mod to recreate the Infiltrators of SMAC? (b) I would LOVE to see your dll modifications, because I am hoping they will give me insight into whether my Ideology Mod is moving in the right direction or not!

Keep up the stellar work guys.

Aussie_Lurker.

[wodan11]

By the way, copying sound files is no more copyright infringement than copying the graphics for the leaderheads (etc). In other words, you're already copying leaderheads, you might as well make it easy on the rest of us and copy the sounds too. (Besides, my copy of SMAC is for Macs, and it would be a PITA to try and get them to my PC.)

Regardless, this kind of usage is a gray area of the law. Copyrights only really matter if they go to court. That is, if the person/company who claims to own a copyright takes you to court. And then, they have to (a) prove ownership, and (b) prove enforcement. An unenforced copyright means squat. What that means is that if the company is aware of infractions and choose to take no action against them, then their chance of the judge upholding their claim against others is lessened.

There are plenty of cases of fans using SMAC artwork, sounds, etc. The owners of the copyrights have taken no action against them (that I'm aware of, anyway). So, I'd say you're pretty safe.

In any event, the action they would take against either you or others is simply a "cease and desist" letter. So it's not like they would just go straight to the lawyers and take you to court.

Also, keep in mind what I said about them being "aware" of it. Chances are, they know all about what the SMAC fans are doing. They're not stupid. However, in their mind the fans are a Good Thing. They keep interest in the game alive, and this increases possible future sales. If nothing else, perhaps someone (:cough: Take2/Firaxis :cough: ) might want to buy the rights. So, taking action against the fans is not something they want to do.

But, they can claim in some possible future court case that they weren't "aware" of these infractions by the fans. So, in other words, I'm saying you do not want to write or call them and ask permission. For one thing, they have to say No. For another, they then have to take action against all the fans (because they can't claim they aren't unaware anymore).

Wodan

[vyeh]

Actually, it would be a nice sign if there was some effort at protecting SMAC copyright. It might show some corporate interest in SMAC II. A successful C4:AC mod could potentially cut into the market for SMAC II. (Why spend $50 for SMAC II if you already have Civ 4 and there is a SMAC mod?)

[Zoid]

SMAC II is safe I think. This project is going nowhere fast...