[C4:AC] Artwork and design thread

[Gavin Berchler]

Please post all details here, ref any artwork, design, etc for the smac mod...



The frenchman has given us full permission to use his artwork....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139865

[Impaler[WrG]]

Though frenchman has skills I dont realy think his style matches the SMAC look and feel were going for.

Tech, Building and Wonder Icons are being pulled from SMAC itself. Its the 3D assets which have to be created from scratch. I would recomend we try to get asioasioasio, charly1977 or Hrochland (all on CFC) to make 7 Base structures to use as the whole base. They have all make impressive Building art and do requests.

We then just give each Faction the free "Base" BuildingClass which will have 7 sub types with each Faction having one as a UB (these could then serve as atatchment points for some of the Faction effects). The Base will be made large enough to cover most of the City Plot. At the same time we drop the Graphical representations of all the other Base Facilities and we end up with something very much like SMAC with a minimum of Art work. As more artwork gets done we can institute the series of consecutivly larger Bases and use a Python algorithm to switch them.

[Gavin Berchler]

I thought some of his futuristic stuff, was very smac orientated... eg cyborg, cloning vats etc. (for the min build icons ) His futuristic era splash would be perfect for one of the eras. We can also ask him nicely if he can tweak some other stuff..

I think we need some good 3d artwork for the city and if they are willing to help all the better. I have put up the base images from smac on the google code site here:

http://civ4smac.googlecode.com/files/factions%20city%20artwork.zip

If you want to share it with anyone just point them there.

[Impaler[WrG]]

That file has no extention on it, I'm looking in my own SMAC install and I think it was original .pcx but I dont know how to view such a file.

Ok I found a PCX viewer and U'm going to conver my whole SMAC image library into BMP for easier viewing. I'll contact the three artist I mentioned earlier and start a thread on CFC asking for volunteers for the Base art. I'll post the faction files their so people can see them too.

Dose anyone know a method of converting the Wonder movies? I always though they were brilliant.

[Gavin Berchler]

that file is bmp already.. I have the files in avi format already.

impaler.. what you should also start thinking about is setting up the interludes. I was thinking that the easiest way would be to add a extra file with the xml values.. that way each interlude would not have to be coded seperately... initially th interludes would be launched after a unit or buidling is built... hence we should as an extra xml keyword saying (launchinterlude)INTERLUDE_NAME(/launchinterlude) it would then refernce a gaminterludes.xml file with the following schema
interlude name...interlude_mindwormbuild
interlude icon
interlude text will contain the body text plus palcehoders for names and places...
name1 =janeba
city1= ironguard
city2=janeba complex.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Interludes should definatly be done by Python, it will be much easier then adding XML tags all over the place. Just use an Event manager to detect the triggers and throw up a little Interlude screen with the Text pasted ontop of a nice picture.

[Gavin Berchler]

yes that was what I was going to do at the beginning... but on further consideration I realised that interludes were a really fun, all be it underused, feature...

The interludes were divided into 2...

1. The standard story interludes.... eg mindworms first attack and conversations with planet.

2. The mini missions/sub plots. (eg what happens if your first mindworm unit is killed by a rival faction)

Sure we can hard code in most of the python stuff, however perhaps another way to do it which would allow us to do some additions at a later stage would be to build an interlude "engine" per se. Instead of scripting each event out seperately, we can use the engine to fire interludes... on the following instances
1. When a facility is built..eg centauri preserve
2. When a unit is built eg mindworms for the first time
3. When an attack on a particular unit/base happens. eg first mindworm attacks base on planet.

The first 2 can be launched by xml triggers however the third would need to be pythoned. The reason I think that it would be preferable to do the xml triggers, where possible, is that it would be very easy and more importantly quicker to create a new unit/building interludes, without having to go back and add more code and we can thus expand on the limited selection that was in the original smac.

I was thinking we could follow the same lines with the planetary council too.

[Impaler[WrG]]

If you admit that its nessary to make a python event triggering engine for SOME interludes then why double the effort and create XML based firing mechanisms for other interludes, infact we would need to embed several new tags int TWO differnt portions of code and effectivly pipe these very rare events up to python. Its much better to just have one consolidated method for doing something then two and this is adsactly the kind of Event driven mod that Begs for Python.

I'm no expert at Python (Translation: I am not voluntering to write this) but it should be simple to write a 'First Building' and 'First Combat' triggering Sript which would even be flexible enought for general use by other moders. Infact the Great Person Popup mod found HERE could probably be converted to do this quite easily with a bit of hacking. All the specifics will be arguments, some thing like...

InitializeInterlude( FirstBuilding, "BUILDING_CENTARUI_PRESERVE", "TXT_KEY_CENTARI_PRESERVE_INTERLUDE", "ART_DEF_INTERLUDE_BACKGROUND")

[Gavin Berchler]

I completely agree.. I just spoke to troy about it.. he thinks that this serves to be a standalone mod comp. and could be expanded a lot out beyond just the basic first battle etc.

why don't you focus on the other stuff like native life modifiers and the other parts...and we will complete this?

[Impaler[WrG]]

Yes find a good Pythonista to whip this up, I'll plug away on the SDK. Native life modifiers, you mean the Life Cycle bonus from thouse Buildings and various other sources like Planet Level?

My thoughts, make "Native Life" a kind of special CombatClass like "Melle" "archer" etc, It might be nessary to have 3 such classes for the land/sea/air worms. Their would be a special Bool their which would initiate alternative combat rules (Units could gain the Bool by upgrades as well) which pull in some PsiCombat modifier data from the Player level. The Mind worm Maturity levels could just be done by Combat Promotions or perhaps some means of using a single UnitClass for all worm levels and altering the specific one built when the player builds a worm. Upgrading would then be performed by replacing the Worm with the next highest member of the Class, that would have the advantage of allowing the Units Graphics to changed as it Promotes.

[Gavin Berchler]

I will get someone to knock it up so that it will do what we want..

You guys need to get the following done.

1. Native life cycle bonus- exactly as you described below. I like the unitclass idea which can get the unit icon changed as it levels up. On a side note I thought we would need to distinguish between wild worms and "home" grown ones. i thought it would be cool to perhaps have a person within the mind worms to distinguish from the wild ones.

2. You guys need to institute population limits and then allow certainn buildings to relax those limits

3. You guys need to institute per square nutrient and resource limits and allow techs to unlock those too .

4. Finally we need to get the warlords cccp instituted so we can get that bug fixed and built in.

There is a tonne of stuff to get through, personally point 4 for me is the biggie. but the native life is the other sticking point. i will get on with my stuff, I am back at work this week so it might take me a while longer to complete, unless other people can help out on the python front.

[N35t0r]

For 2., what about reworking health into life support?

[Gavin Berchler]

does health in civ4 control the amount or the rate of city growth?

[N35t0r]

Sort of both. As long as you have enough health, your city grows normally, if you go over the limit, citizens start eating an extra food per turn, but I'm sure this can be altered.

[Gavin Berchler]

I can change health to life support in a second... I just need to know if they are the same.....
and if they are... whats the equivalent of "healthy"..... "life supporty" just doesn't work

eg (Healthy: +1 redcross symbol)