trying to edit - help !!

[Thunderchild]

Hi all !

I am trying to cut out all the futuristic advances from CTP to have a good 20th century style game (a la Civ 2)
How can I cut advances out of the game ?
I have tried easymod and hacking the text files, but I am not that good at it !
Can someone give me an idiots guide to removing advances ?

Thanks - Andy MC
thunderchild@genesia.freeserve.co.uk

[Dogmatrix]

Hey Thunderchild,
Doing what you want to do isn't that difficult, you only have to edit 3 files (four if you realy want). I thought I'd reply because I had to do this for my own mod recently and it's fresh in my mind, at the minute. First thing is use Easymod to make you a Scenario so that you're not editing the main file for CTP. It should create a folder, inside scenarios/whatever_you_called_the_mod called scen0000 the files I'm talking about can be accessed from that file.
The four files to change are:
default/gamedata/advance.txt
default/gamedata/advanceicon.txt
english/gamedata/gl_str.txt
english/gamedata/help_str.txt(this one doesn't need changing but it does clean up some loose ends)
At the top of advance.txt is a number, this as you probably guessed is the number of advances in the file, you should keep this number correct but I don't think it matters. To remove the advance simply select the text, from ADVANCE_NAME to ADVANCE DONE

Eg, if you were removing AGRICULTURE you'd get rid of the text out of Advance.txt
146

from here~ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE
{
ADVANCE_DEFAULT_ICON ICON_ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE
ADVANCE_DEFAULT_BRANCH BRANCH_AGGRESSIVE_WAR

ADVANCE_AGE_INDEX 0
POWER_POINTS 1
ADVANCE_COST 20
}

### ADVANCE DONE ### ~ to here

ADVANCE_TOOLMAKING
{
ADVANCE_DEFAULT_ICON ICON_ADVANCE_TOOLMAKING
ADVANCE_DEFAULT_BRANCH BRANCH_SEA

ADVANCE_AGE_INDEX 0
POWER_POINTS 2
ADVANCE_COST 20
ALLOWS_ROADS,
Etc, etc
That gets the advance out of that file, make sure you change the number to the right amount after deleting an advance, in this case from 146 to 145.

Now for ADVANCEICON.txt. It, like advance.txt, has a number at the top so make sure it's correct(you can check this with easymod3.3). All you have to do in this case is remove the whole line that starts with the advance you want to get rid of.
Eg, to continue with removing Agriculture I'd get rid of the line that starts with ICON_ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE from out of advanceicon.txt

80
ICON_ADVANCE_DEFAULT "CM038F.tga" "CM038A.avi" "GAMEA001.txt" "HISTA001.txt" "PREQA001.txt" "VARIA001.txt" "Null" "STATA001.txt"
THIS ONE HEREICON_ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE "CA001F.tga" "CA001A.avi" "GAMEA001.txt" "HISTA001.txt" "PREQA001.txt" "VARIA001.txt" "Null" "STATA001.txt" it goes to here in the txt file
ICON_ADVANCE_TOOLMAKING "CA002F.tga" "CA002A.avi" "GAMEA002.txt" "HISTA002.txt" "PREQA002.txt" "VARIA002.txt" "Null" "STATA002.txt"

Etc, Etc. Again make sure you reduced the number at the top by one to account for you removing Agriculture.

Next is the file gl_str in scen0000/english. This file contains a lot of the names that CTP puts on things and has at the start the name of all the advances.
Eg, again to continue removing agriculture, take out the line that starts with ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE, NOTE: you don't have to worry about a number at the top of this file as it has none, thought you'd notice but thought I'd say it anyway .

This last file is optional, it doesn't matter if you leave the stuff in here or not, but it will clean up the files and make them smaller, a needed thing if my mod is to be up/downloadable in a moderate time, my internet connection sucks!!! . Anyway back to what I'm tryin to explain, All you have to do is remove the line that starts with ADVANCE_AGRICULTURE_HELP, in Agricultures case I don't think it exsists I certainly couldn't find it anyway .

That is all you have to do to remove an advance, if you wish to remove multiple its just as easy, except for the changing of the numbers but oh well. Hope this helps and if you have any further questions I'd be happy to answer,
Dogmatrix

Update!: I've forgotten what I was going to say here because I went off to get some cake I had made, I made it for my mum for mothers day, and forgot. Don't ya hate that , maybe not but it gets annoying when it happens about every ten seconds. See ya again!
[This message has been edited by Dogmatrix (edited May 14, 2000).]

[Dogmatrix]

Hey Andy,
Finally read you E-mail, havn't been on the internet at home for a few days sorry, and am happy to here the news was useful. As for using maps that you've made I'm not %100 sure but the editing readme that comes with the 1.2 patch tells you how to do it. Also a lot of the other poeple at this site can, no doubt, offer some help. Deffinantly, i think that's spelled right, try out the readme file first cause I've only done this once and that was a few too many months ago .

See ya,
Dogmatrix, or Andrew Drew for short