Adding a tileimp: harder than it looks?

[Tellius]

Hi,

Being very enthousiastic about AOMIV, I wanted to add a bit of stuff here and there.

One thing is adding a Stone Road to represent the 'Heirbahns' as they are called here, of the Romans. They can only be built after a certain advance (Civic Engineering?) and until the Dark Ages. They have a movement bonus between that of road and railroad. The fact that the Stone Road goes obsolete, means there are never more than 3 road types in the TileImp menu - which is the maximum Stan told me.

Now, the road graphics are no problem. I also found the tileimp.txt where I have to add the info.

What are the problems that popped up?

* Tileimp.txt refers to an icon that appears in the menu (for instance ICON_TILEIMP_ROAD)
In tileimpicon.txt there seems to be a link between this description and a tga file (CT039F.tga for road) but a search of my hard drive could not find this tga file, nor could I find it in any ZFS library.
* Tileimp.txt also refers to a Tooltip and Statusbar. How does this 'compute'
* Tileimpicon.txt also refers for each imp to several txt files I can not find (gamet039.txt for instance). What do these entries mean?
* What other files do I need to alter (except of course for the tilefile itself)? For instance, in aidata I stumbled upon a ImprovementList.txt - which in plain vanilla CtP2 is very incomplete. Any other files or surprises?

Maybe I have taken on way too much, but ONE improvement can't be that difficult, right?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Tellius

[Karl V]

ASFAIK the
Tooltip TOOLTIP_TILEIMP_SELECT_ROAD1_BUTTON
and
Statusbar STATUSBAR_TILEIMP_SELECT_ROAD1_BUTTON is found in the tips.txt file, respectively in AOM_tips.txt.

tileimp.txt seems to be an "artefact" of Civilization:Call to Power, so are the referred Files like gamet039.txt, as the Icons for CTP II are defined in uniticon.txt (AOM_uniticon.txt), if I´m not wrong.

Other Files to alter:
Improvementlists.txt, gl_str.txt (in language folder).

Got a question:
How do solve the problem with the 3 tileimp limitation. ´Cause the "obsolete" Tileimp won´t disappear. Or is there a trick.
BTW, could you post the graphics, cause I did some altering myself with the tils.
Greetings,
Walter

[Ekmek]

I'm working on fixing the obsolete tileimp defect in the AE not sure how far the AE and AoMIV are in compatibility though

Welcome karl V!

[Tellius]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies. I was counting on the tileimp disappearing when it goes obsolete That'll probably kill the endeavour for me...

I found uniticon.txt and the other two files you refer to. Uniticon.txt itself contains some info I have to unlock first, but at least it points towards pictures I can find!

I'll take a screenshot of my current AOM game if you wish Karl, I have taken E's tileset as a basis, and altered almost all tileimps - only graphical changes so fare, the stone road would have been the first deeper change.

Now if anyone knows a fix for the three tileimp limit...

Tellius

[Karl V]

E wrote:

I'm working on fixing the obsolete tileimp defect in the AE not sure how far the AE and AoMIV are in compatibility though

Welcome karl V!

Thanks for the welcome.
I´m working, kind of, a merge of AE and AOMIV, at least, so that AOM IV runs with the AE Exe and Modswapper.
Now I´m at turn 62 and there are no probs occured so far. The Tileimps work properly, at least the few that I got at this stage of the game.
As far as the Tileset is concerned I got a question.
Is there a possibility to make the Mountainchains an Hillchains less "bulky". I mean there are large Sections of Mountains an Hills on the Map an other Parts are missing them.
And, oops two questions sorry , is it possible to have different type of Hills, so that just one type is not repeated over and over again. I messed around a bit with TileEdit and TileRules, an got more variety but I´m still not satisfied. Maybe you have some hint or Advice.
Thanks in advance.

Tellius wrote,

Thanks for the replies. I was counting on the tileimp disappearing when it goes obsolete That'll probably kill the endeavour for me...

In a way it does make sense, that obsolete Tileimps just don´t dissappear, i.eg. if u have not enough PW to build let´s say railroads, u have still the possibility to build roads, or your stoneroads.
Which Infos do you have to unlock in the Uniticon.txt. Maybe I can help, and maybe, if you want, we can work together on these problems. As I said I´m strongly interested in this stuff. And yes please, post a screenshot.

BTW, to both of you. Call me Walter, as it is my real Name. Karl V is just for loggin. Thx.

[Karl V]

Tellius,
something just crossed my mind. It´s maybe possible to add the stoneroad. But I´m at work now, so Í can´t look into the files. Will do this evening.
Walter

[Tellius]

Hi,

Walter, when I mean obsolete I really mean obsolete: you are no longer able to build the stone road (as far as I know, the Heirbahn technology got lost together with lost of other stuff from the Dark Ages on. Think of it like the supply wagon. You have to build them while you can, cause after the Dark Ages, no more option to build supply wagon.

This puts even extra emphasis on planning ahead towards the Dark Ages. First, you have to save gold and PW just to survive the Dark Ages event, secondly, you have to save extra PW to build those supply wagons and stone roads. Stone roads would be ideal to upgrade your roads so as to connect the most important parst of your empire - again, as long as you can.

The picture shows several tileimps I added (some with cheat mode of course) for farms, advanced farms, mines, advanced mines, megamines, fortress, watch tower, border fort (the one with the water ditch and some houses)... I did not yet touch much of the terrain - this is based on E's by the way.

By the way, E and I are dreaming (by lack of someone willing and able to program Delphi for a new version of tileedit) of 300% bigger tiles for the AE version of the game. It would make the game look absolutely stunning, I even bought Bryce 6 hoping I can someday actually use it for new bigger natural looking tiles. But no tileedit with the possibility of new sizes, no bigger tiles I'll try to add some pics in another post to wet your appetite though

Finally, did you have to do anything special to get AOMIV working on AE? How did you go about installing the thing? Very curious here, since it would make AOM the ultimate civ experience so far, bringing the intimidating AI of AE together with the epic feel and gameplay of AOM...

Tellius

[Tellius]

And as promised a taste of what I hope AE would look like with 300% bigger tiles

[Tellius]

Or this one for the mountains, with two possible forst types, hilly terrain (with the rocks showing), jungle...

I xan render all kinds of variations on terrain now I have Bryce though. Possibilities are limitless, tileedit is what's killing us right now.

[Tellius]

And finally a taste of the polar region, with polar mountains and forests.

I've been robbing other games blind, but don't feel too bad about it since the end product will be 100% free. Labour of love..

[Karl V]

Hello,

at the Moment I´m pretty speechless, to say the least, about this Terrain Graphics. And I was proud of the Hills I made.

Anyway, as far as the Roads are concerned:

I WAS WRONG. In other words good news.
I did a quick altering of the tileimp.txt and added the line
ObsoleteAdvance ADVANCE_WATER_LIFTS
It worked. The Icon for the Tileimp Grazing disappeared.
Now we just have to define the Stoneroads properly an hopefully it will work.

So far so good. Because I tried it with the Playtest and the Rev Build 700, so I don´t know wether it will work with a "ordinary" CTPII.exe with the official patch.
This leads me now to my AOM IV/AE Playtest. I did nothing special. I just uninstalled the original game, made a fresh install, but without deleting any AOM File, which is due to my laziness , an started the game. I used Modswapper to start an original Game, firstly, interesting thing is, I got an error message which says that Unit sprites Longbowman and Elephant warrior are missing. Because of that I started an AOM IV game and it worked without any problems. As I posted it above I´m not real far, because I started the game a few days ago. Oh yes, a few alterings were necessary for E´s UnitNation Flags. That´s all. And I totally agree with you, if this Playtest is successfull, which I doubt.

[Karl V]

Back to your Tile set.
Astonishing work, to say the least. As I said it above, I messed around with the Tileset, Terrains and Improvement. It bases of course on the Set made by E. Personally I liked the Hills from Civ 3, so I tried to convert them as you may see on Screenshot 1, but also some tweaking of some terrain goods, as I found it kind of irritating, that Iron Ore and Copper look the same.
Screenshot 2 an 3 tells the Story of Enabling Grazing and making it obsolete. Don´t know if you speak German so,
Domestizierung = Domestication, Weideland = Grazing
Bewässerung = Water Lifts.

[Tellius]

Hi,

Walter, glad you like my tileset (which still is for a big part E's tileset). I've been tinkering with it the entire evening.

I saw on the screenshot I posted, that the orientation of the advanced farm is not very good if placed next to a regular farm (houses don't line up, this disturbed me) so I changed that.

The pasture is barely visible on the screenie, so I made a new one with greener grass - sheep now have better contrast with the pasture they graze on.

I also made a new latifundia. Being very roman in nature, I took a farm and placed a roman looking building on it, looks great.

I also added a big mine-cogwheel (for the lifts going down) to the megamine (the one with four chimneys on my picture), it's now more readily recognisable as a mine.

Finally, I wasn't very satisfied with Stan's town and village, so I changed those too.

What you can not see on this picture, is the 'work in progress' pics. I used the worker graphics from Civ3 and put them, well, to work on the various graphics. Looks great.

I you like, I send you my tileset, but it is some 3600 kB!

Glad the obsolete thing works. Do you have any suggestions? I was thinking of making stone road available from Civil Engineering on (or is that too late in the game?) and making it obsolete with Dark Ages. Movement benefit 40% of regular movement - puts it right between road and railroad.

I was thinking of making it buildable only on plains, grasslands etc, but a quick google search proved the Romans could build these roads almost anywhere, they have several through mountain passes!

Any input is welcome!

Greetz

Tellius

[Tellius]

Hi,

Your tileset looks great too! Much brighter rivers!

I can't see 'screenshots 2 and 3' though. I do understand German, Belgians have to, we have a German minority living here!

Greetz

Tellius

[Karl V]

Screen2