Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Ancient-Era Artillery: Cradle3 started with three ancient-era artillery units (Belfroi, Onager, & Trebuchet) but all of them had "catapult-type" sprites. As described in an earlier post, the Belfroi was replaced by the Ballista from Cradle4, but that still left two catapults. The third was called a "Trebuchet" - except it wasn't - and the only existing Trebuchet sprite (from AOM) was a valiant attempt but the actions were jumpy and not up to par with the other units in Cradle. Eventually I found a good 3D model at Sketchfab and took screen shots of the unit facing in each of the required 5 directions.

I played around with shadows but couldn't get them to look natural, and ultimately built a sprite with 5 Move images and a single Idle (using the #4 Move). Accordingly it has proper facing in all 8 directions and looks EXACTLY like a trebuchet (see attached). Although it has no actual motion, that is also true of the new Ballista unit and is (I think) an acceptable compromise. I also created the necessary 2D art (using the same unit), recorded a "trebuchet firing" sound for the attack, and made all the required text file changes to put the new unit in game.

As part of this activity, the Cradle "Onager" was removed from the game (a blue catapult from "Age of Empires" with an attack animation but no movement) while the CtP2 "gold catapult" (with a full set of attack, movement, and Idle animations) was changed from Trebuchet to Onager (which is exactly what it is). In short, the three major forms of ancient artillery are now properly represented in Cradle 3+

[Kull]

Hagia Sophia: The original graphic in Cradle3 was a somewhat modified version of the one in the Apolyton pack (left side of attachment). But it simply didn't do justice to a building that was the Wonder of it's era. I was planning to insert revised versions of more Wonders, but it's a LOT of work, even with the availability of good 3D models. It's not the matter of having great art to use as a starting point, it's the process of shrinking it down to fit a 90x72 pixel frame and still retaining the detail (and then identifying and changing all the individual pixels which are reserved for "see-through" alphas or shadows). Anyway, there may be more like this, but....we'll see.

[Kull]

The fishing boats and trawlers are nice, but don't they add to much visual clutter once half of the map is paved with them?

Well, that's always been an issue with CtP2. The new system at least provides visual differentiation. The "old system" (see middle of attachment) paved the seas as well, but it was a uniform appearance. Now that same space has 3 different looks - and after "Trawlers", that increases to SIX. So, yes, a lot of "busyness" in the oceans but at least there's a large mix of graphics, and the TYPE of graphic (Net vs. Boats) actually means something (i.e.pillage-proof or not) AND "amount of food each provides increases with vessel size".

[N35t0r]

The fishing boats and trawlers are nice, but don't they add to much visual clutter once half of the map is paved with them?

[Kull]

OceanFarms L3 - "Trawlers": Trawling was a major improvement in fishing technology that first appeared in the 17th century but didn't mature until the 19th. Initially of course it was deployed by sailing vessels, but eventually they morphed into the various forms of engined trawlers which still set forth on the seas today. And just as "Advanced Farms" effectively merges "Pasture" and "Farms, this new TIMP will do the same at sea.

After due consideration, this new technology will be represented by vessels from the "Age of Sail" (see attached), and will be made available with the Astrolabe Advance. Modern-looking fishing vessels would be a better link with the eventual appearance of "Aquaculture" (renamed from "Automated Fisheries"), but that leaves a HUGE amount of time in which the ancient "Fisheries" boats remain on map, long past the time when they were supplanted. Sailing vessels by contrast leave a much shorter "anachronism" gap on the back end of the game, and frankly you can still see vessels like that engaged in fishing activity today, although clearly they are the minority.

Among other things, this new improvement provides incremental food bonus improvements, rather than the previous jump which occurred when going from Fisheries directly to Aquaculture. For example, previously you would see Shallow Water food going from 10 to 30 and Deep Water from 20 to 45. Now there's a "middle ground".

You'll notice that the Beach improvement has changed from a Net to a small open boat, and that signifies not only that it's a technology upgrade, but that boats can be sunk (i.e. pillaged). Which means this region is no longer "safe" - at least not if you upgrade from Nets. Decisions, decisions.

Lastly, I revised the Button Graphics (see red arrow) which now show the fish "goodies" available with each level of Ocean Farm, from the single Grey Fish found on Beach tiles, to the pelagic Tuna and Salmon which can be harvested with Fisheries, and finally the availability of all three with Trawling. Among other things, it's a more intuitive approach to the buttons, and won't have to change if any of the Net or Fishing Boat graphics are altered in the future. You'll also see that Trawlers is the 3rd button in the Ocean Farms group, while "Aquaculture" has shifted to OceanATM.

[Kull]

OceanFarms L2 - "Fishery": This next improvement expands the range of food collection to all Ocean tiles EXCEPT Beaches, which means these two TIMPs work together, rather than having one supplant the other. In that regard it is similar to the Cradle land approach, in which Pasture (Plains) and Farms (Grassland & Desert) coexist. The technology which expands the range of this TIMP is "fishing boats", and they are graphically represented by a pair of improvements borrowed (and modified) from AOM (see attached). The smaller vessel appears when a Fishery is constructed on Shallow Water tiles, while the larger one shows up on the Ocean Shelf and in Deep Water. And of course, they harvest different amounts of food from each region. That isn't new, but the graphics now provide a visual representation of that effect.

Not surprisingly, fishing vessels ARE subject to "pillage" since they are easy targets for Pirates or enemy warships. The specific technology of building boats and sending them out to sea in search of fish, well that's hardly an advanced technology, so we'll shift this one to an earlier period as well, making them available with Map Making (used to be Hullmaking). At the same time, we'll make this a "TIMP-swap" by moving "Shipyards" from here to "Hullmaking (which makes a lot more sense when you think about it). One final point. These improvements WILL need to be defended, but Map Making also gives the player (and the AI) the ability to do that because the Trireme is now available from the same Advance.

This still leaves us with the "multiple time periods" problem. Specifically, the boats used for "Fishery" are clearly ancient, and keeping them on the map all the way until "Robotics" (when the 3rd and last OceanFarms" improvement becomes available) is anachronistic at best. Fortunately the "OceanATM" slot #3 is still available, and can be used for a 4th OceanFarms improvement in the same way that "Special2" allowed a 4th level of Mine and Farm. Which brings us to....

[Kull]

OceanFarms L1 - "Nets": As the name implies, this tile improvement is a Net (a graphical TIMP from Civ3 - see attached), nothing more, and is a visual representation of the technology used to generate food from this coastal zone. Its use and deployment is now VERY narrowly focused, because - in addition to the improved visuals - the new TIMP can only be built on Beach Tiles. That's also why it is now coded to be "un-pillageable". Historically, pirates and raiders couldn't stop people from fishing from a beach, nor would they find it economically worthwhile to do anything about the nets or weirs deployed in this narrow zone.

Because we are limiting the deployment options (Nets used to be buildable in every ocean tile), we'll now make it available earlier, with Ship Building (used to be Sails). Since Nets can't be pillaged, the player no longer has to worry about defending them, and accordingly it's a much safer use of valuable "early-game" PW points. The game play change is extraordinary in that regard, as it eliminates an entire category of needless early-game AI conflict.

[Kull]

Revising "OceanFarms": This sub-project began as a graphics task, narrowly focused on improving the TIMPs for "Nets" (L1) and "Fishery" (L2). But the more I dug into this, additional questions and issues arose, and as the focus widened, it seemed like a lot more was needed in order to improve game-play in this area. Specifically:

1) As shown in the post above - at best, the graphics are of questionable application for the Ancient Era. Something different was clearly necessary.
2) Which raised the question - what do these improvements actually represent? Obviously it's the Ocean equivalent of the Land "Farm" - a way to get more food from ocean tiles. But until we resolve the question of what exactly is collecting that "food", we can't create new graphics, nor figure out how best to stat them and deploy them.
3) Answering that question also leads to another - what sort of replacement art is needed and can it represent this "ocean food" capability across multiple time periods?
4) And the Advances which lead to each TIMP? Are they appropriate or will those need to change as well? And what about the timing and nature of each Advance? Do they reflect the technology being represented by the TIMP?
5) What about pillaging? It makes sense, for example, that a "Farm" could be destroyed (less so a "Pasture", but that's another discussion), but what about these ocean TIMPs? Some? All? None?

The posts to follow will answer all those questions, and give you a detailed look at the new "Ocean Farm" system, beginning with "Nets"

[Kull]

Nets & Fisheries (Existing): One of my long term pet peeves with CtP2 are the as-delivered Tile Improvement graphics which represent "Nets" and "Fisheries" (see attached). What are those things anyway? Red hulled boats dragging net-like things in their wake? Bright Red Buoys with nets strung out between them? Something else? Whatever they may be, "ancient era" they certainly are not. Yet the first set is available with "Sails", in the earliest of early times, while the triple red group isn't far behind. And then? There they stay, in your oceans until "Robotics". Ugh. Can we do better? I think you know the answer....

[Kull]

Unit Voices are Back: To begin - for those who don't care for unit voices - there are two ways to silence them. At the main menu, click the "options" button (lower left), click "sounds", and then set the voice volume to zero. This also works DURING a game - hit the "esc" key and you'll get access to the same "options" menu. In other words, it is VERY EASY to shut them off!

I had noticed voices in some of my games - but not for all units or actions - while other games had nothing (different installs, actually). The culprit for the second problem is the absence of a 15.8MB file called "sounds.zfs" which holds nothing but voices, and is now resident in the Cradle3+ "sound" folder. Confusingly, this file works in tandem with yet another "sounds.zfs" file (22.8MB) which sits in the base game ctp2_data\default\sound folder and holds all the non-voice sounds like guns, arrows, explosions, walking, etc.

Fixing the first issue was a lot more complicated, since it meant tracking down the individual missing voices and finding appropriate substitutes. Along the way, I made a LARGE number of changes, so that now all the female units (especially the new ones) have gender appropriate voices, the Fascist has a nice German accent, the Galleon captain is Spanish, Alexander has his own voice (from the Alexander scenario, unsurprisingly), the Janissary is at least Indian (better than British), and the Warrior no longer speaks with forked - or rather "Brooklyn" - tongue. And many others.

After playing around with this for a while, it appears that neither of the "SoundSelect" voices (see "sounds.txt") are ever used, which is probably just as well. Conversely the "SoundAcknowledge" plays about half the time you move a unit, and it can get annoying, especially if there are lots of units of a particular type to move, or you have units with long movement allowances (like ships) yet have to constantly start-and-stop them (especially during the early "Explore the map" phase). I can't find a file which controls the frequency with which any voice category is used (or that indicates why the "select" files don't play at all), so maybe that is still hard coded (which was a missed opportunity, IMO). Anyway, I am looking for voices which appear too frequently and in some cases have switched them over to "NULL". Better silence than annoyance.

[Kull]

More Cradle 4 features:

1) Economic Building Upkeep: One of the nice things about Cradle 4 is there's no upkeep in Gold for many of the Economic Buildings. Which is good, since these structures are supposed to increase income, not force you to do math in order to figure out if they are worth building.
** Agora: Upkeep from 2 to 0
** Bank: from 4 to 0
** Bazaar: from 1 to 0or
** Brokerage: from 5 to 0
** City Clock: from 5 to 0

2) Religious Conversion Inhibitors: Another interesting feature is that Walls no longer inhibit religious conversion, but Religious buildings do. That definitely makes sense, and is another change that has been added to Cradle 3+, specifically:
** Walls: PreventConversion from 0.3 to 0
** City Walls: from 0.4 to 0
** Basilica: from 0 to 0.2
** Monastery: from 0 to 0.2
** Mosque: from 0 to 0.2
** Shrine: from 0 to 0.1

[Kull]

Tile Improvements (In-process and Multiple graphics): The "Port", "Trading Post", and "Fortification" are three "early-game" examples of tile improvement which feature "in-process" building graphics. You don't just get the standard "building" graphic (barrels, pile of rubble & stacked lumber) which sits on the map for "x" number of turns until the improvement is completed, but rather can "see" all three of them undergo different phases of construction. Among other things, it's a good reminder of what's being built on that tile (the "mouse hover" tells you nothing), but it's also a pretty cool effect.

Many of the late game improvements are equally generous in that regard, but most of the early game improvements are not. As a result, this latest project created new "in-process" graphics for farms, pastures, advance farms, mines, watchtowers, colonies, townships, shipyards, and even Wonders. Plus some for the modern era as well: Airbase, radar, sonar buoys, listening posts and underwater tunnels.

In addition, I used several of Hex's new farm-type improvements and made them terrain-specific. For example, you can build Advanced Farms (a classical era farming upgrade) on Grassland, Plains, and Desert tiles, and now each one of those has a DIFFERENT on-map graphic (see attachment). This really helps reduce the "everything looks the same" effect.

Lastly, I revised a few of the build buttons. They are only 40x30 pixels, and when you try to represent a complex improvement like a colony or township, well....not good. The result is two buttons that look nearly identical. The solution was to select the most prominent building from each improvement (a tower from the colony and a temple from the township), and it's now a much cleaner look.

[Kull]

"Updater.slc" Bug Fix: As I reported way back in Post #10, the new unit upgrade system does not work for "unbuildable" units like the Cradle Militia or Cradle Elites, a pair of categories created using SLIC code. The workaround for that involved another SLIC file, "updater.slc", but that had one MAJOR bug. If you tried to do a partial upgrade of your units, the code took you through them one-by-one and offered a yes/no choice for each of them. Or rather, that's what it was supposed to do, except the code threw out errors, collapsed in the middle of the upgrade process, and never functioned correctly from that point forward.

Well, I'm happy to report that as part of the Apolyton Edition project, Peter Triggs, Tamerlin, and Pedrunn created a revised version (APOL_updater2.slc) and after extensive editing to insert the Cradle 3+ Advances and Elite/Militia upgrade paths, the bug IS GONE! That's a MAJOR step forward for Cradle 3+, as it eliminates an old bug that affected all previous versions of Cradle, and solves one of the biggest remaining issues on my checklist. Because the Apolyton file has been edited so heavily (it won't work with other mods), the Cradle file has been renamed "updater3.slc", but the reality is that all the hard work (ie. the coding) was performed by the aforementioned CtP2 modding gurus. MANY thanks, and a big tip of the hat!

[Kull]

Unit Facing: The only downside to the "Idle Animation" is that once a unit completes its move, the sprite shifts to "Idle and then faces in one of two directions; SE or SW. Units without the Idle animation display no motion (legs walking, spears moving, heads bobbing, etc) but they do "face" in the direction of their final move, which could be any of the 8 Sprite directions (see post #51 for a small diagram). Personally I consider that a small price to pay in order to regain full on-map motion, but it occurred to me - why not solve the problem by creating Idle Animations for ALL directions?

And that's what I tried, using the Assyrian Archer as my testbed, but sadly it was a total failure. I could not figure out how to code the sprite building process so it would make use of all the new Idle direction images. I even opened up some of the CtP2 sprites which came with an Idle animation, and every one of them uses only the #4 direction (i.e. "SE": As described in the linked post, "SW" is not separate art, but rather the mirror of the SE image). A review of the "MakeSprite" documentation also came up empty, as their examples only included a single facing direction, and there's no hint that more are even possible. So at this point I'm going to assume it is NOT possible, and won't pursue it further.

That said, a really interesting thing happens every time you load a save game. All units - even those with Idle Animations - are facing in the direction they last traveled! And they retain that "directionality" until such time as they move, after which they revert to one of the two Idle facings. However, that is not universally true, and thus perhaps it's a clue that source coders could follow up on.

When you build the Idle animation, there are THREE animation "types" to choose from:
0 = sequential (play through from the first frame to the last defined frame)
1 = looped (starts over at the first frame when it's gone through all of the frames
2 = back-n-forth (reverses direction of playback when it reaches the last frame, and plays back to the first before reversing direction again.

And here's the clue: If you build the sprite using Idle animation types 0 or 2, the unit does NOT retain directional facing when you load a saved game, you just get one of the Idle facing directions.

Why is that? Who knows, but once I realized what was happening, all my rebuilt sprites utilize the "looped" animation (#1), so at least directional facing is available whenever a save game is loaded.

[Kull]

"Assyrian Archer" unit: One side benefit from recreating the "Great King" sprite - it led me to look more closely at Stan Karpinkski's Archer unit from AOM (see attached). It's actually a Civ3 conversion, but either way the images which comprise the sprite are of consistently good quality, and it was pretty easy to add the missing Idle animation and to clean up the very few graphics glitches. It clearly has a more ancient look than the "Nottingham Forester" currently filling the role of "first archer", so I created some new 2D pix and it's now in-game.