Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Heptireme: The Ctp1 Trireme is in Cradle as the "Heptireme", and like most Ctp1 units did not have an Idle animation. Which means that 120 out of 142 total images went unused. And it's even worse, because the 10 "Attack" animations were simply a single fixed image aiming in one of five required directions. Accordingly, the Heptireme didn't move and it didn't attack...but, well, it definitely could sink! Adding a 6-file Idle animation was easy enough (it now waggles the oars), but the real challenge was the Attack. Ships of this era featured a large bronze beak attached to the prow and relied on ramming attacks to sink enemy vessels. Which fortunately is pretty similar to some of the existing images.

In order to put this in-game, I edited several "Move" animations, specifically the 7 through 11 sequence....for all 5 directions. In order to represent a "ramming" attack, the image sequence is animated as 7-8-9-10-11-11-11-10-9-8-7 (so the ship drives into the enemy using its oars, and then backs out). That alone isn't enough, as it merely shows the movement of oars. So the ship also has to be repositioned in each image. As an example, let's look at how this was done for the SE direction. "Movement" image #7 is the starting position, and doesn't have to be edited. But from there, Image #8 moves down two pixels and two to the right, #9 moves four in each direction, #10 moves six, and #11 is shifted a full eight pixels down and eight to the right.

Looking at this in the Naval Combat box, the oars appear to move each Heptireme forward and back, so they no longer sit still like turtles. The attachment gives some indication of this as the Heptireme is contacting the bow of the enemy Bireme, the oars are shifted back and there's whitewater along the sides and to the rear. The final step in the process was to associate this attack with the sound of breaking timbers (another new file), and that completes the effect.

In sum, one of the most important ancient era Naval units is now fully animated.

[Kull]

Dromon: Continuing with Naval Units, Cradle uses the Ctp1 Longboat as the "Dromon", and it has problems similar to the "Heptireme"- 5 simple attack images and no movement of any kind (other than sinking). This is especially problematic because the Dromon - in real life - used Greek Fire to attack enemy warships, but we don't see any of that in-game. Conversely, the CtP2 "Fire Trireme" features just such an attack, but it's a complete fantasy - there never was any such unit (although to be fair, I think it was CtP2's way of incorporating a Dromon-like unit with a jazzed up, fancy name). We'll talk about the "Fire Trireme" in a subsequent post, but for this unit I was able to copy the flame portion of the "Fire Trireme" attack animation, and used that to create a new set of attack and idle images.

It required a fair amount of graphics work (image count increased from 204 to 286), but the end result was worth it - both of the new animations work nicely. Truth be told, at this scale the fire attack looks a bit anemic (see attached), but it's still much better than what we had. Surprisingly (or perhaps not....), the attack sound of the "Fire Trireme" was NOT "flame-related", so I added a new flamethrower-based sound and placed the appropriate references in sounds.txt (SOUND_ATTACK_DROMON "flame.wav") and Units.txt.

[Kull]

Turning the "Fire Trireme" into a "Trireme": Although this CtP2 unit already has an Idle Animation, the "Fire Trireme" is a fantasy creation, as ships of this era did not deploy fire attacks. Until the discovery of Greek Fire, it was simply too dangerous to utilize open flame weapons aboard a wooden ship, plus the technology for naval units to deliver fire-over-distance didn't exist (Hollywood flaming catapults aside). We know from a number of sources that animal-style figureheads were utilized in the early Ancient era, so even though we don't see depictions of dragons (such as the one on this unit), it's not completely unreasonable. Plus it would be very time-consuming to try and replace the dragon with something else.

That said, more can be done to make it "era-appropriate", and so the fire attack animation will be removed and a new "ramming attack" will be added in its place. For one thing, this unit clearly features an extended beak at the bow - as did all Triremes - and it's one of the main reasons why I didn't just swap this unit with the Dromon (which just as obviously did NOT have a beak). As with the Heptireme, several of the "Movement" images have been reworked in order to show oars driving the Trireme toward the enemy vessel, and then backing off to repeat the attack (attachment). Sounds have been adjusted as well, and I think the result is a distinct improvement.

Edit: Since the Trireme has now regained its historical functionality, we'll change the enabling advance from the questionable Alchemy to Map Making, which also places this vessel back into the Naval sequence.

[Kull]

Slave Trader: While working through the "civilian" unit category earlier, I broached the possibility of adding an upgrade so the ancient-era CtP2 Slaver could transition to the "red-shirted fat guy" from CtP1. And on further consideration, it makes sense to do that. The rationale (as outlined in the Great Library) is that "with the arrival of active anti-slavery opponents such as the Abolitionist, it becomes more expensive to employ those engaged in the Slave Trade, although improved technology means that Slave Raids are a bit more successful and somewhat less risky".

Accordingly, Classical Education thus becomes the enabling Advance for both the Abolitionist and the new Slave Trader. That also obsoletes the Slaver, but it can upgrade to the new unit. All the graphics exist, so all that was needed were text file additions (newsprite, gl_str, GL, units, & uniticon)

[Kull]

"Age of Sail" warship combat: The last ship without a movement and attack animation was the Carrack. I'll discuss the details of that conversion in a subsequent post, but the attack animation in particular seemed problematic. Vessels like the Carrack, Galleon, and Ship-of-the-Line did not fight "head-to-head" like we see so often see with Ancient Era vessels and again with ships of the Modern Age. Not always of course, but it was usually the opening phase before combat dissolved into a melee. Not so with the cannon-toting warships of the post Renaissance era. For them, it was "close with the enemy and exchange broadsides". Again, not a universal method of attack, but certainly the predominant form. Except not in CtP2. What we get are engagements like those in the attachment, ships facing one another while their guns blast sideways at the open ocean. Or at least...that's what it used to be. ;-)

[Kull]

Carrack: This is the Tom Davies (Morgoth "Cog", and does not have Idle or Attack animations. There are 54 images to work with and we'll create an Idle from part of the "Death" sequence, so the unit appears to rock back and forth before settling down. Initially I planned to use an attack image similar to that of the Galleon, in which the center part of the ship lights up when it "fires", but - as with a similar effect for Ship-of-the-Line - it's a custom graphic that's built-in and can't be separated from the whole. As an alternative, I was able to incorporate a few other animations which appear to show a cannon firing, followed by a bit of smoke. Those were added to a few of the existing Move images, and the result works pretty well.

However, as noted in the post above, that still left a head-to-head battle in which the guns fired off to the side. Before we talk about how that was fixed, here's a brief intro on sprite making. Every sprite has movement in 8 directions, but you don't have to create image sequences for those on the left-facing side of the quadrant (see below) - they are simply mirror images of the right. So a NE-facing sprite (#2) is "flipped" and used as the NW facing sprite. Similar with East-facing (#3) and SE-facing (#4).

      1
   2* |  2
     \|/
  3*--+---3
     /|\
   4* |  4
      5

Looking at the Naval Battleboard in the image appended to post #50 above, you see the Carrack pointing in the NE direction while Ship-of-the-Line faces SW. This is true of ALL naval engagements, and means that - at a minimum - you have to build a NE-facing attack sequence AND a SE-facing sequence, the latter being "flipped" to the SW by the game code.

In order to create a broadside attack sequence, the ship image has to be perpendicular to the attack direction, while it's gunfire erupts in the original facing direction. As an example, consider the NE-facing attack. To get the correct "look", a vessel with cannons blazing from the left side of the ship will have to be facing SE! Even more complicated, the ship firing to the SW is actually using the direction #4 image sequence, and thus the animation is built from images pointing to the NE with guns firing from the right side of the ship! Oy vey! In addition, even though North, South, and East aren't used by the battleboard, a vessel using the on-map "Bombard" attack needs to be able to aim in all directions, so a full set of attack animations is still needed.

And that worked, right? Wrong! Apparently, the battleboard code cycles the attack images in a "loop", so the animation repeats itself until all the vessels of one side are destroyed. But it does one thing more. Before running each loop, the code displays the first image from the Movement animation associated with that direction. Of course Movement sequences have to be "head-on", so the result is an UGLY battle in which the vessels fire their Broadsides, flip to face each other, and then flip sideways as the next attack loop plays.

Fortunately there was a solution. Animation sequences don't have to use all the images in that group. So I re-worked the Movement sequences and plugged in a sideways facing unit as the first image in every sequence - but did not reference that image number in the movement animation itself (which is just a string of images that can be arranged in any order). Meaning that BOTH attack and movement animations now work perfectly, and the Carrack has a far more realistic battle sequence (see attached).

[Kull]

Galleon & Ship-of-the-Line Combat: In the original post which started this thread, I mentioned that working on this mod was like taking "one step forward and two steps back", and this is exactly what I meant. Technically there's nothing wrong with the Galleon and SotL sprites - Movement, Idle, good attack & death animations. Normally I wouldn't dream of touching them. But once the Carrack was reconstructed to include the "broadside attack", well, how could these two not take advantage of that new discovery? And so, two days later, they do.

[Kull]

Unit Build Queue data display differences: While working on a large graphics project (more on that soon), I noticed a small issue resulting from a text file error. Several units did not list the "Production" cost above "Attack" when you look at them in the Unit Build Queue (see attachment). This affected Legions, Praetorians, Caravan, Freight Transport, Merchant Trader, Legion Militia, & Caesar. Tracking that down, in each case, "uniticons.txt" had a DOUBLE listing for "UNIT_**_STATISTICS" and NO LISTING for "UNIT_**_SUMMARY". It *should* have "Statistics" and then "Summary". Now Fixed.

[Kull]

Tile Files (& new Stone Roads): Most CtP2 graphics can function in-game as individual files. For example, even though all the 2D graphics such as unit and button files were originally located entirely inside a file called pic565.zfs, they can be extracted and altered individually. And most importantly - the game does NOT require them to be reinserted into the .zfs file. Open any mod's default/graphics/pictures folder and you'll see that it's full of individually customized graphics files.

However, the same is NOT true of "tile files". Look inside the default/graphics/tiles folder and you'll see only two files, gtset565.til and gtset555.til (only the first is required by the game). This file contains all the map tiles (which I won't be altering) AND all those images used by map overlays such as "Improvements" (think roads, farms and trading posts), Goody huts, and Visible Wonders (Hanging Gardens, etc). Additions or changes to these graphics have to be performed on individual files and then inserted into the .til files.

I won't get into the specifics of that process, as it's documented in the TileEdit program created by Martin B. Vestergaard, but just recognize that Tile Edit is the ONLY program which allows you to work with these files. That's a critical point because - for whatever reason - there is a problem with the .til files included with the Cradle 3 and 4 downloads. TileEdit consistently kicks out errors when trying to open those files, and even when it does, the majority of the Cradle-specific improvements remain invisible and unavailable.

The effort to rescue the Cradle files went on for months, and even progressed to the point of mapping out methods to try and recreate them using the Apolyton til files. Fortunately I eventually took a look at Hex's "Lord of the Rings" mod, and discovered those til files are error-free, fully editable, and contain most of the Cradle 3 graphics. Apologies for the long dissertation, but that's why Cradle 3+ isn't starting from the baseline Cradle til files.

All that said, the effort wasn't completely wasted as I learned a LOT about successful tile file editing, and most fortuitously, discovered a set of stone roads graphics from a modder named Tellius. Those familiar with Cradle will know that Hex created his stone roads by altering the existing Maglev graphics, primarily by changing the colors from bluish to greyish. While a nice feature, graphically they look more like modern day superhighways than ancient stone roads (see image appended to Post #15).

There is a LOT more to come with respect to new tile graphics, but we'll start with the lovely look of Tellius' Stone Roads, now fully incorporated in Cradle 3+.

[Kull]

Maglev as Road Level-4? No matter how long it may take to solve a problem, what's presented in this thread is everything that "worked". But usually there was a lot of failure before it all came together, and some ideas simply never panned out. As an example, wouldn't it be cool if Cradle could have Stone Roads AND Maglevs? A 4th land road level? How hard could that be? Well, so far the results have been less than optimal. Mind you, they WORK, but......ugh.

[Kull]

Maglev as Road Level-4! One of many new features from the Source Code team was the addition of an interesting option to the Tile Improvement Database: PrerequisiteTileImp. That means you can't build one tile improvement unless another is already present. If you add that requirement to the Maglev section, and make the pre-req a Railroad.....voila. Maglev graphics WORK! Incredibly simple and incredibly easy to include in Cradle 3+. The Maglev button is now the "Level 3 Ocean Road", but all the underlying code make it entirely a land improvement - the "Ocean" part is simply the location of the Maglev building button (see bottom right of the attachment).

In fact, if you look closely at the attachment (red arrow), you'll see that it's impossible to build a Maglev on an open tile. There MUST be a railroad in place first. That's the only way to make sure you get Maglev functionality AND perfect graphics. Speaking of which, you'll notice that the original Maglev art has been added to the til file. I tried using Hex's stone roads instead, and while they look nice, there's no "shadow" to indicate that these are elevated transport lines, so the originals have returned.

And while I was at it, the railroads and stone roads have switched position in the build screens (see inset), so now you have the proper sequence of Road (L1), Stone Road (L2) and Railroad (L3).

Lastly, I'll leave you with this tantalizing thought. You'll notice that the "Ocean Road" Level 2 slot is still open. That means it's theoretically possible to add a FIFTH level of Land Road! Simply use the same method that activated Maglevs, and it would have perfect graphics and total functionality. I'm not planning to do anything with that idea, but.....it's certainly possible!

[Kull]

Dwight Eisenhower Tank Sprite: As noted in Post #41, the Panzer MkIII sprite has replaced the Abrams as a more appropriate WW2-era tank. However, that also meant the Dwight Eisenhower Wonder Unit was now represented by a German tank.....which just didn't seem right. Fortunately the Activision WW2 scenario also contains a US Tank sprite which can be used instead. The sprite has Idle (and the other necessary animation sequences) and looks pretty good (albeit a tad bit cartoonish) but didn't have any 2D graphics, so those had to be created from scratch.

All told, it didn't take long to make all the required changes, and now, what can I say? "I like Ike!"

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

You rock, Kull.

[Kull]

Concepts for "Elites" & "Elite Units": The Great Library had no information on "Elite Units" as a group, and while there was a limited concept entry for Veterans, the new "Elites" promotion (introduced by the Source Code team) was not mentioned at all. Accordingly, I wrote up a detailed description on which Cradle units qualify for Elite Promotion and also explained the difference between the two kinds of Elites, since the shared terminology is inevitably confusing. This includes links to & from the MANY affected units, and involved changes to the GL, gl_str.txt, uniticon.txt, & concept.txt, along with 3 new pieces of art for the Elites, Veterans, and Elite Unit concepts.

One "not-so-side-benefit" from the research effort was the discovery that "Elite status" doesn't just work automatically. The SC guys didn't incorporate it in the base game, but rather set the COMBAT_ELITE_CHANCE setting in "Const.txt" at "0". For Cradle 3+, that value is now set to "0.05" (half the veteran chance).

[Kull]

You rock, Kull.

Thanks, man! Hope you are enjoying the write-ups.