Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Blake00]

CivFanatics gloms all CtP variants into one marginal sub-forum with a host of non-similar games, and to me that's just depressing. Kudos to you for trying to spark some life into an old game, but I doubt there's even a handful of folks at Civfanatics who are still interested in CtP. You are more than welcome to copy elements of this thread over there, and see if there's any interest. If so, I might put in an appearance to answer whatever questions might arise.

Yeah it is bit, but the good news is I've spoken with the admins and they're happy for CTP to once again have it's own forum there, but only if someone is willing to moderate it and put some effort into growing it, which I'm happy to do down the track (after I've completed my Civ2 projects over this year that eat up most of my time). While there's not much CTP action going there as you say, we've had great interest in some CTP news content across our social media pages (which we also share out to other civ groups containing thousands of members) so there's definitely future potential there for creating and sharing CTP content that might bring some life back into the forums once we've created a dedicated CTP area again. I'll also be working over the coming years to grow dedicated CTP communities on social media too (you've seen my work with Ninja on the CTP Discord and now I've just kicked off a CTP FB group too) so that in the future we won't just be sharing to general civ groups but actual true CTP groups.

Anyway that's all going to take a while lol.. so no worries mate, if you'd prefer to only post here I'll see if I can create a post about your work there in the near future.

[Kull]

I give a lot of credit to Apolyton for maintaining the various CTP sub-forums, and that's really why this thread was placed here. CivFanatics gloms all CtP variants into one marginal sub-forum with a host of non-similar games, and to me that's just depressing. Kudos to you for trying to spark some life into an old game, but I doubt there's even a handful of folks at Civfanatics who are still interested in CtP. You are more than welcome to copy elements of this thread over there, and see if there's any interest. If so, I might put in an appearance to answer whatever questions might arise.

[Blake00]

This is great work! Wish more people could see what you're doing! Do you have a account over at CivFanatics Kull ? Was just thinking you should make a sister thread there to copy and paste your updates into. Like here the CTP area at CFC is a bit quiet, however I hope to work on changing that and if there's a thread about your project over there I can ask CFC admin The_J to consider making a news item out of it which can then be shared by me around the CFC social media groups & other Civ groups we have connections in.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/other-civ-related-games.534/

[Kull]

Settler Sprite & 2D Art: Now that all four Plunder Units have their own unique sprites, the Settler Sprite and Art can be reallocated back to the Settler Unit (which currently uses the "Nomad" Sprite and Art). Previously it was a bit confusing during the game when the player transitioned from building Nomads to Settlers, since both units were identical (including the 2D unit art). Fortunately in this case the Sprite and 2D art already exist, so the change was very simple. In Newsprite.txt the Settler sprite shifted from "111" to "2" while in Uniticon.txt the graphic links changed from "upup111*.tga to upup002*.tga. And that's it!

This series of improvements means that the group of units which once shared a pair of sprites now have 6 unique sprites and 2D art.

[Kull]

Plunder IV - The Truck: In the Modern Era (beginning with Economics), the Plunder IV unit appears. As we see even today in the Ukraine, invading armies rely on vehicles to spirit off their loot - specifically, the "Truck". I looked around for a good truck unit in the various CtP2 mods, but the only ones in existence used a single image. Once again, Sketchfab came to the rescue and I was able to build an "all-direction" sprite using screen captures from a 3D model of a military 2.5 ton truck (see attached). Zooming in on the same model also provided a slightly larger version of the vehicle which worked nicely for the 2D unit art.

Sounds were also necessary, and here Pixabay saved the day. There's a ton of audio clip sources out there, but most of them force you to jump through hoops before making a clip available. Pixabay conversely makes it easy to find and download the sounds you need - in this case a truck in motion (Move), crashing (Death), and even a nice "Engine Start" (Acknowledge).

[Kull]

Plunder III - The Cow: Back in the mists of time (i.e last summer), my exploration into the mysteries of Sprite Development began, and the first unit to fall "under my knife" was the CtP2 "Cow" unit. Apparently the game developers intended to include "cattle rustling" as a game feature, but the whole concept landed on the cutting room floor, and the only tangible benefit was the inclusion of the cow sprite, along with a document which used it as part of the tutorial on sprite building. The unit did not appear in the game but was beautifully designed with lots of great movement. But - as you can probably guess - there was no Idle animation. Long story short, that was fixed and the lessons learned helped enormously as I delved further into sprite deconstruction and creation. But otherwise, the unit remained unused until now.

So why now? Well, Plunder III encompasses the Middle Ages (from Chivalry until Trade Guilds) and while armies might have more professionals than they did way back in the earliest of ancient eras, "Plunder on the hoof" has never gone out of style, as there's nothing easier to confiscate than items which can follow you home under their own power (and can browse for food along the way). Since Plunder III generates more production when disbanded, that calls for a more valuable creature, and the "Cow" certainly fits that description (see attached).

[Kull]

Plunder II - The Captive: Most Plunder units are disbanded in one of your cities thereby providing a Production Boost (i.e. additional shields) to whatever is under construction. But from Bronze Working until the advent of the Dark Ages, you will receive Plunder II units which are "Captives" - not Slaves - and as such when this unit is disbanded it provides new citizens to the city.

Thinking historically, what sort of person goes from captive to citizen in this time frame? And the answer is that while captives typically became slaves, most of the women - whether as wives or slaves - produced children who DID become citizens (a class of perpetual slaves was usually not a feature of this era).

Representing these women is the Mistress sprite from the "Forever Future" mod (see attached). As you may recall from Post #28, that mod already provided the female sprite for the new Assassin unit and they do so again here. Like most sprites developed for Ctp1, the Mistress did not have an Idle animation and thus had no motion, so the sprite was deconstructed (108 images, no shadows) and a 4-image Idle animation was created in which she leans forward seductively. After adding several appropriate sounds, new 2D artwork and an updated GL record, the unit is now in-game.

[Kull]

Plunder I - The Goat: As discussed in Post #37, several of the Cradle Wonder units have the ability to generate "Plunder" after winning a battle. There are 4 different Plunder Units, but all of them used the CtP2 Settler sprite and the 2D art associated with it. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it was a bit confusing, and since each Plunder unit is "era-specific", it makes sense to look at them individually in the context of the era in which each becomes available.

The earliest is Plunder I, which appears until the discovery of "Copper Smelting". Historically, this was a time when armies were largely composed of poorly trained peasants, and Plunder was whatever they could glean from the surrounding countryside. Of those, the most desirable items would be small or easily transportable. And in that sense, nothing could be more useful than livestock of the sort they knew intimately in their civilian lives. Something like a herd of Goats.

Which is the new sprite which represents the "Plunder I" unit. This is an "all direction" sprite (thank you, Sketchfab), so while there's no moving parts (well beyond my skill level), the goats point in all directions they travel, and you'll hear them trot and bleat as they move.

[Kull]

More Sprites: As a general rule, Cradle tries to avoid situations where different units use the same sprite. The exceptions are:
1) "Elite Units", for example when "Spearman" is upgraded to "Elite Spearman". All of the unit stats, GL text and 2D art is altered but both units continue to use the same "Spearman" sprite. It's not optimal, but there isn't much choice given the limited number of "good" CtP2 sprites.
2) "Wonder Units" also frequently make use of sprites that are used by "normal" units, for example "Hannibal" uses the same sprite as the "War Elephant". This is even less of a problem because each Wonder Unit is both unique and rare, so consequently the player is usually well aware of their location and doesn't confuse them with the "normal" sprites. And, as with "Elite Units", these have different stats, GL text and most importantly - unique 2D unit art.

There were a few other cases, but those have already been resolved so that now the Patriarch and Televangelist have different sprites, as do Cavalry and the Ulysses Grant Wonder Unit, the various Pharaoh/Great King units and the Chariot, and a few others. However, there are two cases in which a total of 6 units share two sprites, but even worse - the 2D unit art is the same. Which makes it very difficult to tell one from the other without seeking out the text descriptions.

The good news is, all 6 units now have 6 different sprites AND all the text and 2D art is different as well. So let's go through them, beginning with....

[Kull]

Goods Improvements (Oil): Lastly, there was the matter of "Tundra Terrain". There's only one Good there (Caribou), but it seemed logical that Oil should be as well. In a purely Ancient Era mod there's a degree of sense in excluding Oil from that sort of terrain, but Cradle 3+ has greatly expanded the opportunities in the Modern portions of the game, so it seemed appropriate to add Arctic Oil availability. But try as I might, the game would simply not display the new Good. Long story short, the "missing link" was found in the terrain.txt file. All terrain-types are listed there, and that includes enumerating the number of Goods available in each. And of course, "Tundra" was set to allow only one....but not anymore!

[Kull]

Goods Improvements (Deer): For some time I'd been thinking about adding "Deer" as a new form of good. They have a long history as a food and trade resource, and exist in almost every part of the planet. But the best location for them would be "Forest" terrain, and that already had four Goods. However, one of those was "Bear" and that animal can be found just as frequently in Mountains as Forest, so.....suddenly it all came together. And now Deer can be seen and heard in the Forests of Cradle 3+ (see attachment) while Bears stalk the Alpine Mountains.

[Kull]

Goods Improvements (Copper): The problem was - and I hadn't really noticed this before - but the "Copper" sprite appeared to be "more gold" than the Gold! Accordingly I created a new granular Copper sprite, using orange tones and mixing in a fair amount of bluish-green to give it a hint of the tarnish-look so common to copper. And as a final touch, I shifted the old Copper sprite to Gold. As you can see in the attachment (Gold left, Copper right), they clearly have a different appearance, even against the same background. So all's well....except for one thing. There was now a gap in the Mountain Good sequence.

[Kull]

Goods Improvements (Gold): This was another one of those ideas which start off with a limited objective and then slowly grow and expand, folding in more "improvement opportunities" along the way. Earlier in the project, after making a number of changes to the graphics and even adding a few new Goods, I proclaimed those changes at an end and moved on to other things (see Post #40). However, in the course of many playtests I couldn't help but notice that the "Gold Good" graphic was almost invisible when seen against the background of Alpine Mountain terrain (see attached).

The first idea was to substitute the "Gold Bars" sprite from Cradle 4, but that is actually a gold-colored version of the gems used by the Emerald Good, and in that context it didn't look very accurate. In addition, all the other metal goods in Cradle 3+ have a more natural appearance (like handfuls of ore), so the gold "Bars" didn't match the other metals.

Of course that took us right back to the original problem, since granular piles of yellow ore aren't visible in Mountain terrain. Accordingly I tested the sprite with several other terrain types and determined that it looks best against the Brown Hill (Sand Dune) background. Which was a logical substitution since Silver was the second, "rare" good in that terrain, and it already was used as the rare good in Brown Mountain terrain. Problem solved, yes? Well not entirely....

[Blake00]

Wow! It's great to see a big CTP modding project on the go again in 2023! I've just mentioned this thread over on the CTP Fans Discord that Ninja runs as some of the guys there have been playing around with the source code and the Apolyton Edition so they'll find this project thread fascinating! Feel free to drop by and keep us updated there too!

[Kull]

Ulysses Grant Sprite: Another fairly small project, but I only recently noticed that the Ulysses Grant Wonder Unit had the same sprite used by the CtP2 Cavalry, basically a helmeted British Lancer (see attached). The CtP1 Cavalry sprite has a red uniform as well, but the broad-brim hat is more in keeping with a Civil War General (and in fact, a blue version of that is used for the Grant unit pic, see bottom of attachment). As with most CtP1 sprites, this one did not have the Idle animation (and thus had no movement), so it was disassembled and rebuilt. There are two animations (Move & Attack), comprising 120 images (plus another 120 shadow files), and a new Idle animation was created which uses 6 files that allow the horse to shake its head and tail. The only change needed was to reference the new creation in "newsprite.txt", and so the new Grant sprite is now in-game.