improved unit tech tree

[primemover]

So would you like to help with a project I am running to try to make thee see terrain a bit more varied

yes... this is one thing I would like to accomplish. but what would help that is something that i am not sure you guys are ready to do... especially since the tiles are not designed the way they should be to accomplish this: and that is to separate the concepts of terrain and vegetation. "forest" can exist on plains, croplands, hills, mountains, and even polar mountains to some extent. this is the main thing i would like done to make the terrain more varied, but how this should be done, especially with the tiles the way they are is difficult to do without collaboration, and I don't think this is a task the first update has in mind.

Remember, the source effort is not particularly organized in any sort of a way. So while your signing up lets everyone know that you're interested and want to be involved, it's up to you to make code modifications later.

this may be but i didn't get a single response... not even a mention that i had been added to the team. and of course no direction on what was being done. i mean i suppose we can always work on whatever we like, but doesn't the team have specific goals (such as the apolyton edition) and specific things they want done for it? If not a mandate on what to do, i was at least expecting something or a link to something that gave a list of things they wanted to accomplish for their current goals so i could pick something from that list to do.

And why don't you explore the code and start working on the part you are interesing in. I didn't look onto the mapping section and I won't hand out task, that are espeacilly designed for you.

I've already done this... to tell you the truth, the coding is so conveluded (without the comments), i am having a real hard time determining the object structure and hence what the code is trying to do (particularly stuff that is contained in header files of unknown position).

Does anyone know the basic object structure? and where such basic objects are defined?

by "basic" i mean a sort of flow chart/concept map that shows where basic game objects are hooked up? That way I could find where the map generator is hooked in and how it relates to everything else that is already there.

anyway... the task is daunting with no idea how its all put together. once i get oriented, it will be much easier to figure out. if there is no way to get oriented, then i will have to start from the ground up. could anyone tell me at least, which file to start with (if I have to go from the ground up?)

[Solver]

We don't really have any sort of code documentation. All the changes that were made so far were just good findings and changes to specific files. There are few things that we found immediately on purpose.

As for what to do... this forum has a ton of threads, which has a ton of discussion, bugs listed, etc., so there should be plenty of ideas to work on.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Solver
We don't really have any sort of code documentation. All the changes that were made so far were just good findings and changes to specific files. There are few things that we found immediately on purpose.

I wouldn't maintain that most of the changes are just good findings. (Just good findings sounds to me like findings by accident) To add the slic database support that was hard to figure out. But it was clear in which file this had to be done. Fixing the trade route pathes was accident, actual I just wanted to understand a little bit about the pathing engine in general and found an empty function that I just needed to fill with something similar from another place. Fixing the advance on city capture bug was also just filling a gap. But I used a windows file search to locate the place, something like city capture.

To find things according the map generation you have to look for the keywords: "map", "generation" or for keywords that you find in the map.txt, with these you can find the location in the source where these are parsed and then you got the variable into that the values are saved, and from there you can figure out which functions access these variables, and then you just need to find the places at which these functions are used.

-Martin

[The Big Mc]

yes... this is one thing I would like to accomplish. but what would help that is something that i am not sure you guys are ready to do... especially since the tiles are not designed the way they should be to accomplish this: and that is to separate the concepts of terrain and vegetation. "forest" can exist on plains, croplands, hills, mountains, and even polar mountains to some extent. this is the main thing i would like done to make the terrain more varied, but how this should be done, especially with the tiles the way they are is difficult to do without collaboration, and I don't think this is a task the first update has in mind.

The graphics are kind of done.

take a look at the main thread.

here

At the moment i need a coder to help integrate the new tiles.

[Ekmek]

quote:
"yes... this is one thing I would like to accomplish. but what would help that is something that i am not sure you guys are ready to do... especially since the tiles are not designed the way they should be to accomplish this: and that is to separate the concepts of terrain and vegetation. "forest" can exist on plains, croplands, hills, mountains, and even polar mountains to some extent. this is the main thing i would like done to make the terrain more varied, but how this should be done, especially with the tiles... "


Any increase in capability of the tile file, like adding new terrains or even allowing more terrains of a type (i.e. plains only have five tiles, if it had 10 or more I would have made a bunch of varied plans with little brush and hills etc to make it more varied on the map)

If you are looking for suggestions for the tile file I'd say:

1) adding more tiles for different types of terrain with map generation knowing it. This meaning more plains types and grasslands and the Variation Rule being less clumsy using it (right now it uses 1 varied tile as the center of a 3x3 of the standard/base tile, not necessary and too blocky I think)


2) FIXING the limits on borders, right now the tilefile prelimits its to square shapes. If you could edit the shapes to be round and invisible in parts and use parts of tiles instead of separate border-tiles that would make earth shapes better.

3) I like your forests to hills, mountains etc suggestion (Civ3 does that) if you crack this one I'll be all over adding new terrains. You might find a solution for this by seeing how rivers are done...

4) X,Y limits. If you could some how code it so that certain tiles only appear within certain parameters it would make things more like earth (I think bigMc has a SLIC for this). ALSO, if you could code something like this for goods (and allow more goods) and improvements I'd love to have things like Cotton plantations only grow in certain climates (X,Y range) and on certain terrain types.


Sorry primemover if I blasted you with this but you were looking for work if you are thinking about taking this on you might want to start a new thread called DESIGN: Map Generation/Tilesets or something...

A some tip I think if you contact Steph at Civfanatics, he has his own civ demo that actually uses Civ3 files but it may have hints how to code the terrains like you are talking about... If somethings I said don't make sense I think BigMC can explain or help more. BigMC and the martins know a lot about the tilefile and helped me a lot.