Terraforming question

[Fugi the Great]

It seems that no one seems to know how to make bridges or canals. I was just thinking a bit about that, looking for a work around the problem and started looking through a few of the text files, mainly the Terrain.txt file. I see that for some reason water tiles can not be terraformed. Okay, so not really knowing what I was doing, a added what I thought was the necessary text to be able to do it by copying some of the text from grassland, (techs to add and remove) but for some reason it doesn't show up as being able to do it in game. Question: is it that I can do it but the icon to do it doesn't show up in the ocean terraform tab (as in no icon made for this, or not told where to appear), or is it hard-coded so one can not change this? I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to change shallow water to swamp/grassland/prairie/whatever, and swamp/grassland/prairie/whatever to shallow water. We already can add land in game when a water tile becomes a "dead" tile, usually by turning Pollution on and just letting it pollute unchecked, and you then change it to any land tile you want, assuming you have the correct techs to do so. I could see it maybe being hard-coded so that enemy unit don't get killed when the terrain changes, but then it really is their own fault for being in your territory anyway.

[Martin Gühmann]

In it should work. How did you modify your tileimp.txt and terrain.txt, if I remember correctly you have to modify both files.

-Martin

[Fugi the Great]

thanks for the speedy reply. that might explain it, never modified the tileimp.txt file, I give that a try - thanks.

[Fugi the Great]

Got the ability to add land on water with no problem, Thank you very much. It acts a little weird when the square blacks out on a Continental Shelf, but then it does this in the cheat editor as well, just have to add another square of land to the area to remove the black square (dump more dirt into the ocean).
I just have a bit of problem with adding the ability to add water. Found where the ToolTip and StatusBar pointers come from. I think it comes down to "Class", if I understand what I think it means. "Class" as I see it, is what tab it will put it on or what column of a tab it will put it on. Land and water improvements are easy to figure out. Example: A Mega Mine is Class:Mine Level:3 shown on the Land Improvements Tab, or the Ocean version is Class:OceanMine Level:3, or something close - those make perfect sense. But then Terraforming is slightly different then those. Those are listed as Class:Terraform, Level:XX, Column:XX; starting with Grassland at Level:0, Column:0, and Polar Mountain at Level:2 Column:3 (IIRC). Level and column are easy enough to figure out. But since there are no terraform buttons on Ocean Terraform tab, what is this tab called? If the button I want to add is Water Shallow on the Ocean Terraform Tab, is it still considered Class:Terraform and is that Level:3 Column:0, or should that be Class:OceanTerraform Level:0 Column:0? Or is it WaterTerraform, or TerraformWater, or TerraformOcean? Is it with a space between the words, or an abreviation of the word? I see no file anywhere that shows what that tab is called, well at least the files that I can read when searching for the word "Class" in the file.

A work around that I could use if this is not known or fixable is put it in place of the Swamp button on the land terraform tab, since Desert and swamps are terraformed at the same technology level, and I don't ever plan on adding any swamps, but seeing the desert button will still let me know that I can remove them. Would still be nice to have it on the proper tab, so that one could also add/remove Kelp or Coral Reefs.

[Fugi the Great]

Just adding this to change the date since this is the first day after the new format of the website. Hope someone can answer my question above.

[Martin Gühmann]

But since there are no terraform buttons on Ocean Terraform tab, what is this tab called? If the button I want to add is Water Shallow on the Ocean Terraform Tab, is it still considered Class:Terraform and is that Level:3 Column:0, or should that be Class:OceanTerraform Level:0 Column:0? Or is it WaterTerraform, or TerraformWater, or TerraformOcean? Is it with a space between the words, or an abreviation of the word? I see no file anywhere that shows what that tab is called, well at least the files that I can read when searching for the word "Class" in the file.

It isn't called none of those. E forgot to implement this piece of code. So ocianforming using the ocianforming tab is not possible.

-Martin

[Fugi the Great]

Ooops. I suppose why add it if no one uses it or says anything about it. Thanks for the reply, I'll try the work around then until hopefully it gets added in a future version.

[Martin Gühmann]

Ooops. I suppose why add it if no one uses it or says anything about it. Thanks for the reply, I'll try the work around then until hopefully it gets added in a future version.

Well I had no idea that it wasn't finished.

-Martin

[Martin Gühmann]

I finished E's work, so it can be used in the next revision.

-Martin

[Fugi the Great]

Great! Glad to hear it.
Apparently what I changed works but causes a few problems. I can add water with no problem, the icon to add WaterShallow shows up where the swamps used to, set the swamp icon to show up in column 5 (no such thing), thought I saw others set that way for the ones that don't show up. I set it so it shouldn't be able to add Shallow Water where there already is water or on mountains or hills (Icon should disappear) but it still shows up, almost like it was ignoring what I typed. Also saw lots of strange messages pop up each turn, for example: 2095 AD 10, or 2096 AD this needs to be added to the Great library, 2097 AD up765a.tga, or that message that says we stopped a biological attack on a city but never told me which one - only the variable message holder. Attacking a unit that I am not currently at war with popped up a message box with two buttons: "let them stay" and "legame" (or something like that). Another time a box popped up with button labeled "Game". Didn't really care what happened at the time, since I did have the largest country and military, so I just pressed it, not really knowing what it would do. Must have added something that shifted everything over a few variables. Anyway, it probably confuses the computer when I put barrier islands all over the place with small corridors for my ships to get out but blocked by my submarine fleet, with no place for it to drop troops to attack cities, but it does keep the most of the spys away from the cities, and maintains my sanity without have to keep kicking spys out every turn, though at a high public works price. Would make for an interesting challenge for the human if he encountered the same thing.
Just kind of strange I haven't seen any fusion tank attacks yet (I know they have the tech) that would have ignored the barrier islands, and headed straight for the citys. And again, no bombers. I see space transports, but they aren't transporting anything, just flying around checking out all the new land I added, (or it transporting the guys that keep trying to do biological attacks on me?).

[Martin Gühmann]

Great! Glad to hear it.

Well, I have to add that he keyword will be Oceanforming instead of terraforming to get it onto the oceanforming tab.

Apparently what I changed works but causes a few problems. I can add water with no problem, the icon to add WaterShallow shows up where the swamps used to, set the swamp icon to show up in column 5 (no such thing), thought I saw others set that way for the ones that don't show up. I set it so it shouldn't be able to add Shallow Water where there already is water or on mountains or hills (Icon should disappear) but it still shows up, almost like it was ignoring what I typed.

If you set it up correctly the icon should still be there but should change from red to green and you shouldn't be able to place it.

Also saw lots of strange messages pop up each turn, for example: 2095 AD 10, or 2096 AD this needs to be added to the Great library, 2097 AD up765a.tga, or that message that says we stopped a biological attack on a city but never told me which one - only the variable message holder. Attacking a unit that I am not currently at war with popped up a message box with two buttons: "let them stay" and "legame" (or something like that). Another time a box popped up with button labeled "Game". Didn't really care what happened at the time, since I did have the largest country and military, so I just pressed it, not really knowing what it would do. Must have added something that shifted everything over a few variables.

Next time reloadslic when you have messed with the string database.

Anyway, it probably confuses the computer when I put barrier islands all over the place with small corridors for my ships to get out but blocked by my submarine fleet, with no place for it to drop troops to attack cities, but it does keep the most of the spys away from the cities, and maintains my sanity without have to keep kicking spys out every turn, though at a high public works price. Would make for an interesting challenge for the human if he encountered the same thing.
Just kind of strange I haven't seen any fusion tank attacks yet (I know they have the tech) that would have ignored the barrier islands, and headed straight for the citys. And again, no bombers. I see space transports, but they aren't transporting anything, just flying around checking out all the new land I added, (or it transporting the guys that keep trying to do biological attacks on me?).

Well, I am still fixing the AI at the Renaissance-Modern boundary, I just have the cargo helicopers fixed, well the part that they unload their troops, before their target, now they have to find the right path so that they can unload their cargo at least on the tile before the target city.

-Martin