BITTERFROST - Test of Time Version

curtsibling · October 26, 2003, 14:52

This thread is for the Test of Time version of Bitterfrost.

The story background and MGE version is available here:

Bitterfrost MGE thread...

I am busy manually converting units and essential files to ToT format, and have decided to make a development thread.

My quest:
I am looking for some pointers on what extra stuff to put into the ToT version.
I have 17 spare unit slots, a ton of events space and also the potential for multi map mayhem too.
Not to mention the funky 24-bit graphics of ToT...

My plea for help:
Would a brave warrior be up for helping me do the technical aspects of a multi-map set?
I can make the maps, but I need a co-worker to make the relations between them...

So if you can, please post your feedback/suggestions/ideas here and help me make a definitive fantasy scenario for ToT!

techumseh · October 26, 2003, 20:01

I'd be glad to help. How many layers do you want? And what do you want them to be? Underground works well, and you can have up to three levels. Underwater is easy to do also. Cloud worlds are kinda dumb, IMHO.

Space and/or another world altogether etc. is dooable, as is another dimension. It depends on what you want.

One thing to consider is whether you want the extra levels to be available for: 1) active civs at the start,
2) colonization, and/or 3) places to discover later primarily to perform quests.

You need to be cautious about 4 fertile maps, I think. It gets up to the limit of cities and units (not to mention patience) pretty quick.

tanelorn · October 26, 2003, 20:33

What about
1 A level of the Bitterfrost map, as is
2 A level of the Imperion map, with the three vassal domains (Crusade, Coven & Bursar) well established- albeit with more earth-like terrains & horse native units insdead of lizards, and a barb city containing a 0 movement ultra unit (the Imperion Emperor) representing the imperion capital, out for grabs. And a teleporter to bitterfrost
3 An ultimately alien ancient homeworld, as you suggested, with a link (teleporter) to bitterfrost
4? The plane of Hades, where the undead hail from?

curtsibling · October 26, 2003, 20:46

I would be honoured to have your help, techumseh!
The map relations boggle my mind, and you are a seasoned ToT ace!

Tanelorn has hit the nail on the head. I want to give the Colonists, Undead and Ancients their own worlds.

But techumseh has also made a very relevant point.

With 4 more maps, the accursed city limit will stretch to maximal very quickly.

I have two solutions for this:

1. To make each world a host for one mega city, where a civ can draw troops and help from.

2. Or make the maps a good deal smaller, and then have them fertile...

What do you think?

I fancy option one, personally.

techumseh · October 26, 2003, 22:30

Will the the Colonists, Undead and Ancients start only on their own world?

My best advice is to have the maps a bit smaller, say in the range of 100X160 or even 60X100, and allow for limited growth on the other maps, but constrain it through the use of unhospitable terrain, including impassable. Even at 60X100, the total land area of the 4 maps is 240X400, as compared to the 122X268 single map of MGE Bitterfrost.

As I'm sure you already know, the maps must all have the same dimensions. It's best to plan ahead regarding the intermap transfer points (teleporters). It's possible to have sea to sea transfer points as well as land to land, but not sea to land.

Once you've finalized the 4 maps, insert this after the @TERRAIN3 field and before the @GOVERNMENTS field:

@SECONDARY_MAPS
6, 0,0, 0,0, 0,0,0,0, 0,0,0, 0,0,0, 0,0,0,
6, 0,0, 0,0, 0,0,0,0, 0,0,0, 0,0,0, 0,0,0,
6, 0,0, 0,0, 0,0,0,0, 0,0,0, 0,0,0, 0,0,0,

This tells the program to ask you for the extra maps when you start an Original game. It's preferable to begin using the Original game, because otherwise the scenario will always be either a Fantasy or a Sci-fi game, and they both have built-in quirks that can be maddening. At least with the original game, everything is still pretty much the same as FW/MGE - until you change it!

One more tip. Put copies of the terrain files for each of the maps in your Bitterfrost scenario folder, before you start, otherwise you won't be able to see the extra worlds. It once took me half an hour of hair-pulling frustration to figure out this simple error.

Catfish · October 27, 2003, 02:38

Quote:

Originally posted by techumseh
…constrain it through the use of unhospitable terrain, including impassable.

Yes. You could even give units the impassable terrain override, with the exception of settlers (domain 1 units always ignore the impassable flag – very annoying). This was something I was considering for a real-world scenario I was working on which uses a 31 000+ tile gigamap. I wanted to restrict the AI from using strategically unimportant areas of the map.

Quote:

Originally posted by techumseh
This tells the program to ask you for the extra maps when you start an Original game. It's preferable to begin using the Original game, because otherwise the scenario will always be either a Fantasy or a Sci-fi game, and they both have built-in quirks that can be maddening. At least with the original game, everything is still pretty much the same as FW/MGE - until you change it!

One more tip. Put copies of the terrain files for each of the maps in your Bitterfrost scenario folder, before you start, otherwise you won't be able to see the extra worlds. It once took me half an hour of hair-pulling frustration to figure out this simple error.

Tell me about it. I was working on a Gothic horror style (vampires, ghosts, werewolves, gypsies, etc) scenario a few years ago which had 2 maps. The first map was your standard earthly affair, while the other was a land of eternal darkness from which the vampire lords based their power. I think I did something stupid like start the scenario as a modified Extended game and then dump the contents in my scenario directory. Sometimes I could toggle between the 2 maps in the Minimap and sometimes not (some of those built-in quirks I guess).

Anyway, I've been fiddling around with 24-bit Bitterfrost terrains for the 15-bit ToT game. Man, I forgot what a pain in the arse it was to create decent tileable terrains. I was also reminded of Civ2's ugly dithering effect between different terrain types.

I've posted a few samples below in png format (I hope it's not too large for some people). The screenshot is from a conversion of the MGE 2nd beta version, so it uses the older map - I don't want to reveal the final MGE map.

The dithering in Civ2 caused me to make some modifications to the terrains I was working on. I changed the cobble base for walls to grassed ramparts - the contrast with the other lighter terrains I was using looked pretty ordinary. I experimented with different dithering patterns and dithering base terrains. Eventually went for a conservative amount of dithering. Need to avoid really dark terrains that contrast strongly with light ones.

- I've done coniferous forests for Terrain2.bmp, but I'm not happy with them (see bottom-left corner, below), so I'll have another crack.
- also touched up the Zartan cities a bit (see below).
- tried one of the Dark Omen People.bmp sets for the humans (see below), as well as added the 24-bit undead set (with the glowing eyes).

BTW, you have 2 instances of the Wild Durn resource in the rules.txt file. One appears very ursine and the other looks like timber. You've also got 2 grassland references in the @Terrain list where it should be hearthland - only visible in the Civilopedia.

Comments Curt? Use, modify, ignore – do what you like. Do you want me to upload some bmps?

curtsibling · October 27, 2003, 04:02

@Catfish!
Totally mind-blowing stuff! I didn't know you were working away on this.

Yes, I would be more than delighted to use those awesome tiles!

@techumseh: Cheers!
If you think it the best course, I will go for the smaller map option.

ToT's inspired terrain rules (like the impassable) will be very useful to limit city growth!

Time to get those maps together ASAP!

My thanks, fellows!

techumseh · October 28, 2003, 04:01

Curt, before you launch the initial game which will become the scenario, you may wish to develop your Rules text in advance for 2 areas: the @MAP_TRANSPORT_RELATIONSHIPS and the @CIVILIZE/@LEADERS fields. This will save you having to do everything by means of a temporary events file.

Which units can move to or exist on which maps, and which civs can research or trade which techs cannot be changed after the game is first launched, except by events. Just changing the rules text on an existing game won't affect these 2 things.

This isn't as onerous as it sounds, and I normally do it all using a temporary events file, just 'cause I'm not usually well enough organized to plan it all out in advance. If you are, then it's probably easier to do most of it before starting the game. You just substitute your scenario's rules text for that of the original game, launch the game, save it, and transfer your save game and rules text to the scenario folder.

If you want to use the temporary events technique, have a look at Darth Veda's tip on the Cradle of Civilization site. Here is an example fixing the intermap abilities of an Ancient Warrior unit:

@IF
SCENARIOLOADED
@THEN
JustOnce
Transport
Unit=Ancient Warrior
State=On
mode=Use
Type=2
@ENDIF

This would allow this type of unit to use the 3rd transporter slot in the @MAP_TRANSPORT_RELATIONSHIPS field. This would contain 2 numbers representing the 2 maps the transporter connects.

The same technique can be used to give units the ability to move on their own between specific maps and for various settler/engineer units to build particular types of transporters.

Similarly, you can use this event to set which civs can use a specific tech or group of techs:

@IF
ScenarioLoaded
@THEN
EnableTechnology
Whom=Ancients
technology=03
value=2
@ENDIF

In this case, the Ancients would be unable to research or own tech 03 (Ast) because the value is 2. 1 means the civ can't research it but can get it by trading, and a value of 0 means there are no restrictions.

Using a temp events file is easy. Just load the scenario with it as your Events file and save. Load the save game and save as the scenario. The settings are now imbedded and you can now use your regular Events file when you start the scenario.

In this and all other mysteries of Test of Time, the Cradle of Civilization has the best information. http://coc.apolyton.net/guides/index.shtml It is our bible, and William Keenan is our prophet!

His detailed work has revealed the secrets of ToT and made it, if not simple, at least clear.

kobayashi · October 28, 2003, 04:55

Is the MGE at its release stage already? I've been waiting for the final version to play it but its sort of been continuously evolving.

curtsibling · October 28, 2003, 04:56

@techumseh:

Truly, you and Will are the high priests of ToT! While I am a mere journeyman!

All this info is being cut and pasted into a txt file, for reference.

techumseh, would you have the time to help me sort these map-relation aspects of the rules file, if I deal with the units and tech parts?

This will be in a week or so.

curtsibling · October 28, 2003, 04:58

Quote:

Originally posted by kobayashi
Is the MGE at its release stage already? I've been waiting for the final version to play it but its sort of been continuously evolving.

Hi, kobayashi.

Yes, the final version is up on the MGE thread, the link to which is on the first post here.

Catfish · October 28, 2003, 09:10

Quote:

Originally posted by curtsibling
I didn't know you were working away on this.

When you asked me about graphics in the other thread, I said I’d make you some 24-bit terrains. So I have.

Here (Edit: Deleted) are the bmp files. The zip contains cities.bmp, people.bmp, terrain1.bmp and terrain2.bmp. Note that these are works-in-progress, but you may be able to make use of some of it.

- I don’t much care for my coniferous forests in terrain2.bmp, so I might later try and fix them up.
- IMHO those darkened Nemo WWII ruins look unsightly, so I’ve replaced them with placeholders (Favoured Flight’s rubble).

Let me know when you’ve got this stuff, Curt, so I can delete the file.

BTW, your frosty Amazon in the title page looks even dodgier than the one that sparked that ridiculous bikini/sasquatch/sheep discussion in the Speculative Graphics thread.

curtsibling · October 28, 2003, 09:16

Triumphant work, Catfish!

Feel free to email the files to me at:

curtsibling@ntlworld.com

I'm at Uni right now, and cannot grab the files...They look awesome, though.

About the Zatarn title image....Always happy to freak y'all out!

fairline · October 28, 2003, 09:19

This is shaping up to be a corker - it's just the sort of boost ToT needs

Have you fixed the locations for each of the maps Curt? If not, an underworld map is always good for a fantasy setting - it opens up the possibility of tunnel quests to find magic, er, stuff and thingies

Catfish: let's not go down that road with the sheep again!

techumseh · October 28, 2003, 11:08

Quote:

Originally posted by curtsibling
@kobayashi:

Truly, you and Will are the high priests of ToT! While I am a mere journeyman!

He is?

Quote:

All this info is being cut and pasted into a txt file, for reference.

techumseh, would you have the time to help me sort these map-relation aspects of the rules file, if I deal with the units and tech parts?

This will be in a week or so.

Sure.

curtsibling · October 28, 2003, 15:51

LOL!

Sorry techumseh , that was a cut and paste malfunction there!

I was aiming that post at your good self, I didn't copy your name right, and Koby's name was still in the cache!

I miss a turn!

curtsibling · October 28, 2003, 15:56

Now I have had a chance to check out Catfish's Bmps at home, I can see they are wonderfu!

Well done that man!
He has captured the cold, snowy feel of the Bitterfrost world!

I would ask if he fancied helping with the terrain of the other realms, but I dont want to push it!

Again, simply awesome!

Catfish · October 28, 2003, 20:54

Quote:

Originally posted by fairline
Catfish: let's not go down that road with the sheep again!

I have no intention of heading down that path again! Fear not Fairline, I will leave you to your own devices.

Quote:

Originally posted by curtsibling
I would ask if he fancied helping with the terrain of the other realms, but I dont want to push it!

He might.

curtsibling · October 28, 2003, 21:14

Catfish, yer the man!

It's not set in stone yet, but I have these terrain concepts in mind:

Imperion map: Fertile and green richlands, farms, livestock timber bonuses...Some tiles may be houses...

Undead map: Black and barren doom lands, tons of ruins, bones etc. Water will be oily and inky.

Ancient map: Bizarre rocky land, with perhaps a purple or glassy unatural terrain. Many crystal-like areas...

What do you think?

Of course there is no major rush, I know you are a busy guy, and Bitterfrost ToT will be an ongoing development for a good few months or so.

Catfish · October 28, 2003, 21:38

Sounds fine to me. I’d stick to placeholder graphics in the early stages of development. At this point it’s likely that you will make frequent changes to the scenario, with new ideas and gameplay issues regularly cropping up. You don’t want to get into the mindset of trying to accommodate a cool graphic at the expense of gameplay, either (I’ve been there before).

Glassy terrain, eh? We don’t have shaders in ToT, you know.

techumseh · October 28, 2003, 23:43

Curt (and others thinking of trying a ToT scenario) you might want to look at this scenario from Daftpanzer: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=99099 It's very good, and he exploits the multimap features well.

curtsibling · October 29, 2003, 03:08

Nice one, techumseh!

curtsibling · October 29, 2003, 03:12

@Catfish :

Yep, those where just my general ideas. To give you a inkling of what I had in mind.

Obviously, the maps are still at an early stage and while I reckon not much will be changed drastically,
there may be some new features, to take advantage of the ToT extras.

As I said, nothing is set in stone!
I'll keep you posted!

fairline · October 29, 2003, 19:00

Quote:

Originally posted by Catfish

I have no intention of heading down that path again! Fear not Fairline, I will leave you to your own devices.

curtsibling · October 29, 2003, 22:23

LOL!

I might even include a sheep unit!

*joke*

Catfish · October 30, 2003, 03:14

Quote:

Originally posted by fairline

Well, a catfish can’t pass up bait like that.

Quote:

Originally posted by curtsibling
I might even include a sheep unit!

Well, there are some in terrain1.bmp already.

Catfish · October 30, 2003, 23:24

Been working on the mountains to make them tile better. Maybe will add some snow tops later - as long as it doesn't stuff them up.
- tweaked coastlines and some resources.
- need to tweak forests.
- need to add ruins to terrain1.bmp.
- not keen on any single river set ever released for Civ2. I may consider doing something about this.

curtsibling · October 31, 2003, 06:17

Beautiful work, Catfish!

Visually, this scenario is going to be a feast!

I'll get working on those maps this weekend.

techumseh · November 5, 2003, 05:49

bump.

curtsibling · November 5, 2003, 12:13

You Bumped?

I will give this scen some attention at the weekend.

Right now, I am snowed under with University work!

@techumseh:

If you are around, could you tell me what is required for a multimap scen, in terms of graphic and text files?

Do I need only one rules, etc?