Re: Scenario Creation (How to's?)

[Hassan]

Question: When you create a scenario in CTP2 do you only include the files and directories of the things you modified? IE: I only put the modified slcs in the default/gamedata/ dir and the game will draw on all the other ctp slcs in the Ctp2/default/gamedata that aren't modified, right?

Hassan

[Paul]

Yes, you only have to include the modified files.

[Hassan]

Thank you, Paul. I'm already on my way to creating my first scenario. Don't know how good it'll be, because I'm not too experienced w/ the CTP Series, but I'm sure I'll manage...

[jmb1539]

I have created a map that is 250 x 500. The game plays fine, however, when I save the game and then try to load the saved game, I can't. The game crashes and I am returned to the desktop doomed to start over again. Anybody know why?

Very Frustrated

[Hassan]

I have no clue Sorry.

[Martin Gühmann]

I'd like to know how many civs do you put on the map, jmb1539?
I had the same problem as I put 32 civs on the map. As I reduced the number of civs to 27 or 28 it worked.

-Martin

[Don Homer]

A bunch of questions:

1) How do you create events in a scenario?

2) I have a map of the world that I want to use in a scenario, but I want 28 civs instead of 8. How?

3) I was creating some cities on my world map. Occasionally I would delete a city and put a new one somewhere nearby. However, the city boundaries didn't come out right. Sometimes the city would only have one square, so it couldn't get any rescources or anything. There was plenty of unoccupied space nearby, but the city borders seemed to avoid certain squares. Why?

[OmniGod]

quote: Originally posted by Don Homer on 03-24-2001 08:47 PM A bunch of questions: 1) How do you create events in a scenario?

That is by slic... see locutus, dale or a few other slic creators.

quote: 2) I have a map of the world that I want to use in a scenario, but I want 28 civs instead of 8. How?

This can be accomplished by exporting the map by opening the chatbox (using the ' key) and typing /exportmap world.txt. You then quit the game, and edit the userprofile.txt to state 29 players. Restart CTP2 and enter the editor. Bring up the chatbox again and type /importmap world.txt. You can then place nations or cities however you'd like.

quote: 3) I was creating some cities on my world map. Occasionally I would delete a city and put a new one somewhere nearby. However, the city boundaries didn't come out right. Sometimes the city would only have one square, so it couldn't get any rescources or anything. There was plenty of unoccupied space nearby, but the city borders seemed to avoid certain squares. Why?

Once you place a city the land there is claimed by the city, to place another city in the proximity of the city will cause the other city to not use the tiles in the sphere of the first city. Even if you delete the city the sphere stays... not sure why but it does. This means that you shouldn't place cities unless you're 100% happy with location. Place a roadtile first if you're not sure. If you restart the map then it's okay but that just becomes a pain in the arse.

[Hassan]

Can you actually have 28 players playing at the same time? Also another question: Why don't player locations save with the map? Is there a way that I can get them to actually save with my maps?

-Hassan

[Martin Gühmann]

You can have 28 players playing at the same time, but it will slow down the game dramatically. OK I have a K6 233 processor. Today a slow one. And additonal I created a map 16 times biger than the normal gigantic map. It is a combination of 15 random generated map. My comp needed eight hour to created it by copy and paste.
28 players on random generated maps no problem. On your maps you have to put settlers of each nation on it, because the number of Opponents screen does not allow to select more than eight players.
For your second question: In the cheateditor there is button like nation. On the nation tab you add advance to your nation or other nations. Public Works and gold can also be added. On this tab there are also four buttons to set start positions. The first mode is full game. This opption is the stadart opption and doesn't allow any kinds of start position or player location setting. The second button allows to set player locations. The third one will set player and civ locations and the last one set the locations of civs.

-Martin

[Hannibal Ad Portas]

Hi

When creating a scn and your placing citys bear in mind that if you
place it incorrectly its best to enter that city and add pop to level
3,then remove the pop 1 by 1 until it disbands,this solves the national
boundry lines problem if you just disband, also if you have the citys
named correctly as you place them, youl not have to rename them creating
a temp file that has to accessed and so slowing the game down.
Hannibal

[Hassan]

Can you tell me exactly, how I get more than 8 players onto the map. This sounds cool and even one extra civ would help some of my scenario ideas. I have a 1ghz AMD K7, I'm also interested in how slow it will make my computer run-(I admit it runs slow in the late stages of CTP between turns).

-Hassan

[Don Homer]

Thanks for the info, one more question:
What about making the instructions at the beginning of the scenario, like in that stupid Japanese RPG scenario, those seperate windows that tell you what to do.

[Grandpa Troll]

Where can I get DETAILED, EXPLICIT directions-for-dummies on the how-to-create-a scenario?

I went to launch editor and made a map..then tried saving it as a scenario..used a cut-n-paste for directory..but it isnt available?

Any/all help would be greatly appreciated!

Yours in Civin

Troll

------------------
Hebrews 11:1

Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for and things unseen

[Don Homer]

I started making a scenario on that huge 400 x 400 world map and cramming in as many cities as I could. I finished Canada, USA, Caribbean and Pacific, saving frequently. Next day, I couldn't load most of the saves, but I could load some of the earlier ones. Is there a minimum amount of cities that one can put on a map? If so, CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Immortal Wombat]

quote: Originally posted by Troll on 03-25-2001 06:25 PM Where can I get DETAILED, EXPLICIT directions-for-dummies on the how-to-create-a scenario?

It works exactly the same (i think) as CTP1, so here is their guide (not amazing) from the game readme file

quote: Advanced User Features: The following are not supported by Activision How to make a Call To Power scenario Requirements Civilization: Call to Power v1.2. A knowledge of how to create folders. The ability to create and edit text files. Step 1: Directories Every scenario is part of a scenario pack. Every scenario pack has its own folder in the Scenarios subdirectory of CTP. For example, if CTP is installed to C:\Program Files\Activision\Civilization-Call To Power\, and you have applied patch 1.2, there should be a folder named C:\Program Files\Activision\Civilization-Call To Power\Scenarios. Inside this folder, you will see a directory named Official. This is where the scenarios Activision created reside. In order to make your own scenarios, you need to first create your own scenario pack directory. For this example, we'll call the directory MyScenarioPack. Make it now. The full path, if you've installed to C:\Program Files\Activision\Civilization-Call To Power\ should be C:\Program Files\Activision\Civilization-Call To Power\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\. From here on out, C:\Program Files\Activision\Civilization-Call To Power will be represented by ... You should replace ... with the directory where you installed Civilization: Call To Power. Now that you have a folder for your scenario pack, each scenario needs to have a folder. These have to be named scenxxxx, where xxxx is replaced with a number, starting from 0000 and moving up incrementally. Make a folder for your first scenario now, name it scen0000. The full path from the main scenarios directory should be ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000. Step 2: Description files Every scenario pack needs a description of the pack. The name of this file is always packlist.txt, and resides in the main pack folder, so it will be ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\packlist.txt in this example. packlist.txt is a plain text file that always contains 3 lines: The name of the scenario pack, a description of the scenario pack, and the number of scenarios in the pack. For our example, create the file ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\packlist.txt now and enter these three lines: packlist.txt: My Scenario PackThis is a description of my scenario pack. My scenario pack rocks.1 Every individual scenario needs a description file too. The name of this file is scenario.txt and goes in the scenxxxx folder for the scenario. Scenario.txt consists of only two lines, the name of the scenario, and a description of the scenario. Remember the name you use here, it will be important later. Create this file for your first scenario now, it should be named ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\scenario.txt . Put these lines in the file: scenario.txt: My First ScenarioThis is a description of my first scenario. I like scenarios. This says that your scenario's name is "My First Scenario". You will need to type it exactly the same later when we get to saved games. Step 3: Check it out That's the bare minimum needed to create a scenario. This scenario won't do anything interesting yet, it will be exactly like playing a normal game. But go into the game anyway and see if it shows up. If you run the game and go to Single Player->New Game->Select Scenario, you should see a new scenario pack named "My Scenario Pack". Double clicking on it, or clicking and selectiong OK, should open the pack, and you should a scenario named "My First Scenario" inside. Double clicking this should take you back to the single player screen, which should now say "Scenario: My First Scenario" underneath the "Standard Game" button (which was the "Select Scenario" button before) If you don't see your scenario pack or your scenario, go back and check the steps above to make sure everything is in the right place. To summarize, here are the files and folders you should have created at this point: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\ ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\packlist.txt ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\ ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\scenario.txt Step 4: Make a map Launch the map editor. Create a map you want to use for your scenario. For this example, press the "Start Locs." button on the editor window, and select "Start Loc. by Civ". Place starting locations for the first four civs, Greeks, Americans, Scots, and Irish. Now click "Save Scenario As". In the first dialog that appears, enter My First Scenario, which must match exactly what you entered as the first line of ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\scenario.txt . Click ok. On the next screen, which looks like a normal save game dialog, enter a folder name in which to save the game in the first text field ("Game:"). For this example, use the folder name "NewScen". This folder will be placed in ...\ctp_program\save\games\NewScen. In the second text field ("Save:") enter "savegame.csg". This is the filename that will be used to save the file inside the NewScen folder. You can use another name, but when you move the file to the actual scenario folder, it must be named savegame.csg, so it makes sense to name it that now. At this point, you should have this file: ...\ctp_program\save\games\NewScen\savegame.csg You should also have a scenario directory from step 1 at: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\ In order to make your newly saved map the map that is used for "My First Scenario", you just need to move ...\ctp_program\save\games\NewScen\savegame.csg to ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\savegame.csg . Do that now. The complete list of files you've added under ...\scenarios should now look like this: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\ ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\packlist.txt ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\ ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\scenario.txt ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\savegame.csg Step 5: Check it out Start up the game again. Go to Single Player->New Game->Select Scenario. Open "My Scenario Pack". Open "My First Scenario". This time, instead of going back to the normal new game screen, you should be presented with a series of dialogs. The first is for number of players. 3 or 4 should be the only legal choices (since you placed 4 starting locations in step 4). Choose 4. Next you should be asked to choose a civilization. The only legal choices should be the civilizations for which you placed starting locations. Finally, you should get the difficulty dialog. Choose the difficulty you want. Once the game has loaded, open the cheat tool and click Show Map. Verify that the game is using the map you saved and that there are 4 settlers in the places where you put starting locations. If you have that, you've now created a real scenario with a fixed map and fixed starting locations that uses the standard rules, congratulations! Step 6: Change the rules Every scenario pack can override the standard text files. Every scenario can also override it's pack's text files. For this example, we'll override the standard files for just scen0000 ("My First Scenario"). Create these new folders ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\ ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\game data\ Any file you place in ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\game data\ will now be read instead of the standard file in ...\ctp_data\default\gamedata\. So, let's copy the units.txt from ...\ctp_data\default\gamedata\units.txt to ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\game data\units.txt Now let's make settlers look like cows: Open up ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\game data\units.txt. Find the unit that starts with "UNIT_SETTLER". Look through UNIT_SETTLER's description until you come to DEFAULT_SPRITE SPRITE_SETTLER Change that line to say DEFAULT_SPRITE SPRITE_CATTLE Now go back and repeat Step 5. This time when you start the game, you should see cows instead of settlers. They will still behave as settlers, all you did was change the sprite. But this gives you an idea of how to start modifying units on your own. Ok, so you know how to change the standard rules. What about creating your own rules? SLIC (documented elsewhere) allows you to modify the game's behavior with triggers on various game events. To add SLIC code to a scenario, you need only create the file ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\game data\scenario.slc and place any SLIC code you want in it. To test things out, create the file now, and place this code in it: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\default\game data\scenario.slc: trigger 'NewWarrior' when (city.built && IsHumanPlayer(g.player)) { CreateUnit(g.player, UnitType("UNIT_WARRIOR"), city.location, 0); Message(g.player, 'NewWarriorMessage');}messagebox 'NewWarriorMessage' { Text(ID_NEW_WARRIOR_MESSAGE);} This code contains a reference to a string that's not in the standard string files. So you also need to create a scenario strings file. You should place this in ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\english\game data\scen_str.txt. You will need to create the "english" and "english\gamedata" directories. Note that if your copy of CTP is in another language, you need to use that language as the first directory name instead of "english". And if you want to include translations for other languages with your scenario, you can create all of the directories for which you have translations and put a scen_str.txt in each of them. Anyway, assuming you're doing this with an english version, put this in your new strings file: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\english\game data\scen_str.txt: NEW_WARRIOR_MESSAGE "You have received a free warrior in [city.1.name]" Now if you go back and repeat step 5, every time you build a city with one of your settlers (err, cows), you should receive a free warrior in that city and a message telling you about the free warrior. Step 7: Custom Icons This is optional, but allows you to jazz up your Scenario Pack and Scenarios with nice little graphics for the Scenario Picker interface. If you like, you can override the default Scenario Pack and Scenario icons that are displayed in the picker screen inside the game. This is easy to do. All you have to do is make 16 bit TARGA images, name them the right name, and put them in the right place(s). Scenario Pack Icon This is a 16 bit TARGA image of size 150x90 pixels. It's called: packicon.tga Using the above example scenario, put this TGA file here: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\packicon.tga Scenario Icon This is also a 16 bit TARGA image of size 150x90 pixels. It's called: scenicon.tga Using the above example scenario, put this TGA file here: ...\scenarios\MyScenarioPack\scen0000\scenicon.tga That's all you need to do. The images have to be in the exact format specified (16 bit TARGA images, not 24 or 32 bit ones,) named correctly, and placed in the right directory to show up in the game. Step 8: Have fun! Now you know everything you need to know to make a scenario. To add more scenarios to your scenario pack, all you have to do is name the folders scen0001, scen0002, etc., and update the number in packlist.txt to reflect the number of scenarios you've created. That's it. AI taking over PBEM/Hotseat player You can use the /attach command from the chat window (hit the ' key) to assign an AI to play the turn of a Hotseat player that has left the game. To allow a human player to assume an AI players turn, use the /detach command. For PBEM games, you must set all players as human (and include an email address) for the first turn of play. On any further turns you can then attach/detach AI's as before. Registry location for .csg files HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.csg and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\csgfile Adding Governments in Scenarios If a scenario maker wants to modify the default CTP governments (described in the govern.txt file) then there are two ways to do this. The first is to modify one of the 12 original governments in the govern.txt file. You can modified any aspect of these governments, including their names. However, you must continue to refer to them by the original name if you modify their rank ordering in the set_govern.fli file. For example, if you redefine the 12th government in the govern.txt file (GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_DEMOCRACY), then you can make this the first choice of the AI when it is available by setting the gov_virtual_d_1 output variable in the set_govern.fli file. Any governments that you create over and above the original twelve do not have ranking variables associated with them in the fli system and will use a utility computation to decide when the new government becomes available if it is better than the one selected by the rank system in set_govern. To force only particular AI's to use one of your additional governments you can not use the ranking system and so must instead tie the government to an advance that only certain AI personalities research, or use some similar method.

[Don Homer]

Well? How many cities?