Needed : help to test a new patch

[Julius Brenzaida]

I have just made a new patch for civ2. It modifies very sligthly (2 numbers) the civ2.exe program to allow :
a) more than 320’000’000 of population
b) more than 30’000 of gold (only naturally, not with the cheat fonction)

Could anyone give me his e-mail so that I can send it to him for a test.
It has been made for civ2 multiplayer only. I have the french version but I gather it should work for the other languages too. I would like to be sure.

Thank you for helping.
If it works, I shall submit it to the Apolyton database.

[Shadowstrike]

Nooooooo...... I only have FW....

*Hangs head in shame*

[Allard HS]

Sounds interesting. Did you find any other interesting values to change, such as the amount of units used in units.gif, technologies, events space and such things?

I would like to test it a bit for you. My email is ahofelt@hotmail.com

[Miner]

Very interesting! How did you go about doing this?
Did you reverse compile or just randomly hex edit the executable? did you have some idea of where to hack?

[Julius Brenzaida]

Thank you Allard HS, I've just sent the patch to you
I think a few other things can benefit from hex editing ... but maybe not the one you're asking. I'll tell you only when I am sure.

Miner, it was just my luck. 32'000 (x10'000) and 30'000 are rare numbers and I modified them in the prog one by one until I found the good ones. If you want, I can tell you where they are. Hex numbers are 007d and 3075. I had no idea on where to hack but I guessed it should be at the beginning of the prog and I was right.

[Dusty]

Hmmmm... This sounds dangerous. I was under the impression that these maximum values were due to the limitation of 16bit signed integers integers
(32767). Does this cause the values to wrap around to negative values? Does it cause crashes?

------------------
Dusty

[Julius Brenzaida]

No, it doesn't appear to be dangerous and it doens't overflow or go back to negatives.
I think the numbers were limited because the AI evaluates the strenght of your civilization by considering a few values like money and population.
The main risk is that the AI might get "less smart" than usual (if you can imagine that).

[Miner]

Julius, the reason I am so interested is that it has occurred to me that the only way to get rid of the dark shading effect on the shields in ToT is to hexedit the .exe file, as research by several civers including myself has found that this ugly effect is not determined by the cities.bmp file unlike in MGE/FW etc.
I have a piece of code which will change any value in any binary file (this has come out of my ToTEdit project, currently on hold) but I have had no luck, mostly due to lack of time as I have pressing concerns at the moment. However you have inspired me to keep trying! Well done!

[Miner]

PS I also have MGE as well as ToT so feel free to post the patch to me, but to be honest I don't know when I will get the chance to extensively test it.

[Julius Brenzaida]

Thanks Miner !
I've just send the patch to you, along with a saved game with over 320'000'000 of population (without cheating).
For ToT, sorry I've bought the game recently and doesn't know much about it yet. Very only thing I've done so far is to play the extended original as the ET and nuke the earth ! Very smart, none of the pollution affected my planet ! (not the right forum, but it's not a strategy I should be proud of, and I was playing Prince)
I hope you will find some time and have some luck to allow you to do what you want with the ToT graphics.

[Miner]

Couple of observations:

1) this executable seems to be 175 000 bytes smaller than mine...weird...is this a consequence of the hacking?

2) you can't give more than 30000 gold by events

3) But you can get upto around 80000 gold by not cheating! It then rolls back round to 30000 or thereabouts.

Haven't tested the population yet, this might take a while!

All tests carried out on the save game provided.
However, I can load my save games and scenarios without any problems.

Now I really must get back to work...the deadline looms...

[Allard HS]

Julius,

your mail hasn't arrived yet. Are you sure you used the correct email address? Hotmail has been quite stable lately, otherwise I would have blamed it.

ahofelt@hotmail.com

Could you try to send it again, please?

[Julius Brenzaida]

Allard, I am quite sure I wrote the correct address. But as computers are definitely not an exact science, I’ve just tried again. I hope it works.

Miner, you are right, money doesn’t go up forever. It can’t do more than 5 digits (99999). After that it reverts to 30000. For the population, it should be able to grow almost forever.
In my saved game the population should be much above 320’000’000, something like 2’000’000’000. Does it not appear that way ?

I’ve just changed 2 numbers, so the civ.exe should have the same amount of bytes. Maybe it’s because I’ve got the french version (but why) or is it a question of patches. Mine should be 1.3.

[Miner]

Julius

Youre right about the population as well, did a double take...miscounting the numbers...just not used to seeing xxxx xxx xxx

[SCDARS]

Please pass it on to me, please. (Email see below)
What I would be really interested in is adding events space - it was done by FW, MGE and ToT versions compared to the respective lower CiC, FW and MGE version, so I think it shouldn't be a big deal.

Do you know the exact amount of bytes allowed for each version? I hope that comparing the files could reveal the locations of the decisive byte.

------------------
SCDARS
scenario_feedback@hotmail.com

[Julius Brenzaida]

Thanks Miner.
So it seems that my patch works. But is it really helpful for anybody ?
I shall try to fix gold on 99'999 and not 30'000 when it reaches 6 digits, but I ain't got much time now.
I will give it a shot in mid-october I guess. I will then have to decide if I ought to submit it to Apolyton. What do you think.

SCDARS, I've sent you my patch. I'm afraid I lack the skills to help you in your "quest" of the decisive byte in any other way.