Hidden undersea terrain (as in CtP1)

lev · January 6, 2002, 22:30

Does anyone know if there is any way to hide the undersea terrain until a player gets submarine technology, as it was in Ctp1? It's a feature I miss...

Locutus · January 9, 2002, 19:28

I agree, I miss this feature too. The only way I can think of to bring it back is to create some new terrain types (which are duplicates of the existing ocean type terrains) and change all the graphics of the current ocean type terrains to shallow water. Then, when the right advance is discovered by the human, use SLIC to terraform all old ('shallow looking') ocean terrain type tiles to the new ('deep looking') tiles. The terraforming process could well be a bit time-consuming though, esp. on big maps...

lev · January 10, 2002, 20:29

Yeah, that could work, but it might indeed be slow. I wonder how Ctp1 handled it? Was there some sort of "show ocean floor" flag, or something?

Locutus · January 11, 2002, 09:25

I think so. The problem is, if you can simply edit the source code all you have to do is change the stuff that get's sent to your monitor. Basically it's not all that different from popping up the city window or something like that. If you have to do this through SLIC you actually have to change the gamestate, meaning you have to go through the entire memory (and part of this memory could well be located on the (slow) harddisk) and manually change every single tile.

(I don't know how computer-savvy you are so I tried to put this explanation in layman's terms, I hope it made sense and didn't offend you or anything

)

lev · January 11, 2002, 12:55

Don't worry, no offense taken.

I had just hoped it was a flag that you could set in some text file somewhere; if it's in the source code, then I guess we're stuck.

Locutus · January 11, 2002, 15:32

Well, IIRC there *was* a flag in a text file (don't remember what it was called though, but I can look it up)- so you could change the advance at which the change occured - but unless I'm very much mistaken that flag no longer exists or at least doesn't work anymore.

Martin Gühmann · January 11, 2002, 17:31

In CTP1 there was a flag in the Advance.txt: ALLOWS_DEEP_OCEAN. The enabling advance for it was: ADVANCE_OIL_REFINING. There is also a flag in the CTP2 Advance.txt: DeepOcean. And surprise the enaibling advance is the same. Therefore this flag has no effect on the game it is there but just for your joy or something else.

-Martin

WesW · January 12, 2002, 02:48

The flag to show deep ocean was one of a number of flags that worked in Ctp1 but not in Ctp2.

SMIFFGIG · September 30, 2002, 20:00

Could it be done then cause I really do miss this too????

Pedrunn · September 30, 2002, 20:19

The only way i can think of is terraforming the volcanos and rifits in the beggining of the game making just deep sea terrain. Still we save the volcanos and rifts in arrays. If a player has the advance to enable the seeing of the undersea terrain we terraform the volcanos and rifts saved in the arrays back as they should be. In the beggining of the turn of the player without this advance we remove volcanos and rifts throgh terraform again. when the turn of the player has the advance we terraform the volcanos and rifts saved in the arrays back again. And by terraforming in and out we simulate the feature.
I got tired just in thinking about it

SMIFFGIG · September 30, 2002, 20:23

That would work

(im getting tired thinking about you thinking about it)

Once again WHY the *@$k did activision not included this anyway or rather EX-clude it as it was in CtP1 . Frustrating to say the least.

Martin Gühmann · October 1, 2002, 11:01

Unfortunatly this terraforming method would need a lot of time.

I think Activision did not included the deep sea feature, because the hadn't the time to implement it the flag is there.

-Martin

Pedrunn · October 1, 2002, 11:08

Quote:

Unfortunatly this terraforming method would need a lot of time.

I was afraid of that.
Still terraform isnt as problematic as the CreateImprovement event.

We could make a global appearance though. If a player gets the advance all players can see the deep sea terrain. Or it could be slowly showed up to the player with the advance when moving units over it.

Martin Gühmann · October 1, 2002, 11:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Pedrunn
I was afraid of that.
Still terraform isnt as problematic as the CreateImprovement event.

That's correct.

Quote:

Originally posted by Pedrunn
We could make a global appearance though. If a player gets the advance all players can see the deep sea terrain. Or it could be slowly showed up to the player with the advance when moving units over it.

In the case of doubt the global appearance is better when moving a ship over it. I can't imagine how to realize the second idea properly. But for the first idea I would rather create additional terrain for the sea volcanos instead of storing them into arrays, so you don't have to think about it if I reload slic.

Actual the best sollution would be to get the source code and implement it directly.

-Martin

Pedrunn · October 1, 2002, 11:27

Quote:

so you don't have to think about it if I reload slic.

This would be catastrophic for the game

Quote:

I would rather create additional terrain for the sea volcanos instead of storing them into arrays,

But it has to be saved in arrays otherwise how will i know where to put the volcanos and rifts?
Simulating the map creation?!? I Dont think so, too much work!

Martin Gühmann · October 1, 2002, 15:26

Quote:

Originally posted by Pedrunn

This would be catastrophic for the game

But it has to be saved in arrays otherwise how will i know where to put the volcanos and rifts?
Simulating the map creation?!? I Dont think so, too much work!

I thought you wanted the effect of CTP1 in the game so the deep terrain must look like shallow water, but it should be impossible for non deep water ships to enter this terrain, so you have to add one more dummy terrain that looks like shallow water but is in fact deep water, so you only need to add another dummy terrain with the features of water volcanos and another one for contnental shelf and another one...

So in this case you have only to replace water volcanos with dummy water volcanos, deep water with dummy deep water and so on no need for arrays or stuff like this, the map must be your memory.

-Martin

Pedrunn · October 1, 2002, 19:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
I thought you wanted the effect of CTP1 in the game so the deep terrain must look like shallow water,

Oh, it has been so long since my last CTP1 play that i cant barely remember what the game look like. Still I like to do things in my way and i think the ancient-renassaince people knew the difference of deep and shallow sea. They only didnt have radar to know how the bottom was like. So if i ever do this deep sea will be in the ancient-renassaince age.

Quote:

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
So in this case you have only to replace water volcanos with dummy water volcanos, deep water with dummy deep water and so on no need for arrays or stuff like this, the map must be your memory.

You are a genius, Martin!

This is a amazing idea

. It will totally solve the reloadslic problem

The Big Mc · October 2, 2002, 06:50

Pedrun this may be the wrong time to tell you this but if you want I have got a mod you may be interesting all it is missing is some code to implement it but how about deep undersea mountains.

The late stage of ctp you can basically settle any were underwater the only thing that makes in interesting is trying to pick up goods. With underwater mountains a person would be forced to look for a clear spot in the ocean bed.

The only problem is that activsion never left a way to integrate these mountains in like trenches of volcanoes so we will need some slic for the.
integration

Martin Gühmann · October 2, 2002, 11:35

The Big Mc actual we never tried what would happen if you use for two terrains the same internal type, therefore it could be possible to add a new terrain.

-Martin

Pedrunn · October 2, 2002, 23:44

Where are the graphics for the underwater moutains?

The Big Mc · October 3, 2002, 09:22

Right first thing first

Using the two internal types confuses the hell out of the game and you get volcanoes as rifts or what ever depending on terrain type you steel and which one is read last in the teran.txt as it forgets about the first one and uses the second one. Sometimes it can be used to advantage like my gaia bomb which uses the internal type dead to trick the AI into every time a nuke goes off to make a forest instead of a dead tile.

Pedrun the pics are at my house I will get them for you possible Monday.

What you want them as just the tile graphics or as a complete tile file.

Pedrunn · October 3, 2002, 09:32

Just the tile graphics are ok.

The Big Mc · October 3, 2002, 11:02

right monday it is then.

Dale · October 3, 2002, 19:26

Straight from ADVANCE.TXT:

Quote:

ADVANCE_OIL_REFINING {

Prerequisites ADVANCE_INDUSTRIAL_REVOLUTION
Prerequisites ADVANCE_RAILROAD

Cost 47870
Icon ICON_ADVANCE_OIL_REFINING
Branch 0
Age AGE_SIX
DeepOcean
KeyAdvanceAdvice KEY_GROWTH_ADVANCE_ADVICE
}

Notice DeepOcean

This enables viewing of the seabed. Just move that command to your submarine tech, and you're laughing.

Martin Gühmann · October 4, 2002, 11:43

Quote:

Originally posted by Dale
Notice DeepOcean

This enables viewing of the seabed. Just move that command to your submarine tech, and you're laughing.

No idea what do you mean, Dale. The problem here is that you can see the seabed from the beginning of the game and that this flag just doesn't work.

-Martin