Science Advisor Screen: Standard game vs Scenarios

The Rusty Gamer · February 15, 2002, 07:18

I've noticed an odd difference on the science advisors screen between playing a standard game and playing a scenario.

The standard game has these wonderful new very strong graphic arrows to link the techs together which looks great, implemented in the new patch I think.

When you play a scenario, however, even after saving it with the new (correct) editor, it has the old dull-looking links on the science advisor screen. I even tried moving the scenario out of the scenario folder into the main directory to see if that would make a difference. I also created a new scenario from scratch. But no, same old dull tech links.

While we're at it, there's a problem I noticed that still persists in the new patch. If, during a game, you choose the new game option and choose a scenario to play, the little icons that normally appear in the tech boxes on the science advisor screen disappear. Has anyone else noticed this or is there a solution I don't know about?

Libertarian · February 15, 2002, 07:23

I'm not sure.

DrFell · February 15, 2002, 13:04

Maybe it's Firaxis' latest attempt to dissaude potential scenario makers by stunning them with the standard game graphics.

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS · February 15, 2002, 13:15

If the game thinks it's using default rules, it uses the predrawn science advisor background for each era (which already have the arrows drawn in). If it's a mod, it dynamically generates connecting lines because the game doesn't have any good and/or efficient way to know if the mod has any altered tech tree data.

Hopefully at some point modders will be able to do their own science advisor backgrounds and package them with their mods to circumvent this, but for now it's the dynamically drawn line thing

Dan

The Rusty Gamer · February 23, 2002, 05:01

Dan,

What about an option in the scenario editor, just like the No Map option, which we can check, something like Use predrawn science advisor background. It would default to be switched on for each new scenario and would switch off when we started changing the tech tree or we could manually switch it off ourselves.

Also, when we use a mod could the program quickly check the tech tree to see if any of the prerequisites have been changed or the tech boxes moved and if not, then use the predrawn background. It wouldn't matter if we'd changed units etc, only if we'd actually changed a tech prerequisite or box position somewhere.

MonsterMan · February 23, 2002, 05:14

I've been wondering how the arrows were made.

CivilizationIII\Art\Advisors\science_ancient.pcx

Now I'll get to work connecting the dots with my own mod :-)

MonsterMan · February 23, 2002, 06:16

I edited out the unrelated techs.

Check it out, it's easy to make arrows : )

The Templar · February 23, 2002, 06:54

Better yet, how about the ability to tell the game to draw dynamic links when it thinks it is using the default rules? The arrows look pretty, but every time I have tried to modify those files, the files come out ten times the size they were and civ3 just shows a black background (I'm converting them from pcx to bmp, editing in paint, then going bmp to pcx - if anyone has a better way that does not involve expensive software, let me know). Anyway, I'd like to radically alter the modern tech tree, but want to maintain the visual links between techs, even if they are the less pretty (but utilitarian) dynamic lines.

MonsterMan · February 23, 2002, 07:14

Converting pcx files to something else and back again is just asking for things to go wrong

Download paintshop pro from www.jasc.com that's what I'm using and as u can see from the screenshot (and my mod, if u want) it is working out great for all things Civ.