Wonder Possibilities

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Locutus

But there are plenty of other issues in which Hancock and other people with 'far-out' ideas (such as e.g. Clyde Winters) have a point, something that other historians and archeologists ought to take more seriously, IMHO...

I agree. Established archaeologists stick to a script and seem reluctant to venture into other discussions even when shown evidence they can't explain. . .

One item that comes to mind is the idea that the Sphinx has "evidence" of water erosion, which seems odd, when it's in the middle of a desert environment. . .

[Immortal Wombat]

Woohoo!

I got some of the city expansion tile improvements to work. Thanks Martin, it seems I had set Class:Road. Class:Mine seems to solve it, and now 9 out of 16 of them display correctly, specifically Tileset Indices: 84 and 92-99.
Tilesets 85-91 are showing blank space.

Still, thats 9 at least available for wonders

[Leonidas]

Fast work, Immortal.

Do images of the Wonders have to drawn, or can they be imported from other works?

Sorry, I don't know enough about the workings/graphics of CTP2 to know how this actually works. . .

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Woohoo!

I got some of the city expansion tile improvements to work. Thanks Martin, it seems I had set Class:Road. Class:Mine seems to solve it, and now 9 out of 16 of them display correctly, specifically Tileset Indices: 84 and 92-99.
Tilesets 85-91 are showing blank space.

Still, thats 9 at least available for wonders

That is also odd and higher tile set indices should also be available as I can access all the single road pices.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

Leonidas, that wasn't using wonder graphics, they'd have to be made specially; I was using tile imps I converted from BlueO's city expansion mod last month.

Martin, it is indeed strange, and I noticed somethign else after I posted. Though the TileIDs were set up like that in the TIle File, in tileimp.txt, the TileSet numbers were given as 600-615 Yet they still showed up in the game. Its really most bizarre.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Leonidas, that wasn't using wonder graphics, they'd have to be made specially; I was using tile imps I converted from BlueO's city expansion mod last month.

No problem

Has anyone looked into actually doing the art work for Wonders yet?

[Immortal Wombat]

I guess not. It depends what we want as landmark wonders. Is there a list yet?

Anyway, update on the tile side of things, I have found 18 indeces that work in both the tile and in timleimp.txt and in the game.
These are: 84, 92-99, 600 and 608-615 (ranges inclusive) working on this basis, It seems that every other block of 7 or 8 work, but I haven't had time to test many other values.

In any case, I have managed to implmement 16 city suburbs as tile improvements, which makes the city expansion a lot less complex hopefully, with no huge host of terrains and goods, and no problem of the big old suburbs being traded across the map so much.

[Pedrunn]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
In any case, I have managed to implmement 16 city suburbs as tile improvements, which makes the city expansion a lot less complex hopefully, with no huge host of terrains and goods, and no problem of the big old suburbs being traded across the map so much.

Wow!!!!!!!
this is a huge improvement to city expansion wich i use in my almost ready mod.
Do you have the code?
And the tile improvements?

[Kull]

Some really neat stuff here! Locutus suggested i drop in for a visit, and this is a fantastic idea! Some truly revolutionary thinking! Now I'm not much of an artist, but it seems to me that much of this "tile improvement art" already exists in the world of Civ2 Scenarios. So rather than create stuff from scratch, why not borrow and edit what already exists? As an example, the attached file contains three pieces of tile art from the Civ2 Jules Verne scenario; Pyramids, an underwater city, and a waterfall:

If you like this idea, the next step would be to develop a list of desired wonders (I'd recommend including "Natural Wonders" such as the Grand Canyon) and then issue a "call for tile art" on the Civ2 forums (HS-Scenario League and Civ2-Creation). There's plenty of knowledgeable designers who could tell us which scenarios contain the art we're looking for.

[Locutus]

Kull,
Thanks for having a look

AFAIK we've never borrowed stuff from Civ2 before and (IMNSHO) with good reason: CtP2 can handle much better graphics than that. The Civ2 graphics are small, only 256 colors, there's no shadows, no alpha channel, etc. With all due respect to the makers of that Civ2 art (most of them are just hobbyists but still manage to produce professional quality art - it's the limitations of the engine that restrict them), those tiles you posted just don't do justice to the beautiful photos Leonidas posted on page 1. CtP2 tiles probably wouldn't do so either, but they generally tend to look much better than Civ2 ones.

That said, I think Morgoth (and Katy) left the CtP community ages ago and BlueO also moved on to Civ3, so (AFAIK) we're without really talented artists at the moment. So if noone can come up with high-quality CtP2 art, it might indeed be good to have a good look at those Civ2 scenarios and see to what degree that stuff can be used by us (but resizing is probably involved, which always screws things up).

One other thing we might want to look at is AoE, maybe some of the wonders there can be reused? I haven't played that game in ages, but I do remember that it had some really neat wonder art. Also, perhaps the graphics from the Civ3 city view could be reused? They're not exactly ugly either, but I don't know how well that would work. Also, I don't know where various fan-made CtP city styles come from, but the guys who made that stuff did an impressive job as well, maybe some of them still hang around and could help us out?

Edit: natural wonders are a nice idea too, Dale brought this up a while ago - they'd be created randomly across them map and have a tourist benefit or something. That would be interesting.

[Martin Gühmann]

[SIZE]Originally posted by Locutus[/SIZE]
Also, I don't know where various fan-made CtP city styles come from, but the guys who made that stuff did an impressive job as well, maybe some of them still hang around and could help us out?

I thought Harlan made the Meso-American Pyramid and the Castle city styles for CTP1 and added the industrial age styles to CTP1. PinkFriend made the ancient and renaissance palace style he offered it to Wes to implement it into his MedPack2 in the beta thread. But unfortunatly he had no idea how convert his graphics to sprites therefore I did it and added the the industrial style by taking screencaptures of Harlan's Industrial styles and cut out the non style specific portions and cut out the palace from PinkFriend's style and combined them, by the way I made the roofes of the industrial buildings green in order to harmonize them with the green copper patina of the palace roofs. I don't who is pinkfriend he made only 13 post exept of one all in the MM2 alpha and beta threads. The Egyptain style and the new modern age was my idea.

-Martin

[Locutus]

Ah yes, thanks for refreshing my memory (again).

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
The Egyptain style and the new modern age was my idea.

Did you also make the graphics for these? The Pyramid style is by far the best looking city style. If you made it, you would definitely be a candidate for designing these wonder graphics for us

[Immortal Wombat]

I have the AoK X-pack now, so that'll be as good a place as any to start with the American wonders.

Oh, and isn't Dave a graphic artist?

[Locutus]

Is he? Never seen any art from him, AFAIK... Then again, I could be wrong...

Anyway, Ben and I have been looking at AoE art (Ben at AoK and Conq, I at AoE and RoR), below are all wonders from AoE(+RoR) and 2 from AoK. Maybe IW can post the rest of the AoK pics later, if we decide we like these.

Question to anyone who currently has Civ3 (I don't): are the City View pictures in a readable format? Could some examples of those be posted here as well, for comparison?

From top-left to bottom-right: the Spanish, Aztec, Middle Eastern, Asian, Roman, Greek and Egyptian wonders (no, I don't know what some of these are supposed to be either).

[Locutus]

I managed to get a picture of the wonders 'in action' (not really, just copy-pasted with PSP). I'm afraid the quality is not very high, I'm a total moron when it comes to graphics, but it gives an impression of what it might look like (although the wonders might be slightly too large here)...

[Dale]

Originally posted by Locutus
Edit: natural wonders are a nice idea too, Dale brought this up a while ago - they'd be created randomly across them map and have a tourist benefit or something. That would be interesting.

I'm glad someone remembered this. I'd still like to look at making a Natural Wonders MOD or something.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Dale
I'm glad someone remembered this. I'd still like to look at making a Natural Wonders MOD or something.

The fact that I don't have time to work on my mod right now doesn't mean I've forgotten about it

[Dale]

Originally posted by Locutus


The fact that I don't have time to work on my mod right now doesn't mean I've forgotten about it

Hmmm.... with all the lurking ya do here, we could've had the mod finished by now.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Dale
Hmmm.... with all the lurking ya do here, we could've had the mod finished by now.

Heh, I've been coding all day! The thing is that during coding, Apolyton is only 1 Alt-Tab away
And yes, the results of my code work will be available later tonight or tomorrow (depending on how many bugs I'll find in the test game I'm about to start)

[Dale]

I want it now!

[Locutus]

Well, tough luck for you I encountered a big fat bug and have no idea what's causing it. Not a chance in hell I'll finish this tonight...

Back to the topic: IW found some more really neat wonders last night, from Empire Earth. I think those would be very useful as well.

[Kull]

Locutus: I have to agree with you that the art quality in Civ2 is markedly inferior to that of CTP2, but the basic concept of borrowing existing art from other games is clearly the fastest way to implement this concept - loved the pasted wonders in your example!

There's another recent game - "Zeus, Master of Olympus" which could serve as a good resource. The art is kinda "cartoony", but might work as a distinct contrast with the cities. Here's a url to some screen shots:

http://zeus.impressionsgames.com/med...eenshots.shtml

[Immortal Wombat]

Wow, this thread exploded while I was unable to read it

Locutus, is that 'Middle East' wonder the Temple in Jerusalem?

I think for pyramids, we'd be better using an adaptation of Martin's city style.

[Locutus]

Kull,
Agreed, borrowing art is the best way to go. Those Zeus graphics look very 'cartoonish' indeed, a little too much to my taste. More importantly, I don't recognize any existing wonders in there. E.g. there are some Pyramid-like constructions on that page but I don't know any real-life Pyramids which resemble the Pyramids from that game (the same problem applies to many AoK wonders as well, BTW).

IW,
I don't know that that ME thing is supposed to be. It's a generic wonder for the Babylonians, Hittites and Persians (yet not for the Sumerians and Assyrians, oddly enough). I've compared it with dozens of famous buildings from the region but can't find anything that resembles it, I think the designers of AoE just made it up or something. Temple of Jerusalem? You mean the temple of Solomon? It doesn't look anything like the pictures of Solomon's temple I've seen:



Anyway, I've done some further digging around and I've found around 60 pictures from various games which could relatively easily be converted into a wonder tile imp. However, many of these have the problem that they don't really resemble real-life wonders, as far as I can tell. Anyway, here's a list of the ones that *do* resemble existing things and from what game they are:

- Gates of Ishtar (EE)
- Coliseum of Rome (RoR, EE)
- Pyramid of Khufu (AoE, EE, Civ3)
- Temple of the Sun (AoE)
- Colossus or Rhodes (AoE, Civ3)
- Pharos of Alexandria (EE, Civ3)
- Great Library of Alexandria (EE, Civ3)
- Temple of Zeus (EE)
- Aya Sofia (AoK)
- Dome of the Rock (AoK)
- Arc de Triomph(?) (AoK, actually a Hunnic wonder but after resizing you can't really see the difference anyway)
- Notre Dame (TC)
- al-Malwiya (The Spiral/Great Mosque) of Sammara (AoK)
- Blue Mosque of Sultanahmet (AoK)
- Great Wall of China (Civ3)
- Pentagon (Civ3)
- Hanging Gardens (Civ3)
- United Nations (Civ3)
- Hoover Dam (Civ3)
- Forbidden City (Civ3)
- Apollo Program (Civ3)

(EE = Empire Earth; Civ3 = Civilization III; AoE = Age of Empires; RoR = AoE: Rise of Rome XP; AoK = Age of Kings; TC = AoK: The Conquerors XP)

URLs of pics:
http://www.strategyplanet.com/empireearth/wonders.shtml (EE)
http://www.ensemblestudios.com/ (AoK, TC)
http://www.gamespot.com/features/aoe2_pre/ (AoK)
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3wonders.shtml (Civ3)

Of the Cradle wonders which can be represented by a building, here's a list of the ones that aren't on the above list, with suggestions on what graphic could be used instead. Note that some wonders (e.g. Ramayana) can't be represented by a building and also that it's not necessary (perhaps even undesirable) that all building-wonders actually become a tile imp.

- Galileo's Telescope -> Copernicus' Observatory? (Civ3)
- Solomon's Temple -> MEern wonder? (AoE)
- Aristotle's Lyceum -> Oracle? (Civ3)
- Shakespeare's Theatre -> Shakespeare's Threatre (Civ3)
- London Exchange -> Wall Street? (Civ3)
- Mecca -> Dome of the Rock? (see above)
- Temple of Zeus -> Sistine Chapel? (Civ3)
- Valley of the Kings -> Same as Pyramids?
- Hadrian's Wall -> Same as Great Wall?
- Stonehenge -> ?reuse goody hut?
- Via Appia -> ?white road?
- Hollywood -> ?
- Empire State Building -> ?

Finally, I looked at the wonder list for the History of the World (formerly History of Civilization) mod and listed the most important wonders for which we don't have a tile imp yet (note that the wonder list for this mod is far from final, so things could easily change):

- Sunken City of Yonaguna
- Harbors of Carthage
- Nan Madol of Pohnpei
- Great Canal of China
- Borobudur
- Angkor Wat
- Kremlin
- Great Zimbabwe
- Registan of Samarkand
- Sankore Mosque of Timbuktu
- Meenakshi Temple of Madurai
- Taj Mahal
- Palais de Versailles
- Torii of Itsukushima
- Sagrada Familia
- Panama Canal
- Opera House of Sydney
- Petronas Towers

[ískallin]

[IMG]C:\My Documents\STUFF.jpg[/IMG]

[Locutus]

ískallin,
You can't post files straight from your hard disk, you'll have to attach it (post a new reply and look for the 'attach file' section).

[ískallin]

[Locutus]

Nice ones, ískallin, some of those could be useful.

Anyway, here's another picture of some of the aforementioned wonders in action. Again, the quality is low and the picture crowded, but it gives an nice impression of how this would look like in the game.

Around Tanis you see (turning clockwise, starting north): Notre Dame (AoK), Pyramid of Khufu (Civ3), Gates of Isthar (EE), al-Malwiya (AoK), Forbidden City (Civ3).

Around Memphis: Hanging Gardens (Civ3), Pharos (EE), Oracle (Civ3), Blue Mosque (AoK), Apollo (Civ3), Aya Sofia (AoK).

[ískallin]

[IMG]C:\My Documents\Untitled.1GIF.gif[/IMG]

i aint shure what wonder's those are

but the cloud temple (blue and grey one) could be Temple of Zues

[ískallin]

i aint shure what wonder's those are

but the cloud temple (blue and grey one) could be Temple of Zues