This could be good... any time frame for full conversion?

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 12-01-2000 09:36 AM just noticed it: we've got many "settlers" and "chieftains" in this forum. the second generation of ctp mod creators...

I'll take an automatic upgrade to Prince if you want to cut down on the number of settlers

Good to hear people are finally getting their copies, about time. Haven't seen mine yet but I guess it can't be long anymore then.

Elucidus,

Well, I for one had no problems adding a trade good myself, so you probably overlooked something simple, as you already said before. I'll just describe how I did it so you will hopefully see what you did wrong.

A few remarks first:
- It doesn't matter where you put the files, in standard game folders or in scenario folders (or some in standard and some in scenario), it's all the same to CtPII (a big improvement over CtPI, esp. for sound and ai files).
- Another wonderful improvement over CtPI I just noticed today is that if you make a typo or some other minor error, you don't have to quit the game and restart it, just Alt-Tab to a text editor, make the change, Alt-Tab back to the game and load the scenario again. Fan-tas-tic!!! this will save lots and lots of frustrations and restarts, at least for me
- CtPII uses 22 goods but there are 24 sprites, so it looks like there are 2 bonus-goods (though I haven't tried them so I don't know what they are, probably CtPI sprites).
- I tried giving goods food and shields, but giving shield causes an error and giving food doesn't seem to do anything, so it looks like adding extra recourses to goods the way Timothy (& Nordicus) did is no longer possible, unless it's possible in some other way
- Goods are no longer concepts, as in CtPI, so the sprites and files and everything else of Nordicus' files that's related to concepts, should be ignored.

Well, here we go:

1) Copy the graphics (2 per good) to default\graphics\pictures.

2) Copy the sound file to default\sound.

3) Copy the Ggxx.spr (with xx a number between 20 and 52) file to default\graphics\sprites and rename it Gg0xx.spr (so 025 instead of 25 FE). Keep in mind that the numbers 20 to 24 are used by CtPII now so rename those using the numbers 53 to 57.

4) Copy the relevant part of Nordicus' gl_str.txt to the english\gamedata\gl_str.txt of CtP (as I said, ignore the concepts part of Nordicus' file).

5) Edit terrain.txt to add, for all terrain types that get new goods, the lines "Resources TERRAIN_{type}_GOOD_*", where {type} is the name of the terrain type and * is ONE, TWO, THREE or FOUR, depending on how many goods there already are and how many you're adding.

6) Edit sound.txt to add the line SOUND_ID_* "xxx.WAV", where * is the name of the good and xxx the name of the soundfile.

7) Go into uniticon.txt and copy an existing entry on a trade good. Now, paste it once for every new good you add and make necessary changes. So rename the entry, the two icons and, optionally, the GL entries. The FirstFrame icon should refer to the 'big' tga (about 40k) and the Icon icon should refer to the 'small' tga (about 2k).

8) Edit goodsID.txt to add all the new goods here. The number here must be the same as the number in the sprite. So the good with sprite Gg025.spr should get number 25.

9) Edit goods.txt to add the new entries. I have no idea what happens if the Probability of all goods for one terrain type is anything else than 1, so to be on the safe side, make sure the totals are always 1. Here's an example, should you need it:

# Apple
TERRAIN_FOREST_GOOD_TWO {
SpriteID 56
Sound SOUND_ID_APPLE
Gold 1
Probability 0.25
Icon ICON_GOOD_FOREST_THREE
}

10) Optionally, add entries to the Great Library. Simply copy the contents of the appropriate files of Nordicus' Trade goods to the correct section of Great_Library.txt. Names of these section should be GOOD_{type}_*_{GAMEPLAY|HISTORICAL}, where, once again, {type} is terrain type and * is the number of the good (as a word).

My theory on the goods.txt file is that is what you get from trade, although adding food there doesn't give you food from trade that I was able to see.

Well, thanks for the info. I'll see if I run accross anything in the future.