Archived Main (2005 - 2006)

Predictions are for more stinking hot temperatures down under this summer. The last thing I need is my CPU running flat out for absolutely no reason. That's what Civilization 2 does to your system; even when idle the game uses 100% of available CPU resources, causing temperatures to rise and system fans to hit turbo mode. The maximum thermal power of today's CPUs far outstrips those of a decade ago when Civilization 2 was released and this archaic game was fast heading towards extinction on my computer until Timbatron rolled up in the Civilization Fanatics' Center forums with a solution. He's written patches for both the ToT and MGE versions of the game. You can download these files from Tim's Code Archive. It's likely that there'll only be a small window of opportunity to test these out (he's a busy guy), so if you've got anything to add, do it in this thread and do it quickly. Oh yes, and you can thank him for his efforts by clicking on his Google ads.

Time for another one of those War of the Ring scenario updates. Over the past several days I've been turning out a few units and fixing up some old ones. I still have just over a dozen place-holders to go. All of the remaining graphics, ie, the terrain, cities, people, icons, improvements and wonders are done. I finished mixing the last of the scenario's sounds a few days ago. The events, rules and other text files are virtually complete - I mean you could keep tweaking these things until the cows come home. What remains is the documentation and a few entries in the describe.txt file. I made changes to the events and rules files following my last playtest (probably around the time I last updated this page), so another round of playtesting is required; the area around Dale and northern Mirkwood is most affected. But, first things first, let's see if I can stick with it and get the rest of these units done.

Gee, it's been a long time since I updated this site's main page. However, I've not been completely idle; the Guides section has been updated several times during the last 6 months. Two months ago a number of packs in the Miscellaneous Graphics section received significant updates. I even worked on my War of the Ring scenario over the past week; the first time since the end of last year. Even made a few more units and tweaked some old ones - don't do that much any more. Here's a screenshot showing a sample of units created since my last update; people seem to like that sort of thing. What've we got here? Rangers, Gandalf the White, Radagast the Brown, Éomer, Éowyn, Elven spearmen, Gollum, Olog-hai, Lord of the Nazgûl, wolves and spearmen. I've added team colour masks to some units in the scenario (eg, the spearmen). They came out better than I thought. On the downside, it blows out the size of the static sprite file to over 800 kB.

It's been a while since I've provided an update for this project. For anyone who cares: it isn't dead. I hadn't worked on the scenario to any great extent since the beginning of the year, but during the last week or so, I've spent a few late nights playtesting it. The main obstacle to completion has really been the AI's inability to focus attacks against specific targets, compounded by its annoyingly weak path-finding. Impassable terrain barriers (there are a lot of them in Middle-earth) pose significant problems for the scenario's AI opponents. This has frustrated me no end. Mordor generally performs well; Minas Tirith gets a real hammering once Mordor becomes mobilised. Saruman has played well also - perhaps too well and has been toned down somewhat. It's Mordor's allies, the Haradrim and the Easterlings, which are the most disappointing, especially the latter. It would be nice to see the Men of Rhûn hit the player's northern cities hard without me having to resort to flooding the map with units. Anyway, after more than a dozen playtests the game is something approaching satisfactory. Fingers crossed I don't get sick of the sight of it - again.

James "Dusty" Reichwein has released a new version of MapCopy which includes support for the Test of Time saved game format. This follows a discussion about AI and map fertility over in CFC's Civ2 Scenario Creation forum. If you find any bugs, post them in the download thread. From the horse's mouth:

This software is a Release candidate. If I don't hear any complaints by June, 30, 2005, I will release it as the final 1.2 version of MapCopy.

So what does it do? MapCopy is a utility program that can copy map data to and from .mp and .sav files, or modify existing values within such files. These data include: resource seeding, tile fertility and ownership, terrain improvements, land mass indices, map visibility and city radii. Alterations can be made on a mass scale, removing the need for painful hex editing. Yes, MapCopy uses command lines. Oh come on, don't be such a big nancy.

Me thinks it's time to go on a rant about PNG files and gamma levels. As more scenario designers are recognising the advantages of ToT over older versions of Civ2, there's been a rise in the number of 24-bit graphics floating around the Civ2 forums. Consequently there's also been a rise in the incidence of PNG files posted with incorrect gamma levels.

BMP is the required format for ToT graphics, but such files are not suited to web pages due to their large size; they're uncompressed. You can zip them up, but ZIP files don't make good previews. PNG files, which are both compressed and lossless, are an excellent alternative. However, there is one problem: PNG files contain a 4-byte gamma value called the gAMA chunk. Its function is to allow applications to (somewhat) standardise gamma levels across different platforms, eg, the gAMA chunk would allow an application to correct for the fact that PCs use a higher gamma level than Macs. Everything would be fine and dandy if applications used the value correctly - or failing that, totally ignored it - but of course the most widely used web browser on the planet, Internet Explorer 6, has to make a hash of it, doesn't it?

When viewed using IE, the mid-tones of PNG files containing the gAMA chunk set to the standard PC value (45455) will appear too dark. Look at the example below. The first row displays the correct gamma levels; the second row shows how IE displays the same graphics when standardised for the PC. If you can't see a difference, get your eyes tested.

Is this a problem? Well, yes it is. Not only will IE users be viewing something that differs from the original, but there's also a risk that users will copy the corrupted graphics from their browser window directly to their game files. Using a download accelerator or the 'Save Picture As...' option will bypass the mess, but on some websites (eg, Apolyton) I've found that these options are frequently unavailable (probably due to my firewall, ad-blocking and anti-virus software) and the only way to get at the original graphics is to save the entire web page. Either that or use another browser entirely (I use both Firefox and IE) - but you can't make everybody on the planet stop using IE. The simplest solution is to eliminate the source of problem, ie, the gAMA chunk.

When a PNG is saved using a graphics editor such as Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or MS Paint, the gAMA chunk is automatically written to the file. How do you get rid of it? It's pretty simple: get your hands on PNGOut over at Ken Silverman's Utility Page or if you don't like command line stuff, PNGGauntlet, which provides a nice User Interface for PNGOut and includes batch processing, ie, it can do multiple files in a single operation. Both sites have updated recently; in fact I use PNGGauntlet with the most recent version of PNGOut. Run either of these utilities with default settings on a PNG file and the gAMA chunk will be removed. What's even better is that PNGOut has the best PNG compression around, so you'll end up with a smaller file to boot.

To use PNGGauntlet: run it, click the Choose Files to Optimize button, select your file/s, leave the Preserve Gamma Information box unchecked, check the Overwrite Original Files box and click Optimize! Some Civ2 graphics can take considerable time to process; it seems to have a difficult time with monochromatic backgrounds - so if you've got a large file, go off and do something else in the meantime. In-game screenshots of a comparable size can be done in a fraction of the time.

By the way, all of the graphics on this website are either PNGs (8-bit or 24-bit) or GIFs (version 89a with transparency or animation). PNG also supports transparency, but again, this is not supported by all browsers and so it's not an option. For photographs and very large screenshots, use the lossy JPG format.

After seeing the same ToT-related questions repeatedly being asked in Civ2 forums, I finally decided to pull my finger out and add a new Guides section to the site. Hopefully, the information there will be of some benefit to those scenario designers wishing to try their hands at ToT. The section currently contains an FAQ page and a handful of guides. If I can combat my laziness, I may add more (multi-mapping and transparent colours come to mind) - but I figured I might as well post the ones I've already written.