Archived Main (2010 - 2012)

A bit of website necromancy here just to highlight a few points of interest:

• Prompted by the apparent demise of the Spanish Civilization Site, I tasked myself with uploading lost scenarios to the Scenario League wiki. That amounted to 76 wiki pages in two weeks; a few late nights there. Included were a few extra scenarios I found lying around on my hard disk. The Scenario League now hosts over 30 Test of Time scenarios.

• The Original Game graphics mod pack has been updated with more than a dozen unit icons; mostly Fairline's artwork. I maintain it for a family member, so occasionally these things get updated even when I'm no longer playing the game.

• For anyone who wants a version of Test of Time that includes the 64-bit compatibility patch, a CPU usage fix, a no-CD crack, a hostile AI fix and the no limits patch all bundled into the one executable, look here. I tossed in my Midgard scenario patch for good measure. Note that if you receive an alert from your anti-virus software, it's a false positive. It's caused by the code injection method used by the CPU usage fix.

It was pointed out to me a couple of days ago that all the download links on this site were 'buggered' (thanks Curt). The problem would have affected people using Mozilla Firefox. It turns out that TPG's Apache server had incorrect MIME type settings, resulting in RAR and 7Z archives loading as text files. ZIP files were OK. While Firefox adhered strictly to web standards, other browsers attempted to guess the correct MIME types. In this instance, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera guessed correctly, so their users would've been unaffected. An interim solution would have been to right-click the download links in Firefox and select Save Link As... or to open the site with another browser, but of course, people were not aware of the problem. Anyway, after an exchange of e-mails, TPG's webmaster promptly made the appropriate changes. People who unsuccessfully tried to download files earlier may need to clear their browser cache for the changes to take effect.

It's nearly the end of another year and it's been over a year since I last updated this page. I've barely touched any version of the Civilization series since the beginning of the year. Civilization 5 has been released to a mixed reception. I'm in no hurry to try it. I did, however, play Test of Time's Midgard scenario a few months ago when a few questions regarding its quest events were posted in the Civilization Fanatics' Center forums. It turns out the events were full of bugs and victory via the quest path, all but impossible. I ended up writing a patch for the scenario. You can download it here. Christ, the graphics are hideous. I had to brighten things up a little:

I've been meaning to upload a new version of the War of the Ring scenario for months now. There were a few critical bugs which required attention, as well as balance issues. I made changes back in July but never tested them. Five months later and I still haven't tested them. I guess I'm heartily sick of the scenario. But it's Christmas, so I've uploaded it: version 1.1. It's tougher now; hopefully, not too tough.