@Thorvald || Journal Entry
El Thorvaldo Moderator

Spring Planting
15 Apr 2023, 09:45 PM

As we thaw out of winter, I'm also thawing out a suite of modding projects new and familiar alike:

Civilization II

Having finally got a handle on the wild world of hex editing, I'm tackling a project that has been on the wish-list for a while: converting the legacy MGE scenarios to Test of Time. This is in tandem with the specific goal of cleaning up the third-party scenario The Day After, which even in its original format was practically unplayable due to a gross oversight in the map's starting pollution. Initial but buggy ports of the former can be downloaded here (first-turn crashes have since been patched but not posted publicly), while work on remastering the latter will be tracked here.

Civilization III

Having arrived late to the Flintlock patch, I have fresh encouragement (and inspiration!) for the neglected Civ3 IOT mod. Most of the provided factions were in place when I fell off, with only ~4 left to implement, and with special abilities like stealth attack freed up for more intuitive use, I can bring the arsenals in line with their original designs.

Freeciv

Aeons ago, before TOTPP was a thing, I did exploratory work on a Civ2 scenario based on the cliffhanger ending of IOT: The Aftermath. Game engine limitations led me to look into retooling it as a mod for Freeciv, which in turn led to a furtive attempt to develop a ToT graphics set. While difficulties with the current UI have shelved a 'proper' ToT port, at the encouragement of retro gaming mentat Blake00, I'm tying off a hybrid MGE–TOT skin pulling from community assets that will be fit for public release.

Fegel-Alert

Blake's encouragement has also lit the fire under my long-suffering OpenRA spoof, which I'm thinking may get a ModDB page once I've finally rounded off a patch fit for public consumption.

Hearts of Iron IV
  • I've intimated to select colleagues, but for about a year now I've been an assistant dev to the F.A.N.D.O.M. Wars mod after I figured my homebrew patches were worth submitting for official adoption. While I've contributed a few ideas of my own, most of my work has been bugfixing and optimization, so if you play the mod and see something sus, gimme a shout!
  • In preparation for a personal submod for the above, I'm also eyeing setting up a ModDB page to house my various smaller HoI projects, including "Patching the Tiger", "More Provinces Redux", the Downfall cosmetic mod, and a previously-unannounced touch-up to vanilla locs for better dynamic parsing of character gender.
DYOS Anniversary Trailer

This one's a bit of a long shot—I had originally planned to put out a spoof trailer commemorating the 10th Anniversary of DRAW Your Own Story around the launch of At Plot's End. Alternating complications led the project to languish from "10th Anniversary" to "15th Anniversary" to "When It's Done™", but as we close in on the second decade, getting this out would be a good test of whether I might finally be able to cartoon semi-regularly again.

Comments (2)

Posted: Tuesday, 18 April, 2023 @ 07:21 PM

I don't know what hex editing is but there's this card game called Hex that has units called the Shin'Hare, they're samurai buns, it's really cool

Posted: Wednesday, 19 April, 2023 @ 05:07 PM

@Warehouse_Rabbit: So hexadecimals have been a foundational part of software engineering since the early days. Hex editing is manipulating the data structure directly, as opposed to, say, rebuilding the whole damn thing from scratch. You can kind of think of it as gene therapy for computers. :p

"Make a rabbit-themed Civ2 scenario", got it. B^)

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