Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => Modding => Topic started by: BFG on February 11, 2013, 09:43:31 PM

Title: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: BFG on February 11, 2013, 09:43:31 PM

For curiosity's sake, has anyone tried expanding the tech tree beyond its normal (vanilla) limit of 89/90?  What happened if so?

The limits:

• Including Transcendent Thought, there are 86 techs in SMAX.
• There are 89 slots for techs in alphax.txt - the 86 originals, the two deleteds (Inertial Damping and Global Energy Theory), and one "User Technology".
• There are 90 tech icons - including one for tech089, which has no corresponding entry in alphax.txt.

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: gwillybj on February 15, 2013, 01:21:22 AM

I gave it a run with five extra techs then just one extra.
Both times I got the same three error messages. The first two were when the game tried to load, the third when it crashed. It never loaded completely.

bad technology key in alphax.txt

bad technology key in scriptx.txt
#BADCHASKEY

the third "encountered an error in terranx.icd and must close" and gave the option to notify microsoft ;lol

I'm curious: What is an icd file?

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Mart on July 13, 2015, 03:51:15 AM

Quote from: gwillybj on February 15, 2013, 01:21:22 AM

...

I'm curious: What is an icd file?

Googling shows: "ICD is an encrypted file format used by SafeDisc. ..."
Copy prevention. Now it can only make some trouble for running game.

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 13, 2015, 03:53:17 AM

Issue for Yitzi?

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Mart on July 13, 2015, 04:21:39 AM

We actually discussed bringing more tech slots in a newer thread.
I necromanced here...

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Yitzi on July 13, 2015, 04:02:58 PM

Quote from: BUncle on July 13, 2015, 03:53:17 AM

Issue for Yitzi?

Making more of anything is a big deal.  More techs could, theoretically, be done (pretty much anything could, theoretically, be done), but would be a huge project.  Not quite as huge as allowing more than 7 factions, but the next level down.

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Mart on July 13, 2015, 04:51:07 PM

If you think about it, having more technologies would be nice to flavor the game. But on the other hand, Those 89, that we have currently can be used in larger capacity.
Working on a mod currently, so thinking about such solutions.
Overall tech rate can be lowered with only one value in alphax.txt, then existing technologies can be added with more features.
The only problem is, that with current existing tech tree, some additions would feel weird, unless we rename some techs. That would give effect of feeling "this tech tree is rewritten and not expanded."

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 13, 2015, 04:52:57 PM

I was thinking if there's remnants of copy protection left that don't work anymore and cause problems, that's room in the program freed up if you track down and remove...

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Mart on July 13, 2015, 04:56:35 PM

Quote from: BUncle on July 13, 2015, 04:52:57 PM

I was thinking if there's remnants of copy protection left that don't work anymore and cause problems, that's room in the program freed up if you track down and remove...

Very interesting idea. Maybe it is even large portion of the code? Room for a lot of new code?

Title: Re: Maximum tech tree size?
Post by: Yitzi on July 13, 2015, 05:00:50 PM

Quote from: BUncle on July 13, 2015, 04:52:57 PM

I was thinking if there's remnants of copy protection left that don't work anymore and cause problems, that's room in the program freed up if you track down and remove...

It's not so simple.  Stuff like copy protection is probably in the read-only section, where there's plenty of room; to add room for new data from alphax.txt, I would need room in the read/write section (which is far more limited), or to make more room (which would probably mess other things up), or to move it to dynamic memory (which is what I'd probably do); however, whichever I did I'd need to change all the references to it, which would be a fairly big project.