Mod Single Age

Gandalf Parker · #1 April 17th, 2007, 12:25 PM

Its preferable to have the mods list link to a conversation thread for each mod so Im going to start one for this mod. It does help hold down the conversational clutter in the stickied threads.

I didnt want to do a mod but I kept hinting and no one else did it so here it is.
www.dom3minions.com/files/SingleAge.zip
edit: updated to Dominions 3.21

It puts 77 nations (including the blank slots) into Era 1 (early era). To use it, you unzip this to your dominions3/mods directory, then use the "Preferences" menu and then "Mod Preferences" to enable it.

This will allow you to create a game with all of the nations to select from. You can play early Ulm against mid Ulm and late Ulm at the same time. Or you can create a game where you play 90 AI's which is alot of fun on one of the giant 1500 province maps.

Once you create a game with it, you can go back and disable it so that it doesnt affect other games you make later. As far as I know, anytime you return to play that game created with that mod, it will kick in automatically without you having to re-enable it.

EDITED:
Do not use my old SingleAge mod for multiplayer games. It has been extensively updated by Slobby and can be found here..
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/attac...9&d=1212179279

Since Llama server at some point renamed the SingleAgeComplete by Slobby to just SingleAge, you might have to rename this one also to play on Llama's server.

Gandalf Parker

Gandalf Parker · #2 April 17th, 2007, 12:30 PM

I will probably have to update this mod when new nations come out.

I have no idea how it behaves with other mods so if anyone tests that, please post it here.

At this time, mods have a problem displaying the signup screen with new nations in it. So this mod (and probably other nation-add mods) are difficult to run from a server. This one, at least, I know to not work with the --enablemod command.

Gandalf Parker · #3 April 17th, 2007, 12:37 PM

So far, this is the workaround Im considering for actually trying to run a full MP game with this mod. Ive found that my server will happily run the game once it is created. But the initial signup might be a problem. By the way, if anyone else wants to beat me to the punch and offer this as an MP game that is fine with me.

Im thinking of having 3 signup "games".
Era 1 (early) on port 7111
Era 2 (mid) on port 7222
Era 3 (late) on port 7333
all running with no start-button.

That way people can upload their gods. When Im ready to start then I will take down those three "games" and copy all of the god files into one game directory for MegaGame on port 7321. I will run first hosting as if it was a pbem game. Then turn the game on for normal play after that.

Sombre · #4 April 17th, 2007, 01:04 PM

It won't impact any other nation mods out there (besides those that modify vanilla nations, such as replacement nation mods), because all you're changing is the display name and the era of various nations.

I don't think the modlist has been cluttered up at all so far. Besides, all you need is in the first post so it wouldn't even matter if there were 500 pages of off topic spam after that. Well it would still be spam, but it wouldn't really mess the purpose up.

Anyway, I'll add this to the modlist in the near future, since we have a download link in the thread. Oh and you might want to stick a banner in the mod. Helps people see when they have the mod turned on, helps them togle it etc.

Sombre · #5 April 17th, 2007, 01:13 PM

Oops, just noticed you changed the 'filler' nation slots as well. Yeah that will mess with the names and so on of other mods. So people will have to fiddle a bit if they want to use this with added nations.

Gandalf Parker · #6 April 17th, 2007, 02:34 PM

Well I was in keeping with my own recommendations for stickies.

I was going to try and keep it as simple as possible so someone else can easily modify it. But I guess you have a point. OK there is an icon image for the mod now.

Velusion · #7 April 28th, 2007, 02:59 PM

I'm considering hosting a game with this mod.

Question - did you ever test the below process and verify that people can select their nation and play?

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:
So far, this is the workaround Im considering for actually trying to run a full MP game with this mod. Ive found that my server will happily run the game once it is created. But the initial signup might be a problem. By the way, if anyone else wants to beat me to the punch and offer this as an MP game that is fine with me.

Im thinking of having 3 signup "games".
Era 1 (early) on port 7111
Era 2 (mid) on port 7222
Era 3 (late) on port 7333
all running with no start-button.

That way people can upload their gods. When Im ready to start then I will take down those three "games" and copy all of the god files into one game directory for MegaGame on port 7321. I will run first hosting as if it was a pbem game. Then turn the game on for normal play after that.

Gandalf Parker · #8 April 28th, 2007, 03:47 PM

Yes I got it to work but I couldnt get it to work quite the way I wanted to. (fully automatable for my lazy self)

This is the best Ive gotten so far. After the above arrangement with 3 signup "games", I had to rename all of the received files from the transmitted name such as early_ulm.2h to the pre-transmitted names such as early_ulm_1.2h (the way that dom keeps track of multiple god choices for a nation is to add 0 thru whatever on the name but its stripped when you send it).

Then send all of the sent god files to my desktop WinXP machine and put them all into an empty savedgames/newlords directory (I made a complete copy of the game into a different directory for this so I dont overwrite my own god-builds).

Then I started a game as if it was going to be a hotseat game for myself. I turned on the SingleAge mod, started an early era game, and "joined" as human players for all the nations. (I just realized that I probably could have just set the second player to human and hit "n" until it stopped adding since that would have added all the nations in random order instead of spending so long setting each one manually).

THEN I had to go thru each of the joins and "Load Pretender God" for each one to load in the god they sent me. Then hit start.

Once the ftherland file was generated I could transfer the entire game directory back to my server and run it as a server game.

I have tested it as far as being able to start a game with early, mid, late arcos and have the server run it. I did have a snag when I tried more something about "more than one player cant play the same nation" but it might have been something I did. Im just too easily distracted to to all that crap for 75 nations. PLEASE find an easier way to make it work.

It MIGHT be possible to do the same thing without transfering the files to a windows machine but Im not very fluent in the linux gui environment. For a graphic environment I use windows.

This is going to be a problem for any modded nations. The game is willing to RUN a game with them, but it wont allow signup over the net. So the games will either have to be started the way I just laid out, or as pbem.

Gandalf Parker

Velusion · #9 April 28th, 2007, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Gandalf Parker said:

I have tested it as far as being able to start a game with early, mid, late arcos and have the server run it. I did have a snag when I tried more something about "more than one player cant play the same nation" but it might have been something I did.

Gandalf Parker

Thats what I'm concerned about. Once the server is ready, can all the multi-nations connect and select which version of arco they want to play without error? I would have thought the mechanism for selecting which pre-loaded nation to play would have been tied into the same as the mechanism for selecting which empty nation to play...

Gandalf Parker · #10 June 12th, 2007, 09:07 PM

Just to update this thread.....

The SingleAge mod has been updated to include the nations from the last upgrade patch. And should also be up to date for the next couple of upgrade patches (Fomoria and Gath)

The discussion on how the mod would work in a big game has of course proven true. Both the pros and cons. Check out the thread on the Perpetuality game.

The Perpetuality game is using a mod which includes my SingleAge mod, and the Streamers and Standards mod, and a couple of small fixit mods. I would very much like to incorporate the Streamers and Standards mod into this one if it is ever brought up to date in a way that I like.