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Star Wars Total Conversion 1.1 now available with 41 new ships and more
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by Citizen MadMaz - 6/12/2003 3:03:47 PM
Hey guys,
If you're interested in this, you can get follow these links:
GCiv Star Wars Total Conversion 1.1 Installer ht tp://blake.prohosting.com/maodi/download/download.pl?login=swgciv&link=ht tp://galciv.bsd.st/madmaz/GCiv_Star_Wars_TC_1.1.exe
GCiv Star Wars Total Conversion 1.0 Music Add-on -  Link
Just to be clear, the second file is the same music add-on I posted before. If you've already downloaded the previous alien mod, I'm sorry, but you'll need to download the full installer. It'll make it a lot easier for me to modify/update, and a lot easier for you to uninstall 
You know, instead of describing the thing, I'll just post the read me file. Hope you like it!
- MadMaz
p.s. the forum does not seem to like embedded URLs, so I added some unnecessary spaces to confuse it. So to follow the link, copy the above URL, then remove the space between "ht" and "tp". Note that there's two of them, one in the beginning and one in the middle. I'll try to find a better way to do it and post again.
[Message Edited]
     
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#1
by Citizen MadMaz - 6/12/2003 3:12:01 PM
Man something is wrong with the edit function. It's adding a mad number of line breaks. The above was after I deleted half of them. Anyway, here's the readme...
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MadMaz's Galactic Civilizations Star Wars Total Conversion 1.1 README
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I may have gone a bit overboard here, so I'm calling it a TC now instead of a mod. I swear I was just planning on experimenting with a few ships, but I got on a roll and ended up throwing a whole weekend at it. I've been trying to find the time during the week to test it more, but I'm far too slow a player (I can't even finish a tiny game in one sitting.) So, I figured I'd just put it out there. You may want to consider it beta, though I don't really think there should be any problems.
In any case, let me cut and paste the disclaimer from the last README:
"You should use this at your own risk. By saying these magic words,
I am now culpability free! Unless you're talking about a laugh or two,
I cannot be held responsible for anything."
Now that that's out of the way, special thanks to Andrés Lescano, who gave me permission to use his SEIV ships as the starting point for almost all the graphics, and LazyBastard, for hosting the file. And of course, props must go out to Stardock for an enjoyable game. And please don't modify, post or redistribute anything in here without permission from all the contributors. You can contact me at  Email
Well, I hope you enjoy it. Again, I don't give a rat's ass about canon or accuracy. I'm just out for a laugh. If something about the mod bothers your star wars sensibilities, just don't use it.
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1.0 What's New?
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1) 41 Ships! Various star destroyers, tie fighters, x-wings, a-wings, y-wings, millennium falcon-like ships, squadrons, etc. The ship's "nationality" color is pretty easy to see, for those gamers out there who may have some minor blindness issues. The "bad" races have Empire-style ships, while the "good" ones have Rebel-style. Also should be color-blind friendly.
2) Better Replacement for the Torians - Got rid of the silent fish people and added some lovably hairy Wookies! Includes never before seen recent footage of Chewbacca on his home world.
3) Other leader improvements - Luke has more to say, a different yoda movie, etc.
4) All sound effects have been replaced. Beeps, weapons fire, menu stuff are now all Star Warsy.
5) Lots of graphical replacements - With the destruction of Bespin, a habitually drunk Lando was thrilled when you gave him the job as your planetary governor. An unemployed but nonetheless curiously shiny 3P0 has also convinced you to hire his pansy ass as your galactic secretary. Several other similar modifications are also included.
6) Planet list replaced with one that contains every "known" Star Wars planet that a very dedicated fanboy had on his web site. Certain vanity planets still exist though 
6) Easy-to-use installer/uninstaller that backs up all the files it replaces.
7) Silent MP3 with corresponding playlist, so you can effectively turn off music, but still hear the negotiation soundtrack when speaking to the AIs.
By the way, this mod should be completely metaverse friendly. Unless I inadvertently broke something, nothing in these files should affect the game play balance.
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1.1 What is replaced
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Though you probably won't need it since I added an uninstaller, you can find a full list of the files replaced in "Files SW Mod Replaced.txt" in you Galactic Civilizations directory. In any case, just to summarize:
- All the ships
- All game sounds
- All alien movies and music that are played during trade negotiations. 3 of the 5 have different movies depending on their relations with you. Don't be surprised if some of them now intermittently talk to you.
- All the various alien portraits, and several other assorted graphics.
- The star names list
- All in-game music (if you download the music add-on.)
What's not changed:
- Starbase/planet graphics
- Alien logos
- Tech tree
- Ship stats (though there are some cosmetic change to the weapon type. More on this below...)
- Upgrade/research/tech mini movies.
- Cutscenes
- Events, anomalies, etc.
- Alien text (so don't be surprised when Darth Vader tells you that your skin looks delicious)
I tried to make the movie looping as seamless as I could, but since the footage is all taken directly from the movies, it's not perfect. The new ones are a bit better though. Btw, all of the materials here are copyrighted, trademark and viciously guarded by the minions of George Lucas. If you don't own both the movies and the soundtracks, you should probably not use them. If you choose to use them anyway, you should take a peek through your window every 5-10 minutes.
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1.2 Installation
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Just run the installer. It will create a backup directory called "Star Wars Backup" in your Galactic Civilizations install directory. You can uninstall via the standard Windows control panel. It will restore the files that you originally had. If you downloaded the previous Star Wars mod, you can just install right over it. And if you manually backed up your original files, just put them in that directory in the appropriate places. It has the same directory structure as the main folder.
The installer will replace your prefs.ini file, so you'll need to change a couple minor things back, like your player and empire name. Any save game that you load will still have the standard AI leader names (Lord Kona, etc.) New games you start after you install this will show up with Vader, Yoda, etc.
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1.2.1 Previous Star Wars Mod
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If you've previously downloaded the high quality version of the movies and mp3s, you may still find them useful, since the video and audio in the installer have a tad lower bitrates. I think the perceptible difference is negligible, but, hey, it's up to you. The installer will move them to a backup directory (described above.) Just copy them back to their original location. I'd suggest copying, as opposed to moving, so that the backup will be complete. That way you'll still have your original files if you decide to run the uninstaller later.
btw, the ones that haven't changed are:
Event Music directory: Race01.mp3, Race05.mp3
Movies directory: 1_trade00, 1_trade01, 1_trade02,
2_trade00, 2_trade01, 2_trade02,
3_trade00, 3_trade01,
5_trade00, 5_trade01, 5_trade02
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2 Details
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2.1 Ships:
Functionally, i.e. in terms of attack/defense/hitpoints, nothing has been changed. Three cosmetic things have been changed:
1 - The model graphics:
- The standard game has 24 different classes of ships. Each race can use a different model; so, given the current tech tree/ship files, there can be up to 168 different ship appearances. Right now, they have it set up so that all the races have the same 24 models but with different colors. This mod is slightly different. The 4 good races (rebels, republic, wookies, and minors) have 17 unique models of rebellion ships, while the bad races, the Empire and the Smugglers, have their own 17. Seven new ships (colony ships, constructors, both transports, freighters, survey ships and the starhawk) are shared between all the races for a total of 41.
- I tried to make it so that each ship "floats" over a colored disk indicating which race it comes from. The player's ship has no disk, and the minors have a black-and-white checkered disk. I don't think the checkered disk is that easy to see, so that may need to be changed. Right now, the player gets rebel ships. If I have time and there's enough interest, I'll put out a patch that lets you play with Empire ships instead.
2 - Some names:
- A lot of the pre-Dreadnought class ships are now squadrons of smaller ships. For example, the defender is 1 x-wing, the battle axe is 5 y-wings, the battlecruiser is an assorted squad... You get the picture. These squadrons are the only ships that have been renamed. If it's not obvious what they're equivalent to, I've added a little abbreviation to the end of the name, for example (BC) for battle cruiser.
3 - Some weapon types:
- A bunch of the ships have different weapon types. Cari said that this only affects the firing graphics and the sounds. I changed them so that they match the correct weapons sounds more closely.
2.2 Ship Listing
I'd give you the real names, but I have no idea what they are. I do remember there are star destroyers (labelled sd below), and x-wings, but everything else are educated guesses:
Name Sound Good Model Evil Model New Name
------------- ------------ ------------------- --------------------- ----------------------
AM Missile Custom Sound Metal mine-like Bigger red mine thing SAME
Avatar Auto Turret big blue hex ship white sd w/bridge SAME
Battleaxe Tie Laser 5 a-wings 5 tie open Defensive Squadron
Battlecruiser Tie Laser 6 y-wings 6 tie open pointy Offensive Squadron
Battlehammer Blaster 7 x-wings 5 tie weird Elite Squadron
Battleship Auto Turret assorted from above gray sd turret Strike Fleet
Colony Ship N/A
CombatTransport N/A
Constructor N/A
Corvette Blaster 3 x-wings 3 tie folded in Advanced Squadron
Defender Blaster 1 x-wing 1 tie probe X-Wing/Tie Defender
Dreadnought Auto Turret mfalcon gray sd folded side SAME
Excalibur Auto Turret big fish ship triple sd concoction SAME
Freighter N/A
Frigate Auto Turret bubble ship tube like ship SAME
Overlord Auto Turret big L pointing down blue big shiny sd SAME
Phoenix Auto Turret mfalcon with ext black shiny sd SAME
Ranger Auto Turret mfalcon shiny gray sd tiered SAME
Starfighter Tie Laser A-wing tie plain A-Wing/Tie Starfighter
Starhawk Tie Laser Like the shuttle tyderium from rotj but bigger and bluer
Survey Blaster Like the shuttle tyderium
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3 Comments
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- Some models look better than others. Most of the ships started as much smaller icons that were blown up. These ships are actually the 2nd iteration. The first one would have forced me to rename the game as "Galactic Pizza Slices and Dildos in Space" which I don't thing anybody would have liked.
- Naming of ships: I know they're probably all wrong. I probably have medical ships fighting dreadnoughts fighting hotel ships, or other such nonsense. Given the constraints on my limited knowledge and interest, as well as the joint naming problem, that's what I could come up with. Feel free to send me suggestions.
- Only the display names of the ships have been changed. The internal name is still the same. So, presumably the AIs should have no problem dealing with these changes.
- I don't know how GalCiv generates the individualized ship names, for e.g. Battle Fortuna 500, so even though the class name will appear star wars style, the individual ones will still be galciv.
- Some sounds files no longer seem to be used, though I think they once did. To make a long story short, there are some sounds that I could have sworn I heard when I was testing the mod, but have since went on vacation. It's strange. Perhaps something changed with the last update. I'm not sure.
- If the .ship files change with any future updates, the mod will also need to be updated. The installer lets me keep track of version info, so releasing a small patch should be quick and easy.
- Hopefully, there will be a way to get race-specific ships in the future. I tried to make a cheap alignment-based tech with high AI value that would be requirements for the appropriate ship, but that didn't work. The AI's that used hard-coded tech paths wouldn't research them, and the ones that did would just trade them to everyone else anyway.
- On a related note, I've noticed that many of you guys in the forums are truly evil people and would probably prefer playing with the Empire-style ships. If I have time, I'll post an updater that will let you switch between the two. It should be about 15 megs (the size of another set of 24 mdl files.)
- You'll notice that the intro interface is modified, but it doesn't work completely. At some point the movie file gets superimposed with a static image, which I had no luck modifying. No biggie, but I thought I'd mention it in case you wonder why the Star Wars part disappears after the first bik file is done running.
- This is my first time writing an installer. I tested it several times and it worked fine on my computer. But let me put it out there as a caveat, in case you notice any problems.
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Well, that's about it. If anyone wants to contribute to this thing let me know, especially if you'd enjoy writing some funny Star Wars style text for the AI's various dialogue statements, upgrade/tech descriptions, etc. I think that would add a lot more novelty and fun to it.
In any case, I hope you have fun with this...
- MadMaz
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NEW SHIPS, yippeee!
Thank you! I've been waiting for some SEIV shipsets to make their way to GalCiv. whew.. finally, thanks for making the effort!
I'll be a-downloadin' this one tonight. Woot! 
fleabitfox
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#4
by Citizen mykbaker - 6/13/2003 1:00:57 PM
Top notch job MadMaz! This conversion is excellent! I look forward to playing more and seeing more of the ships.
 
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Again great great job on the update to the MOD. However my 5 year old says the ships are too small and wants me to put the others back in the game(Confused him too). Got him back on board showing him the information display on the ships..neat !
I think you did a fine job on everything and will be keeping the new ships installed.
Thanks for a great birthday present! 
     
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#7
by Citizen ntblood - 6/14/2003 3:01:41 PM
I think this Star Wars Mod is great. I don't think I'll ever play the game in it's original form again. I am new to GalCiv.s but this mod makes it so the game has a bit more realism and a lot more depth with the story we all know.
I do have a question though and this might pertain to either versions of the game but I only know how to put it in terms of the Star Wars version. I can see the differences in advantage for defensive verses offensive units but it seems that there is no advantage but disadvantage of all the strike groups (or frigates) over just having several X-wing/Tie fighter units stacked up in a fleet in price or stats. Also, I've acquired the battleship technology but I didn't see that it added any ships to build (?). If you could help me understand the reasoning I would appreciate it. Thanx -Nathan
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#8
by Citizen ntblood - 6/14/2003 4:12:23 PM
Ok, I see one big difference is the range that some can go to.
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#15
by Citizen srilanka - 6/16/2003 4:20:35 AM
MM, your link does not work. It doesn't redirect and clicking on the link gives you a 404 error.
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#17
by Citizen srilanka - 6/16/2003 4:32:05 AM
Okie dokie
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#18
by Citizen Stofsk - 6/16/2003 10:05:17 AM
MadMaz, I tried downloading your SW TC - to no avail. What am I doing wrong?
Cheers,
Stofsk
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#21
by Citizen Stofsk - 6/16/2003 10:53:13 PM
Excellent. Thanks MadMaz (any relation to Mad Max? Yeah, I'm an aussie... had to ask, your nickname is so similar)
Thanks,
Stofsk
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It keeps on saying that the page cannot be displayed! 
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#24
by Citizen Graviton - 11/22/2007 5:53:46 PM
Why don't you ask on the galciv2 forums since most people moved there. Maybe someone there can give you the mod.
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