Release Bonanza

It is my great pleasure to finally announce the release of BULL 1.0 (features)! It's been a long time in the making, and you've gotten a taste with BUFFY. The ZIP archive contains a Readme.txt with instructions for installing it stand-alone (mod or CustomAssets) or inside BUG.

Speaking of BUG . . . version 4.2 has been released with some fixes for Mac users, hover text for the Great Person Bar, civilizations that start with each technology in the SevoPedia, and a slew of bug fixes. Check out the changelog for more details.

And last but not least, BAT 2.1 has been released as well. Grab this package to get all the latest interface goodness of BUG and BULL along with the visual splendor of community unit and building art from Varietas Delectat.

BTS 3.19 Patch

Firaxis surprised the community yesterday with patch 3.19 for BTS. The discussion is already well underway, but the general consensus seems to be favorable.

Most of the changes are pulled from the Unofficial Patch and Better AI. It also includes the multiplayer cargo unloading OOS fix. The only verified bug so far is in an adjustment to the overflow gold; it's all but completely eliminated.

While there are a few minor Python changes we need to add, BUG 3.5+ is completely compatible with 3.19 as-is. The missing Python fixes are remnants of 3.17's No Espionage option and only visual in nature.

BUG Subversion Renamed

I have been doing some Spring cleaning on the BUG project, and the latest change will affect anyone who uses our Subversion (SVN) repository to access the latest BUG code. To match Subversion naming standards, I have renamed the folder that holds the main line of development from "BUG Mod" to "trunk".

Please update your links or checkout the latest code again. If you are using TortoiseSVN to get the code, you can use its Switch command to do this quickly. Let's assume you had created a "BUG" folder and checked out the code previously.

1. Right-click the "BUG" folder and select TortoiseSVN : Switch...
   
2. Change the To URL field to
   http://civ4bug.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/civ4bug/trunk
   
3. Click OK

I have also committed the BULL changes required for BUG to this trunk. This means that "trunk" contains the latest BUG and BULL changes. If you want to start playing with BULL, feel free to grab it from BULL's Subversion repository. You'll need to manually install it until I create an installer.

1. Copy all the files in the Assets folder to CustomAssets or BUG's Assets folder.
2. If BUG is installed to the CustomAssets folder, move CustomAssets/CvGameCoreDLL.dll to BTS's Assets folder, renaming the one that is there for safe keeping.
3. You can ignore the files in SDK. They are used to create CvGameCoreDLL.dll.
   

BUG 3.6 Released

The latest release for BUG is finally available. It adds many cool features such as

• Dot-mapping tool: plan out future cities by placing colored outlines on the map
  
• BUG Charts: multiple charts in one view
  
• EventSigns: shows effects of random events that affect tiles in signs
  
• BUG Finance Advisor: detailed breakdown of your commerce and gold sources
  
• Min/Max Commerce Rate for assisting binary research
  
• Field of View slider
• Improved Foreign Advisor INFO page

And a whole lot more, including minor improvements, many bug fixes, and a smaller, multi-lingual installer. You can download it here. As usual, this version works with BTS 3.13 and 3.17.

We've also added a FAQ for the most common questions.

See the Download thread for further details and continuing coverage.

City Planning the Better Way

We all know that planning your future city locations--while essential to the game--can be a real pain in the a**. Do you edit screenshots in Photoshop, print them out and use crayons, or wrestle with Civ4's line-drawing tool which only works when zoomed so far out as to make seeing tiles nearly impossible?

Just say no!

Enter the Strategy Layer: an in-game dot-mapping tool by Del69 and myself--based on Eunomiac's original idea. It works very much like the sign tool (ALT + S). You can add and remove colored city outlines with a simple click. As someone who used to use signs to mark future city locations, this is probably my new favorite BUG feature!

See the New Features thread for instructions on using the tool.