enabling combat animations in SMAX multiplayer?

[Alvaro]

At first I thought it was a bug, but now I realize it's part of the design - are there any mods that address this? I'm trying to get a new player into the game, and while we're having a great time, it is frustrating how difficult combat is to follow.

Thanks very much.

[Yitzi]

There is an option to turn combat animations on or off...are you sure you didn't just turn them off by mistake?

[Alvaro]

Where is this option? I have map animations turned on and every other thing I could think would be related. Thanks again.

[Yitzi]

Go to menu, game, advanced preferences.  Turn off "fast battle resolution", and maybe turn on "pause after every battle" if you really want to see each one thoroughly (it pauses until you have it continue.)

[Alvaro]

Fast battle resolution is turned off, and I have tried turning pause every battle off and on. While I get the pause screen alerting me of the battle, there are still no animations. I installed your 1.3 patch to see if that helped, but it hasn't.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sounds like maybe something wrong with the battle animation files.  You may need a reinstall.

Welcome to AC2.  How did you find us?

[Alvaro]

The animations display fine in single player, though.

I found the forum looking for mods that might fix this.

EDIT: This sounds like the same problem I have:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/96102-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri/54901268

The response there isn't germane.

[Buster's Uncle]

Google, then.  Shall I move this thread to the Multiplayer Forum, where there's more likely to be someone familiar with this problem?

[Alvaro]

Yeah, that is pretty much the only mention I found of my problem for SMACX, apparently in old versions of civ combat animations were turned off automatically in multiplayer, so most of what I'm finding is about that.

Sounds good! Thanks again for your help. Does the animations working fine in single player lead you to believe it isn't actually a problem with them?

As for a description, basically, I hear the explosions and very quickly the yellow text comes up above the information readout screen, but the camera jumps around blindingly fast, because combat is resolved instantly. It's hard to keep track of what's going on. I'm playing a lan multiplayer game with someone in the same house, and we are doing simultaneous turns and mostly allied. He's big into multiplayer games and wary of single player stuff, and I'm trying to get him into SMAC and he is enjoying it but seeing the combat does add a lot, he played the tutorial scenarios and it was fine.

Also, none of the movies play. Is that normal for multiplayer? Is there a way to turn them on?

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; if it works in SP, the problem's surely not with the files.  Hmmm.  If it was me, I'd go through all the preference settings, looking for anything that causes anything to move fast.

The movies are an .ini file thing, ISTR, that I've forgotten.  Let's hope someone refreshes our memories...

[Alvaro]

Just reinstalled and updated and still having the same issue. In addition to the instantly-resolving combat, monoliths automatically upgrade my units, even though I don't have that selected either (this was happening before the reinstall, too). It doesn't give me a choice of what to do.

These seem to be the only bugs I'm encountering, everything else runs fine.

[Yitzi]

Sounds like certain settings are being treated as set a certain way even when they properly aren't.  It may be related to the difficulty bug; can you test whether the same thing happens with a scenario-based multiplayer game?

Also, I take it this is PBEM or hotseat?

[Alvaro]

Yes, the same thing does happen in a scenario multiplayer game, and no, we're doing Direct Play TCP/IP in the same house.

EDIT: As to the difficulty bug, I believe the first game we tried we set him to a lower difficulty, but in these tests I've been doing I've just been making a multiplayer tcp/ip game with all bots and me, all the same difficulty level (not touching it) and the same effects are occurring.

[Magitek]

Sorry for the necro, but did anyone make any progress on this issue for SMAC/SMAX?
I really hate playing Alpha Centauri without unit animations.. and combat is downright confusing in TCP multiplayer as it is instantaneous (very annoying).

I spent some time in cheat engine trying to narrow down the option switch in memory that turned off combat animations and while I found the bit array for the advanced options menu, SMAC is obviously stepping over it further up the line, or I'm just freezing the options menu interface.

The menu seems to store the options in a 32 bit-mask, but does not seem to read the bit-mask every turn/action to check for the animation state.. so I imagine the bit-mask is just for the menu graphic and is loaded from ini file each time you open the menu. The menu probably applies these options to booleans somewhere when you exit the preferences menu. First I need to find these supposed booleans, or the bitmask that SMAC is actually reading for gameplay.
There's also the possibility it is blocked by a multiplayer boolean flag, bypassing the bitmask, which I will probably find out if I can crack the single-player fast battle resolution switch.

(click to show/hide)

All preferences off:
(alpha centauri.ini) Preferences=100000000001001000110000000100
Memory address: 0x86913c (does not seem to change between restarts and/or multiplayer)
Decimal Value:0
Hex value: 00 00

Combat animations removed:
(alpha centauri.ini) Preferences=100000000001001000110000001100

Memory address: 0x86913c
Decimal value: 16
Hex value: 10 00

Move units quickly:
Decimal value: 64
Hex value: 40 00

Both ticked:
Decimal value: 80
Hex value: 50 00

My plan is to reverse how it works in singleplayer and see if I can't untrigger the flag for TCP/IP multiplayer, trouble is, I'm not all that great with cheat engine or assembly..

(click to show/hide)

Now that I've found what stores the option in the menu, I setup a debug break point watching the bitmask for when it is read by the game; as soon as I press OK it's accessed exactly 12 times.. precisely the number of options in the advanced preferences menu. It's looping through the bitmask for each preference option.

Now I think the fifth option (1+2^4 in binary) (dec:16) (Fast battle resolution) is probably the fifth in the loop before it is copied to the game memory from the menu's memory. I just have to figure out where the fifth loop is being written to. I can't figure out where that boolean is set, thanks to my poor assembly skills.

At terran.exe+229EB8 I nopped out the bitmask flag read so the game is unable to read the parameters, and sure enough the game is no longer able to load parameters, they cannot be ticked in the options menu.. but I see parameters still passed to the final bitmask when I open the menu so I have missed something or am barking up the wrong tree.

From here (desperation sets in early) I started to compare PBEM and TCP/IP memory states on the same scenario (PBEM has normal speed animation, TCP/IP none, but both are some form of multiplayer) but I haven't discovered the flag that separates them yet.

If anyone is a bit more experienced with hacking I could use some help/tips with removing the mandatory fast movement/fast combat in TCP multiplayer.

[Yitzi]

If anyone is a bit more experienced with hacking I could use some help/tips with removing the mandatory fast movement/fast combat in TCP multiplayer.

If you've found where it checks the in-game "fast battle resolution" option, I'd check what the consequence of that check is, and then check the full code about when it does each of the two options.  There'll probably be something in there that's checking for multiplayer.