New version of catgod for Dom3.20

[Evil Dave]

I've finally updated <a href = "http://www.omskivar.org/evil/dom3/catgod.html">catgod</a>, the world's best pretender file viewer, for the new version of Dominions.

Download catgod for <a href = "http://www.omskivar.org/evil/dom3/windows-intel/catgod.zip">Windows</a>, <a href = "http://www.omskivar.org/evil/dom3/osx-ppc/catgod">Mac OS</a> and <a href = "http://www.omskivar.org/evil/dom3/linux-intel/catgod">Linux</a> . Catgod is still command-line only, however, Arralen has written a GUI for it. See <a href = "http://forum.shrapnelgames.com//showpost.php?p=527972&postcount=6">this post</a> for details.

Once you've downloaded catgod, change to your pretender directory (usually dominions3/savedgames/newlords), and start looking at files. For example,
<tt>catgod *.2h</tt>
will show them all.

Many thanks to Ich for finding a bunch of bugs and for building the Windows version!

[Dedas]

You're not evil! :)

[Tifone]

Absolutely interesting tool.

[Gandalf Parker]

I had a request on another forum. Well actually, a complaint. Someone had loaded a cbm god to a non-cbm game generating a discussion of whether or not to roll everyone back or just tell him to try with the default he got. His complaint was "Its too bad the game doesnt check that" which of course I took as a challenge. :)

OK I figured out a way to check gods prior to game start by starting a second game and running it thru one hosting then reading the messages. But thats kindof klunky.

Can CatGod see mods used? That would be a much cleaner method.

[Evil Dave]

Can CatGod see mods used? That would be a much cleaner method.

That's an excellent question! There's a bunch of information in the pretender files I never quite figured out, including some long strings of zeros. Since I did all my testing with pretenders generated with the base game, it's posssible mods in use are indeed recorded there and I can change catgod to report them.

Lemme take a look. I'm all but overwhelmed this week, so I'm not gonna have a chance before the weekend at least.

[Gandalf Parker]

Great. That would be highly appreciated.

Oh Im also supposed to ask if we can get a command switch to only print the nation and the points left over. Thats for the auction crowd. They want to be able to check all the pretenders in a game without actually seeing the information other than point left over

[Edi]

If you can get a new version that allows viewing also modded gods, that would be super excellent. Unfortunately I already added to your reputation, so I won't be able to do that again in a while.

[Gandalf Parker]

The version I have does that kindof. I just used it to check a heavily modded game that included Mytheology. The mytheology gods all showed up as "Bogus" with stats. Im not sure if that was something particular to that mod or if all modded gods would show up that way.

[Evil Dave]

Can CatGod see mods used? That would be a much cleaner method.

That's an excellent question! There's a bunch of information in the pretender files I never quite figured out, including some long strings of zeros. Since I did all my testing with pretenders generated with the base game, it's posssible mods in use are indeed recorded there and I can change catgod to report them.

Sorry, gents. The pretender files don't contain any mod information nor anything saying how many design points are left. :(

[Evil Dave]

The version I have does that kindof. I just used it to check a heavily modded game that included Mytheology. The mytheology gods all showed up as "Bogus" with stats. Im not sure if that was something particular to that mod or if all modded gods would show up that way.

If you mean a message like "Bogus body number ###", it's working as designed. Catgod contains a list of the unit names I extracted from the game file. If the body number is greater than the number of names on the list, catgod says it's bogus. It's better than crashing with a bad array lookup. :)

To get the names of any mod'ed unit, I'd need to know which mods are in use, and then I'd have to read and understand the mod files. I'm sure the game squirrels away the list of mods in use somewhere, but parsing the mod files looks like a lot of work.

[Gandalf Parker]

Sorry, gents. The pretender files don't contain any mod information nor anything saying how many design points are left. :(

Thanks for checking for us. Its appreciated.

[lch]

No wonder, otherwise we wouldn't necessarily have have to see all those "gaah, I created the pretender with the mod (not) on, and now it gives a cheating error!" in CBM/Non-CBM and other games. Mods are only really checked for after a game starts. But good that Evil Dave can confirm this behaviour.

[Gandalf Parker]

On larger games Ive gotten in the habit of copying the 2h files to another directory and running a false start, then checking to see if there are cheat messages. Much easier that way then having people do a turn then find out someone wants a rollback or will go AI in the first turn