FeXoR
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Posts posted by FeXoR
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It happens on: Unknown Land, Medium, 3 Player, Seed 2560 (Just an example of cause. In this case it closes the gulf instead of only dividing it though)
I think the code for this is line 949-1054.
This seams to be a Gulf of Bothnia map though the bug seams never to appear on this map. The difference seams only to be the chosen biome and that the gulf is always opened to the south on Gulf of Bothnia but Unknown Land can have the gulf be opened anywhere.
Hope that helps.
Investigating further...
NOTE: For maps like The Unknown/Unknown Land it would be good to be able to call a random map instead of putting all the code in one map IMO. That way we wouldn't have to debug two or more maps but only the map called (in this case Gulf of Bothnia) that doesn't seam to even be buggy at all.
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Sorry for the double post but theres another thing that interferes with the Damage/Armor Type (or other bonuses), how the graphics and the game rules are linked and Unit AI in general so I added another post to clearly separate it:
It's about Stances/Formations (again ^^). I don't know if I can explain this clearly. I'll try anyway.
As "Attack Bonus VS [unit Type]" feels unnatural to me so feels adding a bonus (of any kind) just for entering a formation. There are several ways to make it more natural but none of them are easy to implement (as far as I though, yet). Damaged units could be take from the outer areas of a formation and could be drawn in to be healed (if healers are present). If there is usage for Stamina (and maybe Moral) the same could be done for exhausted units.
Stances should not interfere with player given orders in any way. Instead there should be Orders that work similar to it. The reason is that you have to click less buttons (only the Order, not the Stance and the Order) and the unit enters exactly one Stage (that of the Order) not two States interfering with each other (Order and Stance).
That all influences the Unit AIs behavior that is - if all (Formations/Stances/Orders) are used - quite unclear to determine how a Unit/Formation will react to a given situation for both, the player and the developer.
For me - personally - it would be much more valuable/handy to have an Attack Move order (as well as a Hold Ground/Defend Order if wanted or something similar). A Guard Target Order and a Search And Destroy/Auto-Explore Order would be handy as well. As can be seen there will be more Orders to implement than the number of Stances + Orders but it will be much cleaner in code and behavior than the Stance/Order combination and they can be implemented one by one.
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A bit off topic (I think there was a thread for this but I can't remember where it was, feel free to move my post there):
Concerning "Physical correct" behavior vs straight forward game rules:
There are mainly two (clean) ways to make a good RTS in sense of game rules:
1.) Add a physics engine at a very basic level and add very simple game rules (Only Movement(Turning) Speed(Acceleration), Attack Speed/Damage, Projectile Speed/Turning Rate(for missile attacks)/Error but nothing like Armor/Attack Type etc.)
Example: Total Annihilation, Spring Engine
Advantages: Very realistic, what units are good against what other units comes out "naturally" (Without bonus, just by the physics)
Disadvantages: Very Hard to balance, a much harder to implement engine
2.) Add a complex set of game rules that allow units to counter specific other units (either by armor/attack type or by another more "natural" attribute like the Unit Size like done in Starcraft) and let the graphics only represent that rules (In AoE/AoC "Bonus vs Unit Type" is also present but seam enforced to me)
Example: Starcraft(Damage bonus against units depending on size, Splash damage), Warcraft III(Damage/Armor Type, Heroes take less spell damage), Age of Empires(Damage/Armor Type)
Advantages: What units are good against what other type can be determined by the Attack/Armor Type without seming to be enforced. It can also represent the Armors usually worn by the specific unit type if it's placed in an historical setting (like 0 A.D.).
Disadvantages: The game is less realistic especially the graphic representation might seam to not always represent the actual outcome in damage (Warcraft III tries to make it a bit better by making all ranged attacks "missile" attacks which on the other hand seam a bit strange in case of auto aiming arrows).
As is 0 A.D. is an ugly mix of all. The graphics does not only represent the game rule but interferes with it e.g.: Melee units that attack does not deal damage if the target is to far away after the attack animation is run.
Though there is no fundamental physics engine underneath the game archers shoot in physical trajectories (might be still good for the graphics but bad to let that interfere with the game rules meaning every shoot should hit if not otherwise managed in the game rules like a "Chance To Hit" Attribute)
We have Damage and Armor Types but also got "Bonus vs". It would be better to have one of this (I'd much prefer Armor/Attack Types).
That mix is quite impossible to be balanced and results in many "Bugs" like the missing chasing melee units (Made even worse by having a min. range for non-siege/fast units like Skirmishers).
Another game (and I like it) that mixes a bit of all is Warzone 2100. Projectiles (but missiles) have a trajectory that is fixed at the time it goes off directed towards the predicted point of the unit targeted when the projectile (would) collide with the target with an applied Error determined by the upgrades of accuracy for that type of weapon. It also has Damage/Weapon Types that deal different damage to different units dependent on their propulsion: Cyborgs, Hoover/Wheel/Half-Track/Full-Track Vehicles, VTOLs. Also the speed of projectiles greatly matters for hitting a target. But it turns out to work quite well though not really balanced.
But in general I think it would be better and a lot cleaner/much less messy to pick one and stick with it and just make additions in an other direction if it works good with the chosen base rules.
NOTE: I tried but not always managed to write words that are involved in the game concept with capital initial letters like "Attack Type". Don't know if that is usual practice and I'm quite sure I didn't do it right all the time but I think it makes it easier to differentiate between game concepts and their explanation. Feedback appreciated.
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Is 1 unraidable civ a problem to be solved? Perhaps we should have asked this question first.
I don't think that's really a problem.
I'm repeating myself but:
Usually raiding doesn't lead to victory immediately. It just slows down the economy so much that the other player will never be able to catch up again. Even if you are really lucky as an Iberian player and you have a lot of resources inside your wall, it won't last for very long.
Indeed. I would be OK to stick with it as is or an upgrade for Wall Towers in Town Phase (It could just add the default one arrow or before the upgrade the towers have no attack at all even with soldiers garrisoned in it).
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Just to give another idea: how about a "global experience" sort of mechanism. The more you fight, the stronger all your citizen soldiers are and the slower they gather. This would automatically make the game slow down as time goes by.
This way citizen soldiers get even more powerful: At the beginning they are good gatherers and then become good fighters...
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Welcome to the forum!
I think this page should be helpful especially the build instructions and track usage:
http://trac.wildfire...rtedProgrammers
Have a nice stay
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In my opinion most RTS games are to fast. Most don't even really have a build up phase of notable length. Just AoE had a similar feel of gameplay.
0 A.D. has the right speed of gameplay though the performance has to be raised (which is high priority right now).
I remember multiplayer games in AoE II where players swapped the island they occupied during the game. It was amazing! Something like that is not possible in most other RTS games.
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Towers that don't shoot by default (or at least after an upgrade) are pretty useless. IMO in the and watchtowers are better than walls including wall towers anyway (At least for me). AFAIK defense towers have a larger range then wall towers in general.
I like the Iberian walls. IMO another civilization should get palisades as civ bonus.
However, I can't see the Iberians are underpowered beyond not having ranged food/wood citizen soldiers. They are overpowered IMO (cheap, fast, self sustaining by gathering mass wood, can be produced right away).
Tell me if a decision is reached so I can change the random maps starting entity placement function appropriate.
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You have pretty much all the aspects of the game already set in your mind, don't you?
Not really, but I take this one as a compliment, so THX
But I have pretty much no idea how to effectively make formations valuable without seaming enforced but still being easy to implement. It could make use of direction dependent blocking, healing and/or regeneration, moral and stamina but should NOT just raise values like attack or armor (That what makes it "enforced to be useful" for me).
Stances is another example that I can't wrap my brain around totally because I find it hard to construct a situation where changing the stance is more useful/less micro intensive then selecting the units in question and give them an order. The second in almost all cases seam better (as far as the units listen to your command what is pretty much the problem as is now). Another thing is that it interferes with the current action of units and so all combinations of stances/action has to be thought about which is pretty much impossible (At least to work sane). The unit AI is hard enough on its own to make work well.
But, yes, I have spend several time thinking of good systems for RTS and RPG games (Pen and Paper as well as Hack n Slay).
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Just for reference, Warcraft 3 uses this system of percentage-based armor. Here is the link for its page: http://classic.battl...apontypes.shtml
Yep. Warcraft III game rules are so good that DotA was possible, the most played map of the game right now - and the game is from 2002.
Since we don't aim to support attributes AFAIK (like WC3 does for heroes) and it's somehow wired to set the amount of damage bonus per upgrade for every single unit type in the game (like WC3 does) it seams to me using a similar system for units attack upgrades would be the best way to go also. It should have a higher efficiency then armor though to make small battles at the beginning take about as long as large battles at the end. So the basis for damage upgrades could be 1.2 (about 8% damage increase when armor and damage is upgraded by one "point"). The base damage could remain as is (absolute values) while the damage upgrades could be a multiplier of pow(1.2, numberOfDamageUpgrades). Some damage upgrades may also grand 2 or 3 "numberOfDamageUpgrades" like armor could be raised by more then 1 per upgrade (I know it's bad naming then). The tooltip for damage could then show something like:
1 "damage upgrade": 15 + 3 (20%)
2 "damage upgrades":15 + 6 (44%)
3 "damage upgrades":15 + 11 (73%)
...
10 "damage upgrades":15 + 78 (619%)
At 10 damage and armor upgrades the average damage dealt will then be raised to 2.16 times the damage compared to no upgrades (so battles would be about twice as fast).
BTW: Making the percentage values of damage reduction granted by armor (not the armor value itself) a float value would push the number of possible upgrades making a difference possible (if the damage is high enough, about 15+) close to infinity (for both, armor and damage upgrades).
The tooltips I suggested are somehow misleading due to the use of "+" (suggesting upgrades would be additive) and the "%". It might be even better to just show multipliers/divisors like:
Damage: 93 (15 * 6.19)
- 93 actual damage, 15 base damage, 6.19 damage multiplier by upgrades.
Armor: 10 (1 / 2.97)
- 10 Armor, 2.97 damage divisor (reducing the life loss roughly to 1/3 of the incoming damage)
That way it is easy to see that about 2 times the damage is dealt. Roughly: 6 / 3 = 2
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If we target wide to use game rules granting the possibility of close to infinite upgrades (and RPG mods) it would be the percentage armor as quantumstate suggests but still having an armor value connected to it in the way I suggested above. The percentage of damage reduction should then be added to the tooltip and can be got by round(100 * (1 - pow(0.9, armor))):
Armor (Damage reduction)
1 (10%)
2 (19%)
3 (27%)
4 (34%)
5 (41%)
6 (47%)
7 (52%)
8 (57%)
9 (61%)
10 (65%)
...
20 (88)
...
50 (99)
As stated above 0.9 is just an example. 0 to 10 Armor seams a good area to use while some upgrades could provide 1-3 additional armor.
Having fixed values of percentage granted per upgrade would extremely favor units with high base "armor"/percentage damage reduction:
A unit with 10% base armor and 3 10% armor upgrades will end up with 40% damage reduction.
A unit with 60% base armor and 3 10% armor upgrades will end up with 90% damage reduction.
Without armor upgrades the light armored unit gets about 2 times the damage of the heavy armored unit.
With upgrades it gets 6 times the damage!
If we target a ruleset that allows huge discrepancies in damage taken we should stick with the subtractive armor.approach. However, this is extremely hard to balance since 1 point in armor can make the difference of 50% effectiveness e.g. for a unit dealing 14 damage to a unit with 12 armor (of that type) that makes 2 effective damage. Raising the armor by 1 reduces the damage to 1. Upgrading the attack again leads to 2 damage.
So in the end only a few units and only when fighting against a specific other unit will extremely benefit from an armor/damage upgrade while most others just get a small benefit.
Attack speed is of extreme importance here as well.
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If we're going to make a radical change to the way armour is calculated in the name of simplicity, then why add complications?
If we change to a percentage armour, then it should be a simple percentage.Yes, but what happens after an armor upgrade? Thats what I'm mainly referring to. A changed armor value adding percentages absorbt will be better for units with already high armor.
Say the upgrade provides 10% more armor:
A unit with 0% armor would get the 10% and then recieves 10% damage less then before the upgrade.
A unit with 50% armor gets 60% then effectively reducing the damage taken compared to before the upgrade would be 20%.
(100 damage, 50% before the upgrade makes 50 damage, 60% after the upgrade makes 40 damage. 40/50 = 0.8 = 80% makes 20% less then before)
It is a damage absorption ratio but is increased by upgrades exponential decaying so every unit gets the same benefit in sense of effective damage reduction.
Perhaps I didn't say what I meant clear enough, sry.
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I heave not read everything but IMO there's only one way to go for armor:
HitpointReduction = DamageIncome * power(0.9, ArmorValue)
In this example 0.9 is just a possible value. It's mainy a bit smaller than 1- That way armor can be any positive number or 0 (no damage reduction since power(a, 0) = 1 for any finite value a). Additionally it's continuous so even float values could be chosen (though I don't think that would help in any way).
In the end its like incoming damage is reduced by 10% (to stick with the top example) for each single point of additional armor. So compared to 0 armor a unit with 1 piercing armor getting 10% less piercing damage. A unit with 2 piercing damage gets 10% less damage than the unit with 1 piercing armor, but not yet 20% less then the unit with 0 armor but only 19%. Indeed even with an armor value of pow(10, 100) a unit would still get damage (if calculated in 512 Bit float ^^).
Changing the basis (0.9 in the above example) can scale how fast damage is absorbed. Here it is 10% per armor because 0.9 = 1-0.1. But it can be more effective e.g. choosing the basis 0.8 or less effective setting the basis to 0.99 only reducing the damage by 1% per point of armor.
It might be not that important in this game since the damage values are quite small integer values making damage dealing non-continuous anyway. But this would be important if someone wants to make an "hack and slay/slash" (allthough quite irritating also known as "roll playing games"... Tz, tz! Only pen and paper is roll playing besides perhaps acting and for some PPL the "act" ^^) game mod for 0 A.D. for example.
A good ruleset is of value - at least for me.
3 Damage types are a good value. More are hard to balance (3 already are BTW), less seams not worth the effort.
Just wanted to let you know my thoughts.
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Well, the format you described is not compatible with this solution. I am not going to complicate it with a full-blown syntactical parser for the sake of the few who insists on writing their maps in vi
^^
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Does your idea come with an implementation?
No. Mine is only a rough idea, yours is an actual implementation, so yours is much better ^^.
But in the end I think it is of interest that triggers are easy/short/intuitive to use (not only in a GUI but also as code/text/whatever).
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Something like:
def event = new TriggerEvent("unitGetsAttacked");
def condition = new TriggerCondition("playerToIndex(ownerOfUnit(attackedUnit)) == 1");
def effect = new TriggerEffect("sendMessageToPlayer('Player 1 is under attack!', 1)");
addTrigger(new Trigger(event, condition, effect));I don't know how the code in maps work.
It's for sure bad to give code as a string.
But in principle my idea is like that.
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Ok ,i have been trying to get a model ingame myself but the transparency dosent seem to work
https://photos-5.dro...I?size=1280x960
the skin has the alpha channel set up right i think .
https://photos-2.dro...k?size=1280x960
What might be the problem ?
For me the links are not linking to an existing page (404). Just to say it...
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Sounds good to me. Not sure who has most experience/organizes scenarios and if he would like so say some words in the opening post.
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"Long-winded to use"?
What does that mean? Well, I mean 30 lines of code for a simple trigger (in the map data) seams a bit long to me. Not sure how to say this short ^^
(cumbersome?)
Most of them are brackets of cause.
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Looks a bit long-winded to use but I'll give it a try. Don't have much time right now though.
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I loaded up a 4 player game (large map size) and saw it didn't have many trees:
[...]
Is this the way it's meant to be? Could be a challenging game
Also how much work would it be to slightly flatten the area near the starting locations?
Well, I could add further trees/group of trees on the mid level terrain (Grass without interactive entities but the starting entities) at the end of map generation.
Since it was requested before I'm.willing to add those.
For terrain flattening: The problem is that the players are placed on mid level ground (Grass) and close to both, low ground (Bog with Stone/Metal) and high ground (Woods with trees/berry bushes/deer) to have access to at least some of each resource type. That means the start locations are placed on the side of a hill with a high rate of incline. Flattening it beneath the Civil Centre will lead to a higher rate of incline towards low/high ground. So that's not suitable IMO.
We should probably start sorting maps into categories. There should be a core set of fairly standard resource density maps and then if people want to create unusual maps like this they can be put separately into something like a 'challenge maps' category. The game balance will be strongly affected and the AI will probably have significant problems, so it would be better for new players not to get a bad experience.
I somehow agree but I think the map description pretty much makes clear that this map is not a "standard" map.
Any suggestions how to make the description more meaningful very welcome!
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Spahbod: Good job!
Have you seen this?: http://www.wildfireg...=60#entry257300
It does not seam to be added though you seam to want it ^^.
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By klicking the "garrison" button when (non-siege and for some buildings non-mounted) units are selected and then left-click on a "garrisonable" building (Civil Centre, Barracks, Temple, Wall Towers, Defense Towers, Fortresses/Army Camps and in a lesser extend Outposts) the units will go "into" the building untill its "full". Depending on the building units inside it grands bonuses: Civil Centres, Wall Towers, Defense Towers, Fortresses/Army Camps and Outposts get additional "attacks" by garrisoned (non-mounted soldier) units. Units garrisoned inside a Temple and (in a lesser extend) inside a Fortress(or Army Camp, not sure here) regenerate health. You can "ungarrison" the troops again if you like.
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I think defensive structures are available to late in the game so that rushing is always possible before walls are available. And if walls are available siege units are also at the same time (well OK after building the needed building to produce them). In addition I find walls quite useless due to the lack of the wall towers range. It would be enough if they don't get the bonus like defense towers (one more arrow/2 arrows per garrisoned soldiers) but still have a "normal" range like archers have. Defense towers could then have a higher range due to the higher position of the projectiles start of flight.
On the other hand citizen soldiers are overpowered due to their ability to build up their own economy. So massing cittizen soldiers will always led to a dominance in sense of the armies size. Even though elite units may be stonger they can't make up for the exponential strngth gain by punping citizen soldiers.
RANDOM MAPS: Suggestions, Bug reports and Ideas about random maps here.
in Scenario Design/Map making
Posted · Edited by FeXoR
I totally agree ^^. But AFAIK there's no way to limit options by the random map right now. I think this should be included in the random maps JSON file because it's the only thing loaded (if at all? Hope...) before map generation. Not sure who did the JSON approach in the first place. Maybe he could look at it. I have no idea how to do this. If no one is willing to do this I'll look into it though when I have time.