Capturable Animals

[Lion.Kanzen]

passive conversion. video by @fatherbushido

 

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, Freagarach said:

Is it happening only with the horses? Because I can't reproduce the bug with deer. I only noticed that while moving they keep throwing their heads down to graze.

Not sure whether it's caused by wraitii's speed multiplier patch or just the feeding animation being buggy.

[Silier]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The walk animation is comically faster (like 5x faster) when I task it to move, as opposed to when it wanders on its own.

Thank you for report. Possible problem has been identified

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 5/12/2019 at 2:49 PM, Angen said:

Thank you for report. Possible problem has been identified

Were you able to reproduce? 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I was thinking of making Donkeys capturable too. You don't eat donkeys, you make them work for you. +2% gathering rate for citizens and slaves for each animal captured. 

Edited May 16, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Were you able to reproduce? 

Yeah it should be fixed when @wraitii commits his patches

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

@Stan`, do you think my changes to UnitAI constitute a bug fix, a feature, a balance change, or? @Freagarach helped me make the horses taskable by the player once they are captured. Should we just allow all animals to be taskable by the player if they are owned by the player? Any arguments why not? 

[Stan`]

I'm not sure. What would be realistic is to have a herding unit which when in range would allow you to control units in his rangebut thatsounds like too much micro 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

I'm not sure. What would be realistic is to have a herding unit which when in range would allow you to control units in his rangebut thatsounds like too much micro 

I'm just saying that what would be the purpose of denying the player control of an animal if, say, the map designer wanted to give Player 1 a bunch of different animals for his scenario? Why not just inherently allow that flexibility?

[Lion.Kanzen]

fattening will be a thing if you capture some of them?

[Stan`]

16 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'm just saying that what would be the purpose of denying the player control of an animal if, say, the map designer wanted to give Player 1 a bunch of different animals for his scenario? Why not just inherently allow that flexibility?

Well the only "purpose" I can see is the animals' relative autonomy. But yeah, as long as they are yours and not Gaia's I don't see the point either. Here is what the "somewhat" outdated design document say about animals :

• Entities Nature Fauna
• Entities Nature Fauna Herd
• Entities Nature Fauna Hunt
• Entities Nature Fauna Cosmetic

According to these, It would make sense to be able to capture animals and order them to get into the corral. See also #1907

(Side note: @Nescio they give a bit more information about the animals than the animal thread, maybe you can guess the missing specific names from there ?)

[fatherbushido]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

But yeah, as long as they are yours and not Gaia's I don't see the point either.

Then they aren't the same thing they were before.

Edited May 16, 2019 by fatherbushido
typo

[Stan`]

1 minute ago, fatherbushido said:

Then they aren't the same thing they were before.

Yes, they are not "wild" anymore.

[fatherbushido]

20 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Yes, they are not "wild" anymore. 

Then you (not you) don't have to make wild animals controllable.

[Stan`]

5 minutes ago, fatherbushido said:

Then you (not you) don't have to make wild animals controllable.

Makes sense. I guess in this case capturing/converting should change the actor template to a not wild equivalent. Pushing this a bit, it could be used to turn units to slaves. They should somehow retain their identity though, In case they are converted back.

[elexis]

The Polar Sea map originally introduced the wolves as non-domesticated animals and made non-domestic animals controllable, so that the wolves could be ordered to attack the player. But following  D156#6745 the wolves were changed to a domesticated animals rP19323 so that they can both receive orders and roam. I think using the name "Controllable" would be more descriptive than "Domesticated", since there are some domesticated animals that can't be ordered either, I guess domesticated sheep sheep are not ordereable in real life directly but they are only fleeing from orderable domesticated wolves. Also entity component properties are supposed to determine the behavior of entity components, not Identity classes. But I speak from ignorance as I don't know what the previous generations of developers laid out in plans (and I don't intend to work on UnitAI right now).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, fatherbushido said:

Then you (not you) don't have to make wild animals controllable.

If gaia owns it then you can't control it of course. If you own it then you should be able to control it.

 

6 hours ago, elexis said:

The Polar Sea map originally introduced the wolves as non-domesticated animals and made non-domestic animals controllable, so that the wolves could be ordered to attack the player. But following  D156#6745 the wolves were changed to a domesticated animals rP19323 so that they can both receive orders and roam. I think using the name "Controllable" would be more descriptive than "Domesticated", since there are some domesticated animals that can't be ordered either, I guess domesticated sheep sheep are not ordereable in real life directly but they are only fleeing from orderable domesticated wolves. Also entity component properties are supposed to determine the behavior of entity components, not Identity classes. But I speak from ignorance as I don't know what the previous generations of developers laid out in plans (and I don't intend to work on UnitAI right now).

Having a "controllable" component in the template would indeed probably be the way to go. Right now, the domestic class is being used for 2 separate behaviors, controllableness (lol), and slaughter behavior. 

[elexis]

40 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

If gaia owns it then you can't control it of course.

Or a different player (owner), undisputedly.

41 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

If you own it then you should be able to control it

That was the naive thought committed, I still hold other uneducated thoughts, so actually let me forget this now gg. I guess there tickets, logs, forum posts of animal UnitAI that one can pay for with his time to uncover. Also UnitAI has 6000 lines, which means it takes more than 6000 lines of your life away when you look at it. Doesn't mean that my naive thoughts that I forgot might have been true in retrospect. I'm currently on a different construction site, perhaps the others can tell you more.

46 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Having a "controllable" component in the template would indeed probably be the way to go

It would have the advantage that it is not linked to animals at all. And the simulation components are as far as I understand the situation a part of Pyrogenesis and not 0 A.D., since they should also be usable for mods that don't base on 0 A.D. templates/art/history. (For example starcraft like RTS with arbitrary entities that aren't animals seems like a realistic use case for Pyrogenesis with a solid UnitAI)

[fatherbushido]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

If gaia owns it then you can't control it of course. If you own it then you should be able to control it.

Then they are not wild anymore ;-) The truth lies elsewhere

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just now, fatherbushido said:

Then they are not wild anymore ;-) The truth lies elsewhere

Kinda like my cat.  

[Stan`]

13 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Having a "controllable" component in the template would indeed probably be the way to go. Right now, the domestic class is being used for 2 separate behaviors, controllableness (lol), and slaughter behavior. 

 

13 hours ago, elexis said:

It would have the advantage that it is not linked to animals at all. And the simulation components are as far as I understand the situation a part of Pyrogenesis and not 0 A.D., since they should also be usable for mods that don't base on 0 A.D. templates/art/history. (For example starcraft like RTS with arbitrary entities that aren't animals seems like a realistic use case for Pyrogenesis with a solid UnitAI)

One could also make non controllable units not selectable  

 

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

While I appreciate improvements to the code

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/22345#file0

It's really starting to get hard to keep these files up to date. What would it take to get the team to add @Freagarach's changes to UnitAI, if indeed those changes are all that are needed? And if you'd like capturable/controllable horses in the core game, I can provide those no problem. You don't need a comprehensive solution right away. Just something that works well and can be expanded/extended/tweaked later. For instance, the proposed line changes allow horses to be captured and controlled, but once captured and moved to your base, they still wander around (like the player's sheep do). To make them garrisonable in corrals requires some other line changes, but those could be a different patch if necessary (but if those line changes aren't too many, they could possibly be bundled with the controllable changes). 

Edited June 7, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Stan`]

I guess it would need a few pings a link to the revision and a programmer review

[Freagarach]

On 6/7/2019 at 7:31 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You don't need a comprehensive solution right away. Just something that works well and can be expanded/extended/tweaked later.

That is not fully true, I learnt. When changing stuff, one can better be thorough in the first run, that is the lesson I learnt over the last few weeks The team won't (and they're right!) accept partial, quick and dirty solutions. When I've got the time later today I can create a diff, but rest assured, it will take some time to be implemented.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I didn't mean that the code should be hacky. I meant that something doesn't have to be feature complete in one patch. It can be broken down into usable chunks. For instance, making captured horses commandable is useful on it's own. Making them garrisonable can be another patch.