Whats the plans for the future work regarding this?I'm currently working on putting some technology upgrades into the mod. I'm not sure if I want to have those use the same pool of resources as units, or if I want to just give the player X number of upgrades to choose. Also a few icons are missing, particles need work, blah blah blah. I don't really have much of a plan for where the mod needs to go, but I may incorporate more factions into it, like Woodsmen. Balancing is also something that will need to be sorted out. More GAE features may be included in the future, in order to add more variety and strategy to the fight.
I love the death animation for the Nexus. :PThanks, but it's actually bugged. It looks like an actual shattering explosion in Blender. ;D
Suggestions:(Note:these will most likely need future GAE features)Maybe these can go in another project, but the focus of Project Green is to make the players do their best with what they have, rather than relying on reinforcements.
-Resources being given over time.
-Resources coming from a building built by the Hero.
Hopefully once the AI is re-done, they'll know how to handle this ;) Because it could be really fun!I hope so, or maybe I'm just missing some little thing that can make it all work together. Time (and more scrutiny) will tell. :)
This sounds very interesting, it's a very light yet fun mod. If multiple lists starting resources/units/upgrades could be set in a faction xml then chosen when creating a game this mod could sort of be built into the engine except for the leader units.That would be quite nice. Maybe each faction could have a designated leader unit that's normally only used in that particular game mode? I know there was some talk of game modes on the GAE board not long ago, but I imagine new feature requests will have to wait a while, in light of recent developments. :)
With the help of Cygal and Hailstone, I figured out what I needed to do to get the AI working! :DCan you elaborate how? I'm curious.
<cygal> johndh: http://glestae.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=glestae/glestae;a=blob;f=source/game/ai/ai.cpp;h=01e8dbed66db521cb8d681e0cbc15eea9755ff15;hb=HEAD#l135
<cygal> I have been looking recently at the forum links which had a few bugs
<johndh> cygal, so that's the order in which they do things?
<cygal> yes
<cygal> I think so.
<hailstone3> no, they are instances of rules
<hailstone3> its tasks that get executed
<cygal> hailstone3: that means the AI will try to harvest first
<hailstone3> from wat i can see
<cygal> I don't how this vector is exactly handled
<cygal> but it will probably first try to harvest
<hailstone3> look in Ai::update()
<cygal> yes, it executes rules
<cygal> the first rule being Harvest?
<hailstone3> ok maybe it does then but not neccessarily
<cygal> if it does not actually first harvest, it is worth investigating more indeed
<cygal> I don't have GAE locally
<hailstone3> ai->findAbleUnit needs to return true for it to harvest first
<cygal> yes
<cygal> ie. it needs a worker?
<johndh> Well, my problem is that the entire concept of my addon is that there is no building and no harvesting, but you start with plenty of resources for an army...
<johndh> so ideally, it would see "I can't harvest, nor can I build, so I'll move on to the seek and destroy part"
<hailstone3> if there are no harvesters it will attempt to execute the next rule
<cygal> johndh: what is the behavior?
<cygal> can I try the addon?
<johndh> cygal, the one starting unit will wander around and kill whatever it finds, but that's it
<johndh> sure, let me grab the link real quick
<cygal> ah
<cygal> that's scouting
<johndh> http://www.gamefront.com/files/20022673/project_green_20-feb-2011.zip
<cygal> the AI scouts at random possible bases first
<cygal> possibly your base, then an ally base, then an enemy base
<cygal> if it founds an enemy, every one will attack the enemy
<hailstone3> if (workerCount < 4) {
<hailstone3> ai->addPriorityTask(new ProduceTask(UnitClass::WORKER));
<hailstone3> }
<johndh> Ahhh....
<johndh> Damn.
<cygal> the AI does not plan
<cygal> it assumes it has to do certain things
<hailstone3> addPriorityTask removes all previous tasks, AiRuleProduce needs a task to pass test
<cygal> I can't test right now sorry
<johndh> So it gets stuck trying to produce more workers, so it can't do anything at all?
<hailstone3> possibly, try starting with 4 workers
<cygal> yes, that's a limitation silnarm already talked me about
<cygal> maybe modifying addPriorityTask to not remove everything could help
<johndh> Starting with four workers "fixes" it, in that they now produce units.
<johndh> I guess I could have the workers only able to mine stone or something, since that's useless here.
<hailstone3> "modifying addPriorityTask to not remove everything" would make it not priority, i think checking if they can actually be built would be better
<cygal> hailstone3: I mean, using push_front
<cygal> your option would work too, I don't know the one would work best (with other weird mods :p)
<johndh> What does it check for to see if a unit is a worker?
<johndh> Skills or commands?
<hailstone3> UnitClass::WORKER
<hailstone3> i forget what that goes off
<hailstone3> im guessing skills
<johndh> I guess I'll test and find out.
<johndh> Okay, so making a size 0 worker with skills but no commands seems to work.
<hailstone3> cygal: what happens if a task fails?
<cygal> let me see
<cygal> it depends
<cygal> in some cases it "retries" it: putting it back at the end with retryTask()
<cygal> when it works it gets removed()
<cygal> but that's specific to each rule it seems
<hailstone3> ok, it doesn't look like it will retry to produce harvesters until the next update so it should be ok to push_front
<johndh> Okay, it definitely works now. :)
<hailstone3> probably better not to have the tasks at all if we know they can't be executed though
<ultifd> Cool :)
To summarize, if the AI player has fewer than four worker units, it will forsake all actions that don't directly involve producing those workers, until that requirement is satisfied. Thus, I gave each player four Workers or Initiates with the standard skills (building and harvesting) but stripped of their commands, so they can't actually do those things. Also, each one is a single polygon of size 0, so they can't be seen, selected, or interacted with in any way. The absolute only function they have is tricking the AI, which they do quite well.Nice catch! Never knew about that before. Hopefully in the (near? distant?) future we will have an improved, or better yet, a Lua AI so we won't have to resort to such low hacks to make the AI behave.
The Aether resource (used for upgrades) won't show up and I don't know why.
Resources will not show up unless at least one unit (not upgrade) uses it. :)Cool, I've fixed it. Thanks.
i played it for the first time a few minutes ago, and im wondering something: why dont the upgrades affect all of the units? i can understand things like range and melee upgrades, but armor, why are only a few units under its effect?The idea is to make it an actual compromise. If it upgraded everyone's armor, I think it would be significantly better than the attack upgrades, in which case there would be no reason to not choose it. Plus, not all of the units wear much armor anyway. Of course, if the balance needs to be improved and you have an idea for doing that, I'd like to see it.
Hmmm, maybe this could be done in Lua and turned into a gamemode for glest? ::)It would be nice, wouldn't it?
I've always wanted to see different gametypes in glest and this seems to go in the right direction.
Added the wiki link. Too bad this mod doesn't work well on 1 vs 1...has to be a real free for all, I guess.Thanks, and yeah it is kind of a bummer. Hopefully it will be polished enough to be a popular multiplayer match style after the merge. 8)
Current to-do list for the next release:
- More upgrades, maybe?
I do really like this, it's real fun to play.We already have that to some degree. Piercing beats soft targets, slashing is decent all-around, impact is good against hard targets, etc. Overall, I think the unit-vs.-unit balance is okay as it is. As far as balance is concerned, I'm more interested in things like, if one upgrade gives a bigger advantage to one side than another, or if one of the leaders is more powerful than the other, or if one side needs more gold. Things like that.
What about some Rock, Paper, Sirrors-like gameplay? You know; the traditional, Range beat infrantry, Infranty beat cavalry, Cavalry beat Range idea.
By the way the Inquisitor and White Mage need new models! I have some ideas, I'd be happy to do some concept art if you'd like. (I wouldn't mind if you say no).That's a little beyond the scope of this project at the moment. If somebody wants to donate some g3d files, then they'll likely get incorporated, but it's not that big a deal to me. This is mostly just a project I'm working on during breaks from other projects. :)
Also to start a discussion about names, what about something along the lines of Glest Skirmish?... Glest Battalions?.... I'm not very good at names. :-[Glest Skirmish sounds okay. I'm not terribly concerned with naming since everything is still in a pretty early stage, so I don't think I'll decide on anything just yet.
why dont you do some of the stuff we talked about before, like getting a small resource bonus or getting a squad of elite units? (but this would require more than 2 Aether points....)That's certainly a possibility.
Sounds good. How about some new units?Good idea. In fact, that's such a good idea that I already thought of it. ;D Since both factions have all of the ground units from their own roster, I turned to others. Tech can hire a squad of three elite Gunners from wciow's Dwarves and Magic can hire a squad of three elite Marauders from madmanntis' Woodsmen.
The only other thing I see this is turning this into an actual feature of GAE, or glest 4. Whater. As in a gametype.
Bump. I'm making a few improvements to this mod, including replacing the missing icons and giving each faction the ability to recruit mercenaries. Are there any requests while I'm at it?
How about adding a glow underneath the Heros? Just a slight team colour particle as it is easier to distinguish them.(http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/18/17262/crop_120x90/screen8.1.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/18/17262/screen8.1.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/18/17262/crop_120x90/screen9.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/18/17262/screen7.1.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/18/17262/crop_120x90/screen10.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/18/17262/screen10.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/18/17262/crop_120x90/screen7.1.jpg) (http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/18/17262/screen7.1.jpg)
Right, looks good. Is the battlemachine hero's glow noticeable enough though?If it wasn't before, it ought to be now.
I like having the black in there because it looks kinda sinister and evil, since he's an Inquisitor... so yeah. I don't think a WC3-style hero glow is possible.I have no clue what WC3 hero glow would be like, though the Megapack's genie has a good example of looking more like a glow than smoke.
I have no clue what WC3 hero glow would be like, though the Megapack's genie has a good example of looking more like a glow than smoke.I tried copying that over the one of my units, and it seems that GAE doesn't support that particular particle feature.