Messages

326

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Engine Stuff

« on: 24 November 2012, 23:45:38 »

Yet another edit:
The code changes are finally working although its gonna be a huge pain to reformat my 75 unit XML files. I blew an extra 6 hours on it because I was a dumbass and didn't realize that the problem was a pointer value set to 0. Spent so much time changing classes and messing around before I noticed.

Edit: Whoops changed my mind. I changed the loading code since I was trying to allow items to hold commands which they then pass to units that equip them. I wanted to remove a lot of work also and remove duplicate code. So item type and unit type inherit from creatable type now which changes the loading XML a little bit. On the plus side upgrades and maybe some other classes will also inherit from this class and gain its capabilities as well. Even effects/emanations might be able to inherit from this class. Should open up some fun possibilities.

I've fleshed out various aspects of the item and unit system while working on my current game project.

At the point at which I release the game I am working on I will consider the engine to be in its final Alpha stage.
The reason that it will still be Alpha is that it won't contain the new Rocket GUI or the upgraded graphics engine.

Just as a note the final Alpha will be the last version to maintain legacy syntax. Most GAE mods are quite old and no one uses it much because the plebs only care about multi player. It takes a lot of extra work to maintain all the outdated loading syntax. I'll be moving a bunch of stuff around and adding documentation to the code and shrinking the number of lines per file. The unit file has something like 3500 lines of code and growing for instance. Also a lot of the unit type and unit code is duplicated in the item type and item code, so I'll be moving that to another file.

Basically the old upgrade and enhancement and level syntax will all be gone. Aside from the removal of legacy loading code all the new stats and features are optional in the XML.

I play a lot of games for play testing purposes, so most of the changes don't have bug problems. However I wouldn't go so far as to call it a stable release. You definitely cannot use even GAE's rudimentary multiplayer. Mandate won't support multiplayer at any point as far as I am concerned. If I wanted that I would play Starcraft 2.

December 25 is the release date for the semi stable engine release and the game release. Of course the source code is all available at the GitHub page at any time. I usually update it 3-5 times a week from my local repo.

327

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Engine: Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

« on: 19 November 2012, 10:11:02 »

Got another butt load of work done. Added the cost application to building from the faction menu. Added some new units and new goals for the AI for some of those new units. Added quite a bit of the gameplay programming.

I ended up making the economy much more complex than Majesty, sort of a hybrid with a city builder.

I still have to add some actual harvested resource types. There will be harvesting for various plants/herbs to create potions. Players will have to locate and defend these plant gathering areas and build a harvest type structure.

There may be some other things like rare metals that will allow production of superior weapons as well. I might make the majority of top tier items require resource collection.

I decided that every guild would have both private and public modifications available and perhaps items as well.

The market not only produces gold on a timer but can build shops which add bonus gold. Shops require various structures like farms and herbalists to build.

Houses cost gold to make and produce population as a static resource. Every other building requires population to build. Houses are built by player decision. Houses also have a householder who repairs the house. Peasants only build houses, they do not repair them in order to allow them to focus on more important tasks. Householders also go out to but things for the house if its fully repaired, this increases the tax collection of the house. They might purchase food from a farm for instance or other materials.

I added several guilds to the game. Guilds also produce goods for householders to purchase, and they allow for new shops in the market. Guilds come with their own set of guards that only protect the guild and they can also buy items which add to taxes. Guilds have workers to make purchases but they don't have their own builders, the castle peasants repair them just like hero guilds.

I am thinking of maybe having all structures have their own repair workers, but im not sure, and its somewhat overpowered, unless they simply have a weak repair rate.

I did intend to have guild motherhouses able to produce special heroes that regular cheaper guilds can't. High priests or commanders of knightly orders and what not. Motherhouses may also have guards.

I decided not to implement global spells from guilds or command flags. So the game is a bit more sim like than Majesty. However some guild upgrades may provide very long range spells that perform spells automatically like heals. Although the engine will eventually have revive powers I decided not to implement any resurrection for the kingdom sim. However, monsters retain gold and possibly items from heroes they kill. Only gold retention is implemented currently.

Quite a lot of what I would like to do is limited by lack of models, ie several types of farms, as well as not wanting to many units in the player faction due to load times and video memory caps. I will see how I can work that out.

I decided to release in December, possibly on or near Christmas, I made a priority list of units and features, I have the major work done, so I can just cut out some of the feature creep if I don't think I'll be ready.

I wouldn't expect Annex level balance among choices, although as a single player game its not too critical. If enough people play and provide feedback that would help.

328

Mods / Re: Vbros mod packs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! (Pack 5 Updated!)

« on: 18 November 2012, 09:10:27 »

Is it because the textures are not of a power of two resolution? E.g 32, 64, 256, 512, 1024...
GAE forcably makes you use power of two textures because it helps performance/older graphic cards or whatever, whereas MG and VG don't.

It's a feature not a bug. 

I did get that error. But it didn't seem to cause a problem in some other models. Maybe all the texture errors were for the sword models and it just didn't seem like an issue before.

Okay I fixed one of the textures, sort of. I will just resize all the other ones I guess.

329

Mods / Re: Vbros mod packs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! (Pack 5 Updated!)

« on: 18 November 2012, 05:55:49 »

All of them have a few errors. Every faction from all 5 packs.

They all appear to work in the MG viewer though. I checked 1 or more broken ones from each faction in the MG viewer and they worked there.

330

Mods / Re: Vbros mod packs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! (Pack 5 Updated!)

« on: 18 November 2012, 05:42:15 »

apparently many of the models are not GAE or Glest compatible. Some sort of additional graphical capability in MegaGlest I suppose.

these textures all appear to be tga however so that isn't it.

331

Mods / Re: Vbros mod packs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! (Pack 5 Updated!)

« on: 18 November 2012, 05:02:26 »

Is there some reason the textures wouldnt work in the regular viewer? I will attempt what you said though.

332

Mods / Re: Vbros mod packs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5! (Pack 5 Updated!)

« on: 18 November 2012, 03:45:06 »

I downloaded the vbros packs from the wiki and they are riddled with texture errors. Is there a stable version where all the textures work properly in the viewer?

Or do they work in the game but not the viewer? Its usually 3-4 models per faction that are broken and its almost always the wood texture used for the model that doesn't work properly.

333

General discussion / Re: Looking for 3D molleders [Paid work]

« on: 16 November 2012, 09:22:48 »

I'm not entirely sure if our community has any 3D molleders. What exactly is a molleder? Google turns up blank.

I thought about making a post like this. But I have been working on being less of an asshole lately

You behave a certain way long enough and you eventually have trouble helping it.

334

General discussion / Re: Looking for 3D molleders [Paid work]

« on: 16 November 2012, 09:21:49 »

Based on 5-10 dollars per model its more of a hobby project that he is selling than a business. That's below minimum wage for a 1-2 hour model and with a texture as well I'd imagine its even lower. 3-4 hours minimum. That's not too uncommon for hobby commercial products and you can usually get friends or if you are lucky graphic design students to knock that out on the side if you give them a game credit as well.

If you were seriously into learning about the business model of indie studios there are literally a zillion threads and blogs and dev diaries on gamedev.

335

General discussion / Re: [DONE] E-mail notification on topic reply

« on: 15 November 2012, 20:09:12 »

databases are so much fun. i dunno why but they are.

336

General discussion / Re: Looking for 3D molleders [Paid work]

« on: 15 November 2012, 19:38:19 »

What is it about? Theme and style wise?

337

Closed bug reports / Re: 3.7.0 Winning Team is displayed wrong

« on: 15 November 2012, 19:17:35 »

Muwum is technically correct. If you are playing a team game vs another team, as opposed to a game where you ally with someone but are not actually on their team, you should be winning the game as a team.

338

General discussion / Re: Looking for 3D molleders [Paid work]

« on: 15 November 2012, 19:15:01 »

Glest related? In what way?

339

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Engine: Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

« on: 14 November 2012, 00:11:00 »

Okay I had some medical issues and my computer kept crashing because its really old.

I have just finished enabling the modification system which will allow buildings to give individual upgrades to units/items of the appropriate type. These possess, optionally, an enhancement, one or more resistance boosts, and one or more damage type boosts. You can also add any number of effects.

You specify modifications like items or units with a folder and an Xml file in the modifications folder. Modifications are saved to the faction type, and they are given to units/buildings to distribute using just the name. So if a mage guild passes out various enchantments you would do something like:

<modifications>
    <modification name="flame_weapon"/>
    <modification name="frost_weapon"/>
    <modification name="stone_weapon"/>
</modifications>

But the actual modification information would be in another file. This has 2 goals. Myself and maybe others may want to specify the same modification to be given out by multiple units. Some of my games require this.

The second reason which is likely more important to the average modder with a less complex game is that it clears a lot of extra lines from the unit XMLs which are massively overcrowded already.

This will be used in this particular game to add over time poison damage or paralyzing poison or burning damage to weapons, these upgrades can be purchased at guilds or shops.

This should be the last major code addition for me to have enabled all the necessary features.

Its all XML from here so the alpha version of the game, because of lack of balance and small number of enemy units, should be out in a week or so.

340

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Engine: Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

« on: 10 November 2012, 23:00:26 »

For various reasons I couldn't get a lot of work done in the past 3 days, no matter how hard I tried. But I'm back on it now. Mostly doing XML work right now.

Currently I am doing some slight item system modification to make some bugs in the item system, that I noticed when I tried to use the XML, go away. Pretty much done.

I am adding the items to the guilds for things like increased hero housing, new abilities, weapon poisoning and enchanting and what not.

I was thinking of adding a check in the engine to see if its a faction with sim AI so that when you buy an item it equips automatically since there isn't a case where you would make one and not want it to equip in this game type.

341

General discussion / Re: Please read: Is the Glest Advanced Engine project dead?

« on: 9 November 2012, 17:48:57 »

Even if you were to port GAE features over to MegaGlest it wouldn't really be a merger since GAE devs would not likely then start working on MegaGlest. And I think MG already has ported many GAE features over, although obviously not the most significant features.

342

MegaGlest / Re: String clarification for translations

« on: 9 November 2012, 00:52:50 »

But what is a "skill"? An example maybe? I just want to be sure I use proper word in Polish

Units have commands. Commands have one or more skills like move or stop or attack.

343

General discussion / Re: Please read: Is the Glest Advanced Engine project dead?

« on: 8 November 2012, 07:41:31 »

I don't think this is a good idea. MegaGlest has it's own website.

Your plan might be marginally helpful for MegaGlest in some ways but this is the Glest site for Vanilla Glest as well as the both main forks. It doesn't exist to service the needs of MegaGlest. That's what its own site is for.

You could simply make a MegaGlest section of the wiki or a new wiki just for MegaGlest. Then you don't need to have all the is this feature vanilla mg or gae type stuff with color coded backgrounds.

344

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Engine: Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

« on: 8 November 2012, 05:31:22 »

Sounds good. Maybe I missed some threads, but how does the gameplay work? Simple explanation please  . Also it is sounding mighty complex, are old glest tech-trees still compatible?

The game I am currently working on is similar to games like Majesty 1 and also somewhat similar to some city simulators.

Effectively you can make buildings, some of which produce items and some which make hero units who can buy those items with wealth gathered from killing monsters. Units are controlled by AI but buildings are under player control.

Building commands mostly involve hiring heroes or adding production facilities. Facilities is basically creating and equipping an item that then allows the building to produce new items which heroes automatically buy if they have money and desire.

Heroes get taxed on money they make at their guild which goes into the guild vault. Shops get gold from heroes buying items. This gold is collected by tax collectors. Some structures produce gold automatically as well like markets and houses.

This is all data based though. If you really wanted you could do something like have heroes collect monster parts and plants and sell them to the alchemist who then makes potions and sells them back. Or mages collect magic crystals from lairs which are then stored in the guild and made into items or upgrades or w/e.

This is just one game I decided I wanted to make using the new capabilities of my GAE fork. My fork should play any GAE mod, well there may be some slight updates you would need to make to an old mod's tech tree. I have been attempting to make most changes use optional child nodes but some don't. That's just an xml problem though.

345

Mandate Engine / Re: Mandate Engine: Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

« on: 5 November 2012, 06:58:12 »

Reserved for small updates:

Giant Update(November 22nd):

(click to show/hide)

I got a shit load done over the last 2 weeks. I got all of the building shit done. I made significant changes to the new GUI code to fix a few errors in the item system. I've added new capabilities such as units with local storage beginning with their own resources. This allows gold rewards for unit kills.

I modified the level system to only work on exp, however to mimic the original Glest system you can just use exp in place of kills and have all units give 1 exp on death.

The final method for levels I used was a base value per hit, regardless of the hit's resulting effect. However its divided by the units level count +1, so it takes more over time. I also added a count function to levels so that you can specify a rank and a number of levels at once with the same bonus.

My first use of this for my current project involves 40 levels:
Level 0 units are all titled as inductees.
Levels 1-10 are recruits, 11-25 are regulars and levels 26-45 are veterans. The last 3 names are specified per unit, inductee is the default title since levels start at 0. The 3 XML derived titles are for the Defender unit from one of the games Orders.

Each level takes 1000 exp. So 2 hits 3 hits 4 hits 5 hits and so forth increasing per level. When I get to work on my other games I might as a few different ways to calculate exp gain.

I've added several more units and fixed some AI as well. Each Order will have at least 3 units and some have more. The units are basic, advanced and Order leader. For instance the defenders have: Defender, Guardian, Preceptor. They may also have a Bannerman unit if I can find a proper model. Some of the Orders have more than the 2 standard buildings now, standards being Motherhouse and Chapterhouse.

I did a lot more cleaning up and bug squashing and some other features I'm just blanking on, I'm definitely on pace for the previously given mid December release date.

Units Owned Bug Resolved(November 6th):

(click to show/hide)

Several units didn't have proper XML for the guild hero cap, ie you could hire unlimited heroes.

Small AI Issue Resolved(November 6th):

(click to show/hide)

So the AI was lagging incredibly for some reason even though it had previously been fine, I think having 51 units lags my ancient 4 year old laptop, I implemented a fix so that AI runs only 5 times a second instead of 40, and only if the unit has no action, so if you are doing a task like killing an enemy it will still select a new attack each time and attack as fast as possible, but if the enemy unit dies it will take 1/8 of a second before that individual unit selects a new target, and the same for other tasks. This appears to have resolved the issue.

Got All Units/Buildings Working(November 4th):

(click to show/hide)

So I finished getting all the models playable. You can build all the mother houses which build all the guildhalls and both of them can build and load their hero unit. Units can almost all move/stop/attack and their are almost no texture/model errors. I am going to take a well deserved rest and tomorrow morning I will set up all the heros with their AI personalities and goals. Then onward to finishing up the keeps and shops and doing the second tier castle and its morphs and such. And then adding new items and upgrades and then finally balancing the factions.

346

Mandate Engine / Mandate Engine: Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

« on: 5 November 2012, 04:34:08 »

This thread will contain any new information about the new game type I am working on getting a solid demo of to show off the new capabilities of my Glest fork.
I'm gonna grab some posts from the main mandate thread and reformat it for this post in the interests of completeness.
This will be the first serious demonstration of new gameplay capabilities, although it lacks any major engine updates.
This is just one of the kinds of totally different game types you can work with, in whole or in part, using Mandate.

Thanks to fabulous number of solid quality models I am one my way to finishing the units for the player faction.

I added a new command that allows buildings to produce structures without a moveskill as if you were using the faction build menu. Except this command properly displays the selected model when placing. I learned enough about why the faction menu only displays the icon and not the model to probably fix that issue later on, which is quite nice.

I am working my way through the guildhalls and mother houses and their resident heroes, 12 of each for 36 units in all, so its taking quite a while. First I supplied basic XMLs with build idle and die, then i added a structure(the modified build command), produce, load, and unload skill and command.

Each guildhall can produce load and unload its heroes and motherhouses at this stage can do all of that and create guildhalls.

Mother houses forts and shops are built from the faction build menu, currently 12 mother houses and 1 for and 5 shops can be built from the menu and properly display build and die in game although they have the default stats which will need to be modified.

Guildhalls are build only from the mother house, firstly to reduce massive clutter of icons on the build menu and secondly to avoid me having to add annoying unit requirements so you can only build them after building the mother house.

Each mother house/guild hall pair comes from the same faction, except wizards, so as to look more cohesive. That system also minimizes art style conflicts since the two buildings match and different guilds each have different styles.

Currently I am using buildings from the elves, dwarves, romans, greeks, magic, tech, undead, moon, imperial and woodsmen factions.

Dark magic is too evil, as are some undead, so they will be used in the demon/monster faction instead. Warlords clashes with the fantasy vibe somewhat, while imperial I only used the keep/castle as an upgrade for the tech castle building. There may be further use of tech and imperial structures with some sort of steampunk related guilds.

Mother houses will eventually provide higher tier heroes beyond the basic hero as well as upgrades. They may also produce an item that the hero will buy if he has money which will allow the use of advanced skills. You would only need one mother house, which is good since they are quite expensive. Guildhalls merely provide extra hero spaces. Both mother houses and guild halls will have space upgrades to load/produce extra heroes.

I will probably need another few days to add the attack skills and then balance unit stats once I finish the basic functions and select models for the heroes, the guildhalls/motherhouses all have models and can be built but not all of them have their commands.

Items/upgrades and the various shops which also sell items will take me maybe 1 or 2 days.

347

Mods / Re: Cannot Locate Certain Mods

« on: 4 November 2012, 18:16:31 »

Okay. I have successfully integrated 5 models to my faction. They have a special default xml with just be_built stop and die skills and no commands and their stats aren't set but I needed to make sure they appear properly in the game which they do.

So far 2 from solunar 2 from undead and 1 from dwarves are in, all building types. I need to add about 10 more buildings I think, putting the total up to 20.

Man going through and setting up the final xmls is gonna be a pain but since its more of a city builder/kingdom sim than an RTS you really do need that many structures.

I think that from the 7 or 8 factions I was able to download I have enough art assets, but a repaired elves faction or the grey elves models would make the number of modelling styles less myriad which would improve the look of the demo.

Hopefully we can actually get the idea of a permanent storage space for all mods up and running because I checked literally 50 broken links trying to get downloads.

348

Mods / Re: Cannot Locate Certain Mods

« on: 4 November 2012, 17:25:12 »

That one doesn't work. Also I have 2 versions of elves and neither work. I believe the problem is the tree textures being not multiples of 2.

349

Mods / Re: Cannot Locate Certain Mods

« on: 4 November 2012, 16:48:44 »

Does anyone have an elves link where the textures are sized properly and therefore appear in the game? I resized the tree texture for the lore house but it still doesn't work, presumably it fails to link properly if you do that.

There are still a few decent buildings, although for the forge the swords don't get textured. That's also why I couldn't use any elves units.

350

Mods / Re: Cannot Locate Certain Mods

« on: 4 November 2012, 16:17:00 »

I did manage to dig up the undead mod link. Its highly useful. I also got a few others like roman and greek where although units are mostly not useful, almost all the buildings are.

Shouldn't you be able to host mods on sourceforge? They have a good mirror system iirc and I don't think it would cost a lot if anything.