Four Path Magitech

[daniel.santos]

Current Development Binaries (Updated February 28, 2008)

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32-r38.rar]Glest Advanced Engine r38 (win32)[/url] (pre-alpha)
[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/four_path_magitech-r36.tbz2]Four Path Magitech r36[/url] (pre-alpha)
Quick & Dirty Setup

• (optional) backup your glest.ini file

[li]extract [/li][/list]

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32-r38.rar]glestadv-win32-r38.rar[/url] into your Glest directory[/li]
[li]extract [/li][/list]

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/four_path_magitech-r36.tbz2]four_path_magitech-r36.tbz2[/url]

into your glest/techs directory[/li]

• run glestadv-sse2.exe
• play using Four Path Magitech
• post feedback

Original Post:
I decided to start a new thread as "Idea for New Units" was getting old and we can't rename it since they guy that had the original idea hasn't returned to the boards since December, LOL!

I'm almost ready to release an alpha for the four path magitech tree & accompanying engine.  It will only have the path of corruption filled out and a few minor units for enlightenment and nature.  I have renamed the subversion directory for the mod from extmagitech to four_path_magitech:

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[url=https://glest.codemonger.org/svn/repos/four_path_magitech]https://glest.codemonger.org/svn/repos/four_path_magitech[/url]
wciow, I would like to get a smaller version of the skeleton model and also the necromancer tower model please.  They don't have to be animated.  The Lich would be nice as well, but whatever you have ready (or close to it).

I moved a few more things around.  The advancement of subfactions now occurs as an upgrade that takes a long time. This causes lower level units to retain their value and forces you to use them.  As it was, getting to where you could make necromancers was fast enough to almost skip daemons and ghost armor all together, now it takes considerably longer to get there.

I fixed a lot of odd bugs that I found in my code (effects weren't expiring, etc.) and added damage-type to effects.  Now, if an effect has a negative hp-regneration, the damage it does is based upon the damage multiplier.  This makes disease effects do considerably less against stone creatures.  I don't like how a lot of this lines up however, so I added functionality to support a body-type as well as an armor-type.  I'm not using it anywhere yet and I'm not sure that it really makes sense, but the idea was that an effect could be causing you damage that isn't based upon your armor (like a diseased human inside plate metal armor would be effected differently than a disease against a ghost in plate metal armor).  I don't know how to deal with that yet so I'm ignoring it for now, maybe it will go away?

I will be adding something akin to a GrowSkillType type soon that will allow a unit to be built on it's own.  This differs from the Morph skill type because there doesn't have to be unit to start with and the hit points increase as it grows (much like being built).  I'm not 100% sure how this is going to come together yet, but the idea is that initiates and/or druids on the path of nature will be able to plant trees that magically grow and be able to "awaken" trees into treants.  This may require modifying the engine to make trees (and therefore, all resources) selectable.  Because I intend to introduce these as the 1st "walls", trees will have to become attackable, unless I come up with a unit besides trees to do this from.  I'll also be modifying the build command to be draggable to build multiple units in a line).  The original Glest engine already supports queued commands, so it doesn't take any modifications aside from adding a "draggable" boolean to the BuildComandType and the changes to the Gui class to support it.

[daniel.santos]

wciow, I'm adding summon zombie giant to the Lich, at least for now until we have an ability for him to control other units (the "dominate" attack) and I'm adding just a wee bit of armor to the skeleton and scaling back the "minion_heath" armor effect, that way the skeleton will actually get a gain in armor as he levels (should he actually survive long enough).  The Lich seems to work pretty well actually having minions, and they minions are dying nicely, just as they should.

What would you think of the idea of scaling back the zombie giant hit points a little bit, say from 1400 to 1150, reducing his size to 1 and calling him a zombie, zombie warrior, risen hero, or something along those lines?  His festering wound effect (random 20% change) works quite nicely now that I have the damage-type on the effects.  This is a disease effect, so it works great against organic types and doesn't do too much to stone or wood.  Just a thought.

[wciow]

Excellent, it's nice to have a proper thread for the FPM mod!

I need to get the newer version from the SVN (I think I'm still working on rev 16).

Don't worry, I have the models ready but I just need to send them to you!

Its cool that you implemented the code for different subfaction

I agree that you should put the 'body type' code aside for now. It sounds kinda complicated to have two different armour types! Also I think that turning the zombie giant into a normal zombie is ok, but it should stay as a powerful unit!

In response to what you said in the last 'idea for new units' post; I totally agree that the path of enlightenment needs to have a symbol for its units! I deliberatly did not put anything onto the monk texture. I also agree that   we should stay away from the traditional christian sybols (i,e crucifix). The way I see it is that the path of enlightenment is religious but is a Glest specific religion and not a real world one.

[charlieg]

I must say I do like the idea of "evolving" your tech.  It gives the game a brand new dynamic.  Once you take 1 tech route, though, you should not be able to take others.  Is it like that?

[daniel.santos]

I must say I do like the idea of "evolving" your tech.  It gives the game a brand new dynamic.  Once you take 1 tech route, though, you should not be able to take others.  Is it like that?

Yea, that's how it works, it's permanent.  But because you can start an upgrade, building or whatever that ends up causing this subfaction change, I've been having to comb through the code and make sure there's no way to exploit changing to one faction and then changing to another.

wciow, thanks sounds fun  I posted the link to a tarball on glest.codemonger.org, but you have to copy factions/magic/magic.xml.normal to magic.xml because I forgot and left the "test" version in (the magic.xml file that starts you off with one of each kind of unit).  And I was thinking, for animations, maybe we can do the 1st run where there is just a slightly different position or something that indicates the animation.  Like the dead animation is one frame of the guy laying down, the attack he has his hands up or something.  Not for the 1st alpha release, but whenever we start in that direction.  And yea, I definitely want to leave the zombie/zombie giant a powerful unit, with strong defense but still very strong offense.  Since I changed the levels to be where you can specify what gets upgraded, I made the zombie giant's attack speed increase by 10 points with each level.  I did lower his hit points, but I also changed his armor type from organic to metal, which survives a lot of different attacks better.  Also, I changed the Lich's armor from leather, which takes 125% damage from piercing/arrows to bone, which takes only %50 normal damage from piercing.  This should help him survive arrow attacks, but I left his HPs low.  Hey will be extreme vunlerable to impact attacks now, which leaves an achilies heal (and so will his skeletons).  This makes the catapult a powerful weapon against Lichs & skeletons (impact does %150 on bones).

[daniel.santos]

I was in a hurry when I posted this, but I meant to mention that the Lich's withering despair is a disease attack, which does little against wood -- it's important to have these strengths and weaknesses.  The necromancer and Lich are finally at a point where they have an edge over the existing tech units.  They can both summon skeletons and a zombie now and summoning a skeleton is fast enough that it can be done on the battle field in a pinch or in a long battle.

I need to start focusing on the enlightenment path now.  A few things I know that I want is to have:

• Monks heal very fast for Eps
• Monks purge negative effects from allies
• "holy" attack units have a higher immunity to diseases
• "piety" is already setup as a static resource for the tech side.  Each monk produces 4 piety points and creating "holy" attack units uses these.
• Barracks get a morph skill called "sanctify" which requires an abbey and monk to exist.  This transforms it into a barracks of some type that can create the holy warriors and white knights (I forgot what we were calling them already! ).

But there's a lot more than we talked about in other threads that I'll have to go back and review.  It needs a lot of fleshing out.  I was thinking about some type of "inspire" ability that white knights get and that increases as they level -- this would augment surrounding units in some way (maybe faster movement and attack speed), but not be as powerful as the path or reason's captain/colonel/general "leadership" ability.

[Duke]

You could define a body or armour type undead(flesh), which is weaker to holy attacks or something.
A name for the White Knight would probably be Paladin.

[ZaggyDad]

You could maybe name the "holy warrior" a "crusader", or something like that.

~Zaggy

[orion]

If I may make a request for this upcoming mod (Which I'm looking forward too ). The Units need to have more Ranks than that of the standard magitech. For Example, guard -> elite guard (after killing more than 4 people).

For Example: Paladin

Paladin -> Rising Paladin -> Elite Paladin -> Legendary Paladin -> God Paladin -> etc

If the Ranks haven't been fleshed out yet, allow me too do so.

[wciow]

I think Daniel is building in multiple ranks on at least some of the new units. Please feel free to make suggestions though

[daniel.santos]

Ok, here is the current tech tree:

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/four_path_magitech-r36.tbz2]http://glest.codemonger.org/files/four_path_magitech-r36.tbz2[/url] and (mostly currently) engine

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32_SSE2-static-r32.rar]http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32_SSE2-static-r32.rar[/url]. I have company over, so I'll post more later.  cwiow, please give it a try and give any feedback.

Also, you have to put these values in your glest.ini:

FastestSpeed=2
SlowestSpeed=0.25

Since I enhanced the way that game speed is managed (there are 7 speeds now).  I made some other changes to the engine, but I'll have to post a windows exe for those later.

Daniel

[orion]

I finally got my apache PHP server up and running last night which is great news for me. On the other topic known as "Poll for new Units", I asked if it was okay for me to create a website for this mod. Now that my server is running correctly, may I create the official "4 Path Magitech" website. This will be a BIG mod and I think it deserves a website of it's own.

PS: I am a professional web designer (It is my current job), not some random guy who doesn't know anything about html.

[daniel.santos]

I finally got my apache PHP server up and running last night which is great news for me. On the other topic known as "Poll for new Units", I asked if it was okay for me to create a website for this mod. Now that my server is running correctly, may I create the official "4 Path Magitech" website. This will be a BIG mod and I think it deserves a website of it's own.

PS: I am a professional web designer (It is my current job), not some random guy who doesn't know anything about html.

Cool orion, I hadn't heard from you so I didn't know what your plans were.  I'm also a professional web application developer.  My specialty is J2EE applications.  Haven't you seen my awesome web page

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org]http://glest.codemonger.org[/url]?  But if you think you think that you can possibly improve upon that, then you're quite welcome to do so on either my server or yours.  I also have Tomcat  6 setup w/ apache2, but I think I broke mod_php on the last upgrade I did.  I don't care either way, I think it would be cool.

As for the additional levels I'm not really convinced that so many levels is necessary.  It doesn't mean I'm against it, but I think that beyond implementing "heros", where units that get killed can be recalled somehow, or even reused on subsequent levels of a campaign, going too far with unit levels isn't going to add much to the game because they like to die.  I actually tweaked the skeletons a few times trying to get their leveling to matter.  As it is, I reduced the max number of skeleton pets a necromancer can have from 4 to 3 and made them stronger (more HPs and more armor when they level) to bring them more in line with the power of a tech swordsman.  They are actually sub-par un-upgraded and moderately superior after their two upgrades (preservation and corporeal theft).  They make their 1st level at 2 kills, but I wasn't seeing them get there very often, unlike battle mages, that when managed carefully made expert more commonly than not (especially when used for early harassment raids).  One thing I've noticed that commonly kills skeletons is on an aggressive push, they tend to get out of range of their creators and start deteriorating, whereas the ranged-attack necromancers and liches tend to stay back away from the action as much as possible.  Of course, they are mostly designed to die and protect their creators, as well as the other ranged units on the magic faction.

@Duke@, I'm thinking that the undead organic is a good idea and would mean that we should create a "holy" attack as well.  However, it is important that contests between various paths (subfactions) be balanced so that enlightenment is not underpowered against either nature or reason and that corruption is not nullified by enlightenment.  So the holy attack couldn't be too powerful against undead or corruption wouldn't have a chance against them and the game becomes a contest of knowing what path the opponent chooses and choosing the path that nullifies theirs (not a good thing).  One should be able to defeat an enemy of one path equally well using any other path.  So in the end, I'm not actually sure if it is a good idea unless the holy attack of the "enlightened" can be effective against the other paths, and I don't see a good story for that to be the case.  Doesn't mean it wont work, but that's what we'll have to look at as we move forward.

On the other hand, allowing white knights, paladins, crusaders, holy warriors, etc. to have other special abilities due to their faith is completely appropriate and transports to contests against all subfactions.  Now, allowing monks to have an attack that only works against the undead sounds cool and should be able to be worked in well with game balance, but that would require extra coding (perhaps lots of extra coding) to specify that they can attack, but only attack certain armor types.  This is especially true of the AI, where monks normally just roam around and try to heal units (at the moment).

[orion]

Cool orion, I hadn't heard from you so I didn't know what your plans were. I'm also a professional web application developer. My specialty is J2EE applications. Haven't you seen my awesome web page

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org]http://glest.codemonger.org[/url]? But if you think you think that you can possibly improve upon that, then you're quite welcome to do so on either my server or yours. I also have Tomcat 6 setup w/ apache2, but I think I broke mod_php on the last upgrade I did. I don't care either way, I think it would be cool.

Awesome! I'll start fleshing out the web logo and the website today. And I'll remember to keep you updated. I know the java programming language, but I never explored J2EE. Instead, I learned php and javascript along with the standard css and html.

As for the additional levels I'm not really convinced that so many levels is necessary. It doesn't mean I'm against it, but I think that beyond implementing "heros", where units that get killed can be recalled somehow, or even reused on subsequent levels of a campaign, going too far with unit levels isn't going to add much to the game because they like to die.

Concerning the unit ranks, I have played many rts games and they all have some sort of descent ranking system. The units should be allowed to get progressively stronger as they destroy more enemies. For Example, the game "Air Defense 3". Although it is only a flash game you can play on the internet, it has an excellent ranking system.

Air Defense 3 Ranking system:
private 1>> private 2 >> private 3 >>
general 1>> general 2 >> general 3 >>
Lieutenant >> etc

While it is true that the units usually die easily, introducing a more advanced ranking system could make glest an even more challenging and interesting game. I was surprised to find that glest only had two ranks for the guards, soldiers, and archers of the tech faction, because most other rts games have at least 5 ranks for units. For Example, here is the way I would have structured the "Guard" unit for the tech faction.

Guard:

initial rank: soldier;
after 2 kills: exceptional soldier;
after 4 kills: hero;
after 7 kills: general;
after 10 kills: lieutenant;
after 20 kills: captain;
after 30 kills: legend;

Or something like that. Do you understand what I mean?

[encoish]

Haven't been around lately. My, how things have improved! This mod is going splendidly well. Kudos for daniel.santos, wciow, and orion.

Orion - Giving 5 ranks to guards would be a very interesting idea, but it's quite improbable and impractical. Enormous dedication would be required, and in the frenzy that usually accompanies RTS games, it would be quite hard, if not impossible. Implementing the system is fine; it would be a goal to achieve and would add to the depth of the mod. Such "leveling/rank systems", in my opinion, fit TBS games better. Wesnoth http://http://www.wesnoth.org/ is a good example of vital ranking system intergration. I'd still love to see the rank system there though.

[encoish]

Hmm, and it still gives the OpenAl sound library not found even after I install it... Maybe it's my stupidity.

[orion]

Orion - Giving 5 ranks to guards would be a very interesting idea, but it's quite improbable and impractical. Enormous dedication would be required, and in the frenzy that usually accompanies RTS games, it would be quite hard, if not impossible. Implementing the system is fine; it would be a goal to achieve and would add to the depth of the mod. Such "leveling/rank systems", in my opinion, fit TBS games better. Wesnoth http://www.wesnoth.org/ is a good example of vital ranking system intergration. I'd still love to see the rank system there though.

If Daniel.santos and the others working on this project would let me, I would dedicate myself to improving the rank system...and the website . The Glest ranking system definitely needs to be improved. With a better ranking system, battles in the game could be more exciting.

Imagine you just sent about 50 units to battle and only 10 of them survived who killed about 7 people each. Shouldn't those ten be rewarded with something other than just becoming an "Elite" unit. Elite units can easily be killed just as normal units can be. I would like it so that higher ranking units are much harder to kill. I also like the idea of a "hero" in your army; someone who has exceptional skills and power.

[encoish]

Changed the ini file from OpenAL back to original. Wonderful mod. But path of corruption is insanely overpowered right now. I had a leader lich (I gave the guard command to the other 7 lichs to this "leader lich"), and each of his subordinates (7 lichs, 32 necromancers) had summoned all they could. It filled the map. Needless to say, tech was defeated easily. One runaway lich actually beat tech for me. I was concentrating on summoning necromancers when the game popped up a sign with "You win."

[daniel.santos]

Changed the ini file from OpenAL back to original. Wonderful mod. But path of corruption is insanely overpowered right now. I had a leader lich (I gave the guard command to the other 7 lichs to this "leader lich"), and each of his subordinates (7 lichs, 32 necromancers) had summoned all they could. It filled the map. Needless to say, tech was defeated easily. One runaway lich actually beat tech for me. I was concentrating on summoning necromancers when the game popped up a sign with "You win."

Ahh, thanks for the feedback.  So you're right, it's that darn .ini file from the Linux version that I included, not thinking about that part. I made a change that added two values to the glest.ini, so I thought I would just include it but I included the wrong version!  But they again, they are fairly fragile units before being upgraded to Liches.  What I may do is increase the price for necromancers and decrease some of the pre-preservation stats on the Lich.  I haven't actually played it since applying the preservation upgrade to the Lich.

But from another standpoint, if you have an army of 7 Liches and 32 necromancers, all fully loaded, you should be able to win the game anyway.

[daniel.santos]

ok, fixed the silly glest.ini file, fixed that command canceling problem and finally cleaned up the effect display text (summarizes multiple instances of the same effect): 

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32-r38.rar]http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32-r38.rar[/url]

[orion]

Ok, the web logo is going great, and I think I'll have that to show to everyone tommorrow for advice and suggestions.
I think I remember reading a topic where daniel.santos said hewould like to release the 4 path magitech as a totally new program independant of the original glest game. Couldn't we just include the 4 path magitech as a new tech tree instead of releasing a whole new program. For Example, what titi did with the indians.

[wciow]

@ Orion - Good work with the website, I look forward to seeing it when its finished!

I don't really see why we need to make four path as a separate tech tree. It will be exactly the same as a faction :s FPM cannot be independent of the original Glest since it uses most of the original Glest content. Its a mod rather than a stand-alone game. When the FPM mod is finished it will be possible to release a stripped down version of the Glest-advanced-engine that can be a basis for new stand-alone games.

I like the idea of having multiple levels for units, however we need to find a way of stopping units from dying so quickly (before they can level). I'm not really a fan of adding RPG style heroes a la WC3, but maybe we could implement this in a new and interesting way!


@ encoish - Yes the path of corruption is very overpowered because there is no balance yet as the other paths are not really fleshed out.

@Daniel - I've been testing out the new version and have some feedback :lol:

As for my modelling I was hoping that I could get some ideas for the path of nature units from the community. Basically I need some ideas for how the Treant and Druid should look. If anyone has any ideas then please post them. I don't care if they are masterpieces worthy of a gallery, crudely scrawled MSpaint pictures, written descriptions or even 'net links. All ideas are helpful

p.s - I have the animations for path of corruption about 90% complete now. I will send you the new animations so that we can see the units walking rather than gliding around the level!

[Duke]

Orion the problem is titi's mods are based on the original Glest engine, but the FPM tech needs a lot of options that aren't included in that engine. You have to completely recompile the programm to get these options inside.

So you might want to conside to creater a general website for the Glest Advanced Profect (GAP, the name is not set yet but it's the most promising one). I'm pretty sure FPM won't be the only mod based on it.
For example, I'm currently planning on something with beastmen and treefolk, but am currently occupied with exam preparations.

As to the ranking, I agree that units should get stronger the longer they survive and the more experience they get.
It hasn't to be as complex as wethnoth, which is round based and thus more strategic. Besides it usually has only three ranks anyway.
How about a simple generic one for starters? Every unit just gets a title like advanced, veteran, elite, heroic, legendary and the stats get incresed by 20, 40, 60, 80 and lastly 100%.

Balancing is always a difficult task especially the fever units you have. but it is usually good to have some units that are stronger against one enemy, but weaker against another. And to have other other units where the roles are exchanged.
It makes the game more strategic. If all units were about equal it would just be a question of who can harvest faster and produce more units.

In this special case it wouldn't be necessary to give all enlightened units holy damage. Let's say just the paladin can do this, but the standart crusader has just enough faith to be more optimistic(a little stronger) while in the presence of a monk.
And I believe you wanted to include some demons in the oath of corruption? with them it wouldn't be helpless against holy units. And the necro is not undead as well. The Lich could have an update that gives him armor with magic resistance etc.

[Duke]

some treant pics:
1. http://www.legendgames.co.uk/acatalog/treant.jpg
2. http://www.celestialheavens.com/images/screenshots/homm5/sylvan/HeroesV_Sylvan_06_Treant.jpg
3. http://monsters.ffxi-atlas.com/monsters/imgs/treant.jpg
4.

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[url=http://www.l2ag.ru/mob/597.jpg]http://www.l2ag.ru/mob/597.jpg[/url]5.

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[url=http://nwn.bioware.com/players/images/nwn_profile_lacuna_01_180x240.jpg]http://nwn.bioware.com/players/images/nwn_profile_lacuna_01_180x240.jpg[/url]Nr 3. is an interesting one, because it has one trunk instead of two legs. But my faforite is Nr. 5 although Nr. 4 might be easier to model.

I think there are essentially two types of druids, one like your monk, just with a brown and green robe and the other more the nature guy, partly naked with hides and bark and leaves.
1. http://www.celestialheavens.com/images/screenshots/homm5/sylvan/HeroesV_Sylvan_04u_Druid_Elder.jpg
2.

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[url=http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:Lo1eltiCdivfsM:http://www.combinecreative.com/nate/images/Druid5%2520copy.jpg]http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:Lo1eltiCdivfsM:http://www.combinecreative.com/nate/images/Druid5%2520copy.jpg[/url]3. http://www.mythinglinks.org/p_druid~HisSite~Full~richd.jpg
4.

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[url=http://www.art-serena.com/color_art/druid800x600.jpg]http://www.art-serena.com/color_art/druid800x600.jpg[/url]I'd settle for one with bark cuiras, fur coat and kilt, leaf hair and twig antlers.

[orion]

Orion the problem is titi's mods are based on the original Glest engine, but the FPM tech needs a lot of options that aren't included in that engine. You have to completely recompile the programm to get these options inside.

So you might want to conside to creater a general website for the Glest Advanced Profect (GAP, the name is not set yet but it's the most promising one). I'm pretty sure FPM won't be the only mod based on it.
For example, I'm currently planning on something with beastmen and treefolk, but am currently occupied with exam preparations.

Fine. Would it be problem to create a website for the GAP instead of the FPM itself? It's no problem.

As to the ranking, I agree that units should get stronger the longer they survive and the more experience they get.
It hasn't to be as complex as wethnoth, which is round based and thus more strategic. Besides it usually has only three ranks anyway.
How about a simple generic one for starters? Every unit just gets a title like advanced, veteran, elite, heroic, legendary and the stats get incresed by 20, 40, 60, 80 and lastly 100%.

This is exactly what I mean. I wasn't asking for a more complex ranking system; I was asking for a ranking system with more ranks. Advanced, veteran, elite, heroic and legendary are great ranks for the units. All I ask is that each unit have atleast 5 ranks similar to those described by Duke.