Four Path Magitech

[mr. cookie]

i need help with this i have extracted them both to my glest directory but it says :cant open property map file:glestadvini.

[orion]

In the Glest directory, does glestadv.ini exist?

[osiris]

hi, i just downloaded four_path_magitech, and i tried to play it and got the error "path_of_corruption sub faction not found." what am i doing wrong?

[Ayrin Greenflag]

hi guys, i've seen this tread only now ....    
it's awesome...and seems that some of your ideas fit also with a project of mine... take a look to this
[usrl]http://www.glest.org/glest_board/viewtopic.php?p=16706#16706[/url]
could we collaborate and share some model or idea?

[nosoyjoe]

hey guys, I'm new in the forums cause i was just to lazy to join before this. I've changed Glest so many times, and in so many different ways. I started by creating units in the existing factions, and eventually I created my own. I thought of have subfactions, but i never knew I could do it like this. Instead I had the factions use food as the resource, and energy as the limiting factor. For example, you start the game with only 5 energy which you spend on upgrading the castle/mage tower to the appropriate  subfaction. This completely prevents players from changing subfactions. Another note to be made is that I'm not so old...but I've read up on the xml pages and i understand it. My only limitation is that i can not model, which i imagine limits the abilities of many people. So what I did was use the current models provided by Glest and other mods that I've accumulated. I'm also amazing with creativity. But, I've only taught myself from the examples set by pre-existing xml files, so I have many questions. First off, is it possible to create a hero? Like that of Warcraft 3? The idea I had was have a building that starts with the game, (Shown in the xml file for the faction) and make it impossible to build that building again. In addition, use the hero as the "pet" of the building, but limit the pet value to 1. The only limitation I could think of this would be that once the building is destroyed, it can not be brought back, unless we did the fall down, get back up, idea seen in the path of corruption. If each subfaction had its own hero we could also do experience points (kills), so with each new title, the hero gains abilities, like Warcraft 3...hope you guys enjoyed this food for thought, I can add more stuff later on but its 3 AM where I am and I'm actually working on my own mod at the moment which in only one night I've created 5 buildings, 3 mobile units, and ideas for upgrades. The xml is done for the buildings and units...that's all for now

[modman]

The site is down; I can't download this!  (codemonger is down, I mean)

[ZaggyDad]

I believe that's because Daniel hasn't been able to pay the site's expenses.

[modman]

Is there anywhere else I can download GAE?

[Ayrin Greenflag]

someone has the last version of FPM? there is an active download link? elsewhere if u post it to me i will put online again

[hailstone]

I have the svn version but the folder is over 600MB.

[modman]

I played the four-path Magitech thing, and I would say that it definately needs a lot of work.  It has some good ideas, but I wish more of it was done.  I also wish you guys had the Tech side techtree diagram done.  Am I correct when I say that Tech was to be split into Science and Religion subfactions?

[ZaggyDad]

I played the four-path Magitech thing, and I would say that it definately needs a lot of work. It has some good ideas, but I wish more of it was done.

Of course it needs a lot of work. It's barely in the alpha stages, non-technically.

Am I correct when I say that Tech was to be split into Science and Religion subfactions?

Yes, it was. (And still is)

[gameboy]

i made some icons for the FPM guard and patrol commands.
here they are.
the guard icon for Tech, There is also a Patrol icon.
[attachment=2:133sdh3c]guard.jpg[/attachment:133sdh3c]
I made only a guard icon for Magic
[attachment=1:133sdh3c]guard.jpg[/attachment:133sdh3c]
Here the download.
[attachment=0:133sdh3c]icons.rar[/attachment:133sdh3c]

[ZaggyDad]

Both of the guard icons look excellent, but you really need to find a different way for making a patrol icon. And you need the glowing stuff in the icons, too.

[wciow]

Nice icons, they fit well with the original Glest ones  

[daniel.santos]

i made some icons for the FPM guard and patrol commands.

Nice work gameboy!

[daniel.santos]

Priestess

I've been thinking about the enlightenment/reason paths and trying to figure out what feels good from a theme/story line standpoint and what will work well in actual game play.  I want to remove the technodome, technician and associated units from enlightenment completely, this removes their current flying units.  Somebody once proposed angels or some such possibility.  At this point, I'm thinking along the lines of no flying units and exploring other ways to balance this out.

A down side of this approach is that any future maps created that contained isolated pockets meant to be exploited via aerial units would be rendered useless with the FPM mod, since enlightenment wouldn't have them.  However, these are some of my current ideas for expanding enlightenment.

• First of all, everything is based upon the religious establishment, so units & techs should begin to emanate from there.  Since the abby takes a lot of time and resources to build, we should maybe give them a temple that is smaller, cheaper and faster to build and allow them to either upgrade it to an abby later or build an abby separately afterwards (I'm in favor of the upgrade personally).  (Also, I think the model for the abby should be made larger).
• Add an upgrade to the priestess's lightening attack so that it will hit more than one target, not as splash damage, but as a chained attack.  This attack should work jumping from the 1st unit hit to one or more additional enemy units (if any are close enough) and the damage dealt will decrease (but not too substantially) with each successive jump.  This will give them an AE-style attack similar to the Lich's where allied units near the enemy target are not effected.
• The priestess should be able to train acolytes/disciples/devotee, etc. (another name is possible).  My vision of this religion is that it is female oriented, so the acolytes will only be female.  The acolytes are similar in mannerism to the magic side initiate, except that they do not build, repair, heal and maybe they don't even attack.  Instead, they serve to strengthen the priestess's powers.  Here are my ideas on that:
  • We're still using the magic summoner's model for the priestess, and although I think it's becoming of a priestess, we do need a new one.  Whatever that may end up looking like, the acolyte should be noticeably dressed down compared to their mentors, but still dressed elegantly (not like a peasant).
  • A priestess can train as many as two-ish acolytes.
  • Acolytes would have one mode where they follow the priestess around similar to necro's pets and one mode where they attempt to serve in other capacities.
  • When following, the acolyte would have a skill similar to heal/repair that adds ep regeneration to the priestess when she is not at full mana (probably transferring the acolytes mana to the priestess).  This would visually look similar or identical to what initiates & technicians do when healing.  Otherwise, the acolyte would simply follow the priestess and attempt to stay out of the line of fire.
  • When the acolyte is near the priestess (say, 10 spaces?), the priestess has some type of additional powers, maybe that's where chain lightening comes from or they get additional damage added to their attacks.  I'm thinking that each acolyte should increase their attack & sight range by 1 or 2 as well.
  • When the acolyte is not in follow mode, she instead meditates.  This increases (double-ish) her mana regeneration and should be able to have some type of benefits to the entire faction (maybe adding +1 regen to all allied units anywhere on the map?) -- but mainly, in this mode she will have an astral project skill -- the long awaited spying mechanism!  This skill should suck down EPs while in use and allow the acolyte's spirit to roam about, invisible and untouchable, although we may let the tower of souls see and attack her spirit, or at least prevent her spirit from coming near.  While using this skill, the body cannot be controlled and you should have a button to terminate the skill and return to the body.  Also, if the acolyte's body is harmed while using this skill it is instantly canceled.  Afterthought: maybe ghost armor (but not animated or ancient armor) should be able to see them as well, but not do anything about it.

Implications:

• As mentioned earlier the abby takes a lot of time and resources to build and the time it takes to get it up and running can leave enlightenment quite vulnerable while magic gets more powerful attacks sooner.  Here's a few ideas I have to address that:
  • I proposed a temple earlier.  This should be able to generate monks, but not priestess (still requiring an abby for that).
  • tech needs to be able to develop something else while working on the path of enlightenment or reason upgrade.  Since we're moving technodrome to reason only, this takes a lot of wind out of their sails.  We need to add something else in that can help them until they get monks.
  • I'm thinking that monks need an additional ability, researchable after the temple is built to help the balance, especially at the pre-presistess stage.  My current idea is a manually invoked skill (unlike auto-healing) which uses all or most of the monks mana to give a temporary regenerative or defensive boost to friendly units -- I prefer the defensive to regenerative.  One idea is something like "<Diety Name>'s Sympathy" that when cast, creates a static field that reduces enemy attack speed by half (and cannot stack) when they enter it and illustrated with a glowing light effect.  This gives enemy units the option to retreat from the attack rather than attempting to fight with 1/2 attack speed and if enlightenment wants to press the attack, they will have to do so without their defensive field. -- Afterthought #2: the skill could always consume 100% of the monks mana and only last for mana/x seconds, so the duration would depend upon how much mana the monk has.
• Many of these proposals will require changes to the engine to implement.
  • Acolytes healing EPs might not be very hard to implement, we could just add EPs as a posibility to the heal skill and and the checks for the auto-heal code (if we heal EPs, try to heal units who's EP's aren't at max and if we heal HPs, likewise)
  • The code doesn't currently support a static emanation per-se, it could probably be hacked.  We simply create a unit named <deity_name>s_sympathy that has no model, is invisible and unelectable with 60 hit points and a hp-regeneration rate of -1, thus, they would automatically die after 60 seconds (or whatever duration we want that to have).  I'm not too certain this will work well, but it might.  Also, the unselectable thing might require some code changes.
  • Astral projection would probably require a good deal of coding.
  • Chain lightening would require coding changes but could be made cheaply at 1st with splash damage (maybe)

In conclusion, enlightenment units should be able to make up for the lack of flying units by being better:

• defended - proposed monk's "<Deity Name>'s Sympaty" skill
• healed - monk already does this
• swift - paladin's Inspire emanation already adds movement speed and significantly so when you have about 8 or so of them together
• deadly - if priestess' had chain lightening and acolytes regenerating their EPs faster, they could contribute significantly more to ordinary combat while still being available to snipe the mean units (archmages, liches, etc.) and pull out an earthquake or two.  Also, by increasing the attack range, it should make up for the loss of areal unit's ability to quickly infiltrate

[wciow]

Priestess

 Since the abby takes a lot of time and resources to build, we should maybe give them a temple that is smaller, cheaper and faster to build and allow them to either upgrade it to an abby later or build an abby separately afterwards (I'm in favor of the upgrade personally).

 

Maybe a church which upgrades to a an abbey?

We're still using the magic summoner's model for the priestess, and although I think it's becoming of a priestess, we do need a new one.  Whatever that may end up looking like, the acolyte should be noticeably dressed down compared to their mentors, but still dressed elegantly (not like a peasant).

Hmm, I'll see what I can do

For the priestess attack maybe you could have a chain lightning which emanates from the priestess and is amplified by every acolyte around her.

Having no flying units is fine as long as the other side doesn't have them. Trying to balanced one side with flyers against one without is a pain in the ass.

The astral projection skills sound really cool; hope you can pull it off. I think soul towers should definitely spot astral souls, otherwise you could just put a couple in the enemy base and leave them there spying!

[daniel.santos]

New FPM release posted here.

[daniel.santos]

Maybe a church which upgrades to a an abbey?

I suppose I don't care too much if it's a church, temple, ashram, mosque, miziram, etc.  However, I was thinking to steer away from *too* many Christian symbols (certainly not all of them) and leave a little ambiguity as to what real world religion we are copying.  When I came up with the idea for the shrine, I thought that it's a nice, generic type of small place made in honor or something or someone and fit kind well for the requirement for a priestess (it also makes a nice spot to sit and recuperate).

blah, blah, blah...

Hmm, I'll see what I can do   I think it can work to have a single subfaction that doesn't get flying units, if properly adjusted for.  Also, they would get one "flying" unit, it would just be a non fighting unit -- the acolyte in astral projection.  In my mind, I have to think about what flying units bring to the game.  I see, mobility, infiltration, extra damage to the front line (where the battle is).  If those can be adjusted for, then I think we can have a subfaction without flying units.  It's nice to have pros & cons IMO (i.e., just need enough pros to make up for the cons).

One serious problem with enlightenment now is that paladins aren't mobile enough because of their size and all the other smaller units are slow, so something else has to give in this area to make them a feasible no-fly subfaction.

The astral projection skills sound really cool; hope you can pull it off. I think soul towers should definitely spot astral souls, otherwise you could just put a couple in the enemy base and leave them there spying!

Yea, I'm leaning towards tower of souls seeing her and being able to do something about it, and ghost armor (maybe another unit on nature) being able to see them.  I might have to add another "field" to the engine though, I'm not 100% certain yet.  I might just claim that she's flying.

[gameboy]

Instead of a flying unit for enlightenment you could maybe have the priesstess to a vision skill which allows the priestess to see things out of her line of sight ex. your enemy base is 200 spaces away from the priestess if you use the skill 200 spaces away from the priestess you will be able to see that place without having to actually go there, of course the priestess should be in a trance while she's doing that.
A cheap infantry unit for enlightenment could be a crossbowman or a militia.
and maybe you could improve the dragon it could have a continuous attack which rains down fire from the sky only stopping to catch his breath.

[daniel.santos]

I am rather fond of a "crossbowman", a more heavily armored archer with a longer range (+2-ish) and a faster attack (the speed of the missile, not the attack rate) enabling it to hit moving targets better.  It doesn't need to do more damage (or it can do only slightly more damage), the idea is that they can have better armor (I'm thinking leather & scale armor, so metal), better range, and a better chance at hitting moving targets.  However, I think this is more appropriate on the reason side, that's the kinda of stuff I hope to see on that side, along with plate-mail wearing infantry units.  But back to the crossbowman, I thought they should also have a melee attack that does more damage per second than their ranged attack and, like the battlemech's auto-attack, be able to decide which to use based upon range to target.

As far as the priestess, what you are proposing sounds a lot like what I've already proposed with the acolytes and I don't want to take the priestess out of action because their attacks are pretty important right now (and will be more so if we yoink technodrome & technician).

So now that GAE 0.2.8 is out, I'm going to merge 0.2.8 with the 0.3 branch and resume development for some of the features we were talking about back in May and also see if I can fit any of these new ideas for FPM.  I think stabilizing the 0.2.x branch is a good idea, so I'm going to do all new features in 0.3 now.

• chain lightning
• lightning that comes from the attacker (but mostly just because doing chain lightning will make this too easy, I don't want the priestess attack coming directly from her personally.  Other mods may like it )
• Mechanism for astral travel - I'm already thinking that it wont be too hard, I just have to figure out which "field" to put the acolyte's spirit in when she's traveling.
• Mechanism for static effects (maybe?  I might just go with creating a unit with some model, a light source, etc.)

[ZaggyDad]

If you wan't to make the crossbowman's bolt go faster than a normal archer's, then you'll need to make it so that the projectile causes damage even if it doesn't hit the enemy in a frame (I was trying to make the bolt move faster in my mod, but the arrow wouldn't effect people most of the time, cause it was going right through).

[daniel.santos]

If you wan't to make the crossbowman's bolt go faster than a normal archer's, then you'll need to make it so that the projectile causes damage even if it doesn't hit the enemy in a frame (I was trying to make the bolt move faster in my mod, but the arrow wouldn't effect people most of the time, cause it was going right through).

Yea, I ran into some problems like this when I was working on the necromancer's attack (notice it travels very quickly too), I can't remember what I did to solve it.

[gameboy]

I was wondering if you could first have a spray of arrows then the archer reloads and then another spray of arrows, so it'll be like all the arrows cause say a minimum 8 damage so if you're firing 10, you get an overall damage of say 80-90. It could work like this the archer(crossbow) has an attack rate of 10 bolts per second but takes 2 seconds to reload, so the energy points could be 100 and a re-gen of 50 and each attack would cost 10 energy and fire at a speed of .1 second so in one second you have an attack and in 2 seconds he can get his energy back.