Four Path Magitech

[encoish]

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 Smile. 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.

I agree. The ranking system needs to be improved; it's just that I thought it 5 ranks might be too much... But include it anyway. That'll be a new challenge for me.

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 Wink

How about female druids? (pardon the right one. Sorry.)

[daniel.santos]

Ok, lots of topics to address here, so I'll go one by one.   The enlightenment faction can even possibly get some type of priestess as well (just a random thought), so we could do this for other units later on too.

Treant
As for the looks, I like

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[url=http://nwn.bioware.com/players/images/nwn_profile_lacuna_01_180x240.jpg]this treant[/url].  I also like the top part and face of

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[url=http://www.l2ag.ru/mob/597.jpg]this one[/url], but I don't care much for the overall body structure.  I was thinking along the lines of something that looks very similar to a tree, as in the lord of the rings style treant, especially since I want to add a "root" ability to the treant.  This would take 5-ish seconds and would cause them to look exactly like a tree when done (so you can't tell from just visuals alone if it's a tree or a treant) and give them some type of attack/bonuses, etc.

Enlightenment bugs
Yea, sorry about the barracks -> guard thing.  I find that funny as hell though!!   But I lean heavily on others when it comes to presentation.

I think that having a separate site for the engine and FPM is perfectly appropriate.  I have a file structure setup where you can install it into your Glest directory and play using either the original Glest engine or the modified engine.  Also, with the modified engine, you can still play any other tech tree mod since I was sure to make the way it loads data backwards compatible.  The only difference is the extra entries needed in the language.lng file (I only have an english.lng now) and the glest.ini file has two extra entries, but I can find a way to resolve these differences.  I want to keep the new engine as close to the original as possible and still implement what is needed (I'm still merging with the mainline every week or so).

Necromancer & his minions
You can actually have up to 3 skeletons and 1 zombie, but there's a bug in the code that limits the number of minions you can be summoning in the queue at one time and I haven't figured it out yet.  I have considered lowering the limit to 2 skeletons, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to do that right now, I would rather raise the cost and maybe even the time to summon if needed.  However, I don't want to raise the time to summon very much at all, because I like them being a unit that can produce on the battleground if needed.

The necromancer may be too cheap, I've raised him by 25 gold (so he's 200 gold, 25 wood & 25 stone now).  It's hard to justify a lot of wood or stone since he's mostly a finger waggler.  I thought that 25 wood and stone could be justified as reagents (for his production).  Since gold usage is heavy, I might just raise the amount of gold per resource under the resources directory, so it doesn't run out as quickly.  As wciow pointed out, this still leaves people mostly harvesting for gold.  One nice feature of the necromancer tower is that it holds gold, so you can build it near a gold mine.  I was considering doing the same for the abbey.  The path of reason is supposed to get a mobile storage unit and the nature path wont be using as much gold.  It would be cool if we could have more resource types like iron, copper, aluminum, but my initial thought is that it introduces too much complexity and too much work since resources are embedded into maps, although one hack to work around the complexity in maps is to give harvesters a way to mine secondary resources (iron, copper, etc) out of primary resources (i.e., from stone or gold mines).

Levels
I'm not opposed to giving more levels.  But I think there's it's important to clarify this.  The original Glest engine gives the following bonuses for a level increase:

• + 50% health points
• +50% energy points
• +20% sight
• +50% armor

I have modified the Level class so that instead of just containing the name (to append to the unit name) and number of kills, it also has all of the fields that an upgrade has (see https://docs.megaglest.org/Effects_&_upgrades for full details), but having the multipliers for hp, ep, sight and armor defaulting to the above values.  Thus, they behave identically to the original Glest levels unless you explicitly specify different values.

The important part of giving lots of levels is that adding 50% health and armor at every level is going to make them far too powerful, so if this is something we seriously consider, this will have to be reduced.  The nice thing is that you can add special things like the zombie's attack speed increasing.  I may further modify the entire EnhancementTypeBase class (the base class for upgrades, levels, effects, emanations, etc.) so that emanations can be added or modified.

As far as allowing guards to become generals, I was already considering having a separate unit type on the path of reason who's primary purpose is leadership, and they would progress something like lieutenant -> captain -> colonel -> general, where they start out as lieutenants, so there are only 3 actual level-ups.

[daniel.santos]

I have some questions that I would like to get opinions on please.

• A barracks can be "sanctified", thus allowing it to create paladins and white knights.  What should the resulting building be called?  Some thoughts (none of which I'm happy with) include "House of Honor", "Blessed Barracks" and "Holy Barracks".  Maybe something close to "Peacekeeper's Missionary" or "Mission of Peace" (ya know, just like previous war making done in the name of peace ).  I would really like some input here (my well is kinda dry on this one).  Just for reference, we're probably calling the advanced infantry unit on the reason side "Academy" or "Military Academy", "Officer's Academy" or "Academy of Military Sciences."
• What should we call the Glest engine mod?  I'm thinking either Glest Advanced Pack, which makes the nice acronym "GAP" or Glest Advanced Engine, which to me feels more descriptive, since we're not really "packing" much together, but the resulting acronym GAE isn't as memorable, or possibly just "Glest Advanced."
• Does anybody have any ideas for an alternate unit to replace the daemon with?  This should be an alignment neutral unit and will have identical (or nearly identical) stats and cost.
• What should the mounted holy unit be called? I think we're set on "white knight", but I thought getting opinions might help.
• What should the holy infantry unit be called?  The basic options are "crusader", "holy warrior" and "paladin".  I'm leaning towards paladin personally.
• What other advancements should the religious faction get?  I have lots of ideas (including walls) for the reason side.  I was thinking of only giving walls to reason and nature (nature gets them in the form of planting trees that can also be transformed into treants -- trees will become attackable).

Thanks.

[daniel.santos]

wciow, what would you think of a priestess for an advanced enlightenment unit?  This breaks from the patriarchal standard of modern religions, but in very ancient times (5k-2k BC) there was a lot more of this than later days.  There was also a lot of this in "pagan" religions, but that would fall under the nature side more.  Male or female, I thought it would be cool to have a holy unit that is more on the manifestations, miracles and divine intervention side of things and a priestess would likely fit that bill quite nicely.

I also need to figure out what to do with Monks aside from giving them healing abilities.  But on the topic of healing, I'm leaving the newly granted healing abilities on technicians (that was added with 3.0 or so) but I'm toning them down slightly, so that monks still have a purpose in life aside from providing piety points for paladins and white knights.

[wciow]

I like the idea of a female druid. I still haven't decided what it will look like but I'm leaning towards the 'furs and skins' type rather than another robed unit. A female druid would suit this unit well.

The abbey should definitely be able to store gold like the necro tower!

On the extra resources point, I don't think extra resources are really needed as they will just complicate things. I am interested to know whether resources are hardcoded i,e you can only have 5 different resources, or whether this is just a limitation of the mapper?

On unit names:- White knight and paladin are fine (paladin is somewhat cliched in the fantasy genre but its still probably the most suitable!)

Personally I think monks should stay the same. They provide piety points and they also have a near insta-heal ability. I don't think they need to have an attack since they are monks. Possibly they could have some kind of beneficial buff for nearby units?

The treant idea is great   Treants should be able to camouflage themselves. Basically the treant should have a 'tree form' ability which basically morphs them into a standard Glest tree which can't move or attack. This allows players to set up ambushes and spy on the enemy. Unfortunately two things need to be done to make this work. Firstly there has to be some way that the enemies will not recognize the tree and attack it (also it shouldn't show on the minimap). Secondly the big problem is making the tree match the chosen tileset. Having a palm tree in the middle of an icy waste is gonna give it away!

[daniel.santos]

Having a palm tree in the middle of an icy waste is gonna give it away!

Hehe, definately!  I think my idea from the standpoint of the engine is to have some skill that will allow units to morph their appearance and behave differently.  I was thinking to have this skill allow them to morph into any tileset object (rock, bush, mine-able stone, gold, tree, etc.) or a unit, even from another faction.  All I need to implement to make this work is allowing them to look like a tileset object, but having the hooks there will make it useful for somebody else who wants to do a mod where they have a shapechanger or something.

Furs & skins for the druid are fine with me, but I do like the planty, leafy thing too.  I'll leave the art up to you, but if you could work in a twig or two, I can have that warm fuzzy feeling in my tummy (or was that the beer?).  The direction I was heading with the nature path is that they regenerate a lot, their grove produces wood on it's own and even regenerates.  I want to give them the ability to grow trees as a means to create defensive barriers.  These might be some magical type of tree instead of a real tree (because real trees will take lots of coding to make happen).  My idea was to have this as a ritual for initiates that takes maybe about 5 or 10 seconds and then some type of sapling is created that magically grows on it's own (starts from zero HPs and increases until full strength) and then becomes some type of tree with a lot of hit points.  

For the treant, I was thinking of allowing them to attack, but the attack would give them away.  Now I"m thinking that your idea is better.

Monks healing is broken in source control right now, because I revamped it and modified the engine.  Using the default repair mechanism, the amount of points restored depends upon the max HP of the unit being repaired/healed.  I modified the monk to now heal for 200 points flat, for 40 mana and it has a speed of 120 which is just a little bit faster than once per second.  I'm modifying this ability to remove 1 detrimental effect per 200 points healed.  Hopefully, I'll have something to show this weekend.

Barracks no longer sanctify into a guard  But paladins & white knights are still identical to guards & horseman.  I'm also open to another name besides paladin.  Hopefully, one will come across that we like.

Resources are easy to configure (under four_path_magitech/resources) and making them have more gold in them is easy too.  This doesn't effect maps where they decided to specify how much gold is in each resource (not sure how many maps actually do that though).

[Duke]

For the name: I have been calling it GAP Glest Advanced Project.
Its the memorable acronym, but as you said youre not packing anything and it is actually more then just the engine too.

Demon replacement: how about a clay elemental/golem? it's rather neutral and could be shaped into pretty much anything.

[orion]

Ok, sorry I haven't replied to this topic in a while. I've been busy with the website and I AM a perfectionist. That means that I won't release something unless I approve it to the fullest.
I didn't want to laugh about you're website if that was really your best. It's not to bad that you specialize in "making things work". I do the opposite; I specialize in making things look good and presentable.

What should the holy infantry unit be called? The basic options are "crusader", "holy warrior" and "paladin". I'm leaning towards paladin personally.

I'm leaning toward paladin on this.

What should the mounted holy unit be called? I think we're set on "white knight", but I thought getting opinions might help.

White knight sounds okay, but something is really bugging me about the "knight" part. How about "White Rider" or something like that. It's just, the "knight" part sounds to "tech-ish"

Does anybody have any ideas for an alternate unit to replace the daemon with? This should be an alignment neutral unit and will have identical (or nearly identical) stats and cost.

Well....the opposite of a daemon would probably be a Sprite or something like that. (I have no imagination )

A barracks can be "sanctified", thus allowing it to create paladins and white knights. What should the resulting building be called? Some thoughts (none of which I'm happy with) include "House of Honor", "Blessed Barracks" and "Holy Barracks". Maybe something close to "Peacekeeper's Missionary" or "Mission of Peace" (ya know, just like previous war making done in the name of peace Smile ). I would really like some input here (my well is kinda dry on this one). Just for reference, we're probably calling the advanced infantry unit on the reason side "Academy" or "Military Academy", "Officer's Academy" or "Academy of Military Sciences."

I find it unnecessary to name the "sanctified" barracks something like "House of Honor". Just naming it "Sanctuary" would suffice. (Once again, I have no imagination when it comes to this)

I hope I helped, even if it was just a little bit of help. Have you guys decided on what the flying religious unit will be? If not, why not make it an "Angel" or something like that.

[daniel.santos]

Yea, on the flying units, I think we have a lot of planning to do yet.  I wasn't planning on taking away any units from the existing tech faction, but we did take the behemoth away and moved him to the post-path choice (where he's replaced by treant on the nature side).  That was more out of trying to keep the genre consistent though.  This will take some weighing out.  The flying units and catapult are still very strong opponents to skeletons and lichs.

[Duke]

I would make the mounted unit the Paladin, because they usually wear full plate and need the horse to move substantially.
While Crusaders usually have only chain mail and thus can walk easier.

[orion]

I agree with Duke. Let's make the mounted units paladins and the walking units crusaders.

[vahron]

ok - sorry 'bout the huge delay. Here's the triangulated mesh+texture for the "divine blade weilder" in a zip file.

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[url=http://www.fileshost.com/en/file/37504/divinebladeweilder-zip.html]http://www.fileshost.com/en/file/37504/divinebladeweilder-zip.html[/url]
g3d file:

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[url=http://www.filefactory.com/file/9c2112]g3dmodelbladeweilder.zip[/url]
cheers,
Vahron

[daniel.santos]

thanks vahron, I'm working on getting them now.   Next time, please feel more than free to email them to me and I'll upload them to my server.  Either that, I'll create a directory on my server that you can upload stuff too.  However, I'm currently am only set up for scp with ssh key authentication, so I would need to get a public key from you.

[daniel.santos]

on the paladin/crusader thing, I do feel a little warm fuzzy on that.  I wasn't particularly comfortable with the way it was set up before.  What are your thoughts wciow?
Also, I finally finished screwing with the code and such, so here's the current build.

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[list][li][url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-win32-r43.rar]glestadv-win32-r43.rar[/url] (win32)[/li]
[li][url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/four_path_magitech-r42.tbz2]four_path_magitech-r42.tbz2[/url][/li][/list]I haven't started a real change log yet, but don't worry, it's all in subversion, I'm actually going to build one from that (I always comment throughly when I check in).  Here's the short list of what's new in the engine.

Glest Advanced Engine Changes

• When units attack an enemy on their own (i.e., because they spotted them), they will now politely return to where they started out after the enemies are gone.
• Units with repair/heal abilities will now automatically heal/repair damaged units if they are idle.  They too, will also return to where they were before when all units within eyesight have been repaired.
• Using a repair/heal command on a unit no longer is stopped when the unit moves.  Instead, they will chase the damn thing around until it's either healed or dead.
• You can now use repair/heal commands on an empty cell.  The unit will travel to that location and heal/repair any damaged ally that it sees along the way, much like the way the attack command works when used on an empty cell or unexplored area.
• Units no longer attempt to build from the top right (NW) corner of a building.  Instead, the builder unit will progress towards the nearest position that they can begin building from.  If the builder unit resides inside of the location where the target building is supposed to go, he will relocate to outside of that area, unless you have completely blocked him in.
• Building multiple buildings in a row (units with <multi-build value="true"/>) doesn't break now when one of the units can't be built.  Before, it would cancel them all.  Now, it will build all of the buildings that it is able to.
• Made major changes to the repair skills (RepairSkillType).  Repair skills can now take an optional <amount value="blah"/> value (to override the default repair amount), a <multiplier value="blah"/> (to use the default repair amount, but modify it) and <max-range value="blah"/> instead of always being range 1 (i.e., directly next to the target).  Additionally you can now have a splash particle system associated with them so that on each iteration of the repair, pretty decorations indicate that the target is getting repaired/healed.

Also, please note that I have not merged with the mainline in about 2 weeks.  This means that the fixes for ATI users (due to ATI's crapped up drivers) are not in the glest advanced engine mod yet.  There was also some minor balancing done in the mainline that hasn't been merged either.

FPM Changes

• Added all of wciow's current animations & models.
• Monk can now heal from a distance and pretty lights indicate who is getting healed.  These aren't as pretty as they need to be because the splash particle system was designed for the explosion type effect of an impact that gives splash damage.  We're going to have to implement a new particle system type to get the "spell casting" aura-type effects that we want.
• With the new changes to the engine, monks are much more powerful because you don't have to micromanage them to get them to heal.  However, I've noticed that when getting into a hefty battle, it doesn't take long for them to run out of mana.  None the less, I'm thinking that it's much closer to balanced than not since your units mostly don't die until they run out of mana!!  Like the necro and lich, the monk is definitely be a unit to try to take out early!
• Holy infantry & mounted units are identical to the guard & horseman still, so don't expect anything out of them yet.
• Workers can now build pig walls.  I'm going to remove it soon, but I wanted to let people play with it.  Walls are supposed to be part of the path of reason (and I thought a pig made a nice size 1 model )

[tux-gamer]

Wow, interesting.
can i get glestadv-r43 source code ?
i have go to

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/]http://glest.codemonger.org/files/[/url] , but i don't see source code for glestadv-r43.

Thanks before.

ps: I'am sory if my english is bad.

[daniel.santos]

I just played a round on the tech/religion side against a CPU ultra magic.  It was hard (religion still very underpowered).  Monks keep running off because they don't have an attack.  Maybe I can do something about that.  Monks maybe need an upgrade that increases their healing range and maybe sight.

@wciow@, I think I would like the abbey bigger, like a little bigger than the castle.  I'm thinking a 6x6 (size 6).  It has a nice big courtyard, so 4x4 of it on it's SE side could be traversed.  Would you be ok with that?  Also, I made the abbey take too long to build (I'm going to fix that).  Losses are light when I have a lot of monks and they are actually close enough to heal.  It seems to work out decently that they start running out of mana if the battle goes on too long.  But if the AI played the corruption side better, I might have lost.

The auto-healing worked nicely and I had some technicians along to take care of the mechs -- that worked nicely.  I'm trying to get some of the need for micromanaging out.  3 archmages stopped by and whooped up on me big time at one point -- that's fine with me balance-wise.  I can see that a combination of liches & archmages could be exceedingly devastating against melee units, they would never get to them.

[orion]

I have a request for the GAP that shouldn't be to hard to implement. IT GETS ON MY NERVES when you give a group of people a command to move to a certain area and while moving to that area, they encounter the enemy, but they do not attack; they just keep on running to where I commanded them to go to. Is there anyway to fix this?

[Duke]

tell them to attack that area instead of moving to it.

But a shortcut would be nice.
Lets say just right mouse lets them move, but ctrl+right mouse lets them attack/heal.

[wciow]

I haven't posted any models in a while since I've been busy clearing up the animation backlog from the ones I already did!

Here is the Treant model, I decided to just go with a pretty generic looking treat. As usual the texture could use some more work but the basic mesh is completed.



@Daniel - I will redo the abbey for you so that it is bigger. Also I'm going to add a proper floor (paving) to the courtyard bit. The textures for both the abbey and necromancers tower are going to get a big overhaul because they look way to cartoonish and bright compared to the other buildings and don't fit well with the glest style atm.

As for flying units I hadn't really thought about them. I think we should possibly leave flying units as an extension which can be done post v1.0

Also is the AI using the new units at all? when the cpu is magic it doesn't seem to build any corruption units? However I have seen the cpu building an abbey and monks so that seems ok.

@ Vahron - Your model is good! the only thing that needs tweaking is the blocky feet but thats only a minor crit. The only thing to decide is how it fits into the scheme of the mod.

@Orion - how is the website doing?

[orion]

GREAT LOOKING TREANT. I LOVE IT.

The website is going well. The main thing I have been working on is the overall logo/design of the website. Once I complete overall logo, I'll present it and then I'll start going into depth with the website.

[vahron]

played around with the abbey texture:

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[url=http://img169.imageshack.us/my.php?image=abbeynewtexco2.png][img]http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/4039/abbeynewtexco2.th.png[/img][/url]
more grimey/realistic.

might be a bit dark though. Added a team colour strip on top roof too.

here's the file:

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[url=http://www.filefactory.com/file/001096]abbeytex.tga[/url]


[daniel.santos]

@tux-gamer@ I'm sorry, I forgot about you!

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[url=http://glest.codemonger.org/files/glestadv-src-r43.tbz2]glestadv-src-r43.tbz2[/url]

[daniel.santos]

@vahron@, have I mentioned how much I HATE those free file hosting sites lately?  Can you please send me an email and I'll set you up something you can upload to on my server?  Also, the texture downloads as a zero length file.

@wciow@, very impressive treant! (and very intimidating).  I like more branches and leaves, something that looks more like a tree -- more of the nature as opposed to nature gone awry look, but that's just my preference.  But I'll cast my vote and accept the outcome.

[orion]

hehehehe
I know what you mean daniel. A very clean file hoster that I use is mediafire.com. That's where I upload my glest maps and c++ source files for other programs. Maybe you should switch vahron

[daniel.santos]

sorry for my multiple posts (brain working in small increments today)

@orion@ & @duke@, that's something to consider.  Like maybe a ctrl-right click will cause units to attack to that position if they have any attacks, heal/repair to that position of they have any of those and just walk their otherwise eh?  I would have to make some kind of new command for that, but it would probably just be an internal command.  Hehe, like "stop to this position" since the stop "skill" now lets them heal or attack.

Just as a note, in the works, I'm modifying the attack and repair commands so that multiple attack skills can be specified, in order of preference.  Take the battle mech for instance; if you tell him to attack to a position using his axe attack command, he will ignore air units even though he has an attack he could use.  But if you tell him to attack using his arrow attack, he will use that on land units instead of his more powerful axe attack.

@wciow@, yes the AI does use the new units, and this is actually a problem in the original AI (problem in my opinion anyway) that they develop new techs rather slowly and concentrate on producing mass amounts of the units they can make.  I haven't delved into the AI yet, but I will have to soon.  When the AI does progress into the corruption path, they make very poor use of "pets", usually separating them from their creators, resulting in skeletons attacking that are half dead or worse.  I have also never seen them use the soul steal attack of the lich.