Apocalyptic Dawn (formerly known as Military)

[Omega]

Oh so you finally got your new laptop? Specs? Price?   

Not yet. In the very soon future. Maybe a week or two? I have almost 2k available, so I can get any good laptop. I'll spend at least two days (one to find the laptops I like, then google them at home, then another to buy it )

From what I know...

Can they attack units in land/air/water as normal?

Yes.

Is there yet a way to make a dock (that must be built at least one tile on land and at least one tile on water?) that can create units ONLY on the water side?

Not yet.

Dang. Dock is completely necessary for such things. I guess I'll let the water units wait for a bit. To do once I get new laptop:

-Remodel humvee and grenadeer
-Add helicopter

Ideas:
-Anti air tank?
-TOW missles?

Ideas after water units:
-Drydock
-Battleship
-Submarine

[wyvern]

plan for a destroyer and a PT boat as the PT boat could be a scout while the destroyer could fight submarines.

[jda]

From what I know...

Can they attack units in land/air/water as normal?

Yes.

Is there yet a way to make a dock (that must be built at least one tile on land and at least one tile on water?) that can create units ONLY on the water side?

Not yet.

Dang. Dock is completely necessary for such things. I guess I'll let the water units wait for a bit. ine

Well, I think actually the only part that you can't do is force the building location to be apropriate... But I do believe you can make it so it lays half on water and half on ground by giving it the "amphibious" field tag (instead of land, air, shallow water or deep water).
The player will have to be smart enough to not actually build it where there's no water around... And... if there is a large enough pool of water, maybe it might get to be built wholey on water... Maybe better to PM silnarm to look at these postings (he might miss it otherwise)...?

[Omega]

The player will have to be smart enough to not actually build it where there's no water around... And... if there is a large enough pool of water, maybe it might get to be built wholey on water... Maybe better to PM silnarm to look at these postings (he might miss it otherwise)...?

Good idea. GAE should ensure the body of water is at least X tiles before allowing production of production buildings there. Of course, I'd have to release custom water maps with this that have large accessable bodies of water near the bases.

[ultifd]

Hmm...water units...were any other actual water units made before... 

Oh so you finally got your new laptop? Specs? Price?   

Not yet. In the very soon future. Maybe a week or two? I have almost 2k available, so I can get any good laptop. I'll spend at least two days (one to find the laptops I like, then google them at home, then another to buy it )

Cool, good luck.   

[silnarm]

Yes, but I'm still not sure of their capibilities. Can someone (probably silnarm, he programmed it) answer these questions:

Can they attack units in land/air/water as normal?
Is there a proper documentary for this (the XMLs)?
Is there yet a way to make a dock (that must be built at least one tile on land and at least one tile on water?) that can create units ONLY on the water side?
Lastly, what happens if you produce too many units from that dock and the water runs out of room? Never seen this on land and dunno how it would react to the limited water space...

Attacks are as pretty much as per normal, in attack fields the field 'land' is now interpreted as the zone 'surface', so if an attack can target 'land' units, it can target water units too now, and vice versa.

For docks that are both in and out of water, I actually wrote a code to do it, but height-map data is only stored per tile, not cell (one tile = 2*2 cells). So while it worked fine, there was no way to ensure that the parts you wanted over water would actually be over water in the end, as the parts that are over land get 'flattened' and that could effect more cells than we would like to effect. The code was 'thrown away'. I'll think about this one some more, and see if I can think of some way to do it with-out changing the map format...

For placing new units the game currently looks for a free spot the unit can occupy within a given radius of the building, and plonks the new unit there, if no such spot can be found, the command is cancelled and you get the 'Invalid position' message on the console.

Besides, I need to update the Glest Guide's GAE page for water units, but I'm lacking the know-how... :'(

So much to do, so little time :'(

Good doco is rather important though, will have some new wiki pages for you this weekend some time.

NB: Amphibious just lets a unit move on land or water, can't be used for a dock/shipyard.

Cheers.

[Omega]

Attacks are as pretty much as per normal, in attack fields the field 'land' is now interpreted as the zone 'surface', so if an attack can target 'land' units, it can target water units too now, and vice versa.

So what are all the new field entries now and their exact syntax? Obviously 'land' and 'air', but is it also 'water' and 'amphibious' in those terms?

I'll think about this one some more, and see if I can think of some way to do it with-out changing the map format...

Good luck, it'd be really handy.

will have some new wiki pages for you this weekend some time.

Yay!

Quick question though, can we use a building with JUST the water field to place a building that must be completely in the water, BUT since the worker cannot enter water, would have to be by the edge. Would this work? Or would the worker be unable to do it? I know that normal units can walk in the shallow water, which I assume counts as water the docks could be built in, and then the worker SHOULD be able to access the water field required for the docks... Can you verify?

Another quick question, if a building would be built half on water, half on land (pretending that it was amphibious and the SMART player created it on the border of the two [though in reality amphibious lets them create it on either land or water, not necessarily both]), pretending that the building can produce two different units, one that can only travel land (or surface) and one that can only travel water, can it position these right? I don't plan on making such a building, but it's just a curious question. Glest didn't have to worry about that before and was wondering if that was taken into aspect in the development of water units.

Seeing no other mod TO MY KNOWLEDGE (kinda limited, the mods board is flooding lately, but most of them seem to be proposals and unfinished mods that remind me of a fan-made game site) has water units, I hope to be the first to do so (the same way I was the first completed GAE faction [FPM is unfinished] and was the first to use many of the GAE functions in a mod).

Cheers

Cheers to you too! Was it a Great Western or a Molson Canadian that you wanted? (Canadian beer is better than the american counterparts, come and taste!)

[silnarm]

<field value="any_water"/> <!-- Travel on any submerged cell -->
<field value="deep_water"/> <!-- Travel only on deeply submerged cells -->
<field value="amphibious"/> <!-- Travel on any water cell or land -->

For the 'water and workers' issue, land dwellers can go in the shallow water, which should be good enough to get them in position for a shipyard.  If the building needed to be completely in the water that could be a problem, unless your worker unit was a boat of course...

If a building can produce land and water units, they will be placed correctly, yes. When a new unit is produced the game looks for a position as close to the producing unit as possible, based on the new units field, the 'producer' has no direct effect on where units it produces are placed.

There was a 'Naval' scenario by Phoenix a while back, so you wouldn't technically be the first with that one, but it'd still be nice to see the water fields used more extensively

During my time in Canada I actually became rather fond of Molson Ex, do you stock that ? 

[Omega]

Thanks, that was exactly what I needed. Though I wonder if a unit can walk into the shallows then be able to build a 'any_water' building since it would can reach the location where the builder can stand to build it, even if the building is partly in shallows, partly in deep water. ie:

X=Land
O=Shallows
D=Deep Water
/---\
|   | = Building
\---/

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
OOOO/---\OOOOO
DDDD|DDD|DDDDD
DDDD\---/DDDDD

[silnarm]

That should be fine, indeed in your example the worker would be able to build from the land cells, they only need to be 'next to' the building

[Omega]

Awesome. Last (hopefully) question: Would the AI be able to do that too? If there is a building that can be built in water, will they try to do so?

[Omega]

Sorry for the double post, but edits are only good for hot topics, otherwise the post gets missed.

Anyway, I plan on restarting in on saturday night. I've already updated to 0.2.13, and am doing lots of play testing.

So, general opinion, what priorities need to be set? Here's my rough draft:

-Improve models of humvee and grenadeer
-Add Heli
-Add dock
-Add battleship
-Submarine??
-TOW Missle???
-Else???

I doubt I'll improve anims much. Lost all blends.

[Gabbe]

Uhh, so the glest g3d import doesn`t work... i knew it...

I have a question, now that you`ve got your new lap will the new models be higher quality?

And i think your list is good

Anims fix-negative-sad....

[-Archmage-]

G3D import does work.

Omega, I'll help you with the anims.

[John.d.h]

In that case, I hope you actually know how to hold a gun.

[Omega]

Sure thing arch. I don't even have to supply you anything because the g3ds and their textures is all I have (I told you I lost EVERYTHING - and why I'm not so hot about linux for the time being). Anyway, you'd be stuck with just barebones mesh, so you'd have to completely rebone it (too bad, I had such nice bone jobs, even if the anims weren't so hot at times). Anyway, here's some of the MASSIVE changes I've made so far (none affecting models, that's last):

-TOTALLY fixed the AI! You see, if the worker unit (the private) has a morph skill, the AI treats them like MAGIC and build buildings at a very slow rate and does minimal production from buildings, even if its cheaper and faster to produce that way than to morph. The only way to fix that was to remove the morphing from the privates COMPLETELY. The machine gun turret is now morphed from the marine and infantry, though I don't like that and will try and tweak the AI in the custom coded release. Anyway, now I made the AI too difficult and even the normal difficulty one beat me (that's what 2 months of no play does to you). Bottom line, better AI. Much better AI...

-Revamped the nuke so that the headquarters can target it, otherwise it doesn't fire unless the foe is within sight, which totally makes it useless. Now the building BLOODY TURNS but its a small price to pay (ok, maybe a medium price, but if you don't pay attention, maybe you won't notice?). On the other hand, lots of tweaking to the nuke to make it usable and worthwhile. Just fire all you got then attack the foe. They won't even know what hit them! One of those will probably kill most of the privates around, either by radiation poisoning or by the blast itself. Oh, and radiation poisoning STACKS. A couple of nukes could whipe a 20 radius circle off the map (of units, its somewhat less effective vs buildings, but still causes a good deal of collateral). The remedy for nukes? Move. To shoot across the map will take an average of 30s-2+min. A large blue target circle appears at the target, so you can't miss it. Of course, the AI doesn't know that...

-Various small changes... Not worth documenting, but for the most part, I spent some time playtesting and balancing things out, including reductions to the humvee and machine gun turret's strength.

->I'm gonna add units with dummy models for the dock and stuff soon to see how it works out and to see if the AI can handle it well. Gonna need some good maps for water... Big lake in the middle with bases around it just bording the lake... I like it! Speaking of maps, it's nice to mention that military has over 70 bundled with it. I download everyone I see and if its playable to a  certain standard, in it goes.

[-Archmage-]

In that case, I hope you actually know how to hold a gun.

I've shot quite a few different guns, I know how to hold one.

Sure thing arch. I don't even have to supply you anything Tongue because the g3ds and their textures is all I have (I told you I lost EVERYTHING - and why I'm not so hot about linux for the time being). Anyway, you'd be stuck with just barebones mesh, so you'd have to completely rebone it (too bad, I had such nice bone jobs, even if the anims weren't so hot at times)

You know, it would be nice if you would help me rig the models....... This will take me months, I really hope you'll help.
BTW, I have no clue how to animate the tracks on a tank........

If you want to check the quality of my work, I can upload something.

[Gabbe]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=blender+tank+tracks

I just couldn`t resist 

[-Archmage-]

Thanks, will check it out.

[ElimiNator]

Making tank tracks is hard and it uses a huge amount of faces, I know couse I tried it for the grav_tank in moon.

[Gabbe]

doesn`t matter as long as it looks nice, and now i don`t care any longer for loadfings with my 6 cores rawr!!!

[Omega]

You cant really see the tracks ingame, so why bother. I've shot my share of guns too, but animating them is a whole diff thing.

[Omega]

OK: Results of testing with Water units (contains bug, please read Silnarm!)

-Lua generator placed 'any_water' units perfectly
-Battleships were flawless
-If dock is within 3(ish) cells of water, it produces battleships perfectly in the water.
-MAJOR BUG: Worker cannot build a unit in water because it isn't able to. The land is stated as 'unsuitable' for building (aka: invalid position), despite the fact that it has only one field: 'any_water'.
-ANOTHER MAJOR BUG: Despite having only 'any_water' as a field, the worker can still only build the dock on land (though if its built close to the water (with 3ish cells), it works fine). Lua doesn't ever do this. Must be a bug with building (since buildings are generally only built on land, it may be default? Needs to be fixed).

Dock works fine otherwise, but those two bugs really hinder developement (especially for the AI).

[wyvern]

you could add destroyers, pt boats, an A-10, and an f-22

[Omega]

I don't have time to google, teacher's on my back, but quick comments:

Destroy: Possibility, if subs are added.
Pt Boats: What?
A-10: See prev response.
F-22: Not bad... Maybe, but isnt the stealth bomber a good replacement?