Mandate Update Thread

[MoLAoS]

So after having to clear out a lot of shit left over from something or other, things like pointers to faction type and tech tree that didn't do anything but were pushed all the way down various ::load functions, I got some work done.

I can now load a specialization into the Sovereign/Character Creator menu and it displays the CharacterStats, an RPG based attribute system. I just need to add a couple things and find a way to format them well for the limited GUI and then you can see all the things the specialization you pick will give you. Then finish up the free allocation section. Anyways its gonna take me longer than I thought cause of weird bugs and other non-sensical coding choices in the engine but I expect to be done by the end of the week if I'm lucky. That will be a pretty good step towards the game being done. Also this will help me get an in-game unit xml editor ready. Although I might shift generic editing to a standalone application. I won't do that editor for a while since I don't need it for the game but eventually it will be there and have all the flexibility of hand edits but with no annoying mistakes.

It wouldn't take so long but I had to do all the work of familiarizing myself with this aspect of the engine that I hadn't used before.

Hopefully I will get these kinds of characters integrated a week after the menu and get the crafting and traits done. Then really all I need is to do events, clean up, and enable the interactions of a couple classes.

[MoLAoS]

I've always felt like the current system of energy/mana is just not good enough. And my initial addition of shield points isn't too useful and its confusing. So I've decided to implement two new systems.

You can now arbitrarily define any number of energy systems. I know at first it may seem weird, who needs more than one. But I do. And I assume people will find a use given the capability being built in and easy to use.

Basically you assign a name and some values to the unit and then to their skills. Its possible just to use it for different energy systems per unit, but also for multiple ones on the same unit. For instance a stamina stat may power stronger attacks on melee units. A magic golem may have magic for spells but also electricity for normal operation.

I also added a defenses vector. Instead of having the shield points you can use any number of defensive shields. I already added resistances, but those are per hit. Now you can make a normal shield, or a shield blocking only physical damage or just fire or w/e. You can cast a spell to add a shield and a timer and so forth.

I want to have units that can ignore some kinds of shields. I'm not sure how well it will work out in practice but its not too hard to enable so I'm gonna try it out.

I had considered mediating shields through effects and I might change that around later. The energy system is more important and the shield thing just happens to be easy to build using the same code.

[MoLAoS]

You can now specify the secondary resource if you have one at all and you can give any number of extras. All units have Health but whether you have mana or energy or power or rage or stamina is all up to you. Some slight refinements are in order to integrate into later features but I can't do much there now.

Secondary resources are separately functioning so you may be able to combine them for various effects. I am also going to try and add some functionality for them. Although this might just be left to effects. On-hit burn/drain/restore should all be possible with the current effect system. I may still want to add stuff like getting "souls" from kills and then having a statistics/enhancement you can set in unit or item that gives a bonus per soul and some other stuff like that.

Defenses I am still working on though its mostly implemented. Things like shield spells or protoss style perma shield are probable. Shields can be tinkered to only affect a specific damage type and such stuff or absorb half damage or w/e. You could also have a one time shield that can't be restored or similar weird stuff.

[MoLAoS]

I am making some decent progress on character creation. I've been able to write valid XML to a file from in game. This will definitely allow me to create an in-game unit editor for people who don't want to mess with XML. I know I don't. So much clutter to deal with. XML is super verbose.

The creator writes formatted perfectly space xml and handles attributes and children and so forth. Which presumably isn't shocking to coders but is possibly useful to modders.

Anyways I'm probably gonna take a break. GUI programming and file writing is hella dull, even with solid libraries.

[MoLAoS]

So I got a lot of work done today while listening to some oldschool punk on youtube. Anyways I'm slowly fixing it so that all the relevant classes of Sovereign, the character class for your player character, will be filled and save into a file that is in the exact format that the ::load function for Sovereign uses. I knocked out EnhancementType, DamageTypes, Resistances just now. I also go some other stuff.

I mostly just need actions, which is the container class for skills and commands, so basically the abilities of your character, and then effectTypes. Actually I was thinking maybe your character doesn't need straight effect types. I am trying to think of any default emanations it would be good to have and I can't really. You probably only need activate emanations. So that means its really just skills.

I'm not sure how that will work really since I would need to standardize animation names so that more than one kind of unit could use a skill if they wanted.

I am trying to decide if I need a class/grouping system that will have some skills and bonuses or if I can just role that into traits since it technically holds the capability to do it.

Then I will be done with this part and only have to deal with mages/leaders/overseers and how to implement traits and dual classes and shit for them. This is somewhat easier since you can implement that in raw XML. A regular player doesn't need to design units so then there doesn't need to be a character creator for those which is good cause its a lot of work to make customizable units like the player character is.

[MoLAoS]

Traits are going to end up serving a much more diverse role in the game than I originally intended. They contain all the necessary functionality to implement a psuedo-class so there is no reason to duplicate code.

As part of the addition of the Character Creator and the major character unit system I came to a point where I wanted to have schools of magic and other class/subclass type functionality and I realized it would be easier to use traits. In theory I could load these as multiple unit types but honestly unit-type has so much stuff that you only need once that its pointless.

Basically a subclass is implemented in a trait in a pretty obvious manner. For the pyromancy school of magic I am adding to the character creator there are a few options.

Pyromancer is a mage subclass which means it requires the mage trait as a prereq.

The Mage class is implemented as follows:
+5 conception since mages are smart
+10 potency so that the spells of a mage are stronger than a melee combat class since there is no strict skill typing
+50 mana because duh mages need mana
--some number of basic spells

The Pyromancer class is implemented on top of that as follows:
+5 conception because of a more intense knowledge focus
+5 potency because a focus in magic improves all spell damage
+25 mana because duh advanced mage
+10 fire damage
+5 fire resistance
--some number of fire based skills

Note that potency is a character stat for major characters that represents a generic increase to spell damage
Note that conception character stat that is a generic increase to knowledge acquisition because mages need to research new powers

Many bonuses are only available by subclass/trait like pyro fire damage. No matter how you spec a fire mage you can't get that bonus. All mage classes/subclasses get a bonus to mana potency and conception so a pyromancer and a hydromancer have a similar power there.

As far as my personal project goes the class system allows you to pick powerups based on experience, so you could spec 3 fire classes or get pyro/hydro/aero. Also speccing in multiple elements allows for special advanced classes. Steam mages from hydro/pyro vs something like pyro/pyro/pyro. Traits have a progress stat that can mean different things. For personality types it may need to hit a value for a one-off trait and for classes its like a level. So to be a just ruler you may need to get x points in justice at which point you get a relations bonus or something.

Aside from hybrid classing I wanted to make it so that it would be worth it to be a pyro/hydro combo without speccing to steam. Still working on various strategies.

You can get skills/spells separate from traits but generally traits/sub classes have rarer skills and good bonuses like the pyromancer's damage bonus.

Traits can be added to upgrades and are therefore usable in regular RTS. I am trying to maintain the ability to play a standard Glest/MG style RTS while putting in all the RPG stuff but I also want you to be able to use any feature you want rather than having a lot of limited game types.

[MoLAoS]

After a bit of work I've managed to enable a way to pass the same skill to several units with traits and I guess w/e else. It did piss off the checksum though. But anyways ridiculously multi-classed mages are now working great. All sorts of fun shenanigans. Making great progress.

[MoLAoS]

You can now confer new skills with upgrades. The value here is mostly space saving, previously you could lock skills/commands with upgrades but now you can put those in the upgrades to make the unit less stuffy. Also you can confer the same skill to multiple unit types but only need to write the skill once in the upgrade.

The main value is that this system will allow the conferring of skills with numerous other methods now that some kinks are worked out.

Anyways I'm gonna try to work on some other stuff for a while. Gotta go check my list of stuff that I need to do.

I kinda wanna enable the player characters and customizable characters now but that's a lot of work. You can already create a template for your player character with the character creator, its just not possible to load currently.

[MoLAoS]

Back from my extensive CK2:TOG inspired break.

After some annoying hacks you can now load the whole tech tree into the character creator to load skills and shit. Necessary for loading traits and skills so that you can see what they do before you decide if you want them on your guy.

Should be able to finish off at least saving the portion of the player/special characters. Still cannot load them in game although traits are currently fully functioning and both traits and upgrades can pass around new skills to units if you use the appropriate model file names.

[MoLAoS]

Well, shit is going down in EVE, not much for me to do there. Did some work on the game.

Basically, educated citizens spawn given correct circumstances. They can be recruited by Orders to get new heroes. The standard RTS method of a produce unit command still works, this is a separate thing. Click the Recruit button, click the citizen you want, based on their special stats, they turn into the unit type that is the main type for the Order. They gain a trait based on the extra classes the Order supports. Their main type has access to more class features and determines their unit model and base stats. Other classes are added as traits with maybe 70-80% of class features, and don't affect the unit model although they may give SLIGHT stat bonuses. Mainly they provide new skills/spells, and new production/crafting abilities. It may also be that certain combinations provide new bonus features based on which classes are enabled. At least you will be able to add new classes through research based on currently enabled classes.

The special recruit units, and their conversion to their new type and their assignment to their new home are enabled. Multi classing works but there is not yet a way to add new traits/classes to a structure, although you can assign multiple traits in the XML, with the first one in the xml list being the main type.

[MoLAoS]

I've made some decent progress on the Order system. You can now recruit special units to Orders and when you research new classes they are automatically added to the units that belong to that Order. I was stymied for a bit because of code limitations and in the end I had to think outside the box and subvert the normal structure of CommandType. Sad times but nothing else to be done.

I'm considering working on a feature whereby individual Order members don't auto gain new stuff but merely now have the option to learn new things that the Order can teach after research. This might require a rather complex rewrite of some code though so I'll probably put it off till a later project.

Sadly stuff in EVE is not going well because nullsec pvp corps are ignorant of what really matters in EVE, so I've been distracted from programming as I try to work out a way for my plans to go forward.

[MoLAoS]

I have added a button to destroy buildings. For specific tags it will kick out your units inside it first. I may just swap in a special tag for that, so that other tags have less stuff shoved together in one tag. Currently you do not get a return of resources. I'm considering making a harvestable object spawn that you need to carry resources from, rather than auto returning them. Although I could add the option for both.

Button is right near the top in the farthest right cell in the second row of the unit display interface. Have no idea why it took me so long to add such an obvious feature. Currently only units tagged as "building" can be destroyed this way.

[Tiel]

You're only releasing after you finish your game, right?

[MoLAoS]

You're only releasing after you finish your game, right?

Well, you can compile from GitHub which I mostly keep up to date. You'd have to read through code to find the XML for stuff since I had to close my webpage that had the Wiki due to financial problems, though.

Also, although I fix any bug I come across that doesn't mean there aren't any still there.

[tomreyn]

Have you considered to host your website on GitHub.io (using GitHub as a web page editor)? Or you could use the GitHub wiki - both options are free.

[MoLAoS]

Accidentally hit modify instead of quote. Stupid mod tools. That's why it says I edited your post.

Have you considered to host your website on GitHub.io (using GitHub as a web page editor)? Or you could use the GitHub wiki - both options are free.

Yeah but I'd have to rewrite everything all over again. And only a few people ever message me or comment about the project. Since I really dislike writing XML its really not that tempting to rewrite the wiki pages.

Also I got a job so I have less free time. Not sure if I'll stay in the job though, its pretty mind numbing.

[MoLAoS]

crossposted from Bay12:

Well, I decided I wanted to try to get back into this, and in order to maintain motivation I'm going to try and add a large but important and fun feature, pets.

I'm going to utilize the AI behavior system to manage pets, rather than writing a whole new system. It should be simply enough to use a personality, aka a set of ai behaviors, to implement pets. I'm also adding a planned but not yet implemented behavior to facilitate this, the FOLLOW behavior. Most pets will be a combination of FOLLOW and DEFEND. I also want to implement a behavior called FOCUSFIRE which will be used by pets as well. That way pets won't have to wait for their owner to get attacked before being assigned a valid target and hopefully regular units can utilize this behavior also to work together, for the later implementation of "groups" or "parties".

There may be some need to modify the loading units into other units code to accommodate pets if their owners need to enter an Orderhall or a Guildhall or w/e, but otherwise it should all be handled by the MandateAI behavior system.

One major reason to work on this feature is so I can implement the Druid and Necromancer Magic Orders. Although other planned orders can either tech into pets or may have some limited ones already.