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liu yan: heheheh, if portrait's not found, it uses the kitty pic.
overdoing it with the chinese influences ? the only chinese influence would be the use of that particular font (which is 'bonzai' btw, from a '4000 fonts' cd i picked up years ago). which was 'found 1 font i kinda like and stuck to it'. font selection can take FOREVER when done correctly, so i'm just running with 1 font right now. expect to see it everywhere at the moment heh.
all of the original graphics are in the paintshoppro native format with multiple layers etc… so easy to swap out font in those. from there it's exported to a png. game fonts for dynamic text are just a font -> graphic converter that's easy enough to feed other fonts into.
the papery info area was frayed on the edges by cutting out lots of partial star shaped things (netbook making precision mousing difficult heh).
i call it ugly for a reason :)
edit:
Quote:Also we need to decide on which stats — both for the provinces and for the officers — to use.whachu talkin bout willis ?
Yeah, I figured that out with the star cuts XD
You've overdone it, though… and we can always do a sleek, modern design despite it being a 200 AD-ish setting.
Maybe I'll try a hand at producing something, but do keep in mind that I have other tasks to do as well…
being skinable is highly useful.
Well, there are plenty of games that use a paper-ish background for lots of different ledger things…. even stuff up until ww2-era stuff.
i debated going with a stark cold typical 1980-1990's era pc game sci fi-ish look … they're easy enough to create and look 'okay'… but… i figured i'd try the whole paper look. granted, it needs to go from papery-screen to papery-screen with sfx and stuff to feel proper.
—>8—>8—snip—>8—>8—
i typed out something then deleted it.
—>8—>8—snip—>8—>8—
1024×768, display everything ya want displayed, keep note of x/y positions for all dynamic elements of the screen (names, values, portraits, etc). dynamic strings use mono spaced fonts fwiw.
graphics can be bmp, jpg, png (maybe others) … i really do suggest png.
Something that hit me that i 'wanted' while doing this last night… was a spot to have a mini-map of china (as it looks at that point in the game) and to highlight which province you were working with atm. just something to think about :)
if ya wait on doing it 'serious like', you can just fiddle with the dev-demo release that'll be rolling around soon (crossing fingers).
HAH! In my incomplete sample window, the only thing I have is the china map with the current province highlighted. XD
And don't worry, I will definitely be using png.
lol…. while veterans of the game wouldn't have any problem identifying by number, it's just a usability thing that's greatly handy (and important enough that i think it should be on that screen rather than something requiring a click or something :)
In rotk2 Chengdu is 33.
But who's to say that we'll be using the same map?
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On a side note, I've had an interesting idea for a while: define a map shaped like each province, and have battlefields be composed of all maps for involved provinces. So if Cao Cao invades Luoyang form Xuchang and brings reinforcements from Chenliu, then the map will be the maps for Luoyang, Chenliu, and Xuchang fused together. We'll need to figure out how exactly to work things out, but all three will be up for grabs — Cao Cao is capable of losing both of those provinces, just as Ma Chao managed to lose his entire land when he invaded Changan.
Finally, even if we go with the standard method, we should have a base camp for the attacker to defend. They have to coordinate their plans and store their food SOMEWHERE!
aye, i had similar quandaries for 3 way battles, or even head to head battles.
there's *NOTHING* stopping the battlescape map to actually be *ALL* of china … with… say… using tiled to have a layer partition off where each province is… thus … i dunno.
re: standard method / attacker has to defend something
aye, back in post #1 — "return of the attackers rice pot?" or something :)
Presumably, battles can only involve the target province and every province adjacent to it. So in rotk2, Zhuge Liang's northern invasions would be limited to 12, 13, 14, 29, and 30… which would still be enough to count as a full campaign!
As for boundaries, every province should have a minimum and maximum coordinates; they'll fit together perfectly, but the battle program will limit the map based on the minimum and maximum of the x & y numbers. So if the individual provinces have these (x,y) numbers:
(8,10)~(20,24)
(7,15)~(16,36)
(15,14)~(32,32)
Then the combined map will be:
(7,10)~(32,36)
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As for the loss of dictatorship, realism means that total control may not be the best of ideas. Keep in mind that some officers can be amazingly hotheaded; just think of all the times that Sum Dumgai rode out to battle Zhuge Liang's officers even though Sima Yi outright ordered them not to!
So it may be best to limit how many officers are player-controlled based on the attack leader's rank and intelligence. The rest — and any blockies — are AI-controlled, although you can still give simple orders such as "Defend Hanzhong's castle" or "Attack Zhang He".
Although if a block leader is loyal enough, they may be willing to accept direct orders…
Quote:So in rotk2, Zhuge Liang's northern invasions would be limited to 12, 13, 14, 29, and 30… which would still be enough to count as a full campaign!I don't understand the point of this statement ?
Sounds like we're going to have at least two different game modes… or an amalgamation of block loyalty and other stuff etc.
I prefer the omnipotent dictatorship style of play myself :). I can understand the draw of the more limited style… which would be a LOT more ai stuff to be done for it… almost down to personality algorithms etc.
PS: my goal for the game isn't really realism. Hints of it are fine, but… *its a game*. Player will undoubtedly create hundreds of impossible situations, and limit removal will make plenty of it impossible as well. The more you enforce realism, the more you remove hyperbole. Lastly, the more you take away from the player, the 'worse' it is (for lack of a better word).
More hyper extreme realism would also lead to situations where the player wants to recruit more people for their army… but for some reason, whatever conditions prevents them from gaining many people. IE: they try to recruit 100 soldiers, but only get 5. Very possible historically, but there are ALOT of factors that could affect that.
Or, say you're liu bei, you're in battle. You try to control zhang fei, but he's either drunk or just being willful and rampages about without your control despite insanely high block & ruler loyalty ? Liu Bei tends to be in a lot of really tight spots in the earlier scenarios (particularly scenario 3 rotk1)… losing control of a 99ish war general can be quite detrimental.
If generals have their own dozen set of biorhythms to choose from, then shouldn't the ruler itself also have limitations in what they'll let the player do (ie: nothing drastically or repeatedly out of character) ? Surely Cao Cao wouldn't let the player just vacate lou yang for no reason. Liu Bei wouldn't supposedly stand for heavily taxing the people. Ma Teng wouldn't let the player ally with Dong Zhou. Jin Xuan would never accept retreat in battle!!!
A possible example of a 'realism' idea that could be added that'd receive less resistance from me: food stores should tick down every month (rather than being eternal).
The complicated personality and loss of control stuff may really insist on say a LUA interperter or something. I dunno if it'd be possible to get a parser and such as complicated as the system would require or if it'd need to be hard coded into the game source etc.
i just dunno.
Oh, thought.
battlescape situation. two opposing units side by side. can one general somehow attempt to challenge / capture the other one ? ie: you have lu bu with only 10 soldiers, cao chun is next to you… is there something lu bu can do to attempt to capture / kill cao chun ?
risk / reward would have to be high… and have to avoid being abusable.
Erm, what I ment to say is that if shu invades province 13 (using the rotk2 map), it could involve those five provinces (and, therefore, match Zhuge Liang's northern campaigns).
The point is that you get to capture multiple provinces at one; the other point nis thta the attacker also risks losing the province(s) they attacked from.
But at the same time, there could be a lot of officers in battle. If there are five officers per provinces, that'd be twenty-five officers. So only some of them would be player-controlled; the best would be directed by the AI, although they certainly want the player to win!
As for realism, don't worry — we're not making this Sim3k. ;) At the very least, a ruler here should have the level of cotnrol they have in RoTK8 and RoTK 10. In addition, every force should be able to win…. even though some will have lots of difficulty (Gongsun Yuan anyone?)
There shouldn't be limits on how many soldiers the player can recruit…. unless they really go overboard in recruiting the population en masse, which is a problem in rotk2 too!
In battle, officers you control normally should have no problems with disobeying; the only problems would be if a headstrong officer gets challenged to a duel or confused/mislead/etc… and that's true in EVERY rotk game with those options. ;)
No officers should have special limitations like the ones you suggested, especially since Ma Teng and Han Sui first pledged allegiance to Dong Zhuo! (things quickly soured).
Personality shouldn't be more complex than it is in the rotk games. Rotk8, for example, has:
(1) Name
(2) Face
(3) War
(4) Politics
(5) Intelligence
(6) Charm
(7) Ferociousness
(8) Calmness
(9) Ambition
(10) Justice
(11) Lifespan
(12) Compatibility
Food going down each month makes sense; gold going down slightly each month (salaries) also makes sense.
Finally, attempting to capture an enemy officer should be attemptable; damage would be stacked in the enemy's favor, though (say, half deaths for them, double for you), and the odds of success are low unless they have few troops, a headstrong officer, and/or a lower war officer. And, of course, there's always a slight chance the officer dies instead…
First up a note – i've not played rotk beyond 3, and only played a bit of 4. The series seemed to go in a direction i had less interest in.
I'm gonna break this up into multiple posts.
First up WAR)!(@%&)(!@*#
This might get far more complicated than you think it might :)
Simple situation:
Province 30 invades 13. No one joins the battle from other provinces.
Traditionally: "map of province 13, units from 30 get placed on the south, units from 13 get placed around the castle, fight!" … and only the fate of province 13 hangs in the balance. This would just be early ROTK games in their entirety.
Instead:
Do we have a meshed together map of 30 and 13, with both castles present on the field. Where does attackers units get positioned ? where do defenders units get positioned ? If the attacker wants to send more units half way through the battle, do they spawn around the source castle (province 13 in this case) ?
If the attacking side can continue to deploy units beyond their initial 'want to send' stuff (which would make sense if they have to also possibly defend a counter attack or do reinforcements) … how does that "jive" with if i had everyone else do other things for that turn before attacking ? IE, sticking with rotk2 things-happen-immediately: i had all 10 generals "train" the troops, and then sent 5 out to fight. Defenders can field as many people as they want (in traditional rotk2) … but… when the attackers want to reinforce for whatever reason (to press the attack more or to defend themselves)… they already had 10 of the generals marked as 'used' already ??? those generals therefore can't perform a second 'action' for this month ??
Lets say the attackers are going to fail in taking the province, 13 stands strong! In early rotk's you just simply retreat and the battle is over. Well… we now have a mesh of two maps with opposite objectives.
Attackers are wanting to retreat, but how do we know when the battle is over ? They can't simply "retreat -> province 30" … province 30 is being contested currently! Or do they 'retreat -> province 30", go in the reserve, and are unable to be recalled, and if province 30 falls, they get captured ?
And those that were in the initial attack suredly better not be able to retreat->33, cause then they just teleported backwards. evil hackery cheaty bastids heh.
But back to the point – when the attacker gives up, how is 'battle over' decided ? They pull their units back into reserve, or flee, or simply march them back towards province 30's castle. The defender then has say on if the battle is over or not ? Cause, what if he wants to pursue the counter attack ? Ya can't just use "all attackers are in their original province, all defenders are in their original province" … cause… what if the defenders are just 1 day's worth of movement behind chasing the attackers.
I don't think you can also just offer the defender "attacking force has disbanded, do you wish to pursue" kind of thing… cause… what if the defender chooses to pursue, but doesn't move / advance ? You then keep both provinces tied up in battle even though no battle is taking place. Abusable :(. Easy example: Dong Zhou / Lou Yang attacks Hain Fu. Hain Fu is victorious but decides to keep the battle going. Lou Yang is now locked up battle and can't issue normal commands because it's in a non-battle with a tiny no-one-cares province.
Off topic thoughts: return of a 'morale' stat for soldiers. The idea being, not being forced to field the gov'ner or ruler during a battle (but suffering some kind of penalty for being a coward). Primary example: liu bei gets invaded, but has zhao yun handling castle defenses.
Expanding on WAR(*!@%&(!*@&#(
Sticking to the 2 province war…
Lets say that 13 is victorious in defending AND counter attacks back into 30… and takes 30's castle. What generals get transfered from 13 to 30 ? do we pop up another screen to make a selection ?
Then, to expand on this….
13 decides to counter attack. Well, the guy that controls 30 wants other provinces to send reinforcements. How does this work ?
30 invades 13. 14 and 12 come to the defense (for simplicity, all the same ruler).
We now have a battlescape map that comprises 4 provinces (thus also 4 castles)… right ?
Lets say the attack fails and the counter attack is strong. Did we just have generals from 14 and 12, which have *NO* connection to 30 somehow magically be able to transport to it ?
30 attacks 13, 14 and 12 come as reinforcements.
The attack succeeds, castle 13 falls. But the reinforcements are still present… does the battle continue while 14/12 attempt to retake 13 ? There are still 2 defender's castles on the map and 1 attacking castle (and the contested one).
Lets say that the reinforcements decide to NOT contest the fallen castle. Is it now up to the invasionary force to decide if they wanna press on and attempt to take 14 or 12's castle ? As well as if the reinforcements decide if to attempt to take province 30 ? (thus 30/13 swap control) ?
Did we just end up with forces from 30 teleporting far beyond their neighbor provinces ?
This fur ball gets nasty quickly :)
lastly….
30 attacks 13, 14 and 12 come to reinforce.
the attack fails, and the reinforcements march on to 30.
Well… surely 30 could call for reinforcements from 33.
Does the battlescape now dynamically enlarge to include 33 ? Can we get generals from province 14 ending up in province 33 within 1 month's time ?
This just seems like it could be a recursive nightmare.
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