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I'm working on getting it to the point that a for-developers-only demo exe might be able to released… cause… until that time it's all just vaporware as far as anyone might know. Having something in your hands able to tinker with goes a long way … particularly if anyone's kind enough to do some of the data entry stuffs heh.
Messing with the netbook lately has cost me many days of working on it (kinda meh in a project that is 9 months old now ?) … but… crappy coder graphics for the ui, making ui more functional / game flow stuff, and handling a lot of the RPN word substition (ie: RULERTRUST gets replaced with the ruler's current trust level etc) is what's needed for the dev release / semi-playable.
One drastic change I'd love to implement down the line is a 'concurrent system'. Everyone plots… and THEN it all happens at once. Immediate affects would be invading another province (what if cao cao and lu bu attack the same province ?) … recruiting people (Mi Fang sees request from both Liu Bei and Cao Cao .. which does he take ?) … and battlescape stuff (two people try to enter the same square ?). It'd be toggle on/off of course when starting a new game.
Something in the back of my head that I think is generally moot – network play.
Midknight: complete write from scratch.
Written in GLBasic (a basic that sits on top of SDL for the most part)… can target windows, osx (x86 and ppc), linux, ios, palm webos, palm pixi, android, gp2x, wince, and possibly a few others. It allows inline'ing c++, which i've already used for only a couple things (reading raw binary data from a file cause the provided file io stuff is kinda slow).
Being that I'm using the inline'ing and might possibly move it to 2d on 3d rendering … it requires the non-free version of the glbasic compiler ($100-ish).
In an effort to make this more friendly for the community to mod it, I'm attempting to do as much as I can for things to be not-hard-coded but rather read in from files etc (thus community doesn't need to touch the code base / buy the compiler).
I dunno if glbasic's free version has gotten to the point of compiled things have run time limits (5/10min)… if not, then some preprocessor escapes for 'slow vs fast' between free vs pro versions might be workable.
The amount of work required hasn't been too extreme… it's been mostly 'time available to work on it' kind of thing. Granted, there's a lot of data entry that takes FOREVER :(.
ROTK2 could be possibly described as a 'core version' of rotk. nearly all stats and numbers are based on 1-100 (only population numbers, gold, rice, get higher iirc), there are fewer stats for the generals (no 'luck', 'health', etc from rotk1….. or no army/war differentiation, no 'politics' stat, etc).
I've always liked how clean and straight forward it was, thus the desire to make an updated version. About the only two things that I can think of that have been discussed to possibly severely complicate it would be my desire to have something akin to 'experience' from rotk1 (each stat or task has a substat, the more you do it, the better you get at it… possibly to the point that your base stat goes up by 1 — ie if you develop the land for 5 years straight, your INT stat might go up 2 or 3 points)… and the block loyalty stuff discussed as of late.
Immediate apparent changes will be removal / upping of limits from the original (generals per province, number of generals fielded during battle, etc). Double or triple the number of generals available. A more proper RNG rather than something that can be predicted. Being able to choose the route a messenger takes while going somewhere.
Larger changes would be random promotion of regular soldiers into new generals (so and so has talent!), more things will affect ruler 'trust' stat, losing the ability to cheat at the game by using the recruit command targeting enemy provinces… this gets you a free list of generals there as well as being able to glean info by sorting them differently (soldiers/loyalty come to mind)… instead you will probably have to 'view' the province with a general and then choose to try to recruit someone with same guy doing the 'viewing'.
More drastic changes would be the block loyalty thing we've been discussing lately (although it seems like we'll have the ability to vary its influence), how free general searching works, possibly allowing the battlescape to be altered (ie: build a fort somewhere ???). Possibly several more game events that tie to historical actions (ie: see yuan shu / sun ce separation).
I'm sure I've missed lots of things in this summary heh.
PS: rotk1 – i had no plans for a rotk1 remake. Is there a point ?
everything updated, installed. even installed paintshoppro (the old coder's preferred art proggy heh) … onward!
So….
After they get cable plugged back in, I finish the beginning of the netbook re-install / maintenance and head home (15min drive).
Get home… start the windows update cycle for a fresh install (~140 updates, then after these will be more updates or service pack 1, then more etc etc etc)… can't wait to get to the point of installing drivers heh.
Get a text — same location 1000mi away is having problems again. Needless to say I'm a bit miffed. Wait for the updates to finish downloading and ask about license agreements… then head back to work while it's spending forever installing.
Get to work…. check it out… the cable is unplugged AGAIN. :bon:
So very not amused.
Blocks: first incarnation will be block-less while we getting a playable game and we work out the details.
I'm not sure if game configuration block level stuff is better served as static "severity" choosing (ie: non-existent, weak, middle, strong, worship huo hu) and to have game logic work off of these finite settings….
Or if we'd rather implement it as just a variable (say, 1-100) that gets put into each calculation to affect how likely block-level actions occur or get affected etc etc etc.
I'm leaning more towards block-level calculations are always made and their involvement is dictated by this "how influential they are" variable.
IE:
event check tiger wolf:
likelihood = ruler soldiers – ((block soldiers * (100 – block-leader-to-leader loyalty) * block-leader-ambition * global_influence) / (100 * 100 * 100))
if likelihood < 0 then revolt!@%!@#!
PS: saw some of the SoSZ posts you've made concerning rotk2 and stuff, will have to dig into them :)
EDIT:
updated formula a bit, it's still a little wrong, but whatever. would also need to be able to be able to allow really aggressive guys to attempt a revolt even if under powered (maybe div by 50 instead of div by 100 ?)
Quote:Granted, I did this in Rise of Lu Bu by giving Lu Bu 150 Intelligence when it should've been like 80, but originally it was like 200+ heh heh.Ah the old days :P.
I do miss my >200 int lu bu hehehe… it seemed almost necessary in some parts of the original mod :P
Welcome Jeph! Swell group of people visit here, and there is always lots of DoaE action going on… you'll fit right in probably :)
Got called into work because stuff was down!%#@@!$!@ at a location ~1000mi away. Turns out someone had been into the server rack there and unplugged something…. yeah… really related to me :retard: …. played phone chain / tag and got someone to plug it back in. fixed.
Anyhoo using tools available here to backup stuff off of the old spinning disk and am installing win7 pro 32bit as we speak.
should be able to get back to dev'ing tonight (dunno if i'll do anything, but it should be possible at least).
oh, and for the curious — using the dev environment that i am, this should compile and run on just about any platform you can think of (except dos or os/2 perhaps).
installed new ssd into netbook, and figured i'd up the win7 install from starter to pro 64bit. well… in general it kinda went good, but intel doesn't support 64bit os on their gma 3600 (newest released atom platform graphics afaik)…. had to hack around it a bit.
it seems… okayish, but far from perfect.
dunno where my usb -> sata/ide thing went, so gonna have to take everything to work and fetch data off old disk there. might do so tonight, might wait until tomorrow.
Ya know, just wanted to point out what an astounding job you guys are doing with these portraits. :salut:
Ok…. so… you're thinking of blocks as being smaller in scope than I was thinking of… but having very strong game play influences.
And multiple blocks *has* to be an eventuality… it *will* happen towards the end game. Towards the end of the period, Cao Cao has the royal court under his thumb, the tribes to the west, his own group, tribes to the north, some yuan shao stuff, etc…
EDIT: i typed this out as you were typing your reply out, so this doesn't take into consideration your post just prior to this one. reading that now :3
Typed those last three from my phone, hoping to catch ya before ya called it good for the day / night hehehe. So if there's any auto-spell corrections, apologies.
Out of curiosity, if I happen to rule over Liu Bei…. how does Liu Bei end up recruiting someone for me on his own ? A betrayal / conversion during battle is about the only thing that comes to mind outside of 'so and so joins you' that happens every year relating to sons of prominent generals etc.
Or, if someone's loyalty drops below a certain point, do they leave their current ruler and go find their block leader and join them ? Or become a free general and migrate slowly towards their block leader (where once they get there, they get recruited automagically) ?
If their loyalty drops below a certain point, but the block leader is loyal to you… do… they just happen to stay then ?
And concerning blocks…
Lets say that for some reason that I have that superman Cao Bao as my ruler (cough). Liu Bei and his entourage are under my rule. Liu Bei happens to be very loyal time. Liu Bei's entourage is very loyal to Liu Bei…. but… their loyalty to me is rock bottom.
How does this affect:
a) the entourage's loyalty to me
b) liu bei's loyalty to me
c) the recruitability of the entourage by other rulers
d) recruitability of of liu bei to other rulers ?
e) the odds of liu bei doing what he does best and stabbing me in the back ?
Basically, your standard intrigue — the block leader loves me, but his friends hate me. Does the leader feel the plight of his friends and look for ways out, or ?
Nasty complicated icky oy heheheheh.
Still fun to think about, and could make for a very interesting game!!! :)
ps – thanks for names lists
Also, if a general can ignore commands… i dunno… this just seems… dangerous for making grid locks / impossible situations. i love the idea, but it also scares the shit out of me.
Now, having more commands affect loyalty… that I do like. Gotta be careful to not turn loyalty into the third resource though (outside of gold and rice).
In jest: Zhang Fei: reward the peasants! Zhang Fei loyalty goes up cause he drinks on the side, Cao Bao's loyalty goes down due to receiving a drunken flogging…. *cough*
tonight's goal: a first run 'functionality over aesthetics' run at the provincial screen gui that make just hollow function calls at the moment. basically, i just want it to be able to get to the point where things can be interacted with wholly… making it pretty or more usable comes later… this is just so things can be tested.
after functional provincial gui: starting to fill in lots of RPN stuff.
I'm a bit weary of a general being able to refuse a command. While it makes loyalty more important…
Let's say we get to a point where cao cao has guan yu. He attacks yuan shao who currently has liu bei.
Towards the end of the fight, only the two brothers are left.
Both are loyal enough to their rulers that they don't change sides, but their familiarity stops them from following 'attack' battle scape orders against each other. Deadlock.
Btw – I don't like 'personality' as a description for block loyalty / alignment. Conflicts with the 'traitor bit' generals have in the original.
'block alignment' or 'block loyalty'?
If we end up with two block stats, whatever.
'familiarity' seems decent as well.
And an extra visible stat for block loyalty? Or does this stay the currently hidden personality stat value … But we make it visible?
And can this value ever go 'down' ? (or if the currently hidden one – move towards someone else?)
So…. If I'm … say… Dong Zhou. I have my own block prolly?
If I take the game to 220ad and beyond, there won't be much of my block by comparison.
I'm going to have mostly a conglomerate of opposing blocks.
How much control do I really have?
Is this then the loyalty structure is I'm to keep the block leaders loyal to me so my influence is felt?
We'd have to definitely show block affiliations for each general. As well as possibly block 'leader'?
'Spy' options grow to some degree as well.
Basically I'm fearful this will turn the player into the useless emporer in some games that makes requests of subordinates.
