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Quote:As for stats, they probably won't DIRECTLY affect things, but if you have only 15 charisma, expect to have officers with low enough loyalty that the block leader can start handing out invitations…
Poor Jin Xuan…. cough.
Anyway… I love a lot of the concepts here… definitely gonna have to debate this a lot more once we get into a playable game (no, i'm not trying to close the subject, it just gets really complicated and very theoretical without being able to test it).
As far another thing to possibly do:
* a list of 'surnames' and 'first' names for use with random general promotion after combat or similar
some of this sounds down right dangerous to fully implement. it'd be moving away from the player being an absolute dictator … and attempting to loosely manage a simulation (akin to those games where, say, you're a football coach or owner but never actually "play" the soccer game itself…. a simulation engine determines what happens).
i can see varying degrees / incarnations of this mechanic taking a lot of play testing to see if it's liked / hated or if it can be broken, etc.
stuff like, is it possible for Cao Cao to convert Guan Yu to be within his clique rather than in Liu Bei's ? showering with gifts, etc.
Oh, and AI flow charts / pseudo code is handy — but given that we've got the core game functionality in so much flux… that's a complete bitch to try to even guess at implementing now heh.
Oh and "other people working on it" …
Depending on how 'mod-able' it is, it might require actually working within the code base as well. I'm trying to keep as much as possible as /NOT/ being hard coded though.
Compiling the code would probably be impossible unless you picked up a license for the compiler (i do make use of some 'professional only' functionality).
Without an events system, the primary "working on it" currently would be…
Things that are useful no matter what:
* filling out more information per the ~450 generals (date of birth, personality, expected lifetime, etc…. boring tedious work heh)
* filling out more start-of-scenario data (i believe I only have the data for the first scenario put in)
* flushing out more generals used within the first scenario (i've got most of the rotk2 generals, but there are more that were active during that time…)
* more generals such as the bandits and stuff ?
* filling out RPN functions for things (even if it's just regular math and i make it rpn for ya)
Ideas to toy with:
* possibly figuring out how to construct this loyalty / clique / blocking system :P
Stuff that is meh:
* graphical skinning possibilities
* fiddling with battlescape maps maybe, i dunno
After the events system gets put into place … there will be a little bit more mod-able stuff … but… huge drastic stuffs… well… there's a lot that would basically be better off as something like "the game is written entirely in LUA, the graphical front end is generic" heh. (oh, and note: i'm not gonna make it lua-friendly).
Yeah, I'm trying to get it to the point where there can be meaningful contributions by other people…. otherwise it's more or less 'only my project' which is not the intention.
Cliques is an interesting addition to the loyalty / ruler hierarchy.
Oh… clique might be a mostly American term. A loose definition, lets pretend you're in high school. You have the jocks, the cheer leaders, the geeks, etc. In general, each of those could be considered a 'major clique'. Within, say, the cheer leaders… you'll have several smaller groups. They usually don't like each other or something. Each of that smaller group of 'friends' would be your typical clique.
Anyway… the interaction of individuals, cliques, rulers, etc could be a nasty nightmare to try to figure out. Formulas would be kinda neat.
I do like the idea.
Lets say Liu Bei and his entourage are serving under Yuan Shao. Cao Cao manages to recruit Liu Bei away from Yuan Shao.
A) do close supporters of Liu Bei (Yu/Fei) automagically follow Liu Bei ? Or maybe if their loyalty is under XX to Yuan Shao ? (if loyalty-to-clique-leader * partiality-to-clique-leader > loyality-to-ruler, convert as well?)
B) if the members of the Liu Bei clique don't follow him over to Cao Cao, does their loyalty to Yuan Shao drop ?
C) lotsa questions like that
Instead of Cao Cao managing to recruit Liu Bei, lets say he manages to recruit Guan Ping. How does this work out ? Does Liu Bei's clique dislike Yuan Shao now and suffer a drop in loyalty ?
Another scenario: while serving Yuan Shao, Lu Bu kills that traitorous bastard Liu Bei. Now what ?
A) Does the clique get a new 'leader' or is it left void ?
B) Does the clique loyalty to their ruler decline ?
So, lotsa questions here… and it drastically changes traditional game play (i can see two modes of play coming up… 'free' vs 'enhanced' hehe).
Some clique-implementation questions…
In an effort to keep it somewhat dynamic or less prone to falling apart as a game progresses…
A) does each general keep a familiarity list with every other general ?
B) serving within the same province makes it go up ?
C) doing the same task together makes it go up ?
D) combat on same side makes it go up ?
E) what causes it to go down ?
What about people that, say, couldn't stand each other ? Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang ? I doubt serving together would make things better ? If there are things that causes familiarity to go down, could you eventually get Guan Yu to hate Liu Bei ?
Could general stats help this (charisma stat becoming even more godly ?) ??
I see *alot* of questions about this stuff… but it's quite intriguing!
It's progressing slowly.
What's kinda fun is that the code base cleans up a bit while I progress in this part of the endeavor :).
The project is also becoming much more usable (with proper loop and state system), which is always nice. The optimizations done last week have also made it very "playable" (horrible word, there's no game yet lol) on my netbook, so platform horsepower shouldn't be a concern.
I still need to clean up how I'm gonna handle game variables. I keep switching back and forth from just working from a master list vs building sub lists for each action. Always the thought of each province has it's own global sub list that doesn't get rebuilt constantly except when someone joins / leaves a province is probably a valid compromise (decided: [X] hehe).
So next few days:
* provincial sublist (easy)
* move everything to working off of the provincial sublist (tedious but easy)
* "button" code for making gui stuff easier / better
* implementing the provincial screen gui
* cleaning up the general-select-for-actions screen gui
After that:
* provincial screen actions go through the RPN stuff and causes things to happen
* load the flare map format
* convert existing battlescape map stuffs to flare format if someone hasn't already made the maps
** easy enough since i've already got the battlescape maps in a different format
From there… I dunno. It'd prolly be time to let a few people look at it, since it should become interactive enough for anyone who wants to contribute.
Down the line in possibly this order:
* battlescape gui interaction
* beginnings of actual game flow (ie: only being able to control one ruler's territories at a time, 'end of turn', etc).
* 'events' system thing (yuan shu / sun ce independence, random promotion, spoils of war, seasonal things, etc)
busy night
* optimized several things by thousands of percents
** mostly graphical and a few other small things
** makes it far less painful on lower end systems (like this netbook heh)
** not necessarily going to be thrown away later, so not a waste of time
* initial move to a proper application / game loop
** no longer sitting in a buried loop somewhere
** things are much more 'background processing' friendly
** beginnings of input abstraction
What must happen next:
Coming up with a cleaner way of handling overall game state, variables, etc
Right now, several things require a lot of string searching / matching across several arrays of structs and all that jazz. While that was fine for proof of concept, it really needs to go away and cleaner state variables implemented etc.
… rolling along / progressing just fine….
The flare format requires 3 layers, but it will export all of the layers into it… so.. no limit on layer count afaik.
A valid assertion to the greatness of the game (let alone all you mod hackers heh).
Hasn't really been a game like it since.
Along those lines, I can understand some trepidation on making changes to some of the core concepts of the game.
example TP regeneration via defend or whatever. I honestly do think that TP regen is something that really should be available, but with a quick re-think, I'm glad it wasn't made into an item that does it. in ff1, i loved the spell slot system, and i loved that ya had to seriously manage/conserve spell stuff. in the later remakes, not only do they drastically change it by moving to a mp system (booooooo!) they let you buy ethers! (way more booooooo).
doae with a tp-ether would be a bit different in that inventory space would be a bit more of a concern – but – how many people can go through the game with just 5 generals (tactician acting in the fight, i know in yuan shao, i did for most of the early game)…. or how many people use 5 fighters and have their tactician carrying the gullwings, steeds, and maintenance items ? and that still leaves one whole extra pack mule you can bring around. tp-ether would just be an excuse to fill up those extra people's inventories.
I'd go way beyond 1 in a trillion personally.
I've not watched it, but I don't doubt that it luck manipulates crits and the enemy missing and such (or possibly an-sha and general capture etc).
Some people find TAS's amusing in of themselves, or some speedrunners like them for finding tricks that *are* humanly possible or just as a theoretical limit of a game…
but i don't fall into either of those categories. hate hate hate :finger:
something that might be amusing for the small community here to try is 'fastest real time completion' kind of thing. don't have to be all kinds of official about it, but some fceux recording files etc would be fine (just have to make sure no one cheats with save states / re-recording, etc).
note: i'm not interested in attempting it btw – got too many other things to do rather than attempt to speedrun doae heh.
Given that I frequent the speed running communities…
TAS's don't count one iota…. especially in something like DoaE that's so RNG heavy.
I dunno if the mentioned tas does any frame perfect trick / glitches outside of luck manipulation… but all in all, it's inhuman and totally bunk IMHO
:huohu:
hex tiles that don't bleed out beyond their boundaries for now it is. functionality over prettiness to start :cheers:. as far as the flare map format that forces 3 layers, we'll have the background / map layer, and then a layer for making special tiles somehow (only immediate use is hand placed starting positions, a possible future thought would be spots where a random rebel force could spawn!%!@… cough…). the third layer will go unused afaik.
to re-iterate, i fully agree that the battlescape would need a graphical update later.
for now, i'm not even gonna support animating tiles just yet. if i feel froggy i'll implement it since that's easiest / quickest.
to begin with, i was happy with just staggered squares like the original, but as i put more thought into it i was wanting to do a lot more…. and i caught myself snowballing (as is typical with design-stage of a project) and last night decided really need to put a stop to that heh.
and conversations here about ideas didn't help :).
so, isometric staggered, over sized tiles, etc will have to wait. something to note — a lot of this may be moot if the system is moved to a 3d rendering of the battlescape :P
can't edit prev post, 500 server error.
maybe it's cause i'm busy with lots of other things that i can't just sit down and play through the game ? (ie: time is a precious resource in my life heh)
i dunno ?
Out of curiosity … how long does it take you guys to play through the game ?
Just a casual play through typically takes me 3-4 days (3-6hrs/day)…. and with the non-ultra-difficult mods, that typically involves very little grinding.
Amidoingitwrong ?
You modders seem to think that people play through it in just a couple hours :scratch:
