2014-06-14 18:01:01

Its ok for units that can attack adjacently to not have sight range as well. You will just have to e.g build buildings, or have units there to provide the sight.

2014-06-14 21:13:47

@Victorious

Thanks for the answer of the elementals.
Respecting of the maps, yep. The official maps of the mod (PRA and CAN (specially PRA)) all of them have a good starting structure. Some resources in the starting point, and good expansion squares. But, the old maps don't have this standard, and some of it, are bad to use with the mod. ¿Is possible to remove it of the releases of the mod? You have to change the ofisialMaps.txt in cfg  folder, and put in it the names (and md5 checksum) of new official maps.

Well, the spook-lights are really a problem. I confirm that is possible to move it, and use to spam the opponent. What is a good solution? Provide it a speed of 0 to they can't move? decrease the time of life of it? Or make it attackable. Currently is a bug of the game that effects unit are controllable vi the caster.

@pragma:

Take this, an update of tts file for Spanish languaje. With some friends of the group "TyphloJuegos", We made some changes to some names. But, we prefer Latin-American variants of some words.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8451597/tts.rar

2014-06-15 01:04:55

Hi.

Thank you sanslash332 and your group for this better translation. It will be included in the version 8.2 of course.

About the spook lights, there is a bigger problem in fact. The plants and the trees are affected also. Because we don't want the plants and the trees can be teleported, we have put them like effects, instead of units. But in this way, the damages are disabled! So, currently, the plants and the trees don't attack. I don't know how we can do. To clarify, the teleportation of medicine plants and serenity trees must be prohibited, because with that, the elven become too strong.

For the spook lights, we can immobilize them and give them 2 meters in range. The medicine plants and the serenity trees don't attack, they are not affected by the problem. There are just the carnivorous plants, the darkness trees and the sentinel trees that must be changed. Maybe we can consider they can be teleported? If we do that, it just will seem a bit strange that some plants can be teleported and not others.

2014-06-15 02:26:16

not ebing able to tleport your serenity trees isn't much of a setback for the elf race because the druid can just create brand new serenity trees after porting. After all, it only takes 1 druid to port. So if you have 4, that still levves 3 druids able to sow serenity trees on squaraes. Someone really ought to contact jean-luc because the effect range should be specificable as a number of tiles instead of just current tile, ajacent tile, random or anywhere. The portal spell is way too powerful when you are able to portal from 1 side of the map to the other instantaneously. Maybe if it had a range of like 8 squares, with a diagonal square counting as 2 squares, it would be powerful but not overpowered. But you'd need to ask jean-luc to put that in because you currently can't unless you modify the source code, which yoyu actually can do. The source code is included in library.zip.

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2014-06-15 06:15:58 (edited by Victorious 2014-06-15 06:55:58)

The serenity tree and medicine plant are already classed as effects, so that means that effects on a tile can be teleported along with regular units. My suggestion is to change them into buildings instead, because those won't get teleported.

Also, can energy balls be improved? Right now, their range is too short for them to do anything before being killed.

2014-06-15 07:44:20

Well. First of all, we have to report this bugs to Gean to he'll try repair them.
I try to help gean with this bugs, but... I need time, and of course study the model of class of the game to find the correct sector when is necessary make the changes.

Currently I am studying the source of the game, but find the bug... xD

For trees... currently what does the tree of darkness, sentinel tree or carnivore plants if they can't attack? They does nothing? Currently are useless effects?

@oragma:

For the spook lights, we can immobilize them and give them 2 meters in range. The medicine plants and the serenity trees don't attack, they are not affected
by the problem. There are just the carnivorous plants, the darkness trees and the sentinel trees that must be changed. Maybe we can consider they can be
teleported? If we do that, it just will seem a bit strange that some plants can be teleported and not others.

respecting the trees, you can change the damage of sentinel trees to arm level 1 (or 2) that affects only airborn units. The example are with the quicksand skill in the original rules.txt

For carnivorous plants and thorny plants, simply, put to it arm level x to damage only healable units. The necromancers have to take distance of it, and  tree of darkness... jum delete the damage of it, but put one skill to create corpses.

@keyIsFull

Man, the source code isn't in library.zip file. That archives are the compiled python files, you can't modify or extract any line of code from it. The source code is distributed in github from this URL:
https://github.com/soundmud/soundrts

You have to clone it to modify, and make pull request to gean luck.

@victorious:
The serenity tree and medicine plant are already classed as effects, so that means that effects on a tile can be teleported along with regular units. My
suggestion is to change them into buildings instead, because those won't get teleported.

O, the solution of victorious is perfect! Try if possible use the summon command to invoke a building instead an effect or unit. If is possible do this, the solution is turn all trees and plants into buildings and all its OK with them. They can attack, they can't move, and they can't be teleported. however, the problem with spook-lights continue here. Definitely a temporal solution is reduce they speed to 0.

2014-06-15 08:29:10

You could make spook lights buildings as well, because its silly to be able to create spook lights on the current square, then have a druid teleport the spook lights to the enemy squares. I'm not sure if buildings can have decay though.

2014-06-15 08:30:48 (edited by zakc93 2014-06-15 08:36:37)

The problem with harm levels is that they will affect your units as well. Buildings are probably the best solution. Once the spook lights are immobilised, maybe they should be summonnable on adjacent squares, since the aim is not to make them underpowered. It would be cool if exorcism was able to destroy them, but I'm not sure how that would be possible.
Also, please look into the elementals for the next version as well. I had another epic defeat against them yesterday despite managing a few conversions. There really is just no way to beat them, not when they're being played by a human player anyway. Every other race has their weaknesses, the elementals should have some too.
Edit: I don't think teleporting spook lights would be so bad, since you would lose a druid which you would need to have converted, and since the spook lights are only temporary, it would probably not be worth it anyway. Now I'm curious, is it possible to teleport ally units?

2014-06-15 12:18:19

Hi.

Good look, in the buildings' class, the trees and the plants seem to behave like we want. But they are concerned now by the abilities that affect buildings, maybe some players will notice this curiosity. About the spook lights, I think I will do like I said, with a speed as 0 and a range of 2 meters. I'm not sure it's necessary to put them like buildings.

Ideally, all the ranges should be in meters. Currently, you can have a maps with very big squares, and the units that can attack the adjacent squares can damage the entire adjacent squares, even if the squares are 50 meters. It should be the same thing with the abilities, we could imagine a teleportation with a limit in meters.

About balancing, we have tested the mod on our maps, mainly CAN5 and PRA8. In this kind of map, the elementals don't seem too strong. However, I understand they are very strong on others maps, for example the small maps where the players begin with 4000 golds and woods. Maybe we will define the official maps for the mod, like sanslash has suggested.

2014-06-15 12:36:25

I don't think the range modifier works for abilities, like you can only put square, nearby, or anywhere for abilities ranges.

2014-06-16 04:36:39 (edited by sanslash332 2014-06-16 06:28:10)

@pragma:

Good look, in the buildings' class, the trees and the plants seem to behave like we want. But they are concerned now by the abilities that affect buildings,
maybe some players will notice this curiosity. About the spook lights, I think I will do like I said, with a speed as 0 and a range of 2 meters. I'm not
sure it's necessary to put them like buildings.

hmm it's more realist if the trees and plants can be affected by spells or skills that affects buildings. Both are asserted on the ground.


About the meters, this is the ideal behavior  for the game. All things have to be calculated respecting the meters, and not be the squares. The squares should just be a navigation method for the maps, and not a calculating parameter.
With this, the special range will be completely deleted of the game, and the units like catapults, only have a long meter range to attack adjacent squares. Of course will be necessary create other new parameter, a death zone for this kind of unit. For example, if an enemy is less than 5 meters, the  unit can't attack this enemy.


@victorous:

I don't think the range modifier works for abilities, like you can only put square, nearby, or anywhere for abilities ranges.

nop, all  abilities completely ignores the range parameter.

Pragma, if you can, in the credits of new version, put "Typhlojuegos" Mailgroup as the contributors of Spanish translation. Not my nick. I only distribute the translation to you.
edit:
is a bug that the spiing airship don't have a mana_regen?
Or is deffined that are maximum 4 shoots of gas lacrimojene for each airship.

2014-06-16 07:41:20

Its probably intended that they do not have mana regen.

2014-06-16 09:27:59

About elementals, on maps where you start out with little resources and gathering resources are necessary, elementals might have the opposite problem: be too vulnerable to early rush attacks and take too long to build up (not sure since I haven't tried this against human players). But if this is the case, then they'll be impractical to play on these maps as well. I think if they are made weaker but less costly to recruit, a better balance can be achieved with other races.

2014-06-16 11:26:10

Hmm, maybe the stats of each elemental could be halved, with the resource and time costs being reduced to 60% of their current values?

2014-06-16 13:27:46

Hi.

In fact, in our maps, the player who chooses the elementals has to recruit 30 or 40 fairies immediatly and he builds other circles quickly. The best strategy is probably to occupy the biggest mines and woods from the begining of the game. Often, the elementals and the robotics are the first races to compete for the resources' squares.

But because the fairies fly and are not expensive, the elementals have an advantage that offsets their offensive weakness at the begining. They can install circles everywhere to take resources. Even if an ennemy destroys a circle, it's usually profitable.

We continue to think about it.

2014-06-16 15:49:02

Its odd, are you not convinced Pragma that elementals are overpowered? Honestly the medicinal plants and serenity trees being teleportable is a fairly minor balance issue, compared to elementals.

2014-06-16 15:54:10

Hmm, makes me wonder who you play with. Perhaps we could play with them too? Though really, I don't understand how having fairies building elemental circles everywhere really helps elementals to be more balanced. Really all you're saying is that enemy players, if they want any chance of winning against them, have to fight for control of those goldmines and probably spread their already relatively poor armies thin doing it. On maps where resources are not an issue such as onj1, which gives you 4000 gold and wood, the problem is even bigger, because the only thing that's stopping you from building up an army of elemental ownage is recruitment and building times.
The opposite problem, where elementals are weak in the beginning of a game that starts you off with few resources, is also untrue. They have the best ability to exploit resources before anyone else does. Yous aid so yourself in post 90. You say the following: In fact, in our maps, the player who chooses the elementals has to recruit 30 or 40 fairies immediatly and he builds other circles quickly.
This does not make sense to me, especially in the context of your argument, which is that elementals don't need denting because their incredible power is balanced out by their long recruitment time and huge resource costs. Other players can make the same number of peasant units as easily as an elemental player can make fairies. The fact that they can fly, though, is just another advantage of the elemental race, because they are the only peasant unit that can do this, so they will undoubtedly be the first to the squares that have big resources. So really, this statement doesn't help your argument that elementals don't need to be made less powerful. They do.

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2014-06-16 15:58:26

Thanks KeyWasFull. For me, there are only 7 races, because elementals are just so unbalanced, and I feel as if its cheating to play them.

2014-06-17 00:13:22

Hi. Glad to know that you have decided to translate the mod. It's interesting that the rules have been evolved and tested by players. I wouldn't find the time and energy to evolve and test the rules of the races I wanted to add, so this mod is probably better and would allow me to focus on the code.

I don't know yet what you think about including the mod in the official installer. Maybe at the moment you have a better flexibility with the current way of distributing. You can remove maps, add rules, change sounds without having to wait for me.

On the other hand, and like in the past, I can try to change the code to allow things that are not possible yet. Changing the class of the trees to buildings is probably the simplest way with the current code. Changing the range to meters instead of next square might require lots of change with the units AI, so it's not that simple. Creating impassable mountains (even for air units) like in Warcraft 3 is possible but not so simple because the units AI will have to find a path around the mountains. Maybe use the same code for air and ground.

According to automatic bug reports, there might be a bug in the current alpha version when trying to convert a unit. I'm not sure how it can happen. Did you notice something wrong during a game?

It seems that since mid 2013 the number of multiplayer games have suddenly collapsed. This is unusual. Maybe the new versions have broken something, I don't know. Maybe the small example mods (orcs, stone) I had added have fragmented the player base. Focusing on this mod might help. Not sure if I should keep the default rules. Need more thinking.

2014-06-17 00:57:03

I think that the decline in multiplayer games is because the public server was shut down. A lot of people just don't have the inclination or the knowhow or the patience to set up their own servers and forward tport 300 through their routers and stuff.

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2014-06-17 04:15:01

@SoundMud: I think you should keep the existing rules, because they are a good starting point for newbies to familiarize themselves with game mechanics before adding additional races to the mix.

2014-06-17 04:40:32

First of all, thanks soundmud for come to this topic. And for give to them your support.

For suggestions for the game, and that are not too much difficult to implement, one parameter that makes one unit (or building) be uncontrollable by the owner, and that cast it's effect (if it has) controlled randomly with a cool down time, or every x seconds. Including with it attack, self-defense, etc.

I'm not sure if the current  behavior of special range parameter is ideal. It's necessary have two different flags to determinates if one unit (or building) can attack adjacent squares, and defend itself.

Currently in the alpha, what are the properties of one thing that can be affected by bonus effect? And it's possible add option to create passive skills (or upgrades), such like a attacks can make slower the foe. Or skills that paralyze units for a period of time change their speed to 0 for a few time.

Currently only the "can build" options requires as target a meadow? That is a good option, for spells or abilities, add one option that requires a one spell must be casted in a meadow (for example invoke one magic building) or have to cost paying life or resources to cast it. For example, one spell that requires sacrifices the caster to make a super summoning effect.

I'm thinking in this, because I Want to try create a race like a Zergs of starcraft. One race thats sacrifices it's workers to mutate it into buildings. A, and all of their units are mutations of a basic unit created at the hatchery.

Other parameter is if can add to requires trigger, the condition that the building is necessary be next to another. For example, for creating and add-on to some buildings.

Well. More, and more stuff can be added to the game. The possibilities are infinite.


And... soundmud, what are the main classes in the code of the game? Who of them are directly instantiated and who of them are just abstract class?

Thanks.

bye!

2014-06-17 07:26:52

@SoundMUD: something that was brought up is weather you could make it so that units with special_range are also able to attack in its own square if a range is specified.
Also, I was thinking, could you maybe add a flag that would make a unit unconvertible?

2014-06-17 12:01:12 (edited by frastlin 2014-06-17 12:02:43)

GRR! This mod makes sound RTS way too fun! LOL
A couple things:
1. I would like a ton of maps, the first ones can be the starting rules, with the original units. Then the next map can have the town hall with all the different races, but one only. Then one can move up from there. It would be nice to have more descriptive names for the maps. Also, could there be a description of what upgrade comes after what and what each army unit is for? I'm just throwing mods in, researching arrows and whatnot because I'm sure it is good, but I'm not sure how.

A bug I think!
On the grave digger's last building, when I summon those final undead creatures, they eat my grave diggers...

And yes, setting up your own server is way too complex for most people. Although if someone wrote a nice guide on how to do it for rtr and all the other games that use them, I'm sure it would help!

2014-06-17 13:58:18

cursed gargoyles deal damage to any healables on the current square. I'm not a big fan of them, but since they fly you can bring them deep into enemy territory. I guess if you summon like 12 of them, you could give your enemy some serious grief if he's using healable units such as elves or orcs.

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