Dune Wars Mod

keldath said:

heres the patch- land terrain:

http://ul.to/n35kf4

Click to expand...

Great. A changelist would be really helpful. There are always going to be some differences between the land and sea versions; it should be only the base terrain itself, and the AI settings for the hover/transport units. So, if there are any *other* differences between this and patch 5, could you let us know? Otherwise we are sort of poking around at random.

I am starting to really feel that land transport is a *fatal* problem for the land model. What advantages do you see in the land model, which we cannot do in the ocean model?

hey david,

theres not difference between the land and sea patchs, just the unitais, and the terrain settings.

ill try to keep a list - its my weakness, cause mostly i do whatever you guys reports.

major changes i do write though...ill try better.


i dont see any fatal issue with ocean model, just the thing that carryalls wont be able to get into land...but...we can love with it.
the land terrain will allow a bit more tweaks with units movement, and im sure it will produce a game with more action,

but sticjing to vanilla ocean is also good, i also like the level difference between land and sand sea.

whatever you guys decide is fine with me,
if you guys prefer we use the ocean as basis and perhaps later deal with land - that also fine with me.

i have fixed some minor stuff you reported.
hope i didnt passed something.
i really want to do the corporations thing,
and after that - merge in johny's modeled woc revdcm.

The vanilla tech icons have been bothering me, especially ones like the cow and horse. So I hunted around for images and stuck them onto buttons. I am not able to actually draw anything, but I can crop fine. The jpg is not actually an atlas; I somehow lost the alpha channel. But the individual dds files are in the zipfile. They go in assets\art\interface\buttons\techtree, and you would need to edit the xml to correspond. The filenames should be obvious, but in order shown in the jpg:

Row 1: Desert Exploration, Conservation, Water Springs, Irrigation, Desert Resources, Desert Warfare

Row 2: Hovering, Desert Suits, Winds of Arrakis, Suk School, Dune Topography.

Anybody else want to take a crack at some?

davidlallen,
yeah i know brow, you did mentioned it, along with others.

alright,
if you guys can get me the images,
ill connect them to an atlas and the xml.

)

david,

is it possible for you to create a second corporation screen or something like this? for the unique corps?
have you given to this matter some thought?

The individual dds files are there, so you just need to unzip them and change the xml.

I agree that lack of money is a problem, and I agree that there is not much sense of spice economy in the game so far. I am not sure that corporations are the answer. But I have not thought about it very much. Is there a reason to have two sets of corporations? Why isn't one set enough?

Sigh. I have hacked my way past the problem where the windtrap feature was being deleted. Now it is working in vanilla revdcm, see this post. But somehow fresh water is entirely missing from dune wars. The flag bAddsFreshWater on features is not doing anything. To see, edit your xml/terrain/civ4featuresinfo.xml file and for any feature change this flag from 0 to 1. In revdcm and vanilla civ, this makes all the squares adjacent to it have fresh water when you move the mouse over them. In dune wars this flag has no effect.

Can anybody suggest why this may be happening?

davidlallen.....

its not that theres no effect man!
its the text!! its missing - ! johny deleted the water tag!

i think theres a water text file on the mod - jus get into it and write something there!
so it means it working! i forgot about it - at first - we didnt know how to remove lakes - and we ddint want to have text of water when hover the mouse above the adjacent tiles - so we deleted it!

Oh, cool. Now the windtrap is completely working. It can be built on hills or peak, gives 2 food, and provides fresh water around it. I have changed the irrigation, growth facility and green house to require fresh water.

I can definitely see the problem you mentioned with the mapscript. Small pockets of deep desert also generate fresh water, since they are treated as lakes. I can probably get rid of this in the mapscript.

It will take a little time to balance it. If there is any request, I can post what I have so that other people can try it in parallel. I think the AI will build it well enough. It doesn't actually *add* that much food; the +2 food goes onto a plot which is usually zero food. I may have to make it +3 if I want the population to be more or less the same as population in vanilla games.

go ahead man,
im very happy with what youve made, looking forward to see it inside the mod.

I played a game using patch 5, small map, archipelago mapscript to test out the new windtrap. It is working!

It requires changes in a number of files. I have made a bunch of other changes in those files also. What is the best way to give you these changes? I had written up a description of all the steps to make the changes, but it's a long list. Maybe you would prefer if I gave you the changed files so you did not have to edit; but then some other changes might "sneak in".

The changed files are:

Add invisible feature whose job is to spread fresh water: CIV4FeatureInfos.xml CIV4ArtDefines_Feature.xml

Add "City Wind Trap" building: CIV4BuildingInfos.xml CIV4BuildingClassInfos.xml CIV4ArtDefines_Building.xml

Add "Wind Trap" improvement: CIV4ImprovementInfos.xml CIV4ArtDefines_Improvement.xml

Add "Build Wind Trap" action: CIV4BuildInfos.xml

Key code to add the feature when the improvement or building is built: CvEventManager.py

Post-process map to remove lakes: mapscript.py

Put back text for Fresh Water: Water_CIV4GameTextInfos.xml

Spice Economy

I read up on spice at wikipedia. The "Little Maker" article has the best description. Fremen were able to mine spice manually throughout history. The best way to mine it is to wait for a "spice blow", like a small volcano, and find the rich spice deposit right afterwards. With technology, they would airlift a harvester there, collect until wormsign was spotted nearby, and then flee.

I am not sure how to fit that into a Civ mod. The airlift unit is late in the game, but we want to make spice mining important throughout the whole game. We can make desert generally give a high gold value (see 81 below). We can make the existing spice bonuses give pretty high gold, but deep desert ground units don't appear till mid game.

One thing I can do, after we get the windtrap integrated, is write some more python which will make "spice blows" randomly appear. There is a tornado minimod I can use. After the spice blow, a valuable bonus should appear. I was thinking that this bonus could remain for a number of turns and then disappear. But if we want some kind of "spice victory" based on controlling spice output, having them appear randomly may be a little frustrating.

I guess I am not really sure how to proceed on that. Any thoughts?

New issues

79. You renamed the foundry unit to grove, but unfortunately in units/civ4buildinfos.xml, the action is still called "Build a Foundry".

80. I had a start with a decent number of food bonus squares, but none of them was Sand Verbana. *All* of the early food buildings like food silo give health for verbana only. So I was really limited by health. Can you make the buildings also give the health bonus for some other food bonuses?

81. I made a bunch of changes related to coast and ocean. I am not sure you will like them. Coast right now gives 1 food, 1 gold; it does not make sense to me that it gives food. So I changed it to 2 gold. I actually made ocean give zero everything. There are a number of bonuses which can appear on coast or ocean. I made them all land-only except for little maker, sandtrout, and the spice bonuses. I also removed sandtrout from coast and set its food bonus to zero.

82. Even bumping up the gold for coast to 2, the AI never used it. I used it a little, when I needed gold. Maybe if there is an early game tech to give another +1 gold for coast, it would be more valuable and also solve part of the gold problem.

83. Based on looking at the AI's, the +5 gold you get from either Oracle of Hajra or Pillar of Fire is highly important in the early game. That is OK, it's just I hadn't noticed it before.

84. Soostone is really important, and kind of rare. It is required for grenade troopers, and it gives double build speed for the two important wonders. It may be helpful to make it less rare.

85. There is a big bare spot for new units in the middle game. Maybe you still consider this the early game. The two key technologies for an attack are hovering and imperialism (for mortars). Once you get those, it takes a long time before you get any other interesting unit. The techs which give new units are quite a bit further up the tree, or else they are on unimportant branches. I am not sure what to suggest, but I seem to get a little bored once I launch the first attack around turn 150-200. My economy goes in the toilet due to unit support and distance maintenance, my tech rate slows to nothing, and there is nothing new I can build except more troops.

davidlallen,

hi man,

glad to know the windtrap works!

i prefer you send me all the files youve made, ill add them in, would save me some time.

spice economy,

i have created a corporation for each civ, when you found your first city - you get a corporation (using a building).

every corp will consume spice, and have different economy values per spice.

i think it will add some interest to get more spice. ill make the ai to think its its most important res', and likely to go to war on it.

for now i named it "house spice firm", im open for suggestions..

should be nice.

its weird not having roads .

ill use what you wrote on the feedback,
but ill refer to these :

84. agreed, ill un rare it.

85. when i started the tech and units, i decided to make a substential time frame between jumping onto a next level of unit, so youll have more time to enjoy from each unit class,
but i agree it might be sometimes boring.
i was thinking about making some hero units - that they will have abit more strength form the other units, that will be placed in the between techs , i used it for my overlord2 mod -combo units - its fun and makes certain units more valuable - cause you can only have 1-4 of each .

as for economy and money levels..not to worry, we will raise it more, much more.

Well, here is an unofficial patch-patch, or mod-patch, or something. Please take your dune-wars 1.0 installation, apply patch 5 from keldath, and then apply this patch over that. This contains all the changes I have made locally so far. The important changes are:

* No more roads. Trade propagates along terrain types, like it does in vanilla for coast or ocean, when you achieve certain techs (#70)
* Windtraps. Farm improvements require fresh water, which is only available from the windtrap improvement or the city windtrap building (#71)
* Much less bonus from coasts. No food, fewer bonuses appear. (#81)

I have posted all the changes I made previously; here are the issue numbers which are fixed in my release:

20. Non-vanilla tech icons. Added 12 new icons, changes in technologyinfos.xml
47. New LH and button for spacer guild guy. XML change only, you already had the files.
58. At the end of the first turn there is a cascade of 20 python alerts. Changed file assets\revolution\rebeltypes.py to add "return" at line 20.
59. Added missing change for thumpers, artdef_interface.xml
60. Harkonnen starts with hover tech. This is now way up in the tech tree, it is not a good starting tech. It is TECH_HUNTING, search in civilizationinfos.xml. There aren't any other tier 1 techs so I randomly changed them to another one, and deleted from minor civs.
69. Hover tech was moved deeper in the tech tree, but the cost was not changed. It is a bargain for where it is. I made it 220.
70. I made some changes to TerrainTrades as described in an earlier post. It deletes roads altogether, which seems worthwhile for Dune.
71. Added windtrap code, numerous changed files, new directory art/units/windtrap, small modification to mapscript PublicMaps/Archipelago.py to remove lakes.
73. Renamed Irrigation to Desert Farming. Some messages are confusing when real irrigation is used. My windtrap mod will use real irrigation.
74. To prevent the AI from going crazy building Sand APC: remove iAIWeight 15 (search, this is also on one other unit). I also moved it one later in the tech ttree, Desert Power instead of Desert Pathfinding, and increased the cost from 65 to 90.
75. Maula Mortar has a foot soldier unit graphic, but it has SPECIALUNIT_ARMORUNITS, which means it cannot be loaded onto the hover transport. That means any real assault must wait for desert pathfinding (or desert power, see previous item). I changed it to SPECIALUNIT_PEOPLE.
76. On the other hand, the Strider unit is a Burseg, and it should have SPECIALUNIT_ARMORUNITS. I did see a Smuggler Strider; I am not sure if that is on purpose. Probably it is just missing from the exclude list in civilizationinfos.
78. Changed workboat to move 1, to prevent using it as a cheap scout.
81. I made a bunch of changes related to coast and ocean. I am not sure you will like them. Coast right now gives 1 food, 1 gold; it does not make sense to me that it gives food. So I changed it to 2 gold. I actually made ocean give zero everything. There are a number of bonuses which can appear on coast or ocean. I removed all of them except for little maker, sandtrout, and the spice bonuses. I also removed sandtrout from coast and set its food bonus to zero.

Population levels

In other news, I wrote a quick routine to count some statistics which can be applied to dune wars, or standard revolution dcm. I wanted to compare the number of cities, population, etc across several runs. At this point I have done *one* autoplay each of:

* Dune wars with patch-5-davea above
* Revolutions DCM with Archipelago mapscript
* Revolutions DCM with Pangaea mapscript

Each game is at Prince difficulty, huge size, and autoplayed for 400 turns.

In the Dune Wars game, the average number of cities is 6, the average population is 60, and the average number of units is 85. In the Rev Archipelago game, the average number of cities is 17, average population 200, and average number of units is 140. In the Rev Pangaea game, cities 14, population 170, units 160. I would have thought pangaea would have a higher population.

I do not think there is much of a lesson from these numbers; with only one run each, they are not statistically significant. But it is interesting that the Dune number of cities is about 3x less, while the average population per city is about the same. This routine will be helpful to see the effect of tuning the bonuses; for example, it will be interesting to see what happens to the number of cities when I increase the amount of gold for coastline, or make some other change.

Just a simple question, because you've dealt more with it than me:
The CanMoveAllTerrain tag works, doesn't it?
With both, DOMAIN_LAND and DOMAIN_WATER?
"Only" the transport is the problem, right?

We have done some investigation on this with no solution yet. Please see this thread for more detail. Briefly, bCanMoveAllTerrain has no effect on DOMAIN_SEA units for a reason we mostly do not understand. If you take a ship, make it DOMAIN_LAND, and give it bCanMoveAllTerrain, then the AI will not use it as an ocean transport. We would dearly love an sdk coder to follow the suggestions given by jdog in that thread.

Hey!

http://uploaded.to/file/s34kwl

This is a (experimental) patch for Dune wars patch 5 (sea terrain):

- imported the drop ship from Planetfall and made changes in sdk suggested by jdog5000 and maniac (thanks!).
- Drop ships can be trained in all cities. I didn't balanced the ship, but you can use it as a blue print.
- new terrain art, it still need some work (grid not working)
- better fix for diplomacy bug

You have answered my prayers! Unfortunately I am not quite able to play a game. I deleted my mods\dune wars area, ran the original version 1.0 install, applied patch 5, and applied your patch. When I start a game and use F6 to bring up the tech screen, I get a cascade of python errors, and I am unable to select a tech to research. Also when I hit the shift key, I get a cascade of python errors.

If this is completely working, then we have no more need for the "land model". This will be awesome!

Hmm... it is working fine for me. Maybe try without the python files.

As a long time Dune fan, I love the mod ,but could not help but notice; you misspelled Kwisatz Haderach. Also, is there an actual patch I can download, or is it just a bunch of unofficial modifications?

@ koma -- try without which python files? I have only included the files from your patch and the previous patches. What would you suggest I remove? Is it possible for you to rip out your install area and load the main release, patch 5, and your patch to see what happens?

@ blade117 -- the mod is under development. The difference between an "official" and "unofficial" patch is mostly imaginary. I suggest you download the main file from post 1 in this thread, and then add patch 5 as listed in this post. The particular misspelling you mention is corrected in that patch among others. Then please let us know your feedback! There are a number of changes underway, but we definitely need more playtesters and also people willing to create dune-o-pedia entries.

try without which python files? I have only included the files from your patch and the previous patches. What would you suggest I remove? Is it possible for you to rip out your install area and load the main release, patch 5, and your patch to see what happens?

Click to expand...

What is the python error? Can you post it?