[dev thread] Mad Max Fury Road

This thread is for discussion of my Fury Road BTS mod, inspired by the "Mad Max" movies and the Fallout series of CRPGs.

EDIT June 29: We have a sub-forum for discussion, please come visit. Also, version 0.5 is released.

It is after a nuclear apocalypse when the landscape is desert, gasoline is precious, and biker gangs threaten to destroy the last centers of civilization. The challenge is to *rebuild* civilization by scavenging from the ruins, not to *build* civilization.

The first few posts in this thread show the different elements I originally planned for the mod: tech tree, resources and improvements, units, buildings, map. This is still relevant, but does not reflect the current game; see the documentation in the latest release at the above link.

Please take a look and let me know what you think. I have no ability to do graphics, which is a big limitation for the mod. Getting the Mad Max theme will require a bunch of custom unit and building graphics.

BTW, "Fury Road" was the working title of the fourth Mad Max movie. There are some older rumors on the net but there is nothing recent. So it seems like a good name to use.

EDIT: this gives the idea, but it's mostly out of date.

The tree is a lot smaller than a full tree, and it assumes civilization got up to the modern era before falling back to Mad Max level technology, where you can occasionally get cars and guns working, but mechanical items like crossbows are more common.

Combustion -> Refining -> Distilling, Purifying

This represents rediscovery of gasoline manufacturing. Combustion reveals oil and allows building wells. Refining allows building the refinery building, which is required to create gasoline, which is required to fuel most of the units in the game. Purifying allows higher yield gasoline which will enable certain promotions. Distilling yields jet fuel, which is required for fueling gunships.

Agriculture -> Medicine

Agriculture allows building farms and pastures. Even after the apocalypse, some animals and crop plants survive. To make the medic promotions rarer, medicine is required.

Construction -> Engineering -> Composites

Construction is required for building basic structures such as cottages and roads. Engineering allows building walls and forts. Composites represents more modern armor technology and enables strongpoints in cities, which provide some defense against gunpowder weapons.

Small Arms -> Automatic weapons -> Heavy Weapons -> Rocketry

To start, you can only build crossbow armed units. Small Arms represents the ability to make shotguns and rifles, and ammunition. Automatic weapons enables the use of machine guns and similar, although in the scope of the game, you can only find this type of weapon in ruins and you cannot build them on your own. Heavy weapons represents the ability to repair (but not build) tank and anti-tank type weapons. Rocketry is the ability to repair missiles and ICBMs which you may find in ruined missile silos. See the post on resources / improvements to understand more about how units can be found in ruins.

Machinery -> Salvaging -> Recycling

Machinery lets you build large, non-powered equipment like catapults and also enables building junkyards to reclaim resources (hammers) from ruin sites. Recycling improves the efficiency of junkyards and enables scrubbing fallout.

Engines -> Customizing, Railroad

Without engines technology, you can only work on small engines like cars and motorcycles. Engines enables building a garage, which enables customizing car and motorcycle units with better suspension, weapons and so forth. This will enable a number of promotions. Railroad represents the ability to repair locomotives and train tracks for much faster mobility across country.

Since the play is based around "rebuilding", we want to focus on getting useful things out of the ruins, not out of mining or harvesting forests. So the yield of most plots is reduced.

All the normal resources are gone except for cows, sheep, corn, wheat, rice, and oil. There is a new feature called ruins, which will do most of the work; note this is not the vanilla "city ruins", which is an improvement. I cannot use that since you cannot put an improvement on top of an existing improvement; you can put improvements on top of features.

The following resources may be placed in plots with the ruin feature. They interact strongly with the improvements (below) and tech tree (previous post).

* Munitions: represents caches of usable automatic and heavy weapons. Required to build units armed with anything more than small arms.

* Ruined depot: when rebuilt, will enable creation of modern era military units: tank, artillery, mobile SAM

* Ruined railyard: when rebuilt, will enable usage of railroads for faster movement

* Ruined airbase: when rebuilt, will enable usage of gunships

* Ruined silo: when rebuilt, will enable usage of tacnukes and ICBMS

The following improvements are available.

* Junkyard: early in the game, you can build this on ruin plots to increase hammers

* Armory: build on munitions resource to enable building most military units.

* Depot, railyard, airbase, silo: placing this improvement on a ruined resource (eg, placing a depot improvement on a ruined depot plot) represents re-activating the building.

In the early game, you put junkyards in ruins to get more hammers. In the mid game, you build armory improvements on top of munitions resources in ruin features, to get automatic weapons.

In the late game, you rebuild the four advanced improvements; they can only be rebuilt where the original ruin exists. Combined with the proper tech, advanced units can be rebuilt. For example, you find a ruined depot resource, you build a depot improvement on it, and you develop the Heavy Weapons tech. This enables rebuilding of tanks, artillery and SAM infantry.

The mechanic for this will require python. It can almost, but not quite be done in XML events, and I don't think it requires using the SDK. Once the depot improvement exists, it will randomly generate one of the advanced units every 4-6 turns. Whoever owns the plot at that time gets control of the unit. So you could build the improvement, have an enemy occupy it (even temporarily), and the enemy might wind up with a free tank.

The same idea is used for airfields to generate gunships, railyards to generate locomotives, and silos to generate ICBM or tacnukes. These advanced units are "rebuilt" or "activated", which is quite different from vanilla units which can be built at any speed by using hammers in your cities.

Since this is a total mod, almost all the vanilla units are removed. In the early game, you have unmodified vanilla settlers and workers. There are also two new land units, choppers and interceptors. This is the main "flavor" of Mad Max. Choppers are mobile motorcycle units used primarily by barbarians. Interceptors are "muscle cars" used primarily by civs. Interceptors, in particular, can be heavily customized with promotions. The strength of these units will be around six or eight. The vanilla warrior unit is available early, and will be boosted to a strength slightly less than these units. With a little tech, the catapult unit can be built to help with attacking enemy cities; its strength may be boosted into this range.

As you develop technology, you can build some units, but here is where fuel becomes an issue. The chopper and interceptor can scavenge fuel and have unlimited range, but any other mobile unit requires fuel and resupply. You may recall the big climax of Mad Max involves defending one gas truck against an onslaught of choppers and jeeps, so we need to capture that with a mechanic. The idea here is that we will have fuel trucks, which contain fuel needed for resupply, and fuel trucks can be captured like workers.

A fuel truck is built by a refinery building which requires the oil resource. I know there are a few mods which do something like this already, which may be a good source of example code; but what I want is a little different. In Warlords and BTS, the Great General can be "consumed" to give experience points to units in its stack. I want the fuel truck to be "consumed" to give turns of supply to units in its stack. So you build a fuel truck and stack it with 4-5 jeeps, and "consume" it. Its fuel supply, say 40 turns of supply, is divided among the units in the stack. So each unit gets 8-10 turns of supply. As long as the unit has supply, it can move. But after that number of turns, say 8-10 turns, it becomes immobile. It can defend at a penalty, but it cannot attack, and it cannot move until the owning player can move another truck there and resupply it.

This has a huge effect on strategy, and will require an SDK mod in order for the AI to have a prayer of understanding it. If you are attacking a city at any distance away, you will have to put a couple of fuel trucks into your stack in order to refuel. The fuel trucks are vulnerable to being captured. Of course you could rely on being able to capture fuel trucks of the enemy; that *might* work, or it might become a suicide mission.

The mid-game units are related to the tech tree. Once you have Refining, you can build gas trucks and jeeps. The basic jeep is just a mobile platform for crossbow wielding punks. With Small Arms, you can build riflemen or upgrade warriors to riflemen; and you can upgrade jeeps to rifle armed jeeps. With Automatic Weapons, and access to the munitions resource through armory improvements, you can build stronger units. You can build the machine gun unit from the vanilla game, or upgrade your rifle jeeps to automatic weapons.

The strongest units in the mod are the modern units which have the same stats as the vanilla units, but they are "rebuilt" as described in the resources post above. These are tank, artillery, SAM infantry, gunship, ICBM and tacnuke, and they will not show up until late game in this mod. Gunships require special fuel, as shown in the tech tree; they require a more advanced distillery building and a specialized truck. The jet fuel truck cannot resupply jeeps, and the gasoline truck cannot refuel gunships.

I have removed almost all the existing buildings. I needed a couple of standard ones for health, happiness, culture boosts. Here is the list. For new buildings, I have listed in parentheses the building graphic it uses.

Refinery (factory): once you have combustion and build this, it automatically generates a gas truck once every few turns.

Garage (stable): gives +XP for wheeled units like jeeps and trucks

Simple renames: School (library), Thunderbowl (colosseum), Factory (forge)

Same as vanilla: Aqueduct, radio tower, walls, granary, monument, market

I have written a mapscript which does pretty much what I want. It only generates pangaea maps; I started with the vanilla pangaea.py. It goes through the following steps.

1. Generate terrain. No changes here.
2. Generate features. I have overridden the standard feature generator to make a lot more plains and desert, but no other changes here.
3. I wasn't able to get a low enough amount of forest with the default feature generator, so the script loops over the map and removes half the forest randomly. It also puts in some random fallout plots.
4. Call the standard starting position generator.
6. Add city ruin centers which are between 4-8 plots away from any start position and at least 6 plots away from any other city ruin
7. Around the ruin center, add some additional ruin plots and fallout plots.
8. Add some ruin suburbs at 2-4 plots distance from the ruin center and add roads which connect them to the center
9. Repeat 6-8 until there are no more locations for ruin centers
10. Add roads which run between nearby pairs of ruin centers. This is a little tricky and does not guarantee every ruin center is connected, but it seems to be good enough.

I had a very similar idea and developed alot of stuff but never started on it. I'll PM you the excel file, since I cannot seem to upload it.

Added jefmart1's excel file with his permission, which contains a number of excellent ideas

I was also going to try to create different looking goody huts; like small towns, military bases, city ruins, etc to try to create the PA (post apocalyptic) feel. For example, New York would have been 4-5 ruined city goody huts with radiation and "barbarians" around it. But I have no modeling experience so I couldn't do that.

Much of what I wanted to do was limited by the fact that I can only use XML and alot of stuff required Python or SDK work. Like, I wanted to have units get poisoned, radiated, or diseased and then potentially spread it, but have it cureable or wear off. I wanted to have vehicle and unit ammo be switchable between HE, AP, and regular. Basically using the "spell" functions if FFH like for the ships. But that required Python to change the schema in the XML files.

It was pretty ambitious and when I realized I couldn't do half the stuff I wanted I didn't pursue it any further.

jefmart1, there are a lot of good themed buildings and civs in your excel. I like the idea of goody huts for the ruins -- there might be something good there, or there might be a monster. I can see some influences from the "Fallout" games which is cool. Fallout Tactics was one of my favorites.

I definitely agree that the standard Civ fallout feature does not fit the PA feel. In Fallout, you'd get radiated and lose stats for a while, unless you had one of the counter medicines. In Civ, you don't have any trouble inside fallout, it just decreases food/hammers/commerce. I am sure it would take an SDK mod to implement damage there, I'll put that onto the list.

I also like your idea of the blood sports line. Clearly there has to be a "thunderdome" type wonder in there for entertainment and unit experience!

I'm going to try the different ammo types with different unit types -- for example, in my units post above, I have jeep, upgrading to jeep with rifle once you have small arms, upgrading to jeep auto once you have automatic weapons. That has the advantage of only requiring XML.

So far I haven't gotten into the python/SDK part, but I've got a bunch of small XML questions which I have posted other places. I think I can keep making good progress.

The first 2 Fallouts were waaay better then Fallout Tactics (which was cool) but was a little to scripted.

As for the fallout, I think it could be implemented using the spell system from Fall from Heaven 2. There is a poison promotion in there that could be the same just with the Radiation "promotion".

I tried to use "promotions" for the vehicle upgrades so I would only have a few actual units and they would be customizable. For example, the Technical (a pickup or SUV with a light machine gun mounted on it). You would add roll bars, armor, heavier weapons, etc as higher tech become available. I wanted to have these upgrades purchaseable instead of earned, but I couldn't do that with XML (but I was told it was doable with Python and SDK).

I will add "damaging fallout" to my list of "things to figure out how to do with python/sdk". All the XML stuff is done, apart from some tuning I could still do. But there are some mechanics I still have to work out:

1. Limited fuel. I want fuel trucks to be capturable; but there are at least two related threads on quantifiable resources and fuel here which I haven't tackled yet. Maybe something there is close enough, and I can borrow it.

2. Units appearing on the "depot" type improvements, as I described in my units post above. This shouldn't be hard in python, I just need to dig into the existing documentation and get it done.

3. Damaging fallout. I haven't thought about this much, maybe it won't be hard, but I doubt there is any XML way to do it. The simplest thing is to just damage a unit when it moves there. But maybe the FFH poison mod does more, like you continue to take damage for N turns, and there are antidotes. That would be more complex but probably worthwhile.

4. Locomotives. When you rebuild a railyard, I want it to give access to faster movement; but I want to have locomotives which can be captured. I haven't figured out the details of that. One complication is that you cannot have two routes in the same square. So I cannot have separate highways and rail lines which run between the same cities. This one is least important so far because I feel it can be left out without affecting the overall feel.

Regarding vehicle upgrades with promotions or purchased upgrades, I agree purchased upgrades are a big theme in the Fallout games, in fact you could argue that is the entire point of Fallout. So far, I have a bunch of promotions which are specific to the Interceptor vehicle, and I am hoping that "leveling up and choosing the promotion" will have the same "cool factor" as purchasing a cool upgrade in Fallout.

EDIT: version 0.1 is obsolete. Please see later in the thread for the current version.

I am sure it needs more play-balancing, and I have a bunch of ideas for things to add. But, please take a look and tell me what you think. If you can get tanks to appear in the scenario, then the playtest of this version is a success. Hopefully the strategy information in the Civilopedia will give enough information to succeed. Please also see the known issues I have listed just above in this thread.

I'd be interested in seeing any save-games you wind up with, so I can see how your strategies compare to mine. This is interesting if you make tanks appear; but if you get stuck, it is still interesting. It indicates a play balancing problem, or insufficient information about how to reach the goals. PM me if you can't upload a save file and I will give you my RL email address.

I don't expect any crashes or funny behavior, because there is only a small amount of python so far and no SDK changes. But just in case, it will help any debugging if you edit your My Games\Beyond the Sword\CivilizationIV.ini file and set:

HidePythonExceptions = 0
LoggingEnabled = 1
SynchLog = 1
OverwriteLogs = 1
RandLog = 1
MessageLog = 1

You can download it by clicking on this link.

To run it, from the main BTS menu, choose Advanced, then Load a Mod, then Fury Road, then Play Now!. If this is the first mod you are trying, please look in the FAQ threads for help on installing and running mods.

EDIT: this is mostly out of date. See later in the thread for the current crossreference.

I located a few appropriate units in the download forum. I have not even tried to make resource or improvement graphics; I just re-used the existing ones. Some of the combinations don't work well; for example, it can be difficult to see certain resources like aluminum, when they are placed on a city ruin plot.

All the resources and improvements have the proper text when you hover over them with the mouse; but here is a cross-reference which shows the graphic for each item.

Resource and related improvement
* Munitions (aluminum) => Armory (mine)
* Ruined depot (stone) => Rebuilt depot (quarry)
* Ruined airbase (wine) => Rebuilt airbase (winery)
* Ruined silo (dye) => Rebuilt silo (plantation)

Other improvements
* Junkyard (windmill)
* Salvage Center (lumbermill)

EDIT: version 0.1 is obsolete. See later in the thread for the current version.

1. I can't figure out why some of the prerequisites for my new promotions are mixed up. They are clearly correct in the XML. For example, in the XML, Erratic Driving II requires Erratic Driving I, and Erratic Driving III requires Erratic Driving II. But during game play or in the civilopedia, EDIII requires EDI and EDII leads to hardpoints, which is unrelated in the xml.

2. Fuel is not yet added to the game. I have looked into the Quantitative Resource thread and Grey Fox's fuel modcomp. Both of them are close to what I want but I will need to do a bunch of work to get something working. The hardest part may be altering the AI so the other civs don't leave their units stranded.

3. There are no new unit graphics, bonus/improvement graphics, building graphics, or leaderheads. I have no ability to do graphics, it would really help if you could contribute. See the graphical crossreferences for what's what today. See the graphical requests post for a list of what I would like.

4. There is no map generator yet. I have manually created and balanced one map. I have described how the map generator might work here. I am now python-literate and I am a good programmer, so I can probably solve this.

5. Although there is a reference to ruined railyards enabling rail travel, this is not yet implemented. I need to think about the right mechanic. I want to have individual locomotive units which can be captured. I also want to have both roads and rails in the same plot, which does not appear possible.

6. I have added graphics for the buttons. But some of them are still black and white: hardpoint promotion, and the three unitcombat symbols.

7. I have added strategy text in the Civilopedia for all the items. Oddly there is no way to add text for improvements or promotions. However, I have not updated the quotes; so some techs may show unrelated quotes.

8. I haven't tried to customize the diplomacy text or leaders yet. Having "punk" style leaderheads would be a good start. I did turn off most of the nations in the list, and kept only the leaders which look at least sort of "punk". Pericles has a "punk" helmet, but of course that's the Parthenon in the background, which is not "punk".

9. Civics and religions all rely on "future tech", which is intentionally unavailable. I don't plan to use religions, but I doubt I can remove all references to religion. That is why future tech shows up in the technology page of the Civilopedia.

10. The XML for projects says there may be problems loading if all the projects are deleted, so I left one there. But it also relies on future tech so it is unavailable.

EDIT: this is partly obsolete. See later in the thread for an updated list.

I know it's a huge thing to ask. But I have no ability to do graphics, and a lot of Mad Max depends on the graphical theme. I have gotten a playable game with XML and Python, but a bunch of graphics would really make the game pop. Within each section I have tried to list the graphics by priority.

Features

I added one feature for city ruins by cloning the vanilla city ruins improvement. I can see that features are supposed to "tile" using the 16 NIF files for each one, but I don't know how to put them together. A tiling set of ruins features would be cool. Note that a lot of the bonuses and improvements are allowed only on the ruins feature. So the feature should be "flat" in altitude so that the bonuses and improvements stand out.


Units

1. Chopper unit. Any kind of motorcycle would do, ideally with a punk rider. This is the main barbarian unit.

2. Interceptor unit. Any kind of cool car would do. I know there have been a few requests before, but now there is a game to go along with it

3. Jeep units. I need three variants: unarmed punks, rifle armed punks, and vehicle mounted weapon with punks. The WillysJeep works well for the third one; see my more detailed request here.

4. Mutant animals. Even though Mad Max didn't have mutant animals, you know they would have, if they had a bigger budget or access to today's CGI! I was able to find a good giant spider, and I modified a nice werewolf model from FFH into a deathclaw (think gorilla with huge claws). I made a button for one other unit from the Fallout series, a radscorp (huge scorpion). It just uses the panther model. So a giant scorpion and anything else you can think of would be good.

5. Basic foot units like warrior, settler, rifleman. If there were a separate "punk" skin I would make that a barbarian specific unit.

6. Catapult. I have in mind a truck-towed, explosive-throwing feel. The wood and stone one doesn't fit the theme.

7. Gas truck. I found a generic World War II truck, but I don't have the skill to put a big silver tank on the back. See my more detailed request here.

Leaderheads

I took some low-res graphics from an older Fallout game to make the leaderheads in version 0.2. They aren't 3D but they do capture the "feel" I am looking for. Any kind of "punk" leaderheads would be great.

Ruined/rebuilt bonus pairs

There are three pairs of items which need related graphics. Each one can be ruined or rebuilt. My concept is that you could create the rebuilt item (improvement) first, which has lights and some animation. Then take that and remove the lights and animation and destroy part of the walls and roof. The second version is the original ruined one. All three pairs are limited to being built on the ruins feature, so they have to stand out in altitude and graphics.

1. Depot. This is a military base where tanks, artillery and SAM equipment were stored.

2. Airbase. This is a specialized military base where gunships were stored.

3. Silo. Another military base where ICBMs were stored. I guess these would normally be underground but that would be hard to mix in with the ruin feature.

Miscellanous

1. Junkyard and "advanced junkyard" (salvaging center) improvements

2. Walls. This may be hard to modify so it fits with the city L-system. But a Mad Max themed wall would be rusting sheet metal with barbed wire and graffiti.

3. Munitions. A bonus representing a cache of machine guns and ammo

4. Armory. An improvement built on top of munitions, it gives you the ability to build machine gun armed units

5. Garage building. I am using the stable graphic, which is kind of close, but having a modified version which looks more like a beat-up garage would help.

In the early game, I explored part of the map. My choppers kept getting killed by animals (which is by design) so I could not reach the whole map. But I found an oil resource nearby, and found a key munitions resource and ruined depot in the nearest ruined city. I built a settler and a couple of defensive units and set up a colony there.

Barbarians nearly overran me at least twice (which is by design). I had a few fogbusters out so I would at least get notice. As soon as I was able to get the munitions resource connected up I built machine guns, which will put a stop to future barbarian attacks.

It took a little while, but I got enough tech to get the rebuilt depot. Pericles was close enough to culture-flip the depot, but fortunately I had units occupying it, so I was able to rebuild a few tanks and artilleries. I was just barely able to conquer Athens after my tanks chewed up his riflemen.

My goal was to prove out the mechanics, and getting tanks was enough. So I retired. Afterwards, on the map I could see there was a small barbarian nation, and it turned out Boudica had also taken one of Pericles' smaller cities.

Moving back from another thread:

jefmart1 said:

I like the tech and the promos, you need to get the models for the units in before anyone else will probably play the mod. I was disappointed that there was no Road Warrior promo...

If you want the Road Warrior feel though you need to limit guns, especially after the first movie ammunition was apparently hard to come by. Maybe add crossbow tech and flamethrower tech?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback!

Regarding art, I totally agree. I need to figure out how to attract artists. I have learned that artists here mostly ignore requests unless there is already a working XML, which makes sense to tune out "wishlist" requests. But there is a chicken and egg problem, I don't want to put the game into the downloads section until there is art, and I don't seem to be getting much interest from artists yet.

Anybody have a suggestion for getting artists interested in an early, but working, game?

I have renamed "Erratic Driving" to "Road Warrior" in version 0.2. I want the interceptor unit to have a bunch of powerful, unique promos. I could release the second one as soon as I figure out the crash problem here.

It isn't obvious without the art, but there are four levels of progression for the units:

1. Primitive weapons: crossbows, clubs
2. (with "small arms" tech): rifles, shotguns, unlimited ammo
3. (with "automatic weapons" tech, "munitions" resource, and "armory" improvement): machine guns
4. (with rebuilt military depots): tanks, artillery

Level 1 is mostly what is in the movie. For level 3, there is sort-of limited ammo, since you need to have access to an improvement to build the units. I debated whether to do some kind of ammo limitation for level 2. I think a fuel limitation is absolutely critical for the "feel", so I have been exploring a way to do that. There is a "quantitative resources" thread active, and a recent "fuel modcomp"; both of those are close to what I want. If I can get a mechanism worked out for limited fuel, it may be possible to reuse it for limited ammo at level 2.

sounds really cool.
I loved the mad max movies (and kknd if someone remembers...)!
so, my offer here stands as well (as it does for the dune mod):

If you come to a point of a fun playable Mod (gameplay-wise), I am willing to do a fitting, coherent unit and terrain graphics overhaul. (low poly, low texture, high quality, see ww1 units )

Because I think a total conversion needs a fitting visual design for maxing out fun and feeling (and post apocalypse definitely is awesome to work on).

So, I hope, that is enough artist attraction and you will have enough motivation to get to a fun point and work on the xml, i will keep my promise, promised (ask smitty or Kael) But i dont wanna spend time on a project, which gets abandoned.

cheers.

EDIT:
any links to good pages with concept pics or even better, a lot of pictures from the movie (thinking of mad max II or maybe III) might be helpful, when it comes to this point. otherwise i`ll go for what I think looks good

So, go and get all the major features in and a list of all things needed out

Ooh, cool. Thanks! I hope I can get enough people interested to give feedback to make sure it's playable, without any graphics. If I can get one or two of the key units to seed the process, it would be helpful. Above is a wish list; are you aware of anything related I could pull out of existing mods?