cephalo
Deity
Well, then there's no benefit to the polar terrain.
Arrakis.py map script discussion
- Thread starter cephalo
- Start date
Well, then there's no benefit to the polar terrain.
davidlallen
Deity
In my view, the polar terrain should be pretty small, and surrounded by a ring of civs. If the amount of water there is valuable, then it should be an opportunity for all the civs to go there and fight over it. They would ship it back to their existing cities somehow.
In terms of mechanics, we might need some improvement like "Ice Drilling"; then a civ could build a fort and this improvement. But, if the goal is to ship it back, how does that work? Maybe some new bonus like "ice" which gives +1 food at every city? (Is that possible?)
In terms of mechanics, we might need some improvement like "Ice Drilling"; then a civ could build a fort and this improvement. But, if the goal is to ship it back, how does that work? Maybe some new bonus like "ice" which gives +1 food at every city? (Is that possible?)
cephalo
Deity
That's exactly why I was thinking national wonder. It would be a small SDK change. I had to do this for happiness in my Gross National Happiness mod.
cephalo
Deity
The configuration of the maps I've seen of Dune, the polar area (worm line) seems to be surrounded by the usual deep desert. I've modeled it this way in the map script. If we keep it that way, you won't really be able to reach the polar terrain with your borders. I sortof imagined it out in the desert.
davidlallen
Deity
I did not follow that. Perhaps you would build an improvement on the polar terrain in order to get a resource, and that resource enables building a national wonder in your city (which is not on polar terrain), and that wonder gives a +1 food in every city. Is that what you meant? Which part of that requires an SDK change?
cephalo
Deity
Hey that doesn't require an SDK change does it? Yeah, that would be simplest then.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
In the book, one of the guests at the Atreides banquet is 'a water-shipper whose summer mansion was near his polar-cap factory'. So a factory improvement at the poles sounds good. Not sure what to call a factory that makes water out of ice, maybe Polar Water Factory is good enough. Then we can have an Ice bonus only appearing on Polar Terrain.
The National Wonder idea is doable, but... we now have two corporations to replace, (Sapho Corp, and Stillsuit Makers, as a consequence of recent and soon-to-be bonus changes so it would make perfect sense to have a Water Shippers Corporation (or is there already a Water one? - I forget) and do something with that.
Also in the book, the talk about the northern deserts as well as the southern ones so a ring of deep desert around the pole is appropriate.
The National Wonder idea is doable, but... we now have two corporations to replace, (Sapho Corp, and Stillsuit Makers, as a consequence of recent and soon-to-be bonus changes so it would make perfect sense to have a Water Shippers Corporation (or is there already a Water one? - I forget) and do something with that.
Also in the book, the talk about the northern deserts as well as the southern ones so a ring of deep desert around the pole is appropriate.
davidlallen
Deity
Ice Processor? Ice Extractor?
I rarely use corps in vanilla, so I may not be the best judge, but what do you think about simply removing all the non-spice corps?
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
As far as I could tell from reading articles like this about Corps in vanilla, Sid's Sushi was by far the best and it was the only one I ever built when I was playing vanilla. It seems like the concept of Corporations is quite a cool thing, but even Firaxis couldn't come up with 7 decent/compelling ideas for them. I think the way that they are implemented is just not that fun maybe. The fact that domestic corporation spread does not make money is sort of counter-intuitive.
The current ones need some redesign anyway after the bonus overhaul. There may be some much more interesting things we can do with them, but it needs some research and thought.
Maybe we should open a Corporations thread to discuss whether we keep them/how can we improve them. I think FFH2 tried to do something with corporations but ended up taking it out again...
The current ones need some redesign anyway after the bonus overhaul. There may be some much more interesting things we can do with them, but it needs some research and thought.
Maybe we should open a Corporations thread to discuss whether we keep them/how can we improve them. I think FFH2 tried to do something with corporations but ended up taking it out again...
cephalo
Deity
In my opinion, corporations don't make alot of sense on this planet. This is all about spice. I don't know if you guys ever played M.U.L.E. (If not, you really, really should. It's possible these days with a commodore 64 emulator.) but in that game there is a very clear example of the situation on Dune. If you have competitors for a commodity, your profits are drastically reduced.
Everyone who comes to Dune is already a corporation or other business entity looking to cash in. The conflict of interest between factions is so great that either accepting or offering 'help' to any other faction can only be viewed as a bad idea. Any trade between houses would have to be so carefully considered that it would happen only during short periods of dire mutual interest. I don't think that corporations could thrive here unless they were completely locked out of and independant of the spice interests.
Everyone who comes to Dune is already a corporation or other business entity looking to cash in. The conflict of interest between factions is so great that either accepting or offering 'help' to any other faction can only be viewed as a bad idea. Any trade between houses would have to be so carefully considered that it would happen only during short periods of dire mutual interest. I don't think that corporations could thrive here unless they were completely locked out of and independant of the spice interests.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
Decided to make a legible version of the map of Arrakis for reference purposes. Here it is.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
I've been messing around with terrain a lot today, and I've made a little breakthrough that I'm quite excited about. I've managed to completely remove the water. No more weird grey sparkly thing hovering over the desert. The impact is big for such a small change. I like the fact that now that units walk on the sea bed in effect, it feels like the land is more like the mesas and rocky outcrops shown in the book map.
Also, as you see I've been trying to make the deep desert in this mapscript look like dunes. I've been taking the textures and blurring them which seems to help sell the dunes. I think I may have overdone it in these screenshots, but with some more tweaking it could look pretty good. I've done improved polar terrain too. I'll put it all in a miny terrain patch so that it can be used to develop the mapscript. Cephalo - really like this latest version by the way, it's not far off being something really cool.
Spoiler :
Also, as you see I've been trying to make the deep desert in this mapscript look like dunes. I've been taking the textures and blurring them which seems to help sell the dunes. I think I may have overdone it in these screenshots, but with some more tweaking it could look pretty good. I've done improved polar terrain too. I'll put it all in a miny terrain patch so that it can be used to develop the mapscript. Cephalo - really like this latest version by the way, it's not far off being something really cool.
Spoiler :
you removed water??
what does this mean??
is it like our first versions of maps that koma made with desert instead of water?
how will it impact the domain sea and units ai? transports and so on?
i too rather have it with no water - if we get get over the transports - it will create a much better game since the ai could be much more affressive - it will attack via "ocean" just like it was a land terrain,
the game will be much much less boring and interestin.
the art look a real buety,
i look forward to see you breakthrough,
great work!
what does this mean??
is it like our first versions of maps that koma made with desert instead of water?
how will it impact the domain sea and units ai? transports and so on?
i too rather have it with no water - if we get get over the transports - it will create a much better game since the ai could be much more affressive - it will attack via "ocean" just like it was a land terrain,
the game will be much much less boring and interestin.
the art look a real buety,
i look forward to see you breakthrough,
great work!
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
Here a patch specifically to aid the Arrakis.py mapscript. It does the following:
Polar and No Water Development Patch
+ Adds two new terrains, Polar Desert Waste and Polar Deep Desert. It may be that we don't need both of these. I was thinking perhaps the Polar Deep Desert can be used to create the Worm Line around a blob of Polar terrain at the centre representing the Polar Sink/Cap. The Desert Waste can be used as the coast around the Polar blob, but having tested it I think just going straight to the Polar Deep Desert may look better. Haven't done new icons for these yet.
+ Polar terrain graphics updated to look more frosty. It needed to be more obvious that it was the pole and not salt or something.
+ Removes the graphical water effect entirely making the deep desert look much better. I decided to leave my dune texture experiments out for now. I'm now pretty confident we can get dune-like deep desert though.
+ Renamed the Desert Terrain to Dunes and prevented bonuses from appearing on them. We'll have to decide how we are going to handle these changes with regards to the Archipelago mapscript, when we are ready to release this.
Donwload Link
It would be nice to work towards a full release Arrakis.py and start getting some player feedback. The Ice bonus idea should probably get implemented before then.
Polar and No Water Development Patch
+ Adds two new terrains, Polar Desert Waste and Polar Deep Desert. It may be that we don't need both of these. I was thinking perhaps the Polar Deep Desert can be used to create the Worm Line around a blob of Polar terrain at the centre representing the Polar Sink/Cap. The Desert Waste can be used as the coast around the Polar blob, but having tested it I think just going straight to the Polar Deep Desert may look better. Haven't done new icons for these yet.
+ Polar terrain graphics updated to look more frosty. It needed to be more obvious that it was the pole and not salt or something.
+ Removes the graphical water effect entirely making the deep desert look much better. I decided to leave my dune texture experiments out for now. I'm now pretty confident we can get dune-like deep desert though.
+ Renamed the Desert Terrain to Dunes and prevented bonuses from appearing on them. We'll have to decide how we are going to handle these changes with regards to the Archipelago mapscript, when we are ready to release this.
Donwload Link
It would be nice to work towards a full release Arrakis.py and start getting some player feedback. The Ice bonus idea should probably get implemented before then.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
Don't panic! It's a graphical only change...
Edit: Those bladesmen I plonked down on the 'sea bed' was just to test than they were standing at the right height.
cephalo
Deity
Excellent work Deliverator! What patches does this patch depend on? I'm still using 1.3.
I'm glad you removed that water texture. Maybe I should try my water = land change again. The problem is that I would have to figure out how to make all the normal city buildings drawable on water via the L system.(like lighthouse, colossus) The L system seems veery complicated.
I'm glad you removed that water texture. Maybe I should try my water = land change again. The problem is that I would have to figure out how to make all the normal city buildings drawable on water via the L system.(like lighthouse, colossus) The L system seems veery complicated.
