Chronicles of Adea - fantasy mod development thread

[PawelS]

The icons look great, thanks again for the effort you put in them



Now if anyone would be willing to convert these icons to .dds files of all types and sizes required by the game... I'm busy working on different aspects of the mod right now, so learning how to create these files would slow down the development process. This mod is supposed to be a team effort, so if you want it released sooner, please help me

(Btw, I currently estimate the release date of the alpha version as Q1 2014. I really want to release it before Age of Wonders 3 is out, as it will probably steal a large amount of my time then )

 

[FramedArchitect]

Now if anyone would be willing to convert these icons to .dds files of all types and sizes required by the game...

All required icons and the psd templates available here.

A few notes:

• dds saved at 8.8.8.8 ARGB for high quality (size can be reduced with a resave in different dds format)
• alpha icon sizes increased slightly for better resolution at small size
• atlas size will be 4 x 4

 

[PawelS]

Thaanks!

 

[PawelS]

Third Age techs:

 

[PawelS]

I finished working on the tech tree for now (I won't post a screenshot as I'm going to add a few techs later). Now I'm going to work on the civs, so every one of them has a trait and some uniques. The alpha won't contain Unique Policies, which will be added at beta stage.

 

[Pazyryk]

"Unique Policies"?!!

After reading that phrase an idea popped into my head. I have no idea if it's similar to what you are doing, but:

A set of policies that are unique to each civ. Or perhaps restricted to a limited set of civs. These all appear in one "branch" and you only see the policies allowed by your civ.

I don't want to steal an idea without giving credit, but then I'm not really sure if this was your idea or mine...

 

[FramedArchitect]

A set of policies that are unique to each civ. Or perhaps restricted to a limited set of civs. These all appear in one "branch" and you only see the policies allowed by your civ.

I think this is pretty common in the early firaxis scenarios, and I copied this idea into a few of my own. It's actually a lot of fun coming up with ideas for "laws" that only a particular civ might pass. The firaxis method is to lock all civs to all policy branches (GameEvents.PlayerCanAdoptPolicyBranch returns false), then grant the opening policy to the rightful civ on startup.

 

[Pazyryk]

I really should play the scenarios for ideas, or other mods (like yours for example)...

 

[PawelS]

@Pazyryk: Yes, the unique policies will work as you described. Of course I have nothing against if you use this idea (or any other one) in your mod

As for the technical aspects, I think it should be doable to make the policy screen display one branch depending on the currently played civ, as FramedArchitect said I'm going to make the opener already adopted by the appropriate civ, and make it unadoptable for other civs - this is important because even if the human player can't adopt these openers because it's not visible on the screen, the AI probably would be able to do it. So I think I will set the required era to one era after the last one used in the mod - this way I can do it with pure database modification, without using Lua events.

Edit: To clarify things a bit: It won't be like in the scenarios, where all policies are visible on the screen, but those belonging to other civs are unadoptable. 8 slots on the policy screen will be used for "normal" policies that are the same for all civs, one slot for unique policies (a different policy tree for every civ), and one for alignments (which will work like BNW ideologies).

 

[PawelS]

Progress update: Due to various reasons there was some delay, but now I resumed working on the civs. Hopefully this part will be finished in several days.

 

[Propman]

You could call the Snobar leader "Articus", I suppose.

 

[PawelS]

Done (although I thought of something that sounds more Viking-like...)

 

[Propman]

Kaldrvök? An amalgamation of the words "Kaldr" and "vök", Norman words for "cold" and "wake" respectively.

 

[FramedArchitect]

8 slots on the policy screen will be used for "normal" policies that are the same for all civs, one slot for unique policies (a different policy tree for every civ), and one for alignments (which will work like BNW ideologies).

I think it will require major major edits to SocialPolicyPopup.lua.

 

[PawelS]

Kaldrvök? An amalgamation of the words "Kaldr" and "vök", Norman words for "cold" and "wake" respectively.

Good one, let me know if you have ideas for more leader names (the two civs unmentioned on the list in post #3 are Demon Cultists (their units get random Demonic Mutations as special promotions after first combat, using the Kris mechanic), and Death Cultists (Necromancers getting Mana from kills and summoning the Undead).

I think it will require major major edits to SocialPolicyPopup.lua.

I already edited this file (and the corresponding XML file) a bit to change the policy branch types displayed and the pictures (I still use policy pictures from unmodded game, but placed differently; they will be replaced with new pictures if someone contributes them for the mod). I think it won't be very hard to make the code check for the active player and set one of the policy branches to the required type.

 

[PawelS]

A question to the icon experts: Why do all the alpha civ icons appear as black on the city labels? (I mean the labels of cities belonging to other civs) Seems I have done something wrong...

 

[FramedArchitect]

A question to the icon experts: Why do all the alpha civ icons appear as black on the city labels? (I mean the labels of cities belonging to other civs) Seems I have done something wrong...

The color of the City Banner icon is derived from the PlayerColors Table. In that table PrimaryColor defines the icon and text color for Major Civs (it's opposite iirc for Minors). If the PrimaryColor is black (RGB = 0,0,0) then the color will be black.

 

[PawelS]

The color of the City Banner icon is derived from the PlayerColors Table. In that table PrimaryColor defines the icon and text color for Major Civs (it's opposite iirc for Minors). If the PrimaryColor is black (RGB = 0,0,0) then the color will be black.

It doesn't seem to work like this for me - the text has the proper color but the icon is black... Do you have any idea what might be causing this?

(The city is named "City" because I haven't entered the city names yet).

Edit: I just noticed something - in your Faerun mod the alpha icons in the .dds files are white, but the ones you made for me are black - it seems they should be white to work properly...

 

[FramedArchitect]

I think it won't be very hard to make the code check for the active player and set one of the policy branches to the required type.

Maybe I'm not understanding the way to go about this, but I think you would need to build new button and pipe instances of that policy branch at startup depending on civilization of the active player (this rules out any multiplayer options). This means you need a new panel control item for every playable civ, and those panels all stacked on that one policy branch (you would unhide the panel instance for the active player). I think this means rewriting Init() function, preferably optimized to build only the branch layout for the active player. To me it seems hard, but I am very inexperience in this UI.

 

[FramedArchitect]

It doesn't seem to work like this for me - the text has the proper color but the icon is black... Do you have any idea what might be causing this?

(The city is named "City" because I haven't entered the city names yet).

Edit: I just noticed something - in your Faerun mod the alpha icons in the .dds files are white, but the ones you made for me are black - it seems they should be white to work properly...

Perhaps I made a mistake in the icons I made for this. The background of Alpha dds must be white, which unmasks the icon color. It looks from picture like the background of the Alpha dds is black.