Dune Wars Mod

[davidlallen]

I am lost on what is going on with the dll at this point. [...] I am just submitting this before it gets buried in a corner.

Thanks very much.

Keldath, which mods are actually *needed* for this mod? It seems to be collapsing a little under too many unused mods. As far as I can tell from your first post, "mountains back in service" is the only thing which is *required*. I think super spies is very useful, since assassination and other dirty tricks happened often in the novels. My windtrap is using jimprovement, but that is a special effect; I don't think it will hurt much if windtraps can be built adjacent to each other. And we have the change from koma13 to improve founding of distant colonies.

I know at least one problem is happening because of the mod overlap, preventing my windtrap from working in this mod; and we have both spent some time struggling with other side effects.

Can you list out anything else in the sdk which is currently being *used* by the mod?

 

[The_J]

I autoran a couple of games on patch 5 with my trade mod. I agree the AI is building huge number of units. Two of the civs in this game had > 100 units built and were running their economy into the ground with unit supply cost. I took this screenshot of what look like little trails of ants. This can't be good. All of the units are Sand APC's.

Sure a vanilla BtS problem, sometimes the AI spawns caravells like hell, no idea why.





I've tried today some things for my mod, and want to share the observations:
I tried to add a 3. terrain with bWater set to 1, a deep desert terrain.
Effect: Nothing, it was everytime transformed to ocean/coast.
-> There can only be 2 types of water, like in the GlobalDefines.xml named, one for coast, one for deep water, and the exact type is determined through the position, next to a landplot or not.



Next Attempt, the AI:
I made the deep desert normal land terrain, but in the GlobalDefines i sat

<Define>
		<DefineName>SHALLOW_WATER_TERRAIN</DefineName>
		<DefineTextVal>TERRAIN_DEEP_DESERT</DefineTextVal>
	</Define>

and i made a larger area of deep desert in the Worldbuilder and placed some units arounds, some in int, and activated the auto exploration.
Effect: All units in the area ran straightly out of it, the other units didn't walk in it.
-> The GlobalDefines determines the AI.

Setting SHALLOW_WATER or DEEP_WATER to NONE will bring the game to crash, the first immediatly, the second only, if there's a ocean.


I don't think, i'll put more work in it, it just can't be done .

 

[johny smith]

Well with the dll. I mean I do not know what needs to be added more really for sure. But I want to get it out instead of sitting on and let the bugs be fixed instead of waiting to the last minute. With the WoC stuff the point was to move stuff out of the xml folder. Which is pretty easy for things only in the dll like DCM. The big hundred ton hidden elephant under the haystack that needs to fixed is Revolution so that it actually works with Dune in some way.

Oh Super Spies in this dll has 7 missions instead of 2, and the Great Spy can do missions.
BTW there was no Great Spy AI in BTS. It is added in this. Before it was using the Great Merchant AI.

Inquisitions are removed from the python in this dll. All xml now. AI in the SDK.

Those are the 2 changes from before on SDK components. Super Spies and Inquisitions.

 

[Deliverator]

I'm pretty pleased with this. I managed find a better conversion method for those Google 3D Warehouse Dune models. I have the Sandworm and Ornithopter in Blender now. It'll take to some work for me to turn these two into units, but I think it will be worth the effort to have two real trademarks of Dune.

 

[johny smith]

Sorry sending up one update now to the dll before. It will be the same link. I have it in a SVN.

I had the CvCustomEventManager.py still importing the SpyEvents. I just put that into the BUGEventManager instead now. Sorry forgot that. So you guys can fix it without downloading again.

Of course can delete the CvCustomEventManager afterwards. Just left in by accident. And the file is removed in the 7z file now.

PS: Cool Google 3D warehouse models.

 

[davidlallen]

I'm pretty pleased with this. I managed find a better conversion method for those Google 3D Warehouse Dune models. I have the Sandworm and Ornithopter in Blender now. It'll take to some work for me to turn these two into units, but I think it will be worth the effort to have two real trademarks of Dune.

Those are awesome !! Will it be possible to animate them?

 

[davidlallen]

Sorry sending up one update now to the dll before. It will be the same link. I have it in a SVN.

I had the CvCustomEventManager.py still importing the SpyEvents. I just put that into the BUGEventManager instead now. Sorry forgot that. So you guys can fix it without downloading again.

Of course can delete the CvCustomEventManager afterwards. Just left in by accident. And the file is removed in the 7z file now.

Keldath, I am also undertain of what steps have to happen to incorporate this. But, don't worry about breaking my python. If you can keep my unitinfos and graphics information, I can patch the python back into anything. Hopefully I will show that this can work with the windtrap also.

 

[davidlallen]

I did a few autoplays to compare the amount of AI fighting between dune wars patch 5 and base revolutions dcm. Both were a huge map, 400 turns, Prince difficulty, archipelago mapscript.

It is certainly true that there is more fighting between the AIs in base revdcm. I think part of the reason is the overall lack of food on the dune wars map. In the revdcm game, the largest civ had 58 M people, while in the dune wars game, the largest civ had 13 M people. Less people, less commerce, harder to afford sending an army overseas.

I did find the reason why my game had "ant trails" of sand apc's. This unit and the hover transport (which is deeper in the tech tree) both had iAIWeight 15. I turned that down to zero and the problem went away. I also moved the sand apc one step later in the tech tree (to desert power) and increased its cost from 65 to 90. At 65 it is quite a deal; it has the same speed, strength and carry capacity as the light carryall which is deeper in the tree and costs 100. The carryall can carry anything, while the sand apc can only carry armored units; but still that seems too cheap. I am pretty sure the iAIWeight is the reason.

I did a run of dune wars before and after this iAIWeight change. In the "before" game, two civs had run themselves down to zero gold with huge negative income rates, due to unit supply, due to having 100 APC's. After the change, there were no civs with this problem. So it definitely helps. The comparison against revdcm was with this "after" game.

I'm not sure what to do about it; it seems reasonable to have a much lower food rate. Maybe when I add windtraps, the amount of food and therefore the amount of population will go up.

BTW, I have confirmed that my problem with the windtrap appears in pure revdcm, and I have posted about that in the revdcm bug thread. If they can give a solution, then I can add the windtrap to dune wars. The xml, python and unit (plus a button) are all done.

 

[Tholish]

thats a very interesting idea,

no dougt,

checktholish's futuremod - he has made amazing map work - maps that spits to two - one land one space, something realy incredible.

if someone would help us, we could try it later on.

You are easily impressed. My system used a modified highlands, added some terrain types, and just rewrote the terrain, plot, or feature type based on the value of X and the original terrain, plot or feature type. Crude but effective. Now what FiskMafia did looks completely sophisticated--impressive, but hard to use. I had promised to help you guys with a map, but ran into a CTD in my own mod, and by the time I had that beat back you had your map generator. The only drawback being that it doesn't include a multiplanet context.

For your mod, someone could easily do something like what I did, with vertical strips for each world, wrapping in Y (thus exactly like regular cylindrical maps tipped over), separated by strips of space that can only be passed by specific unit types that can move so fast on non space terrain they are essentially anywhere on a planet, or to nearby space, in one turn, regardless of where they start. However, in order to make this sensible and not like the old Civ 3 Star Wars mod that simply replaced water terrains with space terrains, I had to border the left and right edges (read polar regions) of each planet with unsettleable and unimprovable but free movement terrain called Orbit.

For settlement, the AI plays my game just as I elsewhere read DavidAllen complaining it plays yours: it settles its area but settlers do not cross the unsettlable terrain.
This could probably be solved with SDK work, and I am interested to see what you do. I'm thinking what's needed is a whole new UnitAI: AllTerrainsExploratorySettler. By default it acts like an explorer, except that it travels all terrains, and each turn it randomly may switch ai to settler, or even may just randomly found a city right where it is. In fact, that could probably be done with python, just have a specific unit type checked every turn to see if it randomly founds a city right where it is, if possible. It would be enough to get civs started on the other side of the divide. Except the AI doesn't even push EXPLORERS across it. Maybe the sea explorer ai...

 

[davidlallen]

Actually, koma13 has found a variable which allows settlers to found colonies on the other side of oceans. So that part seems to be working OK. Based on some recent runs, using desert = ocean, our main problem seems to be too little food leading to few attacks. There may be a second problem beyond that, which we cannot see yet.

Where we are stuck is in making hovercraft units act as ocean transport and still be able to move over land. Maniac has dropship units in Planetfall which do this; we may be able to dig out the code. This may be a good approach, as long as we don't mind severely limiting the number of units that can move in deep desert.

The other possibility is desert = land. But here we would really need land transport, which is generally accepted to be harder.

So, we need progress along one of these two avenues before we will have something which does everything we want.

 

[keldath]

davidlallen,
thanks for the report,

i wont have too much time to check today and tomorrow,

so id like you do me a smalll favor,
plz remove the added worm + sand storm + thumper python (xml also possible but not necessary), and then run an autoai game,
see if it still goes crazy with units, cause somthing is wrong there, and they ai shouldnt do that. hope you can test it for me.


dear johny,
dont get lost my friend,
iplan on moving to your new modeled dll just after we finish the corporations system,
i hope to finish that and add what you sent me,
after that i hope to release the whole thing as version 1.1.

sorry im delaying this, but dont worry man, ill use it very soon.



******
while i was writing this you guys postes 5 posts....

so im glad you found the cause for the mass units,
if the food level is low - then i will raise it - no via terrain - ut can be done via buildings,
also ill raise the support level on units sso the ai will be able to attack more.


with johny's new dll it will be easier to remove modcomps we dont need,
i will remove everything that have no use.

as for windtraps, ill take a look at it and try to figure why it wont work.

Deliverator,
awesome models!!!!

tholish ,
not so sure im easily impressed,
after all you mod is kinda unique...

 

[davidlallen]

so id like you do me a smalll favor,
plz remove the added worm + sand storm + thumper python (xml also possible but not necessary), and then run an autoai game,
see if it still goes crazy with units, cause somthing is wrong there, and they ai shouldnt do that. hope you can test it for me.

Thread overlap. I set the iAIWeight of sand apc to zero, and the ai no longer goes crazy. Please see details in the last ten posts or so.

 

[keldath]

hi guys,
didnt do much coding today,
just added davids new files and updated the land mass patch, i will upload it tomorrow.

i did with it a few auto plays, there was action, my civ got destroyed, they ai defiantly moves units better when all terrain is land, but its not very dunish huh....?

also - the money levels were awefull...there was no money...perhaps the trade needs some massive boost - i think i will do it with the corporation system !

hope tomorrow ill do some real work.

 

[Deliverator]

Hi guys. A very very crude and early version of the worm. It will be MUCH better than this when it is done, more natural looking, etc. It's only 1300 polys at the moment. I intend to animate the jaws and try and get some good wriggling movement. It's a great project for me to learn some animation.

I've attached the file - I basically just stuck this into the Cobra nif. You can use it as a placeholder if you like - although it is a bit embarassing at this stage. I'm off for a week but I'll pick this up when I'm back. Cheers.

 

[The_J]

Hi guys. A very very crude and early version of the worm. It will be MUCH better than this when it is done, more natural looking, etc. It's only 1300 polys at the moment. I intend to animate the jaws and try and get some good wriggling movement. It's a great project for me to learn some animation.

Looks great , go on.

 

[davidlallen]

Here's my update for today.

Ocean model vs land model

There is some discussion on tweaking the AI, to make hovers work in the "ocean model". See this thread. Jdog5000 is the key guy for "better AI", so I think something will happen. We will need an sdk person (koma? johny?) to try out the changes suggested by jdog. I recommend trying them out on a vanilla revdcm to see if they work, before trying on the complex sdk of dune wars itself.

On the other hand, there is silence on my threads in a few places to get people interested in land transport. So now I am leaning towards the "ocean model" instead of the "land model". It is too soon to decide which model will work. Either way, if koma13 is still working on new textures, that will be great and we can definitely use them.

New issues

I played through an entire game on small map, Prince difficulty, regular speed, patch 5, archipelago mapscript. I was pretty happy with the gameplay. I had a *lot* of money trouble. Distance cost was part of it; unit support cost was part of it. By about turn 150, when I started attacking, I had to turn research down to zero to concentrate on gold. Even so, I was burning through the pillage bonus from each city so fast I had to rush to get to the next pillage.

I used capitulation to win. Each civ I hit followed a similar pattern: I captured one city, barely captured (or destroyed) a second city, and then they capitulated. Each capitulation netted me 2-3 new techs, which is good since my research stalled. I actually liberated their cities after they capitulated, to avoid the distance cost. I can easily see Irulan, or any of the characters, having a formal ceremony to surrender instead of getting killed, and being allowed to run one small leftover city.

The game was over by around turn 225. I never made it to the deep desert techs, I stalled on researching desert pathfinding. I used the hover transport to run around with grenade troopers and maula mortars. (See item 75. If you don't agree, then attacking a fortified distant city is impossible until deep desert techs make the sand apc available.)

Here are some issues I ran into.

70. Just to assign a number, I made some changes to TerrainTrades as described in an earlier post. This seems to work well in either model. It removes roads altogether, which seems worthwhile for Dune.

71. Just to assign a number, RevDCM is deleting my windtrap feature. This is blocking me from adding the windtrap code, which works in a vanilla game. jdog said he would look at it, I hope he will find the reason.

72. Just to assign a number, the AI does not know when to use thumpers. I don't know what to do about this so I will ignore it for a while.

73. I suggest you rename Irrigation to Desert Farming or Drip Farming, maybe. 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. But this is debatable.

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.

77. I found that putting workboats on sandtrout is highly effective. I am a little surprised that sandtrout give you 5 food. I don't even think sandtrout are edible in the books. It may have been an unusual coincidence, but one of the AI civs had three sandtrout by his home city and got a big start with 15 food.

78. I have listed a couple of issues about the workboat. It is cheap, it has move 2, and it is at the start of the tech tree. You can run a bunch of them around coasts until you map almost everything. I had suggested to rename it "deep harvester" or something so it does not use "hover" in the name. Instead, maybe the right solution is to leave the unit called "hover former", but actually move it to hovering tech. This prevents early game scouting. This may be better than reducing it to move speed 1.

 

[koma13]

Ocean model vs land model

There is some discussion on tweaking the AI, to make hovers work in the "ocean model". See this thread. Jdog5000 is the key guy for "better AI", so I think something will happen. We will need an sdk person (koma? johny?) to try out the changes suggested by jdog. I recommend trying them out on a vanilla revdcm to see if they work, before trying on the complex sdk of dune wars itself.

Yes, I can try that.

On the other hand, there is silence on my threads in a few places to get people interested in land transport. So now I am leaning towards the "ocean model" instead of the "land model".

Well, I'm not sure how to tell, maybe I should have mentioned that earlier but it is only 6 weeks ago that I created a land transport unit ai for Mare Nostrum mod (colonization).
It pick up units and resources and transport them to needed location. But I'm not sure how hard it will be to implement that in Civ4.

It is too soon to decide which model will work.

Hmm, I think both models can work, in the end it doesn't matter that much what we choose.

sea model:
+ same concept as in vanilla civ4 , should be less confusing for ai
+ all map scripts can be used

land model:
+ more flexibility which units can enter deep desert
+ mountains and hills in deep desert

I think it's very confusing for normal players to have 2 models. If we want to have more feedback we should decide which one to follow. In general I prefer land model because it leaves us with more options what to do in deep desert (=more activity). But sea model will be easier to make it playable (there are hundreds of isWater()/isCoastal()/waterArea() checks in sdk/python which all have the potential of messing up the land model ai). That is a strong argument considering the fact our sdk knowledge is limited. So I would say, until we don't have a real sdk coder we should stick with the sea model.

EDIT: After reading jdog500s post it looks like both models need serious ai changes in sdk. Hmm...

Either way, if koma13 is still working on new textures, that will be great and we can definitely use them.

Yes, most work is done.

 

[johny smith]

While I like extra features like anyone else. I think there needs to a SDK and python set up for just experimenting for Dune really. All the WoC Lite would do is add modular XML, we keep the same fonts, and a modular theme. Anyway for testing I would think it would be easier if there was an empty python folder. And not so many non-essential things in the dll. Anyway not hard to merge back in later, but I know game play maybe be different with Better BTS AI. That is my suggestion anyway.

Only thing that is needed is jeckel's stuff for new things added correct? I would worry about more components after getting everything tweaked to what is liked.

 

[Maniac]

-> There can only be 2 types of water, like in the GlobalDefines.xml named, one for coast, one for deep water, and the exact type is determined through the position, next to a landplot or not.

Planetfall has 4 water terrains. Check out the Planetfall mapscript.

 

[keldath]

Deliverator,

look awesome, hope youll be able to animate it

well done.

as for money issues - good - that means the added uniqie corporation system will help alot.

most of the issues you mentioned are just stuff i didnt notice or forgot,
so ill fix'em.

thanks a lot for this.

koma,
well sounds very interesting,if youll be able to adapt what you have done for civ4 from colo', that would probably solve us some trouble.


land vs ocean:

i still dont know which is preferred,
we have advantages for this and that.
for meanwhile ill update both, untill you guys decide which to stick too.
i agree we should not confuse the player with two models.

johny,
i rather make the testing on the patches, we make more progress this way,
and every part should take part in the testing.

maniac,
4 types of water?
thats 4 headaches from the ai to deal with ..hehe,
kiddng,
could be nice and good for more diversity for the desert !

ok guys ill upload soon the terrain patch,
and start adding fixing more stuff to patch 7 for ocean.






davidlallen,
well. glad to know your happy with the game play more or less.
ill refer to all of the issues you wrote on the next patch.



heres the patch- land terrain:

http://ul.to/n35kf4