Dune Wars Mod

[The_J]

I guess you went back and forth on this during development.

It is a little surprising that you can't build a hover unit except in a "coast" city; but once you figure that out it makes sense.

This could be an artifact, i guess.

Do you want to have all land terrain? I can modify the other mapscripts to match. I think Archipelago may be a problem. A lot of the starting position code looks for coastline, and there won't be any, so it would probably fail.

No, it'll work.
I use the archipelgalo mapscript as base for my mod, and the positions are set correctly (most times), without any relations to ocean (would be really bad ).
But i don't know atm, if i've disabled that function.

 

[davidlallen]

This could be an artifact, i guess.

I don't think so. If hovers are just clones of seagoing units, you can only build seagoing units in port cities.

I use the archipelgalo mapscript as base for my mod, and the positions are set correctly (most times), without any relations to ocean (would be really bad ).
But i don't know atm, if i've disabled that function.

Sorry, newcomer question ... is your mod a "modmod" of dune wars, or something else altogether?

 

[koma13]

Hey davidlallen!

I'm currently working on these map scripts. We had same idea as you and we want to replace ocean with desert. I created 2 new land terrain types (deep desert, desert waste) and edited some map scripts to replace ocean. I've done most work, just have to link the resources to new terrain and find some better looking terrain graphics.

 

[The_J]

I don't think so. If hovers are just clones of seagoing units, you can only build seagoing units in port cities.

Not really, the need for water is independent from DOMAIN_WATER (but don't know where exactly atm).

My hovers, also DOMAIN_WATER, but can move all terrain, can be build in every city, because i've removed that.

Sorry, newcomer question ... is your mod a "modmod" of dune wars, or something else altogether?

hey, you've posted in my thread.

I'm only talking like being in the team, because here are many similarities between the two mods, like no water, and i hope, here will come some good ideas, how to handle it .

 

[davidlallen]

I have started hooking the Fury Road animal AI onto the worm. But, before I make any modifications, I am afraid this mod is not very python-clean. That is, with python alerts enabled, there are many many python problems in the mod. You may have noticed that in the diplo screens, after the initial greeting, the only option is "Let's discuss something else". This is due to a python error. Also, at the end of the first turn there is a cascade python error which requires 20 clicks to clear. Also, whenever the city build screen comes up, there is a python error.

To see these, edit My Games\Beyond the Sword\CivilizationIV.ini, find the line "HidePythonExceptions 1" and change it to zero. To debug these ... well, that is the trick. The original developers of all these mods could probably tell you quickly.

This is a side effect of combining a bunch of mods, without looking at the python alerts to see when trouble starts to appear. I am not familiar with any of these mods so I will not be able to debug them easily. I did try the "civchecker" program which some clever person wrote . You can find it at this link, also see the discussion thread. It finds a few things as follows; but I do not think these will fix the python alerts I have seen.

UndefinedSymbol: CIVILIZATION_AMERICA
Used: dune civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 576
Used: dune civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 680
Used: dune civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 786
UndefinedSymbol: CIVILIZATION_BYZANTIUM
Used: dune civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml at line 911
UndefinedSymbol: BUILDINGCLASS_HYDRO_PLANT
Used: dune events/civ4eventinfos.xml at line 26426
Used: dune events/civ4eventtriggerinfos.xml at line 16400
UndefinedSymbol: BUILDINGCLASS_STABLE
Used: dune events/civ4eventinfos.xml at line 16329
Used: dune events/civ4eventtriggerinfos.xml at line 10915
Used: dune events/civ4eventtriggerinfos.xml at line 11270
UndefinedSymbol: CHOAM
Used: dune buildings/civ4buildingclassinfos.xml at line 1139
Used: dune buildings/civ4buildingclassinfos.xml at line 1667
Used: dune buildings/civ4buildinginfos.xml at line 22218
Used: dune buildings/civ4buildinginfos.xml at line 30057
Used: dune gameinfo/civ4corporationinfo.xml at line 225
UndefinedSymbol: GDI
Used: dune buildings/civ4buildingclassinfos.xml at line 1655
Used: dune buildings/civ4buildinginfos.xml at line 29879
Used: dune gameinfo/civ4corporationinfo.xml at line 190

Also there are a ton of undefined symbols in the events and event triggers file; I guess you changed all the unitclass names but forgot to update this file.

 

[davidlallen]

Sorry, newcomer question ... is your mod a "modmod" of dune wars, or something else altogether?

hey, you've posted in my thread.

Sorry for the confusion. The author of the first post in this thread is keldath, and the download is "dune wars mod". I guess you are a different person, with a different mod; where can I learn more about yours?

(EDIT: duh. You are referring to "Mars, Now" where I posted a while back.)

 

[The_J]

With "my thread" i didn't mean this thread , i'm talking about my mod (look at my sig).



But now back to topic .

 

[davidlallen]

Hey davidlallen!

I'm currently working on these map scripts. We had same idea as you and we want to replace ocean with desert. I created 2 new land terrain types (deep desert, desert waste) and edited some map scripts to replace ocean. I've done most work, just have to link the resources to new terrain and find some better looking terrain graphics.

Great. No need for my changes then. Can you just use the existing graphics for the sandsea? Just a plain yellow seems enough. The original maps in the mod look "right" for sandsea, except for the animation of waves. That spoils the effect somewhat

 

[keldath]

hi guys,

davidlallen,
thanks for the continets code, ill check it out,

you understood completely what are my options with sand sea.

koma does aswell,
from what he wrote - he made areplacment for coast and water - this will be even better the desert for all water terrain,

im aware of the changes - mostly to the unit ai - and hovers functions.

koma,
im eager to see what youv'e come up with . i can do the terrain graphics to spare you the work.

david,
vadus and koma created a map named dune- it uses archipelago.py,

but i found a bug on it when you regenratethe map - you know when you start a map and dont like the strting location - when regenerate - bang the map graphics go baserk,
so i didnt include it for v1, if it was without the bug - i would have made it the sole map for v1,
and change the unitai.


im no python coder, but i can merge most things, and tweak some.


im aware of the pytho errors,
most of them are originated in the bug mod,
it can be abboying, butm if you remove python errors, you would not know theres a problem and the game will run perfect.
i guess most of the errors are because i utterly changed every xml file -unti classes, religions, buildings and so on,
so i guess as long as thses msgs are not game breakers - we can live with it, ofcourse, only if you set python errors to 0...


and a note,
mars mod is a stand alone,
because of the wonderful work the_j has made with it, its the one thing that gave me inspiration to do dune wars (well i gotta give some credit to planetfall aswell ..).

hope you read my long pm there david...
and perhaps after you and koma set up the map standart you can do some worm stuff.

im eager to have the map scripts

gnite everyone.


****

yeah i didnt put time on the waves....not sure how yet , didnt looked at it,
cause my main goal was to have a land based terrain to replace ocean and coast,
all of the unitai originally made with all units set to domain land, just like most units in mars mod.

the allterainmovement tag, does more bad then good, otherwise it would have solved a whole lot of probs...

 

[davidlallen]

im aware of the pytho errors, most of them are originated in the bug mod, it can be abboying, butm if you remove python errors, you would not know theres a problem and the game will run perfect. i guess most of the errors are because i utterly changed every xml file -unti classes, religions, buildings and so on, so i guess as long as thses msgs are not game breakers - we can live with it, ofcourse, only if you set python errors to 0...

I can certainly hide these errors. That does not make the game run perfect, for example the diplomacy exit option is missing. It just makes us ignorant of the problems. I am developing the worm AI code in python, so I need the errors displayed in case I make my own programming mistake. One of my errors may be mixed among the 20-30 of theirs.

I did read your PM about worm AI. I am not able to integrate msound into the executable, because I have chosen to not learn how to build the executable. All of Fury Road is done with python. So I will build something which is not so sensitive to noise. I can directly make it sensitive to unit promotions later on, if we decide that is worth the effort.

 

[Maniac]

feedback: there are no terrain textures with grids.

 

[Ajidica]

Keldath, the sound file is corrupted somehow. I dled it from the mediafire link and when I extracted it, it stopped saying it had an error.
A few things I noticed:
>The default option is to sart in late era, not 'Birth of Arrakis'
>Workboat needs to be renamed
>Tribal Village to Graben Sietch

Imperial Militia Pedia:
The Imperial Militia is the basic division of troops in any Corrino Army, decently trained and equiped. They are a levy from Corrino held areas and at times, levies donated by other houses to secure favors. They will fight and they will die for the glory of the Emperor.

Sardaukar:
It is commonly assumed that Sardaukar are drawn from the ranks of the Imperial Militia. The famed Atreides Mentat Thufir Hawat has made the discovery that the Sardaukar are not drawn from the Imperial Militia, rather they are criminals and exiles that are trained on the semi-radioactive wastes of Salusa Secundus, the Emperors prison planet. They are as well trained as the feared Fremen Fedaykin, if not better. The Sardaukar are acknowledged as the best troops in the galaxy and enforce the Emperors will wherever he deems it. The fearsome reputation of the Sardaukar is evidenced by how people whisper their name in fear, if not abject terror.

Imperial Trooper:
A better trained and equiped version of the Imperial Militia, drawn only from the Corrino's home territory and fiercely loyal to the Emperor of the Golden Lion Throne. The primary difference from the Imperial Militia is that they are under the command of a Bator, possibly even a Burseg, as opposed to a Levenbrach. While not the best troops in their class, it is thought that Atreides and Fremen troops are better, possibly even the Fremen, they can hold their own in any fight and make up the bulk of the Imperial Army, while being the most trusted of the Emperors line troops.

Ginaz Master:
The School of the Swordmasters of Ginaz dates all the way back to the Butlerian Jihad, where the fledgling School of Ginaz offered mercenaries to the Butlerians to help fight 'The Thinking Machines'. The School of the Swordmasters of Ginaz still exists, and is known for their superb swordmasters, who are also commanders, technicians, pilots, and excell in many other capacities. The famed Atreides swordmaster, Duncan Idaho, took anywhere from 19-29 Sardaukar with him before he died during the First Battle of Arakeen. House Corrino will not release the numbers on how many he killed. The Ginaz Swordmasters are the best in the Imperium, and the Ginaz Masters are the best of the best.

Master Assassin:
Assassins are the prefered way of doing war in the Imperium as it is safer and cheaper. It is regulated by the art of Kanly to avoid another 'War of Assassins' where the Imperium was plunged into anarchy. The most dangerous of assassins have generaly been mentats. From the famed Atreides Warrior/Mentat Thufir Hawat to the 'twisted' Mentat of the Harkonnens, Pieter DeVries. It is speculated that the Count Hasimir Fenring may also be an assassin. It is said that he killed Elrood IX, Shaddam IV's father. The snake may be powerful, but cut off the head, and it is dead. This is the theory behind assassins.

Siege Tank:
As the Imperial Observer during the First Battle of Arrakeen, he saw firsthand the power of the Harkonenn artillery in defeating many Atreides soldiers by forcing them into the cliffs and then pummelling and trapping them with artillery. Although artillery seems old-fashioned these days with the Holzman Shield, when shelling unsuspecting infantry in the desert or a city, artillery shells can be devestating.

Death Hand: (I would really reccomend renaming this unit Keldath.)
The Harkonnen 'thoper crews are known for an unusual thing, sharpshooting. This goes against common wisdom as 'thopters are designed for gaining air-superiority, raids, or supporting infantry. Harkonnen 'thopter crews have gained experiance hunting escaped slaves on Geidi Prime, and on the vast desert plains of Arakkis, the small Fremen group makes a tempting target for Harkonnen 'thopters, and a bloody lesson that the complacent Fremen won't soon forget.

Heavy Trooper:
Harkonnen Infantry are the heaviest equiped in the Imperium, each with enough equipment to equip a small detail. They need that equipment as Harkonnen infantry aren't the best individualy due to a high morality rate, a telltale of the Harkonnens disregard for human life. However, when properly deployed, they are nearly unstoppable as they can lay down both a powerful barrage before wading into enemy ranks with swords drawn for the final kill.

Face Dancer:
Face Dancers are a Tleilaxu invantion, regarded as an abomination and twisting of life. Face Dancers are able to 'reform' their body into whatever form they choose with certaint limitations, such as the form must be human. Face Dancers aren't entirely human themselves, instead they are more of a Hive Mind organism made in the Tleilaxu Axlotl Tanks.

Ghola:
Gholas are bodies recreated from a persons cells. When they come out of the Axlotl Tanks, they are a blank slate and have no memories. However, as part of an experement by the Face Dancer Scytale with the Duncan Idaho Ghola, he managed to bring the memories of Idaho back, essentialy reviving him.

Keldath, I would highly reccomend getting rid of one of the Atreides's thopter units and replace it with an infantry unit. That is actualy the reason why the emperor wanted to get rid of the Duke, he had trained a small corps under Duncan and Guerny to better than Sardaukar.


EDIT: Keldath, I don't know if you know this, but you can have 'water' units built in any city by setting <MaxTiles> or something like that to 0 like the land units.

 

[davidlallen]

OK, I grabbed bits out of the Fury Road animal AI, and I have something working for sandworm AI in your mod. Please replace files in directory "dune wars\assets\python" with the files in the attached zip.

At the end of each turn, it counts up the number of unowned squares and the number of existing sandworms, and randomly places some new sandworms. The sandworms will be placed in plots which are not owned, water, hill, or peak. For a small map at average difficulty, 12 worms are placed; more on larger maps or higher difficulty.

When the AI units move, they will move according to animal AI most of the time. If they are on a square with any improvement, they will destroy it. For scaled improvements, such as town/village/cottage, the improvement is moved down one level. Only goody hut improvements are immune. If the sandworm is adjacent to an improvement (not on rocky hills) it will move towards it, destroying it next turn.

I have not done anything special with the sandworm attack strength. In your unitinfo, it is given a strength of 10. At the beginning of the game, even a scout will always beat a sandworm when the sandworm attacks; this is because the handicap file gives each player two free wins against barbs (and animals). This is a little weird. You may want to reset this number to zero, and/or increase the strength of the basic sandworm.

I have not done anything with sound. If you want to make certain units more or less likely to attract attention, I can do that, but using msound seems like overkill. I have not done anything with the "high tech" worms; I can add more code for that, but first we should see what else needs to be added to the AI to make it interesting.

Please let me know your feedback.

 

[keldath]

hi guys,

dont have much time to write,

maniac - yes im aware, i didnt colored the grid files....hoped noone would notice...

Ajidica - thanks for the feed buddy. what did you mean with maxtiles - plz elaborate .

davidlallen - excellnt - ill check it out when i get home from work.
can you fix the python error regarding diplomacy? thats acctually annoying....

 

[davidlallen]

can you fix the python error regarding diplomacy? thats acctually annoying....

That one I can't get a handle on. The python error says "Access violation - no RTTI data". There are a couple of bug reports in the FFH forum from Oct 2007 which have this exact traceback, but no solutions were posted.

There is one which generates 20 popups at the end of the first turn. This one is due to file assets\python\revolution\rebeltypes.py where function setup() tries to find all of the tags like CIVILIZATION_AMERICA which are gone. This can be fixed by adding a return in that function, but it won't be doing anything useful.

There is another one which pops at startup referring to global Assimilation. This also appears to be related to revolution but I can't trace it back.

Are you doing anything with the revolution mod? It seems to be causing a few problems, and maybe you should take it out. I don't understand how to configure it but it doesn't seem to have the right setup for your mod.

 

[johny smith]

I have still not even tried the latest.

The_J I did not take offense or anything. Just wanted to point it out if people do want future promotions similar to that in any mod. I could show them a easy setup to work with.

Keldath If you are going to use Revolutions I have not looked at the recent but would seem easy to remove some things. I did notice the python errors appear in the last I tried. And had some really other strange one as well when loading the defalt BtS with Dune in mods.

If you do use the Revolution and want to change the button for the advisor it can be done as well. Are you going to use Inquisitors? Because that is all in the python as well.

Are you actually using DCM? Or Influence Driven War? Or Super Spies? Just wondering. Because if you are not using any of these why have them in the dll?

If you want to use the WoC stuff I have a version with none of that in there as well.

Just whatever you would like anyway I can help out, but I think you can figure it out alone.

 

[Ajidica]

Keldath, I know enough about python the be able to replace txt lines and such in it, so if you give me minor civs to use, I can add them in. I have to agree with davidlallen, what exactly are you going to be doing with revolution, it doesn't seem to work well with Dune.

The tag is actualy <iMinAreaSize> Here is the naval one:
<iMinAreaSize>20</iMinAreaSize>
Here is the land one:
<iMinAreaSize>-1</iMinAreaSize>
The number inside refers to how many water tiles are needed.

So, if you allow hovers to cross over land, this is how they can be built in land cities.

 

[The_J]

@Johny: Good to know .

The tag is actualy <iMinAreaSize> Here is the naval one:
<iMinAreaSize>20</iMinAreaSize>
Here is the land one:
<iMinAreaSize>-1</iMinAreaSize>
The number inside refers to how many water tiles are needed.

So, if you allow hovers to cross over land, this is how they can be built in land cities.

that's not totally correct.
If you have a landunit, or a land building, and ad

<iMinAreaSize>20</iMinAreaSize>

it can't be build on small islands, because there's not enough landmass.


Had a bug in my mod with that. I "converted" (okay, i've renamed them ) buildings and units, and changed the domain/the need for water, but forgot that, and on higher terraforming levels some players complained, that a city has stopped producing a building/a unit.
-1 just says, that there's nor prereqisite for the landmass.

 

[davidlallen]

If you do use the Revolution and want to change the button for the advisor it can be done as well. Are you going to use Inquisitors? Because that is all in the python as well.

Are you actually using DCM? Or Influence Driven War? Or Super Spies? Just wondering. Because if you are not using any of these why have them in the dll?

I don't know these mods well enough to know what each one adds. I can see he has lasgun troops with range 2, which I think uses DCM; I don't know how much that adds because I haven't played any long games yet. I see there are a bunch of spy and saboteur units in the game, which might come from superspies, and that seems to fit the Dune theme pretty well.

Revolutions doesn't seem to fit, unless we want sub-factions suddenly appearing, and I don't really see how influence driven war adds anything except complexity.

Still, it is Keldath's call.

 

[Ajidica]

I personaly like IDW, but it is keldaths call. Also, the ranged attack doesn't have to be from DCM, you can do it in normal BTS as a airstrike, like how they handled it in Afterworld.