Dune Wars Mod

[davidlallen]

Well, I think there's some code in the DLL that assumes that the plot type for any water terrain is PLOT_OCEAN. So if you set bWater on something, it wont retain PLOT_LAND etc. If you set the terrain type for a plot and it's water, like TERRAIN_COAST, it will change the plot type to PLOT_OCEAN for you.

I agree, but I don't see why that is a problem. In Dune Wars, ocean and coast are both PLOT_WATER. They are just yellow in color. The game does treat them as water, that is what we want.

In any case, I have alot of work to do to realize these dunes. Once I get it running and the dunes turn out really nice, then you guys can solve the problems in their use.

I will try some experiments with multiple water types tonight. I hope it does not come down to a choice between either, fancy looking dunes, or amphibious assault working correctly.

 

[koma13]

I don't think this ocean/land plot for dune terrain is a problem. Both ways should work fine. Remember, we have ALL-terrain transports.

About spice: How if we remove the restriction that you can only build spice improvement inside your culture zone? Allowing spice harvest outside in the deep desert would make the current concept more interesting imho.

 

[darkedone02]

one time, in dune wars...

I like to be somewhat organized in a way, and make sure that every base has at least one non-recon, one non-national unit into each and every base with full promotions to make them indestructable, however, I didn't research any other tech that give me another defence/offence unit that could fortify and one of the sandstorms took over my capital and spawn a new empire, I defected the new empire and my next new city took over the name of my capital. and rebuild the city.

One thing that I kinda felt empty is how there is not enough improvements that is big and shiny like a town for example, most of them is just look like tubes and arms and whatnot. I also wish there is another way to stop sandstorms from becoming strong and destroying my improvements.

Since I heard we can't build roads or anything like that, then you need to find a way to remove this "require route" after building an improvement on the right resource.

 

[davidlallen]

About spice: How if we remove the restriction that you can only build spice improvement inside your culture zone? Allowing spice harvest outside in the deep desert would make the current concept more interesting imho.

That is an excellent idea. The restriction currently comes from the corporation code inside the sdk. At least, it does not seem adjustable in either python or xml. Here is how to tell.

1. Give yourself your spice corporation and look at your commerce income in the finance advisor.

2. Place a bunch of spice improvements inside your cultural borders and look at your income again. It went up a lot.

3. Remove those improvements and put the same number of spice improvements outside your cultural borders. Now your income is back down.

Sadly I am not able to trace inside the sdk to find where this is happening and get rid of it.

 

[davidlallen]

one of the sandstorms took over my capital and spawn a new empire

What!?! With the current code I do not think sandstorms even attack units, let alone conquer cities. This is a bug. There is more to it, but for now you can edit assets/xml/units/civ4unitinfos.xml. Find the four entries for SANDSTORM1,2,3,4. In each one, right underneath is a line <bNoCapture>0</bNoCapture>. Change the 0 to 1.

One thing that I kinda felt empty is how there is not enough improvements that is big and shiny like a town for example, most of them is just look like tubes and arms and whatnot.

I agree more dune-specific unit/bonus art would be worthwhile. If you have a chance, take a look through the downloads database and other mods. If there is art there, we can steal^h^h^h^h borrow it.

I also wish there is another way to stop sandstorms from becoming strong and destroying my improvements.

Well, welcome to Dune

Since I heard we can't build roads or anything like that, then you need to find a way to remove this "require route" after building an improvement on the right resource.

There is a system for this which should be working. If you look in the tech tree under "Desert Passage", you will see that once you research this tech, your resources will automatically connect up on these terrain types. There are later techs which allow connecting up resources on desert waste and deep desert. If you find this is not working, please send a screenshot which shows the terrain in the square and nearby.

 

[cephalo]

I agree, but I don't see why that is a problem. In Dune Wars, ocean and coast are both PLOT_WATER. They are just yellow in color. The game does treat them as water, that is what we want.

The problem though is that the game gets it's plot geometry from the plot type, which I beleive is something that is hard-coded. In order to make the different altitudes, I need them to stay PLOT_LAND and PLOT_HILLS so they aren't all flattened down to PLOT_OCEAN. Don't worry about it yet though, I have to prove the worth of my dune theory first.

 

[koma13]

Sadly I am not able to trace inside the sdk to find where this is happening and get rid of it.

EDIT:

CvPlot::canBuild looks like a good start.

CvPlot::canHaveImprovement maybe too.

 

[davidlallen]

The problem though is that the game gets it's plot geometry from the plot type, which I beleive is something that is hard-coded. In order to make the different altitudes, I need them to stay PLOT_LAND and PLOT_HILLS so they aren't all flattened down to PLOT_OCEAN. Don't worry about it yet though, I have to prove the worth of my dune theory first.

Can you keep the altitude data on the side, or in the geometries, instead of using the PLOT_*?

 

[cephalo]

Can you keep the altitude data on the side, or in the geometries, instead of using the PLOT_*?

I don't think so, I think the four plot types, PLOT_OCEAN, PLOT_LAND, PLOT_HILLS and PLOT_PEAK are an unshakable paradigm. I've never seen a mod alter these, not even Colonization did, but it would be awsome if you could.

There's alot of logic packed in those 4 enums though. For example, peaks and hills change their geometry depending on what plot types are adjacent to them. So anything you do to 'roll your own' would not be a trivial undertaking. However, I confess that I have not researched this issue thoroughly.

EDIT: You might be able to change their meaning in non-graphical ways though. With some SDK work you might be able to have hills that behave like ocean from a gameplay and AI perspective.

 

[Deliverator]

Played with tiling options for spice. Forest isn't going to work - it doesn't lay down on ocean, plus it has a load of stuff like road cutting we don't need for the spice. So that leaves the ice model. I think this is the way forward. Today, I am basically going try and create something with the tiling system of this:

Spoiler :

And the colour, dusty edges and effects of this:

Spoiler :

Essentially, it is now only texturing work to match the shape of the icebergs with spice patches. Once I have matched the shape I can delete the icebergs from the NIFs.

Spoiler :

I also wish there is another way to stop sandstorms from becoming strong and destroying my improvements.

Maybe there could be a late game wonder, Weather Satellites, that gives some benefit connected with the sandstorms...

 

[keldath]

hi guys,

glad to see all the talks about the plot ocean and water,
hope youll be able to do something with it.

darkedone02,
welcome to dune,

your the first to say your not into my improvements, if you have some suggestions - id be happy to hear.
i can create more deiversity with them in the future.

as for units, i have plans to plant hero like units inside the tech, along with power units, that will make the game more interesting.

its just versioj 1.2, plan on getting to 2 at least.

my plans are to add a lot more content to the game,
right now, we are focusing on dune wars mechanics, so we can have dune features currect in the mod, if its spice system, worm sign, and such.
after we get those balanced we can continue on adding stuff that will enrich the mod it self.

my goal is to make this mod as a large extenssive mod.

 

[Bestiano]

Hello Everybody
Im not too active around here, but I really love the mod so figured I'd share some thoughts.
This is a very extreme idea and I won't be surprised if it will be infeasible. I saw that "Future Mod" around the forums, which puts in the game multiple planets in form of separate maps, so I got an idea for Dune. Maybe there could be an extra map Final Frontier style, all faction would be active on Dune and share it, but at the same time they would fight each other on the galactic map. Spice would of course get extra value, as you would need it to build space ships and travel interstellar distances. I think this would work well in Dune world, since all Houses truly are interstellar factions, and would be definitely something completely different from all other mods.

I am not a modder so I cant imagine what issues may be found in this concept. It would also require a total overhaul of existing mod in terms of techs, units and god knows what..

Also on the other note...
Why do you need corporations to harness the power of spice, cant you just make spice as a cumulative resource, and completely skip this corporal stuff. Also when I was playing (and didn't play much as I was busy) I couldn't build corporal executives to spread corporal branches, so all I could have was a HQ and got 1 gold and 1 food out of it and paid 7 gold maintenance... I am sure its just me being stupid here, so if you will ever get around it, it would be cool to have some basic info about new concepts and additions, to ease the learning curve.

Thanks and keep on the great work

 

[keldath]

hi Bestiano,
and welcomed to dune wars.

thank you for your post,

your two map idea was discussed here actually,
i totally agree that implementing this can be very ver cool and enrish gameplay,
however, so far - only the creator of future mod - tholish can create it - and i dunno if he will create for us some map scripts, this is something for a later version cause were still building this mod.


we harness the spice with unique corporations because we want to give spice an extra meaning, so economy would be based upon it.
it is on purpose that you cannot spread the uniqie corporations, each nation have its own spice corp in addition to the seven regular corporations.


thanks and enjoy.

 

[davidlallen]

Why do you need corporations to harness the power of spice, cant you just make spice as a cumulative resource, and completely skip this corporal stuff. Also when I was playing (and didn't play much as I was busy) I couldn't build corporal executives to spread corporal branches, so all I could have was a HQ and got 1 gold and 1 food out of it and paid 7 gold maintenance.

Please look down at the bottom of your available building list to find the spice corporation, it is a yellow icon with a red and black center. This gives you a lot of commerce income based on spice. It sounds like you built one of the standard corporations instead, which may not have as much value. As far as I can tell there is little extra value in having this corporation in multiple cities.

I don't know of any way to make "cumulative resources" work in the standard game apart from corporations. There are a couple of mods which tried this, but I do not think any standalone mods for this were ever completed. The corporation mechanic seems to work well once you build the building. Can you suggest another place we can lift a working mechanic for this?

I have not upgraded to 3.19 yet because it would mean most of the mods I have can no longer work. So I haven't installed the 1.2 version of dune wars. But I had posted a set of hints which may be in 1.2; anyway you can see the hints at this post.

 

[keldath]

dont worry david,
the hinys are in 1.2.

there are cumulative resource mods, but i haven't tried them yet, and i don't think their mechanism works well.


****

hey guys,

how do i reduce the amount of spie that are placed after a spice blow?

also,
how do i make spice blow to appear after more time?


also was thinking of making it that you cannot build spice harvester improvement close to one another - 1 -2 tiles away from each other.

what dio you think?



*************

bad news people:

there's a ctd after 300 turns or so,
i have know idea why, and it non passable crash.

i need your help on this guys.

 

[Deliverator]

This is where I've got to on the spice. The internal edges need blending and I need to create 2/3 variations on each tile to sell the realism. Unfortunately, features can't have effects so there is no gas which is a bit disappointing. Maybe we could lay down a feature for the tile and a bonus dummy to produce the gas/fumes.

Spoiler :

 

[davidlallen]

That looks great. Every square which has a spice feature, also has a spice bonus. Today that is because there are three densities of spice. Can you put the gas effect onto the bonus?

Will you be able to make different densities? If not, then I can easily just put the graphics onto the bonus and get rid of the three features.

 

[keldath]

ery nice spice!

though i really like the fumes!

***

guys - plz run a few games with autoai - and see if you get a ctd around 300 turns (i used 500 speed turns - duel world, archipelago)

 

[Deliverator]

That looks great. Every square which has a spice feature, also has a spice bonus. Today that is because there are three densities of spice. Can you put the gas effect onto the bonus?

Will you be able to make different densities? If not, then I can easily just put the graphics onto the bonus and get rid of the three features.

OK, then I'll make a NIF that has nothing apart from the effects generating nodes. The bonus can use that NIF and the feature can be the new one I'm creating. Hopefully, the two together will look pretty decent.

Densities. Mmmm, not sure. The problem is that to do the tiling I'd have to create probably 10 tiles texures per density. It's something I could do eventually, but when there are units I really want to do I'm not sure it would be the best use of my time. Perhaps we should just take them out.

Also, game mechanic wise it would be really nice if the spice was actually consumed after a number of turns rather than just disappearing.

 

[davidlallen]

Densities. [...] Perhaps we should just take them out. Also, game mechanic wise it would be really nice if the spice was actually consumed after a number of turns rather than just disappearing.

I can take out the densities easily. If we have only one density, there is no particular reason to have both a feature and a bonus. Do you just want to put it all onto one bonus?

What is the difference you suggest between "consumed" and "disappeared"? Today the spice has a 3% chance per turn of degrading one level if there is no spice harvester on the square, or a 10% chance of degrading if there is. So it is consumed; but on the other hand it can slowly disappear on its own also. What would you suggest?