Dungeon Adventure MOD MOD

[Lutefisk Mafia]

If a huge map had an inaccessable polar zone or other area that is always blocked off (The Forbidden Island), you could use this area to generate dungeon maps. Then the explorable dungeons would be doable.

Another thing I have played with is to create two new terrains or features called "East Ocean" and "West Ocean." Not surprisingly, these make vertical stripes in the Ocean. They use an "onUnitMove" call to see if the unit moved onto either of these zones. If so, it is instantly teleported to the opposing zone at the same latitude. In this way, you can section off a huge chunk of the map to use for dungeon zones, etc. that the player can never get to normally. And you still have map wrapping! (sort of) Just remember to code in a restriction that prevents moving from one type of "limiter" zone to a tile of the same type, to prevent exploits.

 

[Skitters]

- perhaps not an issue if DAM has no flying creatures, but regarding the forbidden island would you need to generate impassable terrain that you can't fly through too?

The East / West ocean suggestion sounds pretty neat - but would it have to be for specifically designed maps, or would the map script know to have Ocean running North-South? (though I have a vision of it generating islands which are suddenly sundered on the East / West coast)

Alternatively if a land tile is generated where the East / West point should be, perhaps it could be set to have East / West mountains?

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

There are so many ways to make terrains inaccessable.

But, I'm pretty sure that coding a conditional block into the:

def unitCannotMoveInto(self,argsList):

section of CvGameUtils.py sets a total block, regardless of other promotions and conditional stuff. I was using it for the AGTFOS mod and it worked fine.

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

I am going to spam my own thread and rhapsodize for a moment.

Spore came out on the 7th, and I picked up a copy at the local Best Buy.

Wow.

I had that day totally free from any obligations and sat down to play at about 10 AM.

A bit later, I was starting to feel uncomfortable and had to use the restroom, so I got up to walk around a bit, answer the call of nature, maybe eat something...

It was dark outside. It was 9 PM.

I had played for 11 hours straight --- one giant uninterrupted continous 11-hour Sporgasm.

Again, wow.

 

[xienwolf]

It does sound like an awesome game/platform/tool thingy.... but the DRM on it SUCKS

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what's a DRM? but I agree that spore looks awesome. something original, at last. I was getting tired of seeing nothing like FPS coming out lately.

 

[JDexter]

DRM = Digital Rights Managment.

As in copy protection. Spore has a very buggy one (of course MOST DRM systems are defective by design, but that's another argument) that many PCs/Macs have problems with.

 

[Kael]

As far as I can tell its not buggy. It just only allows you to play on 3 machines. Spore doesn't use a CD key copy protection (ie: you don't have to insert the CD to play). Instead you have limited activations. After your 3 for your particular ID you have to call EA to reactivate.

Thats got a lot of people mad who are worried that if the activation service goes away they will lose the game. Or that they should be able to install on as many machines as they want (not currently but say they have 4 different computer over the next 6 years), or that they should be able to resell the game (the activation limit makes that very difficult).

Its an interesting debate.

 

[Arctem]

The main problem with DRM is that it only is a problem to those who legally buy the game. The ones who pirate it usually break it in about a day or two (Spore's was actually broken before it was out in the states) and don't have to worry about it, making the DRM less than pointless since it sometimes drives potential buyers to pirating it.

For the record, I bought the game legally and have had no problems with SecuROM so far.

 

[3141592]

What Arctem said. There is no DRM that cannot be broken by a dropout student living in his parents basement so why put it on at all. All it ever does is annoy those who buy it legally.

 

[xienwolf]

The good about their DRM:

Doesn't require you keep the CD in your drive --> Improves battery life and gamespeed (my general complaint about DRM)

The bad about their DRM:

3 installs, based on a registry key being maintained to track if you already installed on the machine. Thus if you fry your registry (I do that somewhat too often) you might have to eat an install, or if you overhaul your machine (anyone who tries to remain State of the Art does this often) you eat an install.

Need an Internet Connection during Installation Process: Not an issue for me personally since I am a net-whore. But I have a lot of friends/family who would love this game, but don't have any net capabilities at home (barely managed to get them to have a computer capable of such a game).


And yes: It really sucks that nobody has figured out a good method of an unbreakable DRM, but they continue to utilize them. However, much is to be said for keeping the semi-honest honest. Afterall, anyone can break into my car/house by smashing the window quite easily, but I still lock it up.

 

[Arctem]

Something kinda funny: Stardock had absolutely zero DRM on their Sins of a Solar Empire (awesome game), and had almost no problem with piracy, selling over 500,000 copies, 200,000 being in the first month.

 

[Kael]

Something kinda funny: Stardock had absolutely zero DRM on their Sins of a Solar Empire (awesome game), and had almost no problem with piracy, selling over 500,000 copies, 200,000 being in the first month.

The question everyone would love the answer to is "how many people pirated the game?" Unfortunatly its an impossible question to answer.

And I thought Sins had some copy protection (but correct me if Im wrong because I dont own it). Doesn't the digital version require authentication and the cd version require the cd (ie: cdkey) to play? Or can someone simply buy the game, install it on their computer and 20 of their friends and all play together?

(sorry lutefisk's for hijackign your thread but you started it )

 

[Arctem]

It doesn't require the disc to play. In order to download patches you need to authorize, but they aren't required to play. You're allowed to have it authorized on 2 (or maybe 3) computers at the same time, but you are free to uninstall and reinstall it as many times as you want so that isn't a problem. And, of course, you can have it installed on infinite computers at once, but you'll be without the patches (which is the only real anti-piracy thing they have). You can redownload the game whenever you want, whether you bought online or not, as long as you aren't at the max of authorized computers.

Basically, a really good system that doesn't mess with the consumer at all. Stardock is one of my favorite developers because of this (along with Valve due to Steam, which is similar to Stardock's system, except they require online authorization to play, which doesn't really bother me).

Stardock's stance on DRM and piracy is largely explained here: http://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=303512 (I think the post is by the head developer of Sins, or some similar position).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

so he's basically saying that games nowadays are getting more and more targeted to hard-core gamers? to me , I'd think quite the contrary actually, and the games coming out lately seem to back up my opinion - they're getting simpler, not more complicated. methinks game companies thinks of it like that:

" ok so we know that the vast majority of hardcore gamers are not going to give us a cent. screw them, we'll try to attract as many casual gamers as we can, since those guys actually PAY for the freakin game "

which is good, but casual gamers buy games cuz they play very little and so they buy 1 game and they're all set for a good while. not expensive.

hardcore gamers on the otherside tend to get bored with games quickly and they just want to try them all. which means that they'd need to be Bill freakin Gates to play all the games they want to play.

sure, playing games is not by all means necessary for survival so they could just be grateful for the few that they COULD actually buy and everything's cool. but nobody is willing to give away huge amounts of cash when they can just get it free, heck it's the very same issue that has got millions of people into downloading music instead of buying it.

so yeah, I agree that piracy does harm the videogame scene. but it's just normal that people are not willing to pay for something they can get for free.

 

[Arctem]

sure, playing games is not by all means necessary for survival

You obviously don't know what you're talking about...

On a more serious note, I think that there are a lot of games being made for those few who have powerfull computers. Crysis, Farcry 2, Bioshock, and Fallout 3 being prime examples (admittedly most FPS's fit that category, but nowadays FPS is one of the most common genres). Sure, there are games like Spore that are made for the everyone (which makes the DRM make even less sense, since a lot of them wouldn't understand why their game wasn't working after using up the installs or because they had a program it disagreed with), but most companies don't target the average consumer whose computer wasn't anywhere near top of the line when they bought it 3 years ago.

 

[TheJopa]

As far as I can tell its not buggy. It just only allows you to play on 3 machines. Spore doesn't use a CD key copy protection (ie: you don't have to insert the CD to play). Instead you have limited activations. After your 3 for your particular ID you have to call EA to reactivate.

Thats got a lot of people mad who are worried that if the activation service goes away they will lose the game. Or that they should be able to install on as many machines as they want (not currently but say they have 4 different computer over the next 6 years), or that they should be able to resell the game (the activation limit makes that very difficult).

Its an interesting debate.

Call EA? I don't even want to think what would happen if I had to call EA from Croatia. It would be cheaper to simply buy another copy of game.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

Omfg I Just Got Spore Too And Its Amazing O_o

Woooooooooo!

 

[Lutefisk Mafia]

Omfg I Just Got Spore Too And Its Amazing O_o

Woooooooooo!

I have raised two civs from celldom all the way up to Space, the Illithids and the Gozerians. My content on the Sporepedia is under my name Lutefisk_Mafia -- mostly dragons, cthulhu critters, monkeys with gas problems, and other weird stuff.

 

[xanaqui42]

Another thing I have played with is to create two new terrains or features called "East Ocean" and "West Ocean." Not surprisingly, these make vertical stripes in the Ocean. They use an "onUnitMove" call to see if the unit moved onto either of these zones. If so, it is instantly teleported to the opposing zone at the same latitude. In this way, you can section off a huge chunk of the map to use for dungeon zones, etc. that the player can never get to normally. And you still have map wrapping! (sort of) Just remember to code in a restriction that prevents moving from one type of "limiter" zone to a tile of the same type, to prevent exploits.

If you intend to do this, I'd suggest creating, say XML hooks to indicate the locations of these stripes, and then use that to modify the low-level (C++) distance functions. Otherwise, you'll have problems if/when the AI wants to move units. Then, I'd change the impassible-type functions to make the other section impassible to any unit from the first section (or change the routing functions to route any moves planned into the opposite section into the closest way to get into the opposite section instead).